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Home -> Jerome K. Jerome -> Paul Kelver -> Chapter 6

Paul Kelver - Chapter 6

1. Contents

2. Prologue

3. Book I. Chapter 1

4. Chapter 2

5. Chapter 3

6. Chapter 4

7. Chapter 5

8. Chapter 6

9. Chapter 7

10. Chapter 8

11. Chapter 9

12. Book II. Chapter 1

13. Chapter 2

14. Chapter 3

15. Chapter 4

16. Chapter 5

17. Chapter 6

18. Chapter 7

19. Chapter 8

20. Chapter 9

21. Chapter 10







CHAPTER VI.



OF THE GLORY AND GOODNESS AND THE EVIL THAT GO TO THE MAKING OF LOVE.



During my time of struggle I had avoided all communication with old

Hasluck. He was not a man to sympathise with feelings he did not

understand. With boisterous good humour he would have insisted upon

helping me. Why I preferred half starving with Lott and Co. to

selling my labour for a fair wage to good-natured old Hasluck, merely

because I knew him, I cannot explain. Though the profits may not have

been so large, Lott and Co.'s dealings were not one whit more honest:

I do not believe it was that which decided me. Nor do I think it was

because he was Barbara's father. I never connected him, nor that good

old soul, his vulgar, homely wife, in any way with Barbara. To me she

was a being apart from all the world. Her true Parents! I should

have sought them rather amid the sacred groves of vanished lands,

within the sky-domed shrines of banished gods. There are instincts in

us not easily analysed, not to be explained by reason. I have always

preferred the finding--sometimes the losing--of my way according to

the map, to the surer and simpler method of vocal enquiry; working out

a complicated journey, and running the risk of never arriving at my

destination, by aid of a Continental Bradshaw, to putting myself into

the hands of courteous officials maintained and paid to assist the

perplexed traveller. Possibly a far-off progenitor of mine may have

been some morose "rogue" savage with untribal inclinations, living in

his cave apart, fashioning his own stone hammer, shaping his own flint

arrow-heads, shunning the merry war-dance, preferring to caper by

himself.



But now, having gained my own foothold, I could stretch out my hand

without fear of the movement being mistaken for appeal. I wrote to

old Hasluck; and almost by the next post received from him the

friendliest of notes. He told me Barbara had just returned from

abroad, took it upon himself to add that she also would be delighted

to see me, and, as I knew he would, threw his doors open to me.



Of my boyish passion for Barbara never had I spoken to a living soul,

nor do I think, excepting Barbara herself, had any ever guessed it.

To my mother, though she was very fond of her, Barbara was only a

girl, with charms but also with faults, concerning which my mother

would speak freely; hurting me, as one unwittingly might hurt a

neophyte by philosophical discussion of his newly embraced religion.

Often, choosing by preference late evening or the night, I would

wander round and round the huge red-brick house standing in its

ancient garden on the top of Stamford Hill; descending again into the

noisome streets as one returning to the world from praying at a

shrine, purified, filled with peace, all noble endeavour, all

unselfish aims seeming within my grasp.



During Barbara's four years' absence my adoration had grown and

strengthened. Out of my memory of her my desire had evolved its

ideal; a being of my imagination, but by reason of that, to me the

more real, the more present. I looked forward to seeing her again,

but with no impatience, revelling rather in the anticipation than

eager for the realisation. As a creature of flesh and blood, the

child I had played with, talked with, touched, she had faded further

and further into the distance; as the vision of my dreams she stood

out clearer day by day. I knew that when next I saw her there would

be a gulf between us I had no wish to bridge. To worship her from

afar was a sweeter thought to me than would have been the hope of a

passionate embrace. To live with her, sit opposite to her while she

ate and drank, see her, perhaps, with her hair in curl-papers, know

possibly that she had a corn upon her foot, hear her speak maybe of a

decayed tooth, or of a chilblain, would have been torture to me. Into

such abyss of the commonplace there was no fear of my dragging her,

and for this I was glad. In the future she would be yet more removed

from me. She was older than I was; she must be now a woman.

