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+Project Gutenberg's Paul Kelver, by Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+
+Title: Paul Kelver
+
+Author: Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1334]
+Release Date: June, 1998
+Last Updated: March 31, 2022
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Ron Burkey
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL KELVER ***
+
+
+
+
+PAUL KELVER
+
+By Jerome K. Jerome
+
+(Jerome Klapka), 1859-1927
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Items in [brackets] are editorial comments added
+in proofing. Italicized text is delimited by _underscores_. The pound
+(currency) symbol has been replaced by the word “pound”.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+BOOK I
+
+I. PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET
+THE MAN IN GREY
+
+II. IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH
+
+III. HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY
+
+IV. PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM
+THE ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL, AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS
+
+V. IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY
+
+VI. OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE
+LOVE-LIT EYES
+
+VII. OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW
+
+VIII. HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING
+
+IX. OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL
+
+X. IN WHICH PAUL IS SHIPWRECKED, AND CAST INTO DEEP WATERS
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+I. DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED
+
+II. PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY, AND
+BECOMES CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN
+
+III. GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM. BUT BEFORE SETTING OUT,
+HE WILL GO A-VISITING
+
+IV. LEADS TO A MEETING
+
+V. HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL
+
+VI. OF THE GLORY AND GOODNESS AND THE EVIL THAT GO TO THE MAKING OF LOVE
+
+VII. HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST
+
+VIII. AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN
+
+IX. THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING
+
+X. PAUL FINDS HIS WAY
+
+
+
+
+PAUL KELVER
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SEEKS TO CAST THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THIS STORY UPON
+ANOTHER.
+
+At the corner of a long, straight, brick-built street in the far East
+End of London--one of those lifeless streets, made of two drab walls
+upon which the level lines, formed by the precisely even window-sills
+and doorsteps, stretch in weary perspective from end to end, suggesting
+petrified diagrams proving dead problems--stands a house that ever draws
+me to it; so that often, when least conscious of my footsteps, I awake
+to find myself hurrying through noisy, crowded thoroughfares, where
+flaring naphtha lamps illumine fierce, patient, leaden-coloured faces;
+through dim-lit, empty streets, where monstrous shadows come and go
+upon the close-drawn blinds; through narrow, noisome streets, where the
+gutters swarm with children, and each ever-open doorway vomits riot;
+past reeking corners, and across waste places, till at last I reach the
+dreary goal of my memory-driven desire, and, coming to a halt beside the
+broken railings, find rest.
+
+The house, larger than its fellows, built when the street was still
+a country lane, edging the marshes, strikes a strange note of
+individuality amid the surrounding harmony of hideousness. It is
+encompassed on two sides by what was once a garden, though now but a
+barren patch of stones and dust where clothes--it is odd any one should
+have thought of washing--hang in perpetuity; while about the door
+continue the remnants of a porch, which the stucco falling has left
+exposed in all its naked insincerity.
+
+Occasionally I drift hitherward in the day time, when slatternly women
+gossip round the area gates, and the silence is broken by the
+hoarse, wailing cry of “Coals--any coals--three and sixpence a
+sack--co-o-o-als!” chanted in a tone that absence of response has
+stamped with chronic melancholy; but then the street knows me not, and
+my old friend of the corner, ashamed of its shabbiness in the unpitying
+sunlight, turns its face away, and will not see me as I pass.
+
+Not until the Night, merciful alone of all things to the ugly, draws her
+veil across its sordid features will it, as some fond old nurse, sought
+out in after years, open wide its arms to welcome me. Then the teeming
+life it now shelters, hushed for a time within its walls, the flickering
+flare from the “King of Prussia” opposite extinguished, will it talk
+with me of the past, asking me many questions, reminding me of
+many things I had forgotten. Then into the silent street come the
+well-remembered footsteps; in and out the creaking gate pass, not seeing
+me, the well-remembered faces; and we talk concerning them; as two
+cronies, turning the torn leaves of some old album where the faded
+portraits in forgotten fashions, speak together in low tones of those
+now dead or scattered, with now a smile and now a sigh, and many an “Ah
+me!” or “Dear, dear!”
+
+This bent, worn man, coming towards us with quick impatient steps, which
+yet cease every fifty yards or so, while he pauses, leaning heavily upon
+his high Malacca cane: “It is a handsome face, is it not?” I ask, as I
+gaze upon it, shadow framed.
+
+“Aye, handsome enough,” answers the old House; “and handsomer still it
+must have been before you and I knew it, before mean care had furrowed
+it with fretful lines.”
+
+“I never could make out,” continues the old House, musingly, “whom you
+took after; for they were a handsome pair, your father and your mother,
+though Lord! what a couple of children!”
+
+“Children!” I say in surprise, for my father must have been past five
+and thirty before the House could have known him, and my mother's face
+is very close to mine, in the darkness, so that I see the many grey
+hairs mingling with the bonny brown.
+
+“Children,” repeats the old House, irritably, so it seems to me, not
+liking, perhaps, its opinions questioned, a failing common to old folk;
+“the most helpless pair of children I ever set eyes upon. Who but
+a child, I should like to know, would have conceived the notion of
+repairing his fortune by becoming a solicitor at thirty-eight, or,
+having conceived such a notion, would have selected the outskirts of
+Poplar as a likely centre in which to put up his door-plate?”
+
+“It was considered to be a rising neighbourhood,” I reply, a little
+resentful. No son cares to hear the family wisdom criticised, even
+though at the bottom of his heart he may be in agreement with the
+critic. “All sorts and conditions of men, whose affairs were in
+connection with the sea would, it was thought, come to reside hereabout,
+so as to be near to the new docks; and had they, it is not unreasonable
+to suppose they would have quarrelled and disputed with one another,
+much to the advantage of a cute solicitor, convenient to their hand.”
+
+“Stuff and nonsense,” retorts the old House, shortly; “why, the mere
+smell of the place would have been sufficient to keep a sensible man
+away. And”--the grim brick face before me twists itself into a goblin
+smile--“he, of all men in the world, as 'the cute solicitor,' giving
+advice to shady clients, eager to get out of trouble by the shortest
+way, can you fancy it! he who for two years starved himself, living on
+five shillings a week--that was before you came to London, when he
+was here alone. Even your mother knew nothing of it till years
+afterwards--so that no man should be a penny the poorer for having
+trusted his good name. Do you think the crew of chandlers and brokers,
+dock hustlers and freight wreckers would have found him a useful man of
+business, even had they come to settle here?”
+
+I have no answer; nor does the old House wait for any, but talks on.
+
+“And your mother! would any but a child have taken that soft-tongued
+wanton to her bosom, and not have seen through acting so transparent?
+Would any but the veriest child that never ought to have been let out
+into the world by itself have thought to dree her weird in such folly?
+Children! poor babies they were, both of them.”
+
+“Tell me,” I say--for at such times all my stock of common sense is not
+sufficient to convince me that the old House is but clay. From its walls
+so full of voices, from its floors so thick with footsteps, surely it
+has learned to live; as a violin, long played on, comes to learn at last
+a music of its own. “Tell me, I was but a child to whom life speaks in a
+strange tongue, was there any truth in the story?”
+
+“Truth!” snaps out the old House; “just truth enough to plant a lie
+upon; and Lord knows not much ground is needed for that weed. I saw
+what I saw, and I know what I know. Your mother had a good man, and
+your father a true wife, but it was the old story: a man's way is not a
+woman's way, and a woman's way is not a man's way, so there lives ever
+doubt between them.”
+
+“But they came together in the end,” I say, remembering.
+
+“Aye, in the end,” answers the House. “That is when you begin to
+understand, you men and women, when you come to the end.”
+
+The grave face of a not too recently washed angel peeps shyly at
+me through the railings, then, as I turn my head, darts back and
+disappears.
+
+“What has become of her?” I ask.
+
+“She? Oh, she is well enough,” replies the House. “She lives close here.
+You must have passed the shop. You might have seen her had you looked
+in. She weighs fourteen stone, about; and has nine children living. She
+would be pleased to see you.”
+
+“Thank you,” I say, with a laugh that is not wholly a laugh; “I do not
+think I will call.” But I still hear the pit-pat of her tiny feet, dying
+down the long street.
+
+The faces thicken round me. A large looming, rubicund visage smiles
+kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of
+instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn
+from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth
+and the loveliest eyes I ever have known in a man.
+
+“Was he as bad, do you think, as they said?” I ask of my ancient friend.
+
+“Shouldn't wonder,” the old House answers. “I never knew a worse--nor a
+better.”
+
+The wind whisks it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling
+nimbly by aid of a stick. Three corkscrew curls each side of her head
+bob with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the
+most alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to
+herself some fascinating secret, “I'd like to skin 'em. I'd like to skin
+'em all. I'd like to skin 'em all alive!”
+
+It sounds a fiendish sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old
+lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond
+my ken.
+
+Then, as though choosing contrasts, follows a fair, laughing face. I saw
+it in the life only a few hours ago--at least, not it, but the poor daub
+that Evil has painted over it, hating the sweetness underlying. And as
+I stand gazing at it, wishing it were of the dead who change not, there
+drifts back from the shadows that other face, the one of the wicked
+mouth and the tender eyes, so that I stand again helpless between the
+two I loved so well, he from whom I learned my first steps in manhood,
+she from whom I caught my first glimpse of the beauty and the mystery of
+woman. And again the cry rises from my heart, “Whose fault was it--yours
+or hers?” And again I hear his mocking laugh as he answers, “Whose
+fault? God made us.” And thinking of her and of the love I bore her,
+which was as the love of a young pilgrim to a saint, it comes into my
+blood to hate him. But when I look into his eyes and see the pain that
+lives there, my pity grows stronger than my misery, and I can only echo
+his words, “God made us.”
+
+Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but
+the centre round which they circle remains always the one: a little
+lad with golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy,
+awkward ways and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.
+
+And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask: “Would he know me,
+could he see me, do you think?”
+
+“How should he,” answers the old House, “you are so different to what he
+would expect. Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?”
+
+“It is sad to think he would not recognise me,” I say.
+
+“It might be sadder if he did,” grumbles the old House.
+
+We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House is
+thinking. Soon it speaks as I expected.
+
+“You--writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him? There is
+something that you know.”
+
+It is the favourite theme of the old House. I never visit it but it
+suggests to me this idea.
+
+“But he has done nothing?” I say.
+
+“He has lived,” answers the old House. “Is not that enough?”
+
+“Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times,” I persist. “How
+of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?”
+
+The old House waxes impatient of me.
+
+“'The people!'” it retorts, “what are you all but children in a dim-lit
+room, waiting until one by one you are called out to sleep. And one
+mounts upon a stool and tells a tale to the others who have gathered
+round. Who shall say what will please them, what will not.”
+
+Returning home with musing footsteps through the softly breathing
+streets, I ponder the words of the old House. Is it but as some foolish
+mother thinking all the world interested in her child, or may there lie
+wisdom in its counsel? Then to my guidance or misguidance comes the
+thought of a certain small section of the Public who often of an evening
+commands of me a story; and who, when I have told her of the dreadful
+giants and of the gallant youths who slay them, of the wood-cutter's
+sons who rescue maidens from Ogre-guarded castles; of the Princesses the
+most beautiful in all the world, of the Princes with magic swords, still
+unsatisfied, creeps closer yet, saying: “Now tell me a real story,”
+adding for my comprehending: “You know: about a little girl who lived in
+a big house with her father and mother, and who was sometimes naughty,
+you know.”
+
+So perhaps among the many there may be some who for a moment will turn
+aside from tales of haughty Heroes, ruffling it in Court and Camp, to
+listen to the story of a very ordinary lad who lived with very ordinary
+folk in a modern London street, and who grew up to be a very ordinary
+sort of man, loving a little and grieving a little, helping a few and
+harming a few, struggling and failing and hoping; and if any such there
+be, let them come round me.
+
+But let not those who come to me grow indignant as they listen, saying:
+“This rascal tells us but a humdrum story, where nothing is as it should
+be;” for I warn all beforehand that I tell but of things that I have
+seen. My villains, I fear, are but poor sinners, not altogether bad;
+and my good men but sorry saints. My princes do not always slay their
+dragons; alas, sometimes, the dragon eats the prince. The wicked
+fairies often prove more powerful than the good. The magic thread leads
+sometimes wrong, and even the hero is not always brave and true.
+
+So let those come round me only who will be content to hear but their
+own story, told by another, saying as they listen, “So dreamt I. Ah,
+yes, that is true, I remember.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET
+THE MAN IN GREY.
+
+Fate intended me for a singularly fortunate man. Properly, I ought to
+have been born in June, which being, as is well known, the luckiest
+month in all the year for such events, should, by thoughtful parents, be
+more generally selected. How it was I came to be born in May, which is,
+on the other hand, of all the twelve the most unlucky, as I have proved,
+I leave to those more conversant with the subject to explain. An early
+nurse, the first human being of whom I have any distinct recollection,
+unhesitatingly attributed the unfortunate fact to my natural impatience;
+which quality she at the same time predicted would lead me into even
+greater trouble, a prophecy impressed by future events with the stamp of
+prescience. It was from this same bony lady that I likewise learned the
+manner of my coming. It seems that I arrived, quite unexpectedly, two
+hours after news had reached the house of the ruin of my father's mines
+through inundation; misfortunes, as it was expounded to me, never coming
+singly in this world to any one. That all things might be of a piece,
+my poor mother, attempting to reach the bell, fell against and broke the
+cheval-glass, thus further saddening herself with the conviction--for
+no amount of reasoning ever succeeded in purging her Welsh blood of
+its natural superstition--that whatever might be the result of future
+battles with my evil star, the first seven years of tiny existence had
+been, by her act, doomed to disaster.
+
+“And I must confess,” added the knobbly Mrs. Fursey, with a sigh, “it
+does look as though there must be some truth in the saying, after all.”
+
+“Then ain't I a lucky little boy?” I asked. For hitherto it had been
+Mrs. Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune.
+That I could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less
+happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until eight
+or nine o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding piece of
+luck. Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which, in my more
+riotous moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first sign of a cold
+it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed gruel and sup
+off brimstone and treacle--a compound named with deliberate intent to
+deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as taste is concerned, being
+wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was another example of Fortune's
+favouritism: other little boys were so astoundingly unlucky as to be
+left alone when they felt ill. If further proof were needed to convince
+that I had been signalled out by Providence as its especial protege,
+there remained always the circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey
+for my nurse. The suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of
+children was a new departure.
+
+The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct
+it.
+
+“Oh, you! You are lucky enough,” she replied; “I was thinking of your
+poor mother.”
+
+“Isn't mamma lucky?”
+
+“Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came.”
+
+“Wasn't it lucky, her having me?”
+
+“I can't say it was, at that particular time.”
+
+“Didn't she want me?”
+
+Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion
+that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of
+perpetual apology for its existence.
+
+“Well, I daresay she could have done without you,” was the answer.
+
+I can see the picture plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair before
+the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands, meanwhile Mrs.
+Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble.
+At that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time the problem
+of life.
+
+Suddenly, without moving, I said:
+
+“Then why did she take me in?”
+
+The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.
+
+“Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?”
+
+“Why, mamma. If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?”
+
+But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded
+this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad
+that she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window
+presented itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and
+annoyed, looking as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the fish
+he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna, and
+the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone away
+thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long, compass-like
+legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here, incidentally, I fell
+a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the garden I had often
+watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm, though no doubt
+really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous and uncomfortable.
+Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And where would the stork
+have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs. Fursey's: their cottage was the
+nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey would not have taken me in; and
+next to them, at the first house in the village, lived Mr. Chumdley,
+the cobbler, who was lame, and who sat all day hammering boots with
+very dirty hands, in a little cave half under the ground, his whole
+appearance suggesting a poor-spirited ogre. I should have hated being
+his little boy. Possibly nobody would have taken me in. I grew pensive,
+thinking of myself as the rejected of all the village. What would the
+stork have done with me, left on his hands, so to speak. The reflection
+prompted a fresh question.
+
+“Nurse, where did I come from?”
+
+“Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you.”
+
+“Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?” Mrs. Fursey paused
+for quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was reflecting
+whether such answer might not make me unduly conceited. Eventually she
+must have decided to run that risk; other opportunities could be relied
+upon for neutralising the effect.
+
+“Oh, from Heaven.”
+
+“But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to,” I answered; “not
+where you comed from.” I know I said “comed,” for I remember that at
+this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor
+mother. “Comed” and “goned,” which I had worked out for myself, were
+particular favourites of mine.
+
+Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had
+been pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my
+education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same
+subject only confused a child.
+
+“You came from Heaven,” repeated Mrs. Fursey, “and you'll go to
+Heaven--if you're good.”
+
+“Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?”
+
+“So they say.” Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what
+might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took
+no responsibility.
+
+“And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?” Mrs. Fursey's reply to this
+was decidedly more emphatic.
+
+“Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?”
+
+At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my
+eyes. Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should
+be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as it
+appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm
+disappeared.
+
+But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a
+fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my
+fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's
+egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.
+
+“Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?” I asked. “Weren't they
+fond of me up there?”
+
+The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom,
+for she answered more sympathetically than usual.
+
+“Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to
+get rid of you sometimes.” There could be no doubt as to this last. Even
+at the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was not
+occasionally half-past five.
+
+The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted
+either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was glad
+to get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have done without
+me. Nobody wanted me. Why was I here?
+
+And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark room,
+came into my childish brain the feeling that Something, somewhere, must
+have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I belonged to and
+that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part of me as I of It.
+The feeling came back to me more than once during my childhood, though I
+could never put it into words. Years later the son of the Portuguese Jew
+explained to me my thought. But all that I myself could have told was
+that in that moment I knew for the first time that I lived, that I was
+I.
+
+The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little
+boy, sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions
+concerning life.
+
+Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an old.
+
+“Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?”
+
+Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.
+
+“What maggot has the child got into its head now?” was her observation;
+“who hasn't got a husband?”
+
+“Why, mamma.”
+
+“Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a
+husband.”
+
+“No, she ain't.”
+
+“And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives in
+London.”
+
+“What's the good of _him_!”
+
+Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.
+
+“You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in
+London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit
+there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an
+ungrateful little brat.”
+
+I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of
+a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my
+aunt.
+
+Had said my aunt: “There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I saw
+such a thing to mope as a woman.”
+
+My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled all
+day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.
+
+My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite
+attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the garden
+beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the white and
+yellow crocuses decking the grass.
+
+“I want a husband,” had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously
+childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I was
+reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; “I hate
+not having a husband.”
+
+“Help us and save us,” my aunt had retorted; “how many more does a girl
+want? She's got one.”
+
+“What's the good of him all that way off,” had pouted my mother; “I want
+him here where I can get at him.”
+
+I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in
+London, and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish
+endeavours to square information with reflection had resulted in my
+assigning to him an entirely spiritual existence. I agreed with my
+mother that such an one, however to be revered, was no substitute for
+the flesh and blood father possessed by luckier folk--the big, strong,
+masculine thing that would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden,
+or take a chap to sail in boats.
+
+“You don't understand me, nurse,” I explained; “what I mean is a husband
+you can get at.”
+
+“Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,”
+ answered Mrs. Fursey. “When he's ready for you he'll send for you, and
+then you'll go to him in London.”
+
+I felt that still Mrs. Fursey didn't understand. But I foresaw that
+further explanation would only shock her, so contented myself with a
+simple, matter-of-fact question.
+
+“How do you get to London; do you have to die first?”
+
+“I do think,” said Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of resigned despair rather
+than of surprise, “that, without exception, you are the silliest little
+boy I ever came across. I've no patience with you.”
+
+“I am very sorry, nurse,” I answered; “I thought--”
+
+“Then,” interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations, “you
+shouldn't think. London,” continued the good dame, her experience no
+doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would be through my
+understanding of this matter, “is a big town, and you go there in a
+train. Some time--soon now--your father will write to your mother that
+everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your aunt will leave
+this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of you.”
+
+“And shan't we come back here ever any more?”
+
+“Never again.”
+
+“And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the
+pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?”
+
+“Never again.” I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It
+sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.
+
+“And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or
+you, ever any more?” In this moment of the crumbling from under me of
+all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey
+herself.
+
+“Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And I do
+hope, Master Paul,” added Mrs. Fursey, piously, “it may be a better one.
+That you will make up your mind to--”
+
+But Mrs. Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have been,
+fell upon deaf ears. Here was I face to face with yet another problem.
+This life into which I had fallen: it was understandable! One went away,
+leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to return to them.
+One left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a new existence in a
+strange land. One parted from the friends one had always known, one saw
+them never again. Life was indeed a strange thing; and, would a body
+comprehend it, then must a body sit staring into the fire, thinking very
+hard, unheedful of all idle chatter.
+
+That night, when my mother came to kiss me good-night, I turned my
+face to the wall and pretended to be asleep, for children as well as
+grown-ups have their foolish moods; but when I felt the soft curls brush
+my cheek, my pride gave way, and clasping my arms about her neck, and
+drawing her face still closer down to mine; I voiced the question that
+all the evening had been knocking at my heart:
+
+“I suppose you couldn't send me back now, could you? You see, you've had
+me so long.”
+
+“Send you back?”
+
+“Yes. I'd be too big for the stork to carry now, wouldn't I?”
+
+My mother knelt down beside the bed so that her face and mine were on
+a level, and looking into her eyes, the fear that had been haunting me
+fell from me.
+
+“Who has been talking foolishly to a foolish little boy?” asked my
+mother, keeping my arms still clasped about her neck.
+
+“Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know,” I answered, “and she
+said you could have done without me.” Somehow, I did not mind repeating
+the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's fun.
+
+My mother drew me closer to her.
+
+“And what made her think that?”
+
+“Well, you see,” I replied, “I came at a very awkward time, didn't I;
+when you had a lot of other troubles.”
+
+My mother laughed, but the next moment looked grave again.
+
+“I did not know you thought about such things,” she said; “we must be
+more together, you and I, Paul, and you shall tell me all you think,
+because nurse does not quite understand you. It is true what she said
+about the trouble; it came just at that time. But I could not have done
+without you. I was very unhappy, and you were sent to comfort me and
+help me to bear it.” I liked this explanation better.
+
+“Then it was lucky, your having me?” I said. Again my mother laughed,
+and again there followed that graver look upon her childish face.
+
+“Will you remember what I am going to say?” She spoke so earnestly that
+I, wriggling into a sitting posture, became earnest also.
+
+“I'll try,” I answered; “but I ain't got a very good memory, have I?”
+
+“Not very,” smiled my mother; “but if you think about it a good deal it
+will not leave you. When you are a good boy, and later on, when you are
+a good man, then I am the luckiest little mother in all the world. And
+every time you fail, that means bad luck for me. You will remember that
+after I'm gone, when you are a big man, won't you, Paul?”
+
+So, both of us quite serious, I promised; and though I smile now when
+I remember, seeing before me those two earnest, childish faces, yet I
+think, however little success it may be I have to boast of, it would
+perhaps have been still less had I entirely forgotten.
+
+From that day my mother waxes in my memory; Mrs. Fursey, of the many
+promontories, waning. There were sunny mornings in the neglected garden,
+where the leaves played round us while we worked and read; twilight
+evenings in the window seat where, half hidden by the dark red curtains,
+we would talk in whispers, why I know not, of good men and noble women,
+ogres, fairies, saints and demons; they were pleasant days.
+
+Possibly our curriculum lacked method; maybe it was too varied and
+extensive for my age, in consequence of which chronology became confused
+within my brain, and fact and fiction more confounded than has usually
+been considered permissible, even in history. I saw Aphrodite, ready
+armed and risen from the sea, move with stately grace to meet King
+Canute, who, throned upon the sand, bade her come no further lest
+she should wet his feet. In forest glade I saw King Rufus fall from a
+poisoned arrow shot by Robin Hood; but thanks to sweet Queen Eleanor,
+who sucked the poison from his wound, I knew he lived. Oliver Cromwell,
+having killed King Charles, married his widow, and was in turn stabbed
+by Hamlet. Ulysses, in the Argo, it was fixed upon my mind, had
+discovered America. Romulus and Remus had slain the wolf and rescued
+Little Red Riding Hood. Good King Arthur, for letting the cakes burn,
+had been murdered by his uncle in the Tower of London. Prometheus, bound
+to the Rock, had been saved by good St. George. Paris had given the
+apple to William Tell. What matter! the information was there. It needed
+rearranging, that was all.
+
+Sometimes, of an afternoon, we would climb the steep winding pathway
+through the woods, past awful precipices, spirit-haunted, by grassy
+swards where fairies danced o' nights, by briar and bracken sheltered
+Caves where fearsome creatures lurked, till high above the creeping sea
+we would reach the open plateau where rose old Jacob's ruined tower.
+“Jacob's Folly” it was more often called about the country side, and by
+some “The Devil's Tower;” for legend had it that there old Jacob and his
+master, the Devil, had often met in windy weather to wave false wrecking
+lights to troubled ships. Who “old Jacob” was, I never, that I can
+remember, learned, nor how nor why he built the Tower. Certain only it
+is his memory was unpopular, and the fisher folk would swear that
+still on stormy nights strange lights would gleam and flash from the
+ivy-curtained windows of his Folly.
+
+But in day time no spot was more inviting, the short moss-grass before
+its shattered door, the lichen on its crumbling stones. From its topmost
+platform one saw the distant mountains, faint like spectres, and the
+silent ships that came and vanished; and about one's feet the pleasant
+farm lands and the grave, sweet river.
+
+Smaller and poorer the world has grown since then. Now, behind those
+hills lie naught but smoky towns and dingy villages; but then they
+screened a land of wonder where princesses dwelt in castles, where the
+cities were of gold. Now the ocean is but six days' journey wide, ending
+at the New York Custom House. Then, had one set one's sail upon it, one
+would have travelled far and far, beyond the golden moonlight, beyond
+the gate of clouds; to the magic land of the blood red shore, t'other
+side o' the sun. I never dreamt in those days a world could be so small.
+
+Upon the topmost platform a wooden seat ran round within the parapet,
+and sitting there hand in hand, sheltered from the wind which ever blew
+about the tower, my mother would people for me all the earth and air
+with the forms of myth and legend--perhaps unwisely, yet I do not
+know. I took no harm from it, good rather, I think. They were beautiful
+fancies, most of them; or so my mother turned them, making for love and
+pity, as do all the tales that live, whether poems or old wives fables.
+But at that time of course they had no meaning for me other than the
+literal; so that my mother, looking into my eyes, would often hasten
+to add: “But that, you know, is only an old superstition, and of course
+there are no such things nowadays.” Yet, forgetful sometimes of the
+time, and overtaken homeward by the shadows, we would hasten swiftly
+through the darkening path, holding each other tightly by the hand.
+
+Spring had waxed to summer, summer waned to autumn. Then my aunt and I
+one morning, waiting at the breakfast table, saw through the open window
+my mother skipping, dancing, pirouetting up the garden path. She held
+a letter open in her hand, which as she drew near she waved about her
+head, singing:
+
+“Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then comes Wednesday morning.”
+
+She caught me to her and began dancing with me round the room.
+
+Observed my aunt, who continued steadily to eat bread and butter:
+
+“Just like 'em all. Goes mad with joy. What for? Because she's going to
+leave a decent house, to live in a poky hole in the East End of London,
+and keep one servant.”
+
+To my aunt the second person ever remained a grammatical superfluity.
+Invariably she spoke not to but of a person, throwing out her
+conversation in the form of commentary. This had the advantage
+of permitting the party intended to ignore it as mere impersonal
+philosophy. Seeing it was generally uncomplimentary, most people
+preferred so to regard it; but my mother had never succeeded in
+schooling herself to indifference.
+
+“It's not a poky hole,” she replied; “it's an old-fashioned house, near
+the river.”
+
+“Plaistow marshes!” ejaculated my aunt, “calls it the river!”
+
+“So it is the river,” returned my mother; “the river is the other side
+of the marshes.”
+
+“Let's hope it will always stop there,” said my aunt.
+
+“And it's got a garden,” continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last
+remark; “which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it
+isn't the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won't make
+me miserable because I am too happy.”
+
+“Drat the woman!” said my aunt, “why can't she sit down and give us our
+tea before it's all cold?”
+
+“You are a disagreeable thing!” said my mother.
+
+“Not half milk,” said my aunt. My aunt was never in the least disturbed
+by other people's opinion of her, which was perhaps well for her.
+
+For three days my mother packed and sang; and a dozen times a day
+unpacked and laughed, looking for things wanted that were always found
+at the very bottom of the very last box looked into, so that Anna,
+waiting for a certain undergarment of my aunt's which shall be nameless,
+suggested a saving of time:
+
+“If I were you, ma'am,” said Anna, “I'd look into the last box you're
+going to look into first.”
+
+But it was found eventually in the first box-the box, that is, my mother
+had intended to search first, but which, acting on Anna's suggestion,
+she had reserved till the last. This caused my mother to be quite short
+with Anna, who she said had wasted her time. But by Tuesday afternoon
+all stood ready: we were to start early Wednesday morning.
+
+That evening, missing my mother in the house, I sought her in the garden
+and found her, as I had expected, on her favourite seat under the great
+lime tree; but to my surprise there were tears in her eyes.
+
+“But I thought you were glad we were going,” I said.
+
+“So I am,” answered my mother, drying her eyes only to make room for
+fresh tears.
+
+“Then why are you crying?”
+
+“Because I'm sorry to leave here.”
+
+Grown-up folks with their contradictory ways were a continual puzzle to
+me in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now, myself
+included.
+
+We were up and off next day before the dawn. The sun rose as the wagon
+reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our farewell
+look at Old Jacob's Tower. My mother cried a little behind her veil; but
+my aunt only said, “I never did care for earwigs in my tea;” and as
+for myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much sentiment about
+anything.
+
+On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who
+in his sleep--and he slept often--imagined me to be a piece of stuffing
+out of place. Then, grunting and wriggling, he would endeavour to rub
+me out, until the continued irritation of my head between the window
+and his back would cause him to awake, when he would look down upon me
+reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the carriage generally: “It's
+a funny thing, ain't it, nobody's ever made a boy yet that could keep
+still for ten seconds.” After which he would pat me heartily on the
+head, to show he was not vexed with me, and fall to sleep again upon me.
+He was a good-tempered man.
+
+My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had
+found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat
+upon; so I was left mainly to my own resources. When I could get my head
+free of the big man's back, I gazed out of the window, and watched the
+flying fragments as we shed the world. Now a village would fall from us,
+now the yellow corn-land would cling to us for awhile, or a wood catch
+at our rushing feet, and sometimes a strong town would stop us, and hold
+us, panting for a space. Or, my eyes weary, I would sit and listen to
+the hoarse singing of the wheels beneath my feet. It was a monotonous
+chaunt, ever the same two lines:
+
+     “Here we suffer grief and pain,
+     Here we meet to part again,”
+
+followed by a low, rumbling laugh. Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes
+pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and
+ever followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the
+iron wheels sing to me that same song.
+
+Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my
+having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring all
+the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy in the
+dragon's stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully overeaten
+himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely undigested, including
+Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson, against whom, at that
+period, I entertained a strong prejudice by reason of our divergent
+views upon the subject of spelling. Even in this hour of our mutual
+discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone, but persisted in asking me
+how I spelt Jonah. Nobody was looking, so I kicked him. He sprang up
+and came after me. I tried to run away, but became wedged between
+Hop-o'-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar. I suppose our tearing about must
+have hurt the dragon, for at that moment he gave vent to a most fearful
+scream, and I awoke to find the fat man rubbing his left shin, while
+we struggled slowly, with steps growing ever feebler, against a sea of
+brick that every moment closed in closer round us.
+
+We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that
+might have been the dragon's home, where, to my alarm, my mother was
+immediately swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.
+
+“Why's he do that?” I asked of my aunt.
+
+“Because he's a fool,” answered my aunt; “they all are.”
+
+He put my mother down and came towards us. He was a tall, thin man, with
+eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively even then
+I associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white horse.
+
+“Why, how he's grown,” said the grey man, raising me in his arms until
+my mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little
+person; “and solid too.”
+
+My mother whispered something. I think from her face, for I knew the
+signs, it was praise of me.
+
+“And he's going to be our new fortune,” she added aloud, as the grey man
+lowered me.
+
+“Then,” said my aunt, who had this while been sitting rigid upon a flat
+black box, “don't drop him down a coal-mine. That's all I say.”
+
+I wondered at the time why the grey man's pale face should flush so
+crimson, and why my mother should whisper angrily:
+
+“How can you be so wicked, Fanny? How dare you say such a thing?”
+
+“I only said 'don't drop him down a coal-mine,'” returned my aunt,
+apparently much surprised; “you don't want to drop him down a coal-mine,
+do you?”
+
+We passed through glittering, joyous streets, piled high each side with
+all the good things of the earth; toys and baubles, jewels and gold,
+things good to eat and good to drink, things good to wear and good to
+see; through pleasant ways where fountains splashed and flowers bloomed.
+The people wore bright clothes, had happy faces. They rode in beautiful
+carriages, they strolled about, greeting one another with smiles. The
+children ran and laughed. London, thought I to myself, is the city of
+the fairies.
+
+It passed, and we sank into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets,
+wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the yellow
+waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses, rock-bound.
+Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none stayed to greet
+another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless. London, then, said I
+to myself, is the city of the giants. They must live in these towering
+castles side by side, and these hurrying thousands are their driven
+slaves.
+
+But this passed also, and we sank lower yet until we reached a third
+city, where a pale mist filled each sombre street. None of the beautiful
+things of the world were to be seen here, but only the things coarse
+and ugly. And wearily to and fro its sunless passages trudged with heavy
+steps a weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull, listless faces. And
+London, I knew, was the city of the gnomes who labour sadly all their
+lives, imprisoned underground; and a terror seized me lest I, too,
+should remain chained here, deep down below the fairy city that was
+already but a dream.
+
+We stopped at last in a long, unfinished street. I remember our pushing
+our way through a group of dirty urchins, all of whom, my aunt remarked
+in passing, ought to be skinned. It was my aunt's one prescription for
+all to whom she took objection; but really in the present instance I
+think it would have been of service; nothing else whatever could have
+restored them to cleanliness. Then the door closed behind us with an
+echoing clang, and the small, cold rooms came forward stiffly to greet
+us.
+
+The man in grey went to the one window and drew back the curtain; it
+was growing dusk now. My aunt sat on a straight, hard chair and stared
+fixedly at the three-armed gaselier. My mother stood in the centre of
+the room with one small ungloved hand upon the table, and I noticed--for
+I was very near--that the poor little one-legged thing was trembling.
+
+“Of course it's not what you've been accustomed to, Maggie,” said the
+man in grey; “but it's only for a little while.”
+
+He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back
+being to the light.
+
+My mother drew his arms around us both.
+
+“It is the best home in all the world,” she said; and thus we stayed for
+awhile.
+
+“Nonsense,” said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; “it's a poky
+hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she's got a
+man clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could rest
+where he was put. Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up.”
+
+It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man laughed--I
+had not heard him laugh till then--and my mother ran to my aunt and
+kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.
+
+For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a
+screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in the
+evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued voices
+awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and the man in
+grey were talking together over their supper.
+
+“We must buy land,” said the voice of the grey man; “London is coming
+this way. The Somebodies” (I forget the name my father mentioned) “made
+all their money by buying up land round New York for a mere song. Then,
+as the city spread, they became worth millions.”
+
+“But where will you get the money from, Luke?” asked the voice of my
+mother.
+
+The voice of the grey man answered airily:
+
+“Oh, that's merely a matter of business. You grant a mortgage. The
+property goes up in value. You borrow more. Then you buy more--and so
+on.”
+
+“I see,” said my mother.
+
+“Being on the spot gives one such an advantage,” said the grey man. “I
+shall know just when to buy. It's a great thing, being on the spot.”
+
+“Of course, it must be,” said my mother.
+
+I suppose I must have dozed, for the next words I heard the grey man say
+were:
+
+“Of course you have the park opposite, but then the house is small.”
+
+“But shall we need a very large one?” asked my mother.
+
+“One never knows,” said the grey man. “If I should go into Parliament--”
+
+At this point a hissing sound arose from the neighbourhood of the fire.
+
+“It _looks_,” said my mother, “as if it were done.”
+
+“If you will hold the dish,” said the grey man, “I think I can pour it
+in without spilling.”
+
+Again I must have dozed.
+
+“It depends,” said the grey man, “upon what he is going to be. For the
+classics, of course, Oxford.”
+
+“He's going to be very clever,” said my mother. She spoke as one who
+knows.
+
+“We'll hope so,” said the grey man.
+
+“I shouldn't be surprised,” said my mother, “if he turned out a poet.”
+
+The grey man said something in a low tone that I did not hear.
+
+“I'm not so sure,” answered my mother, “it's in the blood. I've often
+thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet.”
+
+“I never had the time,” said the grey man. “There were one or two little
+things--”
+
+“They were very beautiful,” interrupted my mother. The clatter of the
+knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments. Then continued
+the grey man:
+
+“There would be no harm, provided I made enough. It's the law of nature.
+One generation earns, the next spends. We must see. In any case, I think
+I should prefer Oxford for him.”
+
+“It will be so hard parting from him,” said my mother.
+
+“There will be the vacations,” said the grey man, “when we shall
+travel.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH.
+
+The case of my father and mother was not normal. You understand they
+had been separated for some years, and though they were not young in
+age--indeed, before my childish eyes they loomed quite ancient folk,
+and in fact my father must have been nearly forty and my mother quit of
+thirty--yet, as you will come to think yourself, no doubt, during the
+course of my story, they were in all the essentials of life little more
+than boy and girl. This I came to see later on, but at that time, had I
+been consulted by enquiring maid or bachelor, I might unwittingly have
+given wrong impressions concerning marriage in the general. I should
+have described a husband as a man who could never rest quite content
+unless his wife were by his side; who twenty times a day would call from
+his office door: “Maggie, are you doing anything important? I want to
+talk to you about a matter of business.” ... “Maggie, are you alone? Oh,
+all right, I'll come down.” Of a wife I should have said she was a woman
+whose eyes were ever love-lit when resting on her man; who was glad
+where he was and troubled where he was not. But in every case this might
+not have been correct.
+
+Also, I should have had something to say concerning the alarms and
+excursions attending residence with any married couple. I should have
+recommended the holding up of feet under the table lest, mistaken for
+other feet, they should be trodden on and pressed. Also, I should have
+advised against entry into any room unpreceded by what in Stageland
+is termed “noise without.” It is somewhat disconcerting to the nervous
+incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound as of people
+springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird scuttling of feet,
+and then to discover the occupants sitting stiffly in opposite corners,
+deeply engaged in book or needlework. But, as I have said, with regard
+to some households, such precautions might be needless.
+
+Personally, I fear, I exercised little or no controlling influence upon
+my parents in this respect, my intrusions coming soon to be greeted
+with: “Oh, it's only Spud,” in a tone of relief, accompanied generally
+by the sofa cushion; but of my aunt they stood more in awe. Not that she
+ever said anything, and, indeed, to do her justice, in her efforts to
+spare their feelings she erred, if at all, on the side of excess.
+Never did she move a footstep about the house except to the music of
+a sustained and penetrating cough. As my father once remarked,
+ungratefully, I must confess, the volume of bark produced by my aunt in
+a single day would have done credit to the dying efforts of a hospital
+load of consumptives; to a robust and perfectly healthy lady the cost in
+nervous force must have been prodigious. Also, that no fear should live
+with them that her eyes had seen aught not intended for them, she would
+invariably enter backwards any room in which they might be, closing the
+door loudly and with difficulty before turning round: and through dark
+passages she would walk singing. No woman alive could have done more;
+yet--such is human nature!--neither my father nor my mother was grateful
+to her, so far as I could judge.
+
+Indeed, strange as it may appear, the more sympathetic towards them she
+showed herself, the more irritated against her did they become.
+
+“I believe, Fanny, you hate seeing Luke and me happy together,” said my
+mother one day, coming up from the kitchen to find my aunt preparing
+for entry into the drawing-room by dropping teaspoons at five-second
+intervals outside the door: “Don't make yourself so ridiculous.” My
+mother spoke really quite unkindly.
+
+“Hate it!” replied my aunt. “Why should I? Why shouldn't a pair of
+turtle doves bill and coo, when their united age is only a little over
+seventy, the pretty dears?” The mildness of my aunt's answers often
+surprised me.
+
+As for my father, he grew positively vindictive. I remember the occasion
+well. It was the first, though not the last time I knew him lose his
+temper. What brought up the subject I forget, but my father stopped
+suddenly; we were walking by the canal bank.
+
+“Your aunt”--my father may not have intended it, but his tone and manner
+when speaking of my aunt always conveyed to me the impression that he
+regarded me as personally responsible for her existence. This used to
+weigh upon me. “Your aunt is the most cantankerous, the most--” he broke
+off, and shook his fist towards the setting sun. “I wish to God,” said
+my father, “your aunt had a comfortable little income of her own, with
+a freehold cottage in the country, by God I do!” But the next moment,
+ashamed, I suppose, of his brutality: “Not but what sometimes, of
+course, she can be very nice, you know,” he added; “don't tell your
+mother what I said just now.”
+
+Another who followed with sympathetic interest the domestic comedy was
+Susan, our maid-of-all-work, the first of a long and varied series,
+extending unto the advent of Amy, to whom the blessing of Heaven. Susan
+was a stout and elderly female, liable to sudden fits of sleepiness, the
+result, we were given to understand, of trouble; but her heart, it was
+her own proud boast, was always in the right place. She could never look
+at my father and mother sitting anywhere near each other but she must
+flop down and weep awhile; the sight of connubial bliss always reminding
+her, so she would explain, of the past glories of her own married state.
+
+Though an earnest enquirer, I was never able myself to grasp the ins
+and outs of this past married life of Susan's. Whether her answers were
+purposely framed to elude curiosity, or whether they were the result of
+a naturally incoherent mind, I cannot say. Their tendency was to convey
+confusion.
+
+On Monday I have seen Susan shed tears of regret into the Brussels
+sprouts, that she had been debarred by the pressure of other duties from
+lately watering “his” grave, which, I gathered, was at Manor Park.
+While on Tuesday I have listened, blood chilled, to the recital of her
+intentions should she ever again enjoy the luxury of getting her fingers
+near the scruff of his neck.
+
+“But, I thought, Susan, he was dead,” was my very natural comment upon
+this outbreak.
+
+“So did I, Master Paul,” was Susan's rejoinder; “that was his
+artfulness.”
+
+“Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?”
+
+“Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get hold
+of him.”
+
+“Then he wasn't a good man?”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Your husband.”
+
+“Who says he ain't a good man?” It was Susan's flying leaps from tense
+to tense that most bewildered me. “If anybody says he ain't I'll gouge
+their eye out!”
+
+I hastened to assure Susan that my observation had been intended in the
+nature of enquiry, not of assertion.
+
+“Brings me a bottle of gin--for my headaches--every time he comes home,”
+ continued Susan, showing cause for opinion, “every blessed time.”
+
+And at some such point as this I would retire to the clearer atmosphere
+of German grammar or mixed fractions.
+
+We suffered a good deal from Susan one way and another; for having
+regard to the admirable position of her heart, we all felt it our duty
+to overlook mere failings of the flesh--all but my aunt, that is, who
+never made any pretence of being a sentimentalist.
+
+“She's a lazy hussy,” was the opinion expressed of her one morning by my
+aunt, who was rinsing; “a gulping, snorting, lazy hussy, that's what she
+is.” There was some excuse for my aunt's indignation. It was then eleven
+o'clock and Susan was still sleeping off an attack of what she called
+“new-ralgy.”
+
+“She has seen a good deal of trouble,” said my mother, who was wiping.
+
+“And if she was my cook and housemaid,” replied my aunt, “she would see
+more, the slut!”
+
+“She's not a good servant in many respects,” admitted my mother, “but I
+think she's good-hearted.”
+
+“Oh, drat her heart,” was my aunt's retort. “The right place for that
+heart of hers is on the doorstep. And that's where I'd put it, and her
+and her box alongside it, if I had my way.”
+
+The departure of Susan did take place not long afterwards. It occurred
+one Saturday night. My mother came upstairs looking pale.
+
+“Luke,” she said, “do please run for the doctor.”
+
+“What's the matter?” asked my father.
+
+“Susan,” gasped my mother, “she's lying on the kitchen floor breathing
+in the strangest fashion and quite unable to speak.”
+
+“I'll go for Washburn,” said my father; “if I am quick I shall catch him
+at the dispensary.”
+
+Five minutes later my father came back panting, followed by the doctor.
+This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the knack of
+looking bigger than even he really was. He came down the kitchen stairs
+two at a time, shaking the whole house. He brushed my mother aside, and
+bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her back with her mouth wide
+open. Then he rose and looked at my father and mother, who were watching
+him with troubled faces; and then he opened his mouth, and there came
+from it a roar of laughter, the like of which sound I had never heard.
+
+The next moment he had seized a pail half full of water and had flung it
+over the woman. She opened her eyes and sat up.
+
+“Feeling better?” said the doctor, with the pail still in his hand;
+“have another dose?”
+
+Susan began to gather herself together with the evident intention of
+expressing her feelings; but before she could find the first word, he
+had pushed the three of us outside and slammed the door behind us.
+
+From the top of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous voice
+raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the man's
+savage roar of laughter. And, when for want of breath she would flag for
+a moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting: “Bravo!
+Go it, my beauty, give it tongue! Bark, bark! I love to hear you,”
+ applauding her, clapping his hands and stamping his feet.
+
+“What a beast of a man,” said my mother.
+
+“He is really a most interesting man when you come to know him,”
+ explained my father.
+
+Replied my mother, stiffly: “I don't ever mean to know him.” But it is
+only concerning the past that we possess knowledge.
+
+The riot from below ceased at length, and was followed by a new voice,
+speaking quietly and emphatically, and then we heard the doctor's step
+again upon the stairs.
+
+My mother held her purse open in her hand, and as the man entered the
+room she went forward to meet him.
+
+“How much do we owe you, Doctor?” said my mother. She spoke in a voice
+trembling with severity.
+
+He closed the purse and gently pushed it back towards her.
+
+“A glass of beer and a chop, Mrs. Kelver,” he answered, “which I am
+coming back in an hour to cook for myself. And as you will be without
+any servant,” he continued, while my mother stood staring at him
+incapable of utterance, “you had better let me cook some for you at the
+same time. I am an expert at grilling chops.”
+
+“But, really, Doctor--” my mother began. He laid his huge hand upon her
+shoulder, and my mother sat down upon the nearest chair.
+
+“My dear lady,” he said, “she's a person you never ought to have had
+inside your house. She's promised me to be gone in half an hour, and
+I'm coming back to see she keeps her word. Give her a month's wages, and
+have a clear fire ready for me.” And before my mother could reply, he
+had slammed the front door.
+
+“What a very odd sort of a man,” said my mother, recovering herself.
+
+“He's a character,” said my father; “you might not think it, but he's
+worshipped about here.”
+
+“I hardly know what to make of him,” said my mother; “I suppose I had
+better go out and get some chops;” which she did.
+
+Susan went, as sober as a judge on Friday, as the saying is, her great
+anxiety being to get out of the house before the doctor returned. The
+doctor himself arrived true to his time, and I lay awake--for no human
+being ever slept or felt he wanted to sleep while Dr. Washburn was
+anywhere near--and listened to the gusts of laughter that swept
+continually through the house. Even my aunt laughed that supper time,
+and when the doctor himself laughed it seemed to me that the bed shook
+under me. Not liking to be out of it, I did what spoilt little boys
+and even spoilt little girls sometimes will do under similar stress of
+feeling, wrapped the blanket round my legs and pattered down, with
+my face set to express the sudden desire of a sensitive and possibly
+short-lived child for parents' love. My mother pretended to be angry,
+but that I knew was only her company manners. Besides, I really had, if
+not exactly a pain, an extremely uncomfortable sensation (one common to
+me about that period) as of having swallowed the dome of St. Paul's. The
+doctor said it was a frequent complaint with children, the result of too
+early hours and too much study; and, taking me on his knee, wrote then
+and there a diet chart for me, which included one tablespoonful of
+golden syrup four times a day, and one ounce of sherbet to be placed
+upon the tongue and taken neat ten minutes before each meal.
+
+That evening will always live in my remembrance. My mother was brighter
+than I had ever seen her. A flush was on her cheek and a sparkle in her
+eye, and looking across at her as she sat holding a small painted screen
+to shield her face from the fire, the sense of beauty became suddenly
+born within me, and answering an impulse I could not have explained, I
+slipped down, still with my blanket around me, from the doctor's knee,
+and squatted on the edge of the fender, from where, when I thought no
+one was noticing me, I could steal furtive glances up into her face.
+
+So also my father seemed to me to have become all at once bigger and
+more dignified, talking with a vigour and an enjoyment that sat newly on
+him. Aunt Fan was quite witty and agreeable--for her; and even I asked
+one or two questions, at which, for some reason or another, everybody
+laughed; which determined me to remember and ask those same questions
+again on some future occasion.
+
+That was the great charm of the man, that by the magnetic spell of his
+magnificent vitality he drew from everyone their best. In his company
+clever people waxed intellectual giants, while the dull sat amazed at
+their own originality. Conversing with him, Podsnap might have been
+piquant, Dogberry incisive. But better than all else, I found it
+listening to his own talk. Of what he spoke I could tell you no more
+than could the children of Hamelin have told the tune the Pied Piper
+played. I only know that at the tangled music of his strong voice
+the walls of the mean room faded away, and that beyond I saw a brave,
+laughing world that called to me; a world full of joyous fight, where
+some won and some lost. But that mattered not a jot, because whatever
+else came of it there was a right royal game for all; a world where
+merry gentlemen feared neither life nor death, and Fate was but the
+Master of the Revels.
+
+Such was my first introduction to Dr. Washburn, or to give him the
+name by which he was known in every slum and alley of that quarter, Dr.
+Fighting Hal; and in a minor key that evening was an index to the whole
+man. Often he would wrinkle his nose as a dog before it bites, and then
+he was more brute than man--brutish in his instincts, in his appetites,
+brutish in his pleasure, brutish in his fun. Or his deep blue eyes would
+grow soft as a mother's, and then you might have thought him an angel
+in a soft felt hat and a coat so loose-fitting as to suggest the
+possibility of his wings being folded away underneath. Often have I
+tried to make up my mind whether it has been better for me or worse that
+I ever came to know him; but as easy would it be for the tree to
+say whether the rushing winds and the wild rains have shaped it or
+mis-shaped.
+
+Susan's place remained vacant for some time. My mother would explain
+to the few friends who occasionally came from afar to see us, that her
+“housemaid” she had been compelled to suddenly discharge, and that
+we were waiting for the arrival of a new and better specimen. But the
+months passed and we still waited, and my father on the rare days when
+a client would ring the office bell, would, after pausing a decent
+interval, open the front door himself, and then call downstairs
+indignantly and loudly, to know why “Jane” or “Mary” could not attend to
+their work. And my mother, that the bread-boy or the milkman might not
+put it about the neighbourhood that the Kelvers in the big corner house
+kept no servant, would hide herself behind a thick veil and fetch all
+things herself from streets a long way off.
+
+For this family of whom I am writing were, I confess, weak and human.
+Their poverty they were ashamed of as though it were a crime, and in
+consequence their life was more full of paltry and useless subterfuge
+than should be perhaps the life of brave men and women. The larder,
+I fancy, was very often bare, but the port and sherry with the sweet
+biscuits stood always on the sideboard; and the fire had often to be low
+in the grate that my father's tall hat might shine resplendent and my
+mother's black silk rustle on Sundays.
+
+But I would not have you sneer at them, thinking all pretence must
+spring from snobbishness and never from mistaken self-respect. Some fine
+gentleman writers there be--men whose world is bounded on the east by
+Bond Street--who see in the struggles of poverty to hide its darns only
+matter for jest. But myself, I cannot laugh at them. I know the long
+hopes and fears that centre round the hired waiter; the long cost of the
+cream and the ice jelly ordered the week before from the confectioner's.
+But to me it is pathetic, not ridiculous. Heroism is not all of one
+pattern. Dr. Washburn, had the Prince of Wales come to see him, would
+have put his bread and cheese and jug of beer upon the table, and helped
+His Royal Highness to half. But my father and mother's tea was very weak
+that Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith might have a glass of wine should they come
+to dinner. I remember the one egg for breakfast, my mother arguing that
+my father should have it because he had his business to attend to; my
+father insisting that my mother should eat it, she having to go out
+shopping, a compromise being effected by their dividing it between them,
+each clamouring for the white as the most nourishing. And I know however
+little the meal looked upon the table when we started I always rose well
+satisfied. These are small things to speak of, but then you must bear in
+mind this is a story moving in narrow ways.
+
+To me this life came as a good time. That I was encouraged to eat
+treacle in preference to butter seemed to me admirable. Personally, I
+preferred sausages for dinner; and a supper of fried fish and potatoes,
+brought in stealthily in a carpet bag, was infinitely more enjoyable
+than the set meal where nothing was of interest till one came to the
+dessert. What fun there was about it all! The cleaning of the doorstep
+by night, when from the ill-lit street a gentleman with a piece
+of sacking round his legs might very well pass for a somewhat tall
+charwoman. I would keep watch at the gate to give warning should any
+one looking like a possible late caller turn the corner of the street,
+coming back now and then in answer to a low whistle to help my father
+grope about in the dark for the hearthstone; he was always mislaying
+the hearthstone. How much better, helping to clean the knives or running
+errands than wasting all one's morning dwelling upon the shocking
+irregularity of certain classes of French verbs; or making useless
+calculations as to how long X, walking four and a quarter miles an hour,
+would be overtaking Y, whose powers were limited to three and a half,
+but who had started two and three quarter hours sooner; the whole
+argument being reduced to sheer pedantry by reason of no information
+being afforded to the student concerning the respective thirstiness of X
+and Y.
+
+Even my father and mother were able to take it lightly with plenty of
+laughter and no groaning that I ever heard. For over all lay the morning
+light of hope, and what prisoner, escaping from his dungeon, ever stayed
+to think of his torn hands and knees when beyond the distant opening he
+could see the sunlight glinting through the brambles?
+
+“I had no idea,” said my mother, “there was so much to do in a house.
+In future I shall arrange for the servants to have regular hours, and a
+little time to themselves, for rest. Don't you think it right, Luke?”
+
+“Quite right,” replied my father; “and I'll tell you another thing we'll
+do. I shall insist on the landlord's putting a marble doorstep to the
+next house we take; you pass a sponge over marble and it is always
+clean.”
+
+“Or tesselated,” suggested my mother.
+
+“Or tesselated,” agreed my father; “but marble is more uncommon.”
+
+Only once, can I recall a cloud. That was one Sunday when my mother,
+speaking across the table in the middle of dinner, said to my father,
+“We might save the rest of that stew, Luke; there's an omelette coming.”
+
+My father laid down the spoon. “An omelette!”
+
+“Yes,” said my mother. “I thought I would like to try again.”
+
+My father stepped into the back kitchen--we dined in the kitchen, as a
+rule, it saved much carriage--returning with the wood chopper.
+
+“What ever are you going to do, Luke, with the chopper?” said my mother.
+
+“Divide the omelette,” replied my father.
+
+My mother began to cry.
+
+“Why, Maggie--!” said my father.
+
+“I know the other one was leathery,” said my mother, “but it was the
+fault of the oven, you know it was, Luke.”
+
+“My dear,” said my father, “I only meant it as a joke.”
+
+“I don't like that sort of joke,” said my mother; “it isn't nice of you,
+Luke.”
+
+I don't think, to be candid, my mother liked much any joke that was
+against herself. Indeed, when I come to think of it, I have never met a
+woman who did, nor man, either.
+
+There had soon grown up a comradeship between my father and myself for
+he was the youngest thing I had met with as yet. Sometimes my mother
+seemed very young, and later I met boys and girls nearer to my own age
+in years; but they grew, while my father remained always the same. The
+hair about his temples was turning grey, and when you looked close you
+saw many crow's feet and lines, especially about the mouth. But his eyes
+were the eyes of a boy, his laugh the laugh of a boy, and his heart the
+heart of a boy. So we were very close to each other.
+
+In a narrow strip of ground we called our garden we would play a cricket
+of our own, encompassed about by many novel rules, rendered necessary by
+the locality. For instance, all hitting to leg was forbidden, as tending
+to endanger neighbouring windows, while hitting to off was likewise not
+to be encouraged, as causing a temporary adjournment of the game, while
+batter and bowler went through the house and out into the street to
+recover the ball from some predatory crowd of urchins to whom it had
+evidently appeared as a gift direct from Heaven. Sometimes rising very
+early we would walk across the marshes to bathe in a small creek that
+led down to the river, but this was muddy work, necessitating much
+washing of legs on the return home. And on rare days we would, taking
+the train to Hackney and walking to the bridge, row up the river Lea,
+perhaps as far as Ponder's End.
+
+But these sports being hedged around with difficulties, more commonly
+for recreation we would take long walks. There were pleasant nooks even
+in the neighbourhood of Plaistow marshes in those days. Here and there
+a graceful elm still clung to the troubled soil. Surrounded on all sides
+by hideousness, picturesque inns still remained hidden within green
+walls where, if you were careful not to pry too curiously, you might
+sit and sip your glass of beer beneath the oak and dream yourself where
+reeking chimneys and mean streets were not. During such walks my father
+would talk to me as he would talk to my mother, telling me all his wild,
+hopeful plans, discussing with me how I was to lodge at Oxford, to what
+particular branches of study and of sport I was to give my preference,
+speaking always with such catching confidence that I came to regard my
+sojourn in this brick and mortar prison as only a question of months.
+
+One day, talking of this future, and laughing as we walked briskly,
+through the shrill streets, I told him the words my mother had
+said--long ago, as it seemed to me, for life is as a stone rolling
+down-hill, and moves but slowly at first; she and I sitting on the moss
+at the foot of old “Jacob's Folly”--that he was our Prince fighting
+to deliver us from the grim castle called “Hard Times,” guarded by the
+dragon Poverty.
+
+My father laughed and his boyish face flushed with pleasure.
+
+“And she was right, Paul,” he whispered, pressing my small hand in
+his--it was necessary to whisper, for the street where we were was very
+crowded, but I knew that he wanted to shout. “I will fight him and I
+will slay him.” My father made passes in the air with his walking-stick,
+and it was evident from the way they drew aside that the people round
+about fancied he was mad. “I will batter down the iron gates and she
+shall be free. I will, God help me, I will.”
+
+The gallant gentleman! How long and how bravely he fought! But in the
+end it was the Dragon triumphed, the Knight that lay upon the ground,
+his great heart still. I have read how, with the sword of Honest
+Industry, one may always conquer this grim Dragon. But such was in
+foolish books. In truth, only with the sword of Chicanery and the stout
+buckler of Unscrupulousness shall you be certain of victory over him. If
+you care not to use these, pray to your Gods, and take what comes with a
+stout heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY.
+
+“Louisa!” roared my father down the kitchen stairs, “are you all asleep?
+Here have I had to answer the front door myself.” Then my father strode
+into his office, and the door slammed. My father could be very angry
+when nobody was by.
+
+Quarter of an hour later his bell rang with a quick, authoritative
+jangle. My mother, who was peeling potatoes with difficulty in
+wash-leather gloves, looked at my aunt who was shelling peas. The bell
+rang again louder still this time.
+
+“Once for Louisa, twice for James, isn't it?” enquired my aunt.
+
+“You go, Paul,” said my mother; “say that Louisa--” but with the words a
+sudden flush overspread my mother's face, and before I could lay down
+my slate she had drawn off her gloves and had passed me. “No, don't stop
+your lessons, I'll go myself,” she said, and ran out.
+
+A few minutes later the kitchen door opened softly, and my mother's
+hand, appearing through the jar, beckoned to me mysteriously.
+
+“Walk on your toes,” whispered my mother, setting the example as she
+led the way up the stairs; which after the manner of stairs showed their
+disapproval of deception by creaking louder and more often than under
+any other circumstances; and in this manner we reached my parents'
+bedroom, where, in the old-fashioned wardrobe, relic of better days,
+reposed my best suit of clothes, or, to be strictly grammatical, my
+better.
+
+Never before had I worn these on a week-day morning, but all
+conversation not germane to the question of getting into them quickly
+my mother swept aside; and when I was complete, down even to the new
+shoes--Bluchers, we called them in those days--took me by the hand, and
+together we crept down as we had crept up, silent, stealthy and alert.
+My mother led me to the street door and opened it.
+
+“Shan't I want my cap?” I whispered. But my mother only shook her
+head and closed the door with a bang; and then the explanation of the
+pantomime came to me, for with such “business”--comic, shall I call
+it, or tragic?--I was becoming familiar; and, my mother's hand upon my
+shoulder, we entered my father's office.
+
+Whether from the fact that so often of an evening--our drawing-room
+being reserved always as a show-room in case of chance visitors;
+Cowper's poems, open face-downwards on the wobbly loo table; the
+half-finished crochet work, suggestive of elegant leisure, thrown
+carelessly over the arm of the smaller easy-chair--this office would
+become our sitting-room, its books and papers, as things of no account,
+being huddled out of sight; or whether from the readiness with which my
+father would come out of it at all times to play at something else--at
+cricket in the back garden on dry days or ninepins in the passage on
+wet, charging back into it again whenever a knock sounded at the front
+door, I cannot say. But I know that as a child it never occurred to
+me to regard my father's profession as a serious affair. To me he was
+merely playing there, surrounded by big books and bundles of documents,
+labelled profusely but consisting only of blank papers; by japanned
+tin boxes, lettered imposingly, but for the most part empty. “Sutton
+Hampden, Esq.,” I remember was practically my mother's work-box. The
+“Drayton Estates” yielded apparently nothing but apples, a fruit of
+which my father was fond; while “Mortgages” it was not until later in
+life I discovered had no connection with poems in manuscript, some in
+course of correction, others completed.
+
+Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us. His hair stood up
+from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked; and
+this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an expression
+of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were needed, to the
+suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.
+
+“This is the youngster,” said my father, taking me from my mother, and
+passing me on. “Tall for his age, isn't he?”
+
+With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he was
+smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held out a
+fat and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine, brought to
+my mind the picture of the walrus in my natural history book; with the
+other he flapped me kindly on the head.
+
+“Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?” he observed,
+still holding my hand. “And that,” he added with a wink of one of his
+small eyes towards my father, “is about the 'ighest compliment I can pay
+'im, eh?”
+
+His eyes were remarkably small, but marvellously bright and piercing; so
+much so that when he turned them again upon me I tried to think quickly
+of something nice about him, feeling sure that he could see right into
+me.
+
+“And where are you thinkin' of sendin' 'im?” he continued; “Eton or
+'Arrow?”
+
+“We haven't quite made up our minds as yet,” replied my father; “at
+present we are educating him at home.”
+
+“You take my tip,” said the fat man, “and learn all you can. Look at
+me! If I'd 'ad the opportunity of being a schollard I wouldn't be here
+offering your father an extravagant price for doin' my work; I'd be able
+to do it myself.”
+
+“You seem to have got on very well without it,” laughed my father;
+and in truth his air of prosperity might have justified greater
+self-complacency. Rings sparkled on his blunt fingers, and upon the
+swelling billows of his waistcoat rose and sank a massive gold cable.
+
+“I'd 'ave done better with it,” he grunted.
+
+“But you look very clever,” I said; and though divining with a child's
+cuteness that it was desired I should make a favourable impression upon
+him, I hoped this would please him, the words were yet spontaneous.
+
+He laughed heartily, his whole body shaking like some huge jelly.
+
+“Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool,” he assented, “but I'd
+like myself better if I could talk about something else than business,
+and didn't drop my aitches. And so would my little gell.”
+
+“You have a daughter?” asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond
+of sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to
+disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.
+
+“I won't tell you about 'er. But I'll just bring 'er to see you now and
+then, ma'am, if you don't mind,” answered Mr. Hasluck. “She don't often
+meet gentle-folks, an' it'll do 'er good.”
+
+My mother glanced across at my father, but the man, intercepting her
+question, replied to it himself.
+
+“You needn't be afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me,” he assured
+her quite good-temperedly; “nobody ever believes she's my daughter,
+except me and the old woman. She's a little lady, she is. Freak o'
+nature, I call it.”
+
+“We shall be delighted,” explained my mother.
+
+“Well, you will when you see 'er,” replied Mr. Hasluck, quite
+contentedly.
+
+He pushed half-a-crown into my hand, overriding my parents'
+susceptibilities with the easy good-temper of a man accustomed to have
+his way in all things.
+
+“No squanderin' it on the 'eathen,” was his parting injunction as I left
+the room; “you spend that on a Christian tradesman.”
+
+It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that half-crown
+of old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived from a new
+pair of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which would then be all
+my own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all less exalted visions
+concerning the disposal of chance coins coming into my small hands. But
+on this occasion I was left free to decide for myself.
+
+The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of
+the bewildering streets! Even advice when asked for was denied me.
+
+“You must learn to think for yourself,” said my father, who spoke
+eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what
+he called “commercial aptitude.”
+
+“No, dear,” said my mother, “Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you
+like. If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked. Your father
+and I want to see what you will do with it.”
+
+The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to people
+in distress. For this I hated them with the malignity the lower nature
+ever feels towards the higher. I consulted my aunt Fan.
+
+“If somebody gave you half-a-crown,” I put it to her, “what would you
+buy with it?”
+
+“Side-combs,” said my aunt; she was always losing or breaking her
+side-combs.
+
+“But I mean if you were me,” I explained.
+
+“Drat the child!” said my aunt; “how do I know what he wants if he don't
+know himself? Idiot!”
+
+The shop windows into which I stared, my nose glued to the pane! The
+things I asked the price of! The things I made up my mind to buy and
+then decided that I wouldn't buy! Even my patient mother began to show
+signs of irritation. It was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a family
+curse, was old Hasluck's half-crown.
+
+Then one day I made up my mind, and so ended the trouble. In the window
+of a small plumber's shop in a back street near, stood on view among
+brass taps, rolls of lead piping and cistern requisites, various squares
+of coloured glass, the sort of thing chiefly used, I believe, for
+lavatory doors and staircase windows. Some had stars in the centre,
+and others, more elaborate, were enriched with designs, severe but
+inoffensive. I purchased a dozen of these, the plumber, an affable
+man who appeared glad to see me, throwing in two extra out of sheer
+generosity.
+
+Why I bought them I did not know at the time, and I do not know now.
+My mother cried when she saw them. My father could get no further than:
+“But what are you going to do with them?” to which I was unable to
+reply. My aunt, alone, attempted comfort.
+
+“If a person fancies coloured glass,” said my aunt, “then he's a fool
+not to buy coloured glass when he gets the chance. We haven't all the
+same tastes.”
+
+In the end, I cut myself badly with them and consented to their being
+thrown into the dust-bin. But looking back, I have come to regard myself
+rather as the victim of Fate than of Folly. Many folks have I met since,
+recipients of Hasluck's half-crowns--many a man who has slapped his
+pocket and blessed the day he first met that “Napoleon of Finance,”
+ as later he came to be known among his friends--but it ever ended so;
+coloured glass and cut fingers. Is it fairy gold that he and his kind
+fling round? It would seem to be.
+
+Next time old Hasluck knocked at our front door a maid in cap and apron
+opened it to him, and this was but the beginning of change. New oilcloth
+glistened in the passage. Lace curtains, such as in that neighbourhood
+were the hall-mark of the plutocrat, advertised our rising fortunes to
+the street, and greatest marvel of all, at least to my awed eyes, my
+father's Sunday clothes came into weekday wear, new ones taking their
+place in the great wardrobe that hitherto had been the stronghold of
+our gentility; to which we had ever turned for comfort when rendered
+despondent by contemplation of the weakness of our outer walls. “Seeing
+that everything was all right” is how my mother would explain it. She
+would lay the lilac silk upon the bed, fondly soothing down its rustling
+undulations, lingering lovingly over its deep frosted flounces of rich
+Honiton. Maybe she had entered the room weary looking and depressed, but
+soon there would proceed from her a gentle humming as from some small
+winged thing when the sun first touches it and warms it, and sometimes
+by the time the Indian shawl, which could go through a wedding ring, but
+never would when it was wanted to, had been refolded and fastened again
+with the great cameo brooch, and the poke bonnet, like some fractious
+child, shaken and petted into good condition, she would be singing
+softly to herself, nodding her head to the words: which were generally
+to the effect that somebody was too old and somebody else too bold and
+another too cold, “so he wouldn't do for me;” and stepping lightly as
+though the burden of the years had fallen from her.
+
+One evening--it was before the advent of this Hasluck--I remember
+climbing out of bed, for trouble was within me. Creatures, indescribable
+but heavy, had sat upon my chest, after which I had fallen downstairs,
+slowly and reasonably for the first few hundred flights, then with haste
+for the next million miles or so, until I found myself in the street
+with nothing on but my nightshirt. Personally, I was shocked, but nobody
+else seemed to mind, and I hailed a two-penny 'bus and climbed in. But
+when I tried to pay I found I hadn't any pockets, so I jumped out and
+ran away and the conductor came after me. My feet were like lead, and
+with every step he gained on me, till with a scream I made one mighty
+effort and awoke.
+
+Feeling the need of comfort after these unpleasant but by no means
+unfamiliar experiences, I wrapped some clothes round me and crept
+downstairs. The “office” was dark, but to my surprise a light shone from
+under the drawing-room door, and I opened it.
+
+The candles in the silver candlesticks were lighted, and in state,
+one in each easy-chair, sat my father and mother, both in their best
+clothes; my father in the buckled shoes and the frilled shirt that I had
+never seen him wear before, my mother with the Indian shawl about her
+shoulders, and upon her head the cap of ceremony that reposed three
+hundred and sixty days out of the year in its round wicker-work nest
+lined with silk. They started guiltily as I pushed open the door, but I
+congratulate myself that I had sense enough--or was it instinct--to ask
+no questions.
+
+The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged,
+the lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows,
+my father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the change
+not only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing, and even
+in their very voices. My father brought over from the sideboard the
+sherry and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a glass to my
+mother, and he and my mother drank to each other, while I between them
+ate the biscuits, and the conversation was of Byron's poems and the
+great glass palace in Hyde Park.
+
+I wonder am I disloyal setting this down? Maybe to others it shows but
+a foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention. I dwell
+upon such trifles because to me the memory of them is very tender. The
+virtues of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis but what we
+expected of them: how could they do otherwise? Their failings we would
+forget; no one of us is perfect. But over their follies we love to
+linger, smiling.
+
+To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon
+made perhaps more difference than to any one else. My father now was
+busy all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of
+the giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every day
+more social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left much to
+my own resources.
