CHAPTER IX.
OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL.
Loves of my youth, whither are ye vanished? Tubby of the golden
locks; Langley of the dented nose; Shamus stout of heart but faint of
limb, easy enough to "down," but utterly impossible to make to cry:
"I give you best;" Neal the thin; and Dicky, "dicky Dick" the fat;
Ballett of the weeping eye; Beau Bunnie lord of many ties, who always
fought in black kid gloves; all ye others, ye whose names I cannot
recollect, though I well remember ye were very dear to me, whither are
ye vanished, where haunt your creeping ghosts? Had one told me then
there would come a day I should never see again your merry faces,
never hear your wild, shrill whoop of greeting, never feel again the
warm clasp of your inky fingers, never fight again nor quarrel with
you, never hate you, never love you, could I then have borne the
thought, I wonder?
Once, methinks, not long ago, I saw you, Tubby, you with whom so often
I discovered the North Pole, probed the problem of the sources of the
Nile, (Have you forgotten, Tubby, our secret camping ground beside the
lonely waters of the Regent's Park canal, where discussing our frugal
meal of toasted elephant's tongue--by the uninitiated mistakable for
jumbles--there would break upon our trained hunters' ear the hungry
lion or tiger's distant roar, mingled with the melancholy, long-drawn
growling of the Polar Bear, growing ever in volume and impatience
until half-past four precisely; and we would snatch our rifles, and
with stealthy tread and every sense alert make our way through the
jungle--until stopped by the spiked fencing round the Zoological
Gardens?) I feel sure it was you, in spite of your side whiskers and
the greyness and the thinness of your once clustering golden locks.
You were hurrying down Throgmorton Street chained to a small black
bag. I should have stopped you, but that I had no time to spare,
having to catch a train at Liverpool Street and to get shaved on the
way. I wonder if you recognised me: you looked at me a little hard,
I thought. Gallant, kindly hearted Shamus, you who fought once for
half an hour to save a frog from being skinned; they tell me you are
now an Income Tax assessor; a man, it is reported, with power of
disbelief unusual among even Inland Revenue circles; of little faith,
lacking in the charity that thinketh no evil. May Providence direct
you to other districts than to mine.
So Time, Nature's handy-man, bustles to and fro about the many rooms,
making all things tidy, covers with sweet earth the burnt volcanoes,
turns to use the debris of the ages, smoothes again the ground above
the dead, heals again the beech bark marred by lovers.
In the beginning I was far from being a favourite with my schoolmates,
and this was the first time trouble came to dwell with me. Later, we
men and women generally succeed in convincing ourselves that whatever
else we may have missed in life, popularity in a greater or less
degree we have at all events secured, for without it altogether few of
us, I think, would care to face existence. But where the child
suffers keener than the man is in finding himself exposed to the cold
truth without the protecting clothes of self-deception. My ostracism
was painfully plain to me, and, as was my nature, I brooded upon it in
silence.
"Can you run?" asked of me one day a most important personage whose
name I have forgotten. He was head of the Lower Fourth, a tall youth
with a nose like a beak, and the manner of one born to authority. He
was the son of a draper in the Edgware Road, and his father failing,
he had to be content for a niche in life with a lower clerkship in the
Civil Service. But to us youngsters he always appeared a Duke of
Wellington in embryo, and under other circumstances might, perhaps,
have become one.
"Yes," I answered. As a matter of fact it was my one accomplishment,
and rumour of it maybe had reached him.
"Run round the playground twice at your fastest," he commanded; "let
me see you."
I clinched my fists and charged off. How grateful I was to him for
having spoken to me, the outcast of the class, thus publicly, I could
only show by my exertions to please him. When I drew up before him I
was panting hard, but I could see that he was satisfied.
"Why don't the fellows like you?" he asked bluntly.
If only I could have stepped out of my shyness, spoken my real
thoughts! "0 Lord of the Lower Fourth! You upon whom success--the
only success in life worth having--has fallen as from the laps of the
gods! You to whom all Lower Fourth hearts turn! tell me the secret of
this popularity. How may I acquire it? No price can be too great for
me to pay for it. Vain little egoist that I am, it is the sum of my
desires, and will be till the long years have taught me wisdom. The
want of it embitters all my days. Why does silence fall upon their
chattering groups when I draw near? Why do they drive me from their
games? What is it shuts me out from them, repels them from me? I
creep into the corners and shed scalding tears of shame. I watch with
envious eyes and ears all you to whom the wondrous gift is given.
What is your secret? Is it Tommy's swagger? Then I will swagger,
too, with anxious heart, with mingled fear and hope. But why--why,
seeing that in Tommy they admire it, do they wait for me with
imitations of cock-a-doodle-do, strut beside me mimicking a pouter
pigeon? Is it Dicky's playfulness?--Dicky, who runs away with their
balls, snatches their caps from off their heads, springs upon their
backs when they are least expecting it?
Why should Dicky's reward be laughter, and mine a bloody nose and a
widened, deepened circle of dislike? I am no heavier than Dicky; if
anything a pound or two lighter. Is it Billy's friendliness? I too
would fling my arms about their necks; but from me they angrily wrench
themselves free. Is indifference the best plan? I walk apart with
step I try so hard to render careless; but none follows, no little
friendly arm is slipped through mine. Should one seek to win one's
way by kind offices? Ah, if one could! How I would fag for them. I
could do their sums for them--I am good at sums--write their
impositions for them, gladly take upon myself their punishments, would
they but return my service with a little love and--more important
still--a little admiration."
But all I could find to say was, sulkily: "They do like me, some of
them." I dared not, aloud, acknowledge the truth.
"Don't tell lies," he answered; "you know they don't--none of them."
And I hung my head.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he continued in his lordly way; "I'll
give you a chance. We're starting hare and hounds next Saturday; you
can be a hare. You needn't tell anybody. Just turn up on Saturday
and I'll see to it. Mind, you'll have to run like the devil."
He walked away without waiting for my answer, leaving me to meet Joy
running towards me with outstretched hands. The great moment comes to
all of us; to the politician, when the Party whip slips from
confabulation with the Front Bench to congratulate him, smiling, on
his really admirable little speech; to the youthful dramatist, reading
in his bed-sitting-room the managerial note asking him to call that
morning at eleven; to the subaltern, beckoned to the stirrup of his
chief--the moment when the sun breaks through the morning mists, and
the world lies stretched before us, our way clear.
Obeying orders, I gave no hint in school of the great fortune that had
come to me; but hurrying home, I exploded in the passage before the
front door could be closed behind me.