Instinctively I felt that in spite of years I was not yet a man. She

would marry. The thought gave me no pain, my feeling for her was

utterly devoid of appetite. No one but myself could close the temple

I had built about her, none deny to me the right of entry there. No

jealous priest could hide her from my eyes, her altar I had reared too

high. Since I have come to know myself better, I perceive that she

stood to me not as a living woman, but as a symbol; not a fellow human

being to be walked with through life, helping and to be helped, but

that impalpable religion of sex to which we raise up idols of poor

human clay, alas, not always to our satisfaction, so that foolishly we

fall into anger against them, forgetting they were but the work of our

own hands; not the body, but the spirit of love.



I allowed a week to elapse after receiving old Hasluck's letter before

presenting myself at Stamford Hill. It was late one afternoon in

early summer. Hasluck had not returned from the City, Mrs. Hasluck

was out visiting, Miss Hasluck was in the garden. I told the

supercilious footman not to trouble, I would seek her there myself. I

guessed where she would be; her favourite spot had always been a sunny

corner, bright with flowers, surrounded by a thick yew hedge, cut,

after the Dutch fashion, into quaint shapes of animals and birds. She

was walking there, as I had expected, reading a book. And again, as I

saw her, came back to me the feeling that had swept across me as a

boy, when first outlined against the dusty books and papers of my

father's office she had flashed upon my eyes: that all the fairy

tales had suddenly come true, only now, instead of the Princess, she

was the Queen. Taller she was, with a dignity that formerly had been

the only charm she lacked. She did not hear my coming, my way being

across the soft, short grass, and for a little while I stood there in

the shadow of the yews, drinking in the beauty of her clear-cut

profile, bent down towards her book, the curving lines of her long

neck, the wonder of the exquisite white hand against the lilac of her

dress.



I did not speak; rather would I have remained so watching; but turning

at the end of the path, she saw me, and as she came towards me held

out her hand. I knelt upon the path, and raised it to my lips. The

action was spontaneous, till afterwards I was not aware of having done

it. Her lips were smiling as I raised my eyes to them, the faintest

suggestion of contempt mingling with amusement. Yet she seemed

pleased, and her contempt, even if I were not mistaken, would not have

wounded me.



"So you are still in love with me? I wondered if you would be."



"Did you know that I was in love with you?"



"I should have been blind if I had not."



"But I was only a boy."



"You were not the usual type of boy. You are not going to be the

usual type of man."



"You do not mind my loving you?"



"I cannot help it, can I? Nor can you."



She seated herself on a stone bench facing a sun-dial, and leaning

hack, her hands clasped behind her head, looked at me and laughed.



"I shall always love you," I answered, "but it is with a curious sort

of love. I do not understand it myself."



"Tell me," she commanded, still with a smile about her lips, "describe

it to me."



I was standing over against her, my arm resting upon the dial's stone

column. The sun was sinking, casting long shadows on the velvety

grass, illuminating with a golden light her upturned face.



"I would you were some great queen of olden days, and that I might be

always near you, serving you, doing your bidding. Your love in return

would spoil all; I shall never ask it, never desire it. That I might

look upon you, touch now and then at rare intervals with my lips your

hand, kiss in secret the glove you had let fall, the shoe you had

flung off, know that you knew of my love, that I was yours to do with

as you would, to live or die according to your wish. Or that you were

priestess in some temple of forgotten gods, where I might steal at

daybreak and at dusk to gaze upon your beauty; kneel with clasped

hands, watching your sandalled feet coming and going about the altar

steps; lie with pressed lips upon the stones your trailing robes had

touched."



She laughed a light mocking laugh. "I should prefer to be the queen.

The role of priestess would not suit me. Temples are so cold." A

slight shiver passed through her. She made a movement with her hand,

beckoning me to her feet. "That is how you shall love me, Paul," she

said, "adoring me, worshipping me--blindly. I will be your queen and

treat you--as it chooses me. All I think, all I do, I will tell you,

and you shall tell me it is right. The queen can do no wrong."



She took my face between her hands, and bending over me, looked long

and steadfastly into my eyes. "You understand, Paul, the queen can do

no wrong--never, never." There had crept into her voice a note of

vehemence, in her face was a look almost of appeal.



"My queen can do no wrong," I repeated. And she laughed and let her

hands fall back upon her lap.



"Now you may sit beside me. So much honour, Paul, shall you have

to-day, but it will have to last you long. And you may tell me all

you have been doing, maybe it will amuse me; and afterwards you shall

hear what I have done, and shall say that it was right and good of

me."