+
+Rambling--“bummelling,” as the Germans term it--was my bent. This my
+mother would have checked, but my father said:
+
+“Don't molly-coddle him. Let him learn to be smart.”
+
+“I don't think the smart people are always the nicest,” demurred my
+mother. “I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke.”
+
+My father appeared surprised, but reflected.
+
+“I should call myself smart--in a sense,” he explained, after
+consideration.
+
+“Perhaps you are right, dear,” replied my mother; “and of course boys
+are different from girls.”
+
+Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded by
+many small cottages in leafy gardens; or even reach as far as Clapton,
+where old red brick Georgian houses still stood behind high palings, and
+tall elms gave to the wide road on sunny afternoons an old-world air of
+peace. But such excursions were the exception, for strange though it may
+read, the narrow, squalid streets had greater hold on me. Not the few
+main thoroughfares, filled ever with a dull, deep throbbing as of some
+tireless iron machine; where the endless human files, streaming ever up
+and down, crossing and recrossing, seemed mere rushing chains of flesh
+and blood, working upon unseen wheels; but the dim, weary, lifeless
+streets--the dark, tortuous roots, as I fancied them, of that grim
+forest of entangled brick. Mystery lurked in their gloom. Fear whispered
+from behind their silence. Dumb figures flitted swiftly to and fro,
+never pausing, never glancing right nor left. Far-off footsteps, rising
+swiftly into sound, as swiftly fading, echoed round their lonely comers.
+Dreading, yet drawn on, I would creep along their pavements as through
+some city of the dead, thinking of the eyes I saw not watching from the
+thousand windows; starting at each muffled sound penetrating the long,
+dreary walls, behind which that close-packed, writhing life lay hid.
+
+One day there came a cry from behind a curtained window. I stood still
+for a moment and then ran; but before I could get far enough away I
+heard it again, a long, piercing cry, growing fiercer before it ceased;
+so that I ran faster still, not heeding where I went, till I found
+myself in a raw, unfinished street, ending in black waste land,
+bordering the river. I stopped, panting, wondering how I should find
+my way again. To recover myself and think I sat upon the doorstep of
+an empty house, and there came dancing down the road with a curious,
+half-running, half-hopping step--something like a water wagtail's--a
+child, a boy about my own age, who, after eyeing me strangely sat down
+beside me.
+
+We watched each other for a few minutes; and I noticed that his mouth
+kept opening and shutting, though he said nothing. Suddenly, edging
+closer to me, he spoke in a thick whisper. It sounded as though his
+mouth were full of wool.
+
+“Wot 'appens to yer when yer dead?”
+
+“If you're good you go to Heaven. If you're bad you go to Hell.”
+
+“Long way off, both of 'em, ain't they?”
+
+“Yes. Millions of miles.”
+
+“They can't come after yer? Can't fetch yer back again?”
+
+“No, never.”
+
+The doorstep that we occupied was the last. A yard beyond began the
+black waste of mud. From the other end of the street, now growing dark,
+he never took his staring eyes for an instant.
+
+“Ever seen a stiff 'un--a dead 'un?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I 'ave--stuck a pin into 'im. 'E never felt it. Don't feel anything
+when yer dead, do yer?”
+
+All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms
+and legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread, with
+quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought then in
+bakers' shops: he made me hungry, reminding me of such.
+
+“Of course not. When you are dead you're not there, you know. Our bodies
+are but senseless clay.” I was glad I remembered that line. I tried to
+think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it evaded me.
+
+“I like you,” he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in
+the chest. It was the token of palship among the youth of that
+neighbourhood, and gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship
+with children is an affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew him
+for my first chum.
+
+He wormed himself up.
+
+“Yer won't tell?” he said.
+
+I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that I
+should agree.
+
+“Say 'I swear.'”
+
+“I swear.”
+
+The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like secret
+oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.
+
+“Good-bye, cockey.”
+
+But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust it
+into my hand. Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his ran
+off across the mud.
+
+I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going. He stumbled
+a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but
+struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.
+
+I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he would
+sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself
+free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river,
+he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating
+feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over
+him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving underneath the mud.
+And after a time even that ceased.
+
+It was late before I reached home, and fortunately my father and mother
+were still out. I did not tell any one what I had seen, having sworn not
+to; and as time went on the incident haunted me less and less until
+it became subservient to my will. But of my fancy for those silent,
+lifeless streets it cured me for the time. From behind their still walls
+I would hear that long cry; down their narrow vistas see that writhing
+figure, like some animated ginger-bread, hopping, springing, falling.
+
+Yet in the more crowded streets another trouble awaited me, one more
+tangible.
+
+Have you ever noticed a pack of sparrows round some crumbs perchance
+that you have thrown out from your window? Suddenly the rest of the
+flock will set upon one. There is a tremendous Lilliputian hubbub,
+a tossing of tiny wings and heads, a babel of shrill chirps. It is
+comical.
+
+“Spiteful little imps they are,” you say to yourself, much amused.
+
+So I have heard good-tempered men and women calling out to one another
+with a laugh.
+
+“There go those young devils chivvying that poor little beggar again;
+ought to be ashamed of theirselves.”
+
+But, oh! the anguish of the poor little beggar! Can any one who has not
+been through it imagine it! Reduced to its actualities, what was it?
+Gibes and jeers that, after all, break no bones. A few pinches,
+kicks and slaps; at worst a few hard knocks. But the dreading of it
+beforehand! Terror lived in every street, hid, waiting for me, round
+each corner. The half-dozen wrangling over their marbles--had they seen
+me? The boy whistling as he stood staring into the print shop, would I
+get past him without his noticing me; or would he, swinging round upon
+his heel, raise the shrill whoop that brought them from every doorway to
+hunt me?
+
+The shame, when caught at last and cornered: the grinning face that
+would stop to watch; the careless jokes of passers-by, regarding the
+whole thing but as a sparrows' squabble: worst of all, perhaps, the rare
+pity! The after humiliation when, finally released, I would dart away,
+followed by shouted taunts and laughter; every eye turned to watch me,
+shrinking by; my whole small carcass shaking with dry sobs of bitterness
+and rage!
+
+If only I could have turned and faced them! So far as the mere bearing
+of pain was concerned, I knew myself brave. The physical suffering
+resulting from any number of stand-up fights would have been trivial
+compared with the mental agony I endured. That I, the comrade of a
+hundred heroes--I, who nightly rode with Richard Coeur de Lion,
+who against Sir Lancelot himself had couched a lance, and that not
+altogether unsuccessful, I to whom all damsels in distress were wont to
+look for succour--that I should run from varlets such as these!
+
+My friend, my bosom friend, good Robin Hood! how would he have behaved
+under similar circumstances? how Ivanhoe, my chosen companion in all
+quests of knightly enterprise? how--to come to modern times--Jack
+Harkaway, mere schoolboy though he might be? Would not one and all
+have welcomed such incident with a joyous shout, and in a trice have
+scattered to the winds the worthless herd?
+
+But, alas! upon my pale lips the joyous shout sank into an unheard
+whisper, and the thing that became scattered to the wind was myself, the
+first opening that occurred.
+
+Sometimes, the blood boiling in my veins, I would turn, thinking to go
+back and at all risk defying my tormentors, prove to myself I was no
+coward. But before I had retraced my steps a dozen paces, I would see
+in imagination the whole scene again before me: the laughing crowd,
+the halting passers-by, the spiteful, mocking little faces every way I
+turned; and so instead would creep on home, and climbing stealthily up
+into my own room, cry my heart out in the dark upon my bed.
+
+Until one blessed day, when a blessed Fairy, in the form of a small
+kitten, lifted the spell that bound me, and set free my limbs.
+
+I have always had a passionate affection for the dumb world, if it be
+dumb. My first playmate, I remember, was a water rat. A stream ran at
+the bottom of our garden; and sometimes, escaping the vigilant eye of
+Mrs. Fursey, I would steal out with my supper and join him on the banks.
+There, hidden behind the osiers, we would play at banquets, he, it is
+true, doing most of the banqueting, and I the make-believe. But it was
+a good game; added to which it was the only game I could ever get him to
+play, though I tried. He was a one-ideaed rat.
+
+Later I came into the possession of a white specimen all my own. He
+lived chiefly in the outside breast pocket of my jacket, in company with
+my handkerchief, so that glancing down I could generally see his little
+pink eyes gleaming up at me, except on very cold days, when it would be
+only his tail that I could see; and when I felt miserable, somehow he
+would know it, and, swarming up, push his little cold snout against
+my ear. He died just so, clinging round my neck; and from many of my
+fellow-men and women have I parted with less pain. It sounds callous to
+say so; but, after all, our feelings are not under our own control; and
+I have never been able to understand the use of pretending to emotions
+one has not. All this, however, comes later. Let me return now to my
+fairy kitten.
+
+I heard its cry of pain from afar, and instinctively hastened my steps.
+Three or four times I heard it again, and at each call I ran faster,
+till, breathless, I arrived upon the scene, the opening of a narrow
+court, leading out of a by-street. At first I saw nothing but the backs
+of a small mob of urchins. Then from the centre of them came another
+wailing appeal for help, and without waiting for any invitation, I
+pushed my way into the group.
+
+What I saw was Hecuba to me--gave me the motive and the cue for passion,
+transformed me from the dull and muddy-mettled little John-a-dreams I
+had been into a small, blind Fury. Pale Thought, that mental emetic,
+banished from my system, I became the healthy, unreasoning animal, and
+acted as such.
+
+From my methods, I frankly admit, science was absent. In simple,
+primitive fashion that would have charmed a Darwinian disciple to
+observe, I “went for” the whole crowd. To employ the expressive idiom of
+the neighbourhood, I was “all over it and inside.” Something clung about
+my feet. By kicking myself free and then standing on it I gained the
+advantage of quite an extra foot in height; I don't know what it was and
+didn't care. I fought with my arms and I fought with my legs; where I
+could get in with my head I did. I fought whatever came to hand in
+a spirit of simple thankfulness, grateful for what I could reach and
+indifferent to what was beyond me.
+
+That the “show”--if again I may be permitted the local idiom--was not
+entirely mine I was well aware. That not alone my person but my property
+also was being damaged in the rear became dimly conveyed to me through
+the sensation of draught. Already the world to the left of me was mere
+picturesque perspective, while the growing importance of my nose was
+threatening the absorption of all my other features. These things did
+not trouble me. I merely noted them as phenomena and continued to punch
+steadily.
+
+Until I found that I was punching something soft and yet unyielding.
+I looked up to see what this foreign matter that thus mysteriously had
+entered into the mixture might be, and discovered it to be a policeman.
+Still I did not care. The felon's dock! the prison cell! a fig for such
+mere bogies. An impudent word, an insulting look, and I would have gone
+for the Law itself. Pale Thought--it must have been a livid green by
+this time--still trembled at respectful distance from me.
+
+Fortunately for all of us, he was not impertinent, and though he spoke
+the language of his order, his tone disarmed offence.
+
+“Now, then. Now, then. What is all this about?”
+
+There was no need for me to answer. A dozen voluble tongues were ready
+to explain to him; and to explain wholly in my favour. This time the
+crowd was with me. Let a man school himself to bear dispraise, for
+thereby alone shall he call his soul his own. But let no man lie, saying
+he is indifferent to popular opinion. That was my first taste of public
+applause. The public was not select, and the applause might, by the
+sticklers for English pure and undefiled, have been deemed ill-worded,
+but to me it was the sweetest music I had ever heard, or have heard
+since. I was called a “plucky little devil,” a “fair 'ot 'un,” not only
+a “good 'un,” but a “good 'un” preceded by the adjective that in
+the East bestows upon its principal every admirable quality that can
+possibly apply. Under the circumstances it likewise fitted me literally;
+but I knew it was intended rather in its complimentary sense.
+
+Kind, if dirty, hands wiped my face. A neighbouring butcher presented me
+with a choice morsel of steak, not to eat but to wear; and I found it,
+if I may so express myself without infringing copyright, “grateful and
+comforting.” My enemies had long since scooted, some of them, I had
+rejoiced to notice, with lame and halting steps. The mutilated kitten
+had been restored to its owner, a lady of ample bosom, who, carried
+beyond judgment by emotion, publicly offered to adopt me on the spot.
+The Law suggested, not for the first time, that everybody should now
+move on; and slowly, followed by feminine commendation mingled with
+masculine advice as to improved methods for the future, I was allowed to
+drift away.
+
+My bones ached, my flesh stung me, yet I walked as upon air. Gradually
+I became conscious that I was not alone. A light, pattering step was
+trying to keep pace with me. Graciously I slacked my speed, and the
+pattering step settled down beside me. Every now and again she would run
+ahead and then turn round to look up into my face, much as your small
+dog does when he happens not to be misbehaving himself and desires you
+to note the fact. Evidently she approved of me. I was not at my best,
+as far as appearance was concerned, but women are kittle cattle, and
+I think she preferred me so. Thus we walked for quite a long distance
+without speaking, I drinking in the tribute of her worship and enjoying
+it. Then gaining confidence, she shyly put her hand into mine, and
+finding I did not repel her, promptly assumed possession of me,
+according to woman's way.
+
+For her age and station she must have been a person of means, for having
+tried in vain various methods to make me more acceptable to followers
+and such as having passed would turn their heads, she said:
+
+“I know, gelatines;” and disappearing into a sweetstuff shop, returned
+with quite a quantity. With these, first sucked till glutinous, we
+joined my many tatters. I still attracted attention, but felt warmer.
+
+She informed me that her name was Cissy, and that her father's shop was
+in Three Colt Street. I informed her that my name was Paul, and that
+my father was a lawyer. I also pointed out to her that a lawyer is much
+superior in social position to a shopkeeper, which she acknowledged
+cheerfully. We parted at the corner of the Stainsby Road, and I let her
+kiss me once. It was understood that in the Stainsby Road we might meet
+again.
+
+I left Eliza gaping after me, the front door in her hand, and ran
+straight up into my own room. Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, The Last of
+the Barons, Rob Roy! I looked them all in the face and was not ashamed.
+I also was a gentleman.
+
+My mother was much troubled when she saw me, but my father, hearing the
+story, approved.
+
+“But he looks so awful,” said my mother. “In this world,” said my
+father, “one must occasionally be aggressive--if necessary, brutal.”
+
+My father would at times be quite savage in his sentiments.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM THE
+ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL. AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS.
+
+The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare. The
+jingle of the tram-bell and the rattle of the omnibus and cart mingle
+continuously with the rain of many feet, beating ceaselessly upon its
+pavements. But at the time of which I write it was an empty, voiceless
+way, bounded on the one side by the long, echoing wall of the docks and
+on the other by occasional small houses isolated amid market gardens,
+drying grounds and rubbish heaps. Only one thing remains--or did remain
+last time I passed along it, connecting it with its former self--and
+that is the one-storeyed brick cottage at the commencement of the
+bridge, and which was formerly the toll-house. I remember this
+toll-house so well because it was there that my childhood fell from me,
+and sad and frightened I saw the world beyond.
+
+I cannot explain it better. I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on a
+visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which to
+keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing nature.
+
+“Have the half-crown in your hand,” my mother would direct me, while
+making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the bottom
+of my knickerbocker pocket; “but of course if he won't take it, why, you
+must bring it home again.”
+
+I am not sure, but I think he was some distant connection of ours; at
+all events, I know he was a kind friend. I, seated in the velvet chair
+of state, he would unroll his case of instruments before me, and ask me
+to choose, recommending with affectionate eulogisms the most murderous
+looking.
+
+But on my opening my mouth to discuss the fearful topic, lo! a pair
+would shoot from under his coat-sleeve, and almost before I knew what
+had happened, the trouble would be over. After that we would have
+tea together. He was an old bachelor, and his house stood in a great
+garden--for Plaistow in those days was a picturesque village--and out of
+the plentiful fruit thereof his housekeeper made the most wonderful
+of jams and jellies. Oh, they were good, those teas! Generally our
+conversation was of my mother who, it appeared, was once a little girl:
+not at all the sort of little girl I should have imagined her; on the
+contrary, a prankish, wilful little girl, though good company, I should
+say, if all the tales he told of her were true. And I am inclined to
+think they were, in spite of the fact that my mother, when I repeated
+them to her, would laugh, saying she was sure she had no recollection of
+anything of the kind, adding severely that it was a pity he and I could
+not find something better to gossip about. Yet her next question would
+be:
+
+“And what else did he say, if you please?” explaining impatiently when
+my answer was not of the kind expected: “No, no, I mean about me.”
+
+The tea things cleared away, he would bring out his great microscope.
+To me it was a peep-hole into a fairy world where dwelt strange dragons,
+mighty monsters, so that I came to regard him as a sort of harmless
+magician. It was his pet study, and looking back, I cannot help
+associating his enthusiasm for all things microscopical with the fact
+that he was an exceptionally little man himself, but one of the biggest
+hearted that ever breathed.
+
+On leaving I would formally hand him my half-crown, “with mamma's
+compliments,” and he would formally accept it. But on putting my hand
+into my jacket pocket when outside the gate I would invariably find
+it there. The first time I took it back to him, but unblushingly he
+repudiated all knowledge.
+
+“Must be another half-crown,” he suggested; “such things do happen.
+One puts change into a pocket and overlooks it. Slippery things,
+half-crowns.”
+
+Returning home on this particular day of days, I paused upon the bridge,
+and watched for awhile the lazy barges manoeuvring their way between the
+piers. It was one of those hushed summer evenings when the air even of
+grim cities is full of whispering voices; and as, turning away from the
+river, I passed through the white toll-gate, I had a sense of leaving
+myself behind me on the bridge. So vivid was the impression, that I
+looked back, half expecting to see myself still leaning over the iron
+parapet, looking down into the sunlit water.
+
+It sounds foolish, but I leave it standing, wondering if to others a
+like experience has ever come. The little chap never came back to me.
+He passed away from me as a man's body may possibly pass away from him,
+leaving him only remembrance and regret. For a time I tried to play his
+games, to dream his dreams, but the substance was wanting. I was only a
+thin ghost, making believe.
+
+It troubled me for quite a spell of time, even to the point of tears,
+this feeling that my childhood lay behind me, this sudden realisation
+that I was travelling swiftly the strange road called growing up. I did
+not want to grow up; could nothing be done to stop it? Rather would I
+be always as I had been, playing, dreaming. The dark way frightened me.
+Must I go forward?
+
+Then gradually, but very slowly, with the long months and years, came
+to me the consciousness of a new being, new pulsations, sensories,
+throbbings, rooted in but differing widely from the old; and little
+Paul, the Paul of whom I have hitherto spoken, faded from my life.
+
+So likewise must I let him fade with sorrow from this book. But before
+I part with him entirely, let me recall what else I can remember of him.
+Thus we shall be quit of him, and he will interfere with us no more.
+
+Chief among the pictures that I see is that of my aunt Fan, crouching
+over the kitchen fire; her skirt and crinoline rolled up round her
+waist, leaving as sacrifice to custom only her petticoat. Up and down
+her body sways in rhythmic motion, her hands stroking affectionately
+her own knees; the while I, with paper knife for sword, or horse of
+broomstick, stand opposite her, flourishing and declaiming. Sometimes I
+am a knight and she a wicked ogre. She is slain, growling and swearing,
+and at once becomes the beautiful princess that I secure and bear away
+with me upon the prancing broomstick. So long as the princess is merely
+holding sweet converse with me from her high-barred window, the scene
+is realistic, at least, to sufficiency; but the bearing away has to be
+make-believe; for my aunt cannot be persuaded to leave her chair before
+the fire, and the everlasting rubbing of her knees.
+
+At other times, with the assistance of the meat chopper, I am an Indian
+brave, and then she is Laughing Water or Singing Sunshine, and we go out
+scalping together; or in less bloodthirsty moods I am the Fairy Prince
+and she the Sleeping Beauty. But in such parts she is not at her best.
+Better, when seated in the centre of the up-turned table, I am Captain
+Cook, and she the Cannibal Chief.
+
+“I shall skin him and hang him in the larder till Sunday week,” says my
+aunt, smacking her lips, “then he'll be just in right condition; not too
+tough and not too high.” She was always strong in detail, was my aunt
+Fan.
+
+I do not wish to deprive my aunt of any credit due to her, but the more
+I exercise my memory for evidence, the more I am convinced that her
+compliance on these occasions was not conceived entirely in the spirit
+of self-sacrifice. Often would she suggest the game and even the theme;
+in such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old theatrical
+parlance, would have been termed the heavy lead, the dragons and the
+wicked uncles, the fussy necromancers and the uninvited fairies. As
+authoress of a new cookery book for use in giant-land, my aunt, I am
+sure, would have been successful. Most recipes that one reads are so
+monotonously meagre: “Boil him,” “Put her on the spit and roast her for
+supper,” “Cook 'em in a pie--with plenty of gravy;” but my aunt into the
+domestic economy of Ogredom introduced variety and daintiness.
+
+“I think, my dear,” my aunt would direct, “we'll have him stuffed with
+chestnuts and served on toast. And don't forget the giblets. They make
+such excellent sauce.”
+
+With regard to the diet of imprisoned maidens she would advise:
+
+“Not too much fish--it spoils the flesh for roasting.”
+
+The things that she would turn people into--king's sons, rightful
+princesses, such sort of people--people who after a time, one would
+think, must have quite forgotten what they started as. To let her
+have her way was a lesson to me in natural history both present and
+pre-historic. The most beautiful damsel that ever lived she would
+without a moment's hesitation turn into a Glyptodon or a Hippocrepian.
+Afterwards, when I could guess at the spelling, I would look these
+creatures up in the illustrated dictionary, and feel that under no
+circumstances could I have loved the lady ever again. Warriors and kings
+she would delight in transforming into plaice or prawns, and haughty
+queens into Brussels sprouts.
+
+With gusto would she plan a complicated slaughter, paying heed to every
+detail: the sharpening of the knives, the having ready of mops and pails
+of water for purposes of after cleaning up. As a writer she would have
+followed the realistic school.
+
+Her death, with which we invariably wound up the afternoon, was another
+conscientious effort. Indeed, her groans and writhings would sometimes
+frighten me. I always welcomed the last gurgle. That finished, but not a
+moment before, my aunt would let down her skirt--in this way suggesting
+the fall of the curtain upon our play--and set to work to get the tea.
+
+Another frequently recurring picture that I see is of myself in
+glazed-peaked cap explaining many things the while we walk through dingy
+streets to yet a smaller figure curly haired and open eyed. Still every
+now and then she runs ahead to turn and look admiringly into my face as
+on the day she first became captive to the praise and fame of me.
+
+I was glad of her company for more reasons than she knew of. For one,
+she protected me against my baser self. With her beside me I should
+not have dared to flee from sudden foes. Indeed, together we courted
+adventure; for once you get used to it this standing hazard of attack
+adds a charm to outdoor exercise that older folk in districts better
+policed enjoy not. So possibly my dog feels when together we take the
+air. To me it is a simple walk, maybe a little tiresome, suggested
+rather by contemplation of my waistband than by desire for walking for
+mere walking's sake; to him an expedition full of danger and surprises:
+“The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's doorstep!
+will he greet me with a friendly sniff or try to bite my head off? This
+cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the lamp-post! shall we
+pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become locked in a life and
+death struggle? Impossible to say. This coming corner, now, 'Ware! Is
+anybody waiting round there to kill me, or not?”
+
+But the trusting face beside me nerved me. As reward in lonely places I
+would let her hold my hand.
+
+A second advantage I derived from her company was that of being less
+trampled on, less walked over, less swept aside into doorway or gutter
+than when alone. A pretty, winsome face had this little maid, if Memory
+plays me not kindly false; but also she had a vocabulary; and when the
+blind idiot, male or female, instead of passing us by walking round us,
+would, after the custom of the blind idiot, seek to gain the other side
+of us by walking through us, she would use it.
+
+“Now, then, where yer coming to, old glass-eye? We ain't sperrits. Can't
+yer see us?”
+
+And if they attempted reply, her child's treble, so strangely at
+variance with her dainty appearance, would only rise more shrill.
+
+“Garn! They'd run out of 'eads when they was making you. That's only a
+turnip wot you've got stuck on top of yer!” I offer but specimens.
+
+Nor was it of the slightest use attempting personal chastisement, as
+sometimes an irate lady or gentleman would be foolish enough to do. As
+well might an hippopotamus attempt to reprove a terrier. The only result
+was to provide comedy for the entire street.
+
+On these occasions our positions were reversed, I being the admiring
+spectator of her prowess. Yet to me she was ever meek, almost
+irritatingly submissive. She found out where I lived and would often
+come and wait for me for hours, her little face pressed tight against
+the iron railings, until either I came out or shook my head at her from
+my bedroom window, when she would run off, the dying away into silence
+of her pattering feet leaving me a little sad.
+
+I think I cared for her in a way, yet she never entered into my
+day-dreams, which means that she existed for me only in the outer world
+of shadows that lay round about me and was not of my real life.
+
+Also, I think she was unwise, introducing me to the shop, for children
+and dogs--one seems unconsciously to bracket them in one's thoughts--are
+snobbish little wretches. If only her father had been a dealer in
+firewood I could have soothed myself by imagining mistakes. It was
+a common occurrence, as I well knew, for children of quite the
+best families to be brought up by wood choppers. Fairies, the best
+intentioned in the world, but born muddlers, were generally responsible
+for these mishaps, which, however, always became righted in time for the
+wedding. Or even had he been a pork butcher, and there were many in the
+neighbourhood, I could have thought of him as a swineherd, and so found
+precedent for hope.
+
+But a fishmonger--from six in the evening a fried fishmonger! I searched
+history in vain. Fried fishmongers were without the pale.
+
+So gradually our meetings became less frequent, though I knew that
+every afternoon she waited in the quiet Stainsby Road, where dwelt in
+semi-detached, six-roomed villas the aristocracy of Poplar, and that
+after awhile, for arriving late at times I have been witness to the
+sad fact, tears would trace pathetic patterns upon her dust-besprinkled
+cheeks; and with the advent of the world-illuminating Barbara, to which
+event I am drawing near, they ceased altogether.
+
+So began and ended my first romance. One of these days--some quiet
+summer's afternoon, when even the air of Pigott Street vibrates with
+tenderness beneath the whispered sighs of Memory, I shall walk into the
+little grocer's shop and boldly ask to see her. So far have I already
+gone as to trace her, and often have I tried to catch sight of her
+through the glass door, but hitherto in vain. I know she is the more
+or less troubled mother of a numerous progeny. I am told she has grown
+stout, and probable enough it is that her tongue has gained rather than
+lost in sharpness. Yet under all the unrealities the clumsy-handed world
+has built about her, I shall see, I know, the lithesome little maid with
+fond, admiring eyes. What help they were to me I never knew till I had
+lost them. How hard to gain such eyes I have learned since. Were we to
+write the truth in our confession books, should we not admit the quality
+we most admire in others is admiration of ourselves? And is it not a
+wise selection? If you would have me admirable, my friend, admire me,
+and speak your commendation without stint that in the sunshine of your
+praises I may wax. For indifference maketh an indifferent man, and
+contempt a contemptible man. Come, is it not true? Does not all that is
+worthy in us grow best by honour?
+
+Chief among the remaining figures on my childhood's stage were the many
+servants of our house, the “generals,” as they were termed. So rapid,
+as a rule, was their transit through our kitchen that only one or two,
+conspicuous by reason of their lingering, remain upon my view. It was a
+neighbourhood in which domestic servants were not much required. Those
+intending to take up the calling seriously went westward. The local
+ranks were recruited mainly from the discontented or the disappointed,
+from those who, unappreciated at home, hoped from the stranger more
+discernment; or from the love-lorn, the jilted and the jealous, who took
+the cap and apron as in an earlier age their like would have taken the
+veil. Maybe, to the comparative seclusion of our basement, as contrasted
+with the alternative frivolity of shop or factory, they felt in such
+mood more attuned. With the advent of the new or the recovery of the old
+young man they would plunge again into the vain world, leaving my poor
+mother to search afresh amid the legions of the cursed.
+
+With these I made such comradeship as I could, for I had no child
+friends. Kind creatures were most of them, at least so I found them.
+They were poor at “making believe,” but would always squeeze ten minutes
+from their work to romp with me, and that, perhaps, was healthier for
+me. What, perhaps, was not so good for me was that, staggered at
+the amount of “book-learning” implied by my conversation (for the
+journalistic instinct, I am inclined to think, was early displayed in
+me), they would listen open-mouthed to all my information, regarding me
+as a precocious oracle. Sometimes they would obtain permission to take
+me home with them to tea, generously eager that their friends should
+also profit by me. Then, encouraged by admiring, grinning faces, I would
+“hold forth,” keenly enjoying the sound of my own proud piping.
+
+“As good as a book, ain't he?” was the tribute most often paid to me.
+
+“As good as a play,” one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer, went
+so far as to say.
+
+Already I regarded myself as among the Immortals.
+
+One girl, a dear, wholesome creature named Janet, stayed with us for
+months and might have stayed years, but for her addiction to strong
+language. The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the
+barge “Nancy Jane,” trading between Purfleet and Ponder's End, her
+conversation was at once my terror and delight.
+
+“Janet,” my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up
+instinctively to guard her ears, “how can you use such words?”
+
+“What words, mum?”
+
+“The things you have just called the gas man.”
+
+“Him! Well, did you see what he did, mum? Walked straight into my clean
+kitchen, without even wiping his boots, the--” And before my mother
+could stop her, Janet had relieved her feelings by calling him it--or
+rather them--again, without any idea that she had done aught else than
+express in fitting phraseology a natural human emotion.
+
+We were good friends, Janet and I, and therefore it was that I
+personally undertook her reformation. It was not an occasion for mincing
+one's words. The stake at issue was, I felt, too important. I told
+her bluntly that if she persisted in using such language she would
+inevitably go to hell.
+
+“Then where's my father going?” demanded Janet.
+
+“Does he use language?”
+
+I gathered from Janet that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of
+hearing her father could ever again take interest in the feeble efforts
+of herself.
+
+“I am afraid, Janet,” I explained, “that if he doesn't give it up--”
+
+“But it's the only way he can talk,” interrupted Janet. “He don't mean
+anything by it.”
+
+I sighed, yet set my face against weakness. “You see, Janet, people who
+swear do go there.”
+
+But Janet would not believe.
+
+“God send my dear, kind father to hell just because he can't talk like
+the gentlefolks! Don't you believe it of Him, Master Paul. He's got more
+sense.”
+
+I hope I pain no one by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should
+be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs
+of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than
+I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of
+immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it
+comforted me to whisper to myself: “I don't believe it of Him. He's got
+more sense.”
+
+And about that period I had need of all the comfort I could get. As
+we descend the road of life, the journey, demanding so much of our
+attention, becomes of more importance than the journey's end; but to the
+child, standing at the valley's gate, the terminating hills are
+clearly visible. What lies beyond them is his constant wonder. I never
+questioned my parents directly on the subject, shrinking as so strangely
+we all do, both young and old, from discussion of the very matters
+of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my need,
+contented themselves with the vague generalities with which we seek
+to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs. But there were
+foolish voices about me less reticent; while the literature, illustrated
+and otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered
+all questionings with blunt brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a
+fiery furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could
+turn to the accompanying illustration, and see at a glance how you
+yourself would writhe and shrink and scream, while cheerful devils, well
+organised, were busy stoking. I had been burnt once, rather badly, in
+consequence of live coals, in course of transit on a shovel, being let
+fall upon me. I imagined these burning coals, not confined to a mere
+part of my body, but pressing upon me everywhere, not snatched swiftly
+off by loving hands, the pain assuaged by applications of soft soap and
+the blue bag, but left there, eating into my flesh and veins. And this
+continued for eternity. You suffered for an hour, a day, a thousand
+years, and were no nearer to the end; ten thousand, a million years, and
+yet, as at the very first, it was for ever, and for ever still it would
+always be for ever! I suffered also from insomnia about this period.
+
+“Then be good,” replied the foolish voices round me; “never do wrong,
+and so avoid this endless agony.”
+
+But it was so easy to do wrong. There were so many wrong things to do,
+and the doing of them was so natural.
+
+“Then repent,” said the voices, always ready.
+
+But how did one repent? What was repentance? Did I “hate my sin,” as I
+was instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to hell for
+it? Because the latter, even my child's sense told me, was no true
+repentance. Yet how could one know the difference?
+
+Above all else there haunted me the fear of the “Unforgivable Sin.” What
+this was I was never able to discover. I dreaded to enquire too closely,
+lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the terror of it
+clung to me.
+
+“Believe,” said the voices; “so only shall you be saved.” How believe?
+How know you did believe? Hours would I kneel in the dark, repeating in
+a whispered scream:
+
+“I believe, I believe. Oh, I do believe!” and then rise with white
+knuckles, wondering if I really did believe.
+
+Another question rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings I
+had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most disreputable
+specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him. Our first
+meeting had been outside a confectioner's window, in the Commercial
+Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against the glass, a
+mere palpitating Appetite on legs. He had seized me by the collar, and
+hauled me into the shop. There, dropping me upon a stool, he bade me
+eat. Pride of race prompted me politely to decline, but his language
+became so awful that in fear and trembling I obeyed. So soon as I was
+finished--it cost him two and fourpence, I remember--we walked down to
+the docks together, and he told me stories of the sea and land that made
+my blood run cold. Altogether, in the course of three weeks or a month,
+we met about half a dozen times, when much the same programme was gone
+through. I think I was a fairly frank child, but I said nothing about
+him at home, feeling instinctively that if I did there would be an end
+of our comradeship, which was dear to me: not merely by reason of
+the pastry, though I admit that was a consideration, but also for his
+wondrous tales. I believed them all implicitly, and so came to regard
+him as one of the most interesting criminals as yet unhanged: and what
+was sad about the case, as I felt myself, was that his recital of his
+many iniquities, instead of repelling, attracted me to him. If ever
+there existed a sinner, here was one. He chewed tobacco--one of the
+hundred or so deadly sins, according to my theological library--and was
+generally more or less drunk. Not that a stranger would have
+noticed this; the only difference being that when sober he appeared
+constrained--was less his natural, genial self. In a burst of confidence
+he once admitted to me that he was the biggest blackguard in the
+merchant service. Unacquainted with the merchant service, as at the time
+I was, I saw no reason to doubt him.
+
+One night in a state of intoxication he walked over a gangway and was
+drowned. Our mutual friend, the confectioner, seeing me pass the window,
+came out to tell me so; and having heard, I walked on, heavy of heart,
+and pondering.
+
+About his eternal destination there could be no question. The known
+facts precluded the least ray of hope. How could I be happy in heaven,
+supposing I eventually did succeed in slipping in, knowing that he, the
+lovable old scamp, was burning for ever in hell?
+
+How could Janet, taking it that she reformed and thus escaped damnation,
+be contented, knowing the father she loved doomed to torment? The
+heavenly hosts, so I argued, could be composed only of the callous and
+indifferent.
+
+I wondered how people could go about their business, eat, drink and
+be merry, with tremendous fate hanging thus ever suspended over their
+heads. When for a little space I myself forgot it, always it fell back
+upon me with increased weight.
+
+Nor was the contemplation of heaven itself particularly attractive to
+me, for it was a foolish paradise these foolish voices had fashioned out
+of their folly. You stood about and sang hymns--for ever! I was assured
+that my fear of finding the programme monotonous was due only to my
+state of original sin, that when I got there I should discover I liked
+it. But I would have given much for the hope of avoiding both their
+heaven and their hell.
+
+Fortunately for my sanity I was not left long to brood unoccupied upon
+such themes. Our worldly affairs, under the sunshine of old Hasluck's
+round red face, prospered--for awhile; and one afternoon my father, who
+had been away from home since breakfast time, calling me into his office
+where also sat my mother, informed me that the long-talked-of school was
+become at last a concrete thing.
+
+“The term commences next week,” explained my father. “It is not exactly
+what I had intended, but it will do--for the present. Later, of course,
+you will go to one of the big public schools; your mother and I have not
+yet quite decided which.”
+
+“You will meet other boys there, good and bad,” said my mother, who
+sat clasping and unclasping her hands. “Be very careful, dear, how you
+choose your companions.”
+
+“You will learn to take your own part,” said my father. “School is an
+epitome of the world. One must assert oneself, or one is sat upon.”
+
+I knew not what to reply, the vista thus opened out to me was so
+unexpected. My blood rejoiced, but my heart sank.
+
+“Take one of your long walks,” said my father, smiling, “and think it
+over.”
+
+“And if you are in any doubt, you know where to go for guidance, don't
+you?” whispered my mother, who was very grave.
+
+Yet I went to bed, dreaming of quite other things that night: of
+Queens of Beauty bending down to crown my brows with laurel: of wronged
+Princesses for whose cause I rode to death or victory. For on my
+return home, being called into the drawing-room by my father, I stood
+transfixed, my cap in hand, staring with all my eyes at the vision that
+I saw.
+
+No such wonder had I ever seen before, at all events, not to my
+remembrance. The maidens that one meets in Poplar streets may be fair
+enough in their way, but their millinery displays them not to advantage;
+and the few lady visitors that came to us were of a staid and matronly
+appearance. Only out of pictures hitherto had such witchery looked upon
+me; and from these the spell faded as one gazed.
+
+I heard old Hasluck's smoky voice saying, “My little gell, Barbara,” and
+I went nearer to her, moving unconsciously.
+
+“You can kiss 'er,” said the smoky voice again; “she won't bite.” But I
+did not kiss her. Nor ever felt I wanted to, upon the mouth.
+
+I suppose she must have been about fourteen, and I a little over ten,
+though tall for my age. Later I came to know she had that rare gold
+hair that holds the light, so that upon her face, which seemed of dainty
+porcelain, there ever fell a softened radiance as from some shining
+aureole; those blue eyes where dwell mysteries, shadow veiled. At the
+time I knew nothing, but that it seemed to me as though the fairy-tales
+had all come true.
+
+She smiled, understanding and well pleased with my confusion. Child
+though I was--little more than child though she was, it flattered her
+vanity.
+
+Fair and sweet, you had but that one fault. Would it had been another,
+less cruel to you yourself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY.
+
+“Correct” is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe
+Doctor Florret and all his attributes. He was a large man, but not
+too large--just the size one would select for the head-master of an
+important middle-class school; stout, not fat, suggesting comfort, not
+grossness. His hands were white and well shaped. On the left he wore
+a fine diamond ring, but it shone rather than sparkled. He spoke of
+commonplace things in a voice that lent dignity even to the weather. His
+face, which was clean-shaven, radiated benignity tempered by discretion.
+
+So likewise all about him: his wife, the feminine counterpart of
+himself. Seeing them side by side one felt tempted to believe that
+for his special benefit original methods had been reverted to, and she
+fashioned, as his particular helpmeet, out of one of his own ribs.
+His furniture was solid, meant for use, not decoration. His pictures,
+following the rule laid down for dress, graced without drawing attention
+to his walls. He ever said the correct thing at the correct time in the
+correct manner. Doubtful of the correct thing to do, one could always
+learn it by waiting till he did it; when one at once felt that nothing
+else could possibly have been correct. He held on all matters
+the correct views. To differ from him was to discover oneself a
+revolutionary.
+
+In practice, as I learned at the cost of four more or less wasted
+years, he of course followed the methods considered correct by English
+schoolmen from the days of Edward VI. onwards.
+
+Heaven knows I worked hard. I wanted to learn. Ambition--the all
+containing ambition of a boy that “has its centre everywhere nor cares
+to fix itself to form” stirred within me. Did I pass a speaker at some
+corner, hatless, perspiring, pointing Utopias in the air to restless
+hungry eyes, at once I saw myself, a Demosthenes swaying multitudes, a
+statesman holding the House of Commons spellbound, the Prime Minister of
+England, worshipped by the entire country. Even the Opposition papers,
+had I known of them, I should have imagined forced to reluctant
+admiration. Did the echo of a distant drum fall upon my ear, then before
+me rose picturesque fields of carnage, one figure ever conspicuous:
+Myself, well to the front, isolated. Promotion in the British army of
+my dream being a matter purely of merit, I returned Commander-in-Chief.
+Vast crowds thronged every flag-decked street. I saw white waving hands
+from every roof and window. I heard the dull, deep roar of welcome, as
+with superb seat upon my snow-white charger--or should it be coal-black?
+The point cost me much consideration, so anxious was I that the day
+should be without a flaw--I slowly paced at the head of my victorious
+troops, between wild waves of upturned faces: walked into a lamp-post
+or on to the toes of some irascible old gentleman, and awoke. A drunken
+sailor stormed from between swing doors and tacked tumultuously down the
+street: the factory chimney belching smoke became a swaying mast. The
+costers round about me shouted “Ay, ay, sir. 'Ready, ay, ready.” I
+was Christopher Columbus, Drake, Nelson, rolled into one. Spurning
+the presumption of modern geographers, I discovered new continents.
+I defeated the French--those useful French! I died in the moment of
+victory. A nation mourned me and I was buried in Westminster Abbey.
+Also I lived and was created a Duke. Either alternative had its charm:
+personally I was indifferent. Boys who on November the ninth, as
+explained by letters from their mothers, read by Doctor Florret with a
+snort, were suffering from a severe toothache, told me on November
+the tenth of the glories of Lord Mayor's Shows. I heard their chatter
+fainter and fainter as from an ever-increasing distance. The bells of
+Bow were ringing in my ears. I saw myself a merchant prince, though
+still young. Nobles crowded my counting house. I lent them millions
+and married their daughters. I listened, unobserved in a corner, to
+discussion on some new book. Immediately I was a famous author. All men
+praised me: for of reviewers and their density I, in those days, knew
+nothing. Poetry, fiction, history, I wrote them all; and all men read,
+and wondered. Only here was a crumpled rose leaf in the pillow on which
+I laid my swelling head: penmanship was vexation to me, and spelling
+puzzled me, so that I wrote with sorrow and many blots and scratchings
+out. Almost I put aside the idea of becoming an author.
+
+But along whichever road I might fight my way to the Elysian Fields
+of fame, education, I dimly but most certainly comprehended, was a
+necessary weapon to my hand. And so, with aching heart and aching head,
+I pored over my many books. I see myself now in my small bedroom, my
+elbows planted on the shaky, one-legged table, startled every now and
+again by the frizzling of my hair coming in contact with the solitary
+candle. On cold nights I wear my overcoat, turned up about the neck, a
+blanket round my legs, and often I must sit with my fingers in my ears,
+the better to shut out the sounds of life, rising importunately from
+below. “A song, Of a song, To a song, A song, O! song!” “I love, Thou
+lovest, He she or it loves. I should or would love” over and over again,
+till my own voice seems some strange buzzing thing about me, while
+my head grows smaller and smaller till I put my hands up frightened,
+wondering if it still be entire upon my shoulders.
+
+Was I more stupid than the average, or is a boy's brain physically
+incapable of the work our educational system demands of it?
+
+“Latin and Greek” I hear repeating the suave tones of Doctor Florret,
+echoing as ever the solemn croak of Correctness, “are useful as mental
+gymnastics.” My dear Doctor Florret and Co., cannot you, out of the vast
+storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better fitted
+to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of ten-to-fourteen?
+You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained by years of practice
+to its subtlest uses, take me from your bookshelf, say, your Browning or
+even your Shakespeare. Come, you know this language well. You have not
+merely learned: it is your mother tongue. Construe for me this short
+passage, these few verses: parse, analyse, resolve into component parts!
+And now, will you maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained,
+ink-bespattered little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's
+Metamorphoses to treat in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible
+to insist upon his practising his skinny little arms with hundred pounds
+dumb-bells?
+
+We were the sons of City men, of not well-to-do professional men, of
+minor officials, clerks, shopkeepers, our roads leading through the
+workaday world. Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies utterly
+useless to us. How I hated them, these youth-tormenting Shades. Homer!
+how I wished the fishermen had asked him that absurd riddle earlier.
+Horace! why could not that shipwreck have succeeded: it would have in
+the case of any one but a classic.
+
+Until one blessed day there fell into my hands a wondrous talisman.
+
+Hearken unto me, ye heavy burdened little brethren of mine. Waste not
+your substance upon tops and marbles, nor yet upon tuck (Do ye still
+call it “tuck”?), but scrape and save. For in the neighbourhood of
+Paternoster Row there dwells a good magician who for silver will provide
+you with a “Key” that shall open wide for you the gates of Hades.
+
+By its aid, the Frogs of Aristophanes became my merry friends. With
+Ulysses I wandered eagerly through Wonderland. Doctor Florret was
+charmed with my progress, which was real, for now, at last, I was
+studying according to the laws of common sense, understanding first,
+explaining afterwards. Let Youth, that the folly of Age would imprison
+in ignorance, provide itself with “Keys.”
+
+But let me not seem to claim credit due to another. Dan it was--Dan of
+the strong arm and the soft smile, Dan the wise hater of all useless
+labour, sharp-witted, easy-going Dan, who made this grand discovery.
+
+Dan followed me a term later into the Lower Fourth, but before he had
+been there a week was handling Latin verse with an ease and dexterity
+suggestive of unholy dealings with the Devil. In a lonely corner of
+Regent's Park, first making sure no one was within earshot, he revealed
+to me his magic.
+
+“Don't tell the others,” he commanded; “or it will get out, and then
+nobody will be any the better.”
+
+“But is it right?” I asked.
+
+“Look here, young 'un,” said Dan; “what are you here for--what's
+your father paying school fees for (it was the appeal to our
+conscientiousness most often employed by Dr. Florret himself), for you
+to play a silly game, or to learn something?
+
+“Because if it's only a game--we boys against the masters,” continued
+Dan, “then let's play according to rule. If we're here to learn--well,
+you've been in the class four months and I've just come, and I bet I
+know more Ovid than you do already.” Which was true.
+
+So I thanked Dan and shared with him his key; and all the Latin I
+remember, for whatever good it may be to me, I take it I owe to him.
+
+And knowledge of yet greater value do I owe to the good fortune that
+his sound mother wit was ever at my disposal to correct my dreamy
+unfeasibility; for from first to last he was my friend; and to have
+been the chosen friend of Dan, shrewd judge of man and boy, I deem no
+unimportant feather in my cap. He “took to” me, he said, because I was
+so “jolly green”--“such a rummy little mug.” No other reason would he
+ever give me, save only a sweet smile and a tumbling of my hair with his
+great hand; but I think I understood. And I loved him because he was
+big and strong and handsome and kind; no one but a little boy knows
+how brutal or how kind a big boy can be. I was still somewhat of an
+effeminate little chap, nervous and shy, with a pink and white face, and
+hair that no amount of wetting would make straight. I was growing too
+fast, which took what strength I had, and my journey every day, added
+to school work and home work, maybe was too much for my years. Every
+morning I had to be up at six, leaving the house before seven to catch
+the seven fifteen from Poplar station; and from Chalk Farm I had to walk
+yet another couple of miles. But that I did not mind, for at Chalk Farm
+station Dan was always waiting for me. In the afternoon we walked back
+together also; and when I was tired and my back ached--just as if some
+one had cut a piece out of it, I felt--he would put his arm round
+me, for he always knew, and oh, how strong and restful it was to lean
+against, so that one walked as in an easy-chair.
+
+It seems to me, remembering how I would walk thus by his side, looking
+up shyly into his face, thinking how strong and good he was, feeling so
+glad he liked me, I can understand a little how a woman loves. He was so
+solid. With his arm round me, it was good to feel weak.
+
+At first we were in the same class, the Lower Third. He had no business
+there. He was head and shoulders taller than any of us and years older.
+It was a disgrace to him that he was not in the Upper Fourth. The Doctor
+would tell him so before us all twenty times a week. Old Waterhouse
+(I call him “Old Waterhouse” because “Mister Waterhouse, M.A.,”
+ would convey no meaning to me, and I should not know about whom I
+was speaking) who cordially liked him, was honestly grieved. We, his
+friends, though it was pleasant to have him among us, suffered in our
+pride of him. The only person quite contented was Dan himself. It was
+his way in all things. Others had their opinion of what was good
+for him. He had his own, and his own was the only opinion that ever
+influenced him. The Lower Third suited him. For him personally the Upper
+Fourth had no attraction.
+
+And even in the Lower Third he was always at the bottom. He preferred
+it. He selected the seat and kept it, in spite of all allurements, in
+spite of all reproaches. It was nearest to the door. It enabled him
+to be first out and last in. Also it afforded a certain sense of
+retirement. Its occupant, to an extent screened from observation,
+became in the course of time almost forgotten. To Dan's philosophical
+temperament its practical advantages outweighed all sentimental
+objection.
+
+Only on one occasion do I remember his losing it. As a rule, tiresome
+questions, concerning past participles, square roots, or meridians never
+reached him, being snapped up in transit by arm-waving lovers of such
+trifles. The few that by chance trickled so far he took no notice of.
+They possessed no interest for him, and he never pretended that they
+did. But one day, taken off his guard, he gave voice quite unconsciously
+to a correct reply, with the immediate result of finding himself in an
+exposed position on the front bench. I had never seen Dan out of
+temper before, but that moment had any of us ventured upon a whispered
+congratulation we would have had our head punched, I feel confident.
+
+Old Waterhouse thought that here at last was reformation. “Come, Brian,”
+he cried, rubbing his long thin hands together with delight, “after all,
+you're not such a fool as you pretend.”
+
+“Never said I was,” muttered Dan to himself, with a backward glance of
+regret towards his lost seclusion; and before the day was out he had
+worked his way back to it again.
+
+As we were going out together, old Waterhouse passed us on the stairs:
+“Haven't you any sense of shame, my boy?” he asked sorrowfully, laying
+his hand kindly on Dan's shoulder.
+
+“Yes, sir,” answered Dan, with his frank smile; “plenty. It isn't yours,
+that's all.”
+
+He was an excellent fighter. In the whole school of over two hundred
+boys, not half a dozen, and those only Upper Sixth boys--fellows who
+came in top hats with umbrellas, and who wouldn't out of regard to their
+own dignity--could have challenged him with any chance of success. Yet
+he fought very seldom, and then always in a bored, lazy fashion, as
+though he were doing it purely to oblige the other fellow.
+
+One afternoon, just as we were about to enter Regent's Park by the
+wicket opposite Hanover Gate, a biggish boy, an errand boy carrying an
+empty basket, and supported by two smaller boys, barred our way.
+
+“Can't come in here,” said the boy with the basket.
+
+“Why not?” inquired Dan.
+
+“'Cos if you do I shall kick you,” was the simple explanation.
+
+Without a word Dan turned away, prepared to walk on to the next opening.
+The boy with the basket, evidently encouraged, followed us: “Now, I'm
+going to give you your coward's blow,” he said, stepping in front of us;
+“will you take it quietly?” It is a lonely way, the Outer Circle, on a
+winter's afternoon.
+
+“I'll tell you afterwards,” said Dan, stopping short.
+
+The boy gave him a slight slap on the cheek. It could not have hurt, but
+the indignity, of course, was great. No boy of honour, according to our
+code, could have accepted it without retaliating.
+
+“Is that all?” asked Dan.
+
+“That's all--for the present,” replied the boy with the basket.
+
+“Good-bye,” said Dan, and walked on.
+
+“Glad he didn't insist on fighting,” remarked Dan, cheerfully, as we
+proceeded; “I'm going to a party tonight.”
+
+Yet on another occasion, in a street off Lisson Grove, he insisted
+on fighting a young rough half again his own weight, who, brushing up
+against him, had knocked his hat off into the mud.
+
+“I wouldn't have said anything about his knocking it off,” explained
+Dan afterwards, tenderly brushing the poor bruised thing with his coat
+sleeve, “if he hadn't kicked it.”
+
+On another occasion I remember, three or four of us, Dan among the
+number, were on our way one broiling summer's afternoon to Hadley Woods.
+As we turned off from the highroad just beyond Barnet and struck into
+the fields, Dan drew from his pocket an enormous juicy-looking pear.
+
+“Where did you get that from?” inquired one, Dudley.
+
+“From that big greengrocer's opposite Barnet Church,” answered Dan.
+“Have a bit?”
+
+“You told me you hadn't any more money,” retorted Dudley, in reproachful
+tones.
+
+“No more I had,” replied Dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end of
+his pocket-knife.
+
+“You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear,” argued
+Dudley, accepting.
+
+“Didn't buy it.”
+
+“Do you mean to say you stole it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You're a thief,” denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away a
+pip.
+
+“I know it. So are you.”
+
+“No, I'm not.”
+
+“What's the good of talking nonsense. You robbed an orchard only last
+Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache.”
+
+“That isn't stealing.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“It isn't the same thing.”
+
+“What's the difference?”
+
+And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. “Stealing is
+stealing,” he would have it, “whether you take it off a tree or out of a
+basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a piece?”
+
+The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all had
+a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so. It did
+not agitate him in the least.
+
+To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me,
+and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes confusion.
+The yearly examination was approaching. My father and mother said
+nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my
+father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how much I had
+endeavoured. I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes
+depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make others
+believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of school.
+
+“Are you going in for anything, Dan?” I asked him. We were discussing
+the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.
+
+I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to
+ask it of me.
+
+“They're not giving away anything I particularly want,” murmured Dan, in
+his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it
+must be confessed, not worth their cost.
+
+“You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?” he asked next, as I
+expected.
+
+“I mean to have a shot at the History,” I admitted. “Wish I was better
+at dates.”
+
+“It's always two-thirds dates,” Dan assured me, to my discouragement.
+“Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that
+chap Raleigh was born.”
+
+“I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize,” I explained to
+him. I never felt shy with Dan. He never laughed at me.
+
+“You oughtn't to have done that,” he said. I stared. “It isn't fair to
+the other fellows. That won't be your winning the prize; that will be
+your getting it through favouritism.”
+
+“But they can pray, too,” I reminded him.
+
+“If you all pray for it,” answered Dan, “then it will go, not to the
+fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the
+hardest. That isn't old Florret's idea, I'm sure.”
+
+“But we are told to pray for things we want,” I insisted.
+
+“Beastly mean way of getting 'em,” retorted Dan. And no argument that
+came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right
+thinking on this point.
+
+He would judge all matters for himself. In his opinion Achilles was a
+coward, not a hero.
+
+“He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of
+him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that,” he argued;
+“King Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it wasn't
+playing the game. There's no pluck in fighting if you know you're bound
+to win. Beastly cads, I call them all.”
+
+I won no prize that year. Oddly enough, Dan did, for arithmetic; the
+only subject studied in the Lower Fourth that interested him. He liked
+to see things coming right, he explained.
+
+My father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me
+himself.
+
+“It's very curious, Paul,” he said, “you seem to know a good deal.”
+
+“They asked me all the things I didn't know. They seemed to do it on
+purpose,” I blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm. My father crossed
+the room and sat down beside me.
+
+“Spud!” he said--it was a long time since he had called me by that
+childish nickname--“perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the
+unlucky ones.”
+
+“Are you unlucky?” I asked.
+
+“Invariably,” answered my father, rumpling his hair. “I don't know why.
+I try hard--I do the right thing, but it turns out wrong. It always
+does.”
+
+“But I thought Mr. Hasluck was bringing us such good fortune,” I said,
+looking up in surprise. “We're getting on, aren't we?”
+
+“I have thought so before, so often,” said my father, “and it has always
+ended in a--in a collapse.”
+
+I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to
+another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.
+
+“You see, when I married your mother,” he went on, “I was a rich man.
+She had everything she wanted.”
+
+“But you will get it all back,” I cried.
+
+“I try to think so,” he answered. “I do think so--generally speaking.
+But there are times--you would not understand--they come to you.”
+
+“But she is happy,” I persisted; “we are all happy.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I watch her,” he said. “Women suffer more than we do. They live more
+in the present. I see my hopes, but she--she sees only me, and I have
+always been a failure. She has lost faith in me.”
+
+I could say nothing. I understood but dimly.
+
+“That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul,” he continued after
+a silence. “You can't think what a help education is to a man. I don't
+mean it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it rather
+hampers you. But it helps you to bear adversity. To a man with a
+well-stored mind, life is interesting on a piece of bread and a cup
+of tea. I know. If it were not for you and your mother I should not
+trouble.”
+
+And yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as I
+remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh hope,
+planning, scheming, dreaming again. It was never acting. A worse actor
+never trod this stage on which we fret. His occasional attempts at a
+cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our all three crying
+in one another's arms. No; it was only when things were going well
+that experience came to his injury. Child of misfortune, he ever rose,
+Antaeus-like, renewed in strength from contact with his mother.
+
+Nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of
+prosperity, were oft recurring. Generally speaking, as he himself said,
+he was full of confidence. Already had he fixed upon our new house in
+Guilford Street, then still a good residential quarter; while at the
+same time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently central for
+office purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey's Inn and Bedford
+Row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the Law's sad
+courtiers.
+
+“Poplar,” said my father, “has disappointed me. It seemed a good idea--a
+rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors. It ought to
+have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn't.”
+
+“There have been a few come,” my mother reminded him.
+
+“Of a sort,” admitted my father; “a criminal lawyer might gather
+something of a practice here, I have no doubt. But for general work,
+of course, you must be in a central position. Now, in Guilford Street
+people will come to me.”
+
+“It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in,” agreed
+my mother.
+
+“Later on,” said my father, “in case I want the whole house for offices,
+we could live ourselves in Regent's Park. It is quite near to the Park.”
+
+“Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?” asked my mother, who of the
+two was by far the more practical.
+
+“For Hasluck,” replied my father, “it will be much more convenient. He
+grumbles every time at the distance.”
+
+“I have never been quite able to understand,” said my mother, “why Mr.
+Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be
+plenty of solicitors in the City.”
+
+“He had heard of me,” explained my father. “A curious old
+fellow--likes his own way of doing things. It's not everyone who would
+care for him as a client. But I seem able to manage him.”
+
+Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It was
+a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered,
+with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the
+Foundling Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having
+opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing
+rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen
+Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary
+expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its
+price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.
+
+“This,” said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom
+into the smaller room adjoining, “I shall make your mother's boudoir.
+We will have the walls in lavender and maple green--she is fond of soft
+tones--and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will put her
+writing-table.”
+
+My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.
+
+“You will be quiet here,” said my father, “and we can shut out the bed
+and the washstand with a screen.”
+
+Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent--eight and sixpence a week,
+including attendance--was somewhat more than at the time I ought to have
+afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the opportunity of being
+an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my stout landlady, in
+later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass plate with my father's name
+upon the door. “Luke Kelver, Solicitor. Office hours, 10 till 4.” A
+medical student thought he occupied my mother's boudoir. He was a dull
+dog, full of tiresome talk. But I made acquaintanceship with him; and
+often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while
+pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag.
+
+The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost;
+that his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints
+of wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified
+prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple
+green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her
+soft curls curtaining her quiet face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE
+LOVE-LIT EYES.
+
+“There's nothing missing,” said my mother, “so far as I can find out.
+Depend upon it, that's the explanation: she has got frightened and has
+run away.
+
+“But what was there to frighten her?” said my father, pausing with a
+decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.
+
+“It was the idea of the thing,” replied my mother. “She has never been
+used to waiting at table. She was actually crying about it only last
+night.”
+
+“But what's to be done?” said my father. “They will be here in less than
+an hour.”
+
+“There will be no dinner for them,” said my mother, “unless I put on an
+apron and bring it up myself.”
+
+“Where does she live?” asked my father.
+
+“At Ilford,” answered my mother.
+
+“We must make a joke of it,” said my father.
+
+My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for my
+mother. A party to dinner--to a real dinner, beginning with anchovies
+and ending with ices from the confectioner's; if only they would remain
+ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences, present themselves
+as cold custard--was an extraordinary departure from the even tenor of
+our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect none previous. First there
+had been the house to clean and rearrange almost from top to bottom;
+endless small purchases to be made of articles that Need never misses,
+but which Ostentation, if ever you let her sneering nose inside the
+door, at once demands. Then the kitchen range--it goes without saying:
+one might imagine them all members of a stove union, controlled by some
+agitating old boiler out of work--had taken the opportunity to strike,
+refusing to bake another dish except under permanently improved
+conditions, necessitating weary days with plumbers. Fat cookery books,
+long neglected on their shelf, had been consulted, argued with and
+abused; experiments made, failures sighed over, successes noted; cost
+calculated anxiously; means and ways adjusted, hope finally achieved,
+shadowed by fear.
+
+And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed
+from her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be
+the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering table
+would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But between the
+two yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word of warning,
+had bolted--was probably by this time well on its way to Ilford. There
+was excuse for my mother's tears.
+
+“Isn't it possible to get somebody else?” asked my father.
+
+“Impossible, in the time,” said my mother. “I had been training her for
+the whole week. We had rehearsed it perfectly.”
+
+“Have it in the kitchen,” suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins to
+look like ships, which they didn't in the least, “and call it a picnic.”
+ Really it seemed the only practical solution.
+
+There came a light knock at the front door.
+
+“It can't be anybody yet, surely,” exclaimed my father in alarm, making
+for his coat.
+
+“It's Barbara, I expect,” explained my mother. “She promised to come
+round and help me dress. But now, of course, I shan't want her.” My
+mother's nature was pessimistic.
+
+But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon
+myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the window
+when Barbara came in at the door--in those days, I mean.
+
+She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was so
+quick. And at once they saw the humour of the thing.
+
+“There's going to be no dinner,” laughed my father. “We are going to
+look surprised and pretend that it was yesterday. It will be fun to see
+their faces.”
+
+“There will be a very nice dinner,” smiled my mother, “but it will be
+in the kitchen, and there's no way of getting it upstairs.” And they
+explained to her the situation.
+
+She stood for an instant, her sweet face the gravest in the group. Then
+a light broke upon it.
+
+“I'll get you someone,” she said.
+
+“My dear, you don't even know the neighbourhood,” began my mother. But
+Barbara had snatched the latchkey from its nail and was gone.
+
+With her disappearance, shadow fell again upon us. “If there were only
+an hotel in this beastly neighbourhood,” said my father.
+
+“You must entertain them by yourself, Luke,” said my mother; “and I must
+wait--that's all.”
+
+“Don't be absurd, Maggie,” cried my father, getting angry. “Can't cook
+bring it in?”
+
+“No one can cook a dinner and serve it, too,” answered my mother,
+impatiently. “Besides, she's not presentable.”
+
+“What about Fan?” whispered my father.
+
+My mother merely looked. It was sufficient.
+
+“Paul?” suggested my father.
+
+“Thank you,” retorted my mother. “I don't choose to have my son turned
+into a footman, if you do.”
+
+“Well, hadn't you better go and dress?” was my father's next remark.
+
+“It won't take me long to put on an apron,” was my mother's reply.
+
+“I was looking forward to seeing you in that new frock,” said my father.
+In the case of another, one might have attributed such a speech to tact;
+in the case of my father, one felt it was a happy accident.
+
+My mother confessed--speaking with a certain indulgence, as one does of
+one's own follies when past--that she herself also had looked forward to
+seeing herself therein. Threatening discord melted into mutual sympathy.
+
+“I so wanted everything to be all right, for your sake, Luke,” said my
+mother; “I know you were hoping it would help on the business.”
+
+“I was only thinking of you, Maggie, dear,” answered my father. “You are
+my business.”
+
+“I know, dear,” said my mother. “It is hard.”
+
+The key turned in the lock, and we all stood quiet to listen.
+
+“She's come back alone,” said my mother. “I knew it was hopeless.”
+
+The door opened.
+
+“Please, ma'am,” said the new parlour-maid, “will I do?”
+
+She stood there, framed by the lintel, in the daintiest of aprons, the
+daintiest of caps upon her golden hair; and every objection she swept
+aside with the wind of her merry wilfulness. No one ever had their way
+with her, nor wanted it.
+
+“You shall be footman,” she ordered, turning to me--but this time my
+mother only laughed. “Wait here till I come down again.” Then to my
+mother: “Now, ma'am, are you ready?”
+
+It was the first time I had seen my mother, or, indeed, any other flesh
+and blood woman, in evening dress, and to tell the truth I was a little
+shocked. Nay, more than a little, and showed it, I suppose; for my
+mother flushed and drew her shawl over the gleaming whiteness of her
+shoulders, pleading coldness. But Barbara cried out against this, saying
+it was a sin such beauty should be hid; and my father, filching a shawl
+with a quick hand, so dextrously indeed as to suggest some previous
+practice in the feat, dropped on one knee--as though the world were some
+sweet picture book--and raised my mother's hand with grave reverence to
+his lips; and Barbara, standing behind my mother's chair, insisted on
+my following suit, saying the Queen was receiving. So I knelt also,
+glancing up shyly as towards the gracious face of some fair lady
+hitherto unknown, thus Catching my first glimpse of the philosophy of
+clothes.
+
+My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed
+days that swiftly followed, when my mother's eyes would flash towards
+my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the
+moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again
+and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and
+sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour forth
+a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room, slamming the
+door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards, sitting alone in
+the dark, with bowed head between his hands.
+
+Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their
+passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold
+whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.
+
+In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung closer
+to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have understood
+if they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms clasping me
+tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I hated my father,
+who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet when my father drew
+me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind eyes so full of pain,
+then I felt angry with my mother, remembering her bitter tongue.
+
+It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the
+house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into
+each other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow. The
+idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline in
+the air, feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently through the
+pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face before them.
+Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and the next moment,
+stealing across to my father, answer for him with his voice, but
+strangely different. I used to think I could hear it laughing to itself
+as it stepped back into enfolding space.
+
+To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps
+man and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face
+between them. So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I
+see its mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent
+laugh. So that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the
+twilight, but I see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them,
+creeping after them with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me in
+quiet ways.
+
+Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark
+valley of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love's ordeal? testing the
+feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet
+again, the darkness passed?
+
+Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive
+account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic
+parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of
+observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that
+was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann--or
+Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which--a snuffy, mumbling old frump,
+with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it
+so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long blank
+walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother's right hand;
+and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish seeming, how she
+could be so interested in him, shouting much and often to him; for added
+to his other disattractions he was very deaf, which necessitated his
+putting his hand up to his ear at every other observation made to
+him, crying querulously: “Eh, what? What are you talking about? Say it
+again,”--smiling upon him and paying close attention to his every want.
+Even old Hasluck, opposite to him, and who, though pleasant enough
+in his careless way, was far from being a slave to politeness, roared
+himself purple, praising some new disinfectant of which this same
+Teidelmann appeared to be the proprietor.
+
+“My wife swears by it,” bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.
+
+“Our drains!” chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; “well,
+you'd hardly know there was any in the house since I've took to using
+it.”
+
+“What are they talking about?” asked Teidelmann, appealing to my mother.
+“What's he say his wife does?”
+
+“Your disinfectant,” explained my mother; “Mrs. Hasluck swears by it.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Mrs. Hasluck.”
+
+“Does she? Delighted to hear it,” grunted the old gentleman, evidently
+bored.
+
+“Nothing like it for a sick-room,” persisted Hasluck; “might almost call
+it a scent.”
+
+“Makes one quite anxious to be ill,” remarked my aunt, addressing no one
+in particular.
+
+“Reminds me of cocoanuts,” continued Hasluck.
+
+Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his
+flattery should not be lost.
+
+“I say it reminds me of cocoanuts.” He screamed it this time.
+
+“Oh, does it?” was the reply.
+
+“Doesn't it you?”
+
+“Can't say it does,” answered Teidelmann. “As a matter of fact, don't
+know much about it myself. Never use it.”
+
+Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of
+the subject.
+
+“Take my advice,” he shouted, “and buy a bottle.”
+
+“Buy a what?”
+
+“A bottle,” roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his
+strength.
+
+“What's he say? What's he talking about now?” asked Teidelmann, again
+appealing to my mother.
+
+“He says you ought to buy a bottle,” again explained my mother.
+
+“What of?”
+
+“Of your own disinfectant.”
+
+“Silly fool!”
+
+Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic
+(which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely misjudged
+the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say. I only know
+that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly, and therefore
+assume they reached round the table also.
+
+A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned,
+and the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.
+
+“He's quite right,” was Hasluck's comment; “that's what I am
+undoubtedly. Because I can't talk about anything but shop myself, I
+think everybody else is the same sort of fool.”
+
+But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the
+passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time Teidelmann
+was evidently interested.
+
+“Well, if you could spare the time, I'd be more obliged than I can tell
+you,” Hasluck was saying. “I know absolutely nothing about pictures
+myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in Europe.”
+
+“He ought to know,” chuckled old Teidelmann. “He's tried often enough to
+palm off rubbish onto me.”
+
+“That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young--”
+ Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; “been the
+making of him, I should say.”
+
+“I gave him two thousand for the six,” replied Teidelmann, “and they'll
+sell for twenty thousand.”
+
+“But you'll never sell them?” exclaimed my father.
+
+“No,” grunted old Teidelmann, “but my widow will.” There came a soft,
+low laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.
+
+“It's Anderson's great disappointment,” followed a languid, caressing
+voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), “that he has
+never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art. He'll pay
+thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed Madonna. Such
+a waste of money, it appears to me.”
+
+“But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,”
+ argued my father's voice.
+
+“It would enhance the beauty of my neck,” replied the musical voice.
+
+“An even more absolute waste of money,” was my father's answer, spoken
+low. And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.
+
+“Who is she?” I asked Barbara.
+
+“The second Mrs. Teidelmann,” whispered Barbara. “She is quite a swell.
+Married him for his money--I don't like her myself, but she's very
+beautiful.”
+
+“As beautiful as you?” I asked incredulously. We were sitting on the
+stairs, sharing a jelly.
+
+“Oh, me!” answered Barbara. “I'm only a child. Nobody takes any notice
+of me--except other kids, like you.” For some reason she appeared out of
+conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of mind.
+
+“But everybody thinks you beautiful,” I maintained.
+
+“Who?” she asked quickly.
+
+“Dr. Hal,” I answered.
+
+We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.
+
+“What did he say?” she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in
+it.
+
+I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I was
+positive.
+
+“Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,”
+ Barbara instructed me, “and don't forget what he says this time. I'm
+curious.” And though it seemed to me a foolish command--for what could
+he say of her more than I myself could tell her--I never questioned
+Barbara's wishes.
+
+Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may have
+clouded for a moment Barbara's sunny nature, surely there was no reason
+for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention throughout the
+dinner than the parlour-maid.
+
+“Where ever did you get her from?” asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having
+just descended the kitchen stairs.
+
+“A neat-handed Phillis,” commented Dr. Florret with approval.
+
+“I'll take good care she never waits at my table,” laughed the wife
+of our minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman,
+mother of eleven, eight of them boys.
+
+“To tell the truth,” said my mother, “she's only here temporarily.”
+
+“As a matter of fact,” said my father, “we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck
+for her.”
+
+“Don't leave me out of it,” laughed Hasluck; “can't let the old girl
+take all the credit.”