"I am to be a hare because I run so fast. Anybody can be a hound, but
there's only two hares, and they all want me. And can I have a
jersey? We begin next Saturday. He saw me run. I ran twice round
the playground. He said I was splendid! Of course, it's a great
honour to be a hare. We start from Hampstead Heath. And may I have a
pair of shoes?"
The jersey and the shoes my mother and I purchased that very day, for
the fear was upon me that unless we hastened, the last blue and white
striped jersey in London might be sold, and the market be empty of
running shoes. That evening, before getting into bed, I dressed
myself in full costume to admire myself before the glass; and from
then till the end of the week, to the terror of my mother, I practised
leaping over chairs, and my method of descending stairs was perilous
and roundabout. But, as I explained to them, the credit of the Lower
Fourth was at stake, and banisters and legs equally of small account
as compared with fame and honour; and my father, nodding his head,
supported me with manly argument; but my mother added to her prayers
another line.
Saturday came. The members of the hunt were mostly boys who lived in
the neighbourhood; so the arrangement was that at half-past two we
should meet at the turnpike gate outside the Spaniards. I brought my
lunch with me and ate it in Regent's Park, and then took the 'bus to
the Heath. One by one the others came up. Beyond mere glances, none
of them took any notice of me. I was wearing my ordinary clothes over
my jersey. I knew they thought I had come merely to see them start,
and I hugged to myself the dream of the surprise that was in store for
them, and of which I should be the hero. He came, one of the last,
our leader and chief, and I sidled up behind him and waited, while he
busied himself organising and constructing.
"But we've only got one hare," cried one of them. "We ought to have
two, you know, in case one gets blown."
"We've got two," answered the Duke. "Think I don't know what I'm
about? Young Kelver's going to be the other one."
Silence fell upon the meet.
"Oh, I say, we don't want him," at last broke in a voice. "He's a
muff."
"He can run," explained the Duke.
"Let him run home," came another voice, which was greeted with
laughter.
"You'll run home in a minute yourself," threatened the Duke, "if I
have any of your cheek. Who's captain here--you or me? Now, young
'un, are you ready?"
I had commenced unbuttoning my jacket, but my hands fell to my side.
"I don't want to come," I answered, "if they don't want me."
"He'll get his feet wet," suggested the boy who had spoken first.
"Don't spoil him, he's his mother's pet."
"Are you coming or are you not?" shouted the Duke, seeing me still
motionless. But the tears were coming into my eyes and would not go
back. I turned my face away without speaking.
"All right, stop then," cried the Duke, who, like all authoritative
people, was impatient above all things of hesitation. "Here, Keefe,
you take the bag and be off. It'll be dark before we start."
My substitute snatched eagerly at the chance, and away went the hares,
while I, still keeping my face hid, moved slowly off.
"Cry-baby!" shouted a sharp-eyed youngster.
"Let him alone," growled the Duke; and I went on to where the cedars
grew.
I heard them start off a few minutes later with a whoop. How could I
go home, confess my disappointment, my shame? My father would be
expecting me with many questions, my mother waiting for me with hot
water and blankets. What explanation could I give that would not
betray my miserable secret?
It was a chill, dismal afternoon, the Heath deserted, a thin rain
commencing. I slipped off my shirt and jacket, and rolling them under
my arm, trotted off alone, hare and hounds combined in one small
carcass, to chase myself sadly by myself.
I see it still, that pathetically ridiculous little figure, jogging
doggedly over the dank fields. Mile after mile it runs, the little
idiot; jumping--sometimes falling into the muddy ditches: it seems
anxious rather than otherwise to get itself into a mess; scrambling
through the dripping hedges; swarming over tarry fence and slimy
paling. On, on it pants--through Bishop's Wood, by tangled Churchyard
Bottom, where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering
Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At
intervals it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy little
rag of a handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its
chief anxiety to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge
farmhouses, to dart across highroads when nobody is looking. And so
tear-smeared and mud-bespattered up the long rise of darkening Crouch
End Lane, where to-night the electric light blazes from a hundred
shops, and dead beat into the Seven Sisters Road station, there to
tear off its soaked jersey; and then home to Poplar, with shameless
account of the jolly afternoon that it has spent, of the admiration
and the praise that it has won.
You poor, pitiful little brat! Popularity? it is a shadow. Turn your
eyes towards it, and it shall ever run before you, escaping you. Turn
your back upon it, walk joyously towards the living sun, and it shall
follow you. Am I not right? Why, then, do you look at me, your
little face twisted into that quizzical grin?
When one takes service with Deceit, one signs a contract that one may
not break but under penalty. Maybe it was good for my health, those
lonely runs; but oh, they were dreary! By a process of argument not
uncommon I persuaded myself that truth was a matter of mere words,
that so long as I had actually gone over the ground I described I was
not lying. To further satisfy my conscience, I bought a big satchel
and scattered from it torn-up paper as I ran.
"And they never catch you?" asked my mother.
"Oh, no, never; they never even get within sight of me."
"Be careful, dear," would advise my mother; "don't overstrain
yourself." But I could see that she was proud of me.
And after awhile imagination came to my help, so that often I could
hear behind me the sound of pursuing feet, catch through gaps in the
trees a sight of a merry, host upon my trail, and would redouble my
speed.
Thus, but for Dan, my loneliness would have been unbearable. His
friendship was always there for me to creep to, the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land. To this day one may always know Dan's politics:
they are those of the Party out of power. Always without question one
may know the cause that he will champion, the unpopular cause; the man
he will defend, the man who is down.
"You are such an un-understandable chap," complained a fellow Clubman
to him once in my hearing. "I sometimes ask myself if you have any
opinions at all."
"I hate a crowd," was Dan's only confession of faith.
He never claimed anything from me in return for his affection; he was
there for me to hold to when I wanted him. When, baffled in all my
attempts to win the affections of others, I returned to him for
comfort, he gave it me, without even relieving himself of friendly
advice. When at length childish success came to me and I needed him
less, he was neither hurt nor surprised. Other people--their
thoughts, their actions, even when these concerned himself--never
troubled him. He loved to bestow, but as to response was strangely
indifferent; indeed, if anything, it bored him. His nature appeared
to be that of the fountain, which fulfils itself by giving, but is
unable to receive.
My popularity came to me unexpectedly after I had given up hoping for
it; surprising me, annoying me. Gradually it dawned upon me that my
company was being sought.
"Come along, Kelver," would say the spokesman of one group; "we're
going part of your way home. You can walk with us."
Maybe I would go with them, but more often, before we reached the
gate, the delight of my society would be claimed by a rival troop.
"He's coming with us this afternoon. He promised."
"No, he didn't."
"Yes, he did."