I obeyed, sketching my story briefly, yet leaving nothing untold, not

even the transit of the Lady 'Ortensia, ashamed of the episode though

I was. At that she looked a little grave.



"You must do nothing again, Paul," she commanded, "to make me feel

ashamed of you, or I shall dismiss you from my presence for ever. I

must be proud of you, or you shall not serve me. In dishonouring

yourself you are dishonouring me. I am angry with you, Paul. Do not

let me be angry with you again.



And so that passed; and although my love for her--as I know well she

wished and sought it should--failed to save me at all times from the

apish voices whispering ever to the beast within us, I know the desire

to be worthy of her, to honour her with all my being, helped my life

as only love can. The glory of the morning fades, the magic veil is

rent; we see all things with cold, clear eyes. My love was a woman.

She lies dead. They have mocked her white sweet limbs with rags and

tatters, but they cannot cheat love's eyes. God knows I loved her in

all purity! Only with false love we love the false. Beneath the

unclean clinging garments she sleeps fair.



My tale finished, "Now I will tell you mine," she said. "I am going

to be married soon. I shall be a Countess, Paul, the Countess

Huescar--I will teach you how to pronounce it--and I shall have a real

castle in Spain. You need not look so frightened, Paul; we shall not

live there. It is a half-ruined, gloomy place, among the mountains,

and he loves it even less than I do. Paris and London will be my

courts, so you will see me often. You shall know the great world,

Paul, the world I mean to conquer, where I mean to rule."



"Is he very rich?" I asked.



"As poor," she laughed, "as poor as a Spanish nobleman. The money I

shall have to provide, or, rather, poor dear Dad will. He gives me

title, position. Of course I do not love him, handsome though he is.

Don't look so solemn, Paul. We shall get on together well enough.

Queens, Paul, do not make love matches, they contract alliances. I

have done well, Paul; congratulate me. Do you hear, Paul? Say that I

have acted rightly."



"Does he love you?" I asked.



"He tells me so," she answered, with a laugh. "How uncourtier-like

you are, Paul! Do you suggest that any man could see me and not love

me?"



She sprang to her feet. "I do not want his love," she cried; "it

would bore me. Women hate love they cannot return. I don't mean love

like yours, devout little Paul," she added, with a laugh. "That is

sweet incense wafted round us that we like to scent with our noses in

the air. Give me that, Paul; I want it, I ask for it. But the love

of a hand, the love of a husband that one does not care for--it would

be horrible!"



I felt myself growing older. For the moment my goddess became a child

needing help.



"But have you thought--" I commenced.



"Yes, yes," she interrupted me quickly, "I have thought and thought

till I can think no more. There must be some sacrifice; it must be as

little as need be, that is all. He does not love me; he is marrying

me for my money--I know that, and I am glad of it. You do not know

me, Paul. I must have rank, position. What am I? The daughter of

rich old Hasluck, who began life as a butcher in the Mile End Road.

As the Princess Huescar, society will forget, as Mrs."--it seemed to

me she checked herself abruptly--"Jones or Brown it would remember,

however rich I might be. I am vain, Paul, caring for power--ambition.

I have my father's blood in me. All his nights and days he has spent

in gaining wealth; he can do no more. We upstarts have our pride of

race. He has done his share, I must do mine."



"But you need not be mere Mrs. anybody commonplace," I argued. "Why

not wait? You will meet someone who can give you position and whom at

the same time you can love. Would that not be better?"



"He will never come, the man I could love," she answered. "Because,

my little Paul, he has come already. Hush, Paul, the queen can do no

wrong."



"Who is he?" I asked. "May I not know?"



"Yes, Paul," she answered, "you shall know; I want you to know, then

you shall tell me that I have acted rightly. Do you hear me,

Paul?--quite rightly--that you still respect me and honour me. He

could not help me. As his wife, I should be less even than I am, a

mere rich nobody, giving long dinner-parties to other rich nobodies,

living amongst City men, retired trades-people; envied only by their

fat, vulgarly dressed wives, courted by seedy Bohemians for the sake

of my cook; with perhaps an opera singer or an impecunious nobleman or

two out of Dad's City list for my show-guests. Is that the court,

Paul, where you would have your queen reign?"



"Is he so commonplace a man," I answered, "the man you love? I cannot

believe it."



"He is not commonplace," she answered. "It is I who am commonplace.

The things I desire, they are beneath him; he will never trouble

himself to secure them."