+
+Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as “My dear,” at which
+Mrs. Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that
+incident could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was
+looking, pinched her elbow, which would not have mattered had not the
+unexpectedness of it drawn from her an involuntary “augh,” upon which,
+for the reputation of the house, and the dinner being then towards
+its end; my mother deemed it better to take the whole company into
+her confidence. Naturally the story gained for Barbara still greater
+admiration, so that when with the dessert, discarding the apron but
+still wearing the dainty cap, which showed wisdom, she and the footman
+took their places among the guests, she was even more than before the
+centre of attention and remark.
+
+“It was very nice of you,” said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the circle
+of compliments, “and, as I always tell my girls, that is better than
+being beautiful.”
+
+“Kind hearts,” added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, “are more than
+coronets.” Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct
+quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell
+upon the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like
+the Amen in church.
+
+Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.
+
+“When I was a girl,” said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing
+silence, “I used to look into the glass and say to myself: 'Fanny,
+you've got to be amiable,' and I was amiable,” added my aunt,
+challenging contradiction with a look; “nobody can say that I wasn't,
+for years.”
+
+“It didn't pay?” suggested Hasluck.
+
+“It attracted,” replied my aunt, “no attention whatever.”
+
+Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many
+experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old
+Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the
+case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than
+business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida (I
+am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the details
+of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion, so I have
+been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise of the
+moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa scheme
+becoming converted to Quakerism.
+
+But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn and
+Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence in the
+East End.
+
+As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr.
+Florret's presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song once
+looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the cold stare
+of his disapproving eye. But Dr. “Fighting Hal” was no gentle warbler
+of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite
+argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his
+partisans with him further than they meant to go, and quite unable to
+turn back; leaving his opponents clinging desperately--upside down,
+anyhow--to their perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.
+
+“Life!” flung out Washburn--Dr. Florret had just laid down unimpeachable
+rules for the conduct of all mankind on all occasions--“what do you
+respectable folk know of life? You are not men and women, you are
+marionettes. You don't move to your natural emotions implanted by God;
+you dance according to the latest book of etiquette. You live and love,
+laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only one moment do you come face to face
+with life; that is in the moment when you die, leaving the other puppets
+to be dressed in black and make believe to cry.”
+
+It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality
+of us all.
+
+“Little doll,” he had once called me, and I had resented the term.
+
+“That's all you are, little Paul,” he had persisted, “a good little
+hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what
+it's made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a gallant-hearted,
+soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and primmest of dolls.
+And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to be a man, but hasn't
+the pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul.”
+
+“He's a trifle--a trifle whimsical on some subjects,” explained my
+father, on my repeating this conversation.
+
+“There are a certain class of men,” explained my mother--“you will meet
+with them more as you grow up--who talk for talking's sake. They don't
+know what they mean. And nobody else does either.”
+
+“But what would you have?” argued Dr. Florret, “that every man should do
+that which is right in his own eyes?”
+
+“Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what every
+other fool thinks right,” retorted Washburn. “The other day I called
+to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His wife was
+washing clothes in the front room. 'How's your husband?' I asked. 'I
+think he's dead,' replied the woman. Then, without leaving off her work,
+'Jim,' she shouted, 'are you there?' No answer came from the inner room.
+'He's a goner,' she said, wringing out a stocking.”
+
+“But surely,” said Dr. Florret, “you don't admire a woman for being
+indifferent to the death of her husband?”
+
+“I don't admire her for that,” replied Washburn, “and I don't blame her.
+I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I do admire
+her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In Berkeley Square
+she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief
+to her eyes.
+
+“Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” murmured Dr. Florret.
+
+“Go on,” said Washburn. “How does it run? 'That monster, custom, who all
+sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to the use
+of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put on.' So was
+the lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the more an ass. Here
+asses go about as asses, but there are lions also. I had a woman under
+my hands only a little while ago. I could have cured her easily. Why she
+got worse every day instead of better I could not understand. Then by
+accident learned the truth: instead of helping me she was doing all
+she could to kill herself. 'I must, Doctor,' she cried. 'I must. I have
+promised. If I get well he will only leave me, and if I die now he has
+sworn to be good to the children.' Here, I tell you, they live--think
+their thoughts, work their will, kill those they hate, die for those
+they love; savages if you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless
+dolls.”
+
+“I prefer the dolls,” concluded Dr. Florret.
+
+“I admit they are pretty,” answered Washburn.
+
+“I remember,” said my father, “the first masked ball I ever went to when
+I was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal; everybody
+was so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street and see
+faces.”
+
+“But I thought they always unmasked at midnight,” said the second Mrs.
+Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.
+
+“I did not wait,” explained my father.
+
+“That was a pity,” she replied. “I should have been interested to see
+what they were like, underneath.”
+
+“I might have been disappointed,” answered my father. “I agree with Dr.
+Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement.”
+
+Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would
+have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold
+eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.
+
+Always she was very kind to me. Moreover, since the disappearance of
+Cissy she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my
+small self. My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was the
+one thing needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take much
+pride in our solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to our
+desires: like the oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world than to
+ourselves. If others there were who admired me, very guardedly must they
+have kept the secret I would so gladly have shared with them. But this
+new friend of ours--or had I not better at once say enemy--made me feel
+when in her presence a person of importance. How it was accomplished
+I cannot explain. No word of flattery nor even of mere approval ever
+passed her lips. Her charm to me was not that she admired me, but that
+she led me by some mysterious process to admire myself.
+
+And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me,
+I never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the
+sudden raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.
+
+She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting
+on her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his
+eyes were turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them back
+again. Once she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some light
+jest of his, and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick glance,
+saw that my mother's eyes were watching also.
+
+I have spoken of my father only as he then appeared to me, a child--an
+older chum with many lines about his mobile mouth, the tumbled hair
+edged round with grey; but looking back with older eyes, I see him a
+slightly stooping, yet still tall and graceful man, with the face of a
+poet--the face I mean a poet ought to possess but rarely does, nature
+apparently abhorring the obvious--with the shy eyes of a boy, and a
+voice tender as a woman's. Never the dingiest little drab that entered
+the kitchen but adored him, speaking always of “the master” in tones of
+fond proprietorship, for to the most slatternly his “orders” had ever
+the air of requests for favours. Women, I so often read, can care for
+only masterful men. But may there not be variety in women as in other
+species? Or perhaps--if the suggestion be not over-daring--the many
+writers, deeming themselves authorities upon this subject of woman, may
+in this one particular have erred? I only know my father spoke to
+few women whose eyes did not brighten. Yet hardly should I call him a
+masterful man.
+
+“I think it's all right,” whispered Hasluck to my father in the
+passage--they were the last to go. “What does she think of it, eh?”
+
+“I think she'll be with us,” answered my father.
+
+“Nothing like food for bringing people together,” said Hasluck.
+“Good-night.”
+
+The door closed, but Something had crept into the house. It stood
+between my father and mother. It followed them silently up the narrow
+creaking stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW.
+
+Better is little, than treasure and trouble therewith. Better a dinner
+of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. None
+but a great man would have dared to utter such a glaring commonplace as
+that. Not only on Sundays now, but all the week, came the hot joint to
+table, and on every day there was pudding, till a body grew indifferent
+to pudding; thus a joy-giving luxury of life being lost and but another
+item added to the long list of uninteresting needs. Now we could eat and
+drink without stint. No need now to organise for the morrow's hash.
+No need now to cut one's bread instead of breaking it, thinking of
+Saturday's bread pudding. But there the saying fails, for never now were
+we merry. A silent unseen guest sat with us at the board, so that no
+longer we laughed and teased as over the half pound of sausages or the
+two sweet-scented herrings; but talked constrainedly of empty things
+that lay outside us.
+
+Easy enough would it have been for us to move to Guilford Street.
+Occasionally in the spiritless tones in which they now spoke on all
+subjects save the one, my mother and father would discuss the project;
+but always into the conversation would fall, sooner or later, some
+loosened thought to stir it to anger, and so the aching months went by,
+and the cloud grew.
+
+Then one day the news came that old Teidelmann had died suddenly in his
+counting house.
+
+“You are going to her?” said my mother.
+
+“I have been sent for,” said my father; “I must--it may mean business.”
+
+My mother laughed bitterly; why, at the time, I could not understand;
+and my father flung out of the house. During the many hours that he was
+away my mother remained locked in her room, and, stealing sometimes to
+the door, I was sure I heard her crying; and that she should grieve so
+at old Teidelmann's death puzzled me.
+
+She came oftener to our house after that. Her mourning added, I think,
+to her beauty, softening--or seeming to soften--the hardness of her
+eyes. Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast beside her
+appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her motive, she was
+kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some trifling gift or plan
+for affording me some childish treat. By instinct she understood exactly
+what I desired and liked, the books that would appeal to me as those my
+mother gave me never did, the pleasures that did please me as opposed to
+the pleasures that should have pleased me. Often my mother, talking
+to me, would chill me with the vista of the life that lay before me:
+a narrow, viewless way between twin endless walls of “Must” and “Must
+not.” This soft-voiced lady set me dreaming of life as of sunny fields
+through which one wandered laughing, along the winding path of Will; so
+that, although as I have said, there lurked at the bottom of my thoughts
+a fear of her; yet something within me I seemed unable to control went
+out to her, drawn by her subtle sympathy and understanding of it.
+
+“Has he ever seen a pantomime?” she asked of my father one morning,
+looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of her mouth.
+
+My heart leaped within me. My father raised his eyebrows: “What would
+your mother say, do you think?” he asked. My heart sank.
+
+“She thinks,” I replied, “that theatres are very wicked places.” It
+was the first time that any doubt as to the correctness of my mother's
+judgments had ever crossed my mind.
+
+Mrs. Teidelmann's smile strengthened my doubt. “Dear me,” she said, “I
+am afraid I must be very wicked. I have always regarded a pantomime as
+quite a moral entertainment. All the bad people go down so very straight
+to--well, to the fit and proper place for them. And we could promise to
+leave before the Clown stole the sausages, couldn't we, Paul?”
+
+My mother was called and came; and I could not help thinking how
+insignificant she looked with her pale face and plain dark frock,
+standing stiffly beside this shining lady in her rustling clothes.
+
+“You will let him come, Mrs. Kelver,” she pleaded in her soft caressing
+tones; “it's Dick Whittington, you know--such an excellent moral.”
+
+My mother had stood silent, clasping and unclasping her hands, a
+childish trick she had when troubled; and her lips were trembling.
+Important as the matter loomed before my own eyes, I wondered at her
+agitation.
+
+“I am very sorry,” said my mother, “it is very kind of you. But I would
+rather he did not go.”
+
+“Just this once,” persisted Mrs. Teidelmann. “It is holiday time.”
+
+A ray of sunlight fell into the room, lighting upon her coaxing face,
+making where my mother stood seem shadow.
+
+“I would rather he did not go,” repeated my mother, and her voice
+sounded harsh and grating. “When he is older others must judge for him,
+but for the present he must be guided by me--alone.”
+
+“I really don't think there could be any harm, Maggie,” urged my father.
+“Things have changed since we were young.”
+
+“That may be,” answered my mother, still in the same harsh voice; “it is
+long ago since then.”
+
+“I didn't intend it that way,” said my father with a short laugh.
+
+“I merely meant that I may be wrong,” answered my mother. “I seem so old
+among you all--so out of place. I have tried to change, but I cannot.”
+
+“We will say no more about it,” said Mrs. Teidelmann, sweetly. “I merely
+thought it would give him pleasure; and he has worked so hard this last
+term, his father tells me.”
+
+She laid her hand caressingly on my shoulder, drawing me a little closer
+to her; and it remained there.
+
+“It was very kind of you,” said my mother, “I would do anything to give
+him pleasure, anything--I could. He knows that. He understands.”
+
+My mother's hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would
+not see; and without another word she left the room.
+
+My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next
+afternoon she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we
+saw a magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer. She had dressed herself in
+a prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was brighter
+and gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing and talking
+merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and sulky. At any
+other time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me; but the wonders
+of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard so much of, that
+from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for myself, were floating
+vague and undefined before me in the air; and neither the open-mouthed
+sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of rats; nor even the live rabbit
+found in the stout old gentleman's hat--the last sort of person in whose
+hat one would have expected to find such a thing--could draw away my
+mind from the joy I had caught a glimpse of only to lose.
+
+So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but
+little; and that night, waking--or rather half waking, as children do--I
+thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed. I must
+have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say whether the
+intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to see it still
+there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose from her knees.
+
+She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions. “It was
+a silly dream I had,” she explained “I must have been thinking of the
+conjurer we saw. I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you away
+from me. I could not find you and was all alone in the world.”
+
+She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me. And thus we
+remained until again I must have fallen asleep.
+
+It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I
+called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton.
+She had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from
+terrible headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was
+unable to come out. She would be leaving England in a few days to
+travel. Would my mother come and see her, she would like to say good-bye
+to her before she went. My mother handed the letter across the table to
+my father.
+
+“Of course you will go,” said my father. “Poor girl, I wonder what the
+cause can be. She used to be so free from everything of the kind.”
+
+“Do you think it well for me to go?” said my mother. “What can she have
+to say to me?”
+
+“Oh, just to say good-bye,” answered my father. “It would look so
+pointed not to go.”
+
+It was a dull, sombre house without, but one entered through its
+commonplace door as through the weed-grown rock into Aladdin's cave. Old
+Teidelmann had been a great collector all his life, and his treasures,
+now scattered through a dozen galleries, were then heaped there in
+curious confusion. Pictures filled every inch of wall, stood propped
+against the wonderful old furniture, were even stretched unframed across
+the ceilings. Statues gleamed from every corner (a few of the statues
+were, I remember, the only things out of the entire collection that Mrs.
+Teidelmann kept for herself), carvings, embroideries, priceless china,
+miniatures framed in gems, illuminated missals and gorgeously bound
+books crowded the room. The ugly little thick-lipped man had surrounded
+himself with the beauty of every age, brought from every land. He
+himself must have been the only thing cheap and uninteresting to be
+found within his own walls; and now he lay shrivelled up in his coffin,
+under a monument by means of which an unknown cemetery became quite
+famous.
+
+Instructions had been given that my mother was to be shown up into Mrs.
+Teidelmann's boudoir. She was lying on a sofa near the fire when we
+entered, asleep, dressed in a loose lace robe that fell away, showing
+her thin but snow-white arms, her rich dark hair falling loose about
+her. In sleep she looked less beautiful: harder and with a suggestion of
+coarseness about the face, of which at other times it showed no trace.
+My mother said she would wait, perhaps Mrs. Teidelmann would awake; and
+the servant, closing the door softly, left us alone with her.
+
+An old French clock standing on the mantelpiece, a heart supported by
+Cupids, ticked with a muffled, soothing sound. My mother, choosing a
+chair by the window, sat with her eyes fixed on the sleeping woman's
+face, and it seemed to me--though this may have been but my fancy born
+of after-thought--that a faint smile relaxed for a moment the sleeping
+woman's pained, pressed lips. Neither I nor my mother spoke, the only
+sound in the room being the hushed ticking of the great gilt clock.
+Until the other woman after a few slight movements of unrest began to
+talk in her sleep.
+
+Only confused murmurs escaped her at first, and then I heard her whisper
+my father's name. Very low--hardly more than breathed--were the words,
+but upon the silence each syllable struck clear and distinct: “Ah no, we
+must not. Luke, my darling.”
+
+My mother rose swiftly from her chair, but she spoke in quite
+matter-of-fact tones.
+
+“Go, Paul,” she said, “wait for me downstairs;” and noiselessly opening
+the door, she pushed me gently out, and closed it again behind me.
+
+It was half an hour or more before she came down, and at once we left
+the house, letting ourselves out. All the way home my mother never once
+spoke, but walked as one in a dream with eyes that saw not. With her
+hand upon the lock of our gate she came back to life.
+
+“You must say nothing, Paul, do you understand?” she said. “When people
+are delirious they use strange words that have no meaning. Do you
+understand, Paul; you must never breathe a word--never.”
+
+I promised, and we entered the house; and from that day my mother's
+whole manner changed. Not another angry word ever again escaped her
+lips, never an angry flash lighted up again her eyes. Mrs. Teidelmann
+remained away three months. My father, of course, wrote to her often,
+for he was managing all her affairs. But my mother wrote to her
+also--though this my father, I do not think, knew--long letters that she
+would go away by herself to pen, writing them always in the twilight,
+close to the window.
+
+“Why do you choose this time, just when it's getting dark, to write your
+letters,” my father would expostulate, when by chance he happened to
+look into the room. “Let me ring for the lamp, you will strain your
+eyes.” But my mother would always excuse herself, saying she had only a
+few lines to finish.
+
+“I can think better in this light,” she would explain.
+
+And when Mrs. Teidelmann returned, it was my mother who was the first
+to call upon her; before even my father knew that she was back. And from
+thence onward one might have thought them the closest of friends, my
+mother visiting her often, speaking of her to all in terms of praise and
+liking.
+
+In this way peace returned unto the house, and my father was tender
+again in all his words and actions towards my mother, and my mother
+thoughtful as before of all his wants and whims, her voice soft and low,
+the sweet smile ever lurking around her lips as in the old days before
+this evil thing had come to dwell among us; and I might have forgotten
+it had ever cast its blight upon our life but that every day my mother
+grew feebler, the little ways that had seemed a part of her gone from
+her.
+
+The summer came and went--that time in towns of panting days and
+stifling nights, when through the open window crawls to one's face the
+hot foul air, heavy with reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets;
+when lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad
+mass around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest; and
+my mother moved about the house ever more listlessly.
+
+“There's nothing really the matter with her,” said Dr. Hal, “only
+weakness. It is the place. Cannot you get her away from it?”
+
+“I cannot leave myself,” said my father, “just yet; but there is no
+reason why you and the boy should not take a holiday. This year I can
+afford it, and later I might possibly join you.”
+
+My mother consented, as she did to all things now, and so it came about
+that again of afternoons we climbed--though more slowly and with many
+pauses--the steep path to the ruined tower old Jacob in his happy
+foolishness had built upon the headland, rested once again upon its
+topmost platform, sheltered from the wind that ever blew about its
+crumbling walls, saw once more the distant mountains, faint like
+spectres, and the silent ships that came and vanished, and about our
+feet the pleasant farm lands, and the grave, sweet river.
+
+We had taken lodgings in the village: smaller now it seemed than
+previously; but wonderful its sunny calm, after the turmoil of the
+fierce dark streets. Mrs. Fursey was there still, but quite another than
+the Mrs. Fursey of my remembrance, a still angular but cheery dame,
+bent no longer on suppressing me, but rather on drawing me out before
+admiring neighbours, as one saying: “The material was unpromising, as
+you know. There were times when I almost despaired. But with
+patience, and--may I say, a natural gift that way--you see what can
+be accomplished!” And Anna, now a buxom wife and mother, with an
+uncontrollable desire to fall upon and kiss me at most unexpected
+moments, necessitating a never sleeping watchfulness on my part, and
+a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat. And old
+Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave. On the bench before
+him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and tapped and
+hammered: pert little shoes piping “Be quick, be quick, we want to be
+toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much toddling there
+is to be done.” Dapper boots, sighing: “Oh, please make haste, we are
+waiting to dance and to strut. Jack walks in the lane, Jill waits by
+the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps.” Stout sober boots, saying: “As
+soon as you can, old friend. Remember we've work to do.” Flat-footed old
+boots, rusty and limp, mumbling: “We haven't much time, Mr. Chumbley.
+Just a patch, that is all, we haven't much further to go.” And old Joe,
+still peddling his pack, with the help of the same old jokes. And Tom
+Pinfold, still puzzled and scratching his head, the rejected fish still
+hanging by its tail from his expostulating hand; one might almost have
+imagined it the same fish. Grown-up folks had changed but little. Only
+the foolish children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere
+sucking babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I
+had known now mincing it as men and women; such affectation annoyed me.
+
+One afternoon--it was towards the close of the last week of our stay--my
+mother and I had climbed, as was so often our wont, to the upper
+platform of old Jacob's tower. My mother leant upon the parapet, her
+eyes fixed dreamingly upon the distant mountains, and a smile crept to
+her lips.
+
+“What are you thinking of?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, only of things that happened over there”--she nodded her head
+towards the distant hills as to some old crony with whom she shares
+secrets--“when I was a girl.”
+
+“You lived there, long ago, didn't you, when you were young?” I asked.
+Boys do not always stop to consider whether their questions might or
+might not be better expressed.
+
+“You're very rude,” said my mother--it was long since a tone of her old
+self had rung from her in answer to any touch; “it was a very little
+while ago.”
+
+Suddenly she raised her head and listened. Perhaps some twenty seconds
+she remained so with her lips parted, and then from the woods came a
+faint, long-drawn “Coo-ee.” We ran to the side of the tower commanding
+the pathway from the village, and waited until from among the dark pines
+my father emerged into the sunlight.
+
+Seeing us, he shouted again and waved his stick, and from the light of
+his eyes and his gallant bearing, and the spring of his step across the
+heathery turf, we knew instinctively that trouble had come upon him.
+He always rose to meet it with that look and air. It was the old Norse
+blood in his veins, I suppose. So, one imagines, must those godless old
+Pirates have sprung to their feet when the North wind, loosed as a hawk
+from the leash, struck at the beaked prow.
+
+We heard his quick step on the rickety stair, and the next moment he was
+between us, breathing a little hard, but laughing.
+
+He stood for awhile beside my mother without speaking, both of them
+gazing at the distant hills among which, as my mother had explained,
+things had happened long ago. And maybe, “over there,” their memories
+met and looked upon each other with kind eyes.
+
+“Do you remember,” said my father, “we climbed up here--it was the first
+walk we took together after coming here. We discussed our plans for the
+future, how we would retrieve our fortunes.”
+
+“And the future,” answered my mother, “has a way of making plans for us
+instead.”
+
+“It would seem so,” replied my father, with a laugh. “I am an unlucky
+beggar, Maggie. I dropped all your money as well as my own down that
+wretched mine.”
+
+“It was the will--it was Fate, or whatever you call it,” said my mother.
+“You could not help that, Luke.”
+
+“If only that damned pump hadn't jambed,” said my father.
+
+“Do you remember that Mrs. Tharand?” asked my mother.
+
+“Yes, what of her?”
+
+“A worldly woman, I always thought her. She called on me the morning we
+were leaving; I don't think you saw her. 'I've been through more worries
+than you would think, to look at me,' she said to me, laughing. I've
+always remembered her words: 'and of all the troubles that come to us in
+this world, believe me, Mrs. Kelver, money troubles are the easiest to
+bear.'”
+
+“I wish I could think so,” said my father.
+
+“She rather irritated me at the time,” continued my mother. “I thought
+it one of those commonplaces with which we console ourselves for other
+people's misfortunes. But now I know she spoke the truth.”
+
+There was silence between them for awhile. Then said my father in a
+cheery tone:
+
+“I've broken with old Hasluck.”
+
+“I thought you would be compelled to sooner or later,” answered my
+mother.
+
+“Hasluck,” exclaimed my father, with sudden vehemence, “is little better
+than a thief; I told him so.”
+
+“What did he say?” asked my mother.
+
+“Laughed, and said that was better than some people.”
+
+My father laughed himself.
+
+I wish to do the memory of Noel Hasluck no injustice. Ever was he a kind
+friend to me; not only then, but in later years, when, having come to
+learn that kindness is rarer in the world than I had dreamt, I was glad
+of it. Added to which, if only for Barbara's sake, I would prefer
+to write of him throughout in terms of praise. Yet even were his
+good-tempered, thick-skinned ghost (and unless it were good-tempered
+and thick-skinned it would be no true ghost of old Noel Hasluck) to
+be reading over my shoulder the words as I write them down, I think it
+would agree with me--I do not think it would be offended with me (for
+ever in his life he was an admirer and a lover of the Truth, being one
+of those good fighters capable of respecting even his foe, his enemy,
+against whom from ten to four, occasionally a little later, he fought
+right valiantly) for saying that of all the men who go down into the
+City each day in a cab or 'bus or train, he was perhaps one of the most
+unprincipled: and whether that be saying much or little I leave to those
+with more knowledge to decide.
+
+To do others, as it was his conviction, right or wrong, that they would
+do him if ever he gave them half a chance, was his notion of “business;”
+ and in most of his transactions he was successful. “I play a game,”
+ he would argue, “where cheating is the rule. Nine out of every ten men
+round the table are sharpers like myself, and the tenth man is a fool
+who has no business to be there. We prey upon each other, and the cutest
+of us is the winner.”
+
+“But the innocent people, lured by your fine promises,” I ventured once
+to suggest to him, “the widows and the orphans?”
+
+“My dear lad,” he said, with a laugh, laying his fat hand upon my
+shoulder, “I remember one of your widows writing me a pathetic letter
+about some shares she had taken in a Silver Company of mine. Lord knows
+where the mine is now--somewhere in Spain, I think. It looked as though
+all her savings were gone. She had an only son, and it was nearly all
+they possessed in the world, etc., etc.--you know the sort of thing.
+Well, I did what I've often been numskull enough to do in similar cases,
+wrote and offered to buy her out at par. A week later she answered,
+thanking me, but saying it did not matter. There had occurred
+a momentary rise, and she had sold out at a profit--to her own
+brother-in-law, as I discovered, happening to come across the transfers.
+You can find widows and orphans round the Monte Carlo card tables, if
+you like to look for them; they are no more deserving of consideration
+than the rest of the crowd. Besides, if it comes to that, I'm an orphan
+myself;” and he laughed again, one of his deep, hearty, honest laughs.
+No one ever possessed a laugh more suggestive in its every cadence
+of simple, transparent honesty. He used to say himself it was worth
+thousands to him.
+
+Better from the Moralists' point of view had such a man been an
+out-and-out rogue. Then might one have pointed, crying: “Behold:
+Dishonesty, as you will observe in the person of our awful example, to
+be hated, needs but to be seen.” But the duty of the Chronicler is to
+bear witness to what he knows, leaving Truth with the whole case before
+her to sum up and direct the verdict. In the City, old Hasluck had a
+bad reputation and deserved it; in Stoke-Newington--then a green suburb,
+containing many fine old houses, standing in great wooded gardens--he
+was loved and respected. In his business, he was a man void of all moral
+sense, without bowels of compassion for any living thing; in retirement,
+a man with a strong sense of duty and a fine regard for the rights and
+feelings of others, never happier than when planning to help or give
+pleasure. In his office, he would have robbed his own mother. At home,
+he would have spent his last penny to add to her happiness or comfort. I
+make no attempt to explain. I only know that such men do exist, and that
+Hasluck was one of them. One avoids difficulties by dismissing them as a
+product of our curiously complex civilisation--a convenient phrase; let
+us hope the recording angel may be equally impressed by it.
+
+Casting about for some reason of excuse to myself for my liking of him,
+I hit upon the expedient of regarding him as a modern Robin Hood, whom
+we are taught to admire without shame, a Robin Hood up to date, adapted
+to the changed conditions of modern environment; making his living
+relieving the rich; taking pleasure relieving the poor.
+
+“What will you do?” asked my mother.
+
+“I shall have to give up the office,” answered my father. “Without him
+there's not enough to keep it going. He was quite good-tempered
+about the matter--offered to divide the work, letting me retain
+the straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth. But I
+declined. Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do with
+him.”
+
+“I think you were quite right,” agreed my mother.
+
+“What I blame myself for,” said my father, “is that I didn't see through
+him before. Of course he has been making a mere tool of me from the
+beginning. I ought to have seen through him. Why didn't I?”
+
+They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother
+listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to time,
+as though there were something she could not understand.
+
+He would take a situation in the City. One had been offered him. It
+might sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must
+contrive to live. The little money he had saved must be kept for
+investments--nothing speculative--judicious “dealings,” by means of
+which a cool, clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital. Here the
+training acquired by working for old Hasluck would serve him well. One
+man my father knew--quite a dull, commonplace man--starting a few years
+ago with only a few hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands. Foresight
+was the necessary qualification. You watched the “tendency” of things.
+So often had my father said to himself: “This is going to be a
+big thing. That other, it is no good,” and in every instance his
+prognostications had been verified. He had “felt it;” some men had that
+gift. Now was the time to use it for practical purposes.
+
+“Here,” said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye upon
+the surrounding scenery, “would be a pleasant place to end one's days.
+The house you had was very pretty and you liked it. We might enlarge it,
+the drawing-room might be thrown out--perhaps another wing.” I felt that
+our good fortune as from this day was at last established.
+
+But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled
+glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned
+her face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon, demanding
+answer.
+
+Some idea of it I had even then, watching her; and since I have come to
+read it word for word: “But that woman--that woman that loves you, that
+you love. Ah, I know--why do you play with me? She is rich. With her
+your life will be smooth. And the boy--it will be better far for him.
+Cannot you three wait a little longer? What more can I do? Cannot you
+see that I am surely dying--dying as quickly as I can--dying as that
+poor creature your friend once told us of; knowing it was the only thing
+she could do for those she loved. Be honest with me: I am no longer
+jealous. All that is past: a man is ever younger than a woman, and a man
+changes. I do not blame you. It is for the best. She and I have talked;
+it is far better so. Only be honest with me, or at least silent. Will
+you not honour me enough for even that?”
+
+My father did not answer, having that to speak of that put my mother's
+question out of her mind for all time; so that until the end no word
+concerning that other woman passed again between them. Twenty years
+later, nearly, I myself happened to meet her, and then long physical
+suffering had chased the wantonness away for ever from the pain-worn
+mouth; but in that hour of waning voices, as some trouble of the fretful
+day when evening falls, so she faded from their life; and if even the
+remembrance of her returned at times to either of them, I think it must
+have been in those moments when, for no seeming reason, shyly their
+hands sought one another.
+
+So the truth of the sad ado--how far my mother's suspicions wronged my
+father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that
+was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain
+but in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true
+vision--I never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth
+had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with
+Doctor Hal, who must have seen something of the play and with more
+understanding eyes than mine, and who thereupon delivered to me a short
+lecture on life in general, a performance at which he excelled.
+
+“Flee from temptation and pray that you may be delivered from evil,”
+ shouted the Doctor--(his was not the Socratic method)--“but remember
+this: that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a time when,
+however fast you run, you will be overtaken--cornered--no one to deliver
+you but yourself--the gods sitting round interested. It is a grim fight,
+for the Thing, you may be sure, has chosen its right moment. And every
+woman in the world will sympathise with you and be just to you, not even
+despising you should you be overcome; for however they may talk, every
+woman in the world knows that male and female cannot be judged by the
+same standard. To woman, Nature and the Law speak with one voice: 'Sin
+not, lest you be cursed of your sex!' It is no law of man: it is the
+law of creation. When the woman sins, she sins not only against her
+conscience, but against her every instinct. But to the man Nature
+whispers: 'Yield.' It is the Law alone that holds him back. Therefore
+every woman in the world, knowing this, will be just to you--every woman
+in the world but one--the woman that loves you. From her, hope for no
+sympathy, hope for no justice.”
+
+“Then you think--” I began.
+
+“I think,” said the Doctor, “that your father loved your mother
+devotedly; but he was one of those fighters that for the first
+half-dozen rounds or so cause their backers much anxiety. It is a
+dangerous method.”
+
+“Then you think my mother--”
+
+“I think your mother was a good woman, Paul; and the good woman will
+never be satisfied with man till the Lord lets her take him to pieces
+and put him together herself.”
+
+My father had been pacing to and fro the tiny platform. Now he came to a
+halt opposite my mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders.
+
+“I want you to help me, Maggie--help me to be brave. I have only a year
+or two longer to live, and there's a lot to be done in that time.”
+
+Slowly the anger died out of my mother's face.
+
+“You remember that fall I had when the cage broke,” my father went on.
+“Andrews, as you know, feared from the first it might lead to that. But
+I always laughed at him.”
+
+“How long have you known?” my mother asked.
+
+“Oh, about six months. I felt it at the beginning of the year, but I
+didn't say anything to Washburn till a month later. I thought it might
+be only fancy.”
+
+“And he is sure?”
+
+My father nodded.
+
+“But why have you never told me?”
+
+“Because,” replied my father, with a laugh, “I didn't want you to know.
+If I could have done without you, I should not have told you now.”
+
+And at this there came a light into my mother's face that never
+altogether left it until the end.
+
+She drew him down beside her on the seat. I had come nearer; and my
+father, stretching out his hand, would have had me with them. But my
+mother, putting her arms about him, held him close to her, as though in
+that moment she would have had him to herself alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING.
+
+The eighteen months that followed--for the end came sooner than we had
+expected--were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother had ever
+known; or if happy be not altogether the right word, let me say the most
+beautiful, and most nearly perfect. To them it was as though God in
+His sweet thoughtfulness had sent death to knock lightly at the door,
+saying: “Not yet. You have still a little longer to be together. In a
+little while.” In those last days all things false and meaningless they
+laid aside. Nothing was of real importance to them but that they should
+love each other, comforting each other, learning to understand each
+other. Again we lived poorly; but there was now no pitiful straining
+to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours
+might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth
+a moment's thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure
+ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider
+charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs,
+overflowing towards all things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it
+has seemed to me that we make a mistake seeking to keep Death, God's
+go-between, ever from our thoughts. Is it not closing the door to a
+friend who would help us would we let him (for who knows life so well),
+whispering to us: “In a little while. Only a little longer that you have
+to be together. Is it worth taking so much thought for self? Is it worth
+while being unkind?”
+
+From them a graciousness emanated pervading all around. Even my aunt Fan
+decided for the second time in her career to give amiability a trial.
+This intention she announced publicly to my mother and myself one
+afternoon soon after our return from Devonshire.
+
+“I'm a beast of an old woman,” said my aunt, suddenly.
+
+“Don't say that, Fan,” urged my mother.
+
+“What's the good of saying 'Don't say it' when I've just said it,”
+ snapped back my aunt.
+
+“It's your manner,” explained my mother; “people sometimes think you
+disagreeable.”
+
+“They'd be daft if they didn't,” interrupted my aunt. “Of course you
+don't really mean it,” continued my mother.
+
+“Stuff and nonsense,” snorted my aunt; “does she think I'm a fool? I
+like being disagreeable. I like to see 'em squirming.”
+
+My mother laughed.
+
+“I can be agreeable,” continued my aunt, “if I choose. Nobody more so.”
+
+“Then why not choose?” suggested my mother. “I tried it once,” said my
+aunt, “and it fell flat. Nothing could have fallen flatter.”
+
+“It may not have attracted much attention,” replied my mother, with a
+smile, “but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention.”
+
+“It wasn't only that,” returned my aunt, “it was that it gave no
+satisfaction to anybody. It didn't suit me. A disagreeable person is at
+their best when they are disagreeable.”
+
+“I can hardly agree with you there,” answered my mother.
+
+“I could do it again,” communed my aunt to herself. There was a
+suggestion of vindictiveness in her tones. “It's easy enough. Look at
+the sort of fools that are agreeable.”
+
+“I'm sure you could be if you tried,” urged my mother.
+
+“Let 'em have it,” continued my aunt, still to herself; “that's the way
+to teach 'em sense. Let 'em have it.”
+
+And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother
+altogether wrong. My father was the first to notice the change.
+
+“Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?” he asked. It was one
+evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into effect.
+“Nothing happened, has there?”
+
+“No,” answered my mother, “nothing that I know of.”
+
+“Her manner is so strange,” explained my father, “so--so weird.”
+
+My mother smiled. “Don't say anything to her. She's trying to be
+agreeable.”
+
+My father laughed and then looked wistful. “I almost wish she wouldn't,”
+ he remarked; “we were used to it, and she was rather amusing.”
+
+But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same
+time that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure. This
+was the introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley.
+Properly speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being the
+order in which he had been christened in the year 1815. But in course
+of time, and particularly during his school career, it had been borne in
+upon him that Wellington is a burdensome name for a commonplace mortal
+to bear, and very wisely he had reversed the arrangement. He was a
+slightly pompous but simpleminded little old gentleman, very proud of
+his position as head clerk to Mr. Stillwood, the solicitor to whom my
+father was now assistant. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back
+to the Georges, and was a firm bound up with the history--occasionally
+shady--of aristocratic England. True, in these later years its glory
+was dwindling. Old Mr. Stillwood, its sole surviving representative,
+declined to be troubled with new partners, explaining frankly, in
+answer to all applications, that the business was a dying one, and
+that attempting to work it up again would be but putting new wine
+into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a yearly diminishing
+quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of a good class,
+its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and my father
+had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment.
+James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days of its
+pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the most
+important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street.
+Nothing delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the
+many strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been
+concerned, all of which he had at his tongue's tip. Could he find a
+hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional
+reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, “the
+capital of, let us say, a foreign country,” or “a certain town not
+a thousand miles from where we are now sitting.” The majority of his
+friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage
+him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case
+were one involving suspicion of mystery and crime. When, during their
+very first conversation, he exclaimed: “Now why--why, after keeping away
+from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know
+whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her?
+That is what I want explained to me!” he paused, as was his wont, for
+sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a
+yawn: “Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose,”
+ replied with prompt intelligence:
+
+“To murder her--by slow poison.”
+
+“To murder her! But why?”
+
+“In order to marry the other woman.”
+
+“What other woman?”
+
+“The woman he had just met and fallen in love with. Before that it was
+immaterial to him what had become of his wife. This woman had said to
+him: 'Come back to me a free man or never see my face again.'”
+
+“Dear me! Now that's very curious.”
+
+“Nothing of the sort. Plain common sense.”
+
+“I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a
+little later, and he did marry again.”
+
+“Told you so,” remarked my aunt.
+
+In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light
+thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human
+action. Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y., for
+into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark criminal
+intent.
+
+“I think you are a little too severe,” Mr. Gadley would now and then
+plead.
+
+“We're all of us miserable sinners,” my aunt would cheerfully affirm;
+“only we don't all get the same chances.”
+
+An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in “a western town once
+famous as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name,” my aunt
+was convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged
+another under which her children--should she ever marry and be blessed
+with such--would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of seven
+hundred pounds.
+
+The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always
+fascinated Mr. Gadley.
+
+“I have to thank you, ma'am,” he would remark on rising, “for a
+most delightful conversation. I may not be able to agree with your
+conclusions, but they afford food for reflection.”
+
+To which my aunt would reply, “I hate talking to any one who agrees with
+me. It's like taking a walk to see one's own looking-glass. I'd rather
+talk to somebody who didn't, even if he were a fool,” which for her was
+gracious.
+
+He was a stout little gentleman with a stomach that protruded about a
+foot in front of him, and of this he appeared to be quite unaware. Nor
+would it have mattered had it not been for his desire when talking to
+approach as close to his listener as possible. Gradually in the course
+of conversation, his stomach acting as a gentle battering ram, he would
+in this way drive you backwards round the room, sometimes, unless
+you were artful, pinning you hopelessly into a corner, when it would
+surprise him that in spite of all his efforts he never succeeded in
+getting any nearer to you. His first evening at our house he was talking
+to my aunt from the corner of his chair. As he grew more interested so
+he drew his chair nearer and nearer, till at length, having withdrawn
+inch by inch to avoid his encroachments, my aunt was sitting on the
+extreme edge of her own. His next move sent her on to the floor. She
+said nothing, which surprised me; but on the occasion of his next
+visit she was busy darning stockings, an unusual occupation for her.
+He approached nearer and nearer as before; but this time she sat
+her ground, and it was he who in course of time sprang back with an
+exclamation foreign to the subject under discussion.
+
+Ever afterwards my aunt met him with stockings in her hand, and they
+talked with a space between their chairs.
+
+Nothing further came of it, though his being a widower added to their
+intercourse that spice of possibility no woman is ever too old to
+relish; but that he admired her intellectually was evident. Once he
+even went so far as to exclaim: “Miss Davies, you should have been a
+solicitor's wife!” to his thinking the crown of feminine ambition. To
+which my aunt had replied: “Chances are I should have been if one had
+ever asked me.” And warmed by appreciation, my aunt's amiability took
+root and flourished, though assuming, as all growth developed late is
+apt to, fantastic shape.
+
+There came to her the idea, by no means ill-founded, that by flattery
+one can most readily render oneself agreeable; so conscientiously she
+set to work to flatter in season and out. I am sure she meant to give
+pleasure, but the effect produced was that of thinly veiled sarcasm.
+
+My father would relate to us some trifling story, some incident noticed
+during the day that had seemed to him amusing. At once she would break
+out into enthusiasm, holding up her hands in astonishment.
+
+“What a funny man he is! And to think that it comes to him naturally
+without an effort. What a gift it is!”
+
+On my mother appearing in a new bonnet, or an old one retrimmed, an
+event not unfrequent; for in these days my mother took more thought than
+ever formerly for her appearance (you will understand, you women who
+have loved), she would step back in simulated amazement.
+
+“Don't tell me it's a married woman with a boy getting on for fourteen.
+It's a girl. A saucy, tripping girl. That's what it is.”
+
+Persons have been known, I believe, whose vanity, not checked in time,
+has grown into a hopeless disease. But I am inclined to think that a
+dose of my aunt, about this period, would have cured the most obstinate
+case.
+
+So also, and solely for our benefit, she assumed a vivacity and
+spriteliness that ill suited her, that having regard to her age and
+tendency towards rheumatism must have cost her no small effort. From
+these experiences there remains to me the perhaps immoral opinion that
+Virtue, in common with all other things, is at her best when unassuming.
+
+Occasionally the old Adam--or should one say Eve--would assert itself in
+my aunt, and then, still thoughtful for others, she would descend into
+the kitchen and be disagreeable to Amy, our new servitor, who never
+minded it. Amy was a philosopher who reconciled herself to all things
+by the reflection that there were only twenty-four hours in a day.
+It sounds a dismal theory, but from it Amy succeeded in extracting
+perpetual cheerfulness. My mother would apologise to her for my aunt's
+interference.
+
+“Lord bless you, mum, it don't matter. If I wasn't listening to her
+something else worse might be happening. Everything's all the same when
+it's over.”
+
+Amy had come to us merely as a stop gap, explaining to my mother that
+she was about to be married and desired only a temporary engagement to
+bridge over the few weeks between then and the ceremony.
+
+“It's rather unsatisfactory,” had said my mother. “I dislike changes.”
+
+“I can quite understand it, mum,” had replied Amy; “I dislike 'em
+myself. Only I heard you were in a hurry, and I thought maybe that while
+you were on the lookout for somebody permanent--”
+
+So on that understanding she came. A month later my mother asked her
+when she thought the marriage would actually take place.
+
+“Don't think I'm wishing you to go,” explained my mother, “indeed I'd
+like you to stop. I only want to know in time to make my arrangements.”
+
+“Oh, some time in the spring, I expect,” was Amy's answer.
+
+“Oh!” said my mother, “I understood it was coming off almost
+immediately.”
+
+Amy appeared shocked.
+
+“I must know a little bit more about him before I go as far as that,”
+ she said.
+
+“But I don't understand,” said my mother; “you told me when you came to
+me that you were going to be married in a few weeks.”
+
+“Oh, that one!” Her tone suggested that an unfair strain was being put
+upon her memory. “I didn't feel I wanted him as much as I thought I did
+when it came to the point.”
+
+“You had meantime met the other one?” suggested my mother, with a smile.
+
+“Well, we can't help our feelings, can we, mum?” admitted Amy, frankly,
+“and what I always say is”--she spoke as one with experience even
+then--“better change your mind before it's too late afterwards.”
+
+Amiable, sweet-faced, broad-hearted Amy! most faithful of friends, but
+oh! most faithless of lovers. Age has not withered nor custom staled her
+liking for infinite variety. Butchers, bakers, soldiers, sailors, Jacks
+of all trades! Does the sighing procession never pass before you, Amy,
+pointing ghostly fingers of reproach! Still Amy is engaged. To whom at
+the particular moment I cannot say, but I fancy to an early one who has
+lately become a widower. After more exact knowledge I do not care to
+enquire; for to confess ignorance on the subject, implying that one has
+treated as a triviality and has forgotten the most important detail of
+a matter that to her is of vital importance, is to hurt her feelings;
+while to angle for information is but to entangle oneself. To speak of
+Him as “Tom,” when Tom has belonged for weeks to the dead and buried
+past, to hastily correct oneself to “Dick” when there hasn't been a Dick
+for years, clearly not to know that he is now Harry, annoys her even
+more. In my mother's time we always referred to him as “Dearest.” It was
+the title with which she herself distinguished them all, and it avoided
+confusion.
+
+“Well, and how's Dearest?” my mother would enquire, opening the door to
+Amy on the Sunday evening.
+
+“Oh, very well indeed, mum, thank you, and he sends you his respects,”
+ or, “Well, not so nicely as I could wish. I'm a little anxious about
+him, poor dear!”
+
+“When you are married you will be able to take good care of him.”
+
+“That's really what he wants--some one to take care of him. It's what
+they all want, the poor dears.”
+
+“And when is it coming off?”
+
+“In the spring, mum.” She always chose the spring when possible.
+
+Amy was nice to all men, and to Amy all men were nice. Could she have
+married a dozen, she might have settled down, with only occasional
+regrets concerning those left without in the cold. But to ask her to
+select only one out of so many “poor dears” was to suggest shameful
+waste of affection.
+
+We had meant to keep our grim secret to ourselves; but to hide one's
+troubles long from Amy was like keeping cold hands from the fire. Very
+soon she knew everything that was to be known, drawing it all from my
+mother as from some overburdened child. Then she put my mother down into
+a chair and stood over her.
+
+“Now you leave the house and everything connected with it to me, mum,”
+ commanded Amy; “you've got something else to do.”
+
+And from that day we were in the hands of Amy, and had nothing else to
+do but praise the Lord for His goodness.
+
+Barbara also found out (from Washburn, I expect), though she said
+nothing, but came often. Old Hasluck would have come himself, I am
+sure, had he thought he would be welcome. As it was, he always sent
+kind messages and presents of fruit and flowers by Barbara, and always
+welcomed me most heartily whenever she allowed me to see her home.
+
+She brought, as ever, sunshine with her, making all trouble seem far off
+and shadowy. My mother tended to the fire of love, but Barbara lit the
+cheerful lamp of laughter.
+
+And with the lessening days my father seemed to grow younger, life lying
+lighter on him.
+
+One summer's night he and I were walking with Barbara to Poplar station,
+for sometimes, when he was not looking tired, she would order him to
+fetch his hat and stick, explaining to him with a caress, “I like them
+tall and slight and full grown. The young ones, they don't know how to
+flirt! We will take the boy with us as gooseberry;” and he, pretending
+to be anxious that my mother did not see, would kiss her hand, and slip
+out quietly with her arm linked under his. It was admirable the way he
+would enter into the spirit of the thing.
+
+The last cloud faded from before the moon as we turned the corner, and
+even the East India Dock Road lay restful in front of us.
+
+“I have always regarded myself,” said my father, “as a failure in life,
+and it has troubled me.” I felt him pulled the slightest little bit
+away from me, as though Barbara, who held his other arm, had drawn him
+towards her with a swift pressure. “But do you know the idea that has
+come to me within the last few months? That on the whole I have been
+successful. I am like a man,” continued my father, “who in some deep
+wood has been frightened, thinking he has lost his way, and suddenly
+coming to the end of it, finds that by some lucky chance he has been
+guided to the right point after all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it
+is to me.
+
+“What is the right point?” asked Barbara.
+
+“Ah, that I cannot tell you,” answered my father, with a laugh. “I only
+know that for me it is here where I am. All the time I thought I was
+wandering away from it I was drawing nearer to it. It is very wonderful.
+I am just where I ought to be. If I had only known I never need have
+worried.”
+
+Whether it would have troubled either him or my mother very much even
+had it been otherwise I cannot say, for Life, so small a thing when
+looked at beside Death, seemed to have lost all terror for them; but be
+that as it may, I like to remember that Fortune at the last was kind
+to my father, prospering his adventures, not to the extent his sanguine
+nature had dreamt, but sufficiently: so that no fear for our future
+marred the peaceful passing of his tender spirit.
+
+Or should I award thanks not to Fate, but rather to sweet Barbara,
+and behind her do I not detect shameless old Hasluck, grinning
+good-naturedly in the background?
+
+“Now, Uncle Luke, I want your advice. Dad's given me this cheque as a
+birthday present. I don't want to spend it. How shall I invest it?”
+
+“My dear, why not consult your father?”
+
+“Now, Uncle Luke, dad's a dear, especially after dinner, but you and
+I know him. Giving me a present is one thing, doing business for me
+is another. He'd unload on me. He'd never be able to resist the
+temptation.”
+
+My father would suggest, and Barbara would thank him. But a minute later
+would murmur: “You don't know anything about Argentinos.”
+
+My father did not, but Barbara did; to quite a remarkable extent for a
+young girl.
+
+“That child has insisted on leaving this cheque with me and I have
+advised her to buy Argentinos,” my father would observe after she was
+gone. “I am going to put a few hundreds into them myself. I hope they
+will turn out all right, if only for her sake. I have a presentiment
+somehow that they will.”
+
+A month later Barbara would greet him with: “Isn't it lucky we bought
+Argentinos!”
+
+“Yes; they haven't turned out badly, have they? I had a feeling, you
+know, for Argentinos.”
+
+“You're a genius, Uncle Luke. And now we will sell out and buy
+Calcuttas, won't we?”
+
+“Sell out? But why?”
+
+“You said so. You said, 'We will sell out in about a month and be quite
+safe.'”
+
+“My dear, I've no recollection of it.”
+
+But Barbara had, and before she had done with him, so had he. And the
+next day Argentinos would be sold--not any too soon--and Calcuttas
+bought.
+
+Could money so gained bring a blessing with it? The question would
+plague my father.
+
+“It's very much like gambling,” he would mutter uneasily to himself at
+each success, “uncommonly like gambling.”
+
+“It is for your mother,” he would impress upon me. “When she is gone,
+Paul, put it aside, Keep it for doing good; that may make it clean.
+Start your own life without any help from it.”
+
+He need not have troubled. It went the road that all luck derived
+however indirectly from old Hasluck ever went. Yet it served good
+purpose on its way.
+
+But the most marvellous feat, to my thinking, ever accomplished by
+Barbara was the bearing off of my father and mother to witness “A Voice
+from the Grave, or the Power of Love, New and Original Drama in five
+acts and thirteen tableaux.”
+
+They had been bred in a narrow creed, both my father and my mother. That
+Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has drowned
+much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from hearsay
+do foolishly to speak but ill of it. If ever earnest times should
+come again, not how to enjoy but how to live being the question, Fate
+demanding of us to show not what we have but what we are, we may regret
+that they are fewer among us than formerly, those who trained themselves
+to despise all pleasure, because in pleasure they saw the subtlest foe
+to principle and duty. No graceful growth, this Puritanism, for its
+roots are in the hard, stern facts of life; but it is strong, and from
+it has sprung all that is worth preserving in the Anglo-Saxon character.
+Its men feared and its women loved God, and if their words were harsh
+their hearts were tender. If they shut out the sunshine from their lives
+it was that their eyes might see better the glory lying beyond; and if
+their view be correct, that earth's threescore years and ten are but
+as preparation for eternity, then who shall call them even foolish for
+turning away their thoughts from its allurements.
+
+“Still, I think I should like to have a look at one, just to see what it
+is like,” argued my father; “one cannot judge of a thing that one knows
+nothing about.”
+
+I imagine it was his first argument rather than his second that
+convinced my mother.
+
+“That is true,” she answered. “I remember how shocked my poor father
+was when he found me one night at the bedroom window reading Sir Walter
+Scott by the light of the moon.”
+
+“What about the boy?” said my father, for I had been included in the
+invitation.
+
+“We will all be wicked together,” said my mother.
+
+So an evening or two later the four of us stood at the corner of Pigott
+Street waiting for the 'bus.
+
+“It is a close evening,” said my father; “let's go the whole hog and
+ride outside.”
+
+In those days for a lady to ride outside a 'bus was as in these days for
+a lady to smoke in public. Surely my mother's guardian angel must have
+betaken himself off in a huff.
+
+“Will you keep close behind and see to my skirt?” answered my mother,
+commencing preparations. If you will remember that these were the days
+of crinolines, that the “knife-boards” of omnibuses were then approached
+by a perpendicular ladder, the rungs two feet apart, you will understand
+the necessity for such precaution.
+
+Which of us was the most excited throughout that long ride it would be
+difficult to say. Barbara, feeling keenly her responsibility as prompter
+and leader of the dread enterprise, sat anxious, as she explained to us
+afterwards, hoping there would be nothing shocking in the play, nothing
+to belie its innocent title; pleased with her success so far, yet
+still fearful of failure, doubtful till the last moment lest we should
+suddenly repent, and stopping the 'bus, flee from the wrath to come.
+My father was the youngest of us all. Compared with him I was sober and
+contained. He fidgeted: people remarked upon it. He hummed. But for
+the stern eye of a thin young man sitting next to him trying to read
+a paper, I believe he would have broken out into song. Every minute he
+would lean across to enquire of my mother: “How are you feeling--all
+right?” To which my mother would reply with a nod and a smile, She sat
+very silent herself, clasping and unclasping her hands. As for myself,
+I remember feeling so sorry for the crowds that passed us on their way
+home. It was sad to think of the long dull evening that lay before them.
+I wondered how they could face it.
+
+Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle. The lights were low
+and the house only half full when we reached them.
+
+“It seems very orderly and--and respectable,” whispered my mother. There
+seemed a touch of disappointment in her tone.
+
+“We are rather early,” replied Barbara; “it will be livelier when the
+band comes in and they turn up the gas.”
+
+But even when this happened my mother was not content. “There is so
+little room for the actors,” she complained.
+
+It was explained to her that the green curtain would go up, that the
+stage lay behind.
+
+So we waited, my mother sitting stiffly on the extreme edge of her
+seat, holding me tightly by the hand; I believe with some vague idea of
+flight, should out of that vault-scented gloom the devil suddenly appear
+to claim us for his own. But before the curtain was quite up she had
+forgotten him.
+
+You poor folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps
+oftener, what do you know of plays? You see no drama, you see but
+middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly
+pretending to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the
+Chemist, making believe to be a haughty Princess. How can you, a grown
+man, waste money on a seat to witness such tomfoolery! What we saw was
+something very different. A young and beautiful girl--true, not a lady
+by birth, being merely the daughter of an honest yeoman, but one equal
+in all the essentials of womanhood to the noblest in the land--suffered
+before our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had one not seen it
+for oneself, one would never have believed Fate could have accumulated
+upon the head of any single individual. Beside her woes our own poor
+troubles sank into insignificance. We had used to grieve, as my mother
+in a whisper reminded my father, if now and again we had not been able
+to afford meat for dinner. This poor creature, driven even from her
+wretched attic, compelled to wander through the snow without so much as
+an umbrella to protect her, had not even a crust to eat; and yet never
+lost her faith in Providence. It was a lesson, as my mother remarked
+afterwards, that she should never forget. And virtue had been
+triumphant, let shallow cynics say what they will. Had we not proved it
+with our own senses? The villain--I think his Christian name, if one
+can apply the word “Christian” in connection with such a fiend, was
+Jasper--had never really loved the heroine. He was incapable of love. My
+mother had felt this before he had been on the stage five minutes, and
+my father--in spite of protests from callous people behind who appeared
+to be utterly indifferent to what was going on under their very
+noses--had agreed with her. What he was in love with was her
+fortune--the fortune that had been left to her by her uncle in
+Australia, but about which nobody but the villain knew anything. Had
+she swerved a hair's breadth from the course of almost supernatural
+rectitude, had her love for the hero ever weakened, her belief in
+him--in spite of damning evidence to the contrary--for a moment wavered,
+then wickedness might have triumphed. How at times, knowing all the
+facts but helpless to interfere, we trembled, lest deceived by the
+cruel lies the villain told her; she should yield to importunity. How
+we thrilled when, in language eloquent though rude, she flung his false
+love back into his teeth. Yet still we feared. We knew well that it was
+not the hero who had done the murder. “Poor dear,” as Amy would have
+called him, he was quite incapable of doing anything requiring one-half
+as much smartness. We knew that it was not he, poor innocent lamb! who
+had betrayed the lady with the French accent; we had heard her on the
+subject and had formed a very shrewd conjecture. But appearances,
+we could not help admitting, were terribly to his disfavour. The
+circumstantial evidence against him would have hanged an Archbishop.
+Could she in face of it still retain her faith? There were moments when
+my mother restrained with difficulty her desire to rise and explain.
+
+Between the acts Barbara would whisper to her that she was not to mind,
+because it was only a play, and that everything would be sure to come
+right in the end.
+
+“I know, my dear,” my mother would answer, laughing, “it is very foolish
+of me; I forget. Paul, when you see me getting excited, you must remind
+me.”
+
+But of what use was I in such case! I, who only by holding on to the
+arms of my seat could keep myself from swarming down on to the stage
+to fling myself between this noble damsel and her persecutor--this
+fair-haired, creamy angel in whose presence for the time being I had
+forgotten even Barbara.
+
+The end came at last. The uncle from Australia was not dead. The
+villain--bungler as well as knave--had killed the wrong man, somebody of
+no importance whatever. As a matter of fact, the comic man himself was
+the uncle from Australia--had been so all along. My mother had had a
+suspicion of this from the very first. She told us so three times, to
+make up, I suppose, for not having mentioned it before. How we cheered
+and laughed, in spite of the tears in our eyes.
+
+By pure accident it happened to be the first night of the piece, and
+the author, in response to much shouting and whistling, came before the
+curtain. He was fat and looked commonplace; but I deemed him a genius,
+and my mother said he had a good face, and waved her handkerchief
+wildly; while my father shouted “Bravo!” long after everybody else had
+finished; and people round about muttered “packed house,” which I didn't
+understand at the time, but came to later.
+
+And stranger still, it happened to be before that very same curtain
+that many years later I myself stepped forth to make my first bow as a
+playwright. I saw the house but dimly, for on such occasion one's vision
+is apt to be clouded. All that I saw clearly was in the front row of the
+second circle--a sweet face laughing though the tears were in her eyes;
+and she waved to me a handkerchief. And on one side of her stood a
+gallant gentleman with merry eyes who shouted “Bravo!” and on the other
+a dreamy-looking lad; but he appeared disappointed, having expected
+better work from me. And the fourth face I could not see, for it was
+turned away from me.
+
+Barbara, determined on completeness, insisted upon supper. In those
+days respectability fed at home; but one resort possible there was, an
+eating-house with some pretence to gaiety behind St. Clement Danes,
+and to that she led us. It was a long, narrow room, divided into wooden
+compartments, after the old coffee-house plan, a gangway down the
+centre. Now we should call it a dismal hole, and closing the door hasten
+away. But to Adam, Eve in her Sunday fig-leaves was a stylishly dressed
+woman; and to my eyes, with its gilded mirrors and its flaring gas, the
+place seemed a palace.
+
+Barbara ordered oysters, a fish that familiarity with its empty shell
+had made me curious concerning. Truly no spot on the globe is so rich in
+oyster shells as the East End of London. A stranger might be led to the
+impression (erroneous) that the customary lunch of the East End labourer
+consists of oysters. How they collect there in such quantities is a
+mystery, though Washburn, to whom I once presented the problem, found no
+difficulty in solving it to his own satisfaction: “To the rich man the
+oyster; to the poor man the shell; thus are the Creator's gifts divided
+among all His creatures; none being sent empty away.” For drink the
+others had stout and I had ginger beer. The waiter, who called me “Sir,”
+ advised against this mixture; but among us all the dominating sentiment
+by this time was that nothing really mattered very much. Afterwards my
+father called for a cigar and boldly lighted it, though my mother looked
+anxious; and fortunately perhaps it would not draw. And then it came out
+that he himself had once written a play.
+
+“You never told me of that,” complained my mother.
+
+“It was a long while ago,” replied my father; “nothing came of it.”
+
+“It might have been a success,” said my mother; “you always had a gift
+for writing.”
+
+“I must look it over again,” said my father; “I had quite forgotten it.
+I have an impression it wasn't at all bad.”
+
+“It can be of much help,” said my mother, “a good play. It makes one
+think.”
+
+We put Barbara into a cab and rode home ourselves inside a 'bus. My
+mother was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her
+to lean against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his
+shoulder. A coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man's arm round her
+likewise, and she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his coat.
+
+“They can do with a bit of nursing, can't they?” said the man with a
+grin to the conductor.
+
+“Ah, they're just kids,” agreed the conductor, sympathetically, “that's
+what they are, all of 'em, just kids.”
+
+So the day ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without
+a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!--no comic
+uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life!
+Even my mother at moments was quite irritable.
+
+We were much together again, my father and I, about this time. Often,
+making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him, he
+leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm. To this day I can
+always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road. And on Saturday
+afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb the hill and
+sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together, watching the
+dim vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.
+
+At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying. The “year to two”
+ of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in
+my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile
+he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I
+know it was his great heart rising to his need.
+
+The comprehension came to me suddenly. It was one afternoon in early
+spring. I was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was
+then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always
+much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a
+block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely
+crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful
+jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of
+physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror
+and the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might
+be dead before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a
+smile as usual, and I flung myself sobbing into his arms.
+
+I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had
+had a fear something had happened to him, for from that time forward
+he dropped all reserve with me, and talked openly of our approaching
+parting.
+
+“It might have come to us earlier, my dear boy,” he would say with his
+arm round me, “or it might have been a little later. A year or so one
+way or the other, what does it matter? And it is only for a little
+while, Paul. We shall meet again.”
+
+But I could not answer him, for clutch them to me as I would, all my
+beliefs--the beliefs in which I had been bred, the beliefs that until
+then I had never doubted, in that hour of their first trial, were
+falling from me. I could not even pray. If I could have prayed for
+anything, it would have been for my father's life. But if prayer were
+all powerful, as they said, would our loved ones ever die? Man has not
+faith enough, they would explain; if he had there would be no parting.
+So the Lord jests with His creatures, offering with the one hand to
+snatch back with the other. I flung the mockery from me. There was no
+firm foothold anywhere. What were all the religions of the word but
+narcotics with which Humanity seeks to dull its pain, drugs in which it
+drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble that death pricks.
+
+I do not mean my thoughts took this form. I was little more than a lad,
+and to the young all thought is dumb, speaking only with a cry. But they
+were there, vague, inarticulate. Thoughts do not come to us as we grow
+older. They are with us all our lives. We learn their language, that is
+all.
+
+One fair still evening it burst from me. We had lingered in the Park
+longer than usual, slowly pacing the broad avenue leading from the
+Observatory to the Heath. I poured forth all my doubts and fears--that
+he was leaving me for ever, that I should never see him again, I could
+not believe. What could I do to believe?
+
+“I am glad you have spoken, Paul,” he said, “it would have been sad had
+we parted not understanding each other. It has been my fault. I did not
+know you had these doubts. They come to all of us sooner or later. But
+we hide them from one another. It is foolish.”
+
+“But tell me,” I cried, “what can I do? How can I make myself believe?”
+
+“My dear lad,” answered my father, “how can it matter what we believe or
+disbelieve? It will not alter God's facts. Would you liken Him to some
+irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?”
+
+“What do you believe,” I asked, “father, really I mean.”
+
+The night had fallen. My father put his arm round me and drew me to him.
+
+“That we are God's children, little brother,” he answered, “that what He
+wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be best.
+I cannot think that He will let us die: that were to think of Him as
+without purpose. But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him.
+'Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.'”
+
+We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.
+
+“'Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity'--you remember
+the verse--Faith in God's goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may
+be fulfiled. But these concern but ourselves--the greatest of all is
+Charity.”
+
+Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and
+there a point of light.
+
+“Be kind, that is all it means,” continued my father. “Often we do what
+we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We
+cannot understand--maybe the old laws we have misread. But the new Law,
+that we love one another--all creatures He has made; that is so clear.
+And if it be that we are here together only for a little while, Paul,
+the future dark, how much the greater need have we of one another.”
+
+I looked up into my father's face, and the peace that shone from it slid
+into my soul and gave me strength.
+
+
+
+
+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!
+“O 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, between long, lifeless walls. I
+looked into Hal's face from time to time, and he was laughing; but every
+now and then he would look over his shoulder at the man behind him still
+following doggedly, and then his face would be twisted into a comically
+terrified grimace. Turning into a narrow cul-de-sac, Hal suddenly ducked
+behind a wide brick buttress, and the man, still running, passed us.
+And then Hal stood up and called to him, and the man turned, looked into
+Hal's eyes, and understood.
+
+He was not a coward. Besides, even a rat when cornered will fight for
+its life. He made a rush at Hal, and Hal made no attempt to defend
+himself. He stood there laughing, and the man struck him full in the
+face, and the blood spurted out and flowed down into his mouth. The
+man came on again, though terror was in every line of his face, all his
+desire being to escape. But this time Hal drove him back again. They
+fought for awhile, if one can call it fighting, till the man, mad for
+air, reeled against the wall, stood there quivering convulsively, his
+mouth wide open, resembling more than anything else some huge dying
+fish. And Hal drew away and waited.
+
+I have no desire to see again the sight I saw that quiet, still evening,
+framed by those high, windowless walls, from behind which sounded with
+ceaseless regularity the gentle swish of the incoming tide. All sense of
+retribution was drowned in the sight of Hal's evident enjoyment of his
+sport. The judge had disappeared, leaving the work to be accomplished by
+a savage animal loosened for the purpose.
+
+The wretched creature flung itself again towards its only door of
+escape, fought with the vehemence of despair, to be flung back again, a
+hideous, bleeding mass of broken flesh. I tried to cling to Hal's arm,
+but one jerk of his steel muscles flung me ten feet away.
+
+“Keep off, you fool!” he cried. “I won't kill him. I'm keeping my head.
+I shall know when to stop.” And I crept away and waited.
+
+Hal joined me a little later, wiping the blood from his face. We made
+our way to a small public-house near the river, and from there Hal sent
+a couple of men on whom he could rely with instructions how to act. I
+never heard any more of the matter. It was a subject on which I did not
+care to speak to Hal. I can only hope that good came of it.
+
+There was a spot--it has been cleared away since to make room for the
+approach to Greenwich Tunnel--it was then the entrance to a grain depot
+in connection with the Milwall Docks. A curious brick well it resembled,
+in the centre of which a roadway wound downward, corkscrew fashion,
+disappearing at the bottom into darkness under a yawning arch. The place
+possessed the curious property of being ever filled with a ceaseless
+murmur, as though it were some aerial maelstrom, drawing into its
+silent vacuum all wandering waves of sound from the restless human ocean
+flowing round it. No single tone could one ever distinguish: it was
+a mingling of all voices, heard there like the murmur of a sea-soaked
+shell.
+
+We passed through it on our return. Its work for the day was finished,
+its strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons thundering
+up and down its spiral way. Hal paused, leaning against the railings
+that encircled its centre, and listened.
+
+“Hark, do you not hear it, Paul?” he asked. “It is the music of
+Humanity. All human notes are needful to its making: the faint wail of
+the new-born, the cry of the dying thief; the beating of the hammers,
+the merry trip of dancers; the clatter of the teacups, the roaring of
+the streets; the crooning of the mother to her babe, the scream of the
+tortured child; the meeting kiss of lovers, the sob of those that part.
+Listen! prayers and curses, sighs and laughter; the soft breathing of
+the sleeping, the fretful feet of pain; voices of pity, voices of hate;
+the glad song of the strong, the foolish complaining of the weak. Listen
+to it, Paul! Right and wrong, good and evil, hope and despair, it is but
+one voice--a single note, drawn by the sweep of the Player's hand across
+the quivering strings of man. What is the meaning of it, Paul? Can you
+read it? Sometimes it seems to me a note of joy, so full, so endless,
+so complete, that I cry: 'Blessed be the Lord whose hammers have beaten
+upon us, whose fires have shaped us to His ends!' And sometimes it
+sounds to me a dying note, so that I could curse Him who in wantonness
+has wrung it from the anguish of His creatures--till I would that
+I could fling myself, Prometheus like, between Him and His victims,
+calling: 'My darkness, but their light; my agony, O God; their hope!'”
+
+The faint light from a neighbouring gas-lamp fell upon his face that
+an hour before I had seen the face of a wild beast. The ugly mouth was
+quivering, tears stood in his great, tender eyes. Could his prayer in
+that moment have been granted, could he have pressed against his bosom
+all the pain of the world, he would have rejoiced.
+
+He shook himself together with a laugh. “Come, Paul, we have had a busy
+afternoon, and I'm thirsty. Let us drink some beer, my boy, good sound
+beer, and plenty of it.”
+
+My mother fell ill that winter. Mountain born and mountain bred, the
+close streets had never agreed with her, and scolded by all of us, she
+promised, “come the fine weather,” to put sentiment behind her, and go
+away from them.
+
+“I'm thinking she will,” said Hal, gripping my shoulder with his strong
+hand, “but it'll be by herself that she'll go, lad. My wonder is,” he
+continued, “that she has held out so long. If anything, it is you that
+have kept her alive. Now that you are off her mind to a certain extent,
+she is worrying about your father, I expect. These women, they never
+will believe a man can take care of himself, even in Heaven. She's never
+quite trusted the Lord with him, and never will till she's there to give
+an eye to things herself.”
+
+Hal's prophecy fell true. She left “come the fine weather,” as she had
+promised: I remember it was the first day primroses were hawked in the
+street. But another death had occurred just before; which, concerning me
+closely as it does, I had better here dispose of; and that was the death
+of old Mr. Stillwood, who passed away rich in honour and regret, and was
+buried with much ostentation and much sincere sorrow; for he had been to
+many of his clients, mostly old folk, rather a friend than a mere man
+of business, and had gained from all with whom he had come in contact,
+respect, and from many real affection.
+
+In conformity with the old legal fashions that in his life he had so
+fondly clung to, his will was read aloud by Mr. Gadley after the return
+from the funeral, and many were the tears its recital called forth.
+Written years ago by himself and never altered, its quaint phraseology
+was full of kindly thought and expression. No one had been forgotten.
+Clerks, servants, poor relations, all had been treated with even-handed
+justice, while for those with claim upon him, ample provision had
+been made. Few wills, I think, could ever have been read less open to
+criticism.
+
+Old Gadley slipped his arm into mine as we left the house. “If you've
+nothing to do, young 'un,” he said, “I'll get you to come with me to the
+office. I have got all the keys in my pocket, and we shall be quiet.
+It will be sad work for me, and I had rather we were alone. A couple of
+hours will show us everything.”
+
+We lighted the wax candles--old Stillwood could never tolerate gas in
+his own room--and opening the safe took out the heavy ledgers one by
+one, and from them Gadley dictated figures which I wrote down and added
+up.