"Well, he ain't, anyhow. See?"
"Oh, isn't he? Who says he isn't?"
"I do."
"Punch his head, Dick!"
"Yes, you do, Jimmy Blake, and I'll punch yours. Come, Kelver."
I might have been some Queen of Beauty offered as prize for knightly
contest. Indeed, more than once the argument concluded thus
primitively, I being carried off in triumph by the victorious party.
For a period it remained a mystery to me, until I asked explanation of
Norval--we called him "Norval," he being one George Grampian: it was
our wit. From taking joy in teasing me, Norval had suddenly become
one of my greatest admirers. This by itself was difficult enough to
understand. He was in the second eleven, and after Dan the best
fighter in the lower school. If I could understand Norval's change of
attitude all would be plain to me; so when next time, bounding upon me
in the cloakroom and slipping his arm into mine, he clamoured for my
company to Camden Town, I put the question to him bluntly.
"Why should I walk home with you? Why do you want me?"
"Because we like you."
"But why do you like me?"
"Why! Why, because you're such a funny chap. You say such funny
things."
It struck me like a slap in the face. I had thought to reach
popularity upon the ladder of heroic qualities. In all the school
books I had read, Leonard or Marmaduke (we had a Marmaduke in the
Lower Fifth--they called him Marmalade: in the school books these
disasters are not contemplated), won love and admiration by reason of
integrity of character, nobility of sentiment, goodness of heart,
brilliance of intellect; combined maybe with a certain amount of
agility, instinct in the direction of bowling, or aptitude for
jumping; but such only by the way. Not one of them had ever said a
funny thing, either consciously or unconsciously.
"Don't be disagreeable, Kelver. Come with us and we will let you into
the team as an extra. I'll teach you batting."
So I was to be their Fool--I, dreamer of knightly dreams, aspirant to
hero's fame! I craved their wonder; I had won their laughter. I had
prayed for popularity; it had been granted to me--in this guise. Were
the gods still the heartless practical jokers poor Midas had found
them?
Had my vanity been less I should have flung their gift back in their
faces. But my thirst for approbation was too intense. I had to
choose: Cut capers and be followed, or walk in dignity, ignored. I
chose to cut the capers. As time wore on I found myself striving to
cut them quicker, quainter, thinking out funny stories, preparing
ingenuous impromptus, twisting all ideas into odd expression.
I had my reward. Before long my company was desired by all the
school. But I was never content. I would rather have been the
Captain of their football club, even his deputy Vice; would have given
all my meed of laughter for stuttering Jerry's one round of applause
when in our match against Highbury he knocked up his century, and so
won the victory for us by just three.
Till the end I never quite abandoned hope of exchanging my vine leaves
for the laurels. I would rise an hour earlier in the morning to
practise throwing at broomsticks set up in waste places. At another
time, the sport coming into temporary fashion, I wearied body and mind
for weeks in vain attempts to acquire skill on stilts. That even fat
Tubby could out-distance me upon them saddened my life for months.
A lad there was, a Sixth Form boy, one Wakeham by name, if I remember
rightly, who greatly envied me my gift of being able to amuse. He was
of the age when the other sex begins to be of importance to a fellow,
and the desire had come to him to be regarded as a star of wit among
the social circles of Gospel Oak. Need I say that by nature he was a
ponderously dull boy.
One afternoon I happened to be the centre of a small group in the
playground. I had been holding forth and they had been laughing.
Whether I had delivered myself of anything really entertaining or not
I cannot say. It made no difference; they had got into the habit of
laughing when I talked. Sometimes I would say quite serious things on
purpose; they would laugh just the same. Wakeham was among them, his
eyes fixed on me, watching me as boys watch a conjurer in the hope of
finding out "how he does it." Later in the afternoon he slipped his
arm through mine, and drew me away into an empty corner of the ground.
"I say, Kelver," he broke out, the moment we were beyond hearing, "you
really are funny!"
It gave me no pleasure. If he had told me that he admired my bowling
I might not have believed him, but should have loved him for it.
"So are you," I answered savagely, "only you don't know it."
"No, I'm not," he replied. "Wish I was. I say, Kelver"--he glanced
round to see that no one was within earshot--"do you think you could
teach me to be funny?"
I was about to reply with conviction in the negative when an idea
occurred to me. Wakeham was famous among us for one thing; he could,
inserting two fingers in his mouth, produce a whistle capable of
confusing dogs a quarter of a mile off, and of causing people near at
hand to jump from six to eighteen inches into the air.
This accomplishment of his I envied him as keenly as he envied me
mine. I did not admire it; I could not see the use of it. Generally
speaking, it called forth irritation rather than affection. A
purple-faced old gentleman, close to whose ear he once performed,
promptly cuffed his head for it; and for so doing was commended by the
whole street as a public benefactor. Drivers of vehicles would
respond by flicking at him, occasionally with success. Even youth,
from whom sympathy might have been expected, appeared impelled, if
anything happened to be at all handy, to take it up and throw it at
him. My own social circle would, I knew, regard it as a vulgar
accomplishment, and even Wakeham himself dared not perform it in the
hearing of his own classmates. That any human being should have
desired to acquire it seems incomprehensible. Yet for weeks in secret
I had wrestled to produce the hideous sound. Why? For three reasons,
so far as I can analyse this youngster of whom I am writing:
Firstly, here was a means of attracting attention; secondly, it was
something that somebody else could do and that he couldn't; thirdly,
it was a thing for which he evidently had no natural aptitude
whatever, and therefore a thing to acquire which his soul yearned the
more. Had a boy come across his path, clever at walking on his hands
with his heels in the air, Master Paul Kelver would in all probability
have broken his neck in attempts to copy and excel. I make no
apologies for the brat: I merely present him as a study for the
amusement of a world of wiser boys--and men.
I struck a bargain with young Wakeham; I undertook to teach him to be
funny in return for his teaching me this costermonger's whistle.
Each of us strove conscientiously to impart knowledge. Neither of us
succeeded. Wakeham tried hard to be funny; I tried hard to whistle.
He did all I told him; I followed his instructions implicitly. The
result was the feeblest of wit and the feeblest of whistles.
"Do you think anybody would laugh at that?" Wakeham would pathetically
enquire at the termination of his supremest effort. And honestly I
would have to confess I did not think any living being would.
"How far off do you think any one could hear that?" I would demand
anxiously, on recovering sufficient breath to speak at all.
"Well, it would depend upon whether you knew it was coming," Wakeham
would reply kindly, not wishing to discourage me.
We abandoned the scheme by mutual consent at about the end of a
fortnight.