"Not even for love of you?"



"I would not have him do so even were he willing. He is great, with a

greatness I cannot even understand. He is not the man for these

times. In old days, I should have married him, knowing he would climb

to greatness by sheer strength of manhood. But now men do not climb;

they crawl to greatness. He could not do that. I have done right,

Paul."



"What does be say?" I asked.



"Shall I tell you?" She laughed a little bitterly. "I can give you

his exact words, 'You are half a woman and half a fool, so woman-like

you will follow your folly. But let your folly see to it that your

woman makes no fool of herself.'"



The words were what I could imagine his saying. I heard the strong

ring of his voice through her mocking mimicry.



"Hal!" I cried. "It is he."



"So you never guessed even that, Paul. I thought at times it would be

sweet to cry it out aloud, that it could have made no difference, that

everyone who knew me must have read it in my eyes."



"But he never seemed to take much notice of you," I said.



She laughed. "You needn't be so unkind, Paul. What did I ever do for

you much more than snub you? We boys and girls; there is not so much

difference between us: we love our masters. Yet you must not think

so poorly of me. I was only a child to him then, but we were locked

up in Paris together during the entire siege. Have not you heard? He

did take a little notice of me there, Paul, I assure you."



Would it have been better, I wonder, had she followed the woman and

not the fool? It sounds an easy question to answer; but I am thinking

of years later, one winter's night at Tiefenkasten in the Julier Pass.

I was on my way from San Moritz to Chur. The sole passenger, I had

just climbed, half frozen, from the sledge, and was thawing myself

before the stove in the common room of the hotel when the waiter put a

pencilled note into my hand:



"Come up and see me. I am a prisoner in this damned hole till the

weather breaks. Hal."



I hardly recognised him at first. Only the poor ghost he seemed of the

Hal I had known as a boy. His long privations endured during the

Paris siege, added to the superhuman work he had there put upon

himself, had commenced the ruin of even his magnificent physique--a

ruin the wild, loose life he was now leading was soon to complete. It

was a gloomy, vaulted room that once had been a chapel, lighted dimly

by a cheap, evil-smelling lamp, heated to suffocation by one of those

great green-tiled German ovens now only to be met with in rare

out-of-the-way world corners. He was sitting propped up by pillows on

the bed, placed close to one of the high windows, his deep eyes

flaring like two gleaming caverns out of his drawn, haggard face.



"I saw you from the window," he explained. "It is the only excitement

I get, twice a day when the sledges come in. I broke down coming

across the Pass a fortnight ago, on my way from Davos. We were stuck

in a drift for eighteen hours; it nearly finished my last lung. And I

haven't even a book to read. By God! lad, I was glad to see your

frosted face ten minutes ago in the light of the lantern."



He grasped me with his long bony hand. "Sit down, and let me hear my

voice using again its mother tongue--you were always a good

listener--for the last eight years I have hardly spoken it. Can you

stand the room? The windows ought to be open, but what does it

matter? I may as well get accustomed to the heat before I die."



I drew my chair close to the bed, and for awhile, between his fits of

coughing, we talked of things that were outside our thoughts, or,

rather, Hal talked, continuously, boisterously, meeting my

remonstrances with shouts of laughter, ending in wild struggles for

breath, so that I deemed it better to let him work his mad mood out.



Then suddenly: "What is she doing?" he asked. "Do you ever see her?"



"She is playing in--" I mentioned the name of a comic opera then

running in Paris. "No; I have not seen her for some time."



He laid his white, wasted hand on mine. "What a pity you and I could

not have rolled ourselves into one, Paul--you, the saint, and I, the

satyr. Together we should have made her perfect lover."



There came back to me the memory of those long nights when I had lain

awake listening to the angry voices of my father and mother soaking

through the flimsy wall. It seemed my fate to stand thus helpless

between those I loved, watching them hurting one another against their

will.



"Tell me," I asked--"I loved her, knowing her: I was not blind.

Whose fault was it? Yours or hers?"



He laughed. "Whose fault, Paul? God made us."



Thinking of her fair, sweet face, I hated him for his mocking laugh.

But the next moment, looking into his deep eyes, seeing the pain that

dwelt there, my pity was for him. A smile came to his ugly mouth.