+
+“Thirty years I have kept these books for him,” said old Gadley, as we
+laid by the last of them, “thirty years come Christmas next, he and I
+together. No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now people
+to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them about,
+drop greasy crumbs upon them--I know their ways, the brutes!--scribble
+all over them. And he who always would have everything so neat and
+orderly!”
+
+We came to the end of them in less than the time old Gadley had thought
+needful: in such perfect order had everything been maintained. I was
+preparing to go, but old Gadley had drawn a couple of small keys from
+his pocket, and was shuffling again towards the safe.
+
+“Only one more,” he explained in answer to my look, “his own private
+ledger. It will merely be in the nature of a summary, but we'll just
+glance through it.”
+
+He opened an inner drawer and took from it a small thick volume bound
+in green leather and closed with two brass locks. An ancient volume, it
+appeared, its strong binding faded and stained. Old Gadley sat down
+with it at the dead man's own desk, and snuffing the two shaded candles,
+unlocked and opened it. I was standing opposite, so that the book to me
+was upside down, but the date on the first page, “1841,” caught my eye,
+as also the small neat writing now brown with age.
+
+“So neat, so orderly he always was,” murmured old Gadley again,
+smoothing the page affectionately with his hand, and I waited for his
+dictation.
+
+But no glib flow of figures fell from him. His eyebrows suddenly
+contracted, his body stiffened itself. Then for the next quarter of an
+hour nothing sounded in the quiet room but his turning of the creakling
+pages. Once or twice he glanced round swiftly over his shoulder, as
+though haunted by the idea of some one behind him; then back to the
+neat, closely written folios, his little eyes, now exhibiting a comical
+look of horror, starting out of his round red face. First slowly, then
+quickly with trembling hands he turned the pages, till the continual
+ratling of the leaves sounded like strange, mocking laughter through
+the silent, empty room; almost one could imagine it coming from some
+watching creature hidden in the shadows.
+
+The end reached, he sat staring before him, his whole body quivering,
+great beads of sweat upon his shiny bald head.
+
+“Am I mad?” was all he could find to say. “Kelver, am I mad?”
+
+He handed me the book. It was a cynically truthful record of fraud,
+extending over thirty years. Every client, every friend, every relative
+that had fallen into his net he had robbed: the fortunate ones of a
+part, the majority of their all. Its very first entry debited him
+with the proceeds of his own partner's estate. Its last ran--“Re
+Kelver--various sales of stock.” To his credit were his payments year
+after year of imaginary interests on imaginary securities, the surplus
+accounted for with simple brevity: “Transferred to own account.” No
+record could have been more clear, more frank. Beneath each transaction
+was written its true history; the actual investments, sometimes
+necessary, carefully distinguished from the false. In neat red ink would
+occur here and there a note for his own guidance: “Eldest child comes of
+age August, '73. Be prepared for trustees desiring production.” Turning
+to “August, '73,” one found that genuine investment had been made, to
+be sold again a few months later on. From beginning to end not a single
+false step had he committed. Suspicious clients had been ear-marked:
+the trusting discriminated with gratitude, and milked again and again to
+meet emergency.
+
+As a piece of organisation it was magnificent. No one but a financial
+genius could have picked a dozen steps through such a network of
+chicanery. For half a lifetime he had moved among it, dignified,
+respected and secure.
+
+Whether even he could have maintained his position for another month was
+doubtful. Suicide, though hinted at, was proved to have been impossible.
+It seemed as though with his amazing audacity he had tricked even Death
+into becoming his accomplice.
+
+“But it is impossible, Kelver!” cried Gadley, “this must be some dream.
+Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal! What is the meaning of it?”
+
+He took the book into his hands again, then burst into tears. “You never
+knew him,” wailed the poor little man. “Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal!
+I came here as office boy fifty years ago. He was more like a friend to
+me than--” and again the sobs shook his little fat body.
+
+I locked the books away and put him into his hat and coat. But I had
+much difficulty in getting him out of the office.
+
+“I daren't, young 'un,” he cried, drawing back. “Fifty years I have
+walked out of this office, proud of it, proud of being connected with
+it. I daren't face the street!”
+
+All the way home his only idea was: Could it not be hidden? Honest,
+kindly little man that he was, he seemed to have no thought for the
+unfortunate victims. The good name of his master, of his friend, gone!
+Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal, a by-word! To have avoided that I
+believe he would have been willing for yet another hundred clients to be
+ruined.
+
+I saw him to his door, then turned homeward; and to my surprise in
+a dark by-street heard myself laughing heartily. I checked myself
+instantly, feeling ashamed of my callousness, of my seeming indifference
+to the trouble even of myself and my mother. Yet as there passed before
+me the remembrance of that imposing and expensive funeral with its
+mournful following of tearful faces; the hushed reading of the will with
+its accompaniment of rustling approval; the picture of the admirably
+sympathetic clergyman consoling with white hands Mrs. Stillwood,
+inclined to hysteria, but anxious concerning her two hundred pounds'
+worth of crape which by no possibility of means could now be paid
+for--recurred to me the obituary notice in “The Chelsea Weekly
+Chronicle”: the humour of the thing swept all else before it, and I
+laughed again--I could not help it--loud and long. It was my first
+introduction to the comedy of life, which is apt to be more brutal than
+the comedy of fiction.
+
+But nearing home, the serious side of the matter forced itself
+uppermost. Fortunately, our supposed dividends had been paid to us
+by Mr. Stillwood only the month before. Could I keep the thing from
+troubling my mother's last days? It would be hard work. I should have to
+do it alone, for a perhaps foolish pride prevented my taking Hal into my
+confidence, even made his friendship a dread to me, lest he should come
+to learn and offer help. There is a higher generosity, it is said, that
+can receive with pleasure as well as bestow favour; but I have never
+felt it. Could I be sure of acting my part, of not betraying myself to
+her sharp eyes, of keeping newspapers and chance gossip away from her?
+Good shrewd Amy I cautioned, but I shrank from even speaking on the
+subject to Hal, and my fear was lest he should blunder into the subject,
+which for the usual nine days occupied much public attention. But
+fortunately he appeared not even to have heard of the scandal.
+
+Possibly had the need lasted longer I might have failed, but as it was,
+a few weeks saw the end.
+
+“Don't leave me to-day, Paul,” whispered my mother to me one morning. So
+I stayed, and in the evening my mother put her arms around my neck and I
+lay beside her, my head upon her breast, as I used to when a little boy.
+And when the morning came I was alone.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED.
+
+“Room to let for a single gentleman.” Sometimes in an idle hour,
+impelled by foolishness, I will knock at the door. It is opened after a
+longer or shorter interval by the “slavey”--in the morning, slatternly,
+her arms concealed beneath her apron; in the afternoon, smart in dirty
+cap and apron. How well I know her! Unchanged, not grown an inch--her
+round bewildered eyes, her open mouth, her touzled hair, her scored red
+hands. With an effort I refrain from muttering: “So sorry, forgot
+my key,” from pushing past her and mounting two at a time the narrow
+stairs, carpeted to the first floor, but bare beyond. Instead, I say,
+“Oh, what rooms have you to let?” when, scuttling to the top of the
+kitchen stairs, she will call over the banisters: “A gentleman to see
+the rooms.” There comes up, panting, a harassed-looking, elderly
+female, but genteel in black. She crushes past the little “slavey,” and
+approaching, eyes me critically.
+
+“I have a very nice room on the first floor,” she informs me, “and one
+behind on the third.”
+
+I agree to see them, explaining that I am seeking them for a young
+friend of mine. We squeeze past the hat and umbrella stand: there is
+just room, but one must keep close to the wall. The first floor is
+rather an imposing apartment, with a marble-topped sideboard measuring
+quite three feet by two, the doors of which will remain closed if you
+introduce a wad of paper between them. A green table-cloth, matching the
+curtains, covers the loo-table. The lamp is perfectly safe so long as
+it stands in the exact centre of the table, but should not be shifted.
+A paper fire-stove ornament in some mysterious way bestows upon the room
+an air of chastity. Above the mantelpiece is a fly-blown mirror, between
+the once gilt frame and glass of which can be inserted invitation
+cards; indeed, one or two so remain, proving that the tenants even of
+“bed-sitting-rooms” are not excluded from social delights. The wall
+opposite is adorned by an oleograph of the kind Cheap Jacks sell
+by auction on Saturday nights in the Pimlico Road, and warrant as
+“hand-made.” Generally speaking, it is a Swiss landscape. There appears
+to be more “body” in a Swiss landscape than in scenes from less favoured
+localities. A dilapidated mill, a foaming torrent, a mountain, a maiden
+and a cow can at the least be relied upon. An easy chair (I disclaim
+all responsibility for the adjective), stuffed with many coils of steel
+wire, each possessing a “business end” in admirable working order, and
+covered with horsehair, highly glazed, awaits the uninitiated. There is
+one way of sitting upon it, and only one: by using the extreme edge, and
+planting your feet firmly on the floor. If you attempt to lean back in
+it you inevitably slide out of it. When so treated it seems to say to
+you: “Excuse me, you are very heavy, and you would really be much more
+comfortable upon the floor. Thank you so much.” The bed is behind the
+door, and the washstand behind the bed. If you sit facing the window you
+can forget the bed. On the other hand, if more than one friend come
+to call on you, you are glad of it. As a matter of fact, experienced
+visitors prefer it--make straight for it, refusing with firmness to
+exchange it for the easy chair.
+
+“And this room is?”
+
+“Eight shillings a week, sir--with attendance, of course.”
+
+“Any extras?”
+
+“The lamp, sir, is eighteenpence a week; and the kitchen fire, if the
+gentleman wishes to dine at home, two shillings.”
+
+“And fire?”
+
+“Sixpence a scuttle, sir, I charge for coals.”
+
+“It's rather a small scuttle.”
+
+The landlady bridles a little. “The usual size, I think, sir.” One
+presumes there is a special size in coal-scuttles made exclusively for
+lodging-house keepers.
+
+I agree that while I am about it I may as well see the other room,
+the third floor back. The landlady opens the door for me, but remains
+herself on the landing. She is a stout lady, and does not wish to dwarf
+the apartment by comparison. The arrangement here does not allow of your
+ignoring the bed. It is the life and soul of the room, and it
+declines to efface itself. Its only possible rival is the washstand,
+straw-coloured; with staring white basin and jug, together with other
+appurtenances. It glares defiantly from its corner. “I know I'm small,”
+ it seems to say; “but I'm very useful; and I won't be ignored.”
+ The remaining furniture consists of a couple of chairs--there is no
+hypocrisy about them: they are not easy and they do not pretend to be
+easy; a small chest of light-painted drawers before the window, with
+white china handles, upon which is a tiny looking-glass; and, occupying
+the entire remaining space, after allowing three square feet for the
+tenant, when he arrives, an attenuated four-legged table apparently
+home-made. The only ornament in the room is, suspended above the
+fireplace, a funeral card, framed in beer corks. As the corpse
+introduced by the ancient Egyptians into their banquets, it is hung
+there perhaps to remind the occupant of the apartment that the luxuries
+and allurements of life have their end; or maybe it consoles him in
+despondent moments with the reflection that after all he might be worse
+off.
+
+The rent of this room is three-and-sixpence a week, also including
+attendance; lamp, as for the first floor, eighteen-pence; but kitchen
+fire a shilling.
+
+“But why should kitchen fire for the first floor be two shillings, and
+for this only one?”
+
+“Well, as a rule, sir, the first floor wants more cooking done.”
+
+You are quite right, my dear lady, I was forgetting. The gentleman
+in the third floor back! cooking for him is not a great tax upon the
+kitchen fire. His breakfast, it is what, madam, we call plain, I think.
+His lunch he takes out. You may see him, walking round the quiet square,
+up and down the narrow street that, leading to nowhere in particular, is
+between twelve and two somewhat deserted. He carries a paper bag,
+into which at intervals, when he is sure nobody is looking, his mouth
+disappears. From studying the neighbourhood one can guess what it
+contains. Saveloys hereabouts are plentiful and only twopence each.
+There are pie shops, where meat pies are twopence and fruit pies a
+penny. The lady behind the counter, using deftly a broad, flat knife,
+lifts the little dainty with one twist clean from its tiny dish: it is
+marvellous, having regard to the thinness of the pastry, that she never
+breaks one. Roley-poley pudding, sweet and wonderfully satisfying, more
+especially when cold, is but a penny a slice. Peas pudding, though this
+is an awkward thing to eat out of a bag, is comforting upon cold days.
+Then with his tea he takes two eggs or a haddock, the fourpenny size;
+maybe on rare occasions, a chop or steak; and you fry it for him, madam,
+though every time he urges on you how much he would prefer it grilled,
+for fried in your one frying-pan its flavour becomes somewhat confused.
+But maybe this is the better for him, for, shutting his eyes and
+trusting only to smell and flavour, he can imagine himself enjoying
+variety. He can begin with herrings, pass on to liver and bacon, opening
+his eyes again for a moment perceive that he has now arrived at the
+joint, and closing them again, wind up with distinct suggestion of
+toasted cheese, thus avoiding monotony. For dinner he goes out again.
+Maybe he is not hungry, late meals are a mistake; or, maybe, putting
+his hand into his pocket and making calculations beneath a lamp-post,
+appetite may come to him. Then there are places cheerful with the sound
+of frizzling fat, where fried plaice brown and odorous may be had for
+three halfpence, and a handful of sliced potatoes for a penny; where for
+fourpence succulent stewed eels may be discussed; vinegar ad lib.; or
+for sevenpence--but these are red-letter evenings--half a sheep's head
+may be indulged in, which is a supper fit for any king, who happened to
+be hungry.
+
+I explain that I will discuss the matter with my young friend when he
+arrives. The landlady says, “Certainly, sir:” she is used to what she
+calls the “wandering Christian;” and easing my conscience by slipping a
+shilling into the “slavey's” astonished, lukewarm hand, I pass out
+again into the long, dreary street, now echoing maybe to the sad cry of
+“Muffins!”
+
+Or sometimes of an evening, the lamp lighted, the remnants of the meat
+tea cleared away, the flickering firelight cosifying the dingy rooms,
+I go a-visiting. There is no need for me to ring the bell, to mount the
+stairs. Through the thin transparent walls I can see you plainly,
+old friends of mine, fashions a little changed, that is all. We wore
+bell-shaped trousers; eight-and-six to measure, seven-and-six if from
+stock; fastened our neckties in dashing style with a horseshoe pin. I
+think in the matter of waistcoats we had the advantage of you; ours were
+gayer, braver. Our cuffs and collars were of paper: sixpence-halfpenny
+the dozen, three-halfpence the pair. On Sunday they were white and
+glistening; on Monday less aggressively obvious; on Tuesday morning
+decidedly dappled. But on Tuesday evening, when with natty cane, or
+umbrella neatly rolled in patent leather case, we took our promenade
+down Oxford Street--fashionable hour nine to ten p.m.--we could shoot
+our arms and cock our chins with the best. Your india-rubber linen has
+its advantages. Storm does not wither it; it braves better the heat and
+turmoil of the day. The passing of a sponge! and your “Dicky” is itself
+again. We had to use bread-crumbs, and so sacrifice the glaze. Yet I
+cannot help thinking that for the first few hours, at all events, our
+paper was more dazzling.
+
+For the rest I see no change in you, old friends. I wave you greeting
+from the misty street. God rest you, gallant gentlemen, lonely and
+friendless and despised; making the best of joyless lives; keeping
+yourselves genteel on twelve, fifteen, or eighteen (ah, but you are
+plutocrats!) shillings a week; saving something even of that, maybe, to
+help the old mother in the country, so proud of her “gentleman” son who
+has book learning and who is “something in the City.” May nothing you
+dismay. Bullied, and badgered, and baited from nine to six though you
+may be, from then till bedtime you are rorty young dogs. The half-guinea
+topper, “as worn by the Prince of Wales” (ah, how many a meal has it not
+cost!), warmed before the fire, brushed and polished and coaxed, shines
+resplendent. The second pair of trousers are drawn from beneath the bed;
+in the gaslight, with well-marked crease from top to toe, they will pass
+for new. A pleasant evening to you! May your cheap necktie make all the
+impression your soul can desire! May your penny cigar be mistaken for
+Havana! May the barmaid charm your simple heart by addressing you as
+“Baby!” May some sweet shop-girl throw a kindly glance at you, inviting
+you to walk with her! May she snigger at your humour; may other dogs
+cast envious looks at you, and may no harm come of it!
+
+You dreamers of dreams, you who while your companions play and sleep
+will toil upward in the night! You have read Mr. Smiles' “Self-Help,”
+Longfellow's “Psalm of Life,” and so strengthened attack with confidence
+“French Without a Master,” “Bookkeeping in Six Lessons.” With a sigh to
+yourselves you turn aside from the alluring streets, from the bright,
+bewitching eyes, into the stuffy air of Birkbeck Institutions,
+Polytechnic Schools. May success compensate you for your youth devoid of
+pleasure! May the partner's chair you seen in visions be yours before
+the end! May you live one day in Clapham in a twelve-roomed house!
+
+And, after all, we have our moments, have we not? The Saturday night at
+the play. The hours of waiting, they are short. We converse with kindred
+souls of the British Drama, its past and future: we have our views. We
+dream of Florence This, Kate That; in a little while we shall see
+her. Ah, could she but know how we loved her! Her photo is on our
+mantelpiece, transforming the dismal little room into a shrine. The poem
+we have so often commenced! when it is finished we will post it to her.
+At least she will acknowledge its receipt; we can kiss the paper her
+hand has rested on. The great doors groan, then quiver. Ah, the wild
+thrill of that moment! Now push for all you are worth: charge, wriggle,
+squirm! It is an epitome of life. We are through--collarless, panting,
+pummelled from top to toe: but what of that? Upward, still upward; then
+downward with leaps at risk of our neck, from bench to bench through the
+gloom. We have gained the front row! Would we exchange sensations with
+the stallite, strolling languidly to his seat? The extravagant dinner
+once a week! We banquet _a la Francais_, in Soho, for one-and-six,
+including wine. Does Tortoni ever give his customers a repast they enjoy
+more? I trow not.
+
+My first lodging was an attic in a square the other side of Blackfriars
+Bridge. The rent of the room, if I remember rightly, was three shillings
+a week with cooking, half-a-crown without. I purchased a methylated
+spirit stove with kettle and frying-pan, and took it without.
+
+Old Hasluck would have helped me willingly, and there were others to
+whom I might have appealed, but a boy's pride held me back. I would make
+my way alone, win my place in the world by myself. To Hal, knowing he
+would sympathise with me, I confided the truth.
+
+“Had your mother lived,” he told me, “I should have had something to say
+on the subject. Of course, I knew what had happened, but as it is--well,
+you need not be afraid, I shall not offer you help; indeed, I should
+refuse it were you to ask. Put your Carlyle in your pocket: he is not
+all voices, but he is the best maker of men I know. The great thing to
+learn of life is not to be afraid of it.”
+
+“Look me up now and then,” he added, “and we'll talk about the stars,
+the future of Socialism, and the Woman Question--anything you like
+except about yourself and your twopenny-half-penny affairs.”
+
+From another it would have sounded brutal, but I understood him. And
+so we shook hands and parted for longer than either of us at the time
+expected. The Franco-German War broke out a few weeks later on, and
+Hal, the love of adventure always strong within him, volunteered his
+services, which were accepted. It was some years before we met again.
+
+On the door-post of a house in Farringdon Street, not far from the
+Circus, stood in those days a small brass plate, announcing that the
+“Ludgate News Rooms” occupied the third and fourth floors, and that the
+admission to the same was one penny. We were a seedy company that every
+morning crowded into these rooms: clerks, shopmen, superior artisans,
+travellers, warehousemen--all of us out of work. Most of us were young,
+but with us was mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and these latter were
+always the saddest and most silent of this little whispering army of
+the down-at-heel. Roughly speaking, we were divided into two groups:
+the newcomers, cheery, confident. These would flit from newspaper to
+newspaper with buzz of pleasant anticipation, select their advertisement
+as one choosing some dainty out of a rich and varied menu card, and
+replying to it as one conferring favour.
+
+“Dear Sir,--in reply to your advertisement in to-day's _Standard_, I
+shall be pleased to accept the post vacant in your office. I am of good
+appearance and address. I am an excellent--” It was really marvellous
+the quality and number of our attainments. French! we wrote and spoke it
+fluently, _a la Ahn_. German! of this we possessed a slighter knowledge,
+it was true, but sufficient for mere purposes of commerce. Bookkeeping!
+arithmetic! geometry! we played with them. The love of work! it was a
+passion with us. Our moral character! it would have adorned a Free Kirk
+Elder. “I could call on you to-morrow or Friday between eleven and one,
+or on Saturday any time up till two. Salary required, two guineas a
+week. An early answer will oblige. Yours truly.”
+
+The old stagers did not buzz. Hour after hour they sat writing,
+steadily, methodically, with day by day less hope and heavier fears:
+
+“Sir,--Your advt. in to-day's _D. T._ I am--” of such and such an age.
+List of qualifications less lengthy, set forth with more modesty; object
+desired being air of verisimilitude.--“If you decide to engage me I will
+endeavour to give you every satisfaction. Any time you like to appoint
+I will call on you. I should not ask a high salary to start with. Yours
+obediently.”
+
+Dozens of the first letter, hundreds of the second, I wrote with painful
+care, pen carefully chosen, the one-inch margin down the left hand side
+of the paper first portioned off with dots. To three or four I received
+a curt reply, instructing me to call. But the shyness that had stood so
+in my way during the earlier half of my school days had now, I know not
+why, returned upon me, hampering me at every turn. A shy child grown-up
+folks at all events can understand and forgive; but a shy young man
+is not unnaturally regarded as a fool. I gave the impression of being
+awkward, stupid, sulky. The more I strove against my temperament
+the worse I became. My attempts to be at my ease, to assert myself,
+resulted--I could see it myself--only in rudeness.
+
+“Well, I have got to see one or two others. We will write and let you
+know,” was the conclusion of each interview, and the end, as far as I
+was concerned, of the enterprise.
+
+My few pounds, guard them how I would, were dwindling rapidly. Looking
+back, it is easy enough to regard one's early struggles from a humorous
+point of view. One knows the story, it all ended happily. But at the
+time there is no means of telling whether one's biography is going to be
+comedy or tragedy. There were moments when I felt confident it was going
+to be the latter. Occasionally, when one is feeling well, it is not
+unpleasant to contemplate with pathetic sympathy one's own death-bed.
+One thinks of the friends and relations who at last will understand and
+regret one, be sorry they had not behaved themselves better. But myself,
+there was no one to regret. I felt very small, very helpless. The world
+was big. I feared it might walk over me, trample me down, never seeing
+me. I seemed unable to attract its attention.
+
+One morning I found waiting for me at the Reading Room another of the
+usual missives. It ran: “Will Mr. P. Kelver call at the above address
+to-morrow morning between ten-thirty and eleven.” The paper was headed:
+“Lott and Co., Indian Commission Agents, Aldersgate Street.” Without
+much hope I returned to my lodgings, changed my clothes, donned my
+silk hat, took my one pair of gloves, drew its silk case over my holey
+umbrella; and so equipped for fight with Fate made my way to Aldersgate
+Street. For a quarter of an hour or so, being too soon, I walked up and
+down the pavement outside the house, gazing at the second-floor windows,
+behind which, so the door-plate had informed me, were the offices of
+Lott & Co. I could not recall their advertisement, nor my reply to it.
+The firm was evidently not in a very flourishing condition. I wondered
+idly what salary they would offer. For a moment I dreamt of a Cheeryble
+Brother asking me kindly if I thought I could do with thirty shillings
+a week as a beginning; but the next I recalled my usual fate, and
+considered whether it was even worth while to climb the stairs, go
+through what to me was a painful ordeal, merely to be impressed again
+with the sense of my own worthlessness.
+
+A fine rain began to fall. I did not wish to unroll my umbrella,
+yet felt nervous for my hat. It was five minutes to the half hour.
+Listlessly I crossed the road and mounted the bare stairs to the second
+floor. Two doors faced me, one marked “Private.” I tapped lightly at the
+second. Not hearing any response, after a second or two I tapped again.
+A sound reached me, but it was unintelligible. I knocked yet again,
+still louder. This time I heard a reply in a shrill, plaintive tone:
+
+“Oh, do come in.”
+
+The tone was one of pathetic entreaty. I turned the handle and entered.
+It was a small room, dimly lighted by a dirty window, the bottom half of
+which was rendered opaque by tissue paper pasted to its panes. The place
+suggested a village shop rather than an office. Pots of jam, jars of
+pickles, bottles of wine, biscuit tins, parcels of drapery, boxes of
+candles, bars of soap, boots, packets of stationery, boxes of cigars,
+tinned provisions, guns, cartridges--things sufficient to furnish a
+desert island littered every available corner. At a small desk under the
+window sat a youth with a remarkably small body and a remarkably
+large head; so disproportionate were the two I should hardly have been
+surprised had he put up his hands and taken it off. Half in the room and
+half out, I paused.
+
+“Is this Lott & Co.?” I enquired.
+
+“No,” he answered; “it's a room.” One eye was fixed upon me, dull and
+glassy; it never blinked, it never wavered. With the help of the other
+he continued his writing.
+
+“I mean,” I explained, coming entirely into the room, “are these the
+offices of Lott & Co.?”
+
+“It's one of them,” he replied; “the back one. If you're really anxious
+for a job, you can shut the door.”
+
+I complied with his suggestion, and then announced that I was Mr.
+Kelver--Mr. Paul Kelver.
+
+“Minikin's my name,” he returned, “Sylvanus Minikin. You don't happen by
+any chance to know what you've come for, I suppose?”
+
+Looking at his body, my inclination was to pick my way among the goods
+that covered the floor and pull his ears for him. From his grave and
+massive face, he might, for all I knew, be the head clerk.
+
+“I have called to see Mr. Lott,” I replied, with dignity; “I have an
+appointment.” I produced the letter from my pocket, and leaning across
+a sewing-machine, I handed it to him for his inspection. Having read it,
+he suddenly took from its socket the eye with which he had been hitherto
+regarding me, and proceeding to polish it upon his pocket handkerchief,
+turned upon me his other. Having satisfied himself, he handed me back my
+letter.
+
+“Want my advice?” he asked.
+
+I thought it might be useful to me, so replied in the affirmative.
+
+“Hook it,” was his curt counsel.
+
+“Why?” I asked. “Isn't he a good employer?”
+
+Replacing his glass eye, he turned again to his work. “If employment is
+what you want,” answered Mr. Minikin, “you'll get it. Best employer in
+London. He'll keep you going for twenty-four hours a day, and then offer
+you overtime at half salary.”
+
+“I must get something to do,” I confessed.
+
+“Sit down then,” suggested Mr. Minikin. “Rest while you can.”
+
+I took the chair; it was the only chair in the room, with the exception
+of the one Minikin was sitting on.
+
+“Apart from his being a bit of a driver,” I asked, “what sort of a man
+is he? Is he pleasant?”
+
+“Never saw him put out but once,” answered Minikin.
+
+It sounded well. “When was that?” I asked.
+
+“All the time I've known him.”
+
+My spirits continued to sink. Had I been left alone with Minikin much
+longer, I might have ended by following his advice, “hooking it” before
+Mr. Lott arrived. But the next moment I heard the other door open, and
+some one entered the private office. Then the bell rang, and Minikin
+disappeared, leaving the communicating door ajar behind him. The
+conversation that I overheard was as follows:
+
+“Why isn't Mr. Skeat here?”
+
+“Because he hasn't come.”
+
+“Where are the letters?”
+
+“Under your nose.”
+
+“How dare you answer me like that?”
+
+“Well, it's the truth. They are under your nose.”
+
+“Did you give Thorneycroft's man my message?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What did he answer?”
+
+“Said you were a liar.”
+
+“Oh, he did, did he! What did you reply?”
+
+“Asked him to tell me something I didn't know.”
+
+“Thought that clever, didn't you?”
+
+“Not bad.”
+
+Whatever faults might be laid to Mr. Lott's door, he at least, I
+concluded, possesssed the virtue of self-control.
+
+“Anybody been here?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Mr. Kelver--Mr. Paul Kelver.”
+
+“Kelver, Kelver. Who's Kelver?”
+
+“Know what he is--a fool.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“He's come after the place.”
+
+“Is he there?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What's he like?”
+
+“Not bad looking; fair--”
+
+“Idiot! I mean is he smart?”
+
+“Just at present--got all his Sunday clothes on.”
+
+“Send him in to me. Don't go, don't go.”
+
+“How can I send him in to you if I don't go?”
+
+“Take these. Have you finished those bills of lading?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Good God! when will you have finished them?”
+
+“Half an hour after I have begun them.”
+
+“Get out, get out! Has that door been open all the time?”
+
+“Well, I don't suppose it's opened itself.”
+
+Minikin re-entered with papers in his hand. “In you go,” he said.
+“Heaven help you!” And I passed in and closed the door behind me.
+
+The room was a replica of the one I had just left. If possible, it was
+more crowded, more packed with miscellaneous articles. I picked my
+way through these and approached the desk. Mr. Lott was a small,
+dingy-looking man, with very dirty hands, and small, restless eyes. I
+was glad that he was not imposing, or my shyness might have descended
+upon me; as it was, I felt better able to do myself justice. At once he
+plunged into the business by seizing and waving in front of my eyes a
+bulky bundle of letters tied together with red tape.
+
+“One hundred and seventeen answers to an advertisement,” he cried with
+evident satisfaction, “in one day! That shows you the state of the
+labour market!”
+
+I agreed it was appalling.
+
+“Poor devils, poor devils!” murmured Mr. Lott “what will become of them?
+Some of them will starve. Terrible death, starvation, Kelver; takes such
+a long time--especially when you're young.”
+
+Here also I found myself in accord with him.
+
+“Living with your parents?”
+
+I explained to him my situation.
+
+“Any friends?”
+
+I informed him I was entirely dependent upon my own efforts.
+
+“Any money? Anything coming in?”
+
+I told him I had a few pounds still remaining to me, but that after that
+was gone I should be penniless.
+
+“And to think, Kelver, that there are hundreds, thousands of young
+fellows precisely in your position! How sad, how very sad! How long have
+you been looking for a berth?”
+
+“A month,” I answered him.
+
+“I thought as much. Do you know why I selected your letter out of the
+whole batch?”
+
+I replied I hoped it was because he judged from it I should prove
+satisfactory.
+
+“Because it's the worst written of them all.” He pushed it across to me.
+“Look at it. Awful, isn't it?”
+
+I admitted that handwriting was not my strong point.
+
+“Nor spelling either,” he added, and with truth. “Who do you think will
+engage you if I don't?”
+
+“Nobody,” he continued, without waiting for me to reply. “A month hence
+you will still be looking for a berth, and a month after that. Now, I'm
+going to do you a good turn; save you from destitution; give you a start
+in life.”
+
+I expressed my gratitude.
+
+He waived it aside. “That is my notion of philanthropy: help those that
+nobody else will help. That young fellow in the other room--he isn't a
+bad worker, he's smart, but he's impertinent.”
+
+I murmured that I had gathered so much.
+
+“Doesn't mean to be, can't help it. Noticed his trick of looking at you
+with his glass eye, keeping the other turned away from you?”
+
+I replied that I had.
+
+“Always does it. Used to irritate his last employer to madness. Said to
+him one day: 'Do turn that signal lamp of yours off, Minikin, and look
+at me with your real eye.' What do you think he answered? That it was
+the only one he'd got, and that he didn't want to expose it to shocks.
+Wouldn't have mattered so much if it hadn't been one of the ugliest men
+in London.”
+
+I murmured my indignation.
+
+“I put up with him. Nobody else would. The poor fellow must live.”
+
+I expressed admiration at Mr. Lott's humanity.
+
+“You don't mind work? You're not one of those good-for-nothings who
+sleep all day and wake up when it's time to go home?”
+
+I assured him that in whatever else I might fail I could promise him
+industry.
+
+“With some of them,” complained Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness, “it's
+nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets. Work, business--oh,
+no. I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into the workhouse.
+No thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds them, clothes them.
+How much salary do you want?”
+
+I hesitated. I gathered this was not a Cheeryble Brother; it would be
+necessary to be moderate in one's demands. “Five-and-twenty shillings a
+week,” I suggested.
+
+He repeated the figure in a scream. “Five-and-twenty shillings for
+writing like that! And can't spell commission! Don't know anything about
+the business. Five-and-twenty!--Tell you what I'll do: I'll give you
+twelve.”
+
+“But I can't live on twelve,” I explained.
+
+“Can't live on twelve! Do you know why? Because you don't know how to
+live. I know you all. One veal and ham pie, one roley-poley, one Dutch
+cheese and a pint of bitter.”
+
+His recital made my mouth water.
+
+“You overload your stomachs, then you can't work. Half the diseases you
+young fellows suffer from are brought about by overeating.”
+
+“Now, you take my advice,” continued Mr. Lott; “try vegetarianism. In
+the morning, a little oatmeal. Wonderfully strengthening stuff, oatmeal:
+look at the Scotch. For dinner, beans. Why, do you know there's
+more nourishment in half a pint of lentil beans than in a pound of
+beefsteak--more gluten. That's what you want, more gluten; no corpses,
+no dead bodies. Why, I've known young fellows, vegetarians, who have
+lived like fighting cocks on sevenpence a day. Seven times seven are
+forty-nine. How much do you pay for your room?”
+
+I told him.
+
+“Four-and-a-penny and two-and-six makes six-and-seven. That leaves you
+five and fivepence for mere foolery. Good God! what more do you want?”
+
+“I'll take eighteen, sir,” I answered. “I can't really manage on less.”
+
+“Very well, I won't beat you down,” he answered. “Fifteen shillings a
+week.”
+
+“I said eighteen,” I persisted.
+
+“Well, and I said fifteen,” he retorted, somewhat indignant at the
+quibbling. “That's splitting the difference, isn't it? I can't be fairer
+than that.”
+
+I dared not throw away the one opportunity that had occurred. Anything
+was better than return to the Reading Rooms, and the empty days full of
+despair. I accepted, and it was agreed that I should come the following
+Monday morning.
+
+“Nabbed?” was Minikin's enquiry on my return to the back office for my
+hat.
+
+I nodded.
+
+“What's he wasting on you?”
+
+“Fifteen shillings a week,” I whispered.
+
+“Felt sure somehow that he'd take a liking to you,” answered Minikin.
+“Don't be ungrateful and look thin on it.”
+
+Outside the door I heard Mr. Lott's shrill voice demanding to know where
+postage stamps were to be found.
+
+“At the Post-office,” was Minikin's reply.
+
+The hours were long--in fact, we had no office hours; we got away
+when we could, which was rarely before seven or eight--but my work was
+interesting. It consisted of buying for unfortunate clients in India or
+the Colonies anything they might happen to want, from a stage coach to
+a pot of marmalade; packing it and shipping it across to them. Our
+“commission” was anything they could be persuaded to pay over and above
+the value of the article. I was not much interfered with. There was that
+to be said for Lott & Co., so long as the work was done he was quite
+content to leave one to one's own way of doing it. And hastening through
+the busy streets, bargaining in shop or warehouse, bustling important in
+and out the swarming docks, I often thanked my stars that I was not as
+some poor two-pound-a-week clerk chained to a dreary desk.
+
+The fifteen shillings a week was a tight fit; but that was not my
+trouble. Reduce your denominator--you know the quotation. I found it no
+philosophical cant, but a practical solution of life. My food cost me
+on the average a shilling a day. If more of us limited our commissariat
+bill to the same figure, there would be less dyspepsia abroad. Generally
+I cooked my own meals in my own frying-pan; but occasionally I would
+indulge myself with a more orthodox dinner at a cook shop, or tea with
+hot buttered toast at a coffee-shop; and but for the greasy table-cloth
+and the dirty-handed waiter, such would have been even greater
+delights. The shilling a week for amusements afforded me at least one,
+occasionally two, visits to the theatre, for in those days there were
+Paradises where for sixpence one could be a god. Fourpence a week on
+tobacco gave me half-a-dozen cigarettes a day; I have spent more on
+smoke and derived less satisfaction. Dress was my greatest difficulty.
+One anxiety in life the poor man is saved: he knows not the haunting
+sense of debt. My tailor never dunned me. His principle was half-a-crown
+down on receipt of order, the balance on the handing over of the goods.
+No system is perfect; the method avoided friction, it is true; yet
+on the other hand it was annoying to be compelled to promenade, come
+Sundays, in shiny elbows and frayed trousers, knowing all the while
+that finished, waiting, was a suit in which one might have made one's
+mark--had only one shut one's eyes passing that pastry-cook's window on
+pay-day. Surely there should be a sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks
+to deal in cellars or behind drawn blinds.
+
+Were it because of its mere material hardships that to this day I think
+of that period of my life with a shudder, I should not here confess to
+it. I was alone. I knew not a living soul to whom I dared to speak, who
+cared to speak to me. For those first twelve months after my mother's
+death I lived alone, thought alone, felt alone. In the morning, during
+the busy day, it was possible to bear; but in the evenings the sense
+of desolation gripped me like a physical pain. The summer evenings
+came again, bringing with them the long, lingering light so laden with
+melancholy. I would walk into the Parks and, sitting there, watch with
+hungry eyes the men and women, boys and girls, moving all around me,
+talking, laughing, interested in one another; feeling myself some
+speechless ghost, seeing but not seen, crying to the living with a voice
+they heard not. Sometimes a solitary figure would pass by and glance
+back at me; some lonely creature like myself longing for human sympathy.
+In the teeming city must have been thousands such--young men and women
+to whom a friendly ear, a kindly voice, would have been as the water of
+life. Each imprisoned in his solitary cell of shyness, we looked at one
+another through the grating with condoling eyes; further than that
+was forbidden to us. Once, in Kensington Gardens, a woman turned, then
+slowly retracing her steps, sat down beside me on the bench. Neither of
+us spoke; had I done so she would have risen and moved away; yet there
+was understanding between us. To each of us it was some comfort to sit
+thus for a little while beside the other. Had she poured out her heart
+to me, she could have told me nothing more than I knew: “I, too, am
+lonely, friendless; I, too, long for the sound of a voice, the touch of
+a hand. It is hard for you, it is harder still for me, a girl; shut out
+from the bright world that laughs around me; denied the right of
+youth to joy and pleasure; denied the right of womanhood to love and
+tenderness.”
+
+The footsteps to and fro grew fewer. She moved to rise. Stirred by an
+impulse, I stretched out my hand, then seeing the flush upon her face,
+drew it back hastily. But the next moment, changing her mind, she held
+hers out to me, and I took it. It was the first clasp of a hand I had
+felt since six months before I had said good-bye to Hal. She turned and
+walked quickly away. I stood watching her; she never looked round, and I
+never saw her again.
+
+I take no credit to myself for keeping straight, as it is termed, during
+these days. For good or evil, my shyness prevented my taking part in the
+flirtations of the streets. Whether inviting eyes were ever thrown to me
+as to others, I cannot say. Sometimes, fancying so--hoping so, I would
+follow. Yet never could I summon up sufficient resolution to face the
+possible rebuff before some less timid swain would swoop down upon the
+quarry. Then I would hurry on, cursing myself for the poorness of my
+spirit, fancying mocking contempt in the laughter that followed me.
+
+On a Sunday I would rise early and take long solitary walks into the
+country. One winter's day--I remember it was on the road between Edgware
+and Stanmore--there issued from a by-road a little ahead of me a party
+of boys and girls, young people about my own age, bound evidently on
+a skating expedition. I could hear the musical ring of their blades,
+clattering as they walked, and the sound of their merry laughter so
+clear and bell-like through the frosty air. And an aching anguish fell
+upon me. I felt a mad desire to run after them, to plead with them to
+let me walk with them a little way, to let me laugh and talk with them.
+Every now and then they would pirouette to cry some jest to one another.
+I could see their faces: the girls' so sweetly alluring, framed by their
+dainty hats and furs, the bright colour in their cheeks, the light
+in their teasing eyes. A little further on they turned aside into a
+by-lane, and I stood at the corner listening till the last echo of their
+joyous voices died away, and on a stone that still remains standing
+there I sat down and sobbed.
+
+I would walk about the streets always till very late. I dreaded the
+echoing clang of the little front door when I closed it behind me, the
+climbing of the silent stairs, the solitude that waited for me in my
+empty room. It would rise and come towards me like some living thing,
+kissing me with cold lips. Often, unable to bear the closeness of its
+presence, I would creep out into the streets. There, even though it
+followed me, I was not alone with it. Sometimes I would pace them the
+whole night, sharing them with the other outcasts while the city slept.
+
+Occasionally, during these nightly wanderings would come to me moments
+of exaltation when fear fell from me and my blood would leap with joy at
+prospect of the fierce struggle opening out before me. Then it was the
+ghostly city sighing round me that seemed dead, I the only living thing
+real among a world of shadows. In long, echoing streets I would laugh
+and shout. Misunderstanding policemen would turn their bull's-eyes on
+me, gruffly give me practical advice: they knew not who I was! I stood
+the centre of a vast galanty-show: the phantom houses came and went;
+from some there shone bright lights; the doors were open, and little
+figures flitted in and out, the tiny coaches glided to and fro, manikins
+grotesque but pitiful crept across the star-lit curtain.
+
+Then the mood would change. The city, grim and vast, stretched round
+me endless. I crawled, a mere atom, within its folds, helpless,
+insignificant, absurd. The houseless forms that shared my vigil were
+my fellows. What were we? Animalcule upon its bosom, that it saw not,
+heeded not. For company I would mingle with them: ragged men, frowsy
+women, ageless youths, gathered round the red glow of some coffee stall.
+
+Rarely would we speak to one another. More like animals we browsed
+there, sipping the halfpenny cup of hot water coloured with coffee
+grounds (at least it was warm), munching the moist slab of coarse cake;
+looking with dull, indifferent eyes each upon the wretchedness of
+the others. Perhaps some two would whisper to each other in listless,
+monotonous tone, broken here and there by a short, mirthless laugh; some
+shivering creature, not yet case-hardened to despair, seek, perhaps,
+the relief of curses that none heeded. Later, a faint chill breeze would
+shake the shadows loose, a thin, wan light streak the dark air with
+shade, and silently, stealthily, we would fade away and disappear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY. AND
+BECOMES CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN.
+
+All things pass, even the self-inflicted sufferings of shy young men,
+condemned by temperament to solitude. Came the winter evenings, I took
+to work: in it one may drown much sorrow for oneself. With its handful
+of fire, its two candles lighted, my “apartment” was more inviting.
+I bought myself paper, pens and ink. Great or small, what more can a
+writer do? He is but the would-be medium: will the spirit voices employ
+him or reject him?
+
+London, with its million characters, grave and gay; its ten thousand
+romances, its mysteries, its pathos, and its humour, lay to my hand. It
+stretched before me, asking only intelligent observation, more or less
+truthful report. But that I could make a story out of the things I
+really knew never occurred to me. My tales were of cottage maidens, of
+bucolic yeomen. My scenes were laid in windmills, among mountains, or in
+moated granges. I fancy this phase of folly is common to most youthful
+fictionists.
+
+A trail of gentle melancholy lay over them. Sentiment was more popular
+then than it is now, and, as do all beginners, I scrupulously followed
+fashion. Generally speaking, to be a heroine of mine was fatal. However
+naturally her hair might curl--and curly hair, I believe, is the
+hall-mark of vitality; whatever other indications of vigorous health she
+might exhibit in the first chapter, such as “dancing eyes,” “colour
+that came and went,” “ringing laughter,” “fawn-like agility,” she was
+tolerably certain, poor girl, to end in an untimely grave. Snowdrops and
+early primroses (my botany I worked up from a useful little volume, “Our
+Garden Favourites, Illustrated”) grew there as in a forcing house; and
+if in the neighbourhood of the coast, the sea-breezes would choose
+that particular churchyard, somewhat irreverently, for their favourite
+playground. Years later a white-haired man would come there leading
+little children by the hand, and to them he would tell the tale anew,
+which must have been a dismal entertainment for them.
+
+Now and then, by way of change, it would be the gentleman who would
+fall a victim of the deadly atmosphere of my literature. It was of
+no particular consequence, so he himself would conclude in his last
+soliloquy; “it was better so.” Snowdrops and primroses, for whatever
+consolation they might have been to him, it was hopeless for him to
+expect; his grave, marked by a rude cross, being as a rule situate in an
+exceptionally unfrequented portion of the African veldt or amid burning
+sands. For description of final scenery on these occasions a visit to
+the British Museum reading-room would be necessary.
+
+Dismal little fledgelings! And again and again would I drive them from
+the nest; again and again they fluttered back to me, soiled, crumpled,
+physically damaged. Yet one person had admired them, cried over
+them--myself.
+
+All methods I tried. Sometimes I would send them forth accompanied by
+a curt business note of the take-it-or-leave-it order. At other times I
+would attach to it pathetic appeals for its consideration. Sometimes
+I would give value to it, stating that the price was five guineas and
+requesting that the cheque should be crossed; at other times seek to
+tickle editorial cupidity by offering this, my first contribution to
+their pages, for nothing--my sample packet, so to speak, sent gratis,
+one trial surely sufficient. Now I would write sarcastically, enclosing
+together with the stamped envelope for return a brutally penned note of
+rejection. Or I would write frankly, explaining elaborately that I was a
+beginner, and asking to be told my faults--if any.
+
+Not one found a resting place for its feet. A month, a week, a couple of
+days, they would remain away from me, then return. I never lost a single
+one. I wished I had. It would have varied the monotony.
+
+I hated the poor little slavey who, bursting joyously into the room,
+would hold them out to me from between her apron-hidden thumb and
+finger; her chronic sniff I translated into contempt. If flying down the
+stairs at the sound of the postman's knock I secured it from his hands,
+it seemed to me he smiled. Tearing them from their envelopes, I would
+curse them, abuse them, fling them into the fire sometimes; but before
+they were more than scorched I would snatch them out, smooth them,
+reread them. The editor himself could never have seen them; it was
+impossible; some jealous underling had done this thing. I had sent them
+to the wrong paper. They had arrived at the inopportune moment. Their
+triumph would come. Rewriting the first and last sheets, I would send
+them forth again with fresh hope.
+
+Meanwhile, understanding that the would-be happy warrior must shine in
+camp as well as field, I sought to fit myself also for the social side
+of life. Smoking and drinking were the twin sins I found most difficulty
+in acquiring. I am not claiming a mental excellence so much as
+confessing a bodily infirmity. The spirit had always been willing, but
+my flesh was weak. Fired by emulation, I had at school occasionally
+essayed a cigarette. The result had been distinctly unsatisfactory, and
+after some two or three attempts, I had abandoned, for the time being,
+all further endeavour; excusing my faint-heartedness by telling myself
+with sanctimonious air that smoking was bad for growing boys; attempting
+to delude myself by assuming, in presence of contemporaries of stronger
+stomach, fine pose of disapproval; yet in my heart knowing myself a
+young hypocrite, disguising physical cowardice in the robes of moral
+courage: a self-deception to which human nature is prone.
+
+So likewise now and again I had tasted the wine that was red, and that
+stood year in, year out, decanted on our sideboard. The true
+inwardness of St. Paul's prescription had been revealed to me; the
+attitude--sometimes sneered at--of those who drink it under doctor's
+orders, regarding it purely as a medicine, appeared to me reasonable.
+I had noticed also that others, some of them grown men even, making wry
+faces, when drinking my mother's claret, and had concluded therefrom
+that taste for strong liquor was an accomplishment less easily acquired
+than is generally supposed. The lack of it in a young man could be no
+disgrace, and accordingly effort in that direction also had I weakly
+postponed.
+
+But now, a gentleman at large, my education could no longer be delayed.
+To the artist in particular was training--and severe training--an
+absolute necessity. Recently fashion has changed somewhat, but a quarter
+of a century ago a genius who did not smoke and drink--and that more
+than was good for him--would have been dismissed without further
+evidence as an impostor. About the genius I was hopeful, but at no time
+positively certain. As regarded the smoking and drinking, so much at
+least I could make sure of. I set to work methodically, conscientiously.
+Smoking, experience taught me, was better practised on Saturday nights,
+Sunday affording me the opportunity of walking off the effects. Patience
+and determination were eventually crowned with success: I learned to
+smoke a cigarette to all appearance as though I were enjoying it. Young
+men of less character might here have rested content, but attainment
+of the highest has always been with me a motive force. The cigarette
+conquered, I next proceeded to attack the cigar. My first one I remember
+well: most men do. It was at a smoking concert held in the Islington
+Drill Hall, to which Minikin had invited me. Not feeling sure whether my
+growing dizziness were due solely to the cigar, or in part to the hot,
+over-crowded room, I made my excuses and slipped out. I found myself in
+a small courtyard, divided from a neighbouring garden by a low wall. The
+cause of my trouble was clearly the cigar. My inclination was to take it
+from my mouth and see how far I could throw it. Conscience, on the other
+hand, urged me to persevere. It occurred to me that if climbing on to
+the wall I could walk along it from end to end, there would be no excuse
+for my not heeding the counsels of perfection. If, on the contrary, try
+as I might, the wall proved not wide enough for my footsteps, then I
+should be entitled to lose the beastly thing, and, as best I could,
+make my way home to bed. I attained the wall with some difficulty and
+commenced my self-inflicted ordeal. Two yards further I found
+myself lying across the wall, my legs hanging down one side, my head
+overhanging the other. The position proving suitable to my requirements,
+I maintained it. Inclination, again seizing its opportunity, urged me
+then and there to take a solemn vow never to smoke again. I am proud
+to write that through that hour of temptation I remained firm;
+strengthening myself by whispering to myself: “Never despair. What
+others can do, so can you. Is not all victory won through suffering?”
+
+A liking for drink I had found, if possible, even yet more difficult of
+achievement. Spirits I almost despaired of. Once, confusing bottles, I
+drank some hair oil in mistake for whiskey, and found it decidedly less
+nauseous. But twice a week I would force myself to swallow a glass of
+beer, standing over myself insisting on my draining it to the bitter
+dregs. As reward afterwards, to take the taste out of my mouth, I
+would treat myself to chocolates; at the same time comforting myself
+by assuring myself that it was for my good, that there would come a day
+when I should really like it, and be grateful to myself for having been
+severe with myself.
+
+In other and more sensible directions I sought also to progress.
+Gradually I was overcoming my shyness. It was a slow process. I found
+the best plan was not to mind being shy, to accept it as part of my
+temperament, and with others laugh at it. The coldness of an indifferent
+world is of service in hardening a too sensitive skin. The gradual
+rubbings of existence were rounding off my many corners. I became
+possible to my fellow creatures, and they to me. I began to take
+pleasure in their company.
+
+By directing me to this particular house in Nelson Square, Fate had
+done to me a kindness. I flatter myself we were an interesting menagerie
+gathered together under its leaky roof. Mrs. Peedles, our landlady, who
+slept in the basement with the slavey, had been an actress in Charles
+Keane's company at the old Princess's. There, it is true, she had played
+only insignificant parts. London, as she would explain to us was even
+then but a poor judge of art, with prejudices. Besides an actor-manager,
+hampered by a wife--we understood. But previously in the Provinces there
+had been a career of glory: Juliet, Amy Robsart, Mrs. Haller in “The
+Stranger”--almost the entire roll of the “Legitimates”. Showed we any
+signs of disbelief, proof was forthcoming: handbills a yard long, rich
+in notes of exclamation: “On Tuesday Evening! By Special Desire!!!
+Blessington's Theatre! In the Meadow, adjoining the Falcon Arms!”--“On
+Saturday! Under the Patronage of Col. Sir William and the Officers of
+the 74th!!!! In the Corn Exchange!” Maybe it would convince us further
+were she to run through a passage here and there, say Lady Macbeth's
+sleep-walking scene, or from Ophelia's entrance in the fourth act? It
+would be no trouble; her memory was excellent. We would hasten to assure
+her of our perfect faith.
+
+Listening to her, it was difficult, as she herself would frankly admit,
+to imagine her the once “arch Miss Lucretia Barry;” looking at her, to
+remember there had been an evening when she had been “the cynosure of
+every eye.” One found it necessary to fortify oneself with perusal of
+underlined extracts from ancient journals, much thumbed and creased,
+thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose. Since those days Fate had
+woven round her a mantle of depression. She was now a faded, watery-eyed
+little woman, prone on the slightest provocation to sit down suddenly on
+the nearest chair and at once commence a history of her troubles. Quite
+unconscious of this failing, it was an idea of hers that she was an
+exceptionally cheerful person.
+
+“But there, fretting's no good. We must grin and bear things in this
+world,” she would conclude, wiping her eyes upon her apron. “It's better
+to laugh than to cry, I always say.” And to prove that this was no mere
+idle sentiment, she would laugh then and there upon the spot.
+
+Much stair-climbing had bestowed upon her a shortness of breath, which
+no amount of panting in her resting moments was able to make good.
+
+“You don't know 'ow to breathe,” explained our second floor front to
+her on one occasion, a kindly young man; “you don't swallow it, you
+only gargle with it. Take a good draught and shut your mouth; don't
+be frightened of it; don't let it out again till it's done something:
+that's what it's 'ere for.”
+
+He stood over her with his handkerchief pressed against her mouth to
+assist her; but it was of no use.
+
+“There don't seem any room for it inside me,” she explained.
+
+Bells had become to her the business of life; she lived listening
+for them. Converse to her was a filling in of time while waiting for
+interruptions.
+
+A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present
+from a commercial traveller in the way of business. Not liking whiskey
+myself, it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the occasional
+comfort of Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands to her side,
+she would sink upon the chair nearest to my door. Her poor, washed-out
+face would lighten at the suggestion.
+
+“Ah, well,” she would reply, “I don't mind if I do. It's a poor heart
+that never rejoices.”
+
+And then, her tongue unloosened, she would sit there and tell me stories
+of my predecessors, young men lodgers who like myself had taken her
+bed-sitting-rooms, and of the woes and misfortunes that had overtaken
+them. I gathered that a more unlucky house I could not have selected.
+A former tenant of my own room, of whom I strangely reminded her, had
+written poetry on my very table. He was now in Portland doing five years
+for forgery. Mrs. Peedles appeared to regard the two accomplishments as
+merely different expressions of the same art. Another of her young men,
+as she affectionately called us, had been of studious ambition. His
+career up to a point appeared to have been brilliant. “What he mightn't
+have been,” according to Mrs. Peedles, there was practically no saying;
+what he happened to be at the moment of conversation was an unpromising
+inmate of the Hanwell lunatic asylum.
+
+“I've always noticed it,” Mrs. Peedles would explain; “it's always the
+most deserving, those that try hardest, to whom trouble comes. I'm sure
+I don't know why.”
+
+I was glad on the whole when that bottle of whiskey was finished. A
+second might have driven me to suicide.
+
+There was no Mr. Peedles--at least, not for Mrs. Peedles, though as an
+individual he continued to exist. He had been “general utility” at
+the Princess's--the old terms were still in vogue at that time--a fine
+figure of a man in his day, so I was given to understand, but one easily
+led away, especially by minxes. Mrs. Peedles spoke bitterly of general
+utilities as people of not much use.
+
+For working days Mrs. Peedles had one dress and one cap, both black
+and void of ostentation; but on Sundays and holidays she would appear
+metamorphosed. She had carefully preserved the bulk of her stage
+wardrobe, even to the paste-decked shoes and tinsel jewelry. Shapeless
+in classic garb as Hermia, or bulgy in brocade and velvet as Lady
+Teazle, she would receive her few visitors on Sunday evenings, discarded
+puppets like herself, with whom the conversation was of gayer nights
+before their wires had been cut; or, her glory hid from the ribald
+street beneath a mackintosh, pay her few calls. Maybe it was the unusual
+excitement that then brought colour into her furrowed cheeks, that
+straightened and darkened her eyebrows, at other times so singularly
+unobtrusive. Be this how it may, the change was remarkable, only
+the thin grey hair and the work-worn hands remaining for purposes of
+identification. Nor was the transformation merely one of surface.
+Mrs. Peedles hung on her hook behind the kitchen door, dingy, limp,
+discarded; out of the wardrobe with the silks and satins was lifted down
+to be put on as an undergarment Miss Lucretia Barry, like her costumes
+somewhat aged, somewhat withered, but still distinctly “arch.”
+
+In the room next to me lived a law-writer and his wife. They were very
+old and miserably poor. The fault was none of theirs. Despite copy-books
+maxims, there is in this world such a thing as ill-luck-persistent,
+monotonous, that gradually wears away all power of resistance. I
+learned from them their history: it was hopelessly simple, hopelessly
+uninstructive. He had been a schoolmaster, she a pupil teacher; they had
+married young, and for a while the world had smiled upon them. Then came
+illness, attacking them both: nothing out of which any moral could be
+deduced, a mere case of bad drains resulting in typhoid fever. They had
+started again, saddled by debt, and after years of effort had succeeded
+in clearing themselves, only to fall again, this time in helping a
+friend. Nor was it even a case of folly: a poor man who had helped them
+in their trouble, hardly could they have done otherwise without proving
+themselves ungrateful. And so on, a tedious tale, commonplace, trivial.
+Now listless, patient, hard working, they had arrived at an animal-like
+indifference to their fate, content so long as they could obtain the
+bare necessities of existence, passive when these were not forthcoming,
+their interest in life limited to the one luxury of the poor--an
+occasional glass of beer or spirits. Often days would go by without
+his obtaining any work, and then they would more or less starve. Law
+documents are generally given out to such men in the evening, to be
+returned finished the next morning. Waking in the night, I would hear
+through the thin wooden partition that divided our rooms the even
+scratching of his pen.
+
+Thus cheek by jowl we worked, I my side of the screen, he his: youth and
+age, hope and realisation.
+
+Out of him my fears fashioned a vision of the future. Past his door I
+would slink on tiptoe, dread meeting him upon the stairs. Once had not
+he said to himself: “The world's mine oyster?” May not the voices of the
+night have proclaimed him also king? Might I not be but an idle dreamer,
+mistaking desire for power? Would not the world prove stronger than I?
+At such times I would see my life before me: the clerkship at thirty
+shillings a week rising by slow instalments, it may be, to one hundred
+and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife,
+pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the
+squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from
+the ruck? Was not this the more likely picture?
+
+Our second floor front was a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman
+was Young London personified--blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively
+self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time
+frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. “Never say die” was his motto,
+and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long
+he was noisy, and all night long he snored. He woke with a start, bathed
+like a porpoise, sang while dressing, roared for his boots, and
+whistled during his breakfast. His entrance and exit were always to an
+orchestration of banging doors, directions concerning his meals shouted
+at the top of his voice as he plunged up or down the stairs, the
+clattering and rattling of brooms and pails flying before his feet. His
+departure always left behind it the suggestion that the house was now to
+let; it came almost as a shock to meet a human being on the landing. He
+would have conveyed an atmosphere of bustle to the Egyptian pyramids.
+
+Sometimes carrying his own supper-tray, arranged for two, he would march
+into my room. At first, resenting his familiarity, I would hint at my
+desire to be alone, would explain that I was busy.
+
+“You fire away, Shakespeare Redivivus,” he would reply. “Don't delay the
+tragedy. Why should London wait? I'll keep quiet.”
+
+But his notion of keeping quiet was to retire into a corner and there
+amuse himself by enacting a tragedy of his own in a hoarse whisper,
+accompanied by appropriate gesture.
+
+“Ah, ah!” I would hear him muttering to himself, “I 'ave killed 'er good
+old father; I 'ave falsely accused 'er young man of all the crimes that
+I 'ave myself committed; I 'ave robbed 'er of 'er ancestral estates. Yet
+she loves me not! It is streeange!” Then changing his bass to a shrill
+falsetto: “It is a cold and dismal night: the snow falls fast. I will
+leave me 'at and umbrella be'ind the door and go out for a walk with the
+chee-ild. Aha! who is this? 'E also 'as forgotten 'is umbrella. Ah, now
+I know 'im in the pitch dark by 'is cigarette! Villain, murderer, silly
+josser! it is you!” Then with lightning change of voice and gesture:
+“Mary, I love yer!” “Sir Jasper Murgatroyd, let me avail myself of this
+opportunity to tell you what I think of you--” “No, no; the 'ouses close
+in 'alf an hour; there is not tee-ime. Fly with me instead!” “Never!
+Un'and me!” “'Ear me! Ah, what 'ave I done? I 'ave slipped upon a piece
+of orange peel and broke me 'ead! If you will kindly ask them to turn
+off the snow and give me a little moonlight, I will confess all.”
+
+Finding it (much to Jarman's surprise) impossible to renew the thread of
+my work, I would abandon my attempts at literature, and instead listen
+to his talk, which was always interesting. His conversation was, it is
+true, generally about himself, but it was none the less attractive on
+that account. His love affairs, which appeared to be numerous, formed
+his chief topic. There was no reserve about Jarman: his life contained
+no secret chambers. What he “told her straight,” what she “up and said
+to him” in reply was for all the world that cared to hear. So far his
+search after the ideal had met with but ill success.
+
+“Girls,” he would say, “they're all alike, till you know 'em. So long as
+they're trying to palm themselves off on yer, they'll persuade you
+there isn't such another article in all the market. When they've got yer
+order--ah, then yer find out what they're really made of. And you take
+it from me, 'Omer Junior, most of 'em are put together cheap. Bah!
+it sickens me sometimes to read the way you paper-stainers talk about 'em
+--angels, goddesses, fairies! They've just been getting at yer. You're
+giving 'em just the price they're asking without examining the article.
+Girls ain't a special make, like what you seem to think 'em. We're all
+turned out of the same old slop shop.”
+
+“Not that I say, mind yer,” he would continue, “that there are none of
+the right sort. They're to be 'ad--real good 'uns. All I say is, taking
+'em at their own valuation ain't the way to do business with 'em.”
+
+What he was on the look out for--to quote his own description--was a
+really first class article, not something from which the paint would
+come off almost before you got it home.
+
+“They're to be found,” he would cheerfully affirm, “but you've got to
+look for 'em. They're not the sort that advertises.”
+
+Behind Jarman in the second floor back resided one whom Jarman had
+nicknamed “The Lady 'Ortensia.” I believe before my arrival there had
+been love passages between the two; but neither of them, so I gathered,
+had upon closer inspection satisfied the other's standard. Their present
+attitude towards each other was that of insult thinly veiled under
+exaggerated politeness. Miss Rosina Sellars was, in her own language,
+a “lady assistant,” in common parlance, a barmaid at the Ludgate Hill
+Station refreshment room. She was a large, flabby young woman. With less
+powder, her complexion might by admirers have been termed creamy; as it
+was, it presented the appearance rather of underdone pastry. To be on
+all occasions “quite the lady” was her pride. There were those who held
+the angle of her dignity to be exaggerated. Jarman would beg her for her
+own sake to be more careful lest one day she should fall down backwards
+and hurt herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly
+calculated to check familiarity. Even stockbrokers' clerks--young men
+as a class with the bump of reverence but poorly developed--would in her
+presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of
+not noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the
+noisiest customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange
+it for three of whiskey, which he had; take his money and return him his
+change without ever seeing him, hearing him, or knowing he was there. It
+shattered the self-assertion of the youngest of commercial travellers.
+Her tone and manner, outside rare moments of excitement, were suggestive
+of an offended but forgiving iceberg. Jarman invariably passed her with
+his coat collar turned up to his ears, and even thus protected might
+have been observed to shiver. Her stare, in conjunction with her “I beg
+your pardon!” was a moral douche that would have rendered apologetic and
+explanatory Don Juan himself.
+
+To me she was always gracious, which by contrast to her general attitude
+towards my sex of studied disdain, I confess flattered me. She was good
+enough to observe to Mrs. Peedles, who repeated it to me, that I was the
+only gentleman in the house who knew how to behave himself.
+
+The entire first floor was occupied by an Irishman and--they never
+minced the matter themselves, so hardly is there need for me to do so.
+She was a charming little dark-eyed woman, an ex-tight-rope dancer, and
+always greatly offended Mrs. Peedles by claiming Miss Lucretia Barry as
+a sister artiste.
+
+“Of course I don't know how it may be now,” would reply Mrs. Peedles,
+with some slight asperity; “but in my time we ladies of the legitimate
+stage used to look down upon dancers and such sort. Of course, no
+offence to you, Mrs. O'Kelly.”
+
+Neither of them was in the least offended.
+
+“Sure, Mrs. Peedles, ye could never have looked down upon the Signora,”
+ the O'Kelly would answer laughing. “Ye had to lie back and look up to
+her. Why, I've got the crick in me neck to this day!”
+
+“Ah! my dear, and you don't know how nervous I was when glancing down
+I'd see his handsome face just underneath me, thinking that with one
+false step I might spoil it for ever,” would reply the Signora.
+
+“Me darling! I'd have died happy, just smothered in loveliness!” would
+return the O'Kelly; and he and the Signora would rush into each other's
+arms, and the sound of their kisses would quite excite the little slavey
+sweeping down the stairs outside.
+
+He was a barrister attached in theory to the Western Circuit; in
+practice, somewhat indifferent to it, much more attached to the lower
+strata of Bohemia and the Signora. At the present he was earning all
+sufficient for the simple needs of himself and the Signora as a teacher
+of music and singing. His method was simple and suited admirably the
+locality. Unless specially requested, he never troubled his pupils with
+such tiresome things as scales and exercises. His plan was to discover
+the song the young man fancied himself singing, the particular jingle
+the young lady yearned to knock out of the piano, and to teach it to
+them. Was it “Tom Bowling?” Well and good. Come on; follow your leader.
+The O'Kelly would sing the first line.
+
+“Now then, try that. Don't be afraid. Just open yer mouth and gave it
+tongue. That's all right. Everything has a beginning. Sure, later on,
+we'll get the time and tune, maybe a little expression.”
+
+Whether the system had any merit in it, I cannot answer. Certain it was
+that as often as not it achieved success. Gradually--say, by the end
+of twelve eighteen-penny lessons--out of storm and chaos “Tom Bowling”
+ would emerge, recognisable for all men to hear. Had the pupil any voice
+to start with, the O'Kelly improved it; had he none, the O'Kelly would
+help him to disguise the fact.
+
+“Take it easy, now; take it easy,” the O'Kelly would counsel. “Sure,
+it's a delicate organ, yer voice. Don't ye strain it now. Ye're at yer
+best when ye're just low and sweet.”
+
+So also with the blushing pianiste. At the end of a month a tune was
+distinctly discernible; she could hear it herself, and was happy. His
+repute spread.
+
+Twice already had he eloped with the Signora (and twice again was he
+to repeat the operation, before I finally lost sight of him: to break
+oneself of habit is always difficult) and once by well-meaning friends
+had he been induced to return to home, if not to beauty. His wife, who
+was considerably older than himself, possessed, so he would inform
+me with tears in his eyes, every moral excellence that should attract
+mankind. Upon her goodness and virtue, her piety and conscientiousness
+he would descant to me by the half hour. His sincerity it was impossible
+to question. It was beyond doubt that he respected her, admired her,
+honoured her. She was a saint, an angel--a wretch, a villain such as he,
+was not fit to breathe the same pure air. To do him justice, it must
+be admitted he showed no particular desire to do so. As an aunt or
+grandmother, I believe he would have suffered her gladly. He had nothing
+to say against her, except that he found himself unable to live with
+her.
+
+That she must have been a lady of exceptional merit one felt convinced.
+The Signora, who had met her only once, and then under somewhat trying
+conditions, spoke her praises with equal enthusiasm. Had she, the
+Signora, enjoyed the advantage of meeting such a model earlier, she,
+the Signora, might have been a better woman. It seemed a pity the
+introduction could not have taken place sooner and under different
+circumstances. Could they both have adopted her as a sort of mutual
+mother-in-law, it would have given them, I am positive, the greatest
+satisfaction. On her occasional visits they would have vied with each
+other in showing her affectionate attention. For the deserted lady I
+tried to feel sorry, but could not avoid the reflection that it
+would have been better for all parties had she been less patient and
+forgiving. Her husband was evidently much more suited to the Signora.
+
+Indeed, the relationship between these two was more a true marriage than
+one generally meets with. No pair of love-birds could have been more
+snug together. In their virtues and failings alike they fitted each
+other. When sober the immorality of their behaviour never troubled them;
+in fact, when sober nothing ever troubled them. They laughed, joked,
+played through life, two happy children. To be shocked at them was
+impossible. I tried it and failed.
+
+But now and again there came an evening when they were not sober. It
+happened when funds were high. On such occasion the O'Kelly would return
+laden with bottles of a certain sweet champagne, of which they were both
+extremely fond; and a friend or two would be invited to share in the
+festivity. Whether any exceptional quality resided in this particular
+brand of champagne I am not prepared to argue; my own personal
+experience of it has prompted me to avoid it for the rest of my life.
+Its effect upon them was certainly unique. Instead of intoxicating them,
+it sobered them: there is no other way of explaining it. With the third
+or fourth glass they began to take serious views of life. Before the end
+of the second bottle they would be staring at each other, appalled
+at contemplation of their own transgression. The Signora, the tears
+streaming down her pretty face, would declare herself a wicked, wicked
+woman; she had dragged down into shame the most blameless, the most
+virtuous of men. Emptying her glass, she would bury her face in her
+hands, and with her elbows on her knees, in an agony of remorse, sit
+rocking to and fro. The O'Kelly, throwing himself at her feet, would
+passionately abjure her to “look up.” She had, it appeared, got hold of
+the thing at the wrong end; it was he who had dragged her down.
+
+At this point metaphor would become confused. Each had been dragged
+down by the other one and ruined; also each one was the other one's good
+angel. All that was commendable in the Signora, she owed to the O'Kelly.
+Whatever was not discreditable about the O'Kelly was in the nature of a
+loan from the Signora. With the help of more champagne the right course
+would grow plain to them. She would go back broken-hearted but repentant
+to the tight-rope; he would return a better but a blighted man to
+Mrs. O'Kelly and the Western Circuit. This would be their last evening
+together on earth. A fresh bottle would be broached, and the guest or
+guests called upon to assist in the ceremony of renunciation; glasses
+full to the brim this time.
+
+So much tragedy did they continue to instil into the scene that on the
+first occasion of my witnessing it I was unable to refrain from mingling
+my tears with theirs. As, however, the next morning they had forgotten
+all about it, and as nothing came of it, nor of several subsequent
+repetitions, I should have believed a separation between them impossible
+but that even while I was an inmate of the house the thing actually
+happened.
+
+It came about in this wise. His friends, having discovered him, had
+pointed out to him again his duty. The Signora--a really excellent
+little woman so far as intention was concerned--had seconded their
+endeavours, with the result that on a certain evening in autumn we of
+the house assembled all of us on the first floor to support them on the
+occasion of their final--so we all deemed it then--leave-taking. For
+eleven o'clock two four-wheeled cabs had been ordered, one to transport
+the O'Kelly with his belongings to Hampstead and respectability; in the
+other the Signora would journey sorrowfully to the Tower Basin, there to
+join a circus company sailing for the Continent.