"I suppose it's something that you've got to have inside you," I
suggested to Wakeham in consolation.
"I don't think the roof of your mouth can be quite the right shape for
it," concluded Wakeham.
My success as story-teller, commentator, critic, jester, revived my
childish ambition towards authorship. My first stirrings in this
direction I cannot rightly place. I remember when very small falling
into a sunk dust-bin--a deep hole, rather, into which the gardener
shot his rubbish. The fall twisted my ankle so that I could not move;
and the time being evening and my prison some distance from the house,
my predicament loomed large before me. Yet one consolation remained
with me: the incident would be of value to me in the autobiography
upon which I was then engaged. I can distinctly recollect lying on my
back among decaying leaves and broken glass, framing my account. "On
this day a strange adventure befell me. Walking in the garden, all
unheeding, I suddenly"--I did not want to add the truth--"tumbled into
a dust-hole, six feet square, that any one but a moon calf might have
seen." I puzzled to evolve a more dignified situation. The dust-bin
became a cavern, the entrance to which had been artfully concealed;
the six or seven feet I had really fallen, "an endless descent,
terminating in a vast and gloomy chamber." I was divided between
opposing desires: One, for rescue followed by sympathy and supper;
the other, for the alarming experience of a night of terror where I
lay. Nature conquering Art, I yelled; and the episode terminated
prosaically with a warm bath and arnica. But from it I judge that
desire for the woes and perils of authorship was with me somewhat
early.
Of my many other dreams I would speak freely, discussing them at
length with sympathetic souls, but concerning this one ambition I was
curiously reticent. Only to two--my mother and a grey-bearded
Stranger--did I ever breathe a word of it. Even from my father I kept
it a secret, close comrades in all else though we were. He would have
talked of it much and freely, dragged it into the light of day; and
from this I shrank.
My talk with the Stranger came about in this wise. One evening I had
taken a walk to Victoria Park--a favourite haunt of mine at summer
time. It was a fair and peaceful evening, and I fell a-wandering
there in pleasant reverie, until the waning light hinted to me the
question of time. I looked about me. Only one human being was in
sight, a man with his back towards me, seated upon a bench overlooking
the ornamental water.
I drew nearer. He took no notice of me, and interested--though why, I
could not say--I seated myself beside him at the other end of the
bench. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man, with wonderfully
bright, clear eyes and iron-grey hair and beard. I might have thought
him a sea captain, of whom many were always to be met with in that
neighbourhood, but for his hands, which were crossed upon his stick,
and which were white and delicate as a woman's. He turned his face
and glanced at me. I fancied that his lips beneath the grey moustache
smiled; and instinctively I edged a little nearer to him.
"Please, sir," I said, after awhile, "could you tell me the right
time?"
"Twenty minutes to eight," he answered, looking at his watch. And his
voice drew me towards him even more than had his beautiful strong
face. I thanked him, and we fell back into silence.
"Where do you live?" he turned and suddenly asked me.
"Oh, only over there," I answered, with a wave of my arm towards the
chimney-fringed horizon behind us. "I needn't be in till half-past
eight. I like this Park so much," I added, "I often come and sit here
of an evening.'
"Why do you like to come and sit here?" he asked. "Tell me."
"Oh, I don't know," I answered. "I think."
I marvelled at myself. With strangers generally I was shy and silent;
but the magic of his bright eyes seemed to have loosened my tongue.
I told him my name; that we lived in a street always full of ugly
sounds, so that a gentleman could not think, not even in the evening
time, when Thought goes a-visiting.
"Mamma does not like the twilight time," I confided to him. "It
always makes her cry. But then mamma is--not very young, you know,
and has had a deal of trouble; and that makes a difference, I
suppose."
He laid his hand upon mine. We were sitting nearer to each other now.
"God made women weak to teach us men to be tender," he said. "But
you, Paul, like this 'twilight time'?"
"Yes," I answered, "very much. Don't you?"
"And why do you like it?" he asked.
"Oh," I answered, "things come to you."
"What things?"
"Oh, fancies," I explained to him. "I am going to be an author when I
grow up, and write books."
He took my hand in his and shook it gravely, and then returned it to
me. "I, too, am a writer of books," he said.
And then I knew what had drawn me to him.
So for the first time I understood the joy of talking "shop" with a
fellow craftsman. I told him my favourite authors--Scott, and Dumas,
and Victor Hugo; and to my delight found they were his also; he
agreeing with me that real stories were the best, stories in which
people did things.
"I used to read silly stuff once," I confessed, "Indian tales and that
sort of thing, you know. But mamma said I'd never be able to write if
I read that rubbish."
"You will find it so all through life, Paul," he replied. "The things
that are nice are rarely good for us. And what do you read now?"
"I am reading Marlowe's Plays and De Quincey's Confessions just now,"
I confided to him.
"And do you understand them?"
"Fairly well," I answered. "Mamma says I'll like them better as I go
on. I want to learn to write very, very well indeed," I admitted to
him; "then I'll be able to earn heaps of money."
He smiled. "So you don't believe in Art for Art's sake, Paul?"
I was puzzled. "What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means in our case, Paul," he answered, "writing books for the
pleasure of writing books, without thinking of any reward, without
desiring either money or fame."
It was a new idea to me. "Do many authors do that?" I asked.
He laughed outright this time. It was a delightful laugh. It rang
through the quiet Park, awaking echoes; and caught by it, I laughed
with him.
"Hush!" he said; and he glanced round with a whimsical expression of
fear, lest we might have been overheard. "Between ourselves, Paul,"
he continued, drawing me more closely towards him and whispering, "I
don't think any of us do. We talk about it. But I'll tell you this,
Paul; it is a trade secret and you must remember it: No man ever made
money or fame but by writing his very best. It may not be as good as
somebody else's best, but it is his best. Remember that, Paul."
I promised I would.
"And you must not think merely of the money and the fame, Paul," he
added the next moment, speaking more seriously. "Money and fame are
very good things, and only hypocrites pretend to despise them. But if
you write books thinking only of money, you will be disappointed. It
is earned easier in other ways. Tell me, that is not your only idea?"
I pondered. "Mamma says it is a very noble calling, authorship," I
remembered, "and that any one ought to be very proud and glad to be
able to write books, because they give people happiness and make them
forget things; and that one ought to be very good if one is going to
be an author, so as to be worthy to help and teach others."
"And do you try to be good, Paul?" he enquired.
"Yes," I answered; "but it's very hard to be quite good--until of
course you're grown up."
He smiled, but more to himself than to me. "Yes," he said, "I suppose
it is difficult to be good until you are grown up. Perhaps we shall
all of us be good when we're quite grown up." Which, from a gentleman
with a grey beard, appeared to me a puzzling observation.