"You have been on the stage, Paul; you must have heard the saying

often: 'Ah, well, the curtain must come down, however badly things

are going.' It is only a play, Paul. We do not choose our parts. I

did not even know I was the villain, till I heard the booing of the

gallery. I even thought I was the hero, full of noble sentiment,

sacrificing myself for the happiness of the heroine. She would have

married me in the beginning had I plagued her sufficiently."



I made to speak, but he interrupted me, continuing: "Ah, yes, it

might have been better. That is easy to say, not knowing. So, too,

it might have been worse--in all probability much the same. All roads

lead to the end. You know I was always a fatalist, Paul. We tried

both ways. She loved me well enough, but she loved the world also. I

thought she loved it better, so I kissed her on her brow, mumbled a

prayer for her happiness and made my exit to a choking sob. So ended

the first act. Wasn't I the hero throughout that, Paul? I thought

so; slapped myself upon the back, told myself what a fine fellow I had

been. Then--you know what followed. She was finer clay than she had

fancied. Love is woman's kingdom, not the world. Even then I thought

more of her than of myself. I could have borne my share of the burden

had I not seen her fainting under hers, shamed, degraded. So we dared

to think for ourselves, injuring nobody but ourselves, played the man

and woman, lost the world for love. Wasn't it brave, Paul? Were we

not hero and heroine? They had printed the playbill wrong, Paul, that

was all. I was really the hero, but the printing devil had made a

slip, so instead of applauding you booed. How could you know, any of

you? It was not your fault."



"But that was not the end," I reminded him. "If the curtain had

fallen then, I could have forgiven you."



He grinned. "That fatal last act. Even yours don't always come

right, so the critics tell me."



The grin faded from his face. "We may never see each other again,

Paul," he went on; "don't think too badly of me. I found I had made a

second mistake--or thought I had. She was no happier with me after a

time than she had been with him. If all our longings were one, life

would be easy; but they are not. What is to be done but toss for it?

And if it come down head we wish it had been tail, and if tail we

think of what we have lost through its not coming down head. Love is

no more the whole of a woman's life than it is of a man's. He did not

apply for a divorce: that was smart of him. We were shunned,

ignored. To some women it might not have mattered; but she had been

used to being sought, courted, feted. She made no complaint--did

worse: made desperate effort to appear cheerful, to pretend that our

humdrum life was not boring her to death. I watched her growing more

listless, more depressed; grew angry with her, angrier with myself.

There was no bond between us except our passion; that was real

enough--'grand,' I believe, is the approved literary adjective. It is

good enough for what nature intended it, a summer season in a cave.

It makes but a poor marriage settlement in these more complicated

days. We fell to mutual recriminations, vulgar scenes. Ah, most of

us look better at a little distance from one another. The sordid,

contemptible side of life became important to us. I was never rich;

by contrast with all that she had known, miserably poor. The mere

sight of the food our twelve-pound-a-year cook put upon the table

would take away her appetite. Love does not change the palate, give

you a taste for cheap claret when you have been accustomed to dry

champagne. We have bodies to think of as well as souls; we are apt to

forget that in moments of excitement.



"She fell ill, and it seemed to me that I had dragged her from the

soil where she had grown only to watch her die. And then he came,

precisely at the right moment. I cannot help admiring him. Most men

take their revenge clumsily, hurting themselves; he was so neat, had

been so patient. I am not even ashamed of having fallen into his

trap; it was admirably baited. Maybe I had despised him for having

seemed to submit meekly to the blow. What cared he for me and my

opinion? It was she was all he cared for. He knew her better than I,

knew that sooner or later she would tire, not of love but of the

cottage; look back with longing eyes towards all that she had lost.

Fool! Cuckold! What was it to him that the world would laugh at him,

despise him? Love such as his made fools of men. Would I not give

her back to him?



"By God! It was fine acting; half into the night we talked, I leaving

him every now and again to creep to the top of the stairs and listen

to her breathing. He asked me my advice, I being the hard-headed

partner of cool judgment. What would be the best way of approaching

her after I was gone? Where should he take her? How should they live

till the nine days' talk had died away? And I sat opposite to

him--how he must have longed to laugh in my silly face--advising him!

We could not quite agree as to details of a possible yachting cruise,

and I remember hunting up an atlas, and we pored over it, our heads

close together. By God! I envy him that night!"