+
+I knocked at the door some quarter of an hour before the appointed hour
+of the party. I fancy the idea had originated with the Signora.
+
+“Dear Willie has something to say to you,” she had informed me that
+morning on the stairs. “He has taken a sincere liking to you, and it is
+something very important.”
+
+They were sitting one each side the fireplace, looking very serious; a
+bottle of the sobering champagne stood upon the table. The Signora rose
+and kissed me gravely on the brow; the O'Kelly laid both hands upon my
+shoulders, and sat me down on a chair between them.
+
+“Mr. Kelver,” said the Signora, “you are very young.”
+
+I hinted--it was one of those rare occasions upon which gallantry can be
+combined with truth--that I found myself in company.
+
+The Signora smiled sadly, and shook her head.
+
+“Age,” said the O'Kelly, “is a matter of feeling. Kelver, may ye never
+be as old as I am feeling now.”
+
+“As _we_ are feeling,” corrected the Signora. “Kelver,” said the
+O'Kelly, pouring out a third glass of champagne, “we want ye to promise
+us something.”
+
+“It will make us both happier,” added the Signora.
+
+“That ye will take warning,” continued the O'Kelly, “by our wretched
+example. Paul, in this world there is only one path to possible
+happiness. The path of strict--” he paused.
+
+“Propriety,” suggested the Signora.
+
+“Of strict propriety,” agreed the O'Kelly. “Deviate from it,” continued
+the O'Kelly, impressively, “and what is the result?”
+
+“Unutterable misery,” supplied the Signora.
+
+“Ye think we two have been happy here together,” said the O'Kelly.
+
+I replied that such was the conclusion to which observation had directed
+me.
+
+“We tried to appear so,” explained the Signora; “it was merely on the
+outside. In reality all the time we hated each other. Tell him, Willie,
+dear, how we have hated each other.”
+
+“It is impossible,” said the O'Kelly, finishing and putting down his
+glass, “to give ye any idea, Kelver, how we have hated each other.”
+
+“How we have quarrelled!” said the Signora. “Tell him, dear, how we have
+quarrelled.”
+
+“All day long and half the night,” concluded the O'Kelly.
+
+“Fought,” added the Signora. “You see, Mr. Kelver, people in--in our
+position always do. If it had been otherwise, if--if everything had been
+proper, then of course we should have loved each other. As it is, it has
+been a cat and dog existence. Hasn't it been a cat and dog existence,
+Willie?”
+
+“It's been just hell upon earth,” murmured the O'Kelly, with his eyes
+fixed gloomily upon the fire-stove ornament. Deadly in earnest though
+they both were, I could not repress a laugh, their excellent intention
+was so obvious. The Signora burst into tears.
+
+“He doesn't believe us,” she wailed.
+
+“Me dear,” replied the O'Kelly, throwing up his part with promptness and
+satisfaction, “how could ye expect it? How could he believe that any man
+could look at ye and hate ye?”
+
+“It's all my fault,” cried the little woman; “I am such a wicked
+creature. I cannot even be miserable when I am doing wrong. A decent
+woman in my place would have been wretched and unhappy, and made
+everybody about her wretched and unhappy, and so have set a good example
+and have been a warning. I don't seem to have any conscience, and I do
+try.” The poor little lady was sobbing her heart out.
+
+When not shy I could be sensible, and of the O'Kelly and the Signora one
+could be no more shy than of a pair of robin redbreasts. Besides, I was
+really fond of them; they had been very good to me.
+
+“Dear Miss Beltoni,” I answered, “I am going to take warning by you
+both.”
+
+She pressed my hand. “Oh, do, please do,” she murmured. “We really have
+been miserable--now and then.”
+
+“I am never going to be content,” I assured her, “until I find a lady
+as charming and as amiable as you, and if ever I get her I'll take good
+care never to run any risk of losing her.”
+
+It sounded well and pleased us all. The O'Kelly shook me warmly by the
+hand, and this time spoke his real feelings.
+
+“Me boy,” he said, “all women are good--for somebody. But the woman that
+is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who's the best
+for somebody else. Ye understand?”
+
+I said I did.
+
+At eight o'clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived--as Flora MacDonald, in
+green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking. As
+a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles and the
+subject of deserted wives in general.
+
+“A fine-looking man,” allowed Mrs. Peedles, “but weak--weak as water.”
+
+The Signora agreed that unfortunately there did exist such men: 'twas
+pitiful but true.
+
+“My dear,” continued Mrs. Peedles, “she wasn't even a lady.”
+
+The Signora expressed astonishment at the deterioration in Mr. Peedles'
+taste thus implied.
+
+“I won't go so far as to say we never had a difference,” continued Mrs.
+Peedles, whose object appeared to be an impartial statement of the whole
+case. “There may have been incompatability of temperament, as they say.
+Myself, I have always been of a playful disposition--frivolous, some
+might call me.”
+
+The Signora protested; the O'Kelly declined to listen to such aspersion
+on her character even from Mrs. Peedles herself.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, thus corrected, allowed that maybe frivolous was too
+sweeping an accusation: say sportive.
+
+“But a good wife to him I always was,” asserted Mrs. Peedles, with a
+fine sense of justice; “never flighty, like some of them. I challenge
+any one to accuse me of having been flighty.”
+
+We felt we should not believe any one who did, and told her so.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a
+confidential attitude. “If they want to go, let 'em go, I always say,”
+ she whispered loudly into the Signora's ear. “Ten to one they'll find
+they've only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. One can always
+comfort oneself with that.”
+
+There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles. Her virtuous
+sympathies, I gathered, were with the Signora. Mr. O'Kelly's return
+to Mrs. O'Kelly evidently manifested itself in the light of a shameful
+desertion. Having regard to the fact, patent to all who knew him, that
+the poor fellow was sacrificing every inclination to stern sense of
+duty, such view of the matter was rough on him. But philosophers from
+all ages have agreed that our good deeds are the whips with which Fate
+punishes us for our bad.
+
+“My dear,” continued Mrs. Peedles, “when Mr. Peedles left me I thought
+that I should never smile again. Yet here you see me laughing away
+through life, just as ever. You'll get over it all right.” And Mrs.
+Peedles wiped away her tears and smiled upon the Signora; upon which the
+Signora commenced to cry again.
+
+Happily, timely diversion was made at this point by the bursting into
+the room of Jarman, who upon perceiving Mrs. Peedles, at once gave vent
+to a hoot, supposed to be expressive of Scottish joy, and without a
+moment's hesitation commenced to dance a reel.
+
+My neighbours of the first floor knocked at the door a little while
+afterwards; and genteelly late arrived Miss Rosina Sellars, coldly
+gleaming in a decollete but awe-inspiring costume of mingled black
+and scarlet, out of which her fair, if fleshy, neck and arms shone
+luxuriant.
+
+We did not go into supper; instead, supper came into us from the
+restaurant at the corner of the Blackfriars Road. I cannot say that at
+first it was a festive meal. The O'Kelly and the Signora made effort,
+as in duty bound, to be cheerful, but for awhile were somewhat
+unsuccessful. The third floor front wasted no time in speech, but ate
+and drank copiously. Miss Sellars, retaining her gloves--which was
+perhaps wise, her hands being her weak point--signalled me out, much to
+my embarrassment, as the recipient of her most polite conversation. Mrs.
+Peedles became reminiscent of parties generally. Seeing that most of
+Mrs. Peedles' former friends and acquaintances were either dead or in
+more or less trouble, her efforts did not tend to enliven the table. One
+gathering, of which the present strangely reminded her, was a funeral,
+chiefly remarkable from discovery of the romantic fact, late in the
+proceedings, that the gentleman in whose honour the whole affair had
+been organised was not dead at all; but instead, having taken advantage
+of an error arising out of a railway accident, was at the moment eloping
+with the wife of his own chief mourner. As Mrs. Peedles explained,
+and as one could well credit, it had been an awkward position for all
+present. Nobody had quite known whether to feel glad or sorry--with the
+exception of the chief mourner, upon whose personal undertaking that the
+company might regard the ceremony as merely postponed, festivities came
+to an end.
+
+Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman. As
+a delicate attention to Mrs. Peedles and her costume he sunk
+his nationality and became for the evening, according to his own
+declaration, “a braw laddie.” With her--his “sonsie lassie,” so he
+termed her--he flirted in the broadest, if not purest, Scotch. The
+O'Kelly for him became “the Laird;” the third floor “Jamie o' the Ilk;”
+ Miss Sellars, “the bonnie wee rose;” myself, “the chiel.” Periods of
+silence were dispersed by suggestions that we should “hoot awa',” Jarman
+himself setting us the example.
+
+With the clearance away of the eatables, making room for the production
+of a more varied supply of bottles, matters began to mend. Mrs. Peedles
+became more arch, Jarman's Scotch more striking and extensive, the
+Lady 'Ortensia's remarks less depressingly genteel, her aitches less
+accentuated.
+
+Jarman rose to propose the health of the O'Kelly, coupled with that of
+the Signora. To the O'Kelly, in a burst of generosity, Jarman promised
+our united patronage. To Jarman it appeared that by employing the
+O'Kelly to defend us whenever we got into trouble with the police, and
+by recommending him to our friends, a steady income should be assured to
+him.
+
+The O'Kelly replied feelingly to the effect that Nelson Square,
+Blackfriars, would ever remain engraved upon his memory as the fairest
+and brightest spot on earth. Personally, nothing would have given him
+greater pleasure than to die among the dear friends who now surrounded
+him. But there was such a thing as duty, and he and the Signora had come
+to the conclusion that true happiness could only be obtained by acting
+according to one's conscience, even if it made one miserable.
+
+Jarman, warming to his work, then proposed the health of Mrs. Peedles,
+as true-hearted and hard-breathing a lady as ever it had been his
+privilege to know. Her talent for cheery conversation was familiar to us
+all, upon it he need not enlarge; all he would say was that personally
+never did she go out of his room without leaving him more cheerful than
+when she entered it.
+
+After that--I forget in what--we drank the health of the Lady 'Ortensia.
+Persons there were--Jarman would not attempt to disguise the fact--who
+complained that the Lady 'Ortensia was too distant, “too stand-offish.”
+ With such complaint he himself had no sympathy; but tastes differed. If
+the Lady 'Ortensia were inclined to be exclusive, who should blame her?
+Everybody knew their own business best. For use in a second floor front
+he could not honestly recommend the Lady 'Ortensia; it would not be
+giving her a fair chance, and it would not be giving the second floor a
+fair chance. But for any gentleman fitting up marble halls, for any one
+on the lookout for a really “toney article,” Jarman would say: Inquire
+for Miss Rosina Sellars, and see that you get her.
+
+There followed my turn. There had been literary chaps in the past,
+Jarman admitted so much. Against them he had nothing to say. They had no
+doubt done their best. But the gentleman whose health Jarman wished the
+company now to drink had this advantage over them: that they were
+dead, and he wasn't. Some of this gentleman's work Jarman had read--in
+manuscript; but that was a distinction purely temporary. He, Jarman,
+claimed to be no judge of literature, but this he could and would say,
+it took a good deal to make him miserable, yet this the literary efforts
+of Mr. Kelver invariably accomplished.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, speaking without rising, from personal observation in the
+daytime--which she hoped would not be deemed a liberty; literature, even
+in manuscript, being, so to speak, public property--found herself in a
+position to confirm all that Mr. Jarman had remarked. Speaking as one
+not entirely without authority on the subject of literature and the
+drama, Mrs. Peedles could say that passages she had read had struck her
+as distinctly not half bad. Some of the love-scenes, in particular, had
+made her to feel quite a girl again. How he had acquired such knowledge
+was not for her to say. Cries of “Naughty!” from Jarman, and “Oh, Mr.
+Kelver, I shall be quite afraid of you,” roguishly from Miss Sellars.
+
+The O'Kelly, who, having abandoned his favourite champagne for less
+sobering liquor, had since supper-time become rapidly more cheerful,
+felt sure there was a future before me. That he had not seen any of my
+work, so he assured me, in no way lessened his opinion of it. One thing
+only would he impress upon me: that the best work was the result of
+strict attention to virtue. His advice to me was to marry young and be
+happy.
+
+My persevering efforts of the last few months towards the acquisition of
+convivial habits appeared this evening to be receiving their reward. The
+O'Kelly's sweet champagne I had drunk with less dislike than hitherto; a
+white, syrupy sort of stuff, out of a fat and artistic-looking bottle,
+I had found distinctly grateful to the palate. Dimly the quotation about
+taking things at the flood, and so getting on quickly, floated through
+my brain, coupled with another one about fortune favouring the bold. It
+had seemed to me a good occasion to try for the second time in my life
+a full flavoured cigar. I had selected with the caution of a connoisseur
+one of mottled green complexion from the O'Kelly's largest box. And so
+far all had gone well. An easy self-confidence, delightful by reason of
+its novelty, had replaced my customary shyness; a sense of lightness--of
+positive airiness, emanating from myself, pervaded all things. Tossing
+off another glass of the champagne, I rose to reply.
+
+Modesty in my present mood would have been affectation. To such dear and
+well-beloved friends I had no hesitation in admitting the truth, that I
+was a clever fellow--a damned clever fellow. I knew it, they knew it, in
+a short time everybody would know it. But they need not fear that in
+the hour of my pride, when it arrived, I should prove ungrateful. Never
+should I forget their kindness to me, a lonely young man, alone in a
+lonely--Here the pathos of my own situation overcame me; words seemed
+weak. “Jarman--” I meant, putting my hand upon his head, to have blessed
+him for his goodness to me; but he being not exactly where he looked to
+be, I just missed him, and sat down on the edge of my chair, which was a
+hard one. I had not intended this to be the end of my speech, by a long
+one; but Jarman, whispering to me: “Ended at exactly the right moment;
+shows the born orator,” strong inclination to remain seated, now that I
+was down seconding his counsel, and the company being clearly satisfied,
+I decided to leave things where they were.
+
+A delightful dreaminess was stealing over me. Everything and everybody
+appeared to be a long way off, but, whether because of this or in
+spite of it, exceedingly attractive. Never had I noticed the Signora
+so bewitching; in a motherly sort of way even the third floor front was
+good to look upon; Mrs. Peedles I could almost have believed to be the
+real Flora MacDonald sitting in front of me. But the vision of Miss
+Rosina Sellars made literally my head to swim. Never before had I dared
+to cast upon female loveliness the satisfying gaze with which I now
+boldly regarded her every movement. Evidently she noticed it, for she
+turned away her eyes. I had heard that exceptionally strong-minded
+people merely by concentrating their will could make other, ordinary
+people, do just whatever they, the exceptionally strong-minded people,
+wished. I willed that Miss Rosina Sellars should turn her eyes again
+towards me. Victory crowned my efforts. Evidently I was one of these
+exceptionally strong-minded persons. Slowly her eyes came round and met
+mine with a smile--a helpless, pathetic smile that said, so I read it:
+“You know no woman can resist you: be merciful!”
+
+Inflamed by the brutal lust of conquest, I suppose I must have willed
+still further, for the next thing I remember is sitting with Miss
+Sellars on the sofa, holding her hand, the while the O'Kelly sang a
+sentimental ballad, only one line of which comes back to me: “For the
+angels must have told him, and he knows I love him now,” much stress
+upon the “now.” The others had their backs towards us. Miss Sellars,
+with a look that pierced my heart, dropped her somewhat large head upon
+my shoulder, leaving, as I observed the next day, a patch of powder on
+my coat.
+
+Miss Sellars observed that one of the saddest things in the world was
+unrequited love.
+
+I replied gallantly, “Whateryou know about it?”
+
+“Ah, you men, you men,” murmured Miss Sellars; “you're all alike.”
+
+This suggested a personal aspersion on my character. “Not allus,” I
+murmured.
+
+“You don't know what love is,” said Miss Sellars. “You're not old
+enough.”
+
+The O'Kelly had passed on to Sullivan's “Sweethearts,” then in its first
+popularity.
+
+     “Oh, love for a year--a week--a day!
+     But oh for the love that loves al-wa-ays!”
+
+Miss Sellars' languishing eyes were fixed upon me; Miss Sellars' red
+lips pouted and twitched; Miss Sellars' white bosom rose and fell.
+Never, so it seemed to me, had so large an amount of beauty been
+concentrated in one being.
+
+“Yeserdo,” I said. “I love you.”
+
+I stooped to kiss the red lips, but something was in my way. It turned
+out to be a cold cigar. Miss Sellars thoughtfully removed it, and threw
+it away. Our lips met. Her large arms closed about my neck and held me
+tight.
+
+“Well, I'm sure!” came the voice of Mrs. Peedles, as from afar. “Nice
+goings on!”
+
+I have vague remembrance of a somewhat heated discussion, in which
+everybody but myself appeared to be taking extreme interest--of Miss
+Sellars in her most ladylike and chilling tones defending me against the
+charge of “being no gentleman,” which Mrs. Peedles was explaining nobody
+had said I wasn't. The argument seemed to be of the circular order. No
+gentleman had ever kissed Miss Sellars who had not every right to do so,
+nor ever would. To kiss Miss Sellars without such right was to declare
+oneself no gentleman. Miss Sellars appealed to me to clear my character
+from the aspersion of being no gentleman. I was trying to understand
+the situation, when Jarman, seizing me somewhat roughly by the arm,
+suggested my going to bed. Miss Sellars, seizing my other arm, suggested
+my refusing to go to bed. So far I was with Miss Sellars. I didn't want
+to go to bed, and said so. My desire to sit up longer was proof positive
+to Miss Sellars that I was a gentleman, but to no one else. The argument
+shifted, the question being now as to whether Miss Sellars were a lady.
+To prove the point it was, according to Miss Sellars, necessary that
+I should repeat I loved her. I did repeat it, adding, with faint
+remembrance of my own fiction, that if a life's devotion was likely to
+be of the slightest further proof, my heart's blood was at her
+service. This cleared the air, Mrs. Peedles observing that under such
+circumstances it only remained for her to withdraw everything she had
+said; to which Miss Sellars replied graciously that she had always known
+Mrs. Peedles to be a good sort at the bottom.
+
+Nevertheless, gaiety was gone from among us, and for this, in some way
+I could not understand, I appeared to be responsible. Jarman was
+distinctly sulky. The O'Kelly, suddenly thinking of the time, went to
+the door and discovered that the two cabs were waiting. The third floor
+recollected that work had to be finished. I myself felt sleepy.
+
+Our host and hostess departed; Jarman again suggested bed, and this
+time I agreed with him. After a slight misunderstanding with the door, I
+found myself upon the stairs. I had never noticed before that they
+were quite perpendicular. Adapting myself to the changed conditions, I
+climbed them with the help of my hands. I accomplished the last flight
+somewhat quickly, and feeling tired, sat down the moment I was within
+my own room. Jarman knocked at the door. I told him to come in; but he
+didn't. It occurred to me that the reason was I was sitting on the floor
+with my back against the door. The discovery amused me exceedingly and
+I laughed; and Jarman, baffled, descended to his own floor. I found
+getting into bed a difficulty, owing to the strange behaviour of the
+room. It spun round and round. Now the bed was just in front of me, now
+it was behind me. I managed at last to catch it before it could get past
+me, and holding on by the ironwork, frustrated its efforts to throw me
+out again on to the floor.
+
+But it was some time before I went to sleep, and over my intervening
+experiences I draw a veil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM. BUT BEFORE SETTING OUT, HE
+WILL GO A-VISITING.
+
+The sun was streaming into my window when I woke in the morning. I sat
+up and listened. The roar of the streets told me plainly that the day
+had begun without me. I reached out my hand for my watch; it was not in
+its usual place upon the rickety dressing-table. I raised myself still
+higher and looked about me. My clothes lay scattered on the floor. One
+boot, in solitary state, occupied the chair by the fireplace; the other
+I could not see anywhere.
+
+During the night my head appeared to have grown considerably. I
+wondered idly for the moment whether I had not made a mistake and put
+on Minikin's; if so, I should be glad to exchange back for my own.
+This thing I had got was a top-heavy affair, and was aching most
+confoundedly.
+
+Suddenly the recollection of the previous night rushed at me and shook
+me awake. From a neighbouring steeple rang chimes: I counted with care.
+Eleven o'clock. I sprang out of bed, and at once sat down upon the
+floor.
+
+I remembered how, holding on to the bed, I had felt the room waltzing
+wildly round and round. It had not quite steadied itself even yet. It
+was still rotating, not whirling now, but staggering feebly, as
+though worn out by its all-night orgie. Creeping to the wash-stand, I
+succeeded, after one or two false plunges, in getting my head inside
+the basin. Then, drawing on my trousers with difficulty and reaching
+the easy-chair, I sat down and reviewed matters so far as I was able,
+commencing from the present and working back towards the past.
+
+I was feeling very ill. That was quite clear. Something had disagreed
+with me.
+
+“That strong cigar,” I whispered feebly to myself; “I ought never to
+have ventured upon it. And then the little room with all those people
+in it. Besides, I have been working very hard. I must really take more
+exercise.”
+
+It gave me some satisfaction to observe that, shuffling and cowardly
+though I might be, I was not a person easily bamboozled.
+
+“Nonsense,” I told myself brutally; “don't try to deceive me. You were
+drunk.”
+
+“Not drunk,” I pleaded; “don't say drunk; it is such a coarse
+expression. Some people cannot stand sweet champagne, so I have heard.
+It affected my liver. Do please make it a question of liver.”
+
+“Drunk,” I persisted unrelentingly, “hopelessly, vulgarly drunk--drunk
+as any 'Arry after a Bank Holiday.”
+
+“It is the first time,” I murmured.
+
+“It was your first opportunity,” I replied.
+
+“Never again,” I promised.
+
+“The stock phrase,” I returned.
+
+“How old are you?”
+
+“Nineteen.”
+
+“So you have not even the excuse of youth. How do you know that it will
+not grow upon you; that, having thus commenced a downward career, you
+will not sink lower and lower, and so end by becoming a confirmed sot?”
+
+My heavy head dropped into my hands, and I groaned. Many a temperance
+tale perused on Sunday afternoons came back to me. Imaginative in all
+directions, I watched myself hastening toward a drunkard's grave, now
+heroically struggling against temptation, now weakly yielding, the
+craving growing upon me. In the misty air about me I saw my father's
+white face, my mother's sad eyes. I thought of Barbara, of the scorn
+that could quiver round that bewitching mouth; of Hal, with his
+tremendous contempt for all forms of weakness. Shame of the present and
+terror of the future between them racked my mind.
+
+“It shall be never again!” I cried aloud. “By God, it shall!” (At
+nineteen one is apt to be vehement.) “I will leave this house at once,”
+ I continued to myself aloud; “I will get away from its unwholesome
+atmosphere. I will wipe it out of my mind, and all connected with it. I
+will make a fresh start. I will--”
+
+Something I had been dimly conscious of at the back of my brain came
+forward and stood before me: the flabby figure of Miss Rosina Sellars.
+What was she doing here? What right had she to step between me and my
+regeneration?
+
+“The right of your affianced bride,” my other half explained, with a
+grim smile to myself.
+
+“Did I really go so far as that?”
+
+“We will not go into details,” I replied; “I do not wish to dwell upon
+them. That was the result.”
+
+“I was--I was not quite myself at the time. I did not know what I was
+doing.”
+
+“As a rule, we don't when we do foolish things; but we have to abide by
+the consequences, all the same. Unfortunately, it happened to be in the
+presence of witnesses, and she is not the sort of lady to be easily got
+rid of. You will marry her and settle down with her in two small rooms.
+Her people will be your people. You will come to know them better before
+many days are passed. Among them she is regarded as 'the lady,' from
+which you can judge of them. A nice commencement of your career, is it
+not, my ambitious young friend? A nice mess you have made of it!”
+
+“What am I to do?” I asked.
+
+“Upon my word, I don't know,” I answered.
+
+I passed a wretched day. Ashamed to face Mrs. Peedles or even the
+slavey, I kept to my room, with the door locked. At dusk, feeling a
+little better--or, rather, less bad, I stole out and indulged in a
+simple meal, consisting of tea without sugar and a kippered herring, at
+a neighbouring coffee-house. Another gentleman, taking his seat opposite
+to me and ordering hot buttered toast, I left hastily.
+
+At eight o'clock in the evening Minikin called round from the office to
+know what had happened. Seeking help from shame, I confessed to him the
+truth.
+
+“Thought as much,” he answered. “Seems to have been an A1 from the look
+of you.”
+
+“I am glad it has happened, now it is over,” I said to him. “It will be
+a lesson I shall never forget.”
+
+“I know,” said Minikin. “Nothing like a fair and square drunk for making
+you feel real good; better than a sermon.”
+
+In my trouble I felt the need of advice; and Minikin, though my junior,
+was, I knew, far more experienced in worldly affairs than I was.
+
+“That's not the worst,” I confided to him. “What do you think I've
+done?”
+
+“Killed a policeman?” suggested Minikin.
+
+“Got myself engaged.”
+
+“No one like you quiet fellows for going it when you do begin,”
+ commented Minikin. “Nice girl?”
+
+“I don't know,” I answered. “I only know I don't want her. How can I get
+out of it?”
+
+Minikin removed his left eye and commenced to polish it upon his
+handkerchief, a habit he had when in doubt. From looking into it he
+appeared to derive inspiration.
+
+“Take-her-own-part sort of a girl?”
+
+I intimated that he had diagnosed Miss Rosina Sellars correctly.
+
+“Know how much you're earning?”
+
+“She knows I live up here in this attic and do my own cooking,” I
+answered.
+
+Minikin glanced round the room. “Must be fond of you.”
+
+“She thinks I'm clever,” I explained, “and that I shall make my way.
+
+“And she's willing to wait?”
+
+I nodded.
+
+“Well, I should let her wait,” replied Minikin, replacing his eye.
+“There's plenty of time before you.”
+
+“But she's a barmaid, and she'll expect me to walk with her, to take her
+out on Sundays, to go and see her friends. I can't do it. Besides, she's
+right: I mean to get on. Then she'll stick to me. It's awful!”
+
+“How did it happen?” asked Minikin.
+
+“I don't know,” I replied. “I didn't know I had done it till it was
+over.”
+
+“Anybody present?”
+
+“Half-a-dozen of them,” I groaned.
+
+The door opened, and Jarman entered; he never troubled to knock
+anywhere. In place of his usual noisy greeting, he crossed in silence
+and shook me gravely by the hand.
+
+“Friend of yours?” he asked, indicating Minikin.
+
+I introduced them to each other.
+
+“Proud to meet you,” said Jarman.
+
+“Glad to hear it,” said Minikin. “Don't look as if you'd got much else
+to be stuck up about.”
+
+“Don't mind him,” I explained to Jarman. “He was born like it.”
+
+“Wonderful gift” replied Jarman. “D'ye know what I should do if I 'ad
+it?” He did not wait for Minikin's reply. “'Ire myself out to break up
+evening parties. Ever thought of it seriously?”
+
+Minikin replied that he would give the idea consideration.
+
+“Make your fortune going round the suburbs,” assured him Jarman. “Pity
+you weren't 'ere last night,” he continued; “might 'ave saved our young
+friend 'ere a deal of trouble. Has 'e told you the news?”
+
+I explained that I had already put Minikin in possession of all the
+facts.
+
+“Now you've got a good, steady eye,” said Jarman, upon whom Minikin,
+according to his manner, had fixed his glass orb; “'ow d'ye think 'e is
+looking?”
+
+“As well as can be expected under the circumstances, don't you think?”
+ answered Minikin.
+
+“Does 'e know the circumstances? Has 'e seen the girl?” asked Jarman.
+
+I replied he had not as yet enjoyed that privilege. “Then 'e don't know
+the worst,” said Jarman. “A hundred and sixty pounds of 'er, and still
+growing! Bit of a load for 'im, ain't it?”
+
+“Some of 'em do have luck,” was Minikin's rejoinder. Jarman
+leant forward and took further stock for a few seconds of his new
+acquaintance.
+
+“That's a fine 'ead of yours,” he remarked; “all your own? No offence,”
+ continued Jarman, without giving Minikin time for repartee. “I was
+merely thinking there must be room for a lot of sense in it. Now, what
+do you, as a practical man, advise 'im: dose of poison, or Waterloo
+Bridge and a brick?”
+
+“I suppose there's no doubt,” I interjected, “that we are actually
+engaged?”
+
+“Not a blooming shadow,” assured me Jarman, cheerfully, “so far as she's
+concerned.”
+
+“I shall tell her plainly,” I explained, “that I was drunk at the time.”
+
+“And 'ow are you going to convince 'er of it?” asked Jarman. “You think
+your telling 'er you loved 'er proves it. So it would to anybody else,
+but not to 'er. You can't expect it. Besides, if every girl is going to
+give up 'er catch just because the fellow 'adn't all 'is wits about 'im
+at the time--well, what do you think?” He appealed to Minikin.
+
+To Minikin it appeared that if such contention were allowed girls might
+as well shut up shop.
+
+Jarman, who now that he had “got even” with Minikin, was more friendly
+disposed towards that young man, drew his chair closer to him and
+entered upon a private and confidential argument, from which I appeared
+to be entirely excluded.
+
+“You see,” explained Jarman, “this ain't an ordinary case. This chap's
+going to be the future Poet Laureate. Now, when the Prince of Wales
+invites him to dine at Marlborough 'ouse, 'e don't want to go there
+tacked on to a girl that carries aitches with her in a bag, and don't
+know which end of the spoon out of which to drink 'er soup.”
+
+“It makes a difference, of course,” agreed Minikin.
+
+“What we've got to do,” said Jarman, “is to get 'im out of it. And upon
+my sivvy, blessed if I see 'ow to do it!”
+
+“She fancies him?” asked Minikin.
+
+“What she fancies,” explained Jarman, “is that nature intended 'er to be
+a lady. And it's no good pointing out to 'er the mistake she's making,
+because she ain't got sense enough to see it.”
+
+“No good talking straight to her,” suggested Minikin, “telling her that
+it can never be?”
+
+“That's our difficulty,” replied Jarman; “it can be. This chap”--I
+listened as might a prisoner in the dock to the argument of counsel,
+interested but impotent--“don't know enough to come in out of the rain,
+as the saying is. 'E's just the sort of chap this sort of thing does
+'appen to.”
+
+“But he don't want her,” urged Minikin. “He says he don't want her.”
+
+“Yes, to you and me,” answered Jarman; “and of course 'e don't. I'm
+not saying 'e's a natural born idiot. But let 'er come along and do
+a snivel--tell 'im that 'e's breaking 'er 'eart, and appeal to 'im to
+be'ave as a gentleman, and all that sort of thing, and what do you think
+will be the result?”
+
+Minikin agreed that the problem presented difficulties.
+
+“Of course, if 'twas you or me, we should just tell 'er to put 'erself
+away somewhere where the moth couldn't get at 'er and wait till we sent
+round for 'er; and there'd be an end of the matter. But with 'im it's
+different.”
+
+“He is a bit of a soft,” agreed Minikin.
+
+“'Tain't 'is fault,” explained Jarman; “'twas the way 'e was brought up.
+'E fancies girls are the sort of things one sees in plays, going about
+saying 'Un'and me!' 'Let me pass!' Maybe some of 'em are, but this ain't
+one of 'em.”
+
+“How did it happen?” asked Minikin.
+
+“'Ow does it 'appen nine times out of ten?” returned Jarman. “'E was a
+bit misty, and she was wide awake. 'E gets a bit spoony, and--well, you
+know.”
+
+“Artful things, girls,” commented Minikin.
+
+“Can't blame 'em,” returned Jarman, with generosity; “it's their
+business. Got to dispose of themselves somehow. Oughtn't to be binding
+without a written order dated the next morning; that'd make it all
+right.”
+
+“Couldn't prove a prior engagement?” suggested Minikin.
+
+“She'd want to see the girl first before she'd believe it--only
+natural,” returned Jarman.
+
+“Couldn't get a girl?” urged Minikin.
+
+“Who could you trust?” asked the cautious Jarman. “Besides, there ain't
+time. She's letting 'im rest to-day; to-morrow evening she'll be down on
+'im.”
+
+“Don't see anything for it,” said Minikin, “but for him to do a bunk.”
+
+“Not a bad idea that,” mused Jarman; “only where's 'e to bunk to?”
+
+“Needn't go far,” said Minikin.
+
+“She'd find 'im out and follow 'im,” said Jarman. “She can look after
+herself, mind you. Don't you go doing 'er any injustice.”
+
+“He could change his name,” suggested Minikin.
+
+“'Ow could 'e get a crib?” asked Jarman; “no character, no references.”
+
+“I've got it,” cried Jarman, starting up; “the stage!”
+
+“Can he act?” asked Minikin.
+
+“Can do anything,” retorted my supporter, “that don't want too much
+sense. That's 'is sanctuary, the stage. No questions asked, no character
+wanted. Lord! why didn't I think of it before?”
+
+“Wants a bit of getting on to, doesn't it?” suggested Minikin.
+
+“Depends upon where you want to get,” replied Jarman. For the first
+time since the commencement of the discussion he turned to me. “Can you
+sing?” he asked me.
+
+I replied that I could a little, though I had never done so in public.
+
+“Sing something now,” demanded Jarman; “let's 'ear you. Wait a minute!”
+ he cried.
+
+He slipped out of the room. I heard him pause upon the landing below
+and knock at the door of the fair Rosina's room. The next minute he
+returned.
+
+“It's all right,” he explained; “she's not in yet. Now, sing for all
+you're worth. Remember, it's for life and freedom.”
+
+I sang “Sally in Our Alley,” not with much spirit, I am inclined to
+think. With every mention of the lady's name there rose before me the
+abundant form and features of my _fiancee_, which checked the feeling
+that should have trembled through my voice. But Jarman, though not
+enthusiastic, was content.
+
+“It isn't what I call a grand opera voice,” he commented, “but it ought
+to do all right for a chorus where economy is the chief point to be
+considered. Now, I'll tell you what to do. You go to-morrow straight to
+the O'Kelly, and put the whole thing before 'im. 'E's a good sort; 'e'll
+touch you up a bit, and maybe give you a few introductions. Lucky for
+you, this is just the right time. There's one or two things comin'
+on, and if Fate ain't dead against you, you'll lose your amorita, or
+whatever it's called, and not find 'er again till it's too late.”
+
+I was not in the mood that evening to feel hopeful about anything; but I
+thanked both of them for their kind intentions and promised to think
+the suggestion over on the morrow, when, as it was generally agreed, I
+should be in a more fitting state to bring cool judgment to bear upon
+the subject; and they rose to take their departure.
+
+Leaving Minikin to descend alone, Jarman returned the next minute.
+“Consols are down a bit this week,” he whispered, with the door in his
+hand. “If you want a little of the ready to carry you through, don't
+go sellin' out. I can manage a few pounds. Suck a couple of lemons and
+you'll be all right in the morning. So long.”
+
+I followed his advice regarding the lemons, and finding it correct, went
+to the office next morning as usual. Lott & Co., in consideration of my
+agreeing to a deduction of two shillings on the week's salary, allowed
+himself to overlook the matter. I had intended acting on Jarman's
+advice, to call upon the O'Kelly at his address of respectability in
+Hampstead that evening, and had posted him a note saying I was coming.
+Before leaving the office, however, I received a reply to the effect
+that he would be out that evening, and asking me to make it the
+following Friday instead. Disappointed, I returned to my lodgings in a
+depressed state of mind. Jarman 's scheme, which had appeared hopeful
+and even attractive during the daytime, now loomed shadowy and
+impossible before me. The emptiness of the first floor parlour as
+I passed its open door struck a chill upon me, reminding me of the
+disappearance of a friend to whom, in spite of moral disapproval, I had
+during these last few months become attached. Unable to work, the old
+pain of loneliness returned upon me. I sat for awhile in the darkness,
+listening to the scratching of the pen of my neighbour, the old
+law-writer, and the sense of despair that its sound always communicated
+to me encompassed me about this evening with heavier weight than usual.
+
+After all, was not the sympathy of the Lady 'Ortensia, stimulated for
+personal purposes though it might be, better than nothing? At least,
+here was some living creature to whom I belonged, to whom my existence
+or nonexistence was of interest, who, if only for her own sake, was
+bound to share my hopes, my fears.
+
+It was in this mood that I heard a slight tap at the door. In the dim
+passage stood the small slavey, holding out a note. I took it, and
+returning, lighted my candle. The envelope was pink and scented. It was
+addressed, in handwriting not so bad as I had expected, to “Paul Kelver,
+Esquire.” I opened it and read:
+
+“Dr mr. Paul--I herd as how you was took hill hafter the party. I feer
+you are not strong. You must not work so hard or you will be hill and
+then I shall be very cros with you. I hop you are well now. If so I am
+going for a wark and you may come with me if you are good. With much
+love. From your affechonat ROSIE.”
+
+In spite of the spelling, a curious, tingling sensation stole over me
+as I read this my first love-letter. A faint mist swam before my eyes.
+Through it, glorified and softened, I saw the face of my betrothed,
+pasty yet alluring, her large white fleshy arms stretched out invitingly
+toward me. Moved by a sudden hot haste that seized me, I dressed myself
+with trembling hands; I appeared to be anxious to act without giving
+myself time for thought. Complete, with a colour in my cheeks unusual to
+them, and a burning in my eyes, I descended and knocked with a nervous
+hand at the door of the second floor back.
+
+“Who's that?” came in answer Miss Sellars' sharp tones.
+
+“It is I--Paul.”
+
+“Oh, wait a minute, dear.” The tone was sweeter. There followed the
+sound of scurried footsteps, a rustling of clothes, a banging of
+drawers, a few moments' dead silence, and then:
+
+“You can come in now, dear.”
+
+I entered. It was a small, untidy room, smelling of smoky lamp; but all
+I saw distinctly at the moment was Miss Sellars with her arms above her
+head, pinning her hat upon her straw-coloured hair.
+
+With the sight of her before me in the flesh, my feelings underwent a
+sudden revulsion. During the few minutes she had kept me waiting outside
+the door I had suffered from an almost uncontrollable desire to turn the
+handle and rush in. Now, had I acted on impulse, I should have run out.
+Not that she was an unpleasant-looking girl by any means; it was the
+atmosphere of coarseness, of commonness, around her that repelled me.
+The fastidiousness--finikinness; if you will--that would so often spoil
+my rare chop, put before me by a waitress with dirty finger-nails,
+forced me to disregard the ample charms she no doubt did possess, to
+fasten my eyes exclusively upon her red, rough hands and the one or two
+warts that grew thereon.
+
+“You're a very naughty boy,” told me Miss Sellars, finishing the
+fastening of her hat. “Why didn't you come in and see me in the
+dinner-_h_our? I've a great mind not to kiss you.”
+
+The powder she had evidently dabbed on hastily was plainly visible upon
+her face; the round, soft arms were hidden beneath ill-fitting sleeves
+of some crapey material, the thought of which put my teeth on edge. I
+wished her intention had been stronger. Instead, relenting, she
+offered me her flowery cheek, which I saluted gingerly, the taste of it
+reminding me of certain pale, thin dough-cakes manufactured by the wife
+of our school porter and sold to us in playtime at four a penny, and
+which, having regard to their satisfying quality, had been popular with
+me in those days.
+
+At the top of the kitchen stairs Miss Sellars paused and called down
+shrilly to Mrs. Peedles, who in course of time appeared, panting.
+
+“Oh, me and Mr. Kelver are going out for a short walk, Mrs. Peedles. I
+shan't want any supper. Good night.”
+
+“Oh, good night, my dear,” replied Mrs. Peedles. “Hope you'll enjoy
+yourselves. Is Mr. Kelver there?”
+
+“He's round the corner,” I heard Miss Sellars explain in a lower voice;
+and there followed a snigger.
+
+“He's a bit shy, ain't he?” suggested Mrs. Peedles in a whisper.
+
+“I've had enough of the other sort,” was Miss Sellars' answer in low
+tones.
+
+“Ah, well; it's the shy ones that come out the strongest after a
+bit--leastways, that's been my experience.”
+
+“He'll do all right. So long.”
+
+Miss Sellars, buttoning a burst glove, rejoined me.
+
+“I suppose you've never had a sweetheart before?” asked Miss Sellars, as
+we turned into the Blackfriars Road.
+
+I admitted that this was my first experience.
+
+“I can't a-bear a flirty man,” explained Miss Sellars. “That's why I
+took to you from the beginning. You was so quiet.”
+
+I began to wish that nature had bestowed upon me a noisier temperament.
+
+“Anybody could see you was a gentleman,” continued Miss Sellars. “Heaps
+and heaps of hoffers I've had--_h_undreds you might almost say. But what
+I've always told 'em is, 'I like you very much indeed as a friend, but
+I'm not going to marry any one but a gentleman.' Don't you think I was
+right?”
+
+I murmured it was only what I should have expected of her.
+
+“You may take my harm, if you like,” suggested Miss Sellars, as we
+crossed St. George's Circus; and linked, we pursued our way along the
+Kennington Park Road.
+
+Fortunately, there was not much need for me to talk. Miss Sellars was
+content to supply most of the conversation herself, and all of it was
+about herself.
+
+I learned that her instincts since childhood had been toward gentility.
+Nor was this to be wondered at, seeing that her family--on her mother's
+side, at all events,--were connected distinctly with “the _h_ighest in
+the land.” _Mesalliances_, however, are common in all communities, and
+one of them, a particularly flagrant specimen--her “Mar” had, alas!
+contracted, having married--what did I think? I should never guess--a
+waiter! Miss Sellars, stopping in the act of crossing Newington Butts to
+shudder at the recollection of her female parent's shame, was nearly run
+down by a tramcar.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Sellars did not appear to have “hit it off” together. Could
+one wonder: Mrs. Sellars with an uncle on the Stock Exchange, and Mr.
+Sellars with one on Peckham Rye? I gathered his calling to have been,
+chiefly, “three shies a penny.” Mrs. Sellars was now, however, happily
+dead; and if no other good thing had come out of the catastrophe, it had
+determined Miss Sellars to take warning by her mother's error and avoid
+connection with the lowly born. She it was who, with my help, would lift
+the family back again to its proper position in society.
+
+“It used to be a joke against me,” explained Miss Sellars, “heven when
+I was quite a child. I never could tolerate anything low. Why, one day
+when I was only seven years old, what do you think happened?”
+
+I confessed my inability to guess.
+
+“Well, I'll tell you,” said Miss Sellars; “it'll just show you. Uncle
+Joseph--that was father's uncle, you understand?”
+
+I assured Miss Sellars that the point was fixed in my mind.
+
+“Well, one day when he came to see us he takes a cocoanut out of his
+pocket and offers it to me. 'Thank you,' I says; 'I don't heat cocoanuts
+that have been shied at by just anybody and missed!' It made him so
+wild. After that,” explained Miss Sellars, “they used to call me at home
+the Princess of Wales.”
+
+I murmured it was a pretty fancy.
+
+“Some people,” replied Miss Sellars, with a giggle, “says it fits me;
+but, of course, that's only their nonsense.”
+
+Not knowing what to reply, I remained silent, which appeared to somewhat
+disappoint Miss Sellars.
+
+Out of the Clapham Road we turned into a by-street of two-storeyed
+houses.
+
+“You'll come in and have a bit of supper?” suggested Miss Sellars.
+“Mar's quite hanxious to see you.”
+
+I found sufficient courage to say I was not feeling well, and would much
+rather return home.
+
+“Oh, but you must just come in for five minutes, dear. It'll look so
+funny if you don't. I told 'em we was coming.”
+
+“I would really rather not,” I urged; “some other evening.” I felt
+a presentiment, I confided to her, that on this particular evening I
+should not shine to advantage.
+
+“Oh, you mustn't be so shy,” said Miss Sellars. “I don't like shy
+fellows--not too shy. That's silly.” And Miss Sellars took my arm with
+a decided grip, making it clear to me that escape could be obtained only
+by an unseemly struggle in the street; not being prepared for which, I
+meekly yielded.
+
+We knocked at the door of one of the small houses, Miss Sellars
+retaining her hold upon me until it had been opened to us by a lank
+young man in his shirt-sleeves and closed behind us.
+
+“Don't gentlemen wear coats of a hevening nowadays?” asked Miss Sellars,
+tartly, of the lank young man. “New fashion just come in?”
+
+“I don't know what gentlemen wear in the evening or what they don't,”
+ retorted the lank young man, who appeared to be in an aggressive mood.
+“If I can find one in this street, I'll ast him and let you know.”
+
+“Mother in the droaring-room?” enquired Miss Sellars, ignoring the
+retort.
+
+“They're all of 'em in the parlour, if that's what you mean,” returned
+the lank young man, “the whole blooming shoot. If you stand up against
+the wall and don't breathe, there'll just be room for you.”
+
+Sweeping by the lank young man, Miss Sellars opened the parlour door,
+and towing me in behind her, shut it.
+
+“Well, Mar, here we are,” announced Miss Sellars. An enormously stout
+lady, ornamented with a cap that appeared to have been made out of a
+bandanna handkerchief, rose to greet us, thus revealing the fact
+that she had been sitting upon an extremely small horsehair-covered
+easy-chair, the disproportion between the lady and her support being
+quite pathetic.
+
+“I am charmed, Mr.--”
+
+“Kelver,” supplied Miss Sellars.
+
+“Kelver, to make your ac-quain-tance,” recited Mrs. Sellars in the tone
+of one repeating a lesson.
+
+I bowed, and murmured that the honour was entirely mine.
+
+“Don't mention it,” replied Mrs. Sellars. “Pray be seated.”
+
+Mrs. Sellars herself set the example by suddenly giving way and dropping
+down into her chair, which thus again became invisible. It received her
+with an agonised groan.
+
+Indeed, the insistence with which this article of furniture throughout
+the evening called attention to its sufferings was really quite
+distracting. With every breath that Mrs. Sellars took it moaned wearily.
+There were moments when it literally shrieked. I could not have accepted
+Mrs. Sellars' offer had I wished, there being no chair vacant and no
+room for another. A young man with watery eyes, sitting just behind me
+between a fat young lady and a lean one, rose and suggested my taking
+his place. Miss Sellars introduced me to him as her cousin Joseph
+something or other, and we shook hands.
+
+The watery-eyed Joseph remarked that it had been a fine day between
+the showers, and hoped that the morrow would be either wet or dry; upon
+which the lean young lady, having slapped him, asked admiringly of the
+fat young lady if he wasn't a “silly fool;” to which the fat young lady
+replied, with somewhat unnecessary severity, I thought, that no one
+could help being what they were born. To this the lean young lady
+retorted that it was with precisely similar reflection that she herself
+controlled her own feelings when tempted to resent the fat young lady's
+“nasty jealous temper.”
+
+The threatened quarrel was nipped in the bud by the discretion of Miss
+Sellars, who took the opportunity of the fat young lady's momentary
+speechlessness to introduce me promptly to both of them. They also,
+I learned, were cousins. The lean girl said she had “erd on me,” and
+immediately fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggles; of which the
+watery-eyed Joseph requested me to take no notice, explaining that she
+always went off like that at exactly three-quarters to the half-hour
+every evening, Sundays and holidays excepted; that she had taken
+everything possible for it without effect, and that what he himself
+advised was that she should have it off.
+
+The fat girl, seizing the chance afforded her, remarked genteelly that
+she too had “heard hof me,” with emphasis upon the “hof.” She also
+remarked it was a long walk from Blackfriars Bridge.
+
+“All depends upon the company, eh? Bet they didn't find it too long.”
+
+This came from a loud-voiced, red-faced man sitting on the sofa beside a
+somewhat melancholy-looking female dressed in bright green. These twain
+I discovered to be Uncle and Aunt Gutton. From an observation dropped
+later in the evening concerning government restrictions on the sale of
+methylated spirit, and hastily smothered, I gathered that their line was
+oil and colour.
+
+Mr. Gutton's forte appeared to be badinage. He it was who, on my
+explaining my heightened colour as due to the closeness of the evening,
+congratulated his niece on having secured so warm a partner.
+
+“Will be jolly handy,” shouted Uncle Gutton, “for Rosina, seeing she's
+always complaining of her cold feet.”
+
+Here the lank young man attempted to squeeze himself into the room, but
+found his entrance barred by the square, squat figure of the watery-eyed
+young man.
+
+“Don't push,” advised the watery-eyed young man. “Walk over me quietly.”
+
+“Well, why don't yer get out of the way,” growled the lank young man,
+now coated, but still aggressive.
+
+“Where am I to get to?” asked the watery-eyed young man, with some
+reason. “Say the word and I'll 'ang myself up to the gas bracket.”
+
+“In my courting days,” roared Uncle Gutton, “the girls used to be able
+to find seats, even if there wasn't enough chairs to go all round.”
+
+The sentiment was received with varying degrees of approbation. The
+watery-eyed young man, sitting down, put the lean young lady on his
+knee, and in spite of her struggles and sounding slaps, heroically
+retained her there.
+
+“Now, then, Rosie,” shouted Uncle Gutton, who appeared to have
+constituted himself master of the ceremonies, “don't stand about, my
+girl; you'll get tired.”
+
+Left to herself, I am inclined to think my _fiancee_ would have spared
+me; but Uncle Gutton, having been invited to a love comedy, was not
+to be cheated of any part of the performance, and the audience clearly
+being with him, there was nothing for it but compliance. I seated
+myself, and amid plaudits accommodated the ample and heavy Rosina upon
+my knee.
+
+“Good-bye,” called out to me the watery-eyed young man, as behind the
+fair Rosina I disappeared from his view. “See you again later on.”
+
+“I used to be a plump girl myself before I married,” observed Aunt
+Gutton. “Plump as butter I was at one time.”
+
+“It isn't what one eats,” said the maternal Sellars. “I myself don't eat
+enough to keep a fly, and my legs--”
+
+“That'll do, Mar,” interrupted the filial Sellars, tartly.
+
+“I was only going to say, my dear--”
+
+“We all know what you was going to say, Mar,” retorted Miss Sellars.
+“We've heard it before, and it isn't interesting.”
+
+Mrs. Sellars relapsed into silence.
+
+“'Ard work and plenty of it keeps you thin enough, I notice,” remarked
+the lank young man, with bitterness. To him I was now introduced, he
+being Mr. George Sellars. “Seen 'im before,” was his curt greeting.
+
+At supper--referred to by Mrs. Sellars again in the tone of one
+remembering a lesson, as a cold col-la-tion, with the accent on the
+“tion”--I sat between Miss Sellars and the lean young lady, with Aunt
+and Uncle Gutton opposite to us. It was remarked with approval that I
+did not appear to be hungry.
+
+“Had too many kisses afore he started,” suggested Uncle Gutton, with
+his mouth full of cold roast pork and pickles. “Wonderfully nourishing
+thing, kisses, eh? Look at mother and me. That's all we live on.”
+
+Aunt Gutton sighed, and observed that she had always been a poor feeder.
+
+The watery-eyed young man, observing he had never tasted them
+himself--at which sally there was much laughter--said he would not mind
+trying a sample if the lean young lady would kindly pass him one.
+
+The lean young lady opined that, not being used to high living, it might
+disagree with him.
+
+“Just one,” pleaded the watery-eyed young man, “to go with this bit of
+cracklin'.”
+
+The lean young lady, amid renewed applause, first thoughtfully wiping
+her mouth, acceded to his request.
+
+The watery-eyed young man turned it over with the air of a gourmet.
+
+“Not bad,” was his verdict. “Reminds me of onions.” At this there was
+another burst of laughter.
+
+“Now then, ain't Paul goin' to have one?” shouted Uncle Gutton, when the
+laughter had subsided.
+
+Amid silence, feeling as wretched as perhaps I have ever felt in my life
+before or since, I received one from the gracious Miss Sellars, wet and
+sounding.
+
+“Looks better for it already,” commented the delighted Uncle Gutton.
+“He'll soon get fat on 'em.”
+
+“Not too many at first,” advised the watery-eyed young man. “Looks to me
+as if he's got a weak stomach.”
+
+I think, had the meal lasted much longer, I should have made a dash for
+the street; the contemplation of such step was forming in my mind. But
+Miss Sellars, looking at her watch, declared we must be getting home at
+once, for the which I could have kissed her voluntarily; and, being a
+young lady of decision, at once rose and commenced leave-taking. Polite
+protests were attempted, but these, with enthusiastic assistance from
+myself, she swept aside.
+
+“Don't want any one to walk home with you?” suggested Uncle Gutton.
+“Sure you won't feel lonely by yourselves, eh?”
+
+“We shan't come to no harm,” assured him Miss Sellars.
+
+“P'raps you're right,” agreed Uncle Gutton. “There don't seem to be much
+of the fiery and untamed about him, so far as I can see.”
+
+“'Slow waters run deep,'” reminded us Aunt Gutton, with a waggish shake
+of her head.
+
+“No question about the slow,” assented Uncle Gutton. “If you don't like
+him--” observed Miss Sellars, speaking with dignity.
+
+“To be quite candid with you, my girl, I don't,” answered Uncle Gutton,
+whose temper, maybe as the result of too much cold pork and whiskey,
+seemed to have suddenly changed.
+
+“Well, he happens to be good enough for me,” recommenced Miss Sellars.
+
+“I'm sorry to hear a niece of mine say so,” interrupted Uncle Gutton.
+“If you want my opinion of him--”
+
+“If ever I do I'll call round some time when you're sober and ast you
+for it,” returned Miss Sellars. “And as for being your niece, you was
+here when I came, and I don't see very well as how I could have got out
+of it. You needn't throw that in my teeth.”
+
+The gust was dispersed by the practical remark of brother George to the
+effect that the last tram for Walworth left the Oval at eleven-thirty;
+to which he further added the suggestion that the Clapham Road was wide
+and well adapted to a row.
+
+“There ain't going to be no rows,” replied Uncle Gutton, returning to
+amiability as suddenly as he had departed from it. “We understand each
+other, don't we, my girl?”
+
+“That's all right, uncle. I know what you mean,” returned Miss Sellars,
+with equal handsomeness.
+
+“Bring him round again when he's feeling better,” added Uncle Gutton,
+“and we'll have another look at him.”
+
+“What you want,” advised the watery-eyed young man on shaking hands with
+me, “is complete rest and a tombstone.”
+
+I wished at the time I could have followed his prescription.
+
+The maternal Sellars waddled after us into the passage, which she
+completely blocked. She told me she was delight-ted to have met me, and
+that she was always at home on Sundays.
+
+I said I would remember it, and thanked her warmly for a pleasant
+evening, at Miss Sellars' request calling her Ma.
+
+Outside, Miss Sellars agreed that my presentiment had proved
+correct--that I had not shone to advantage. Our journey home on a
+tramcar was a somewhat silent proceeding. At the door of her room she
+forgave me, and kissed me good night. Had I been frank with her, I
+should have thanked her for that evening's experience. It had made my
+course plain to me.
+
+The next day, which was Thursday, I wandered about the streets till two
+o'clock in the morning, when I slipped in quietly, passing Miss Sellars'
+door with my boots in my hand.
+
+After Mr. Lott's departure on Friday, which, fortunately, was pay-day,
+I set my desk in order and confided to Minikin written instructions
+concerning all matters unfinished.
+
+“I shall not be here to-morrow,” I told him. “Going to follow your
+advice.”
+
+“Found anything to do?” he asked.
+
+“Not yet,” I answered.
+
+“Suppose you can't get anything?”
+
+“If the worst comes to the worst,” I replied, “I can hang myself.”
+
+“Well, you know the girl. Maybe you are right,” he agreed.
+
+“Hope it won't throw much extra work on you,” I said.
+
+“Well, I shan't be catching it if it does,” was his answer. “That's all
+right.”
+
+He walked with me to the “Angel,” and there we parted.
+
+“If you do get on to the stage,” he said, “and it's anything worth
+seeing, and you send me an order, and I can find the time, maybe I'll
+come and see you.”
+
+I thanked him for his promised support and jumped upon the tram.
+
+The O'Kelly's address was in Belsize Square. I was about to ring and
+knock, as requested by a highly-polished brass plate, when I became
+aware of pieces of small coal falling about me on the doorstep. Looking
+up, I perceived the O'Kelly leaning out of an attic window. From signs
+I gathered I was to retire from the doorstep and wait. In a few minutes
+the door opened and his hand beckoned me to enter.
+
+“Walk quietly,” he whispered; and on tip-toe we climbed up to the attic
+from where had fallen the coal. “I've been waiting for ye,” explained
+the O'Kelly, speaking low. “Me wife--a good woman, Paul; sure, a better
+woman never lived; ye'll like her when ye know her, later on--she might
+not care about ye're calling. She'd want to know where I met ye, and--ye
+understand? Besides,” added the O'Kelly, “we can smoke up here;” and
+seating himself where he could keep an eye upon the door, near to a
+small cupboard out of which he produced a pipe still alight, the O'Kelly
+prepared himself to listen.
+
+I told him briefly the reason of my visit.
+
+“It was my fault, Paul,” he was good enough to say; “my fault entirely.
+Between ourselves, it was a damned silly idea, that party, the whole
+thing altogether. Don't ye think so?”
+
+I replied that I was naturally prejudiced against it myself.
+
+“Most unfortunate for me,” continued the O'Kelly; “I know that. Me
+cabman took me to Hammersmith instead of Hampstead; said I told him
+Hammersmith. Didn't get home here till three o'clock in the morning.
+Most unfortunate--under the circumstances.”
+
+I could quite imagine it.
+
+“But I'm glad ye've come,” said the O'Kelly. “I had a notion ye did
+something foolish that evening, but I couldn't remember precisely what.
+It's been worrying me.”
+
+“It's been worrying me also, I can assure you,” I told him; and I gave
+him an account of my Wednesday evening's experience.
+
+“I'll go round to-morrow morning,” he said, “and see one or two people.
+It's not a bad idea, that of Jarman's. I think I may be able to arrange
+something for ye.”
+
+He fixed a time for me to call again upon him the next day, when Mrs.
+O'Kelly would be away from home. He instructed me to walk quietly up and
+down on the opposite side of the road with my eye on the attic window,
+and not to come across unless he waved a handkerchief.
+
+Rising to go, I thanked him for his kindness. “Don't put it that way, me
+dear Paul,” he answered. “If I don't get ye out of this scrape I shall
+never forgive meself. If we damned silly fools don't help one another,”
+ he added, with his pleasant laugh, “who is to help us?”
+
+We crept downstairs as we had crept up. As we reached the first floor,
+the drawing-room door suddenly opened.
+
+“William!” cried a sharp voice.
+
+“Me dear,” answered the O'Kelly, snatching his pipe from his mouth and
+thrusting it, still alight, into his trousers pocket. I made the rest
+of the descent by myself, and slipping out, closed the door behind me as
+noiselessly as possible.
+
+Again I did not return to Nelson Square until the early hours, and the
+next morning did not venture out until I had heard Miss Sellars, who
+appeared to be in a bad temper, leave the house. Then running to the top
+of the kitchen stairs, I called for Mrs. Peedles. I told her I was going
+to leave her, and, judging the truth to be the simplest explanation, I
+told her the reason why.
+
+“My dear,” said Mrs. Peedles, “I am only too glad to hear it. It wasn't
+for me to interfere, but I couldn't help seeing you were making a fool
+of yourself. I only hope you'll get clear off, and you may depend upon
+me to do all I can to help you.”
+
+“You don't think I'm acting dishonourably, do you, Mrs. Peedles?” I
+asked.
+
+“My dear,” replied Mrs. Peedles, “it's a difficult world to live
+in--leastways, that's been my experience of it.”
+
+I had just completed my packing--it had not taken me long--when I
+heard upon the stairs the heavy panting that always announced to me the
+up-coming of Mrs. Peedles. She entered with a bundle of old manuscripts
+under her arm, torn and tumbled booklets of various shapes and sizes.
+These she plumped down upon the rickety table, and herself upon the
+nearest chair.
+
+“Put them in your box, my dear,” said Mrs. Peedles. “They'll come in
+useful to you later on.”
+
+I glanced at the bundle. I saw it was a collection of old plays in
+manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined. The top one I
+noticed was “The Bloodspot: Or the Maiden, the Miser and the Murderer;”
+ the second, “The Female Highwayman.”
+
+“Everybody's forgotten 'em,” explained Mrs. Peedles, “but there's some
+good stuff in all of them.”
+
+“But what am I to do with them?” I enquired.
+
+“Just whatever you like, my dear,” explained Mrs. Peedles. “It's quite
+safe. They're all of 'em dead, the authors of 'em. I've picked 'em out
+most carefully. You just take a scene from one and a scene from the
+other. With judgment and your talent you'll make a dozen good plays out
+of that little lot when your time comes.”
+
+“But they wouldn't be my plays, Mrs. Peedles,” I suggested.
+
+“They will if I give them to you,” answered Mrs. Peedles. “You put 'em
+in your box. And never mind the bit of rent,” added Mrs. Peedles; “you
+can pay me that later on.”
+
+I kissed the kind old soul good-bye and took her gift with me to my new
+lodgings in Camden Town. Many a time have I been hard put to it for
+plot or scene, and more than once in weak mood have I turned with guilty
+intent the torn and crumpled pages of Mrs. Peedles's donation to my
+literary equipment. It is pleasant to be able to put my hand upon my
+heart and reflect that never yet have I yielded to the temptation.
+Always have I laid them back within their drawer, saying to myself, with
+stern reproof:
+
+“No, no, Paul. Stand or fall by your own merits. Never plagiarise--in
+any case, not from this 'little lot.'”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LEADS TO A MEETING.
+
+“Don't be nervous,” said the O'Kelly, “and don't try to do too much. You
+have a very fair voice, but it's not powerful. Keep cool and open your
+mouth.”
+
+It was eleven o'clock in the morning. We were standing at the entrance
+of the narrow court leading to the stage door. For a fortnight past the
+O'Kelly had been coaching me. It had been nervous work for both of us,
+but especially for the O'Kelly. Mrs. O'Kelly, a thin, acid-looking lady,
+of whom I once or twice had caught a glimpse while promenading Belsize
+Square awaiting the O'Kelly's signal, was a serious-minded lady, with a
+conscientious objection to all music not of a sacred character. With the
+hope of winning the O'Kelly from one at least of his sinful tendencies,
+the piano had been got rid of, and its place in the drawing-room filled
+by an American organ of exceptionally lugubrious tone. With this we
+had had to make shift, and though the O'Kelly--a veritable musical
+genius--had succeeded in evolving from it an accompaniment to “Sally in
+Our Alley” less misleading and confusing than might otherwise have been
+the case, the result had not been to lighten our labours. My rendering
+of the famous ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not
+intended by the composer. Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ
+a definition since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad.
+Involuntarily one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as
+satisfactorily as the young man appeared to anticipate. Was there not,
+when one came to think of it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained within
+the temperament of the complainful hero that would ill assort with
+those instincts toward frivolity the careful observer could not avoid
+discerning in the charming yet nevertheless somewhat shallow character
+of Sally.
+
+“Lighter, lighter. Not so soulful,” would demand the O'Kelly, as the
+solemn notes rolled jerkily from the groaning instrument beneath his
+hands.
+
+Once we were nearly caught, Mrs. O'Kelly returning from a district
+visitors' committee meeting earlier than was expected. Hastily I was
+hidden in a small conservatory adjutting from the first floor landing,
+where, crouching behind flower-pots, I listened in fear and trembling to
+the severe cross-examination of the O'Kelly.
+
+“William, do not prevaricate. It was not a hymn.”
+
+“Me dear, so much depends upon the time. Let me give ye an example of
+what I mean.”
+
+“William, pray in my presence not to play tricks with sacred melodies.
+If you have no respect for religion, please remember that I have.
+Besides, why should you be playing hymns in any time at ten o'clock
+in the morning? It is not like you, William, and I do not credit your
+explanation. And you were singing. I distinctly heard the word 'Sally'
+as I opened the door.”
+
+“Salvation, me dear,” corrected the O'Kelly.
+
+“Your enunciation, William, is not usually so much at fault.”
+
+“A little hoarseness, me dear,” explained the O'Kelly.
+
+“Your voice did not sound hoarse. Perhaps it will be better if we do not
+pursue the subject further.”
+
+With this the O'Kelly appeared to agree.
+
+“A lady a little difficult to get on with when ye're feeling well and
+strong,” so the O'Kelly would explain her; “but if ye happen to be ill,
+one of the kindest, most devoted of women. When I was down with typhoid
+three years ago, a tenderer nurse no man could have had. I shall never
+forget it. And so she would be again to-morrow, if there was anything
+serious the matter with me.”
+
+I murmured the well-known quotation.
+
+“Mrs. O'Kelly to a T,” concurred the O'Kelly. “I sometimes wonder if
+Lady Scott may not have been the same sort of woman.”
+
+“The unfortunate part of it is,” continued the O'Kelly, “that I'm such
+a healthy beggar; it don't give her a chance. If I were only a chronic
+invalid, now, there's nothing that woman would not do to make me happy.
+As it is--” The O'Kelly struck a chord. We resumed our studies.
+
+But to return to our conversation at the stage door.
+
+“Meet me at the Cheshire Cheese at one o'clock,” said the O'Kelly,
+shaking hands. “If ye don't get on here, we'll try something else; but
+I've spoken to Hodgson, and I think ye will. Good luck to ye!”
+
+He went his way and I mine. In a glass box just behind the door a
+curved-nose, round-eyed little man, looking like an angry bird in a
+cage, demanded of me my business. I showed him my letter of appointment.
+
+“Up the passage, across the stage, along the corridor, first floor,
+second door on the right,” he instructed me in one breath, and shut the
+window with a snap.
+
+I proceeded up the passage. It somewhat surprised me to discover that
+I was not in the least excited at the thought of this, my first
+introduction to “behind the scenes.”
+
+I recall my father's asking a young soldier on his return from the
+Crimea what had been his sensations at the commencement of his first
+charge.
+
+“Well,” replied the young fellow, “I was worrying all the time,
+remembering I had rushed out leaving the beer tap running in the
+canteen, and I could not forget it.”
+
+So far as the stage I found my way in safety. Pausing for a moment and
+glancing round, my impression was not so much disillusionment concerning
+all things theatrical as realisation of my worst forebodings. In that
+one moment all glamour connected with the stage fell from me, nor has it
+since ever returned to me. From the tawdry decorations of the auditorium
+to the childish make-belief littered around on the stage, I saw the
+Theatre a painted thing of shreds and patches--the grown child's
+doll's-house. The Drama may improve us, elevate us, interest and teach
+us. I am sure it does; long may it flourish! But so likewise does the
+dressing and undressing of dolls, the opening of the front of the house,
+and the tenderly putting of them away to bed in rooms they completely
+fill, train our little dears to the duties and the joys of motherhood.
+Toys! what wise child despises them? Art, fiction, the musical glasses:
+are they not preparing us for the time, however distant, when we shall
+at last be grown up?
+
+In a maze of ways beyond the stage I lost myself, but eventually, guided
+by voices, came to a large room furnished barely with many chairs
+and worn settees, and here I found some twenty to thirty ladies
+and gentlemen already seated. They were of varying ages, sizes
+and appearance, but all of them alike in having about them that
+impossible-to-define but impossible-to-mistake suggestion of
+theatricality. The men were chiefly remarkable for having no hair on
+their faces, but a good deal upon their heads; the ladies, one and
+all, were blessed with remarkably pink and white complexions and
+exceptionally bright eyes. The conversation, carried on in subdued but
+penetrating voices, was chiefly of “him” and “her.” Everybody appeared
+to be on an affectionate footing with everybody else, the terms of
+address being “My dear,” “My love,” “Old girl,” “Old chappie,” Christian
+names--when name of any sort was needful--alone being employed. I
+hesitated for a minute with the door in my hand, fearing I had stumbled
+upon a family gathering. As, however, nobody seemed disconcerted at my
+entry, I ventured to take a vacant seat next to an extremely small and
+boyish-looking gentleman and to ask him if this was the room in which I,
+an applicant for a place in the chorus of the forthcoming comic opera,
+ought to be waiting.
+
+He had large, fishy eyes, with which he looked me up and down. For such
+a length of time he remained thus regarding me in silence that a massive
+gentleman sitting near, who had overheard, took it upon himself to reply
+in the affirmative, adding that from what he knew of Butterworth we
+would all of us be waiting here a damned sight longer than any gentleman
+should keep other ladies and gentlemen waiting for no reason at all.
+
+“I think it exceedingly bad form,” observed the fishy-eyed gentleman,
+in deep contralto tones, “for any gentleman to take it upon himself to
+reply to a remark addressed to quite another gentleman.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” retorted the large gentleman. “I thought you were
+asleep.”
+
+“I think it very ill manners,” remarked the small gentlemen in the same
+slow and impressive tones, “for any gentleman to tell another gentleman,
+who happens to be wide awake, that he thought he was asleep.”
+
+“Sir,” returned the massive gentleman, assuming with the help of a large
+umbrella a quite Johnsonian attitude, “I decline to alter my manners to
+suit your taste.”
+
+“If you are satisfied with them,” replied the small gentleman, “I cannot
+help it. But I think you are making a mistake.”
+
+“Does anybody know what the opera is about?” asked a bright little woman
+at the other end of the room.
+
+“Does anybody ever know what a comic opera is about?” asked another
+lady, whose appearance suggested experience.
+
+“I once asked the author,” observed a weary-looking gentleman, speaking
+from a corner. “His reply was: 'Well, if you had asked me at the
+beginning of the rehearsals I might have been able to tell you, but
+damned if I could now!'”
+
+“It wouldn't surprise me,” observed a good-looking gentleman in a velvet
+coat, “if there occurred somewhere in the proceedings a drinking chorus
+for male voices.”
+
+“Possibly, if we are good,” added a thin lady with golden hair, “the
+heroine will confide to us her love troubles, which will interest us and
+excite us.”
+
+The door at the further end of the room opened and a name was called.
+An elderly lady rose and went out.
+
+“Poor old Gertie!” remarked sympathetically the thin lady with the
+golden hair. “I'm told that she really had a voice once.”
+
+“When poor young Bond first came to London,” said the massive gentleman
+who was sitting on my left, “I remember his telling me he applied to
+Lord Barrymore's 'tiger,' Alexander Lee, I mean, of course, who was then
+running the Strand Theatre, for a place in the chorus. Lee heard him
+sing two lines, and then jumped up. 'Thanks, that'll do; good morning,'
+says Lee. Bond knew he had got a good voice, so he asked Lee what was
+wrong. 'What's wrong?' shouts Lee. 'Do you think I hire a chorus to show
+up my principals?'”
+
+“Having regard to the company present,” commented the fishy-eyed
+gentleman, “I consider that anecdote as distinctly lacking in tact.”