"And what else does mamma say about literature?" he asked. "Can you
remember?"
Again I pondered, and her words came back to me. "That he who can
write a great book is greater than a king; that the gift of being able
to write is given to anybody in trust; that an author should never
forget he is God's servant."
He sat for awhile without speaking, his chin resting on his folded
hands supported by his gold-topped cane. Then he turned and laid a
hand upon my shoulder, and his clear, bright eyes were close to mine.
"Your mother is a wise lady, Paul," he said. "Remember her words
always. In later life let them come back to you; they will guide you
better than the chatter of the Clubs."
"And what modern authors do you read?" he asked after a silence: "any
of them--Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, Dickens?"
"I have read 'The Last of the Barons,'" I told him; "I like that. And
I've been to Barnet and seen the church. And some of Mr. Dickens'."
"And what do you think of Mr. Dickens?" he asked. But he did not seem
very interested in the subject. He had picked up a few small stones,
and was throwing them carefully into the water.
"I like him very much," I answered; "he makes you laugh."
"Not always?" he asked. He stopped his stone-throwing, and turned
sharply towards me.
"Oh, no, not always," I admitted; "but I like the funny bits best. I
like so much where Mr. Pickwick--"
"Oh, damn Mr. Pickwick!" he said.
"Don't you like him?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, I like him well enough, or used to," he replied; "I'm a bit
tired of him, that's all. Does your mamma like Mr.--Mr. Dickens?"
"Not the funny parts," I explained to him. "She thinks he is
occasionally--"
"I know," he interrupted, rather irritably, I thought; "a trifle
vulgar."
It surprised me that he should have guessed her exact words. "I don't
think mamma has much sense of humour," I explained to him. "Sometimes
she doesn't even see papa's jokes."
At that he laughed again. "But she likes the other parts?" he
enquired, "the parts where Mr. Dickens isn't--vulgar?"
"Oh, yes," I answered. "She says he can be so beautiful and tender,
when he likes."
Twilight was deepening. It occurred to me to enquire of him again the
time.
"Just over the quarter," he answered, looking at his watch.
"I'm so sorry," I said. "I must go now."
"So am I sorry, Paul," he answered. "Perhaps we shall meet again.
Good-bye." Then as our hands touched: "You have never asked me my
name, Paul," he reminded me.
"Oh, haven't I?" I answered.
"No, Paul," he replied, "and that makes me think of your future with
hope. You are an egotist, Paul; and that is the beginning of all
art."
And after that he would not tell me his name. "Perhaps next time we
meet," he said. "Good-bye, Paul. Good luck to you!"
So I went my way. Where the path winds out of sight I turned. He was
still seated upon the bench, but his face was towards me, and he waved
his hand to me. I answered with a wave of mine. And then the
intervening boughs and bushes gradually closed in around me. And
across the rising mist there rose the hoarse, harsh cry:
"All out! All out!"
CHAPTER X.
IN WHICH PAUL IS SHIPWRECKED, AND CAST INTO DEEP WATERS.
My father died, curiously enough, on the morning of his birthday. We
had not expected the end to arrive for some time, and at first did not
know that it had come.
"I have left him sleeping," said my mother, who had slipped out very
quietly in her dressing-gown. "Washburn gave him a draught last
night. We won't disturb him."
So we sat round the breakfast table, speaking in low tones, for the
house was small and flimsy, all sound easily heard through its thin
partitions. Afterwards my mother crept upstairs, I following, and
cautiously opened the door a little way.
The blinds were still down, and the room dark. It seemed a long time
that my mother stood there listening, her ear against the jar. The
first costermonger--a girl's voice, it sounded--passed, crying
shrilly: "Watercreases, fine fresh watercreases with your
breakfast-a'penny a bundle watercreases;" and further off a hoarse
youth was wailing: "Mee-ilk-mee-ilk-oi."
Inch by inch my mother opened the door wider and we stole in. He was
lying with his eyes still closed, the lips just slightly parted. I
had never seen death before, and could not realise it. All that I
could see was that he looked even younger than I had ever seen him
look before. By slow degrees only, it came home to me, the knowledge
that he was gone away from us. For days--for weeks, I would hear his
step behind me in the street, his voice calling to me, see his face
among the crowds, and hastening to meet him, stand bewildered because
it had mysteriously disappeared. But at first I felt no pain
whatever.
To my mother it was but a short parting. Into her placid faith had
never fallen fear nor doubt. He was waiting for her. In God's good
time they would meet again. What need of sorrow! Without him the
days passed slowly: the house must ever be a little dull when the
good man's away. But that was all. So my mother would speak of him
always--of his dear, kind ways, of his oddities and follies we loved
so to recall, not through tears, but smiles, thinking of him not as of
one belonging to the past, but as of one beckoning to her from the
future.
We lived on still in the old house though ever planning to move, for
the great brick monster had crept closer round about us year by year,
devouring in his progress all things fair. Field and garden, tree and
cottage, time-mellowed house suggesting story, kind hedgerow hiding
hideousness beyond--the few spots yet in that doomed land lingering to
remind one of the sunshine, one by one had he scrunched them between
his ugly teeth. A world apart, this east end of London, this ghetto
of the poor for ever growing, dreariness added year by year to
dreariness, hopelessness stretching ever farther its long, shrivelled
arms, these endless rows of reeking cells where London herds her
slaves. Often of a misty afternoon when we knew that without this
city of the dead life was stirring in the sunshine, we would fare
forth to house-hunt in pleasant suburbs, now themselves added to the
weary catacomb of narrow streets--to Highgate, then a tiny town
connected by a coach with leafy Holloway; to Hampstead with its rows
of ancient red-brick houses, from whose wind-blown heath one saw
beyond the woods and farms, far London's domes and spires, to Wood
Green among the pastures, where smock-coated labourers discussed their
politics and ale beneath wide-spreading elms; to Hornsey, then a
village consisting of an ivy-covered church and one grass-bordered
way. But though we often saw "the very thing for us" and would
discuss its possibilities from every point of view and find them good,
we yet delayed.
"We must think it over," would say my mother; "there is no hurry; for
some reasons I shall be sorry to leave Poplar."
"For what reasons, mother?"
"Oh, well, no particular reason, Paul. Only we have lived there so
long, you know. It will be a wrench leaving the old house."