He sank back on his pillows and laughed and coughed, and laughed and

coughed again, till I feared that wild, long, broken laugh would be

his last. But it ceased at length, and for awhile, exhausted, he lay

silent before continuing.



"Then came the question: how was I to go? She loved me still. He

was sure of it, and, for the matter of that, so was I. So long as she

thought that I loved her, she would never leave me. Only from her

despair could fresh hope arise for her. Would I not make some

sacrifice for her sake, persuade her that I had tired of her? Only by

one means could she be convinced. My going off alone would not

suffice; my reason for that she might suspect--she might follow. It

would be for her sake. Again it was the hero that I played, the dear

old chuckle-headed hero, Paul, that you ought to have cheered, not

hooted. I loved her as much as I ever loved her in my life, that

night I left her. I took my boots off in the passage and crept up in

my stockinged feet. I told him I was merely going to change my coat

and put a few things into a bag. He gripped my hand, and tears were

standing in his eyes. It is odd that suppressed laughter and

expressed grief should both display the same token, is it not? I

stole into her room. I dared not kiss her for fear of waking her; but

a stray lock of her hair--you remember how long it was--fell over the

pillow, nearly reaching to the floor. I pressed my lips against it,

where it trailed over the bedstead, till they bled. I have it still

upon my lips, the mingling of the cold iron and the warm, soft silken

hair. He told me, when I came down again, that I had been gone

three-quarters of an hour. And we went out of the house together, he

and I. That is the last time I ever saw her."



I leant across and put my arms around him; I suppose it was

un-English; there are times when one forgets these points. "I did not

know! I did not know," I cried.



He pressed me to him with his feeble arms. "What a cad you must have

thought me, Paul," he said. "But you might have given me credit for

better taste. I was always rather a gourmet than a gourmand where

women were concerned."



"You have never seen him either again?" I asked.



"No," he answered; "I swore to kill him when I learnt the trick he had

played me. He commenced the divorce proceedings against her the very

morning after I had left her. Possibly, had I succeeded in finding

him within the next six months, I should have done so. A few

newspaper proprietors would have been the only people really

benefited. Time is the cheapest Bravo; a little patience is all he

charges. All roads lead to the end, Paul."



But I tell my tale badly, marring effects of sunlight with the memory

of shadows. At the time all promised fair. He was a handsome,

distinguished-looking man. Not every aristocrat, if without

disrespect to one's betters a humble observer may say so, suggests his

title; this man would have suggested his title, had he not possessed

it. I suppose he must have been about fifty at the time; but most men

of thirty would have been glad to exchange with him both figure and

complexion. His behaviour to his _fiancee_ was the essence of good

taste, affectionate devotion, carried to the exact point beyond which,

having regard to the disparity of their years, it would have appeared

ridiculous. That he sincerely admired her, was fully content with

her, there could be no doubt. I am even inclined to think he was

fonder of her than, divining her feelings towards himself, he cared to

show. Knowledge of the world must have told him that men of fifty

find it easier to be the lovers of women young enough to be their

daughters, than girls find it to desire the affection of men old

enough to be their fathers; and he was not the man to allow impulse to

lead him into absurdity.



From my own peculiar point of view he appeared the ideal prince

consort. It was difficult for me to imagine my queen in love with any

mere man. This was one beside whom she could live, losing in my eyes

nothing of her dignity. My feelings for her he guessed at our first

interview. Most men in his position would have been amused, and many

would have shown it. For what reason I cannot say, but with a tact

and courtesy that left me only complimented, he drew from me, before I

had met him half-a-dozen times, more frank confession than a month

previously I should have dreamt of my yielding to anything than my own

pillow. He laid his hand upon my shoulder.



"I wonder if you know, my friend, how wise you are," he said. "We all

of us at your age love an image of our own carving. Ah, if only we

could be content to worship the white, changeless statute! But we are

fools. We pray the gods to give her life, and under our hot kisses

she becomes a woman. I also loved when I was your age, Paul. Your

countrymen, they are so practical, they know only one kind of love.

It is business-like, rich--how puts it your poet? 'rich in saving

common sense.' But there are many kinds, you understand that, my

friend. You are wise, do not confuse them. She was a child of the

mountains. I used to walk three leagues to Mass each day to worship

her. Had I been wise--had I so left it, the memory of her would have

coloured all my life with glory. But I was a fool, my friend; I

turned her into a woman. Ah!"--he made a gesture of disgust--"such a

fat, ugly woman, Paul, I turned her into. I had much difficulty in

getting rid of her. We should never touch things in life that are

beautiful; we have such clumsy hands, we spoil whatever we touch."