+
+The feeling of the company appeared to be with the fish-eyed young man.
+
+For the next half hour the door at the further end of the room continued
+to open and close, devouring, ogre-fashion, each time some dainty human
+morsel, now chorus gentleman, now chorus lady. Conversation among our
+thinning ranks became more fitful, a growing anxiety making for silence.
+
+At length, “Mr. Horace Moncrieff” called the voice of the unseen Charon.
+In common with the rest, I glanced round languidly to see what sort of
+man “Mr. Horace Moncrieff” might be. The door was pushed open further.
+Charon, now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a drooping
+moustache, put his head into the room and repeated impatiently his
+invitation to the apparently coy Moncrieff. It suddenly occurred to me
+that I was Mr. Horace Moncrieff.
+
+“So glad you've found yourself,” said the pale-faced young man, as I
+joined him at the door. “Please don't lose yourself again; we're rather
+pressed for time.”
+
+I crossed with him through a deserted refreshment bar--one of the
+saddest of sights--into a room beyond. A melancholy-looking gentleman
+was seated at the piano. Beside him stood a tall, handsome man, who
+was opening and reading rapidly from a bundle of letters he held in his
+hand. A big, burly, bored-looking gentleman was making desperate
+efforts to be amused at the staccato conversation of a sharp-faced,
+restless-eyed gentleman, whose peculiarity was that he never by any
+chance looked at the person to whom he was talking, but always at
+something or somebody else.
+
+“Moncrieff?” enquired the tall, handsome man--whom I later discovered to
+be Mr. Hodgson, the manager--without raising his eyes from his letters.
+
+The pale-faced gentleman responded for me.
+
+“Fire away,” said Mr. Hodgson.
+
+“What is it?” asked of me wearily the melancholy gentleman at the piano.
+
+“'Sally in Our Alley,'” I replied.
+
+“What are you?” interrupted Mr. Hodgson. He had never once looked at me,
+and did not now.
+
+“A tenor,” I replied. “Not a full tenor,” I added, remembering the
+O'Kelly's instructions.
+
+“Utterly impossible to fill a tenor,” remarked the restless-eyed
+gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking gentleman.
+“Ever tried?”
+
+Everybody laughed, with the exception of the melancholy gentleman at the
+piano, Mr. Hodgson throwing in his contribution without raising his eyes
+from his letters. Throughout the proceedings the restless-eyed gentleman
+continued to make humorous observations of this nature, at which
+everybody laughed, excepting always the melancholy pianist--a short,
+sharp, mechanical laugh, devoid of the least suggestion of amusement.
+The restless-eyed gentleman, it appeared, was the leading low comedian
+of the theatre.
+
+“Go on,” said the melancholy gentleman, and commenced the accompaniment.
+
+“Tell me when he's going to begin,” remarked Mr. Hodgson at the
+conclusion of the first verse.
+
+“He has a fair voice,” said my accompanist. “He's evidently nervous.”
+
+“There is a prejudice throughout theatrical audiences,” observed Mr.
+Hodgson, “in favour of a voice they can hear. That is all I am trying to
+impress upon him.”
+
+The second verse, so I imagined, I sang in the voice of a trumpet. The
+burly gentleman--the translator of the French libretto, as he turned
+out to be; the author of the English version, as he preferred to
+be called--acknowledged to having distinctly detected a sound. The
+restless-eyed comedian suggested an announcement from the stage
+requesting strict silence during my part of the performance.
+
+The sickness of fear was stealing over me. My voice, so it seemed to me,
+disappointed at the effect it had produced, had retired, sulky, into my
+boots, whence it refused to emerge.
+
+“Your voice is all right--very good,” whispered the musical conductor.
+“They want to hear the best you can do, that's all.”
+
+At this my voice ran up my legs and out of my mouth. “Thirty shillings
+a week, half salary for rehearsals. If that's all right, Mr. Catchpole
+will give you your agreement. If not, very much obliged. Good morning,”
+ said Mr. Hodgson, still absorbed in his correspondence.
+
+With the pale-faced young man I retired to a desk in the corner, where
+a few seconds sufficed for the completion of the business. Leaving, I
+sought to catch the eye of my melancholy friend, but he appeared too
+sunk in dejection to notice anything. The restless-eyed comedian,
+looking at the author of the English version and addressing me as
+Boanerges, wished me good morning, at which the everybody laughed; and,
+informed as to the way out by the pale-faced Mr. Catchpole, I left.
+
+The first “call” was for the following Monday at two o'clock. I found
+the theatre full of life and bustle. The principals, who had just
+finished their own rehearsal, were talking together in a group. We
+ladies and gentlemen of the chorus filled the centre of the stage. I
+noticed the lady I had heard referred to as Gertie; as also the thin
+lady with the golden hair. The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed
+young man were again in close proximity; so long as I knew them they
+always were together, possessed, apparently, of a sympathetic antipathy
+for each other. The fishy-eyed young gentleman was explaining the age at
+which he thought decayed chorus singers ought, in justice to themselves
+and the public, to retire from the profession; the massive gentleman,
+the age and size at which he thought parcels of boys ought to be
+learning manners across their mother's knee.
+
+Mr. Hodgson, still reading letters exactly as I had left him four days
+ago, stood close to the footlights. My friend, the musical director,
+armed with a violin and supported by about a dozen other musicians,
+occupied the orchestra. The adapter and the stage manager--a Frenchman
+whom I found it good policy to mistake for a born Englishman--sat
+deep in confabulation at a small table underneath a temporary gas jet.
+Quarter of an hour or so passed by, and then the stage manager, becoming
+suddenly in a hurry, rang a small bell furiously.
+
+“Clear, please; all clear,” shouted a small boy, with important air
+suggestive of a fox terrier; and, following the others, I retreated to
+the wings.
+
+The comedian and the leading lady--whom I knew well from the front,
+but whom I should never have recognised--severed themselves from their
+companions and joined Mr. Hodgson by the footlights. As a preliminary we
+were sorted out, according to our sizes, into loving couples.
+
+“Ah,” said the stage manager, casting an admiring gaze upon the
+fishy-eyed young man, whose height might have been a little over five
+feet two, “I have the very girl for you--a beauty!” Darting into the
+group of ladies, he returned with quite the biggest specimen, a lady
+of magnificent proportions, whom, with the air of the virtuous uncle
+of melodrama, he bestowed upon the fishy-eyed young man. To the massive
+gentleman was given a sharp-faced little lady, who at a distance
+appeared quite girlish. Myself I found mated to the thin lady with the
+golden hair.
+
+At last complete, we took our places in the then approved semi-circle,
+and the attenuated orchestra struck up the opening chorus. My music,
+which had been sent me by post, I had gone over with the O'Kelly, and
+about that I felt confident; but for the rest, ill at ease.
+
+“I am afraid,” said the thin lady, “I must ask you to put your arm round
+my waist. It's very shocking, I know, but, you see, our salary depends
+upon it. Do you think you could manage it?”
+
+I glanced into her face. A whimsical expression of fun replied to me and
+drove away my shyness. I carried out her instructions to the best of my
+ability.
+
+The indefatigable stage manager ran in and out among us while we sang,
+driving this couple back a foot or so, this other forward, herding this
+group closer together, throughout another making space, suggesting the
+idea of a sheep-dog at work.
+
+“Very good, very good indeed,” commented Mr. Hodgson at the conclusion.
+“We will go over it once more, and this time in tune.”
+
+“And we will make love,” added the stage manager; “not like marionettes,
+but like ladies and gentlemen all alive.” Seizing the lady nearest to
+him, he explained to us by object lesson how the real peasant invariably
+behaves when under influence of the grand passion, standing gracefully
+with hands clasped upon heart, head inclined at an angle of forty-five,
+his whole countenance eloquent with tender adoration.
+
+“If he expects” remarked the massive gentleman _sotto voce_ to an
+experienced-looking young lady, “a performance of Romeo thrown in, I,
+for one, shall want an extra ten shillings a week.”
+
+Casting the lady aside and seizing upon a gentleman, our stage manager
+then proceeded to show the ladies how a village maiden should receive
+affectionate advances: one shoulder a trifle higher than the other, body
+from the waist upward gently waggling, roguish expression in left eye.
+
+“Ah, he's a bit new to it,” replied the experienced young lady. “He'll
+get over all that.”
+
+Again we started. Whether others attempted to follow the stage manager's
+directions I cannot say, my whole attention being centred upon the
+fishy-eyed young man, who did, implicitly. Soon it became apparent that
+the whole of us were watching the fishy-eyed young man to the utter
+neglect of our own business. Mr. Hodgson even looked up from his
+letters; the orchestra was playing out of time; the author of the
+English version and the leading lady exchanged glances. Three people
+only appeared not to be enjoying themselves: the chief comedian, the
+stage manager and the fishy-eyed young gentleman himself, who pursued
+his labours methodically and conscientiously. There was a whispered
+confabulation between the leading low comedian, Mr. Hodgson and the
+stage manager. As a result, the music ceased and the fishy-eyed young
+gentleman was requested to explain what he was doing.
+
+“Only making love,” replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
+
+“You were playing the fool, sir,” retorted the leading low comedian,
+severely.
+
+“That is a very unkind remark,” replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman,
+evidently hurt, “to make to a gentleman who is doing his best.”
+
+Mr. Hodgson behind his letters was laughing. “Poor fellow,” he murmured;
+“I suppose he can't help it. Go on.”
+
+“We are not producing a pantomime, you know,” urged our comedian.
+
+“I want to give him a chance, poor devil,” explained Mr. Hodgson in a
+lower voice. “Only support of a widowed mother.”
+
+Our comedian appeared inclined to argue; but at this point Mr. Hodgson's
+correspondence became absorbing.
+
+For the chorus the second act was a busy one. We opened as soldiers
+and vivandieres, every warrior in this way possessing his own private
+travelling bar. Our stage manager again explained to us by example how
+a soldier behaves, first under stress of patriotic emotion, and secondly
+under stress of cheap cognac, the difference being somewhat subtle:
+patriotism displaying itself by slaps upon the chest, and cheap cognac
+by slaps upon the forehead. A little later we were conspirators; our
+stage manager, with the help of a tablecloth, showed us how to conspire.
+Next we were a mob, led by the sentimental baritone; our stage manager,
+ruffling his hair, expounded to us how a mob led by a sentimental
+baritone would naturally behave itself. The act wound up with a fight.
+Our stage manager, minus his coat, demonstrated to us how to fight and
+die, the dying being a painful and dusty performance, necessitating, as
+it did, much rolling about on the stage. The fishy-eyed young gentleman
+throughout the whole of it was again the centre of attraction. Whether
+he were solemnly slapping his chest and singing about glory, or solemnly
+patting his head and singing about grapes, was immaterial: he was the
+soldier for us. What the plot was about did not matter, so long as he
+was in it. Who led the mob one did not care; one's desire was to see
+him lead. How others fought and died was matter of no moment; to see him
+slaughtered was sufficient. Whether his unconsciousness was assumed or
+natural I cannot say; in either case it was admirable. An earnest young
+man, over-anxious, if anything, to do his duty by his employers, was
+the extent of the charge that could be brought against him. Our chief
+comedian frowned and fumed; our stage manager was in despair. Mr.
+Hodgson and the author of the English version, on the contrary, appeared
+kindly disposed towards the gentleman. In addition to the widowed
+mother, Mr. Hodgson had invented for him five younger brothers and
+sisters utterly destitute but for his earnings. To deprive so exemplary
+a son and brother of the means of earning a livelihood for dear ones
+dependent upon him was not in Mr. Hodgson's heart. Our chief comedian
+dissociated himself from all uncharitable feelings--would subscribe
+towards the subsistence of the young man out of his own pocket, his
+only concern being the success of the opera. The author of the English
+version was convinced the young man would not accept a charity; had
+known him for years--was a most sensitive creature.
+
+The rehearsal proceeded. In the last act it became necessary for me to
+kiss the thin lady.
+
+“I am very sorry,” said the thin lady, “but duty is duty. It has to be
+done.”
+
+Again I followed directions. The thin lady was good enough to
+congratulate me on my performance.
+
+The last three or four rehearsals we performed in company with the
+principals. Divided counsels rendered them decidedly harassing. Our
+chief comedian had his views, and they were decided; the leading lady
+had hers, and was generous with them. The author of the English version
+possessed his also, but of these nobody took much notice. Once every
+twenty minutes the stage manager washed his hands of the whole affair
+and left the theatre in despair, and anybody's hat that happened to
+be handy, to return a few minutes later full of renewed hope. The
+sentimental baritone was sarcastic, the tenor distinctly rude to
+everybody. Mr. Hodgson's method was to agree with all and listen to
+none. The smaller fry of the company, together with the more pushing of
+the chorus, supported each in turn, when the others were not looking. Up
+to the dress rehearsal it was anybody's opera.
+
+About one thing, and about one thing, only, had the principals fallen
+into perfect agreement, and that was that the fishy-eyed young gentleman
+was out of place in a romantic opera. The tenor would be making
+impassioned love to the leading lady. Perception would come to both of
+them that, though they might be occupying geographically the centre of
+the stage, dramatically they were not. Without a shred of evidence,
+yet with perfect justice, they would unhesitatingly blame for this the
+fishy-eyed young man.
+
+“I wasn't doing anything,” he would explain meekly. “I was only
+looking.” It was perfectly true; that was all he was doing.
+
+“Then don't look,” would comment the tenor.
+
+The fishy-eyed young gentleman obediently would turn his face away from
+them; and in some mysterious manner the situation would thereupon become
+even yet more hopelessly ridiculous.
+
+“My scene, I think, sir!” would thunder our chief comedian, a little
+later on.
+
+“I am only doing what I was told to do,” answered the fishy-eyed young
+gentleman; and nobody could say that he was not.
+
+“Take a circus, and run him as a side-show,” counselled our comedian.
+
+“I am afraid he would never be any good as a side-show,” replied Mr.
+Hodgson, who was reading letters.
+
+On the first night, passing the gallery entrance on my way to the stage
+door, the sight of the huge crowd assembled there waiting gave me my
+first taste of artistic joy. I was a part of what they had come to see,
+to praise or to condemn, to listen to, to watch. Within the theatre
+there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement, amounting almost to
+hysteria. The bird-like gentleman in his glass cage was fluttering,
+agitated. The hands of the stage carpenters putting the finishing
+touches to the scenery were trembling, their voices passionate
+with anxiety; the fox-terrier-like call-boy was pale with sense of
+responsibility.
+
+I made my way to the dressing-room--a long, low, wooden corridor,
+furnished from end to end with a wide shelf that served as common
+dressing-table, lighted by a dozen flaring gas-jets, wire-shielded. Here
+awaited us gentlemen of the chorus the wigmaker's assistant, whose duty
+it was to make us up. From one to another he ran, armed with his hare's
+foot, his box of paints and his bundle of crepe hair. My turn arriving,
+he seized me by the head, jabbed a wig upon me, and in less than a
+couple of minutes I left his hands the orthodox peasant of the stage,
+white of forehead and pink of cheek, with curly moustache and lips of
+coral. Glancing into the glass, I could not help feeling pleased with
+myself; a moustache, without doubt, suited me.
+
+The chorus ladies, when I met them on the stage, were a revelation
+to me. Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist
+of chiefly, yet in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that
+artificial glare, it seemed fit and fascinating. The close approximation
+to so much bare flesh, its curious, subtle odour was almost
+intoxicating. Dr. Johnson's excuse to Garrick for the rarity of his
+visits to the theatre recurred to me with understanding.
+
+“How do you like my costume?” asked the thin lady with the golden hair.
+
+“I think you--” We were standing apart behind a piece of projecting
+scenery. She laid her hand upon my mouth, laughing.
+
+“How old are you?” she asked me.
+
+“Isn't that a rude question?” I answered. “I don't ask your age.
+
+“Mine,” she replied, “entitles me to talk to you as I should to a boy of
+my own--I had one once. Get out of this life if you can. It's bad for
+a woman; it's worse still for a man. To you especially it will be
+harmful.”
+
+“Why to me in particular?”
+
+“Because you are an exceedingly foolish little boy,” she answered, with
+another laugh, “and are rather nice.”
+
+She slipped away and joined the others. The chorus was now entirely
+assembled on the stage. The sound of the rapidly-filling house reached
+us, softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull, continuous
+droning, as of water pouring into some huge cistern. Suddenly there fell
+upon our ears a startling crash; the overture had commenced. The stage
+manager--more suggestive of a sheep-dog than ever, but lacking the calm
+dignity, the self-possession born of conscious capability distinctive of
+his prototype; a fussy, argumentative sheep-dog--rushed into the midst
+of us and worried us into our positions, where the more experienced
+continued to converse in whispers, the rest of us waiting nervously,
+trying to remember our words. The chorus master, taking his stand with
+his back to the proscenium, held his white-gloved hand in readiness. The
+curtain rushed up, the house, a nightmare of white faces, appearing to
+run towards us. The chorus-master's white-gloved hand flung upward. A
+roar of voices struck upon my ear, but whether my own were of them
+I could not say; if I were singing at all it was unconsciously,
+mechanically. Later, I found myself standing in the wings beside the
+thin lady; the stage was in the occupation of the principals. On my next
+entrance my senses were more with me; I was able to look about me. Here
+and there a strongly-marked face among the audience stood out, but the
+majority were as indistinguishable as so many blades of grass. Looked at
+from the stage, the house seemed no more real than from the front do the
+painted faces upon a black cloth.
+
+The curtain fell amid the usual applause, sounding to us behind it like
+the rattle of tiny stones against a window-pane. Three times it rose
+and fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then followed a
+scamper for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being filled with the
+rustling of skirts and the scurrying of feet.
+
+It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into
+his own. The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the
+tenor and the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with the
+exquisite delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that its
+further presence might be embarrassing, it turned to go, half to the
+east, the other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man, starting
+from the centre, was the last to leave the stage. In another moment he
+would have disappeared from view. There came a voice from the gallery,
+clear, distinct, pathetic with entreaty:
+
+“Don't go. Get behind a tree.”
+
+The request was instantly seconded by a roar of applause from every part
+of the house, followed by laughter. From that point onward the house was
+chiefly concerned with the fortunes of the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
+At his next entrance, disguised as a conspirator, he was welcomed
+with enthusiasm, his passing away regretted loudly. At the fall of the
+curtain, the tenor, furious, rushed up to him, and, shaking a fist in
+his face, demanded what he meant by it.
+
+“I wasn't doing anything,” explained the fishy-eyed young man.
+
+“You went off sideways!” roared the tenor.
+
+“Well, you told me not to look at you,” explained meekly the fishy-eyed
+young gentleman. “I must go off somehow. I regard you as a very
+difficult man to please.”
+
+At the final fall of the curtain the house appeared divided as regarded
+the merits of the opera; but for “Goggles” there was a unanimous and
+enthusiastic call, and the while we were dressing a message came for
+“Goggles” that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his private room.
+
+“He can make a funny face, no doubt about it,” commented one gentleman,
+as “Goggles” left the room.
+
+“I defy him to make a funnier one than God Almighty's made for him,”
+ responded the massive gentleman.
+
+“There's a deal in luck,” observed, with a sigh, another, a tall,
+handsome young gentleman possessed of a rich bass voice.
+
+Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting upon
+the pavement outside. Not interested in them myself, I was hurrying
+past, when one laid a hand upon my shoulder. I turned. He was a big,
+broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vandyke beard and soft, dreamy
+eyes.
+
+“Dan!” I cried.
+
+“I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act,” he answered. “In
+the second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it. Are you in
+a hurry?”
+
+“Not at all,” I answered. “Are you?”
+
+“No,” he replied; “we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write my
+notice to-morrow. Come and have supper with me at the Albion and we will
+talk. You look tired, young 'un.”
+
+“No,” I assured him, “only excited--partly at meeting you.”
+
+He laughed, and drew my arm through his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL.
+
+Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories. They revealed points of
+similarity. Leaving school some considerable time earlier than myself,
+Dan had gone to Cambridge; but two years later, in consequence of the
+death of his father, of a wound contracted in the Indian Mutiny and
+never cured, had been compelled to bring his college career to an
+untimely termination.
+
+“You might not have expected that to grieve me,” said Dan, with a smile,
+“but, as a matter of fact, it was a severe blow to me. At Cambridge I
+discovered that I was by temperament a scholar. The reason why at school
+I took no interest in learning was because learning was, of set purpose,
+made as uninteresting as possible. Like a Cook's tourist party through a
+picture gallery, we were rushed through education; the object being not
+that we should see and understand, but that we should be able to say
+that we had done it. At college I chose my own subjects, studied them
+in my own way. I fed on knowledge, was not stuffed with it like a
+Strassburg goose.”
+
+Returning to London, he had taken a situation in a bank, the chairman of
+which had been an old friend of his father. The advantage was that while
+earning a small income he had time to continue his studies; but the
+deadly monotony of the work had appalled him, and upon the death of his
+mother he had shaken the cloying dust of the City from his brain and
+joined a small “fit-up” theatrical company. On the stage he had remained
+for another eighteen months; had played all roles, from “Romeo” to “Paul
+Pry,” had helped to paint the scenery, had assisted in the bill-posting.
+The latter, so he told me, he had found one of the most difficult of
+accomplishments, the paste-laden poster having an innate tendency to
+recoil upon the amateur's own head, and to stick there. Wearying of the
+stage proper, he had joined a circus company, had been “Signor Ricardo,
+the daring bare-back rider,” also one of the “Brothers Roscius in their
+marvellous trapeze act;” inclining again towards respectability, had
+been a waiter for three months at Ostend; from that, a footman.
+
+“One never knows,” remarked Dan. “I may come to be a society novelist;
+if so, inside knowledge of the aristocracy will give me decided
+advantage over the majority of my competitors.”
+
+Other callings he had sampled: had tramped through Ireland with a
+fiddle; through Scotland with a lecture on Palestine, assisted by
+dissolving views; had been a billiard-marker; next a schoolmaster. For
+the last three months he had been a journalist, dramatic and musical
+critic to a Sunday newspaper. Often had I dreamt of such a position for
+myself.
+
+“How did you obtain it?” I asked.
+
+“The idea occurred to me,” replied Dan, “late one afternoon, sauntering
+down the Strand, wondering what I should do next. I was on my beam ends,
+with only a few shillings in my pocket; but luck has always been with
+me. I entered the first newspaper office I came to, walked upstairs to
+the first floor, and opening the first door without knocking, passed
+through a small, empty room into a larger one, littered with books and
+papers. It was growing dark. A gentleman of extremely youthful figure
+was running round and round, cursing to himself because of three things:
+he had upset the ink, could not find the matches, and had broken the
+bell-pull. In the gloom, assuming him to be the office boy, I thought
+it would be fun to mistake him for the editor. As a matter of fact,
+he turned out to be the editor. I lit the gas for him, and found him
+another ink-pot. He was a slim young man with the voice and manner of a
+schoolboy. I don't suppose he is any more than five or six-and-twenty.
+He owes his position to the fact of his aunt's being the proprietress.
+He asked me if he knew me. Before I could tell him that he didn't, he
+went on talking. He appeared to be labouring under a general sense of
+injury.
+
+“'People come into this office,' he said; 'they seem to look upon it as
+a shelter from the rain--people I don't know from Adam. And that damned
+fool downstairs lets them march straight up--anybody, men with articles
+on safety valves, people who have merely come to kick up a row about
+something or another. Half my work I have to do on the stairs.
+
+“I recommended to him that he should insist upon strangers writing their
+business upon a slip of paper. He thought it a good idea.
+
+“'For the last three-quarters of an hour,' he said, 'have I been trying
+to finish this one column, and four times have I been interrupted.'
+
+“At that precise moment there came another knock at the door.
+
+“'I won't see him!' he cried. 'I don't care who he is; I won't see him.
+Send him away! Send everybody away!'
+
+“I went to the door. He was an elderly gentleman. He made to sweep by
+me; but I barred his way, and closed the editorial door behind me. He
+seemed surprised; but I told him it was impossible for him to see the
+editor that afternoon, and suggested his writing his business on a sheet
+of paper, which I handed to him for the purpose. I remained in that
+ante-room for half an hour, and during that time I suppose I must have
+sent away about ten or a dozen people. I don't think their business
+could have been important, or I should have heard about it afterwards.
+The last to come was a tired-looking gentleman, smoking a cigarette. I
+asked him his name.
+
+“He looked at me in surprise, and then answered, 'Idiot!'
+
+“I remained firm, however, and refused to let him pass.
+
+“'It's a bit awkward,' he retorted. 'Don't you think you could make an
+exception in favour of the sub-editor on press night?'
+
+“I replied that such would be contrary to my instructions.
+
+“'Oh, all right,' he answered. 'I'd like to know who's going to the
+Royalty to-night, that's all. It's seven o'clock already.'
+
+“An idea occurred to me. If the sub-editor of a paper doesn't know whom
+to send to a theatre, it must mean that the post of dramatic critic on
+that paper is for some reason or another vacant.
+
+“'Oh, that's all right,' I told him. 'I shall be in time enough.'
+
+“He appeared neither pleased nor displeased. 'Have you arranged with the
+Guv'nor?' he asked me.
+
+“'I'm just waiting to see him again for a few minutes,' I returned.
+'It'll be all right. Have you got the ticket?'
+
+“'Haven't seen it,' he replied.
+
+“'About a column?' I suggested.
+
+“'Three-quarters,' he preferred, and went.
+
+“The moment he was gone, I slipped downstairs and met a printer's boy
+coming up.
+
+“'What's the name of your sub?' I asked him. 'Tall man with a black
+moustache, looks tired.'
+
+“'Oh, you mean Penton,' explained the boy.
+
+“'That's the name,' I answered; 'couldn't think of it.'
+
+“I walked straight into the editor; he was still irritable. 'What is it?
+What is it now?' he snapped out.
+
+“'I only want the ticket for the Royalty Theatre,' I answered. 'Penton
+says you've got it.'
+
+“'I don't know where it is,' he growled.
+
+“I found it after some little search upon his desk.
+
+“'Who's going?' he asked.
+
+“'I am,' I said. And I went.
+
+“They have never discovered to this day that I appointed myself. Penton
+thinks I am some relation of the proprietress, and in consequence
+everybody treats me with marked respect. Mrs. Wallace herself, the
+proprietress, thinks I am the discovery of Penton, in whose judgment
+she has great faith; and with her I get on admirably. The paper I
+don't think is doing too well, and the salary is small, but sufficient.
+Journalism suits my temperament, and I dare say I shall keep to it.”
+
+“You've been somewhat of a rolling stone hitherto,” I commented.
+
+He laughed. “From the stone's point of view,” he answered, “I never
+could see the advantage of being smothered in moss. I should always
+prefer remaining the stone, unhidden, able to move and see about me. But
+now, to speak of other matters, what are your plans for the immediate
+future? Your opera, thanks to the gentlemen, the gods have dubbed
+'Goggles,' will, I fancy, run through the winter. Are you getting any
+salary?”
+
+“Thirty shillings a week,” I explained to him, “with full salary for
+matinees.”
+
+“Say two pounds,” he replied. “With my three we could set up an
+establishment of our own. I have an idea that is original. Shall we work
+it out together?”
+
+I assured him with fervour that nothing would please me better.
+
+“There are four delightful rooms in Queen's Square,” he continued. “They
+are charmingly furnished: a fine sitting-room in the front, with
+two bedrooms and a kitchen behind. Their last tenant was a Polish
+Revolutionary, who, three months ago, poor fellow, was foolish enough to
+venture back to Russia, and who is now living rent free. The landlord of
+the house is an original old fellow, Deleglise the engraver. He occupies
+the rest of the house himself. He has told me I can have the rooms for
+anything I like to offer, and I should suggest thirty shillings a week,
+though under ordinary circumstances they would be worth three or four
+pounds. But he will only let us have them on the understanding that
+we 'do for' ourselves. He is quite an oddity. He hates petticoats,
+especially elderly petticoats. He has one servant, an old Frenchwoman,
+who, I believe, was housekeeper to his mother, and he and she do the
+housework together, most of their time quarrelling over it. Nothing else
+of the genus domestic female will he allow inside the door; not even an
+occasional charwoman would be permitted to us. On the other hand, it
+is a beautiful old Georgian house, with Adams mantelpieces, a stone
+staircase, and oak-panelled rooms; and our portion would be the entire
+second floor: no pianos and no landlady. He is a widower with one child,
+a girl of about fourteen or maybe a little older. Now, what do you say?
+I am a very fair cook; will you be house-and-parlour-maid?”
+
+I needed no pressing. A week later we were installed there, and for
+nearly two years we lived there. At the risk of offending an adorable
+but somewhat touchy sex, convinced that man, left to himself, is
+capable of little more than putting himself to bed, and that only in
+a rough-and-ready fashion, truth compels me to record the fact that
+without female assistance or supervision of any kind we passed through
+those two years, and yet exist to tell the tale. Dan had not idly
+boasted. Better plain cooking I never want to taste; so good a cup of
+coffee, omelette, or devilled kidney I rarely have tasted. Had he always
+confined his efforts within the boundaries of his abilities, there
+would be little to record beyond continuous and monotonous success.
+But stirred into dangerous ambition at the call of an occasional tea or
+supper party, lured out of his depths by the example of old Deleglise,
+our landlord--a man who for twenty years had made cooking his hobby--Dan
+would at intervals venture upon experiment. Pastry, it became evident,
+was a thing he should never have touched: his hand was heavy and
+his temperament too serious. There was a thing called lemon sponge,
+necessitating much beating of eggs. In the cookery-book--a remarkably
+fat volume, luscious with illustrations of highly-coloured food--it
+appeared an airy and graceful structure of dazzling whiteness. Served as
+Dan sent it to table, it suggested rather in form and colour a miniature
+earthquake. Spongy it undoubtedly was. One forced it apart with the
+assistance of one's spoon and fork; it yielded with a gentle tearing
+sound. Another favourite dainty of his was manna-cake. Concerning it
+I would merely remark that if it in any way resembled anything the
+Children of Israel were compelled to eat, then there is explanation
+for that fretfulness and discontent for which they have been, perhaps,
+unjustly blamed--some excuse even for their backward-flung desires in
+the direction of the Egyptian fleshpots. Moses himself may have been
+blessed with exceptional digestion. It was substantial, one must say
+that for it. One slice of it--solid, firm, crusty on the outside,
+towards the centre marshy--satisfied most people to a sense of
+repletion. For supper parties Dan would essay trifles--by no means open
+to the criticism of being light as air--souffle's that guests, in spite
+of my admonishing kicks, would persist in alluding to as pudding; and in
+winter-time, pancakes. Later, as regards these latter, he acquired some
+skill; but at first the difficulty was the tossing. I think myself a
+safer plan would have been to turn them by the aid of a knife and fork;
+it is less showy, but more sure. At least, you avoid all danger of
+catching the half-baked thing upon your head instead of in the pan,
+of dropping it into the fire, or among the cinders. But “Thorough” was
+always Dan's motto; and after all, small particles of coal or a few
+hairs can always be detected by the careful feeder, and removed.
+
+A more even-tempered man than Dan for twenty-three hours out of every
+twenty-four surely never breathed. It was a revelation to me to discover
+that for the other he could be uncertain, irritable, even ungrateful.
+At first, in a spirit of pure good nature, I would offer him counsel and
+advice; explain to him why, as it seemed to me, the custard was pimply,
+the mayonnaise sauce suggestive of hair oil. What was my return? Sneers,
+insult and abuse, followed, if I did not clear out quickly, by spoilt
+tomatoes, cold coffee grounds--anything that happened to be handy.
+Pained, saddened, I would withdraw, he would kick the door to after me.
+His greatest enemy appeared to be the oven. The oven it was that set
+itself to thwart his best wrought schemes. Always it was the oven's
+fault that the snowy bun appeared to have been made of red sandstone,
+the macaroni cheese of Cambrian clay. One might have sympathised with
+him more had his language been more restrained. As it was, the virulence
+of his reproaches almost inclined one to take the part of the oven.
+
+Concerning our house-maid, I can speak in terms of unqualified praise.
+There are, alas, fussy house-maids--who has not known and suffered
+them?--who overdo the thing, have no repose, no instinct telling
+them when to ease up and let the place alone. I have always held the
+perpetual stirring up of dust a scientific error; left to itself, it is
+harmless, may even be regarded as a delicate domestic bloom, bestowing
+a touch of homeliness upon objects that without it gleam cold and
+unsympathetic. Let sleeping dogs lie. Why be continually waking up the
+stuff, filling the air with all manner of unhealthy germs? Nature in her
+infinite wisdom has ordained that upon table, floor, or picture frame it
+shall sink and settle. There it remains, quiet and inoffensive; there it
+will continue to remain so long as nobody interferes with it: why worry
+it? So also with crumbs, odd bits of string, particles of egg-shell,
+stumps of matches, ends of cigarettes: what fitter place for such than
+under the nearest mat? To sweep them up is tiresome work. They cling to
+the carpet, you get cross with them, curse them for their obstinacy,
+and feel ashamed of yourself for your childishness. For every one you
+do persuade into the dust-pan, two jump out again. You lose your temper,
+feel bitter towards the man that dropped them. Your whole character
+becomes deteriorated. Under the mat they are always willing to go.
+Compromise is true statesmanship. There will come a day when you will
+be glad of an excuse for not doing something else that you ought to
+be doing. Then you can take up the mats and feel quite industrious,
+contemplating the amount of work that really must be done--some time or
+another.
+
+To differentiate between the essential and the non-essential, that
+is where woman fails. In the name of common sense, what is the use of
+washing a cup that half an hour later is going to be made dirty again?
+If the cat be willing and able to so clean a plate that not one speck of
+grease remain upon it, why deprive her of pleasure to inflict toil upon
+yourself? If a bed looks made and feels made, then for all practical
+purposes it is made; why upset it merely to put it straight again? It
+would surprise most women the amount of labour that can be avoided in a
+house.
+
+For needlework, I confess, I never acquired skill. Dan had learnt to
+handle a thimble, but my own second finger was ever reluctant to come
+forward when wanted. It had to be found, all other fingers removed out
+of its way. Then, feebly, nervously, it would push, slip, get itself
+pricked badly with the head of the needle, and, thoroughly frightened,
+remain incapable of further action. More practical I found it to push
+the needle through by help of the door or table.
+
+The opera, as Dan had predicted, ran far into the following year. When
+it was done with, another--in which “Goggles” appeared as one of the
+principals--took its place, and was even more successful. After the
+experience of Nelson Square, my present salary of thirty-five shillings,
+occasionally forty shillings, a week seemed to me princely. There
+floated before my eyes the possibility of my becoming a great opera
+singer. On six hundred pounds a week, I felt I could be content. But the
+O'Kelly set himself to dispel this dream.
+
+“Ye'd be making a mistake, me boy,” explained the O'Kelly. “Ye'd be just
+wasting ye're time. I wouldn't tell ye so if I weren't convinced of it.”
+
+“I know it is not powerful,” I admitted.
+
+“Ye might almost call it thin,” added the O'Kelly.
+
+“It might be good enough for comic opera,” I argued. “People appear to
+succeed in comic opera without much voice.
+
+“Sure, there ye're right,” agreed the O'Kelly, with a sigh. “An' of
+course if ye had an exceptionally fine presence and were strikingly
+handsome--”
+
+“One can do a good deal with make-up,” I suggested.
+
+The O'Kelly shook his head. “It's never quite the same thing. It would
+depend upon your acting.”
+
+I dreamt of becoming a second Kean, of taking Macready's place. It need
+not interfere with my literary ambition. I could combine the two: fill
+Drury Lane in the evening, turn out epoch-making novels in the morning,
+write my own plays.
+
+Every day I studied in the reading-room of the British Museum. Wearying
+of success in Art, I might eventually go into Parliament: a Prime
+Minister with a thorough knowledge of history: why not? With Ollendorf
+for guide, I continued French and German. It might be the diplomatic
+service that would appeal to me in my old age. An ambassadorship! It
+would be a pleasant termination to a brilliant career.
+
+There was excuse for my optimistic mood about this period. All things
+were going well with me. A story of mine had been accepted. I forget for
+the moment the name of the journal: it is dead now. Most of the papers
+in which my early efforts appeared are dead. My contributions might
+be likened to their swan songs. Proofs had been sent me, which I had
+corrected and returned. But proofs are not facts. This had happened to
+me once before, and I had been lifted to the skies only to fall the more
+heavily. The paper had collapsed before my story had appeared. (Ah, why
+had they delayed? It might have saved them!) This time I remembered the
+proverb, and kept my own counsel, slipping out early each morning on the
+day of publication to buy the paper, to scan eagerly its columns. For
+weeks I suffered hope deferred. But at last, one bright winter's day in
+January, walking down the Harrow Road, I found myself standing still,
+suddenly stunned, before a bill outside a small news-vendor's shop. It
+was the first time I had seen my real name in print: “The Witch of Moel
+Sarbod: a legend of Mona, by Paul Kelver.” (For this I had even risked
+discovery by the Lady 'Ortensia.) My legs trembling under me, I entered
+the shop. A ruffianly-looking man in dirty shirt-sleeves, who appeared
+astonished that any one should want a copy, found one at length on
+the floor underneath the counter. With it in my pocket, I retraced my
+footsteps as in a dream. On a seat in Paddington Green I sat down and
+read it. The hundred best books! I have waded through them all; they
+have never charmed me as charmed me that one short story in that now
+forgotten journal. Need I add it was a sad and sentimental composition.
+Once upon a time there lived a mighty King; one--but with the names I
+will not bore you; they are somewhat unpronounceable. Their selection
+had cost me many hours of study in the British Museum reading-rooms,
+surrounded by lexicons of the Welsh language, gazetteers, translations
+from the early Celtic poets--with footnotes. He loved and was beloved by
+a beautiful Princess, whose name, being translated, was Purity. One
+day the King, hunting, lost his way, and being weary, lay down and fell
+asleep. And by chance the spot whereon he lay was near to a place which
+by infinite pains, with the aid of a magnifying glass, I had discovered
+upon the map, and which means in English the Cave of the Waters, where
+dwelt a wicked Sorceress, who, while he slept, cast her spells upon him,
+so that he awoke to forget his kingly honour and the good of all his
+people, his only desire being towards the Witch of Moel Sarbod.
+
+Now, there lived in this Kingdom by the sea a great Magician; and
+Purity, who loved the King far better than herself, bethought her of
+him, and of all she had heard concerning his power and wisdom; and went
+to him and besought his aid that she might save the King. There was but
+one way to accomplish this: with bare feet Purity must climb the rocky
+path leading to the Witch's dwelling, go boldly up to her, not fearing
+her sharp claws nor her strong teeth, and kiss her upon the mouth. In
+this way the spirit of Purity would pass into the Witch's soul, and she
+would become a woman. But the form and spirit of the Witch would pass
+into Purity, transforming her, and in the Cave of the Waters she must
+forever abide. Thus Purity gave herself that the King might live. With
+bleeding feet she climbed the rocky path, clasped the Witch's form
+within her arms, kissed her on the mouth. And the Witch became a woman
+and reigned with the King over his people, wisely and helpfully. But
+Purity became a hideous witch, and to this day abides on Moel Sarbod,
+where is the Cave of the Waters. And they who climb the mountain's side
+still hear above the roaring of the cataract the sobbing of Purity,
+the King's betrothed. But many liken it rather to a joyous song of love
+triumphant.
+
+No writer worth his salt was ever satisfied with anything he ever wrote,
+so I have been told, and so I try to believe. Evidently I am not worth
+my salt. Candid friends, and others, to whom in my salad days I used
+to show my work, asking for a frank opinion, meaning, of course, though
+never would they understand me, their unadulterated praise, would assure
+me for my good, that this, my first to whom the gods gave life, was but
+a feeble, ill-shaped child: its attempted early English a cross between
+“The Pilgrim's Progress” and “Old Moore's Almanac;” its scenery--which
+had cost me weeks of research--an apparent attempt to sum up in the
+language of a local guide book the leading characteristics of the Garden
+of Eden combined with Dante's Inferno; its pathos of the penny-plain
+and two-penny-coloured order. Maybe they were right. Much have I written
+since that at the time appeared to me good, that I have read later
+with regret, with burning cheek, with frowning brow. But of this, my
+first-born, the harbinger of all my hopes, I am no judge. Touching the
+yellowing, badly-printed pages, I feel again the deep thrill of joy with
+which I first unfolded them and read. Again I am a youngster, and life
+opens out before me--inmeasurable, no goal too high. This child of my
+brain, my work: it shall spread my name throughout the world. It shall
+be a household world in lands that I shall never see. Friends whose
+voices I shall never hear will speak of me. I shall die, but it shall
+live, yield fresh seed, bear fruit I know not of. Generations yet unborn
+shall read it and remember me. My thoughts, my words, my spirit: in it I
+shall live again; it shall keep my memory green.
+
+The long, long thoughts of boyhood! We elders smile at them. The
+little world spins round; the little voices of an hour sink hushed. The
+crawling generations come and go. The solar system drops from space. The
+eternal mechanism reforms and shapes itself anew. Time, turning, ploughs
+another furrow. So, growing sleepy, we murmur with a yawn. Is it that
+we see clearer, or that our eyes are growing dim? Let the young men
+see their visions, dream their dreams, hug to themselves their hopes of
+enduring fame; so shall they serve the world better.
+
+I brushed the tears from my eyes and looked up. Half-a-dozen urchins,
+male and female, were gaping at me open-mouthed. They scattered
+shouting, whether compliment or insult I know not: probably the latter.
+I flung them a handful of coppers, which for the moment silenced them;
+and went upon my way. How bright, how fair the bustling streets, golden
+in the winter sunshine, thronged with life, with effort! Laughter rang
+around me. Sweet music rolled from barrel-organs. The strenuous voices
+of the costermongers called invitation to the fruitful earth. Errand
+boys passed me whistling shrilly joyous melodies. Perspiring tradesmen
+shouted generous offers to the needy. Men and women hurried by with
+smiling faces. Sleek cats purred in sheltered nooks, till merry dogs
+invited them to sport. The sparrows, feasting in the roadway, chirped
+their hymn of praise.
+
+At the Marble Arch I jumped upon a 'bus. I mentioned to the conductor
+in mounting that it was a fine day. He replied that he had noticed it
+himself. The retort struck me as a brilliant repartee. Our coachman, all
+but run into by a hansom cab driven by a surly old fellow of patriarchal
+appearance, remarked upon the danger of allowing horses out in charge of
+bits of boys. How full the world of wit and humour!
+
+Almost without knowing it, I found myself in earnest conversation with
+a young man sitting next to me. We conversed of life, of love. Not until
+afterwards, reflecting upon the matter, did it surprise me that to a
+mere chance acquaintance of the moment he had spoken of the one thing
+dearest to his heart: a sweet but clearly wayward maiden, the Hebe of
+a small, old-fashioned coffee-shop the 'bus was at that moment passing.
+Hitherto I had not been the recipient of confidences. It occurred to me
+that as a rule not even my friends spoke much to me concerning their
+own affairs; generally it was I who spoke to them of mine. I sympathised
+with him, advised him--how, I do not recollect. He said, however, he
+thought that I was right; and at Regent Street he left me, expressing
+his determination to follow my counsel, whatever it may have been.
+
+Between Berners Street and the Circus I lent a shilling to a couple of
+young ladies who had just discovered with amusement, quickly swallowed
+by despair, that they neither of them had any money with them. (They
+returned it next day in postage stamps, with a charming note.) The
+assurance with which I tendered the slight service astonished me myself.
+At any other time I should have hesitated, argued with my fears, offered
+it with an appearance of sulky constraint, and been declined. For
+a moment they were doubtful, then, looking at me, accepted with a
+delightful smile. They consulted me as to the way to Paternoster Row.
+I instructed them, adding a literary anecdote, which seemed to interest
+them. I even ventured on a compliment, neatly phrased, I am inclined to
+think. Evidently it pleased--a result hitherto unusual in the case of
+my compliments. At the corner of Southampton Row I parted from them with
+regret. Why had I never noticed before how full of pleasant people this
+sweet and smiling London?
+
+At the corner of Queen's Square a decent-looking woman stopped me to ask
+the way to the Children's Hospital at Chelsea, explaining she had made a
+mistake, thinking it was the one in Great Ormond Street where her child
+lay. I directed her, then glancing into her face, noticed how tired
+she looked, and a vista of the weary pavements she would have to tramp
+flashed before me. I slipped some money into her hand and told her to
+take a 'bus. She flushed, then thanked me. I turned a few yards further
+on; she was starting after me, amazement on her face. I laughed and
+waved my hand to her. She smiled back in return, and went her way.
+
+A rain began to fall. I paused upon the doorstep for a minute, enjoying
+the cool drops upon by upturned face, the tonic sharpness of the keen
+east wind; then slipped my key into the lock and entered.
+
+The door of old Deleglise's studio on the first floor happened to be
+open. Hitherto, beyond the usual formal salutations, when by chance we
+met upon the stairs, I had exchanged but few words with my eccentric
+landlord; but remembering his kindly face, the desire came upon me
+to tell him my good fortune. I felt sure his eyes would lighten with
+delight. By instinct I knew him for a young man's man.
+
+I tapped lightly; no answer came. Someone was talking; it sounded like a
+girl's voice. I pushed the door further open and walked in; such was the
+custom of the house. It was a large room, built over the yard, lighted
+by one high window, before which was the engraving desk, shaded under
+a screen of tissue paper. At the further end of the room stood a large
+cheval-glass, and in front of this, its back towards me, was a figure
+that excited my curiosity; so that remaining where I was, partly hidden
+behind a large easel, I watched it for awhile in silence. Above a
+heavily flounced blue skirt, which fell in creases on the floor
+and trailed a couple of yards or so behind, it wore a black low-cut
+sleeveless bodice--much too big for it--of the fashion early Victorian.
+A good deal of dark-brown hair, fastened up by hair-pins that stuck out
+in all directions like quills upon a porcupine, suggesting collapse with
+every movement, was ornamented by three enormous green feathers, one
+of which hung limply over the lady's left ear. Three times, while I
+watched, unnoticed, the lady propped it into a more befitting attitude,
+and three times, limp and intoxicated-looking, it fell back into its
+former foolish position. Her long, thin arms, displaying a pair of
+brilliantly red elbows, pointed to quite a dangerous degree, terminated
+in hands so very sunburnt as to convey the impression of a pair of
+remarkably well-fitting gloves. Her right hand grasped and waved with
+determination a large lace fan, her left clutched fiercely the front of
+her skirt. With a sweeping curtsey to herself in the glass, which would
+have been more effective could she have avoided tying her legs together
+with her skirt--a _contretemps_ necessitating the use of both hands and
+a succession of jumps before she could disentangle herself--she remarked
+so soon as she had recovered her balance:
+
+“So sorry I am late. My carriage was unfortunately delayed.”
+
+The excuse, I gathered, was accepted, for with a gracious smile and
+a vigorous bow, by help of which every hairpin made distinct further
+advance towards freedom, she turned, and with much dignity and head
+over the right shoulder took a short walk to the left. At the end of six
+short steps she stopped and began kicking. For what reason, I, at first,
+could not comprehend. It dawned upon me after awhile that her object
+was the adjustment of her train. Finding the manoeuvre too difficult of
+accomplishment by feet alone, she stooped, and, taking the stuff up in
+her hands, threw it behind her. Then, facing north, she retraced
+her steps to the glass, talking to herself, as she walked, in the
+high-pitched drawl, distinctive, as my stage knowledge told me, of
+aristocratic society.
+
+“Oh, do you think so--really? Ah, yes; you say that. Certainly not! I
+shouldn't think of it.” There followed what I am inclined to believe was
+intended for a laugh, musical but tantalising. If so, want of practice
+marred the effort. The performance failed to satisfy even herself. She
+tried again; it was still only a giggle.
+
+Before the glass she paused, and with a haughty inclination of her head
+succeeded for the third time in displacing the intoxicated feather.
+
+“Oh, bother the silly thing!” she said in a voice so natural as to be,
+by contrast with her previous tone, quite startling.
+
+She fixed it again with difficulty, muttering something inarticulate.
+Then, her left hand resting on an imaginary coat-sleeve, her right
+holding her skirt sufficiently high to enable her to move, she commenced
+to majestically gyrate.
+
+Whether, hampered as she was by excess of skirt, handicapped by the
+natural clumsiness of her age, catastrophe in any case would not sooner
+or later have overtaken her, I have my doubts. I have since learnt her
+own view to be that but for catching sight, in turning, of my face,
+staring at her through the bars of the easel, all would have gone well
+and gracefully. Avoiding controversy on this point, the facts to be
+recorded are, that, seeing me, she uttered a sudden exclamation of
+surprise, dropped her skirt, trod on her train, felt her hair coming
+down, tried to do two things at once, and sat upon the floor. I ran to
+her assistance. With flaming face and flashing eyes she sprang to her
+feet. There was a sound as of the rushing down of avalanches. The blue
+flounced skirt lay round her on the floor. She stood above its billowy
+folds, reminiscent of Venus rising from the waves--a gawky, angular
+Venus in a short serge frock, reaching a little below her knees, black
+stockings and a pair of prunella boots of a size suggesting she had yet
+some inches to grow before reaching her full height.
+
+“I hope you haven't hurt yourself,” I said.
+
+The next moment I didn't care whether she had or whether she hadn't.
+She did not reply to my kindly meant enquiry. Instead, her hand swept
+through the air in the form of an ample semi-circle. It terminated on
+my ear. It was not a small hand; it was not a soft hand; it was not
+that sort of hand. The sound of the contact rang through the room like a
+pistol shot; I heard it with my other ear. I sprang at her, and catching
+her before she had recovered her equilibrium, kissed her. I did not kiss
+her because I wanted to. I kissed her because I could not box her ears
+back in return, which I should have preferred doing. I kissed her,
+hoping it would make her mad. It did. If a look could have killed me,
+such would have been the tragic ending of this story. It did not kill
+me; it did me good.
+
+“You horrid boy!” she cried. “You horrid, horrid boy!”
+
+There, I admit, she scored. I did not in the least object to her
+thinking me horrid, but at nineteen one does object to being mistaken
+for a boy.
+
+“I am not a boy,” I explained.
+
+“Yes, you are,” she retorted; “a beast of a boy!”
+
+“If you do it again,” I warned her--a sudden movement on her part
+hinting to me the possibility--“I'll kiss you again! I mean it.”
+
+“Leave the room!” she commanded, pointing with her angular arm towards
+the door.
+
+I did not wish to remain. I was about to retire with as much dignity as
+circumstances permitted.
+
+“Boy!” she added.
+
+At that I turned. “Now I won't go!” I replied. “See if I do.”
+
+We stood glaring at each other.
+
+“What right have you in here?” she demanded.
+
+“I came to see Mr. Deleglise,” I answered. “I suppose you are Miss
+Deleglise. It doesn't seem to me that you know how to treat a visitor.”
+
+“Who are you?” she asked.
+
+“Mr. Horace Moncrieff,” I replied. I was using at the period both my
+names indiscriminately, but for this occasion Horace Moncrieff I judged
+the more awe-inspiring.
+
+She snorted. “I know. You're the house-maid. You sweep all the crumbs
+under the mats.”
+
+Now this was a subject about which at the time I was feeling somewhat
+sore. “Needs must when the Devil drives;” but as matters were, Dan and I
+could well have afforded domestic assistance. It rankled in my mind that
+to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the future Dickens,
+Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps rolled into one,
+should be compelled to the performance of menial duties. On this morning
+of all others, my brilliant literary career just commenced, the anomaly
+of the thing appeared naturally more glaring.
+
+Besides, how came she to know I swept the crumbs under the mat--that it
+was my method? Had she and Dan been discussing me, ridiculing me behind
+my back? What right had Dan to reveal the secrets of our menage to this
+chit of a school-girl? Had he done so? or had she been prying, poking
+her tilted nose into matters that did not concern her? Pity it was she
+had no mother to occasionally spank her, teach her proper behaviour.
+
+“Where I sweep our crumbs is nothing to do with you,” I replied with
+some spirit. “That I have to sweep them at all is the fault of your
+father. A sensible girl--”
+
+“How dare you speak against my father!” she interrupted me with blazing
+eyes.
+
+“We will not discuss the question further,” I answered, with sense and
+dignity.
+
+“I think you had better not!” she retorted.
+
+Turning her back on me, she commenced to gather up her hairpins--there
+must have been about a hundred of them. I assisted her to the extent of
+picking up about twenty, which I handed to her with a bow: it may have
+been a little stiff, but that was only to be expected. I wished to show
+her that her bad example had not affected my own manners.
+
+“I am sorry my presence should have annoyed you,” I said. “It was quite
+an accident. I entered the room thinking your father was here.”
+
+“When you saw he wasn't, you might have gone out again,” she replied,
+“instead of hiding yourself behind a picture.”
+
+“I didn't hide myself,” I explained. “The easel happened to be in the
+way.”
+
+“And you stopped there and watched me.”
+
+“I couldn't help it.”
+
+She looked round and our eyes met. They were frank, grey eyes. An
+expression of merriment shot into them. I laughed.
+
+Then she laughed: it was a delightful laugh, the laugh one would have
+expected from her.
+
+“You might at least have coughed,” she suggested.
+
+“It was so amusing,” I pleaded.
+
+“I suppose it was,” she agreed, and held out her hand. “Did I hurt you?”
+ she asked.
+
+“Yes, you did,” I answered, taking it.
+
+“Well, it was enough to annoy me, wasn't it?” she suggested.
+
+“Evidently,” I agreed.
+
+“I am going to a ball next week,” she explained, “a grown-up ball, and
+I've got to wear a skirt. I wanted to see if I could manage a train.”
+
+“Well, to be candid, you can't,” I assured her.
+
+“It does seem difficult.”
+
+“Shall I show you?” I asked.
+
+“What do you know about it?”
+
+“Well, I see it done every night.”
+
+“Oh, yes; of course, you're on the stage. Yes, do.”
+
+We readjusted the torn skirt, accommodating it better to her figure by
+the help of hairpins. I showed her how to hold the train, and, I humming
+a tune, we commenced to waltz.
+
+“I shouldn't count my steps,” I suggested to her. “It takes your mind
+away from the music.”
+
+“I don't waltz well,” she admitted meekly. “I know I don't do anything
+well--except play hockey.”
+
+“And try not to tread on your partner's feet. That's a very bad fault.”
+
+“I do try not to,” she explained.
+
+“It comes with practice,” I assured her.
+
+“I'll get Tom to give me half an hour every evening,” she said. “He
+dances beautifully.”
+
+“Who's Tom?”
+
+“Oh, father.”
+
+“Why do you call your father Tom? It doesn't sound respectful.”
+
+“Oh, he likes it; and it suits him so much better than father. Besides,
+he isn't like a real father. He does everything I want him to.”
+
+“Is that good for you?”
+
+“No; it's very bad for me--everybody says so. When you come to think of
+it, of course it isn't the way to bring up a girl. I tell him, but he
+merely laughs--says it's the only way he knows. I do hope I turn out all
+right. Am I doing it better now?”
+
+“A little. Don't be too anxious about it. Don't look at your feet.”
+
+“But if I don't they go all wrong. It was you who trod on mine that
+time.”
+
+“I know. I'm sorry. It's a little difficult not to.”
+
+“Am I holding my train all right?”
+
+“Well, there's no need to grip it as if you were afraid it would run
+away. It will follow all right. Hold it gracefully.”
+
+“I wish I wasn't a girl.”
+
+“Oh, you'll get used to it.” We concluded our dance.
+
+“What do I do--say 'Thank you'?”
+
+“Yes, prettily.”
+
+“What does he do?”
+
+“Oh, he takes you back to your chaperon, or suggests refreshment, or you
+sit and talk.”
+
+“I hate talking. I never know what to say.”
+
+“Oh, that's his duty. He'll try and amuse you, then you must laugh. You
+have a nice laugh.”
+
+“But I never know when to laugh. If I laugh when I want to it always
+offends people. What do you do if somebody asks you to dance and you
+don't want to dance with them?”
+
+“Oh, you say your programme is full.”
+
+“But if it isn't?”
+
+“Well, you tell a lie.”
+
+“Couldn't I say I don't dance well, and that I'm sure they'd get on
+better with somebody else?”
+
+“It would be the truth, but they might not believe it.”
+
+“I hope nobody asks me that I don't want.”
+
+“Well, he won't a second time, anyhow.”
+
+“You are rude.”
+
+“You are only a school-girl.”
+
+“I look a woman in my new frock, I really do.”
+
+“I should doubt it.”
+
+“You shall see me, then you'll be polite. It is because you are a boy
+you are rude. Men are much nicer.”
+
+“Oh, are they?”
+
+“Yes. You will be, when you are a man.”
+
+The sound of voices rose suddenly in the hall.
+
+“Tom!” cried Miss Deleglise; and collecting her skirt in both hands,
+bolted down the corkscrew staircase leading to the kitchen, leaving me
+standing in the centre of the studio.
+
+The door opened and old Deleglise entered, accompanied by a small,
+slight man with red hair and beard and somewhat watery eyes.
+
+Deleglise himself was a handsome old fellow, then a man of about
+fifty-five. His massive, mobile face, illuminated by bright, restless
+eyes, was crowned with a lion-like mane of iron-grey hair. Till a few
+years ago he had been a painter of considerable note. But in questions
+of art his temper was short. Pre-Raphaelism had gone out of fashion for
+the time being; the tendency of the new age was towards impressionism,
+and in disgust old Deleglise had broken his palette across his knee, and
+swore never to paint again. Artistic work of some sort being necessary
+to his temperament, he contented himself now with engraving. At the
+moment he was engaged upon the reproduction of Memlinc's Shrine of St.
+Ursula, with photographs of which he had just returned from Bruges.
+
+At sight of me his face lighted with a smile, and he advanced with
+outstretched hand.
+
+“Ah; my lad, so you have got over your shyness and come to visit the old
+bear in his den. Good boy. I like young faces.”
+
+He had a clear, musical voice, ever with the suggestion of a laugh
+behind it. He laid his hand upon my shoulder.
+
+“Why, you are looking as if you had come into a fortune,” he added, “and
+didn't know what a piece of bad luck that can be to a young fellow like
+yourself.”
+
+“How could it be bad luck?” I asked, laughing.
+
+“Takes all the sauce out of life, young man,” answered Deleglise. “What
+interest is there in running a race with the prize already in your
+possession, tell me that?”
+
+“It is not that kind of fortune,” I answered, “it is another. I have had
+my first story accepted. It is in print. Look.”
+
+I handed him the paper. He spread it out upon the engraving board before
+him.
+
+“Ah, that's better,” he said, “that's better. Charlie,” he turned to the
+red-headed man, who had seated himself listlessly in the one easy-chair
+the room contained, “come here.”
+
+The red-headed man rose and wandered towards us. “Let me introduce you
+to Mr. Paul Kelver, our new fellow servant. Our lady has accepted him.
+He has just been elected; his first story is in print.”
+
+The red-haired man stretched out his long thin hand. “I have thirty
+years of fame,” said the red-haired man--“could I say world-wide?”
+
+He turned for confirmation to old Deleglise, who laughed. “I think you
+can.”
+
+“If I could give it you would you exchange with me--at this moment?”
+
+“You would be a fool if you did,” he went on. “One's first success,
+one's first victory! It is the lover's first kiss. Fortune grows old and
+wrinkled, frowns more often than she smiles. We become indifferent to
+her, quarrel with her, make it up again. But the joy of her first kiss
+after the long wooing! Burn it into your memory, my young friend, that
+it may live with you always!”
+
+He strolled away. Old Deleglise took up the parable.
+
+“Ah, yes; one's first success, Paul! Laugh, my boy, cry! Shut yourself
+up in your room, shout, dance! Throw your hat into the air and cry
+hurrah! Make the most of it, Paul. Hug it to your heart, think of it,
+dream of it. This is the finest hour of your life, my boy. There will
+never come another like it--never!”
+
+He crossed the studio, and taking from its nail a small oil painting,
+brought it over and laid it on the board beside my paper. It was a
+fascinating little picture, painted with that exquisite minutiae and
+development of detail that a newer school was then ridiculing: as though
+Art had but one note to her voice. The dead figure of an old man lay
+upon a bed. A child had crept into the darkened room, and supporting
+itself by clutching tightly at the sheet, was gazing with solemn
+curiosity upon the white, still face.
+
+“That was mine,” said old Deleglise. “It was hung in the Academy
+thirty-six years ago, and bought for ten guineas by a dentist at Bury
+St. Edmunds. He went mad a few years later and died in a lunatic asylum.
+I had never lost sight of it, and the executors were quite agreeable
+to my having it back again for the same ten guineas. I used to go every
+morning to the Academy to look at it. I thought it the cleverest bit of
+work in the whole gallery, and I'm not at all sure that it wasn't. I
+saw myself a second Teniers, another Millet. Look how that light coming
+through the open door is treated; isn't it good? Somebody will pay a
+thousand guineas for it before I have been dead a dozen years, and it
+is worth it. But I wouldn't sell it myself now for five thousand. One's
+first success; it is worth all the rest of life!”
+
+“All?” queried the red-haired man from his easy-chair. We looked round.
+The lady of the skirt had entered, now her own proper self: a young girl
+of about fifteen, angular, awkward-looking, but bringing into the room
+with her that atmosphere of life, of hope, that is the eternal message
+of youth. She was not beautiful, not then--plain one might almost have
+called her but for her frank, grey eyes, her mass of dark-brown hair
+now gathered into a long thick plait. A light came into old Deleglise's
+eyes.
+
+“You are right, not all,” he murmured to the red-haired man.
+
+She came forward shyly. I found it difficult to recognise in her the
+flaming Fury that a few minutes before had sprung at me from the billows
+of her torn blue skirt. She shook hands with the red-haired man and
+kissed her father.
+
+“My daughter,” said old Deleglise, introducing me to her. “Mr. Paul
+Kelver, a literary gent.”
+
+“Mr. Kelver and I have met already,” she explained. “He has been waiting
+for you here in the studio.”
+
+“And have you been entertaining him?” asked Deleglise. “Oh, yes,
+I entertained him,” she replied. Her voice was singularly like her
+father's, with just the same suggestion of ever a laugh behind it.
+
+“We entertained each other,” I said.
+
+“That's all right,” said old Deleglise. “Stop and lunch with us. We will
+make ourselves a curry.”
+
+
+
+
+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 he 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 be 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?” he 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?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST.
+
+Of old Deleglise's Sunday suppers, which, costumed from head to foot
+in spotless linen, he cooked himself in his great kitchen, moving with
+flushed, earnest face about the gleaming stove, while behind him his
+guests waited, ranged round the massive oaken table glittering with cut
+glass and silver, among which fluttered the deft hands of Madeline, his
+ancient whitecapped Bonne, much has been already recorded, and by those
+possessed of greater knowledge. They who sat there talking in whispers
+until such time as old Deleglise turned towards them again, radiant
+with consciousness of success, the savoury triumph steaming between his
+hands, when, like the sudden swell of the Moonlight Sonata, the talk
+would rush once more into a roar, were men whose names were
+then--and some are still--more or less household words throughout the
+English-speaking world. Artists, musicians, actors, writers, scholars,
+droles, their wit and wisdom, their sayings and their doings must be
+tolerably familiar to readers of memoir and biography; and if to such
+their epigrams appear less brilliant, their jests less laughable than to
+us who heard them spoken, that is merely because fashion in humour and
+in understanding changes as in all else.
+
+You, gentle reader of my book, I shall not trouble with second-hand
+record of that which you can read elsewhere. For me it will be but
+to write briefly of my own brief glimpse into that charmed circle.
+Concerning this story more are the afternoon At Homes held by Dan and
+myself upon the second floor of the old Georgian house in pleasant,
+quiet Queen Square. For cook and house-maid on these days it would be a
+busy morning. Failing other supervision, Dan and I agreed that to secure
+success on these important occasions each of us should criticise the
+work of the other. I passed judgment on Dan's cooking, he upon my
+house-work.
+
+“Too much soda,” I would declare, sampling the cake.
+
+“You silly Juggins! It's meant to taste of soda--it's a soda cake.”
+
+“I know that. It isn't meant to taste of nothing but soda. There
+wants to be some cake about it also. This thing, so far as flavour
+is concerned, is nothing but a Seidlitz powder. You can't give people
+solidified Seidlitz powders for tea!”
+
+Dan would fume, but I would remain firm. The soda cake would be laid
+aside, and something else attempted. His cookery was the one thing Dan
+was obstinate about. He would never admit that anything could possibly
+be wrong with it. His most ghastly failures he would devour himself
+later on with pretended enjoyment. I have known him finish a sponge
+cake, the centre of which had to be eaten with a teaspoon, declaring it
+was delicious; that eating a dry sponge cake was like eating dust; that
+a sponge cake ought to be a trifle syrupy towards the centre. Afterwards
+he would be strangely silent and drink brandy out of a wine-glass.
+
+“Call these knives clean?” It would be Dan's turn.
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+Dan would draw his finger across one, producing chiaro-oscuro.
+
+“Not if you go fingering them. Why don't you leave them alone and go on
+with your own work?”
+
+“You've just wiped them, that's all.”
+
+“Well, there isn't any knife-powder.”
+
+“Yes, there is.”
+
+“Besides, it ruins knives, over-cleaning them--takes all the edge off.
+We shall want them pretty sharp to cut those lemon buns of yours.”
+
+“Over-cleaning them! You don't take any pride in the place.”
+
+“Good Lord! Don't I work from morning to night?”
+
+“You lazy young devil!”
+
+“Makes one lazy, your cooking. How can a man work when he is suffering
+all day long from indigestion?”
+
+But Dan would not be content until I had found the board and cleaned the
+knives to his complete satisfaction. Perhaps it was as well that in this
+way all things once a week were set in order. After lunch house-maid and
+cook would vanish, two carefully dressed gentlemen being left alone to
+receive their guests.
+
+These would be gathered generally from among Dan's journalistic
+acquaintances and my companions of the theatre. Occasionally, Minikin
+and Jarman would be of the number, Mrs. Peedles even once or twice
+arriving breathless on our landing. Left to myself, I perhaps should not
+have invited them, deeming them hardly fitting company to mingle with
+our other visitors; but Dan, having once been introduced to them,
+overrode such objection.
+
+“My dear Lord Chamberlain,” Dan would reply, “an ounce of originality is
+worth a ton of convention. Little tin ladies and gentlemen all made
+to pattern! One can find them everywhere. Your friends would be an
+acquisition to any society.”
+
+“But are they quite good form?” I hinted.
+
+“I'll tell you what we will do,” replied Dan. “We'll forget that Mrs.
+Peedles keeps a lodging-house in Blackfriars. We will speak of her as
+our friend, 'that dear, quaint old creature, Lady P.' A title that is
+an oddity, whose costume always suggests the wardrobe of a provincial
+actress! My dear Paul, your society novelist would make a fortune out
+of such a character. The personages of her amusing anecdotes, instead of
+being third-rate theatrical folk, shall be Earl Blank and the Baroness
+de Dash. The editors of society journals shall pay me a shilling a
+line for them. Jarman--yes, Jarman shall be the son of a South American
+millionaire. Vulgar? Nonsense! you mean racy. Minikin--he looks much
+more like forty than twenty--he shall be an eminent scientist. His
+head will then appear the natural size; his glass eye, the result of
+a chemical experiment, a touch of distinction; his uncompromising
+rudeness, a lovable characteristic. We will make him buy a yard of
+red ribbon and wear it across his shirt-front, and address him as Herr
+Professor. It will explain slight errors of English grammar and all
+peculiarities of accent. They shall be our lions. You leave it to me. We
+will invite commonplace, middle-class folk to meet them.”
+
+And this, to my terror and alarm, Dan persisted in doing. Jarman entered
+into the spirit of the joke with gusto. So far as he was concerned, our
+guests, from the beginning to the end, were one and all, I am confident,
+deceived. The more he swaggered, the more he boasted, the more he talked
+about himself--and it was a failing he was prone to--the greater was
+his success. At the persistent endeavours of Dan's journalistic
+acquaintances to excite his cupidity by visions of new journals, to be
+started with a mere couple of thousand pounds and by the inherent
+merit of their ideas to command at once a circulation of hundreds of
+thousands, I could afford to laugh. But watching the tremendous efforts
+of my actress friends to fascinate him--luring him into corners, gazing
+at him with languishing eyes, trotting out all their little tricks
+for his exclusive benefit, quarrelling about him among themselves--my
+conscience would prick me, lest our jest should end in a contretemps.
+Fortunately, Jarman himself, was a gentleman of uncommon sense, or my
+fears might have been realised. I should have been sorry myself to have
+been asked to remain stone under the blandishments of girls young and
+old, of women handsome and once, no doubt, good looking, showered upon
+him during that winter. But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no
+slave to female charms. He enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and
+eventually married the eldest daughter of a small blacking factory. She
+was a plain girl, but pleasant, and later brought to Jarman possession
+of the factory. When I meet him--he is now stout and rubicund--he gives
+me the idea of a man who has attained to his ideals.
+
+With Minikin we had more trouble. People turned up possessed of
+scientific smattering. We had to explain that the Professor never talked
+shop. Others were owners of unexpected knowledge of German, which they
+insisted upon airing. We had to explain that the Herr Professor was
+in London to learn English, and had taken a vow during his residence
+neither to speak nor listen to his native tongue. It was remarked that
+his acquaintance with colloquial English slang, for a foreigner, was
+quite unusual. Occasionally he was too rude, even for a scientist,
+informing ladies, clamouring to know how he liked English women, that he
+didn't like them silly; telling one gentleman, a friend of Dan, a rather
+important man who once asked him, referring to his yard of ribbon, what
+he got it for, that he got it for fourpence. We had to explain him as
+a gentleman who had been soured by a love disappointment. The ladies
+forgave him; the gentlemen said it was a damned lucky thing for the
+girl. Altogether, Minikin took a good deal of explaining.
+
+Lady Peedles, our guests decided among themselves, must be the widow of
+some one in the City who had been knighted in a crowd. They made fun of
+her behind her back, but to her face were most effusive. “My dear Lady
+Peedles” was the phrase most often heard in our rooms whenever she was
+present. At the theatre “my friend Lady Peedles” became a person much
+spoken of--generally in loud tones. My own social position I found
+decidedly improved by reason of her ladyship's evident liking for
+myself. It went abroad that I was her presumptive heir. I was courted as
+a gentleman of expectations.
+
+The fishy-eyed young man became one of our regular guests. Dan won his
+heart by never laughing at him.