To the making of man go all things, even to the instincts of the
clinging vine. We fling our tendrils round what is the nearest
castle-keep or pig-stye wall, rain and sunshine fastening them but
firmer. Dying Sir Walter Scott--do you remember?--hastening home from
Italy, fearful lest he might not be in time to breathe again the damp
mists of the barren hills. An ancient dame I knew, they had carried
her from her attic in slumland that she might be fanned by the sea
breezes, and the poor old soul lay pining for what she called her
"home." Wife, mother, widow, she had lived there till the alley's
reek smelt good to her nostrils, till its riot was the voices of her
people. Who shall understand us save He who fashioned us?
So the old house held us to its dismal bosom; and not until within its
homely but unlovely arms, first my aunt, and later on my mother had
died, and I had said good-bye to Amy, crying in the midst of littered
emptiness, did I leave it.
My aunt died as she had lived, grumbling.
"You will be glad to get rid of me, all of you!" she said, dropping
for the first and last time I can recollect into the retort direct;
"and I can't say I shall be very sorry to go myself. It hasn't been
my idea of life."
Poor old lady! That was only a couple of weeks before the end. I do
not suppose she guessed it was so certain or perhaps she might have
been more sentimental.
"Don't be foolish," said my mother, "you're not going to die!"
"What's the use of talking like an idiot," retorted my aunt, "I've got
to do it some time. Why not now, when everything's all ready for it.
It isn't as if I was enjoying myself."
"I am sure we do all we can for you," said my mother. "I know you
do," replied my aunt. "I'm a burden to you. I always have been."
"Not a burden," corrected my mother.
"What does the woman call it then," snapped back my aunt. "Does she
reckon I've been a sunbeam in the house? I've been a trial to
everybody. That's what I was born for; it's my metier."
My mother put her arms about the poor old soul and kissed her. "We
should miss you very much," she said.
"I'm sure I hope they all will!" answered my aunt. "It's the only
thing I've got to leave 'em, worth having."
My mother laughed.
"Maybe it's been a good thing for you, Maggie," grumbled my aunt; "if
it wasn't for cantankerous, disagreeable people like me, gentle,
patient people like you wouldn't get any practice. Perhaps, after
all, I've been a blessing to you in disguise."
I cannot honestly say we ever wished her back; though we certainly did
miss her--missed many a joke at her oddities, many a laugh at her
cornery ways. It takes all sorts, as the saying goes, to make a
world. Possibly enough if only we perfect folk were left in it we
would find it uncomfortably monotonous.
As for Amy, I believe she really regretted her.
"One never knows what's good for one till one's lost it," sighed Amy.
"I'm glad to think you liked her," said my mother.
"You see, mum," explained Amy, "I was one of a large family; and a bit
of a row now and again cheers one up, I always think. I'll be losing
the power of my tongue if something doesn't come along soon."
"Well, you are going to be married in a few weeks now," my mother
reminded her.
But Amy remained despondent. "They're poor things, the men, at a few
words, the best of them," she replied. "As likely as not just when
you're getting interested you turn round to find that they've put on
their hat and gone out."
My mother and I were very much alone after my aunt's death. Barbara
had gone abroad to put the finishing touches to her education--to
learn the tricks of the Nobs' trade, as old Hasluck phrased it; and I
had left school and taken employment with Mr. Stillwood, without
salary, the idea being that I should study for the law.
"You are in luck's way, my boy, in luck's way," old Mr. Gadley had
assured me. "To have commenced your career in the office of
Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal will be a passport for you anywhere.
It will stamp you, my boy."
Mr. Stillwood himself was an extremely old and feeble gentleman--so
old and feeble it seemed strange that he, a wealthy man, had not long
ago retired.
"I am always meaning to," he explained to me one day soon after my
advent in his office. "When your poor father came to me he told me
very frankly the sad fact--that he had only a few more years to live.
'Mr. Kelver,' I answered him, 'do not let that trouble you, so far as
I am concerned. There are one or two matters in the office I should
like to see cleared up, and in these you can help me. When they are
completed I shall retire! Yet, you see, I linger on. I am like the
old hackney coach horse, Mr. Weller--or is it Mr. Jingle--tells us of;
if the shafts were drawn away I should probably collapse. So I jog
on, I jog on.'"
He had married late in life a common woman much younger than himself,
who had brought to him a horde of needy and greedy relatives, and no
doubt, as a refuge from her noisy neighbourhood, the daily peace of
Lombard Street was welcome to him. We saw her occasionally. She was
one of those blustering, "managing" women who go through life under
the impression that making a disturbance is somehow "putting things to
rights." Ridiculously ashamed of her origin, she sought to hide it
under what her friends assured her was the air of a duchess, but
which, as a matter of fact, resembled rather the Sunday manners of an
elderly barmaid. Mr. Gadley alone was not afraid of her; but, on the
contrary, kept her always very much in fear of him, often speaking to
her with refreshing candour. He had known her in the days it was her
desire should be buried in oblivion, and had always resented as a
personal insult her entry into the old established aristocratic firm
of Stillwood & Co.
Her history was peculiar. Mr. Stillwood, when a blase man about town,
verging on forty, had first seen her, then a fair-haired,
ethereal-looking child, in spite of her dirt, playing in the gutter.
To his lasting self-reproach it was young Gadley himself, accompanying
his employer home from Westminster, who had drawn Mr. Stillwood's
attention to the girl by boxing her ears for having, as he passed,
slapped his face with a convenient sprat. Stillwood, acting on the
impulse of the moment, had taken the child by the hand and dragged
her, unwilling, to her father's place of business--a small coal shed
in the Horseferry Road. The arrangement he there made amounted
practically to the purchase of the child. She was sent abroad to
school and the coal shed closed. On her return, ten years later, a
big, handsome young woman, he married her, and learned at leisure the
truth of the old saying, "what's bred in the bone will come out in the
flesh," scrub it and paint it and hide it away under fine clothes as
you will.
Her constant complaint against her husband was that he was only a
solicitor, a profession she considered vulgar; and nothing "riled" old
Gadley more than hearing her views upon this point.
"It's not fair to the gals," I once heard her say to him. I was
working in the next room, with the door not quite closed, added to
which she talked at the top of her voice on all subjects. "What real
gentleman, I should like to know, is going to marry the daughter of a
City attorney? As I told him years ago, he ought to have retired and
gone into the House."
"The very thing your poor father used to talk of doing whenever things
were going a bit queer in the retail coal and potato business,"
grunted old Gadley.
Mrs. Stillwood called him a "low beast" in her most aristocratic
tones, and swept out of the room.
Not that old Stillwood himself ever expressed fondness for the law.