Hal did not return to England till the end of the year, by which time

the Count and Countess Huescar--though I had her permission still to

call her Barbara, I never availed myself of it; the "Countess" fitted

my mood better--had taken up residence in the grand Paris house old

Hasluck had bought for them.



It was the high-water mark of old Hasluck's career, and, if anything,

he was a little disappointed that with the dowry he had promised her

Barbara had not done even better for herself.



"Foreign Counts," he grumbled to me laughingly, one day, "well, I hope

they're worth more in Society than they are in the City. A hundred

guineas is their price there, and they're not worth that. Who was

that American girl that married a Russian Prince only last week? A

million dollars was all she gave for him, and she a wholesale boot-

maker's daughter into the bargain! Our girls are not half as smart."



But that was before he had seen his future son-in-law. After, he was

content enough, and up to the day of the wedding, childishly elated.

Under the Count's tuition he studied with reverential awe the Huescar

history. Princes, statesmen, warriors, glittered, golden apples, from

the spreading branches of its genealogical tree. Why not again! its

attenuated blue sap strengthened with the rich, red blood, brewed by

toil and effort in the grim laboratories of the under world. In

imagination, old Hasluck saw himself the grandfather of Chancellors,

the great-grandfather of Kings.



"I have laid the foundation, you shall raise the edifice," so he told

her one evening I was spending with them, caressing her golden hair

with his blunt, fat fingers. "I am glad you were not a boy. A boy,

in all probability, would have squandered the money, let the name sink

back again into the gutter. And even had he been the other sort, he

could only have been another business man, keeping where I had left

him. You will call your first boy Hasluck, won't you? It must always

be the first-born's name. It shall be famous in the world yet, and

for something else than mere money.



I began to understand the influences that had gone towards the

making--or marring--of Barbara's character. I had never guessed he

had cared for anything beyond money and the making of money.



It was, of course, a wedding as ostentatious as possible. Old Hasluck

knew how to advertise, and spared neither expense nor labour, with the

result that it was the event of the season, at least according to the

Society papers. Mrs. Hasluck was the type of woman to have escaped

observation, even had the wedding been her own; that she was present

at her daughter's, "becomingly dressed in grey veiling spotted white,

with an encrustation of mousseline de soie," I learnt the next day

from the _Morning Post_. Old Hasluck himself had to be fetched every

time he was wanted. At the conclusion of the ceremony, seeking him, I

found him sitting on the stairs leading to the crypt.



"Is it over?" he asked. He was mopping his face on a huge

handkerchief, and had a small looking-glass in his hand.



"All over," I answered, "they are waiting for you to start."



"I always perspire so when I'm excited," he explained. "Keep me out

of it as much as possible."



But the next time I saw him, which was two or three days later, the

reaction had set in. He was sitting in his great library, surrounded

by books he would no more have thought of disturbing than he would of

strumming on the gorgeous grand piano inlaid with silver that

ornamented his drawing-room. A change had passed over him. His

swelling rotundity, suggestive generally of a bladder inflated to its

extremest limits by excess of self-importance, appeared to be

shrinking. I put the idea aside as mere fancy at the time, but it was

fact; he became a mere bag of bones before he died. He was wearing an

old pair of carpet slippers and smoking a short clay pipe.



"Well," I said, "everything went off all right."



"Everybody's gone off all right, so far," he grunted. He was

crouching over the fire, though the weather was still warm, one hand

spread out towards the blaze. "Now I've got to go off, that's the

only thing they're waiting for. Then everything will be in order."



"I don't think they are wanting you to go off," I answered, with a

laugh.



"You mean," he answered, "I'm the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Ah, but you see, so many of the eggs break, and so many of them are

bad."



"Some of them hatch all right," I replied. The simile was becoming

somewhat confused: in conversation similes are apt to.



"If I were to die this week," he said--he paused, completing mental

calculations, "I should be worth, roughly speaking, a couple of

million. This time next year I may be owing a million."



I sat down opposite to him. "Why run risks?" I suggested. "Surely

you have enough. Why not give it up--retire?"