+
+“I like talking to you,” said the fishy-eyed young man one afternoon to
+Dan. “You don't go into fits of laughter when I remark that it has been
+a fine day; most people do. Of course, on the stage I don't mind. I
+know I am a funny little devil. I get my living by being a funny little
+devil. There is a photograph of me hanging in the theatre lobby. I saw
+a workman stop and look at it the other day as he passed; I was just
+behind him. He burst into a roar of laughter. 'Little--! He makes me
+laugh to look at him!' he cluttered to himself. Well, that's all right;
+I want the man in the gallery to think me funny, but it annoys me when
+people laugh at me off the stage. If I am out to dinner anywhere and ask
+somebody to pass the mustard, I never get it; instead, they burst out
+laughing. I don't want people to laugh at me when I am having my dinner.
+I want my dinner. It makes me very angry sometimes.”
+
+“I know,” agreed Dan, sympathetically. “The world never grasps the fact
+that man is a collection, not a single exhibit. I remember being at a
+house once where the chief guest happened to be a great Hebrew scholar.
+One tea time, a Miss Henman, passing the butter to some one in a hurry,
+let it slip out of her hand. 'Why is Miss Henman like a caterpillar?'
+asked our learned guest in a sepulchral voice. Nobody appeared to know.
+'Because she makes the butter fly.' It never occurred to any one of us
+that the Doctor could possibly joke. There was dead silence for about
+a minute. Then our hostess, looking grave, remarked: 'Oh, do you really
+think so?'”
+
+“If I were to enter a room full of people,” said the fishy-eyed young
+man, “and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus, they
+would think it the funniest story they had heard in years.”
+
+He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he
+undoubtedly who was drawing the house. But he was not happy.
+
+“I am not a comic actor, really,” he explained. “I could play Romeo, so
+far as feeling is concerned, and play it damned well. There is a fine
+vein of poetry in me. But of course it's no good to me with this face of
+mine.”
+
+“But are you not sinning your mercies, you fellows?” Dan replied. “There
+is young Kelver here. At school it was always his trouble that he could
+give us a good time and make us laugh, which nobody else in the whole
+school could do. His ambition was to kick a ball as well as a hundred
+other fellows could kick it. He could tell us a good story now if he
+would only write what the Almighty intended him to write, instead of
+gloomy rigmaroles about suffering Princesses in Welsh caves. I don't
+say it's bad, but a hundred others could write the same sort of thing
+better.”
+
+“Can't you understand,” answered the little man; “the poorest tragedian
+that ever lived never wished himself the best of low comedians. The
+court fool had an excellent salary, no doubt; and, likely enough, had
+got two-thirds of all the brain there was in the palace. But not a
+wooden-headed man-at-arms but looked down upon him. Every gallery boy
+who pays a shilling to laugh at me regards himself as my intellectual
+superior; while to a fourth-rate spouter of blank verse he looks up in
+admiration.”
+
+“Does it so very much matter,” suggested Dan, “how the wooden-headed
+man-at-arms or the shilling gallery boy happens to regard you?”
+
+“Yes, it does,” retorted Goggles, “because we happen to agree with them.
+If I could earn five pounds a week as juvenile lead, I would never play
+a comic part again.”
+
+“There I cannot follow you,” returned Dan. “I can understand the artist
+who would rather be the man of action, the poet who would rather be the
+statesman or the warrior; though personally my sympathies are precisely
+the other way--with Wolfe who thought it a more glorious work, the
+writing of a great poem, than the burning of so many cities and the
+killing of so many men. We all serve the community. It is difficult,
+looking at the matter from the inside, to say who serves it best. Some
+feed it, some clothe it. The churchman and the policeman between them
+look after its morals, keep it in order. The doctor mends it when it
+injures itself; the lawyer helps it to quarrel, the soldier teaches it
+to fight. We Bohemians amuse it, instruct it. We can argue that we are
+the most important. The others cater for its body, we for its mind. But
+their work is more showy than ours and attracts more attention; and to
+attract attention is the aim and object of most of us. But for Bohemians
+to worry among themselves which is the greatest, is utterly without
+reason. The story-teller, the musician, the artist, the clown, we are
+members of a sharing troupe; one, with the ambition of the fat boy in
+Pickwick, makes the people's flesh creep; another makes them hold their
+sides with laughter. The tragedian, soliloquising on his crimes, shows
+us how wicked we are; you, looking at a pair of lovers from under a
+scratch wig, show us how ridiculous we are. Both lessons are necessary:
+who shall say which is the superior teacher?”
+
+“Ah, I am not a philosopher,” replied the little man, with a sigh.
+
+“Ah,” returned Dan, with another, “and I am not a comic actor on my
+way to a salary of a hundred a week. We all of us want the other boy's
+cake.”
+
+The O'Kelly was another frequent visitor of ours. The attic in Belsize
+Square had been closed. In vain had the O'Kelly wafted incense, burned
+pastilles and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne. In vain had he talked of rats,
+hinted at drains.
+
+“A wonderful woman,” groaned the O'Kelly in tones of sorrowful
+admiration. “There's no deceiving her.”
+
+“But why submit?” was our natural argument. “Why not say you are going
+to smoke, and do it?”
+
+“It's her theory, me boy,” explained the O'Kelly, “that the home should
+be kept pure--a sort of a temple, ye know. She's convinced that in time
+it is bound to exercise an influence upon me. It's a beautiful idea,
+when ye come to think of it.”
+
+Meanwhile, in the rooms of half-a-dozen sinful men the O'Kelly kept his
+own particular pipe, together with his own particular smoking mixture;
+and one such pipe and one such tobacco jar stood always on our
+mantelpiece.
+
+In the spring the forces of temptation raged round that feeble but most
+excellently intentioned citadel, the O'Kelly's conscience. The Signora
+had returned to England, was performing then at Ashley's Theatre. The
+O'Kelly would remain under long spells of silence, puffing vigorously
+at his pipe. Or would fortify himself with paeans in praise of Mrs.
+O'Kelly.
+
+“If anything could ever make a model man of me”--he spoke in the tones
+of one whose doubts are stronger than his hopes--“it would be the
+example of that woman.”
+
+It was one Saturday afternoon. I had just returned from the matinee.
+
+“I don't believe,” continued the O'Kelly, “I don't really believe she
+has ever done one single thing she oughtn't to, or left undone one
+single thing she ought, in the whole course of her life.”
+
+“Maybe she has, and you don't know of it,” I suggested, perceiving the
+idea might comfort him.
+
+“I wish I could think so,” returned the O'Kelly. “I don't mean anything
+really wrong,” he corrected himself quickly, “but something just a
+little wrong. I feel--I really feel I should like her better if she
+had.”
+
+“Not that I mean I don't like her as it is, ye understand,” corrected
+himself the O'Kelly a second time. “I respect that woman--I cannot tell
+ye, me boy, how much I respect her. Ye don't know her. There was one
+morning, about a month ago. That woman--she's down at six every morning,
+summer and winter; we have prayers at half-past. I was a trifle late
+meself: it was never me strong point, as ye know, early rising. Seven
+o'clock struck; she didn't appear, and I thought she had overslept
+herself. I won't say I didn't feel pleased for the moment; it was an
+unworthy sentiment, but I almost wished she had. I ran up to her room.
+The door was open, the bedclothes folded down as she always leaves them.
+She came in five minutes later. She had got up at four that morning
+to welcome a troupe of native missionaries from East Africa on their
+arrival at Waterloo Station. She's a saint, that woman; I am not worthy
+of her.”
+
+“I shouldn't dwell too much on that phase of the subject,” I suggested.
+
+“I can't help it, me boy,” replied the O'Kelly. “I feel I am not.”
+
+“I don't for a moment say you are,” I returned; “but I shouldn't harp
+upon the idea. I don't think it good for you.”
+
+“I never will be,” he persisted gloomily, “never!”
+
+Evidently he was started on a dangerous train of reflection. With the
+idea of luring him away from it, I led the conversation to the subject
+of champagne.
+
+“Most people like it dry,” admitted the O'Kelly. “Meself, I have always
+preferred it with just a suggestion of fruitiness.”
+
+“There was a champagne,” I said, “you used to be rather fond of when
+we--years ago.”
+
+“I think I know the one ye mean,” said the O'Kelly. “It wasn't at all
+bad, considering the price.”
+
+“You don't happen to remember where you got it?” I asked.
+
+“It was in Bridge Street,” remembered the O'Kelly, “not so very far from
+the Circus.”
+
+“It is a pleasant evening,” I remarked; “let us take a walk.”
+
+We found the place, half wine-shop, half office.
+
+“Just the same,” commented the O'Kelly as we pushed open the door and
+entered. “Not altered a bit.”
+
+As in all probability barely twelve months had elapsed since his last
+visit, the fact in itself was not surprising. Clearly the O'Kelly had
+been calculating time rather by sensation. I ordered a bottle; and we
+sat down. Myself, being prejudiced against the brand, I called for a
+glass of claret. The O'Kelly finished the bottle. I was glad to notice
+my ruse had been successful. The virtue of that wine had not departed
+from it. With every glass the O'Kelly became morally more elevated.
+He left the place, determined that he would be worthy of Mrs. O'Kelly.
+Walking down the Embankment, he asserted his determination of buying an
+alarm-clock that very evening. At the corner of Westminster Bridge he
+became suddenly absorbed in his own thoughts. Looking to discover the
+cause of his silence, I saw that his eyes were resting on a poster
+representing a charming lady standing on one leg upon a wire; below
+her--at some distance--appeared the peaks of mountains; the artist
+had even caught the likeness. I cursed the luck that had directed our
+footsteps, but the next moment, lacking experience, was inclined to be
+reassured.
+
+“Me dear Paul,” said the O'Kelly--he laid a fatherly hand upon my
+shoulder--“there are fair-faced, laughing women--sweet creatures,
+that ye want to put yer arm around and dance with.” He shook his head
+disapprovingly. “There are the sainted women, who lead us up, Paul--up,
+always up.”
+
+A look, such as the young man with the banner might have borne with him
+to the fields of snow and ice, suffused the O'Kelly's handsome face.
+Without another word he crossed the road and entered an American store,
+where for six-and-elevenpence he purchased an alarm-clock the man
+assured us would awake an Egyptian mummy. With this in his hand he waved
+me a good-bye, and jumped upon a Hampstead 'bus, and alone I strolled on
+to the theatre.
+
+Hal returned a little after Christmas and started himself in chambers
+in the City. It was the nearest he dared venture, so he said, to
+civilisation.
+
+“I'd be no good in the West End,” he explained. “For a season I might
+attract as an eccentricity, but your swells would never stand me for
+longer--no more would any respectable folk, anywhere: we don't get on
+together. I commenced at Richmond. It was a fashionable suburb then,
+and I thought I was going to do wonders. I had everything in my favour,
+except myself. I do know my work, nobody can deny that of me. My
+father spent every penny he had, poor gentleman, in buying me an
+old-established practice: fine house, carriage and pair, white-haired
+butler--everything correct, except myself. It was of no use. I can hold
+myself in for a month or two; then I break out, the old original savage
+that I am under my frock coat. I feel I must run amuck, stabbing,
+hacking at the prim, smiling Lies mincing round about me. I can fool a
+silly woman for half-a-dozen visits; bow and rub my hands, purr round
+her sympathetically. All the while I am longing to tell her the truth:
+
+“'Go home. Wash your face; don't block up the pores of your skin with
+paint. Let out your corsets. You are thirty-three round the abdomen if
+you are an inch: how can you expect your digestion to do its work when
+you're squeezing it into twenty-one? Give up gadding about half your day
+and most of your night; you are old enough to have done with that sort
+of thing. Let the children come, and suckle them yourself. You'll be all
+the better for them. Don't loll in bed all the morning. Get up like a
+decent animal and do something for your living. Use your brain, what
+there is of it, and your body. At that price you can have health
+to-morrow, and at no other. I can do nothing for you.'
+
+“And sooner or later I blurt it out.” He laughed his great roar. “Lord!
+you should see the real face coming out of the simpering mask.
+
+“Pompous old fools, strutting into me like turkey-cocks! By Jove, it was
+worth it! They would dribble out, looking half their proper size after I
+had done telling them what was the matter with them.
+
+“'Do you want to know what you are really suffering from?' I would shout
+at them, when I could contain myself no longer. 'Gluttony, my dear sir;
+gluttony and drunkenness, and over-indulgence in other vices that shall
+be nameless. Live like a man; get a little self-respect from somewhere;
+give up being an ape. Treat your body properly and it will treat you
+properly. That's the only prescription that will do you any good.'”
+
+He laughed again. “'Tell the truth, you shame the Devil.' But the Devil
+replies by starving you. It's a fairly effective retort. I am not the
+stuff successful family physicians are made of. In the City I may manage
+to rub along. One doesn't see so much of one's patients; they come and
+go. Clerks and warehousemen my practice will be among chiefly. The poor
+man does not so much mind being told the truth about himself; it is a
+blessing to which he is accustomed.”
+
+We spoke but once of Barbara. A photograph of her in her bride's
+dress stood upon my desk. Occasionally, first fitting the room for
+the ceremony, sweeping away all impurity even from under the mats, and
+dressing myself with care, I would centre it amid flowers, and kneeling,
+kiss her hand where it rested on the back of the top-heavy looking chair
+without which no photographic studio is complete.
+
+One day he took it up, and looked at it long and hard.
+
+“The forehead denotes intellectuality; the eyes tenderness and courage.
+The lower part of the face, on the other hand, suggests a good deal
+of animalism: the finely cut nostrils show egotism--another word for
+selfishness; the nose itself, vanity; the lips, sensuousness and love
+of luxury. I wonder what sort of woman she really is.” He laid the
+photograph back upon the desk.
+
+“I did not know you were so firm a believer in Lavater,” I said.
+
+“Only when he agrees with what I know,” he answered. “Have I not
+described her rightly?”
+
+“I do not care to discuss her in that vein,” I replied, feeling the
+blood mounting to my cheeks.
+
+“Too sacred a subject?” he laughed. “It is the one ingredient of manhood
+I lack, ideality--an unfortunate deficiency for me. I must probe,
+analyse, dissect, see the thing as it really is, know it for what it
+is.”
+
+“Well, she is the Countess Huescar now,” I said. “For God's sake, leave
+her alone.”
+
+He turned to me with the snarl of a beast. “How do you know she is the
+Countess Huescar? Is it a special breed of woman made on purpose? How do
+you know she isn't my wife--brain and heart, flesh and blood, mine? If
+she was, do you think I should give her up because some fool has stuck
+his label on her?”
+
+I felt the anger burning in my eyes. “Yours, his! She is no man's
+property. She is herself,” I cried.
+
+The wrinkles round his nose and mouth smoothed themselves out. “You need
+not be afraid,” he sneered. “As you say, she is the Countess Huescar.
+Can you imagine her as Mrs. Doctor Washburn? I can't.” He took her
+photograph in his hand again. “The lower part of the face is the true
+index to the character. It shows the animal, and it is the animal that
+rules. The soul, the intellect, it comes and goes; the animal remains
+always. Sensuousness, love of luxury, vanity, those are the strings to
+which she dances. To be a Countess is of more importance to her than to
+be a woman. She is his, not mine. Let him keep her.”
+
+“You do not know her,” I answered; “you never have. You listen to what
+she says. She does not know herself.”
+
+He looked at me queerly. “What do you think her to be?” he asked me. “A
+true woman, not the shallow thing she seems?”
+
+“A true woman,” I persisted stoutly, “that you have not eyes enough to
+see.”
+
+“You little fool!” he muttered, with the same queer look--“you little
+fool. But let us hope you are wrong, Paul. Let us hope, for her sake,
+you are wrong.”
+
+It was at one of Deleglise's Sunday suppers that I first met Urban Vane.
+The position, nor even the character, I fear it must be confessed, of
+his guests was never enquired into by old Deleglise. A simple-minded,
+kindly old fellow himself, it was his fate to be occasionally surprised
+and grieved at the discovery that even the most entertaining of supper
+companions could fall short of the highest standard of conventional
+morality.
+
+“Dear, dear me!” he would complain, pacing up and down his studio
+with puzzled visage. “The last man in the world of whom I should have
+expected to hear it. So original in all his ideas. Are you quite sure?”
+
+“I am afraid there can be no doubt about it.”
+
+“I can't believe it! I really can't believe it! One of the most amusing
+men I ever met!”
+
+I remember a well-known artist one evening telling us with much sense of
+humour how he had just completed the sale of an old Spanish cabinet to
+two distinct and separate purchasers.
+
+“I sold it first,” recounted the little gentleman with glee, “to old
+Jong, the dealer. He has been worrying me about it for the last three
+months, and on Saturday afternoon, hearing that I was clearing out
+and going abroad, he came round again. 'Well, I am not sure I am in a
+position to sell it,' I told him. 'Who'll know?' he asked. 'They are not
+in, are they?' 'Not yet,' I answered, 'but I expect they will be some
+time on Monday.' 'Tell your man to open the door to me at eight o'clock
+on Monday morning,' he replied, 'we'll have it away without any fuss.
+There needn't be any receipt. I'm lending you a hundred pounds, in
+cash.' I worked him up to a hundred and twenty, and he paid me. Upon my
+word, I should never have thought of it, if he hadn't put the idea into
+my head. But turning round at the door: 'You won't go and sell it to
+some one else,' he suggested, 'between now and Monday?' It serves him
+right for his damned impertinence. 'Send and take it away to-day if you
+are at all nervous,' I told him. He looked at the thing, it is about
+twelve feet high altogether. 'I would if I could get a cart,' he
+muttered. Then an idea struck him. 'Does the top come off?' 'See for
+yourself,' I answered; 'it's your cabinet, not mine.' I was feeling
+rather annoyed with him. He examined it. 'That's all right,' he said;
+'merely a couple of screws. I'll take the top with me now on my cab.'
+He got a man in, and they took the upper cupboard away, leaving me the
+bottom. Two hours later old Sir George called to see me about his wife's
+portrait. The first thing he set eyes on was the remains of the cabinet:
+he had always admired it. 'Hallo,' he asked, 'are you breaking up the
+studio literally? What have you done with the other half?' 'I've sent
+it round to Jong's--' He didn't give me time to finish. 'Save Jong's
+commission and sell it to me direct,' he said. 'We won't argue about the
+price and I'll pay you in cash.'
+
+“Well, if Providence comes forward and insists on taking charge of
+a man, it is hardly good manners to flout her. Besides, his wife's
+portrait is worth twice as much as he is paying for it. He handed me
+over the money in notes. 'Things not going quite smoothly with you just
+at the moment?' he asked me. 'Oh, about the same as usual,' I told him.
+'You won't be offended at my taking it away with me this evening?' he
+asked. 'Not in the least,' I answered; 'you'll get it on the top of a
+four-wheeled cab.' We called in a couple of men, and I helped them down
+with it, and confoundedly heavy it was. 'I shall send round to Jong's
+for the other half on Monday morning,' he said, speaking with his head
+through the cab window, 'and explain it to him.' 'Do,' I answered;
+'he'll understand.'
+
+“I'm sorry I'm going away so early in the morning,” concluded the little
+gentleman. “I'd give back Jong ten per cent. of his money to see his
+face when he enters the studio.”
+
+Everybody laughed; but after the little gentleman was gone, the subject
+cropped up again.
+
+“If I wake sufficiently early,” remarked one, “I shall find an excuse
+to look in myself at eight o'clock. Jong's face will certainly be worth
+seeing.”
+
+“Rather rough both on him and Sir George,” observed another.
+
+“Oh, he hasn't really done anything of the kind,” chimed in old
+Deleglise in his rich, sweet voice. “He made that all up. It's just his
+fun; he's full of humour.”
+
+“I am inclined to think that would be his idea of a joke,” asserted the
+first speaker.
+
+Old Deleglise would not hear of it; but a week or two later I noticed an
+addition to old Deleglise's studio furniture in the shape of a handsome
+old carved cabinet twelve feet high.
+
+“He really had done it,” explained old Deleglise, speaking in a whisper,
+though only he and I were present. “Of course, it was only his fun; but
+it might have been misunderstood. I thought it better to put the thing
+straight. I shall get the money back from him when he returns. A most
+amusing little man!”
+
+Old Deleglise possessed a house in Gower Street which fell vacant. One
+of his guests, a writer of poetical drama, was a man who three months
+after he had earned a thousand pounds never had a penny with which
+to bless himself. They are dying out, these careless, good-natured,
+conscienceless Bohemians; but quarter of a century ago they still
+lingered in Alsatian London. Turned out of his lodgings by a Philistine
+landlord, his sole possession in the wide world, two acts of a drama,
+for which he had already been paid, the problem of his future, though
+it troubled him but little, became acute to his friends. Old Deleglise,
+treating the matter as a joke, pretending not to know who was the
+landlord, suggested he should apply to the agents for position as
+caretaker. Some furniture was found for him, and the empty house in
+Gower Street became his shelter. The immediate present thus provided
+for, kindly old Deleglise worried himself a good deal concerning what
+would become of his friend when the house was let. There appeared to be
+no need for worry. Weeks, months went by. Applications were received
+by the agents in fair number, view cards signed by the dozen; but
+prospective tenants were never seen again. One Sunday evening our poet,
+warmed by old Deleglise's Burgundy, forgetful whose recommendation
+had secured him the lowly but timely appointment, himself revealed the
+secret.
+
+“Most convenient place I've got,” so he told old Deleglise. “Whole house
+to myself. I wander about; it just suits me.”
+
+“I'm glad to hear that,” murmured old Deleglise.
+
+“Come and see me, and I'll cook you a chop,” continued the other. “I've
+had the kitchen range brought up into the back drawing-room; saves going
+up and down stairs.”
+
+“The devil you have!” growled old Deleglise. “What do you think the
+owner of the house will say?”
+
+“Haven't the least idea who the poor old duffer is myself. They've put
+me in as caretaker--an excellent arrangement: avoids all argument about
+rent.”
+
+“Afraid it will soon come to an end, that excellent arrangement;”
+ remarked old Deleglise, drily.
+
+“Why? Why should it?”
+
+“A house in Gower Street oughtn't to remain vacant long.”
+
+“This one will.”
+
+“You might tell me,” asked old Deleglise, with a grim smile; “how do you
+manage it? What happens when people come to look over the house--don't
+you let them in?”
+
+“I tried that at first,” explained the poet, “but they would go on
+knocking, and boys and policemen passing would stop and help them. It
+got to be a nuisance; so now I have them in, and get the thing over.
+I show them the room where the murder was committed. If it's a
+nervous-looking party, I let them off with a brief summary. If that
+doesn't do, I go into details and show them the blood-spots on the
+floor. It's an interesting story of the gruesome order. Come round one
+morning and I'll tell it to you. I'm rather proud of it. With the blinds
+down and a clock in the next room that ticks loudly, it goes well.”
+
+Yet this was a man who, were the merest acquaintance to call upon him
+and ask for his assistance, would at once take him by the arm and lead
+him upstairs. All notes and cheques that came into his hands he changed
+at once into gold. Into some attic half filled with lumber he would
+fling it by the handful; then, locking the door, leave it there. On
+their hands and knees he and his friends, when they wanted any, would
+grovel for it, poking into corners, hunting under boxes, groping among
+broken furniture, feeling between cracks and crevices. Nothing gave him
+greater delight than an expedition of this nature to what he termed his
+gold-field; it had for him, as he would explain, all the excitements
+of mining without the inconvenience and the distance. He never knew how
+much was there. For a certain period a pocketful could be picked up in
+five minutes. Then he would entertain a dozen men at one of the best
+restaurants in London, tip cabmen and waiters with half-sovereigns,
+shower half-crowns as he walked through the streets, lend or give to
+anybody for the asking. Later, half-an-hour's dusty search would be
+rewarded with a single coin. It made no difference to him; he would dine
+in Soho for eighteenpence, smoke shag, and run into debt.
+
+The red-haired man, to whom Deleglise had introduced me on the day of
+my first meeting with the Lady of the train, was another of his most
+constant visitors. It flattered my vanity that the red-haired man, whose
+name was famous throughout Europe and America, should condescend to
+confide to me--as he did and at some length--the deepest secrets of his
+bosom. Awed--at all events at first--I would sit and listen while by
+the hour he would talk to me in corners, telling me of the women he had
+loved. They formed a somewhat large collection. Julias, Marias, Janets,
+even Janes--he had madly worshipped, deliriously adored so many it grew
+bewildering. With a far-away look in his eyes, pain trembling through
+each note of his musical, soft voice, he would with bitter jest, with
+passionate outburst, recount how he had sobbed beneath the stars for
+love of Isabel, bitten his own flesh in frenzied yearning for Lenore. He
+appeared from his own account--if in connection with a theme so poetical
+I may be allowed a commonplace expression--to have had no luck with
+any of them. Of the remainder, an appreciable percentage had been mere
+passing visions, seen at a distance in the dawn, at twilight--generally
+speaking, when the light must have been uncertain. Never again, though
+he had wandered in the neighbourhood for months, had he succeeded in
+meeting them. It would occur to me that enquiries among the neighbours,
+applications to the local police, might possibly have been efficacious;
+but to have broken in upon his exalted mood with such suggestions would
+have demanded more nerve than at the time I possessed. In consequence,
+my thoughts I kept to myself.
+
+“My God, boy!” he would conclude, “may you never love as I loved that
+woman Miriam”--or Henrietta, or Irene, as the case might be.
+
+For my sympathetic attitude towards the red-haired man I received one
+evening commendation from old Deleglise.
+
+“Good boy,” said old Deleglise, laying his hand on my shoulder. We were
+standing in the passage. We had just shaken hands with the red-haired
+man, who, as usual, had been the last to leave. “None of the others will
+listen to him. He used to stop and confide it all to me after everybody
+else had gone. Sometimes I have dropped asleep, to wake an hour later
+and find him still talking. He gets it over early now. Good boy!”
+
+Soon I learnt it was characteristic of the artist to be willing--nay,
+anxious, to confide his private affairs to any one and every one who
+would only listen. Another characteristic appeared to be determination
+not to listen to anybody else's. As attentive recipient of other
+people's troubles and emotions I was subjected to practically no
+competition whatever. One gentleman, a leading actor of that day, I
+remember, immediately took me aside on my being introduced to him, and
+consulted me as to his best course of procedure under the extremely
+painful conditions that had lately arisen between himself and his wife.
+We discussed the unfortunate position at some length, and I did my best
+to counsel fairly and impartially.
+
+“I wish you would lunch with me at White's to-morrow,” he said. “We can
+talk it over quietly. Say half-past one. By the bye, I didn't catch your
+name.”
+
+I spelt it to him: he wrote the appointment down on his shirt-cuff. I
+went to White's the next day and waited an hour, but he did not turn
+up. I met him three weeks later at a garden-party with his wife. But he
+appeared to have forgotten me.
+
+Observing old Deleglise's guests, comparing them with their names, it
+surprised me the disconnection between the worker and the work. Writers
+of noble sentiment, of elevated ideality, I found contained in men of
+commonplace appearance, of gross appetites, of conventional ideas.
+It seemed doubtful whether they fully comprehended their own work;
+certainly it had no effect upon their own lives. On the other hand, an
+innocent, boyish young man, who lived the most correct of lives with
+a girlish-looking wife in an ivy-covered cottage near Barnes Common,
+I discovered to be the writer of decadent stories at which the Empress
+Theodora might have blushed. The men whose names were widest known were
+not the men who shone the brightest in Deleglise's kitchen; more
+often they appeared the dull dogs, listening enviously, or failing
+pathetically when they tried to compete with others who to the public
+were comparatively unknown. After a time I ceased to confound the artist
+with the man, thought no more of judging the one by the other than of
+evolving a tenant from the house to which circumstances or carelessness
+might have directed him. Clearly they were two creations originally
+independent of each other, settling down into a working partnership
+for purposes merely of mutual accommodation; the spirit evidently
+indifferent as to the particular body into which he crept, anxious only
+for a place to work in, easily contented.
+
+Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak.
+Cabinet Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped
+from Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries disguised
+in grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that with six
+strokes of the pen they could set half London laughing at whom they
+would; raw laddies with the burr yet clinging to their tongues, but
+who we knew would one day have the people dancing to the music of their
+words. Neither wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor position counted. Was a
+man interesting, amusing; had he ideas and thoughts of his own? Then he
+was welcome. Men who had come, men who were coming, met there on equal
+footing. Among them, as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my
+place--somewhat to my dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I
+have shocked them by the originality of my views, impressed them with
+the depth of my judgments. They declined to be startled, refused to
+be impressed; instead, they laughed. Nor from these men could I obtain
+sympathy in my disappointment.
+
+“What do you mean, you villain!” roared Deleglise's caretaker at me one
+evening on entering the kitchen. “How dare you waste your time writing
+this sort of stuff?”
+
+He had a copy of the paper containing my “Witch of Moel Sarbod” in his
+hand--then some months old. He screwed it up into a ball and flung it in
+my face. “I've only just read it. What did you get for it?”
+
+“Nothing,” I answered.
+
+“Nothing!” he screamed. “You got off for nothing? You ought to have been
+whipped at the cart's tail!”
+
+“Oh, come, it's not as bad as that,” suggested old Deleglise.
+
+“Not bad! There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end.”
+
+“There wasn't intended to be,” I interrupted.
+
+“Why not, you swindler? What were you sent into the world to do? To make
+it laugh.”
+
+“I want to make it think,” I told him.
+
+“Make it think! Hasn't it got enough to think about? Aren't there ten
+thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers, long-eared
+philosophers, boring it to death? Who are you to turn up your nose at
+your work and tell the Almighty His own business? You are here to make
+us laugh. Get on with your work, you confounded young idiot!”
+
+Urban Vane was the only one among them who understood me, who agreed
+with me that I was fitted for higher things than merely to minister
+to the world's need of laughter. He alone it was who would listen
+with approval to my dreams of becoming a famous tragedian, a writer of
+soul-searching books, of passion-analysing plays. I never saw him laugh
+himself, certainly not at anything funny. “Humour!” he would explain
+in his languid drawl, “personally it doesn't amuse me.” One felt its
+introduction into the scheme of life had been an error. He was a large,
+fleshy man, with a dreamy, caressing voice and strangely impassive face.
+Where he came from, who he was, nobody knew. Without ever passing a
+remark himself that was worth listening to, he, nevertheless, by some
+mysterious trick of manner I am unable to explain, soon established
+himself, even throughout that company, where as a rule men found their
+proper level, as a silent authority in all contests of wit or argument.
+Stories at which he listened, bored, fell flat. The _bon mot_ at which
+some faint suggestion of a smile quivered round his clean-shaven lips
+was felt to be the crown of the discussion. I can only conclude his
+secret to have been his magnificent assumption of superiority, added to
+a sphinx-like impenetrability behind which he could always retire from
+any danger of exposure. Subjects about which he knew nothing--and I
+have come to the conclusion they were more numerous than was
+suspected--became in his presence topics outside the radius of
+cultivated consideration: one felt ashamed of having introduced them.
+His own subjects--they were few but exclusive--he had the knack of
+elevating into intellectual tests: one felt ashamed, reflecting how
+little one knew about them. Whether he really did possess a charm of
+manner, or whether the sense of his superiority with which he had imbued
+me it was that made any condescension he paid me a thing to grasp at, I
+am unable to say. Certain it is that when he suggested I should throw
+up chorus singing and accompany him into the provinces as manager of a
+theatrical company he was then engaging to run a wonderful drama that
+was going to revolutionise the English stage and educate the English
+public, I allowed myself not a moment for consideration, but accepted
+his proposal with grateful delight.
+
+“Who is he?” asked Dan. Somehow he had never impressed Dan; but then Dan
+was a fellow to impress whom was slow work. As he himself confessed, he
+had no instinct for character. “I judge,” he would explain, “purely by
+observation.”
+
+“What does that matter?” was my reply.
+
+“What does he know about the business?”
+
+“That's why he wants me.”
+
+“What do you know about it?”
+
+“There's not much to know. I can find out.”
+
+“Take care you don't find out that there's more to know than you think.
+What is this wonderful play of his?”
+
+“I haven't seen it yet; I don't think it's finished. It's something from
+the Spanish or the Russian, I'm not sure. I'm to put it into shape
+when he's done the translation. He wants me to put my name to it as the
+adaptor.”
+
+“Wonder he hasn't asked you to wear his clothes. Has he got any money?”
+
+“Of course he has money. How can you run a theatrical company without
+money?”
+
+“Have you seen the money?”
+
+“He doesn't carry it about with him in a bag.”
+
+“I should have thought your ambition to be to act, not to manage.
+Managers are to be had cheap enough. Why should he want some one who
+knows nothing about it?”
+
+“I'm going to act. I'm going to play a leading part.”
+
+“Great Scott!”
+
+“He'll do the management really himself; I shall simply advise him. But
+he doesn't want his own name to appear.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“His people might object.”
+
+“Who are his people?”
+
+“How do I know? What a suspicious chap you are.”
+
+Dan shrugged his shoulders. “You are not an actor, you never will be;
+you are not a business man. You've made a start at writing, that's your
+proper work. Why not go on with it?”
+
+“I can't get on with it. That one thing was accepted, and never paid
+for; everything else comes back regularly, just as before. Besides, I
+can go on writing wherever I am.”
+
+“You've got friends here to help you.”
+
+“They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense.”
+
+“Well, clever nonsense is worth writing. It's better than stodgy sense:
+literature is blocked up with that. Why not follow their advice?”
+
+“Because I don't believe they are right. I'm not a clown; I don't mean
+to be. Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he has
+nothing else. That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the highest.
+I have knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct. I mean to
+prove it to you all. Vane's the only man that understands me.”
+
+Dan lit his pipe. “Have you made up your mind to go?”
+
+“Of course I have. It's an opportunity that doesn't occur twice.
+'There's a tide in the affairs--”
+
+“Thanks,” interrupted Dan; “I've heard it before. Well, if you've made
+up your mind, there's an end of the matter. Good luck to you! You are
+young, and it's easier to learn things then than later.”
+
+“You talk,” I answered, “as if you were old enough to be my
+grandfather.”
+
+He smiled and laid both hands upon my shoulders. “So I am,” he said,
+“quite old enough, little boy Paul. Don't be angry; you'll always be
+little Paul to me.” He put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the
+window.
+
+“What'll you do?” I enquired. “Will you keep on these rooms?”
+
+“No,” he replied. “I shall accept an offer that has been made to me to
+take the sub-editorship of a big Yorkshire paper. It is an important
+position and will give me experience.”
+
+“You'll never be happy mewed up in a provincial town,” I told him. “I
+shall want a London address, and I can easily afford it. Let's keep them
+on together.”
+
+He shook his head. “It wouldn't be the same thing,” he said.
+
+So there came a morning when we said good-bye. Before Dan returned from
+the office I should be gone. They had been pleasant months that we had
+spent together in these pretty rooms. Though my life was calling to
+me full of hope, I felt the pain of leaving them. Two years is a long
+period in a young man's life, when the sap is running swiftly. My
+affections had already taken root there. The green leaves in summer, in
+winter the bare branches of the square, the sparrows that chirped about
+the window-sills, the quiet peace of the great house, Dan, kindly old
+Deleglise: around them my fibres clung, closer than I had known. The
+Lady of the train: she managed it now less clumsily. Her hands and
+feet had grown smaller, her elbows rounder. I found myself smiling as
+I thought of her--one always did smile when one thought of Norah,
+everybody did;--of her tomboy ways, her ringing laugh--there were those
+who termed it noisy; her irrepressible frankness--there were times when
+it was inconvenient. Would she ever become lady-like, sedate, proper?
+One doubted it. I tried to picture her a wife, the mistress of a house.
+I found the smile deepening round my mouth. What a jolly wife she would
+make! I could see her bustling, full of importance; flying into tempers,
+lasting possibly for thirty seconds; then calling herself names, saving
+all argument by undertaking her own scolding, and doing it well. I
+followed her to motherhood. What a joke it would be! What would she do
+with them? She would just let them do what they liked with her. She and
+they would be a parcel of children together, she the most excited of
+them all. No; on second thoughts I could detect in her a strong vein of
+common sense. They would have to mind their p's and q's. I could see her
+romping with them, helping them to tear their clothes; but likewise I
+could see her flying after them, bringing back an armful struggling,
+bathing it, physicking it. Perhaps she would grow stout, grow grey; but
+she would still laugh more often than sigh, speak her mind, be quick,
+good-tempered Norah to the end. Her character precluded all hope of
+surprise. That, as I told myself, was its defect. About her were none of
+those glorious possibilities that make of some girls charming mysteries.
+A woman, said I to myself, should be a wondrous jewel, hiding unknown
+lights and shadows. You, my dear Norah--I spoke my thoughts aloud, as
+had become a habit with me: those who live much alone fall into this
+way--you are merely a crystal, not shallow--no, I should not call you
+shallow by any mans, but transparent.
+
+What would he be, her lover? Some plain, matter-of-fact, business-like
+young fellow, a good player of cricket and football, fond of his dinner.
+What a very uninteresting affair the love-making would be! If she liked
+him--well, she would probably tell him so; if she didn't, he would know
+it in five minutes.
+
+As for inducing her to change her mind, wooing her, cajoling her--I
+heard myself laughing at the idea.
+
+There came a quick rap at the door. “Come in,” I cried; and she entered.
+
+“I came to say good-bye to you,” she explained. “I'm just going out.
+What were you laughing at?”
+
+“Oh, at an idea that occurred to me.”
+
+“A funny one?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Tell it me.”
+
+“Well, it was something in connection with yourself. It might offend
+you.”
+
+“It wouldn't trouble you much if it did, would it?”
+
+“No, I don't suppose it would.”
+
+“Then why not tell me?”
+
+“I was thinking of your lover.”
+
+It did offend her; I thought it would. But she looked really interesting
+when she was cross. Her grey eyes would flash, and her whole body
+quiver. There was a charming spice of danger always about making her
+cross.
+
+“I suppose you think I shall never have one.”
+
+“On the contrary, I think you will have a good many.” I had not thought
+so before then. I formed the idea for the first time in that moment,
+while looking straight into her angry face. It was still a childish
+face.
+
+The anger died out of it as it always did within the minute, and she
+laughed. “It would be fun, wouldn't it. I wonder what I should do with
+him? It makes you feel very serious being in love, doesn't it?”
+
+“Very.”
+
+“Have you ever been in love?”
+
+I hesitated for a moment. Then the delight of talking about it overcame
+my fear of being chaffed. Besides, when she felt it, nobody could be
+more delightfully sympathetic. I determined to adventure it.
+
+“Yes,” I answered, “ever since I was a boy. If you are going to be
+foolish,” I added, for I saw the laugh before it came, “I shan't talk to
+you about it.”
+
+“I'm not--I won't, really,” she pleaded, making her face serious again.
+“What is she like?”
+
+I took from my breast pocket Barbara's photograph, and handed it to her
+in silence.
+
+“Is she really as beautiful as that?” she asked, gazing at it evidently
+fascinated.
+
+“More so,” I assured her. “Her expression is the most beautiful part of
+her. Those are only her features.”
+
+She sighed. “I wish I was beautiful.”
+
+“You are at an awkward age,” I told her. “It is impossible to say what
+you are going to be like.”
+
+“Mamma was a lovely woman, everybody says so; and Tom I call awfully
+handsome. Perhaps I'll be better when I'm filled out a bit more.” A
+small Venetian mirror hung between the two windows; she glanced up into
+it. “It's my nose that irritates me,” she said. She rubbed it viciously,
+as if she would rub it out.
+
+“Some people admire snub noses,” I explained to her.
+
+“No, really?”
+
+“Tennyson speaks of them as 'tip-tilted like the petals of a rose.'”
+
+“How nice of him! Do you think he meant my sort?” She rubbed it again,
+but in a kinder fashion; then looked again at Barbara's photograph. “Who
+is she?”
+
+“She was Miss Hasluck,” I answered; “she is the Countess Huescar now.
+She was married last summer.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I remember; you told us about her. You were children together.
+But what's the good of your being in love with her if she's married?”
+
+“It makes my whole life beautiful.”
+
+“Wanting somebody you can't have?”
+
+“I don't want her.”
+
+“You said you were in love with her.”
+
+“So I am.”
+
+She handed me back the photograph, and I replaced it in my pocket.
+
+“I don't understand that sort of love,” she said. “If I loved anybody I
+should want to have them with me always.
+
+“She is with me always,” I answered, “in my thoughts.” She looked at me
+with her clear grey eyes. I found myself blinking. Something seemed
+to be slipping from me, something I did not want to lose. I remember a
+similar sensation once at the moment of waking from a strange, delicious
+dream to find the sunlight pouring in upon me through an open window.
+
+“That isn't being in love,” she said. “That's being in love with the
+idea of being in love. That's the way I used to go to balls”--she
+laughed--“in front of the glass. You caught me once, do you remember?”
+
+“And was it not sweeter,” I argued, “the imagination? You were the belle
+of the evening; you danced divinely every dance, were taken in to supper
+by the Lion. In reality you trod upon your partner's toes, bumped and
+were bumped, were left a wallflower more than half the time, had a
+headache the next day. Were not the dream balls the more delightful?”
+
+“No, they weren't,” she answered without the slightest hesitation. “One
+real dance, when at last it came, was worth the whole of them. Oh, I
+know, I've heard you talking, all of you--of the faces that you see in
+dreams and that are ever so much more beautiful than the faces that you
+see when you're awake; of the wonderful songs that nobody ever sings,
+the wonderful pictures that nobody ever paints, and all the rest of it.
+I don't believe a word of it. It's tommyrot!”
+
+“I wish you wouldn't use slang.”
+
+“Well, you know what I mean. What is the proper word? Give it me.”
+
+“I suppose you mean cant,” I suggested.
+
+“No, I don't. Cant is something that you don't believe in yourself. It's
+tommyrot: there isn't any other word. When I'm in love it will be with
+something that is real.”
+
+I was feeling angry with her. “I know just what he will be like. He will
+be a good-natured, commonplace--”
+
+“Whatever he is,” she interrupted, “he'll be alive, and he'll want me
+and I shall want him. Dreams are silly. I prefer being up.” She
+clapped her hands. “That's it.” Then, silent, she looked at me with an
+expression of new interest. “I've been wondering and wondering what it
+was: you are not really awake yet. You've never got up.”
+
+I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my
+brain was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the
+truth. And if so, what would “waking up,” as she termed it, be like? A
+flash of memory recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking Bridge,
+when, as it had seemed to me, the little childish Paul had slipped away
+from me, leaving me lonely and bewildered to find another Self. Was my
+boyhood in like manner now falling from me? I found myself clinging to
+it with vague terror. Its thoughts, its feelings--dreams: they had grown
+sweet to me; must I lose them? This cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to
+receive me: I shrank away from it with fear.
+
+“Do you know, I think you will be rather nice when you wake up.”
+
+Her words recalled me to myself. “Perhaps I never shall wake up,” I
+said. “I don't want to wake up.”
+
+“Oh, but one can't go on dreaming all one's life,” she laughed. “You'll
+wake up, and fall in love with somebody real.” She came across to me,
+and taking the lapels of my coat in both her hands, gave me a vigorous
+shake. “I hope she'll be somebody nice. I am rather afraid.”
+
+“You seem to think me a fool!” I was still angry with her, without quite
+knowing why.
+
+She shook me again. “You know I don't. But it isn't the nice people that
+take best care of themselves. Tom can't. I have to take care of him.”
+
+I laughed.
+
+“I do, really. You should hear me scold him. I like taking care of
+people. Good-bye.”
+
+She held out her hand. It was white now and shapely, but one could not
+have called it small. Strong it felt and firm as it gripped mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN.
+
+I left London, the drums beating in my heart, the flags waving in my
+brain. Somewhat more than a year later, one foggy wet December evening,
+I sneaked back to it defeated--ah, that is a small thing, capable of
+redress--disgraced. I returned to it as to a hiding-place where, lost
+in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such time as I could
+summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my dead life. I had
+been ambitious--dwelling again amid the bitterness of the months that
+followed my return, I write in the past tense. I had been eager to make
+a name, a position for myself. But were I to claim no higher aim, I
+should be doing injustice to my blood--to the great-souled gentleman
+whose whole life had been an ode to honour, to her of simple faith who
+had known no other prayer to teach me than the childish cry, “God help
+me to be good!” I had wished to be a great man, but it was to have
+been a great good man. The world was to have admired me, but to have
+respected me also. I was to have been the knight without fear, but,
+rarer yet, without reproach--Galahad, not Launcelot. I had learnt myself
+to be a feeble, backboneless fighter, conquered by the first serious
+assault of evil, a creature of mean fears, slave to every crack of the
+devil's whip, a feeder with swine.
+
+Urban Vane I had discovered to be a common swindler. His play he had
+stolen from the desk of a well-known dramatist whose acquaintance he had
+made in Deleglise's kitchen. The man had fallen ill, and Vane had been
+constant in his visits. Partly recovering, the man had gone abroad to
+Italy. Had he died there, as at the time was expected, the robbery might
+never have come to light. News reached us in a small northern town that
+he had taken a fresh lease of life and was on his way back to England.
+Then it was that Vane with calm indifference, smoking his cigar over
+a bottle of wine to which he had invited me, told me the bald truth,
+adorning it with some touches of wit. Had the recital come upon me
+sooner, I might have acted differently; but six months' companionship
+with Urban Vane, if it had not, by grace of the Lord, destroyed the
+roots of whatever flower of manhood might have been implanted in me, had
+most certainly withered its leaves.
+
+The man was clever. That he was not clever enough to perceive from the
+beginning what he has learnt since: that honesty is the best policy--at
+least, for men with brains--remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Where
+once he made his hundreds among shady ways, he now, I suppose, makes his
+thousands in the broad daylight of legitimate enterprise. Chicanery in
+the blood, one might imagine, has to be worked out. Urban Vanes are to
+be found in all callings. They commence as scamps; years later, to one's
+astonishment, one finds them ornaments to their profession. Wild oats
+are of various quality, according to the soil from which they are
+preserved. We sow them in our various ways.
+
+At first I stormed. Vane sat with an amused smile upon his lips and
+listened.
+
+“Your language, my dear Kelver,” he replied, my vocabulary exhausted,
+“might wound me were I able to accept you as an authority upon this
+vexed question of morals. With the rest of the world you preach one
+thing and practise another. I have noticed it so often. It is perhaps
+sad, but the preaching has ceased to interest me. You profess to be
+very indignant with me for making use of another man's ideas. It is done
+every day. You yourself were quite ready to take credit not due to you.
+For months we have been travelling with this play: 'Drama, in five acts,
+by Mr. Horace Moncrieff.' Not more than two hundred lines of it are your
+own--excellent lines, I admit, but they do not constitute the play.”
+
+This aspect of the affair had not occurred to me. “But you asked me to
+put my name to it,” I stammered. “You said you did not want your own to
+appear--for private reasons. You made a point of it.”
+
+He waved away the smoke from his cigar. “The man you are posing as would
+never have put his name to work not his own. You never hesitated; on the
+contrary, you jumped at the chance of so easy an opening to your career
+as playwright. My need, as you imagined it, was your opportunity.”
+
+“But you said it was from the French,” I argued; “you had merely
+translated it, I adapted it. I don't defend the custom, but it is the
+custom: the man who adapts a play calls himself the author. They all do
+it.”
+
+“I know,” he answered. “It has always amused me. Our sick friend
+himself, whom I am sure we are both delighted to welcome back to
+life, has done it more than once, and made a very fair profit on the
+transaction. Indeed, from internal evidence, I am strongly of opinion
+that this present play is a case in point. Well, chickens come home to
+roost: I adapt from him. What is the difference?”
+
+“Simply this,” he continued, pouring himself out another glass of wine,
+“that whereas, owing to the anomalous state of the copyright laws,
+stealing from the foreign author is legal and commendable, against
+stealing from the living English author there is a certain prejudice.”
+
+“And the consequences, I am afraid, you will find somewhat unpleasant,”
+ I suggested.
+
+He laughed: it was not a frivolity to which he was prone. “You mean, my
+dear Kelver that you will.”
+
+“Don't look so dumbfounded,” he went on. “You cannot be so stupid as you
+are pretending to be. The original manuscript at the Lord Chamberlain's
+office is in your handwriting. You knew our friend as well as I did,
+and visited him. Why, the whole tour has been under your management.
+You have arranged everything--most excellently; I have been quite
+surprised.”
+
+My anger came later. For the moment, the sudden light blinded me to
+everything but fear.
+
+“But you told me,” I cried, “it was only a matter of form, that you
+wanted to keep your name out of it because--”
+
+He was looking at me with an expression of genuine astonishment. My
+words began to appear humorous even to myself. I found it difficult to
+believe I had been the fool I was now seeing myself to have been.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said, “I am really sorry. I took you for a man of the
+world. I thought you merely did not wish to know anything.”
+
+Still, to my shame, fear was the thing uppermost in my heart. “You are
+not going to put it all on to me?” I pleaded.
+
+He had risen. He laid his hand upon my shoulder. Instead of flinging it
+off, I was glad of its kindly pressure. He was the only man to whom I
+could look for help.
+
+“Don't take it so seriously,” he said. “He will merely think the
+manuscript has been lost. As likely as not, he will be unable to
+remember whether he wrote it or merely thought of writing it. No one in
+the company will say anything: it isn't their business. We must set to
+work. I had altered it a good deal before you saw it, and changed all
+the names of the characters. We will retain the third act: it is the
+only thing of real value in the play. The situation is not original; you
+have as much right to dish it up as he had. In a fortnight we will have
+the whole thing so different that if he saw it himself he would only
+imagine we had got hold of the idea and had forestalled him.”
+
+There were moments during the next few weeks when I listened to the
+voice of my good angel, when I saw clearly that even from the lowest
+point of view he was giving me sound advice. I would go to the man, tell
+him frankly the whole truth.
+
+But Vane never left my elbow. Suspecting, I suppose, he gave me clearly
+to understand that if I did so, I must expect no mercy from him. My
+story, denounced by him as an outrageous lie, would be regarded as the
+funk-inspired subterfuge of a young rogue. At the best I should handicap
+myself with suspicion that would last me throughout my career. On the
+other hand, what harm had we done? Presented in some twenty or so small
+towns, where it would soon be forgotten, a play something like. Most
+plays were something like. Our friend would produce his version and
+reap a rich harvest; ours would disappear. If by any unlikely chance
+discussion should arise, the advertisement would be to his advantage. So
+soon as possible we would replace it by a new piece altogether. A young
+man of my genius could surely write something better than hotch-potch
+such as this; experience was all that I had lacked. As regarded
+one's own conscience, was not the world's honesty a mere question of
+convention? Had he been a young man, and had we diddled him out of his
+play for a ten-pound note, we should have been applauded as sharp men of
+business. The one commandment of the world was: Don't get found out. The
+whole trouble, left alone, would sink and fade. Later, we should tell it
+as a good joke--and be laughed with.
+
+So I fell from mine own esteem. Vane helping me--and he had brains--I
+set feverishly to work. I am glad to remember that every line I wrote
+was born in misery. I tried to persuade Vane to let me make a new
+play altogether, which I offered to give him for nothing. He expressed
+himself as grateful, but his frequently declared belief in my dramatic
+talent failed to induce his acceptance.
+
+“Later on, my dear Kelver,” was his reply. “For the present this is
+doing very well. Going on as we are, we shall soon improve it out of all
+recognition, while at the same time losing nothing that is essential.
+All your ideas are excellent.”
+
+By the end of about three weeks we had got together a concoction that,
+so far as dialogue and characters were concerned, might be said to
+be our own. There was good work in it, here and there. Under other
+conditions I might have been proud of much that I had written. As it
+was, I experienced only the terror of the thief dodging the constable:
+my cleverness might save me; it afforded me no further satisfaction.
+My humour, when I heard the people laughing at it, I remembered I had
+forged listening in vague fear to every creak upon the stairs, wondering
+in what form discovery might come upon me. There was one speech,
+addressed by the hero to the villain: “Yes, I admit it; I do love her.
+But there is that which I love better--my self-respect!” Stepping down
+to the footlights and slapping his chest (which according to stage
+convention would appear to be a sort of moral jewel-box bursting with
+assorted virtues), our juvenile lead--a gentleman who led a somewhat
+rabbit-like existence, perpetually diving down openings to avoid service
+of writs, at the instance of his wife, for alimony--would invariably
+bring down the house upon this sentiment. Every night, listening to the
+applause, I would shudder, recalling how I had written it with burning
+cheeks.
+
+There was a character in the piece, a vicious old man, that from the
+beginning Vane had wanted me to play. I had disliked the part and
+had refused, choosing instead to act a high-souled countryman, in the
+portrayal of whose irreproachable emotions I had taken pleasure. Vane
+now renewed his arguments, and my power of resistance seeming to have
+departed from me, I accepted the exchange. Certainly the old gentleman's
+scenes went with more snap, but at a cost of further degradation to
+myself. Upon an older actor the effect might have been harmless, but the
+growing tree springs back less surely; I found myself taking pleasure
+in the coarse laughter that rewarded my suggestive leers, calling up all
+the evil in my nature to help me in the development of fresh “business.”
+ Vane was enthusiastic in his praises, generous with his assistance.
+Under his tuition I succeeded in making the part as unpleasant as we
+dared. I had genius, so Vane told me; I understood so much of human
+nature. One proof of the moral deterioration creeping over me was that I
+was beginning to like Vane.
+
+Looking back at the man as I see him plainly now, a very ordinary scamp,
+his pretension not even amusing, I find it difficult to present him as
+he appeared to my boyish eyes. He was well educated and well read. He
+gave himself the airs of a superior being by freak of fate compelled to
+abide in a world of inferior creatures. To live among them in comfort it
+was necessary for him to outwardly conform to their conventions but to
+respect their reasoning would have been beneath him. To accept
+their laws as binding on one's own conscience was, using the common
+expression, to give oneself away, to confess oneself commonplace. Every
+decent instinct a man might own to was proof in Vane's eyes of his being
+“suburban,” “bourgeois”--everything that was unintellectual. It was the
+first time I had heard this sort of talk. Vane was one of the pioneers
+of the movement, which has since become somewhat tiresome. To laugh at
+it is easy to a man of the world; boys are impressed by it. From him
+I first heard the now familiar advocacy of pure Hedonism. Pan, enticed
+from his dark groves, was to sit upon Olympus.
+
+My lower nature rose within me to proclaim the foolish chatterer as
+a prophet. So life was not as I had been taught--a painful struggle
+between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless
+epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but
+rather through joyous expression of the animal lay advancement.
+
+Villains--workers in wrong for aesthetic pleasure of the art--are useful
+characters in fiction; in real life they do not exist. I am convinced
+the man believed most of the rubbish he talked. Since the time of which
+I write he has done some service to the world. I understand he is an
+excellent husband and father, a considerate master, a delightful
+host. He intended, I have no doubt, to improve me, to enlarge my
+understanding, to free me from soul-stifling bondage of convention. Not
+to credit him with this well-meaning intention would be to assume
+him something quite inhuman, to bestow upon him a dignity beyond his
+deserts. I find it easier to regard him merely as a fool.
+
+Our leading lady was a handsome but coarse woman, somewhat
+over-developed. Starting life as a music-hall singer, she had married
+a small tradesman in the south of London. Some three or four years
+previous, her Juno-like charms had turned the head of a youthful
+novelist--a refined, sensitive man, of whom great things in literature
+had been expected, and, judging from his earlier work, not unreasonably.
+He had run away with her, and eventually married her; the scandal was
+still fresh. Already she had repented of her bargain. These women regard
+their infatuated lovers merely as steps in the social ladder, and he
+had failed to appreciably advance her. Under her demoralising spell his
+ambition had died in him. He no longer wrote, no longer took interest
+in anything beyond his own debasement. He was with us in the company,
+playing small parts, and playing them badly; he would have remained with
+us as bill-poster rather than have been sent away.
+
+Vane planned to bring this woman and myself together. To her he pictured
+me a young gentleman of means, a coming author, who would soon be
+earning an income sufficient to keep her in every luxury. To me he
+hinted that she had fallen in love with me. I was never attracted to
+her by any feeling stronger than the admiration with which one views a
+handsome animal. It was my vanity upon which he worked. He envied me;
+any man would envy me; experience of life was what I needed to complete
+my genius. The great intellects of this earth must learn all lessons,
+even at the cost of suffering to themselves and others.
+
+As years before I had laboured to acquire a liking for cigars and
+whiskey, deeming it an accomplishment necessary to a literary career, so
+painstakingly I now applied myself to the cultivation of a pretty taste
+in passion. According to the literature, fictional and historical, Vane
+was kind enough to supply me with, men of note were invariably sad dogs.
+That my temperament was not that of the sad dog, that I lacked instinct
+and inclination for the part, appeared to this young idiot of whom I am
+writing in the light of a defect. That her languishing glances irritated
+rather than maddened me, that the occasional covert pressure of her hot,
+thick hand left me cold, I felt a reproach to my manhood. I would fall
+in love with her. Surely my blood was red like other men's. Besides, was
+I not an artist, and was not profligacy the hall-mark of the artist?
+
+But one grows tired of the confessional. Fate saved me from playing
+the part Vane had assigned me in this vulgar comedy, dragged me from my
+entanglement, flung me on my feet again. She was a little brusque in the
+process; but I do not feel inclined to blame the kind lady for that. The
+mud was creeping upward fast, and a quick hand must needs be rough.
+
+Our dramatic friend produced his play sooner than we had expected. It
+crept out that something very like it had been seen in the Provinces.
+Argument followed, enquiries were set on foot. “It will blow over,” said
+Vane. But it seemed to be blowing our way.
+
+The salaries, as a rule, were paid by me on Friday night. Vane, in the
+course of the evening, would bring me the money for me to distribute
+after the performance. We were playing in the north of Ireland. I had
+not seen Vane all that day. So soon as I had changed my clothes I left
+my dressing-room to seek him. The box-office keeper, meeting me, put a
+note into my hand. It was short and to the point. Vane had pocketed the
+evening's takings, and had left by the seven-fifty train! He regretted
+causing inconvenience, but life was replete with small comedies; the
+wise man attached no seriousness to them. We should probably meet again
+and enjoy a laugh over our experiences.
+
+Some rumour had got about. I looked up from the letter to find myself
+surrounded by suspicious faces. With dry lips I told them the truth.
+Only they happened not to regard it as the truth. Vane throughout
+had contrived cleverly to them I was the manager, the sole
+person responsible. My wearily spoken explanations were to them
+incomprehensible lies. The quarter of an hour might have been worse for
+me had I been sufficiently alive to understand or care what they were
+saying. A dull, listless apathy had come over me. I felt the scene only
+stupid, ridiculous, tiresome. There was some talk of giving me “a damned
+good hiding.” I doubt whether I should have known till the next morning
+whether the suggestion had been carried out or not. I gathered that the
+true history of the play, the reason for the sudden alterations, had
+been known to them all along. They appeared to have reserved their
+virtuous indignation till this evening. As explanation of my apparent
+sleepiness, somebody, whether in kindness to me or not I cannot say,
+suggested I was drunk. Fortunately, it carried conviction. No further
+trains left the town that night; I was allowed to depart. A deputation
+promised to be round at my lodgings early in the morning.
+
+Our leading lady had left the theatre immediately on the fall of the
+curtain; it was not necessary for her to wait, her husband acting as her
+business man. On reaching my rooms, I found her sitting by the fire.
+It reminded me that our agent in advance having fallen ill, her husband
+had, at her suggestion, been appointed in his place, and had left us on
+the Wednesday to make the necessary preparations in the next town on our
+list. I thought that perhaps she had come round for her money, and the
+idea amused me.
+
+“Well?” she said, with her one smile. I had been doing my best for some
+months to regard it as soul-consuming, but without any real success.
+
+“Well,” I answered. It bored me, her being there. I wanted to be alone.
+
+“You don't seem overjoyed to see me. What's the matter with you? What's
+happened?”
+
+I laughed. “Vane's bolted and taken the week's money with him.”
+
+“The beast!” she said. “I knew he was that sort. What ever made you take
+up with him? Will it make much difference to you?”
+
+“It makes a difference all round,” I replied. “There's no money to pay
+any of you. There's nothing to pay your fares back to London.”
+
+She had risen. “Here, let me understand this,” she said. “Are you the
+rich mug Vane's been representing you to be, or only his accomplice?”
+
+“The mug and the accomplice both,” I answered, “without the rich.
+It's his tour. He put my name to it because he didn't want his own to
+appear--for family reasons. It's his play; he stole it--”
+
+She interrupted me with a whistle. “I thought it looked a bit fishy, all
+those alterations. But such funny things do happen in this profession!
+Stole it, did he?”
+
+“The whole thing in manuscript. I put my name to it for the same
+reason--he didn't want his own to appear.”
+
+She dropped into her chair and laughed--a good-tempered laugh, loud and
+long. “Well, I'm damned!” she said. “The first man who has ever taken me
+in. I should never have signed if I had thought it was his show. I could
+see the sort he was with half an eye.” She jumped up from the chair.
+“Here, let me get out of this,” she said. “I just looked in to know what
+time to-morrow; I'd forgotten. You needn't say I came.”
+
+Her hand upon the door, laughter seized her again, so that for support
+she had to lean against the wall.
+
+“Do you know why I really did come?” she said. “You'll guess when you
+come to think it over, so I may as well tell you. It's a bit of a
+joke. I came to say 'yes' to what you asked me last night. Have you
+forgotten?”
+
+I stared at her. Last night! It seemed a long while ago--so very
+unimportant what I might have said.
+
+She laughed again. “So help me! if you haven't. Well, you asked me to
+run away with you--that's all, to let our two souls unite. Damned lucky
+I took a day to think it over! Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night,” I answered, without moving. I was gripping a chair to
+prevent myself from rushing at her, pushing her out of the room, and
+locking the door. I wanted to be alone.
+
+I heard her turn the handle. “Got a pound or two to carry you over?” It
+was a woman's voice.
+
+I put my hand into my pocket. “One pound seventeen,” I answered,
+counting it. “It will pay my fare to London--or buy me a dinner and a
+second-hand revolver. I haven't quite decided yet.”
+
+“Oh, you get back and pull yourself together,” she said. “You're only a
+kid. Good-night.”
+
+I put a few things into a small bag and walked thirty miles that night
+into Belfast. Arrived in London, I took a lodging in Deptford, where
+I was least likely to come in contact with any face I had ever seen
+before. I maintained myself by giving singing lessons at sixpence the
+half-hour, evening lessons in French and German (the Lord forgive me!)
+to ambitious shop-boys at eighteen pence a week, making up tradesmen's
+books. A few articles of jewellery I had retained enabled me to tide
+over bad periods. For some four months I existed there, never going
+outside the neighbourhood. Occasionally, wandering listlessly about
+the streets, some object, some vista, would strike me by reason of its
+familiarity. Then I would turn and hasten back into my grave of dim,
+weltering streets.
+
+Of thoughts, emotions, during these dead days I was unconscious.
+Somewhere in my brain they may have been stirring, contending; but
+myself I lived as in a long, dull dream. I ate, and drank, and woke,
+and slept, and walked and walked, and lounged by corners; staring by the
+hour together, seeing nothing.
+
+It has surprised me since to find the scenes I must then have witnessed
+photographed so clearly on my mind. Tragedies, dramas, farces, played
+before me in that teeming underworld--the scenes present themselves to
+me distinct, complete; yet I have no recollection of ever having seen
+them.
+
+I fell ill. It must have been some time in April, but I kept no count of
+days. Nobody came near me, nobody knew of me. I occupied a room at
+the top of a huge block of workmen's dwellings. A woman who kept a
+second-hand store had lent me for a shilling a week a few articles of
+furniture. Lying upon my chair-bedstead, I listened to the shrill sounds
+around me, that through the light and darkness never ceased. A pint of
+milk, left each morning on the stone landing, kept me alive. I would
+wait for the man's descending footsteps, then crawl to the door. I hoped
+I was going to die, regretting my returning strength, the desire for
+food that drove me out into the streets again.
+
+One night, a week or two after my partial recovery, I had wandered on
+and on for hour after hour. The breaking dawn recalled me to myself. I
+was outside the palings of a park. In the faint shadowy light it looked
+strange and unfamiliar. I was too tired to walk further. I scrambled
+over the low wooden fencing, and reaching a seat, dropped down and fell
+asleep.
+
+I was sitting in a sunny avenue; birds were singing joyously, bright
+flowers were all around me. Norah was beside me, her frank, sweet eyes
+were looking into mine; they were full of tenderness, mingled with
+wonder. It was a delightful dream: I felt myself smiling.
+
+Suddenly I started to my feet. Norah's strong hand drew me down again.
+
+I was in the broad walk, Regent's Park, where, I remembered, Norah often
+walked before breakfast. A park-keeper, the only other human creature
+within sight, was eyeing me suspiciously. I saw myself--without a
+looking-glass--unkempt, ragged. My intention was to run, but Norah was
+holding me by the arm. Savagely I tried to shake her off. I was weak
+from my recent illness, and, I suppose, half starved; it angered me
+to learn she was the stronger of the two. In spite of my efforts, she
+dragged me back.
+
+Ashamed of my weakness, ashamed of everything about me, I burst into
+tears; and that of course made me still more ashamed. To add to my
+discomfort, I had no handkerchief. Holding me with one hand--it was
+quite sufficient--Norah produced her own, and wiped my eyes. The
+park-keeper, satisfied, I suppose, that at all events I was not
+dangerous, with a grin passed on.
+
+“Where have you been, and what have you been doing?” asked Norah.
+She still retained her grip upon me, and in her grey eyes was quiet
+determination.
+
+So, with my face turned away from her, I told her the whole miserable
+story, taking strange satisfaction in exaggerating, if anything, my own
+share of the disgrace. My recital ended, I sat staring down the long,
+shadow-freckled way, and for awhile there was no sound but the chirping
+of the sparrows.
+
+Then behind me I heard a smothered laugh. It was impossible to imagine
+it could come from Norah. I turned quickly to see who had stolen upon
+us. It was Norah who was laughing; though to do her justice she was
+trying to suppress it, holding her handkerchief to her face. It was of
+no use, it would out; she abandoned the struggle, and gave way to it. It
+astonished the sparrows into silence; they stood in a row upon the low
+iron border and looked at one another.
+
+“I am glad you think it funny,” I said.
+
+“But it is funny,” she persisted. “Don't say you have lost your sense
+of humour, Paul; it was the one real thing you possessed. You were so
+cocky--you don't know how cocky you were! Everybody was a fool but
+Vane; nobody else but he appreciated you at your true worth. You and he
+between you were going to reform the stage, to educate the public,
+to put everything and everybody to rights. I am awfully sorry for all
+you've gone through; but now that it is over, can't you see yourself
+that it is funny?”
+
+Faintly, dimly, this aspect of the case, for the very first time, began
+to present itself to me; but I should have preferred Norah to have been
+impressed by its tragedy.
+
+“That is not all,” I said. “I nearly ran away with another man's wife.”
+
+I was glad to notice that sobered her somewhat. “Nearly? Why not quite?”
+ she asked more seriously.
+
+“She thought I was some young idiot with money,” I replied bitterly,
+pleased with the effect I had produced. “Vane had told her a pack of
+lies. When she found out I was only a poor devil, ruined, disgraced,
+without a sixpence---” I made a gesture expressive of eloquent contempt
+for female nature generally.
+
+“I am sorry,” said Norah; “I told you you would fall in love with
+something real.”
+
+Her words irritated me, unreasonably, I confess. “In love!” I replied;
+“good God, I was never in love with her!”
+
+“Then why did you nearly run away with her?”
+
+I was wishing now I had not mentioned the matter; it promised to be
+difficult of explanation. “I don't know,” I replied irritably. “I
+thought she was in love with me. She was very beautiful--at least, other
+people seemed to think she was. Artists are not like ordinary men. You
+must live--understand life, before you can teach it to others. When a
+beautiful woman is in love with you--or pretends to be, you--you must
+say something. You can't stand like a fool and--”
+
+Again her laughter interrupted me; this time she made no attempt to
+hide it. The sparrows chirped angrily, and flew off to continue their
+conversation somewhere where there would be less noise.
+
+“You are the biggest baby, Paul,” she said, so soon as she could speak,
+“I ever heard of.” She seized me by the shoulders, and turned me round.
+“If you weren't looking so ill and miserable, I would shake you, Paul,
+till there wasn't a bit of breath left in your body.”
+
+“How much money do you owe?” she asked--“to the people in the company
+and anybody else, I mean--roughly?”
+
+“About a hundred and fifty pounds,” I answered.
+
+“Then if you rest day or night, Paul, till you have paid that hundred
+and fifty--every penny of it--I'll think you the meanest cad in London!”
+
+Her grey eyes were flashing quite alarmingly. I felt almost afraid of
+her. She could be so vehement at times.
+
+“But how can I?” I asked.
+
+“Go straight home,” she commanded, “and write something funny: an
+article, story--anything you like; only mind that it is funny. Post it
+to me to-morrow, at the latest. Dan is in London, editing a new weekly.
+I'll have it copied out and sent to him. I shan't say who it is from. I
+shall merely ask him to read it and reply, at once. If you've a grain
+of grit left in you, you'll write something that he will be glad to have
+and to pay for. Pawn that ring on your finger and get yourself a
+good breakfast”--it was my mother's wedding-ring, the only piece of
+dispensable property I had not parted with--“_she_ won't mind helping
+you. But nobody else is going to--except yourself.”
+
+She looked at her watch. “I must be off.” She turned again. “There
+is something I was forgetting. B--“--she mentioned the name of the
+dramatist whose play Vane had stolen--“has been looking for you for
+the last three months. If you hadn't been an idiot you might have saved
+yourself a good deal of trouble. He is quite certain it was Vane stole
+the manuscript. He asked the nurse to bring it to him an hour after
+Vane had left the house, and it couldn't be found. Besides, the man's
+character is well known. And so is yours. I won't tell it you,” she
+laughed; “anyhow, it isn't that of a knave.”
+
+She made a step towards me, then changed her mind. “No,” she said, “I
+shan't shake hands with you till you have paid the last penny that you
+owe. Then I shall know that you are a man.”
+
+She did not look back. I watched her, till the sunlight, streaming in my
+eyes, raised a golden mist between us.
+
+Then I went to my work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING.
+
+It took me three years to win that handshake. For the first six months I
+remained in Deptford. There was excellent material to be found there
+for humorous articles, essays, stories; likewise for stories tragic
+and pathetic. But I owed a hundred and fifty pounds--a little over
+two hundred it reached to, I found, when I came to add up the actual
+figures. So I paid strict attention to business, left the tears to be
+garnered by others--better fitted maybe for the task; kept to my own
+patch, reaped and took to market only the laughter.