"I am not at all sure, Kelver," I remember his saying to me on one
occasion, "that you have done wisely in choosing the law. It makes
one regard humanity morally as the medical profession regards it
physically:--as universally unsound. You suspect everybody of being a
rogue. When people are behaving themselves, we lawyers hear nothing
of them. All we hear of is roguery, trickery and hypocrisy. It
deteriorates the character, Kelver. We live in a perpetual atmosphere
of transgression. I sometimes fancy it may be infectious."
"It does not seem to have infected you, sir," I replied; for, as I
think I have already mentioned, the firm of Stillwood, Waterhead and
Royal was held in legal circles as the synonym for rectitude of
dealing quite old-fashioned.
"I hope not, Kelver, I hope not," the old gentleman replied; "and yet,
do you know, I sometimes suspect myself--wonder if I may not perhaps
be a scamp without realising it. A rogue, you know, Kelver, can
always explain himself into an honest man to his own satisfaction. A
scamp is never a scamp to himself."
His words for the moment alarmed me, for, acting on old Gadley's
advice, I had persuaded my mother to put all her small capital into
Mr. Stillwood's hands for re-investment, a transaction that had
resulted in substantial increase of our small income. But, looking
into his smiling eyes, my momentary fear vanished.
Laughing, he laid his hand upon my shoulder. "One person always be
suspicious of, Kelver--yourself. Nobody can do you so much harm as
yourself."
Of Washburn we saw more and more. "Hal" we both called him now, for
removing with his gentle, masterful hands my mother's shyness from
about her, he had established himself almost as one of the family, my
mother regarding him as she might some absurdly bearded boy entrusted
to her care without his knowing it, I looking up to him as to some
wonderful elder brother.
"You rest me, Mrs. Kelver," he would say, lighting his pipe and
sinking down into the deep leathern chair that always waited for him
in our parlour. "Your even voice, your soft eyes, your quiet hands,
they soothe me."
"It is good for a man," he would say, looking from one to the other of
us through the hanging smoke, "to test his wisdom by two things: the
face of a good woman, and the ear of a child--I beg your pardon,
Paul--of a young man. A good woman's face is the white sunlight.
Under the gas-lamps who shall tell diamond from paste? Bring it into
the sunlight: does it stand that test? Then it is good. And the
children! they are the waiting earth on which we fling our store. Is
it chaff and dust or living seed? Wait and watch. I shower my
thoughts over our Paul, Mrs. Kelver. They seem to me brilliant, deep,
original. The young beggar swallows them, forgets them. They were
rubbish. Then I say something that dwells with him, that grows. Ah,
that was alive, that was a seed. The waiting earth, it can make use
only of what is true."
"You should marry, Hal," my mother would say. It was her panacea for
all mankind.
"I would, Mrs. Kelver," he answered her on one occasion, "I would
to-morrow if I could marry half a dozen women. I should make an ideal
husband for half a dozen wives. One I should neglect for five days,
and be a burden to upon the sixth."
From any other than Hal my mother would have taken such a remark, made
even in jest, as an insult to her sex. But Hal's smile was a coating
that could sugar any pill.
"I am not one man, Mrs. Kelver, I am half a dozen. If I were to marry
one wife she would be married to six husbands. It is too many for any
woman to manage."
"Have you never fallen in love?" asked my mother.
"Three of me have, but on each occasion the other five of me out-voted
him."
"You're sure six would be sufficient?" queried my mother, smiling.
"Just the right number, Mrs. Kelver. There is one of me must worship,
adore a woman madly, abjectly; grovel before her like the Troubadour
before his Queen of Song, eat her slipper, drink the water she has
washed in, scourge himself before her window, die for a kiss of her
glove flung down with a laugh. She must be scornful, contemptuous,
cruel. There is another I would cherish, a tender, yielding creature,
one whose face would light at my coming, cloud at my going; one to
whom I should be a god. There is a third I, a child of Pan--an ugly
little beast, Mrs. Kelver; horns on head and hoofs on feet, leering
through the wood, seeking its fit mate. And a fourth would wed a
wholesome, homely wench, deep of bosom, broad of hip; fit mother of a
sturdy brood. A fifth could only be content with a true friend, a
comrade wise and witty, a sharer and understander of all joys and
thoughts and feelings. And a last, Mrs. Kelver, yearns for a woman
pure and sweet, clothed in love and crowned with holiness. Shouldn't
we be a handful, Mrs. Kelver, for any one woman in an eight-roomed
house?"
But my mother was not to be discouraged. "You will find the woman one
day, Hal, who will be all of them to you--all of them that are worth
having, that is. And your eight-roomed house will be a kingdom!"
"A man is many, and a woman but one," answered Hal.
"That is what men say who are too blind to see more than one side of a
woman," retorted my mother, a little sharply; for the honour and
credit of her own sex in all things was very dear to my mother. And
indeed this I have learned, that the flag of Womanhood you shall ever
find upheld by all true women, flouted only by the false. For a judge
in petticoats is ever but a witness in a wig.
Hal laid aside his pipe and leant forward in his chair. "Now tell us,
Mrs. Kelver, for our guidance, we two young bachelors, what must the
lover of a young girl be?"
Always very serious on this subject of love, my mother answered
gravely: "She asks for the whole of a man, Hal, not merely for a
sixth, nor any other part of him. She is a child asking for a lover
to whom she can look up, who will teach her, guide her, protect her.
She is a queen demanding homage, and yet he is her king whom it is her
joy to serve. She asks to be his partner, his fellow-worker, his
playmate, and at the same time she loves to think of him as her child,
her big baby she must take care of. Whatever he has to give she
has also to respond with. You need not marry six wives, Hal; you will
find your six in one.
"'As the water to the vessel, woman shapes herself to man;' an old
heathen said that three thousand years ago, and others have repeated
him; that is what you mean."
"I don't like that way of putting it," answered my mother. "I mean
that as you say of man, so in every true woman is contained all women.
But to know her completely you must love her with all love."
Sometimes the talk would be of religion, for my mother's faith was no
dead thing that must be kept ever sheltered from the air, lest it
crumble.
One evening "Who are we that we should live?" cried Hal. "The spider
is less cruel; the very pig less greedy, gluttonous and foul; the
tiger less tigerish; our cousin ape less monkeyish. What are we but
savages, clothed and ashamed, nine-tenths of us?"
"But Sodom and Gomorrah," reminded him my mother, "would have been
spared for the sake of ten just men."
"Much more sensible to have hurried the ten men out, leaving the
remainder to be buried with all their abominations under their own
ashes," growled Hal.
"And we shall be purified," continued my mother, "the evil in us
washed away."
"Why have made us ill merely to mend us? If the Almighty were so
anxious for our company, why not have made us decent in the
beginning?" He had just come away from a meeting of Poor Law
Guardians, and was in a state of dissatisfaction with human nature
generally.