He laughed. "Do you think I haven't said that to myself, lad--sworn I

would a dozen times a year? I can't do it; I'm a gambler. It's the

earliest thing I can recollect doing, gambling with brace buttons.

There are men, Paul, now dying in the workhouse--men I once knew well;

I think of them sometimes, and wish I didn't--who any time during half

their life might have retired on twenty thousand a year. If I were to

go to any one of them, and settle an annuity of a hundred a year upon

him, the moment my back was turned he'd sell it out and totter up to

Threadneedle Street with the proceeds. It's in our blood. I shall

gamble on my death-bed, die with the tape in my hand."



He kicked the fire into a blaze. A roaring flame made the room light

again.



"But that won't be just yet awhile," he laughed, "and before it does,

I'll be the richest man in Europe. I keep my head cool--that's the

great secret." Leaning over towards me, he sunk his voice to a

whisper, "Drink, Paul--so many of them drink. They get worried; fifty

things dancing round and round at the same time in their heads. Fifty

questions to be answered in five minutes. Tick, tick, tick, taps the

little devil at their elbow. This going down, that going up. Rumor

of this, report of that. A fortune to be lost here, a fortune to be

snatched there. Everything in a whirl! Tick, tick, tick, like nails

into a coffin. God! for five minutes' peace to think. Shut the door,

turn the key. Out comes the bottle. That's the end. All right so

long as you keep away from that. Cool, quick brain, clear

judgment--that's the secret."



"But is it worth it all?" I suggested. "Surely you have enough?"



"It means power, Paul." He slapped his trousers pocket, making the

handful of gold and silver he always carried there jingle musically.

"It is this that rules the world. My children shall be big pots,

hobnob with kings and princes, slap them on the back and call them by

their Christian names, be kings themselves--why not? It's happened

before. My children, the children of old Noel Hasluck, son of a

Whitechapel butcher! Here's my pedigree!" Again be slapped his

tuneful pocket. "It's an older one than theirs! It's coming into its

own at last! It's money--we men of money--that are the true kings

now. It's our family that rules the world--the great money family; I

mean to be its head."



The blaze died out, leaving the room almost in darkness, and for

awhile we sat in silence.



"Quiet, isn't it?" said old Hasluck, raising his head.



The settling of the falling embers was the only sound about us.



"Guess we'll always be like this, now," continued old Hasluck. "Old

woman goes to bed, you see, immediately after dinner. It used to be

different when _she_ was about. Somehow, the house and the lackeys

and all the rest of it seemed to be a more natural sort of thing when

_she_ was the centre of it. It frightens the old woman now she's

gone. She likes to get away from it. Poor old Susan! A little

country inn with herself as landlady and me fussing about behind the

bar; that was always her ambition, poor old girl!"



"You will he visiting them," I suggested, "and they will be coming to

stop with you."



He shook his head. "They won't want me, and it isn't my game to

hamper them. I never mix out of my class. I've always had sense

enough for that."



I laughed, wishing to cheer him, though I knew he was right. "Surely

your daughter belongs to your own class," I replied.



"Do you think so?" he asked, with a grin. "That's not a pretty

compliment to her. She was my child when she used to cling round my

neck, while I made the sausages, calling me her dear old pig. It

didn't trouble her then that I dropped my aitches and had a greasy

skin. I was a Whitechapel butcher, and she was a Whitechapel brat. I

could have kept her if I'd liked, but I was set upon making a lady of

her, and I did it. But I lost my child. Every time she came back

from school I could see she despised me a little more. I'm not

blaming her; how could she help it? I was making a lady of her,

teaching her to do it; though there were moments when I almost hated

her, felt tempted to snatch her back to me, drag her down again to my

level, make her my child again, before it was too late. Oh, it wasn't

all unselfishness; I could have done it. She would have remained my

class then, would have married my class, and her children would have

been my class. I didn't want that. Everything's got to be paid for.

I got what I asked for; I'm not grumbling at the price. But it ain't

cheap."



He rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe. "Ring the bell, Paul,

will you?" be said. "Let's have some light and something to drink.

Don't take any notice of me. I've got the hump to-night."



It was a minute or two before the lamp came. He put his arm upon my

shoulder, leaning upon me somewhat heavily.



"I used to fancy sometimes, Paul," he said, "that you and she might

have made a match of it. I should have been disappointed for some

things. But you'd have been a bit nearer to me, you two. It never

occurred to you, that, I suppose?"




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