"It is His way," answered my mother. "The precious stone lies hid in
clay. He has His purpose."
"Is the stone so very precious?"
"Would He have taken so much pains to fashion it if it were not? You
see it all around you, Hal, in your daily practice--heroism,
self-sacrifice, love stronger than death. Can you think He will waste
it, He who uses again even the dead leaf?"
"Shall the new leaf remember the new flower?"
"Yes, if it ever knew it. Shall memory be the only thing to die?"
Often of an evening I would accompany Hal upon his rounds. By the
savage tribe he both served and ruled he had come to be regarded as
medicine man and priest combined. He was both their tyrant and their
slave, working for them early and late, yet bullying them
unmercifully, enforcing his commands sometimes with vehement tongue,
and where that would not suffice with quick fists; the counsellor,
helper, ruler, literally of thousands. Of income he could have made
barely enough to live upon; but few men could have enjoyed more sense
of power; and that I think it was that held him to the neighbourhood.
"Nature laid me by and forgot me for a couple of thousand years," was
his own explanation of himself. "Born in my proper period, I should
have climbed to chieftainship upon uplifted shields. I might have
been an Attila, an Alaric. Among the civilised one can only climb by
crawling, and I am too impatient to crawl. Here I am king at once by
force of brain and muscle." So in Poplar he remained, poor in fees
but rich in honour.
The love of justice was a passion with him. The oppressors of the
poor knew and feared him well. Injustice once proved before him,
vengeance followed sure. If the law would not help, he never
hesitated to employ lawlessness, of which he could always command a
satisfactory supply. Bumble might have the Board of Guardians at his
back, Shylock legal support for his pound of flesh; but sooner or
later the dark night brought punishment, a ducking in dock basin or
canal, "Brutal Assault Upon a Respected Resident" (according to the
local papers), the "miscreants" always making and keeping good their
escape, for he was an admirable organiser.
One night it seemed to him necessary that a child should go at once
into the Infirmary.
"It ain't no use my taking her now," explained the mother, "I'll only
get bullyragged for disturbing 'em. My old man was carried there
three months ago when he broke his leg, but they wouldn't take him in
till the morning."
"Oho! oho! oho!" sang Hal, taking the child up in his arms and putting
on his hat. "You follow me; we'll have some sport. Tally ho! tally
ho!" And away we went, Hal heading our procession through the
streets, shouting a rollicking song, the baby staring at him
openmouthed.
"Now ring," cried Hal to the mother on our reaching the Workhouse
gate. "Ring modestly, as becomes the poor ringing at the gate of
Charity." And the bell tinkled faintly.
"Ring again!" cried Hal, drawing back into the shadow; and at last the
wicket opened.
"Oh, if you please, sir, my baby--"
"Blast your baby!" answered a husky voice, "what d'ye mean by coming
here this time of night?"
"Please, sir, I'm afraid it's dying, and the Doctor--"
The man was no sentimentalist, and to do him justice made no
hypocritical pretence of being one. He consigned the baby and its
mother and the doctor to Hell, and the wicket would have closed but
for the point of Hal's stick.
"Open the gate!" roared Hal. It was idle pretending not to hear Hal
anywhere within half a mile of him when he filled his lungs for a cry.
"Open it quick, you blackguard! You gross vat-load of potato spirit,
you--"
That the Governor should speak a language familiar to the governed was
held by the Romans, born rulers of men, essential to authority. This
theory Hal also maintained. His command of idiom understanded by his
people was one of his rods of power. In less time than it took the
trembling porter to loosen the bolts, Hal had presented him with a
word picture of himself, as seen by others, that must have lessened
his self-esteem.
"I didn't know as it was you, Doctor," explained the man.
"No, you thought you had only to deal with some helpless creature you
could bully. Stir your fat carcass, you ugly cur! I'm in a hurry."
The House Surgeon was away, but an attendant or two were lounging
about, unfortunately for themselves, for Hal, being there, took it
upon himself to go round the ward setting crooked things straight; and
a busy and alarming time they had of it. Not till a couple of hours
later did he fling himself forth again, having enjoyed himself
greatly.
A gentleman came to reside in the district, a firm believer in the
wisdom of the couplet: "A woman, a spaniel and a walnut tree, The
more you beat them the better they be." The spaniel and the walnut
tree he did not possess, so his wife had the benefit of his undivided
energies. Whether his treatment had improved her morally, one cannot
say; her evident desire to do her best may have been natural or may
have been assisted; but physically it was injuring her. He used to
beat her about the head with his strap, his argument being that she
always seemed half asleep, and that this, for the time being, woke her
up. Sympathisers brought complaint to Hal, for the police in that
neighbourhood are to keep the streets respectable. With the life in
the little cells that line them they are no more concerned than are
the scavengers of the sewers with the domestic arrangements of the
rats.
"What's he like?" asked Hal.
"He's a big 'un," answered the woman who had come with the tale, "and
he's good with his fists--I've seen him. But there's no getting at
him. He's the sort to have the law on you if you interfere with him,
and she's the sort to help him."
"Any likely time to catch him at it?" asked Hal.
"Saturdays it's as regular as early closing," answered the woman, "but
you might have to wait a bit."
"I'll wait in your room, granny, next Saturday," suggested Hal.
"All right," agreed the woman, "I'll risk it, even if I do get a
bloody head for it."
So that week end we sat very still on two rickety chairs listening to
a long succession of sharp, cracking sounds that, had one not known,
one might have imagined produced by some child monotonously exploding
percussion caps, each one followed by an answering groan. Hal never
moved, but sat smoking his pipe, an ugly smile about his mouth. Only
once he opened his lips, and then it was to murmur to himself: "And
God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply."
The horror ceased at last, and later we heard the door unlock and a
man's foot upon the landing above. Hal beckoned to me, and swiftly we
slipped out and down the creaking stairs. He opened the front door,
and we waited in the evil-smelling little passage. The man came
towards us whistling. He was a powerfully built fellow, rather
good-looking, I remember. He stopped abruptly upon catching sight of
Hal, who stood crouching in the shadow of the door.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Waiting to pull your nose!" answered Hal, suiting the action to the
word. And then laughing he ran down the street, I following.
The man gave chase, calling to us with a string of imprecations to
stop. But Hal only ran the faster, though after a street or two he
slackened, and the man gained on us a little.
So we continued, the distance between us and our pursuer now a little
more, now a little less. People turned and stared at us. A few boys,
scenting grim fun, followed shouting for awhile; but these we soon
out-paced, till at last in deserted streets, winding among warehouses
bordering the river, we three ran alone, betw
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