+
+At the beginning I sent each manuscript to Norah; she had it copied out,
+debited me with the cost received payment, and sent me the balance. At
+first my earnings were small; but Norah was an excellent agent; rapidly
+they increased. Dan grew quite cross with her, wrote in pained surprise
+at her greed. The “matter” was fair, but in no way remarkable. Any
+friend of hers, of course, he was anxious to assist; but business was
+business. In justice to his proprietors, he could not and would not pay
+more than the market value. Miss Deleglise, replying curtly in the third
+person, found herself in perfect accord with Mr. Brian as to business
+being business. If Mr. Brian could not afford to pay her price for
+material so excellent, other editors with whom Miss Deleglise was
+equally well acquainted could and would. Answer by return would greatly
+oblige, pending which the manuscript then in her hands she retained. Mr.
+Brian, understanding he had found his match, grumbled but paid. Whether
+he had any suspicion who “Jack Homer” might be, he never confessed; but
+he would have played the game, pulled his end of the rope, in either
+case. Nor was he allowed to decide the question for himself. Competition
+was introduced into the argument. Of purpose a certain proportion of
+my work my agent sent elsewhere. “Jack Homer” grew to be a commodity
+in demand. For, seated at my rickety table, I laughed as I wrote, the
+fourth wall of the dismal room fading before my eyes revealing vistas
+beyond.
+
+Still, it was slow work. Humour is not an industrious maid; declines to
+be bustled, will work only when she feels inclined--does not often feel
+inclined; gives herself a good many unnecessary airs; if worried, packs
+up and goes off, Heaven knows where! comes back when she thinks she
+will: a somewhat unreliable young person. To my literary labours I found
+it necessary to add journalism. I lacked Dan's magnificent assurance.
+Fate never befriends the nervous. Had I burst into the editorial
+sanctum, the editor most surely would have been out; if in, would have
+been a man of short ways, would have seen to it that I went out quickly.
+But the idea was not to be thought of; Robert Macaire himself in my one
+coat would have been diffident, apologetic. I joined the ranks of the
+penny-a-liners--to be literally exact, three halfpence a liners. In
+company with half a dozen other shabby outsiders--some of them young men
+like myself seeking to climb; others, older men who had sunk--I attended
+inquests, police courts; flew after fire engines; rejoiced in street
+accidents; yearned for murders. Somewhat vulture-like we lived
+precariously upon the misfortunes of others. We made occasional half
+crowns by providing the public with scandal, occasional crowns by
+keeping our information to ourselves.
+
+“I think, gentlemen,” would explain our spokesman in a hoarse whisper,
+on returning to the table, “I think the corpse's brother-in-law is
+anxious that the affair, if possible, should be kept out of the papers.”
+
+The closeness and attention with which we would follow that particular
+case, the fulness and completeness of our notes, would be quite
+remarkable. Our spokesman would rise, drift carelessly away, to return
+five minutes later, wiping his mouth.
+
+“Not a very interesting case, gentlemen, I don't think. Shall we say
+five shillings apiece?” Sometimes a sense of the dignity of our calling
+would induce us to stand out for ten.
+
+And here also my sense of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an
+undue advantage over my competitors. Twelve good men and true had been
+asked to say how a Lascar sailor had met his death. It was perfectly
+clear how he had met his death. A plumber, working on the roof of a
+small two-storeyed house, had slipped and fallen on him. The plumber had
+escaped with a few bruises; the unfortunate sailor had been picked
+up dead. Some blame attached to the plumber. His mate, an excellent
+witness, told us the whole story.
+
+“I was fixing a gas-pipe on the first floor,” said the man. “The
+prisoner was on the roof.”
+
+“We won't call him 'the prisoner,'” interrupted the coroner, “at least,
+not yet. Refer to him, if you please, as the 'last witness.'”
+
+“The last witness,” corrected himself the man. “He shouts down the
+chimney to know if I was ready for him.”
+
+“'Ready and waiting,' I says.
+
+“'Right,' he says; 'I'm coming in through the window.'
+
+“'Wait a bit,' I says; 'I'll go down and move the ladder for you.
+
+“'It's all right,' he says; 'I can reach it.'
+
+“'No, you can't,' I says. 'It's the other side of the chimney.'
+
+“'I can get round,' he says.
+
+“Well, before I knew what had happened, I hears him go, smack! I rushes
+to the window and looks out: I see him on the pavement, sitting up like.
+
+“'Hullo, Jim,' I says. 'Have you hurt yourself?'
+
+“'I think I'm all right,' he says, 'as far as I can tell. But I wish
+you'd come down. This bloke I've fallen on looks a bit sick.'”
+
+The others headed their flimsy “Sad Accident,” a title truthful but not
+alluring. I altered mine to “Plumber in a Hurry--Fatal Result.” Saying
+as little as possible about the unfortunate sailor, I called the
+attention of plumbers generally to the coroner's very just remarks upon
+the folly of undue haste; pointed out to them, as a body, the trouble
+that would arise if somehow they could not cure themselves of this
+tendency to rush through their work without a moment's loss of time.
+
+It established for me a useful reputation. The sub-editor of one evening
+paper condescended so far as to come out in his shirt-sleeves and shake
+hands with me.
+
+“That's the sort of thing we want,” he told me; “a light touch, a bit of
+humour.”
+
+I snatched fun from fires (I sincerely trust the insurance premiums were
+not overdue); culled quaintness from street rows; extracted merriment
+from catastrophes the most painful, and prospered.
+
+Though often within a stone's throw of the street, I unremittingly
+avoided the old house at Poplar. I was suffering inconvenience at this
+period by reason of finding myself two distinct individuals, contending
+with each other. My object was to encourage the new Paul--the sensible,
+practical, pushful Paul, whose career began to look promising; to
+drive away from interfering with me his strangely unlike twin--the old
+childish Paul of the sad, far-seeing eyes. Sometimes out of the cracked
+looking-glass his wistful, yearning face would plead to me; but I would
+sternly shake my head. I knew well his cunning. Had I let him have his
+way, he would have led me through the maze of streets he knew so well,
+past the broken railings (outside which he would have left my body
+standing), along the weedy pathway, through the cracked and dented door,
+up the creaking staircase to the dismal little chamber where we once--he
+and I together--had sat dreaming foolish dreams.
+
+“Come,” he would whisper; “it is so near. Let us push aside the chest
+of drawers very quietly, softly raise the broken sash, prop it open with
+the Latin dictionary, lean our elbows on the sill, listen to the voices
+of the weary city, voices calling to us from the darkness.”
+
+But I was too wary to be caught. “Later on,” I would reply to him; “when
+I have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your wheedling. Then
+I will go with you, if you are still in existence, my sentimental little
+friend. We will dream again the old impractical, foolish dreams--and
+laugh at them.”
+
+So he would fade away, and in his place would nod to me approvingly a
+businesslike-looking, wide-awake young fellow.
+
+But to one sentimental temptation I succumbed. My position was by
+now assured; there was no longer any reason for my hiding myself. I
+determined to move westward. I had not intended to soar so high, but
+passing through Guildford Street one day, the creeper-covered corner
+house that my father had once thought of taking recalled itself to me.
+A card was in the fanlight. I knocked and made enquiries. A
+bed-sitting-room upon the third floor was vacant. I remembered it well
+the moment the loquacious landlady opened its door.
+
+“This shall be your room, Paul,” said my father. So clearly his voice
+sounded behind me that I turned, forgetting for the moment it was but
+a memory. “You will be quiet here, and we can shut out the bed and
+washstand with a screen.”
+
+So my father had his way. It was a pleasant, sunny little room,
+overlooking the gardens of the hospital. I followed my father's
+suggestion, shut out the bed and washstand with a screen. And sometimes
+of an evening it would amuse me to hear my father turn the handle of the
+door.
+
+“How are you getting on--all right?”
+
+“Famously.”
+
+Often there came back to me the words he had once used. “You must be the
+practical man, Paul, and get on. Myself, I have always been somewhat of
+a dreamer. I meant to do such great things in the world, and somehow I
+suppose I aimed too high. I wasn't--practical.”
+
+“But ought not one to aim high?” I had asked.
+
+My father had fidgeted in his chair. “It is very difficult to say. It
+is all so--so very ununderstandable. You aim high and you don't hit
+anything--at least, it seems as if you didn't. Perhaps, after all, it
+is better to aim at something low, and--and hit it. Yet it seems a
+pity--one's ideals, all the best part of one--I don't know why it is.
+Perhaps we do not understand.”
+
+For some months I had been writing over my own name. One day a letter
+was forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed. It
+was a short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to
+the wedding of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had
+almost forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not
+unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I
+judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished
+me to be witness of the fact that my desertion had not left her
+disconsolate. So much gratification I felt I owed her, and accordingly,
+purchasing a present as expensive as my means would permit, I made
+my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock coat and light grey
+trousers, to Kennington Church.
+
+The ceremony was already in progress. Creeping on tiptoe up the aisle,
+I was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was laid upon my
+sleeve.
+
+“We're all here,” whispered the O'Kelly; “just room for ye.”
+
+Squeezing his hand as I passed, I sat down between the Signora and Mrs.
+Peedles. Both ladies were weeping; the Signora silently, one tear at a
+time clinging fondly to her pretty face as though loath to fall from
+it; Mrs. Peedles copiously, with explosive gurgles, as of water from a
+bottle.
+
+“It is such a beautiful service,” murmured the Signora, pressing my hand
+as I settled myself down. “I should so--so love to be married.”
+
+“Me darling,” whispered the O'Kelly, seizing her other hand and kissing
+it covertly behind his open Prayer Book, “perhaps ye will be--one day.”
+
+The Signora through her tears smiled at him, but with a sigh shook her
+head.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, clad, so far as the dim November light enabled me to
+judge, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth--nothing regal; the sort of
+thing one might assume to have been Her Majesty's second best, say third
+best, frock--explained that weddings always reminded her how fleeting a
+thing was love.
+
+“The poor dears!” she sobbed. “But there, there's no telling. Perhaps
+they'll be happy. I'm sure I hope they may be. He looks harmless.”
+
+Jarman, stretching out a hand to me from the other side of Mrs. Peedles,
+urged me to cheer up. “Don't wear your 'eart upon your sleeve,” he
+advised. “Try and smile.”
+
+In the vestry I met old friends. The maternal Sellars, stouter than
+ever, had been accommodated with a chair--at least, I assumed so, she
+being in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence. She
+greeted me with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after
+my health with pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that,
+until the explanation broke upon me, somewhat puzzled me.
+
+Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much
+impressed, I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good
+fortune. He expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me,
+shook me heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.
+
+“Won't be my fault if we're not,” he added. “Come and see us whenever
+you like.” He repeated this three times. I gathered the general
+sentiment to be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of
+generosity.
+
+Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received
+my salute to a subdued murmur of applause. She looked to my eyes
+handsomer than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing
+less exacting. She also trusted she might always regard me as a friend.
+I replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour; whereupon she
+kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother, shed some tears,
+explaining the reason to be that everybody was so good to her.
+
+Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of enormous
+white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register, whispering
+to me sympathetically: “Better luck next time, old cock.”
+
+The fat young lady--or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter,
+I cannot say for certain--who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I
+assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her
+opinion, I was worth all the others put together.
+
+“And so I told her,” added the fat young lady--or the lean one grown
+stouter, “a dozen times if I told her once. But there!”
+
+I murmured my obligations.
+
+Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of
+his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.
+
+“You take my tip,” advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, “and keep
+out of it.”
+
+“You speak from experience?” I suggested.
+
+“I'm as fond of a joke,” said the watery-eyed Joseph, “as any man. But
+when it comes to buckets of water--”
+
+A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered
+for eleven o'clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph's
+revelations.
+
+“See you again, perhaps,” he murmured, and pushed past me.
+
+What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold
+col-la-shon had been arranged for at a restaurant near by. I walked
+there in company with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I particularly
+desired their companionship, but because Uncle Gutton, seizing me by the
+arm, left me no alternative.
+
+“Now then, young man,” commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously
+so soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the
+others, “if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away. I shan't mind,
+and maybe it'll do you good.”
+
+I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.
+
+“Oh, all right,” returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed. “If
+you're willing to forgive and forget, so am I. I never liked you, as
+I daresay you saw, and so I told Rosie. 'He may be cleverer than he
+looks,' I says, 'or he may be a bigger fool than I think him, though
+that's hardly likely. You take my advice and get a full-grown article,
+then you'll know what you're doing.'”
+
+I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.
+
+“I'm glad you think so,” he returned, somewhat puzzled; “though if you
+wanted to call me names I shouldn't have blamed you. Anyhow, you've took
+it like a sensible chap. You've got over it, as I always told her you
+would. Young men out of story-books don't die of broken hearts, even
+if for a month or two they do feel like standing on their head in the
+water-butt.”
+
+“Why, I was in love myself three times,” explained Uncle Gutton, “before
+I married the old woman.”
+
+Aunt Gutton sighed and said she was afraid gentlemen didn't feel these
+things as much as they ought to.
+
+“They've got their living to earn,” retorted Uncle Gutton.
+
+I agreed with Uncle Gutton that life could not be wasted in vain regret.
+
+“As for the rest,” admitted Uncle Gutton, handsomely, “I was wrong.
+You've turned out better than I expected you would.”
+
+I thanked him for his improved opinion, and as we entered the restaurant
+we shook hands.
+
+Minikin we found there waiting for us. He explained that having been
+able to obtain only limited leave of absence from business, he had
+concluded the time would be better employed at the restaurant than at
+the church. Others were there also with whom I was unacquainted, young
+sparks, admirers, I presume, of the Lady 'Ortensia in her professional
+capacity, fellow-clerks of Mr. Clapper, who was something in the City.
+Altogether we must have numbered a score.
+
+Breakfast was laid in a large room on the first floor. The wedding
+presents stood displayed upon a side-table. My own, with my card
+attached, had not been seen by Mrs. Clapper till that moment. She and
+her mother lingered, examining it.
+
+“Real silver!” I heard the maternal Sellars whisper, “Must have paid a
+ten pound note for it.”
+
+“I hope you'll find it useful,” I said.
+
+The maternal Sellars, drifting away, joined the others gathered together
+at the opposite end of the room.
+
+“I suppose you think I set my cap at you merely because you were a
+gentleman,” said the Lady 'Ortensia.
+
+“Don't let's talk about it,” I answered. “We were both foolish.”
+
+“I don't want you to think it was merely that,” continued the Lady
+'Ortensia. “I did like you. And I wouldn't have disgraced you--at least,
+I'd have tried not to. We women are quick to learn. You never gave me
+time.”
+
+“Believe me, things are much better as they are,” I said.
+
+“I suppose so,” she answered. “I was a fool.” She glanced round; we
+still had the corner to ourselves. “I told a rare pack of lies,” she
+said; “I didn't seem able to help it; I was feeling sore all over. But
+I have always been ashamed of myself. I'll tell them the truth, if you
+like.”
+
+I thought I saw a way of making her mind easy. “My dear girl,” I said,
+“you have taken the blame upon yourself, and let me go scot-free. It was
+generous of you.”
+
+“You mean that?” she asked.
+
+“The truth,” I answered, “would shift all the shame on to me. It was I
+who broke my word, acted shabbily from beginning to end.”
+
+“I hadn't looked at it in that light,” she replied. “Very well, I'll
+hold my tongue.”
+
+My place at breakfast was to the left of the maternal Sellars, the
+Signora next to me, and the O'Kelly opposite. Uncle Gutton faced the
+bride and bridegroom. The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by
+flowers, so that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my ears,
+embellished with the mysterious significance of the unseen oracle.
+
+For the first quarter of an hour or so the meal proceeded almost in
+silence. The maternal Sellars when not engaged in whispered argument
+with the perspiring waiter, was furtively occupied in working sums upon
+the table-cloth by aid of a blunt pencil. The Signora, strangely unlike
+her usual self, was not in talkative mood.
+
+“It was so kind of them to invite me,” said the Signora, speaking low.
+“But I feel I ought not to have come.
+
+“Why not?” I asked
+
+“I'm not fit to be here,” murmured the Signora in a broken voice. “What
+right have I at wedding breakfasts? Of course, for dear Willie it is
+different. He has been married.”
+
+The O'Kelly, who never when the Signora was present seemed to care much
+for conversation in which she was unable to participate, took advantage
+of his neighbour's being somewhat deaf to lapse into abstraction. Jarman
+essayed a few witticisms of a general character, of which nobody took
+any notice. The professional admirers of the Lady 'Ortensia, seated
+together at a corner of the table, appeared to be enjoying a small
+joke among themselves. Occasionally, one or another of them would laugh
+nervously. But for the most part the only sounds to be heard were the
+clatter of the knives and forks, the energetic shuffling of the waiter,
+and a curious hissing noise as of escaping gas, caused by Uncle Gutton
+drinking champagne.
+
+With the cutting, or, rather, the smashing into a hundred fragments,
+of the wedding cake--a work that taxed the united strength of bride
+and bridegroom to the utmost--the atmosphere lost something of its
+sombreness. The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of being
+nearly done, commenced to simmer. The maternal Sellars, putting away
+with her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced the
+table with a smile.
+
+“But it is a sad thing,” sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment,
+with a shake of her huge head, “when your daughter marries, and goes
+away and leaves you.”
+
+“Damned sight sadder,” commented Uncle Gutton, “when she don't go off,
+but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her.”
+
+I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive
+benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre
+that lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly
+girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be
+Miss Gutton.
+
+“It doesn't seem to me,” said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the
+table, “that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to
+be.”
+
+“Got to know a bit about it, I expect,” sounded the small, shrill voice
+of the unseen Joseph.
+
+“To my thinking,” exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, “one of the evils
+crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly
+needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings.” He spoke rapidly
+and with warmth. “Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man's
+luxury.”
+
+Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the
+occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.
+
+“The plain fact of the matter is,” said Jarman, “girls have gone up in
+value. Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with
+a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays--well,
+it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a
+really first-class article.”
+
+Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional
+brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have
+envied him: the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a
+laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.
+
+“Give and take,” observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper's
+roar had died away; “that's what you've got to do when you're married.”
+
+“Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't
+want--that sums it up,” came the bitter voice of the unseen.
+
+“Oh, do be quiet, Joe,” advised the stout young lady, from which I
+concluded she had once been the lean young lady. “You talk enough for a
+man.”
+
+“Can't I open my mouth?” demanded the indignant oracle.
+
+“You look less foolish when you keep it shut,” returned the stout young
+lady.
+
+“We'll show them how to get on,” observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her
+bridegroom, with a smile.
+
+Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.
+
+“When me and the old girl there fixed things up,” said Uncle Gutton, “we
+didn't talk no nonsense, and we didn't start with no misunderstandings.
+'I'm not a duke,' I says--”
+
+“Had she been mistaking you for one?” enquired Minikin.
+
+Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh. I
+feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton's little eyes should leave his
+head.
+
+“Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool,” replied Uncle Gutton, glaring
+at the unabashed Minikin, “she did not. 'I'm not a duke,' I says, and
+_she_ had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic like. 'I'm not
+offering you a life of luxury and ease. I'm offering you myself, just
+what you see, and nothing more.'
+
+“She took it?” asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his
+bread.
+
+“She accepted me, sir,” returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would
+have awed any one but Minikin. “Can you give me any good reason for her
+not doing so?”
+
+“No need to get mad with me,” explained Minikin. “I'm not blaming the
+poor woman. We all have our moments of despair.”
+
+The unfortunate Clapper again exploded. Uncle Gutton rose to his feet.
+The ready Jarman saved the situation.
+
+“'Ear! 'ear!” cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two
+knives. “Silence for Uncle Gutton! 'E's going to propose a toast. 'Ear,
+'ear!”
+
+Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into
+applause.
+
+“What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say--” began Uncle Gutton.
+
+“Good old Uncle Gutton!” persisted the determined Jarman. “Bride and
+bridegroom--long life to 'em!”
+
+Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against Minikin
+to evaporate.
+
+“Well,” said Uncle Gutton, “if you think I'm the one to do it--”
+
+The response was unmistakable. In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses
+and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her
+chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task.
+Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to
+assign to him the duty.
+
+Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he
+suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce
+censure of the Adulteration Act. Reminded of the time by the maternal
+Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with
+such questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly
+interested, and directed himself to the main argument. To his, Uncle
+Gutton's, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity,
+Mr. Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness. Uncle Gutton it
+was who had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair
+Rosina would come eventually to desire--a plain, simple, hard-working,
+level-headed sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him: such
+an one, in short, as Mr. Clapper himself--(at this Mr. Clapper expressed
+approval by a lengthy laugh)--a gentleman who, so far as Uncle Gutton's
+knowledge went, had but one fault: a silly habit of laughing when there
+was nothing whatever to laugh at; of which, it was to be hoped, the
+cares and responsibilities of married life would cure him. (To the
+rest of the discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a gravity painfully
+maintained.) There had been moments, Uncle Gutton was compelled to
+admit, when the fair Rosina had shown inclination to make a fool of
+herself--to desire in place of honest worth mere painted baubles. He
+used the term in no offensive sense. Speaking for himself, what a man
+wanted beyond his weekly newspaper, he, Uncle Gutton, was unable to
+understand; but if there were fools in the world who wanted to read
+rubbish written by other fools, then the other fools would of course
+write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them. He mentioned no names, but
+what he would say was: a plain man for a sensible girl, and no painted
+baubles.
+
+The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect
+that if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it
+was about full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring his
+speech to a premature conclusion. The bride and bridegroom were hustled
+into their clothes. There followed much female embracing and male
+hand-shaking. The rice having been forgotten, the waiter was almost
+thrown downstairs, with directions to at once procure some. There
+appearing danger of his not returning in time, the resourceful Jarman
+suggested cold semolina pudding as a substitute. But the idea was
+discouraged by the bride. A slipper of remarkable antiquity, discovered
+on the floor and regarded as a gift from Providence, was flung from the
+window by brother George, with admirable aim, and alighted on the roof
+of the cab. The waiter, on his return, not being able to find it, seemed
+surprised.
+
+
+I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora,
+who were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had
+not seen the O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years
+before, so that we had much to tell each other. For the third time now
+had the O'Kelly proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of the
+lady to whom he still referred as his “dear good wife.”
+
+“But, under the circumstances, would it not be better,” I suggested,
+“for her to obtain a divorce? Then you and the Signora could marry and
+there would be an end to the whole trouble.”
+
+“From a strictly worldly point of view,” replied the O'Kelly, “it
+certainly would be; but Mrs. O'Kelly”--his voice took to itself
+unconsciously a tone of reverence--“is not an ordinary woman. You can
+have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness. I had a letter from
+her only two months ago, a few weeks after the--the last occurrence. Not
+one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed against her even unto
+seven times seven she would still consider it her duty to forgive me;
+that the 'home' would always be there for me to return to and repent.”
+
+A tear stood in the O'Kelly's eye. “A beautiful nature,” he commented.
+“There are not many women like her.”
+
+“Not one in a million!” added the Signora, with enthusiasm.
+
+“Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy,” I said.
+
+The O'Kelly spoke quite angrily. “Don't ye say a word against her! I
+won't listen to it. Ye don't understand her. She never will despair of
+reforming me.”
+
+“You see, Mr. Kelver,” explained the Signora, “the whole difficulty
+arises from my unfortunate profession. It is impossible for me to keep
+out of dear Willie's way. If I could earn my living by any other means,
+I would; but I can't. And when he sees my name upon the posters, it's
+all over with him.”
+
+“I do wish, Willie, dear,” added the Signora in tones of gentle reproof,
+“that you were not quite so weak.”
+
+“Me dear,” replied the O'Kelly, “ye don't know how attractive ye are or
+ye wouldn't blame me.”
+
+I laughed. “Why don't you be firm,” I suggested to the Signora, “send
+him packing about his business?”
+
+“I ought to,” admitted the Signora. “I always mean to, until I see him.
+Then I don't seem able to say anything--not anything I ought to.”
+
+“Ye do say it,” contradicted the O'Kelly. “Ye're an angel, only I won't
+listen to ye.”
+
+“I don't say it as if I meant it,” persisted the Signora. “It's evident
+I don't.”
+
+“I still think it a pity,” I said, “someone does not explain to Mrs.
+O'Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness.”
+
+“It is difficult to decide,” argued the Signora. “If ever you should
+want to leave me--”
+
+“Me darling!” exclaimed the O'Kelly.
+
+“But you may,” insisted the Signora. “Something may happen to help you,
+to show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you
+will go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she
+is.”
+
+“She's a saint,” agreed Willie.
+
+At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards
+Fleet Street.
+
+The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied
+chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the
+'Ortensia marriage, I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting
+me suggested the necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything
+of his friends beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he
+pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the
+fire, filled and lighted his pipe.
+
+“I left you alone,” he said. “You had to go through it, your slough of
+despond. It lies across every path--that leads to anywhere. Clear of
+it?”
+
+“I think so,” I replied, smiling.
+
+“You are on the high road,” he continued. “You have only to walk
+steadily. Sure you have left nothing behind you--in the slough?”
+
+“Nothing worth bringing out of it,” I said. “Why do you ask so
+seriously?”
+
+He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.
+
+“Don't leave him behind you,” he said; “the little boy Paul--Paul the
+dreamer.”
+
+I laughed. “Oh, he! He was only in my way.”
+
+“Yes, here,” answered Dan. “This is not his world. He is of no use to
+you here; won't help you to bread and cheese--no, nor kisses either. But
+keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has
+been the real Paul--the living, growing Paul; the other--the active,
+worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his
+fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep.”
+
+“I have been driving him away,” I said. “He is so--so impracticable.”
+
+Dan shook his head gravely. “It is not his world,” he repeated. “We must
+eat, drink--be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is the
+child. Take care of him.”
+
+We sat in silence for a little while--for longer, perhaps, than it
+seemed to us--Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied with
+his own thoughts.
+
+“You have an excellent agent,” said Dan; “retain her services as long as
+you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as
+regards your affairs. Women never have where they--”
+
+He broke off to stir the fire.
+
+“You like her?” I asked. The words sounded feeble. It is only the writer
+who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often selects
+by contrast.
+
+“She is my ideal woman,” returned Dan; “true and strong and tender;
+clear as crystal, pure as dawn. Like her!”
+
+He knocked the ashes from his pipe. “We do not marry our ideals,” he
+went on. “We love with our hearts, not with our souls. The woman I shall
+marry”--he sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face--“she will be
+some sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield's Dora. Only
+I am not Doady, who always seems to me to have been somewhat of a--He
+reminds me of you, Paul, a little. Dickens was right; her helplessness,
+as time went on, would have bored him more and more instead of appealing
+to him.”
+
+“And the women,” I suggested, “do they marry their ideals?”
+
+He laughed. “Ask them.”
+
+“The difference between men and women,” he continued, “is very slight;
+we exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he
+is, Norah's ideal? Can't you imagine him?--But I can tell you the type
+of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart.”
+
+He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his
+eye.
+
+“A nice enough fellow--clever, perhaps, but someone--well, someone who
+will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will
+appeal to the mother side of her--not her ideal man, but the man for
+whom nature intended her.”
+
+“Perhaps with her help,” I said, “he may in time become her ideal.”
+
+“There's a long road before him,” growled Dan.
+
+It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopement
+with Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old
+Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance,
+and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly
+changed. His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a
+fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked
+boastingly: Had I seen the _Post_ for last Monday, the _Court Circular_
+for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown
+Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a
+Grand Duke? What did I think of that! and such like. Was not money
+master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made to acknowledge it!
+
+But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.
+
+“No children,” he had whispered to me across the table; “that's what I
+can't understand. Nearly four years and no children! What'll be the
+good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten
+popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?”
+
+It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was
+the talk of the town for the next day--and the following eight. She had
+heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and
+see her.
+
+“I thought you would rather hear it quietly,” said Norah, “than learn it
+from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did
+wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has
+done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she
+derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her.”
+
+Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought
+it. I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My
+goddess had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself.
+From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world. So
+some youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the Great
+Queen was but a woman.
+
+I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years
+later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a
+theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had
+commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the
+extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon
+the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me
+that Madame G---- would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain I
+went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table
+were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her glass, a
+loose shawl about her shoulders.
+
+“Excuse my shaking hands,” she said. “This damned hole is like a
+furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act.”
+
+She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with
+grease.
+
+“D'you know my husband?” she continued. “Baron G--; Mr. Paul Kelver.”
+
+The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man. “Delighted
+to meet Mr. Kelver,” he said, speaking in excellent English. “Any friend
+of my wife's is always a friend of mine.”
+
+He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach
+much importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether
+he was offended or not.
+
+“I am glad I saw you,” she continued. “Do you remember a girl called
+Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.
+
+“Yes,” I answered, “I remember her.”
+
+“Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago.” She was rubbing paint into
+her cheeks as she spoke. “She asked me if ever I saw you to give you
+this. I have been carrying it about with me ever since.”
+
+She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn
+as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed
+it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's
+office framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my
+outstretched palm.
+
+“Quite a pretty little romance,” laughed the Baron.
+
+“That's all,” added the woman at the glass. “She said you would
+understand.”
+
+From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never
+to see again that look upon a woman's face.
+
+“Thank you,” I said. “Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I
+shall always wear it.”
+
+Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+PAUL FINDS HIS WAY.
+
+Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying
+strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of
+the sad eyes, would seek to lure me from my work. But for my vehement
+determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my
+honesty, my desire--growing day by day, till it became almost a physical
+hunger--to feel again the pressure of Norah's strong white hand in mine,
+he might possibly have succeeded. Heaven only knows what then he might
+have made of me: politician, minor poet, more or less able editor,
+hampered by convictions--something most surely of but little service to
+myself. Now and again, with a week to spare--my humour making holiday,
+nothing to be done but await patiently its return--I would write stories
+for my own pleasure. They made no mark; but success in purposeful work
+is of slower growth. Had I persisted--but there was money to be earned.
+And by the time my debts were paid, I had established a reputation.
+
+“Madness!” argued practical friends. “You would be throwing away a
+certain fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence. The one you
+know you can do, the other--it would be beginning your career all over
+again.”
+
+“You would find it almost impossible now,” explained those who spoke, I
+knew, words of wisdom, of experience. “The world would never listen to
+you. Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic actor
+insist upon playing Hamlet. It might be the best Hamlet ever seen upon
+the stage; the audience would only laugh--or stop away.”
+
+Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, “Goggles” and I, seeking some
+quiet corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other.
+He would lay before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo--an
+excellent conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to
+interest me. Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo. But I
+listened with every sign of encouragement. It was the price I paid
+him for, in turn, listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how
+monumental literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and built
+up.
+
+“Perhaps in a future existence,” laughed Goggles, one evening, rising as
+the clock struck seven, “I shall be a great tragedian, and you a famous
+poet. Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we are both
+sinning our mercies. After all, to live is the most important thing in
+life.”
+
+I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him to
+get into his coat.
+
+“Take my advice”--tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy
+eyes upon me. Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should have
+laughed, his expression was so comical. “Marry some dear little woman”
+ (he was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own weight);
+“one never understands life properly till the babies come to explain it
+to one.”
+
+I returned to my easy-chair before the fire. Wife, children, home!
+After all, was not that the true work of man--of the live man, not the
+dreamer? I saw them round me, giving to my life dignity, responsibility.
+The fair, sweet woman, helper, comrade, comforter, the little faces
+fashioned in our image, their questioning voices teaching us the answers
+to life's riddles. All other hopes, ambitions, dreams, what were they?
+Phantoms of the morning mist fading in the sunlight.
+
+Hodgson came to me one evening. “I want you to write me a comic opera,”
+ he said. He had an open letter in his hand which he was reading. “The
+public seem to be getting tired of these eternal translations from the
+French. I want something English, something new and original.”
+
+“The English is easy enough,” I replied; “but I shouldn't clamour for
+anything new and original if I were you.”
+
+“Why not?” he asked, looking up from his letter.
+
+“You might get it,” I answered. “Then you would be disappointed.”
+
+He laughed. “Well, you know what I mean--something we could refer to as
+'new and original' on the programme. What do you say? It will be a big
+chance for you, and I'm willing to risk it. I'm sure you can do it.
+People are beginning to talk about you.”
+
+I had written a few farces, comediettas, and they had been successful.
+But the chief piece of the evening is a serious responsibility. A young
+man may be excused for hesitating. It can make, but also it can mar him.
+A comic opera above all other forms of art--if I may be forgiven
+for using the sacred word in connection with such a subject--demands
+experience.
+
+I explained my fears. I did not explain that in my desk lay a four-act
+drama throbbing with humanity, with life, with which it had been my
+hope--growing each day fainter--to take the theatrical public by storm,
+to establish myself as a serious playwright.
+
+“It's very simple,” urged Hodgson. “Provide Atherton plenty of comic
+business; you ought to be able to do that all right. Give Gleeson
+something pretty in waltz time, and Duncan a part in which she can
+change her frock every quarter of an hour or so, and the thing is done.”
+
+“I'll tell you what,” continued Hodgson, “I'll take the whole crowd
+down to Richmond on Sunday. We'll have a coach, and leave the theatre at
+half-past ten. It will be an opportunity for you to study them. You'll
+be able to have a talk with them and get to know just what they can do.
+Atherton has ideas in his head; he'll explain them to you. Then, next
+week, we'll draw up a contract and set to work.”
+
+It was too good an opportunity to let slip, though I knew that if
+successful I should find myself pinned down firmer than ever to my role
+of jester. But it is remunerative, the writing of comic opera.
+
+A small crowd had gathered in the Strand to see us start.
+
+“Nothing wrong, is there?” enquired the leading lady, in a tone of some
+anxiety, alighting a quarter of an hour late from her cab. “It isn't a
+fire, is it?”
+
+“Merely assembled to see you,” explained Mr. Hodgson, without raising
+his eyes from his letters.
+
+“Oh, good gracious!” cried the leading lady, “do let us get away
+quickly.”
+
+“Box seat, my dear,” returned Mr. Hodgson.
+
+The leading lady, accepting the proffered assistance of myself and three
+other gentlemen, mounted the ladder with charming hesitation. Some delay
+in getting off was caused by our low comedian, who twice, making
+believe to miss his footing, slid down again into the arms of the
+stolid door-keeper. The crowd, composed for the most part of small boys
+approving the endeavour to amuse them, laughed and applauded. Our low
+comedian thus encouraged, made a third attempt upon his hands and knees,
+and, gaining the roof, sat down upon the tenor, who smiled somewhat
+mechanically.
+
+The first dozen or so 'busses we passed our low comedian greeted by
+rising to his feet and bowing profoundly, afterwards falling back
+upon either the tenor or myself. Except by the tenor and myself his
+performance appeared to be much appreciated. Charing Cross passed, and
+nobody seeming to be interested in our progress, to the relief of the
+tenor and myself, he settled down.
+
+“People sometimes ask me,” said the low comedian, brushing the dust off
+his knees, “why I do this sort of thing off the stage. It amuses me.”
+
+“I was coming up to London the other day from Birmingham,” he continued.
+“At Willesden, when the ticket collector opened the door, I sprang out
+of the carriage and ran off down the platform. Of course, he ran after
+me, shouting to all the others to stop me. I dodged them for about
+a minute. You wouldn't believe the excitement there was. Quite fifty
+people left their seats to see what it was all about. I explained
+to them when they caught me that I had been travelling second with a
+first-class ticket, which was the fact. People think I do it to attract
+attention. I do it for my own pleasure.”
+
+“It must be a troublesome way of amusing oneself,” I suggested.
+
+“Exactly what my wife says,” he replied; “she can never understand the
+desire that comes over us all, I suppose, at times, to play the fool. As
+a rule, when she is with me I don't do it.”
+
+“She's not here today?” I asked, glancing round.
+
+“She suffers so from headaches,” he answered, “she hardly ever goes
+anywhere.”
+
+“I'm sorry.” I spoke not out of mere politeness; I really did feel
+sorry.
+
+During the drive to Richmond this irrepressible desire to amuse himself
+got the better of him more than once or twice. Through Kensington he
+attracted a certain amount of attention by balancing the horn upon his
+nose. At Kew he stopped the coach to request of a young ladies' boarding
+school change for sixpence. At the foot of Richmond Hill he caused a
+crowd to assemble while trying to persuade a deaf old gentleman in a
+Bath-chair to allow his man to race us up the hill for a shilling.
+
+At these antics and such like our party laughed uproariously, with the
+exception of Hodgson, who had his correspondence to attend to, and an
+elegant young lady of some social standing who had lately emerged from
+the Divorce Court with a reputation worth to her in cash a hundred
+pounds a week.
+
+Arriving at the hotel quarter of an hour or so before lunch time,
+we strolled into the garden. Our low comedian, observing an elderly
+gentleman of dignified appearance sipping a glass of Vermouth at a small
+table, stood for a moment rooted to the earth with astonishment, then,
+making a bee-line for the stranger, seized and shook him warmly by the
+hand. We exchanged admiring glances with one another.
+
+“Charlie is in good form to-day,” we told one another, and followed at
+his heels.
+
+The elderly gentleman had risen; he looked puzzled. “And how's Aunt
+Martha?” asked him our low comedian. “Dear old Aunt Martha! Well, I am
+glad! You do look bonny! How is she?”
+
+“I'm afraid--” commenced the elderly gentleman. Our low comedian started
+back. Other visitors had gathered round.
+
+“Don't tell me anything has happened to her! Not dead? Don't tell me
+that!”
+
+He seized the bewildered gentleman by the shoulders and presented to him
+a face distorted by terror.
+
+“I really have not the faintest notion what you are talking about,”
+ returned the gentleman, who seemed annoyed. “I don't know you.”
+
+“Not know me? Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten--? Isn't your name
+Steggles?”
+
+“No, it isn't,” returned the stranger, somewhat shortly.
+
+“My mistake,” replied our low comedian. He tossed off at one gulp what
+remained of the stranger's Vermouth and walked away rapidly.
+
+The elderly gentleman, not seeing the humour of the joke, one of
+our party to soothe him explained to him that it was Atherton, _the_
+Atherton--Charlie Atherton.
+
+“Oh, is it,” growled the elderly gentleman. “Then will you tell him from
+me that when I want his damned tomfoolery I'll come to the theatre and
+pay for it.”
+
+“What a disagreeable man,” we said, as, following our low comedian, we
+made our way into the hotel.
+
+During lunch he continued in excellent spirits; kissed the bald back of
+the waiter's head, pretending to mistake it for a face, called for
+hot mustard and water, made believe to steal the silver, and when the
+finger-bowls arrived, took off his coat and requested the ladies to look
+the other way.
+
+After lunch he became suddenly serious, and slipping his arm through
+mine, led me by unfrequented paths.
+
+“Now, about this new opera,” he said; “we don't want any of the old
+stale business. Give us something new.”
+
+I suggested that to do so might be difficult.
+
+“Not at all,” he answered. “Now, my idea is this. I am a young fellow,
+and I'm in love with a girl.”
+
+I promised to make a note of it.
+
+“Her father, apoplectic old idiot--make him comic: 'Damme, sir! By gad!'
+all that sort of thing.”
+
+By persuading him that I understood what he meant, I rose in his
+estimation.
+
+“He won't have anything to say to me--thinks I'm an ass. I'm a simple
+sort of fellow--on the outside. But I'm not such a fool as I look.”
+
+“You don't think we are getting too much out of the groove?” I enquired.
+
+His opinion was that the more so the better.
+
+“Very well. Then, in the second act I disguise myself. I'll come on as
+an organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a policeman,
+or a young swell about town. Give me plenty of opportunity, that's the
+great thing--opportunity to be really funny, I mean. We don't want any
+of the old stale tricks.”
+
+I promised him my support.
+
+“Put a little pathos in it,” he added, “give me a scene where I can show
+them I've something else in me besides merely humour. We don't want to
+make them howl, but just to feel a little. Let's send them out of the
+theatre saying: 'Well, Charlie's often made me laugh, but I'm damned if
+I knew he could make me cry before!' See what I mean?”
+
+I told him I thought I did.
+
+The leading lady, meeting us on our return, requested, with pretty tone
+of authority, everybody else to go away and leave us. There were cries
+of “Naughty!” The leading lady, laughing girlishly, took me by the hand
+and ran away with me.
+
+“I want to talk to you,” said the leading lady, as soon as we had
+reached a secluded seat overlooking the river, “about my part in the new
+opera. Now, can't you give me something original? Do.”
+
+Her pleading was so pretty, there was nothing for it but to pledge
+compliance.
+
+“I am so tired of being the simple village maiden,” said the leading
+lady; “what I want is a part with some opportunity in it--a coquettish
+part. I can flirt,” assured me the leading lady, archly. “Try me.”
+
+I satisfied her of my perfect faith.
+
+“You might,” said the leading lady, “see your way to making the plot
+depend upon me. It always seems to me that the woman's part is never
+made enough of in comic opera. I am sure a comic opera built round a
+woman would be a really great success. Don't you agree with me, Mr.
+Kelver,” pouted the leading lady, laying her pretty hand on mine. “We
+are much more interesting than the men--now, aren't we?”
+
+Personally, as I told her, I agreed with her.
+
+The tenor, sipping tea with me on the balcony, beckoned me aside.
+
+“About this new opera,” said the tenor; “doesn't it seem to you the
+time has come to make more of the story--that the public might prefer a
+little more human interest and a little less clowning?”
+
+I admitted that a good plot was essential.
+
+“It seems to me,” said the tenor, “that if you could write an opera
+round an interesting love story, you would score a success. Of course,
+let there be plenty of humour, but reduce it to its proper place. As a
+support, it is excellent; when it is made the entire structure, it is
+apt to be tiresome--at least, that is my view.”
+
+I replied with sincerity that there seemed to me much truth in what he
+said.
+
+“Of course, so far as I am personally concerned,” went on the tenor,
+“it is immaterial. I draw the same salary whether I'm on the stage five
+minutes or an hour. But when you have a man of my position in the cast,
+and give him next to nothing to do--well, the public are disappointed.”
+
+“Most naturally,” I commented.
+
+“The lover,” whispered the tenor, noticing the careless approach towards
+us of the low comedian, “that's the character they are thinking about
+all the time--men and women both. It's human nature. Make your lover
+interesting--that's the secret.”
+
+Waiting for the horses to be put to, I became aware of the fact that I
+was standing some distance from the others in company with a tall, thin,
+somewhat oldish-looking man. He spoke in low, hurried tones, fearful
+evidently of being overheard and interrupted.
+
+“You'll forgive me, Mr. Kelver,” he said--“Trevor, Marmaduke Trevor. I
+play the Duke of Bayswater in the second act.”
+
+I was unable to recall him for the moment; there were quite a number of
+small parts in the second act. But glancing into his sensitive face, I
+shrank from wounding him.
+
+“A capital performance,” I lied. “It has always amused me.”
+
+He flushed with pleasure. “I made a great success some years ago,” he
+said, “in America with a soda-water syphon, and it occurred to me that
+if you could, Mr. Kelver, in a natural sort of way, drop in a small part
+leading up to a little business with a soda-water syphon, it might help
+the piece.”
+
+I wrote him his soda-water scene, I am glad to remember, and insisted
+upon it, in spite of a good deal of opposition. Some of the critics
+found fault with the incident, as lacking in originality. But Marmaduke
+Trevor was quite right, it did help a little.
+
+Our return journey was an exaggerated repetition of our morning drive.
+Our low comedian produced hideous noises from the horn, and entered into
+contests of running wit with 'bus drivers--a decided mistake from his
+point of view, the score generally remaining with the 'bus driver.
+At Hammersmith, seizing the opportunity of a block in the traffic,
+he assumed the role of Cheap Jack, and, standing up on the back seat,
+offered all our hats for sale at temptingly low prices.
+
+“Got any ideas out of them?” asked Hodgson, when the time came for us to
+say good-night.
+
+“I'm thinking, if you don't mind,” I answered, “of going down into the
+country and writing the piece quietly, away from everybody.”
+
+“Perhaps you are right,” agreed Hodgson. “Too many cooks--Be sure and
+have it ready for the autumn.”
+
+I wrote it with some pleasure to myself amid the Yorkshire Wolds, and
+was able to read it to the whole company assembled before the close of
+the season. My turning of the last page was followed by a dead silence.
+The leading lady was the first to speak. She asked if the clock upon the
+mantelpiece could be relied upon; because, if so, by leaving at once,
+she could just catch her train. Hodgson, consulting his watch, thought,
+if anything, it was a little fast. The leading lady said she hoped it
+was, and went. The only comforting words were spoken by the tenor. He
+recalled to our mind a successful comic opera produced some years before
+at the Philharmonic. He distinctly remembered that up to five minutes
+before the raising of the curtain everybody had regarded it as rubbish.
+He also had a train to catch. Marmaduke Trevor, with a covert shake of
+the hand, urged me not to despair. The low comedian, the last to go,
+told Hodgson he thought he might be able to do something with parts
+of it, if given a free hand. Hodgson and I left alone, looked at each
+other.
+
+“It's no good,” said Hodgson, “from a box-office point of view. Very
+clever.”
+
+“How do you know it is no good from a box-office point of view?” I
+ventured to enquire.
+
+“I never made a mistake in my life,” replied Hodgson.
+
+“You have produced one or two failures,” I reminded him.
+
+“And shall again,” he laughed. “The right thing isn't easy to get.”
+
+“Cheer up,” he added kindly, “this is only your first attempt. We must
+try and knock it into shape at rehearsal.”
+
+Their notion of “knocking it into shape” was knocking it to pieces.
+
+“I'll tell you what we'll do,” would say the low comedian; “we'll cut
+that scene out altogether.” Joyously he would draw his pencil through
+some four or five pages of my manuscript.
+
+“But it is essential to the story,” I would argue.
+
+“Not at all.”
+
+“But it is. It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and
+falls in love with the gipsy.”
+
+“My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that. I meet Roderick at
+the ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?' 'Oh, I have escaped from
+prison.' 'Good business. And how's Miriam?' 'Well and happy--she is
+going to be my wife!' What more do you want?”
+
+“I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson,” would observe the leading lady,
+“and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter, I
+fell in love with John--”
+
+“But John is in love with Arabella.”
+
+“Oh, we've cut out Arabella. I can sing all her songs.”
+
+The tenor would lead me into a corner. “I want you to write in a little
+scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first act. I'll
+talk to her about it. I think it will be rather pretty. I want her--the
+second time I see her--to have come out of her room on to a balcony, and
+to be standing there bathed in moonlight.”
+
+“But the first act takes place in the early morning.”
+
+“I've thought of that. We must alter it to the evening.”
+
+“But the opera opens with a hunting scene. People don't go hunting by
+moonlight.”
+
+“It will be a novelty. That's what's wanted for comic opera. The
+ordinary hunting scene! My dear boy, it has been done to death.”
+
+I stood this sort of thing for a week. “They are people of experience,”
+ I argued to myself; “they must know more about it than I do.” By the
+end of the week I had arrived at the conclusion that anyhow they didn't.
+Added to which I lost my temper. It is a thing I should advise any lady
+or gentleman thinking of entering the ranks or dramatic authorship to
+lose as soon as possible. I took both manuscripts with me, and, entering
+Mr. Hodgson's private room, closed the door behind me. One parcel
+was the opera as I had originally written it, a neat, intelligible
+manuscript, whatever its other merits. The second, scored, interlined,
+altered, cut, interleaved, rewritten, reversed, turned inside out and
+topsy-turvy--one long, hopeless confusion from beginning to end--was the
+opera, as, everybody helping, we had “knocked it into shape.”
+
+“That's your opera,” I said, pushing across to him the bulkier bundle.
+“If you can understand it, if you can make head or tail of it, if you
+care to produce it, it is yours, and you are welcome to it. This is
+mine!” I laid it on the table beside the other. “It may be good, it may
+be bad. If it is played at all it is played as it is written. Regard the
+contract as cancelled, and make up your mind.”
+
+He argued with force, and he argued with eloquence. He appealed to my
+self-interest, he appealed to my better nature. It occupied him forty
+minutes by the clock. Then he called me an obstinate young fool, flung
+the opera as “knocked into shape” into the waste-paper basket--which
+was the only proper place for it, and, striding into the middle of the
+company, gave curt directions that the damned opera was to be played as
+it was written, and be damned to it!
+
+The company shrugged its shoulders, and for the next month kept them
+shrugged. For awhile Hodgson remained away from the rehearsals, then
+returning, developed by degrees a melancholy interest in the somewhat
+gloomy proceedings.
+
+So far I had won, but my difficulty was to maintain the position. The
+low comedian, reciting his lines with meaningless monotony, would pause
+occasionally to ask of me politely, whether this or that passage was
+intended to be serious or funny.
+
+“You think,” the leading lady would enquire, more in sorrow than in
+anger, “that any girl would behave in this way--any real girl, I mean?”
+
+“Perhaps the audience will understand it,” would console himself
+hopefully the tenor. “Myself, I confess I don't.”
+
+With a sinking heart concealed beneath an aggressively disagreeable
+manner, I remained firm in my “pigheaded conceit,” as it was regarded,
+Hodgson generously supporting me against his own judgment.
+
+“It's bound to be a failure,” he told me. “I am spending some twelve to
+fifteen hundred pounds to teach you a lesson. When you have learnt it
+we'll square accounts by your writing me an opera that will pay.”
+
+“And if it does succeed?” I suggested.
+
+“My dear boy,” replied Hodgson, “I never make mistakes.”
+
+From all which a dramatic author of more experience would have gathered
+cheerfulness and hope, knowing that the time to be depressed is when the
+manager and company unanimously and unhesitatingly predict a six months'
+run. But new to the business, I regarded my literary career as already
+at an end. Belief in oneself is merely the match with which one lights
+oneself. The oil is supplied by the belief in one of others; if that
+be not forthcoming, one goes out. Later on I might try to light myself
+again, but for the present I felt myself dark and dismal. My desire was
+to get away from my own smoke and smell. The final dress rehearsal
+over, I took my leave of all concerned. The next morning I would pack
+a knapsack and start upon a walking tour through Holland. The English
+papers would not reach me. No human being should know my address. In a
+month or so I would return, the piece would have disappeared--would be
+forgotten. With courage, I might be able to forget it myself.
+
+“I shall run it for three weeks,” said Hodgson, “then we'll withdraw it
+quietly, 'owing to previous arrangements'; or Duncan can suddenly fall
+ill--she's done it often enough to suit herself; she can do it this
+once to suit me. Don't be upset. There's nothing to be ashamed of in the
+piece; indeed, there is a good deal that will be praised. The idea is
+distinctly original. As a matter of fact, that's the fault with it,”
+ added Hodgson, “it's too original.”
+
+“You said you wanted it original,” I reminded him.
+
+He laughed. “Yes, but original for the stage, I meant--the old dolls in
+new frocks.”
+
+I thanked him for all his kindness, and went home and packed my
+knapsack.
+
+For two months I wandered, avoiding beaten tracks, my only comrades a
+few books, belonging to no age, no country. My worries fell from me, the
+personal affairs of Paul Kelver ceasing to appear the be all and the
+end all of the universe. But for a chance meeting with Wellbourne,
+Deleglise's amateur caretaker of Gower Street fame, I should have
+delayed yet longer my return. It was in one of the dead cities of the
+Zuyder Zee. I was sitting under the lindens on the grass-grown quay,
+awaiting a slow, crawling boat that, four miles off, I watched a moving
+speck across the level pastures. I heard his footsteps in the empty
+market-place behind me, and turned my head. I did not rise, felt even no
+astonishment; anything might come to pass in that still land of dreams.
+He seated himself beside me with a nod, and for awhile we smoked in
+silence.
+
+“All well with you?” I asked.
+
+“I am afraid not,” he answered; “the poor fellow is in great trouble.”
+
+“I'm not Wellbourne himself,” he went on, in answer to my look; “I am
+only his spirit. Have you ever tested that belief the Hindoos hold:
+that a man may leave his body, wander at will for a certain period,
+remembering only to return ere the thread connecting him with flesh and
+blood be stretched to breaking point? It is quite correct. I often lock
+the door of my lodging, leave myself behind, wander a free Spirit.”
+
+He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coins and looked at them.
+“The thread that connects us, I am sorrow to say, is wearing somewhat
+thin,” he sighed; “I shall have to be getting back to him before
+long--concern myself again with his troubles, follies. It is somewhat
+vexing. Life is really beautiful, when one is dead.”
+
+“What was the trouble?” I enquired.
+
+“Haven't you heard?” he replied. “Tom died five weeks ago, quite
+suddenly, of syncope. We had none of us any idea.”
+
+So Norah was alone in the world. I rose to my feet. The slowly moving
+speck had grown into a thin, dark streak; minute by minute it took shape
+and form.
+
+“By the way, I have to congratulate you,” said Wellbourne. “Your opera
+looked like being a big thing when I left London. You didn't sell
+outright, I hope?”
+
+“No,” I answered. “Hodgson never expressed any desire to buy.”
+
+“Lucky for you,” said Wellbourne.
+
+I reached London the next evening. Passing the theatre on my way to
+Queen's Square, it occurred to me to stop my cab for a few minutes and
+look in.
+
+I met the low comedian on his way to his dressing-room. He shook me
+warmly by the hand.
+
+“Well,” he said, “we're pulling them in. I was right, you see, 'Give me
+plenty of opportunity.' That's what I told you, didn't I? Come and see
+the piece. I think you will agree with me that I have done you justice.”
+
+I thanked him.
+
+“Not at all,” he returned; “it's a pleasure to work, when you've got
+something good to work on.”
+
+I paid my respects to the leading lady.
+
+“I am so grateful to you,” said the leading lady. “It is so delightful
+to play a real live woman, for a change.”
+
+The tenor was quite fatherly.
+
+“It is what I have been telling Hodgson for years,” he said, “give them
+a simple human story.”
+
+Crossing the stage, I ran against Marmaduke Trevor.
+
+“You will stay for my scene,” he urged.
+
+“Another night,” I answered. “I have only just returned.”
+
+He sank his voice to a whisper. “I want to talk to you on business, when
+you have the time. I am thinking of taking a theatre myself--not just
+now, but later on. Of course, I don't want it to get about.”
+
+I assured him of my secrecy.
+
+“If it comes off, I want you to write for me. You understand the public.
+We will talk it over.”
+
+He passed onward with stealthy tread.
+
+I found Hodgson in the front of the house.
+
+“Two stalls not sold and six seats in the upper circle,” he informed me;
+“not bad for a Thursday night.”
+
+I expressed my gratification.
+
+“I knew you could do it,” said Hodgson, “I felt sure of it merely from
+seeing that comedietta of yours at the Queen's. I never make a mistake.”
+
+Correction under the circumstances would have been unkind. Promising to
+see him again in the morning, I left him with his customary good conceit
+of himself unimpaired, and went on to the Square. I rang twice, but
+there was no response. I was about to sound a third and final summons,
+when Norah joined me on the step. She had been out shopping and was
+laden with parcels.
+
+“We must wait to shake hands,” she laughed, as she opened the door. “I
+hope you have not been kept long. Poor Annette grows deafer every day.”
+
+“Have you nobody in the house with you but Annette?” I asked.
+
+“No one. You know it was a whim of his. I used to get quite cross with
+him at times. But I should not like to go against his wishes--now.”
+
+“Was there any reason for it?” I asked.
+
+“No,” she answered; “if there had been I could have argued him out of
+it.” She paused at the door of the studio. “I'll just get rid of these,”
+ she said, “and then I will be with you.”
+
+A wood fire was burning on the open hearth, flashing alternate beams of
+light and shadow down the long bare room. The high oak stool stood
+in its usual place beside the engraving desk, upon which lay old
+Deleglise's last unfinished plate, emitting a dull red glow. I paced the
+creaking boards with halting steps, as through some ghostly gallery
+hung with dim portraits of the dead and living. In a little while Norah
+entered and came to me with outstretched hand.
+
+“We will not light the lamp,” she said, “the firelight is so pleasant.”
+
+“But I want to see you,” I replied.
+
+She had seated herself upon the broad stone kerb. With her hand she
+stirred the logs; they shot into a clear white flame. Thus, the light
+upon her face, she raised it gravely towards mine. It spoke to me with
+fuller voice. The clear grey eyes were frank and steadfast as ever, but
+shadow had passed into them, deepening them, illuminating them.
+
+For a space we talked of our two selves, our trivial plans and doings.
+
+“Tom left something to you,” said Norah, rising, “not in his will, that
+was only a few lines. He told me to give it to you, with his love.”
+
+She brought it to me. It was the picture he had always treasured, his
+first success; a child looking on death; “The Riddle” he had named it.
+
+We spoke of him, of his work, which since had come to be appraised at
+truer value, for it was out of fashion while he lived.
+
+“Was he a disappointed man, do you think?” I asked.
+
+“No,” answered Norah. “I am sure not. He was too fond of his work.”
+
+“But he dreamt of becoming a second Millet. He confessed it to me once.
+And he died an engraver.”
+
+“But they were good engravings,” smiled Norah.
+
+“I remember a favourite saying of his,” continued Norah, after a pause;
+“I do not know whether it was original or not. 'The stars guide us. They
+are not our goal.'”
+
+“Ah, yes, we aim at the moon and--hit the currant bush.”
+
+“It is necessary always to allow for deflection,” laughed Norah.
+“Apparently it takes a would-be poet to write a successful comic opera.”
+
+“Ah, you do not understand!” I cried. “It was not mere ambition; cap
+and bells or laurel wreath! that is small matter. I wanted to help. The
+world's cry of pain, I used to hear it as a boy. I hear it yet. I meant
+to help. They that are heavy laden. I hear their cry. They cry from dawn
+to dawn and none heed them: we pass upon the other side. Man and woman,
+child and beast. I hear their dumb cry in the night. The child's sob
+in the silence, the man's fierce curse of wrong. The dog beneath the
+vivisector's knife, the overdriven brute, the creature tortured for an
+hour that a gourmet may enjoy an instant's pleasure; they cried to me.
+The wrong and the sorrow and the pain, the long, low, endless moan God's
+ears are weary of; I hear it day and night. I thought to help.”
+
+I had risen. She took my face between her quiet, cool hands.
+
+“What do we know? We see but a corner of the scheme. This fortress
+of laughter that a few of you have been set apart to guard--this
+rallying-point for all the forces of joy and gladness! how do you know
+it may not be the key to the whole battle! It is far removed from the
+grand charges and you think yourself forgotten. Trust your leader, be
+true to your post.”
+
+I looked into her sweet grey eyes.
+
+“You always help me,” I said.
+
+“Do I?” she answered. “I am so glad.”
+
+She put her firm white hand in mine.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Paul Kelver, by Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K.
+Jerome
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Paul Kelver, by Jerome K. Jerome
+    </title>
+    <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+    .ml {margin-left: 2em;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+ 
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Paul Kelver, by Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Paul Kelver</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1334]<br />
+[Most recently updated: March 31, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Ron Burkey, and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SISTERS ***</div>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      PAUL KELVER
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Jerome K. Jerome
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      (Jerome Klapka), 1859-1927
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="mynote">
+      <p>
+        Transcriber's Note: Items in [brackets] are editorial comments added in
+        proofing. The pound (currency) symbol has been replaced by the word
+        &ldquo;pound&rdquo;.
+      </p>
+      <br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>PAUL KELVER</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PROL"> PROLOGUE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <b>BOOK 1.</b>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <b>BOOK 2</b>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PAUL KELVER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PROL" id="link2H_PROL">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PROLOGUE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SEEKS TO CAST THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THIS STORY UPON
+      ANOTHER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner of a long, straight, brick-built street in the far East End
+      of London&mdash;one of those lifeless streets, made of two drab walls upon
+      which the level lines, formed by the precisely even window-sills and
+      doorsteps, stretch in weary perspective from end to end, suggesting
+      petrified diagrams proving dead problems&mdash;stands a house that ever
+      draws me to it; so that often, when least conscious of my footsteps, I
+      awake to find myself hurrying through noisy, crowded thoroughfares, where
+      flaring naphtha lamps illumine fierce, patient, leaden-coloured faces;
+      through dim-lit, empty streets, where monstrous shadows come and go upon
+      the close-drawn blinds; through narrow, noisome streets, where the gutters
+      swarm with children, and each ever-open doorway vomits riot; past reeking
+      corners, and across waste places, till at last I reach the dreary goal of
+      my memory-driven desire, and, coming to a halt beside the broken railings,
+      find rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house, larger than its fellows, built when the street was still a
+      country lane, edging the marshes, strikes a strange note of individuality
+      amid the surrounding harmony of hideousness. It is encompassed on two
+      sides by what was once a garden, though now but a barren patch of stones
+      and dust where clothes&mdash;it is odd any one should have thought of
+      washing&mdash;hang in perpetuity; while about the door continue the
+      remnants of a porch, which the stucco falling has left exposed in all its
+      naked insincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally I drift hitherward in the day time, when slatternly women
+      gossip round the area gates, and the silence is broken by the hoarse,
+      wailing cry of &ldquo;Coals&mdash;any coals&mdash;three and sixpence a sack&mdash;co-o-o-als!&rdquo;
+       chanted in a tone that absence of response has stamped with chronic
+      melancholy; but then the street knows me not, and my old friend of the
+      corner, ashamed of its shabbiness in the unpitying sunlight, turns its
+      face away, and will not see me as I pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not until the Night, merciful alone of all things to the ugly, draws her
+      veil across its sordid features will it, as some fond old nurse, sought
+      out in after years, open wide its arms to welcome me. Then the teeming
+      life it now shelters, hushed for a time within its walls, the flickering
+      flare from the &ldquo;King of Prussia&rdquo; opposite extinguished, will it talk with
+      me of the past, asking me many questions, reminding me of many things I
+      had forgotten. Then into the silent street come the well-remembered
+      footsteps; in and out the creaking gate pass, not seeing me, the
+      well-remembered faces; and we talk concerning them; as two cronies,
+      turning the torn leaves of some old album where the faded portraits in
+      forgotten fashions, speak together in low tones of those now dead or
+      scattered, with now a smile and now a sigh, and many an &ldquo;Ah me!&rdquo; or &ldquo;Dear,
+      dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This bent, worn man, coming towards us with quick impatient steps, which
+      yet cease every fifty yards or so, while he pauses, leaning heavily upon
+      his high Malacca cane: &ldquo;It is a handsome face, is it not?&rdquo; I ask, as I
+      gaze upon it, shadow framed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, handsome enough,&rdquo; answers the old House; &ldquo;and handsomer still it
+      must have been before you and I knew it, before mean care had furrowed it
+      with fretful lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never could make out,&rdquo; continues the old House, musingly, &ldquo;whom you
+      took after; for they were a handsome pair, your father and your mother,
+      though Lord! what a couple of children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Children!&rdquo; I say in surprise, for my father must have been past five and
+      thirty before the House could have known him, and my mother's face is very
+      close to mine, in the darkness, so that I see the many grey hairs mingling
+      with the bonny brown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Children,&rdquo; repeats the old House, irritably, so it seems to me, not
+      liking, perhaps, its opinions questioned, a failing common to old folk;
+      &ldquo;the most helpless pair of children I ever set eyes upon. Who but a child,
+      I should like to know, would have conceived the notion of repairing his
+      fortune by becoming a solicitor at thirty-eight, or, having conceived such
+      a notion, would have selected the outskirts of Poplar as a likely centre
+      in which to put up his door-plate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was considered to be a rising neighbourhood,&rdquo; I reply, a little
+      resentful. No son cares to hear the family wisdom criticised, even though
+      at the bottom of his heart he may be in agreement with the critic. &ldquo;All
+      sorts and conditions of men, whose affairs were in connection with the sea
+      would, it was thought, come to reside hereabout, so as to be near to the
+      new docks; and had they, it is not unreasonable to suppose they would have
+      quarrelled and disputed with one another, much to the advantage of a cute
+      solicitor, convenient to their hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stuff and nonsense,&rdquo; retorts the old House, shortly; &ldquo;why, the mere smell
+      of the place would have been sufficient to keep a sensible man away. And&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      grim brick face before me twists itself into a goblin smile&mdash;&ldquo;he, of
+      all men in the world, as 'the cute solicitor,' giving advice to shady
+      clients, eager to get out of trouble by the shortest way, can you fancy
+      it! he who for two years starved himself, living on five shillings a week&mdash;that
+      was before you came to London, when he was here alone. Even your mother
+      knew nothing of it till years afterwards&mdash;so that no man should be a
+      penny the poorer for having trusted his good name. Do you think the crew
+      of chandlers and brokers, dock hustlers and freight wreckers would have
+      found him a useful man of business, even had they come to settle here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no answer; nor does the old House wait for any, but talks on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And your mother! would any but a child have taken that soft-tongued
+      wanton to her bosom, and not have seen through acting so transparent?
+      Would any but the veriest child that never ought to have been let out into
+      the world by itself have thought to dree her weird in such folly?
+      Children! poor babies they were, both of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; I say&mdash;for at such times all my stock of common sense is
+      not sufficient to convince me that the old House is but clay. From its
+      walls so full of voices, from its floors so thick with footsteps, surely
+      it has learned to live; as a violin, long played on, comes to learn at
+      last a music of its own. &ldquo;Tell me, I was but a child to whom life speaks
+      in a strange tongue, was there any truth in the story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truth!&rdquo; snaps out the old House; &ldquo;just truth enough to plant a lie upon;
+      and Lord knows not much ground is needed for that weed. I saw what I saw,
+      and I know what I know. Your mother had a good man, and your father a true
+      wife, but it was the old story: a man's way is not a woman's way, and a
+      woman's way is not a man's way, so there lives ever doubt between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they came together in the end,&rdquo; I say, remembering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, in the end,&rdquo; answers the House. &ldquo;That is when you begin to
+      understand, you men and women, when you come to the end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grave face of a not too recently washed angel peeps shyly at me
+      through the railings, then, as I turn my head, darts back and disappears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of her?&rdquo; I ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She? Oh, she is well enough,&rdquo; replies the House. &ldquo;She lives close here.
+      You must have passed the shop. You might have seen her had you looked in.
+      She weighs fourteen stone, about; and has nine children living. She would
+      be pleased to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; I say, with a laugh that is not wholly a laugh; &ldquo;I do not
+      think I will call.&rdquo; But I still hear the pit-pat of her tiny feet, dying
+      down the long street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faces thicken round me. A large looming, rubicund visage smiles kindly
+      on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of instinctive
+      liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn from it, and see
+      a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth and the loveliest
+      eyes I ever have known in a man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was he as bad, do you think, as they said?&rdquo; I ask of my ancient friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn't wonder,&rdquo; the old House answers. &ldquo;I never knew a worse&mdash;nor
+      a better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind whisks it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling
+      nimbly by aid of a stick. Three corkscrew curls each side of her head bob
+      with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the most
+      alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to herself some
+      fascinating secret, &ldquo;I'd like to skin 'em. I'd like to skin 'em all. I'd
+      like to skin 'em all alive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounds a fiendish sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old lady,
+      with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond my ken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as though choosing contrasts, follows a fair, laughing face. I saw
+      it in the life only a few hours ago&mdash;at least, not it, but the poor
+      daub that Evil has painted over it, hating the sweetness underlying. And
+      as I stand gazing at it, wishing it were of the dead who change not, there
+      drifts back from the shadows that other face, the one of the wicked mouth
+      and the tender eyes, so that I stand again helpless between the two I
+      loved so well, he from whom I learned my first steps in manhood, she from
+      whom I caught my first glimpse of the beauty and the mystery of woman. And
+      again the cry rises from my heart, &ldquo;Whose fault was it&mdash;yours or
+      hers?&rdquo; And again I hear his mocking laugh as he answers, &ldquo;Whose fault? God
+      made us.&rdquo; And thinking of her and of the love I bore her, which was as the
+      love of a young pilgrim to a saint, it comes into my blood to hate him.
+      But when I look into his eyes and see the pain that lives there, my pity
+      grows stronger than my misery, and I can only echo his words, &ldquo;God made
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but the
+      centre round which they circle remains always the one: a little lad with
+      golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy, awkward ways
+      and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask: &ldquo;Would he know me,
+      could he see me, do you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he,&rdquo; answers the old House, &ldquo;you are so different to what he
+      would expect. Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is sad to think he would not recognise me,&rdquo; I say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be sadder if he did,&rdquo; grumbles the old House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House is
+      thinking. Soon it speaks as I expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him? There
+      is something that you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the favourite theme of the old House. I never visit it but it
+      suggests to me this idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he has done nothing?&rdquo; I say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has lived,&rdquo; answers the old House. &ldquo;Is not that enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times,&rdquo; I persist. &ldquo;How
+      of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old House waxes impatient of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'The people!'&rdquo; it retorts, &ldquo;what are you all but children in a dim-lit
+      room, waiting until one by one you are called out to sleep. And one mounts
+      upon a stool and tells a tale to the others who have gathered round. Who
+      shall say what will please them, what will not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning home with musing footsteps through the softly breathing streets,
+      I ponder the words of the old House. Is it but as some foolish mother
+      thinking all the world interested in her child, or may there lie wisdom in
+      its counsel? Then to my guidance or misguidance comes the thought of a
+      certain small section of the Public who often of an evening commands of me
+      a story; and who, when I have told her of the dreadful giants and of the
+      gallant youths who slay them, of the wood-cutter's sons who rescue maidens
+      from Ogre-guarded castles; of the Princesses the most beautiful in all the
+      world, of the Princes with magic swords, still unsatisfied, creeps closer
+      yet, saying: &ldquo;Now tell me a real story,&rdquo; adding for my comprehending: &ldquo;You
+      know: about a little girl who lived in a big house with her father and
+      mother, and who was sometimes naughty, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So perhaps among the many there may be some who for a moment will turn
+      aside from tales of haughty Heroes, ruffling it in Court and Camp, to
+      listen to the story of a very ordinary lad who lived with very ordinary
+      folk in a modern London street, and who grew up to be a very ordinary sort
+      of man, loving a little and grieving a little, helping a few and harming a
+      few, struggling and failing and hoping; and if any such there be, let them
+      come round me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But let not those who come to me grow indignant as they listen, saying:
+      &ldquo;This rascal tells us but a humdrum story, where nothing is as it should
+      be;&rdquo; for I warn all beforehand that I tell but of things that I have seen.
+      My villains, I fear, are but poor sinners, not altogether bad; and my good
+      men but sorry saints. My princes do not always slay their dragons; alas,
+      sometimes, the dragon eats the prince. The wicked fairies often prove more
+      powerful than the good. The magic thread leads sometimes wrong, and even
+      the hero is not always brave and true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So let those come round me only who will be content to hear but their own
+      story, told by another, saying as they listen, &ldquo;So dreamt I. Ah, yes, that
+      is true, I remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET THE
+      MAN IN GREY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fate intended me for a singularly fortunate man. Properly, I ought to have
+      been born in June, which being, as is well known, the luckiest month in
+      all the year for such events, should, by thoughtful parents, be more
+      generally selected. How it was I came to be born in May, which is, on the
+      other hand, of all the twelve the most unlucky, as I have proved, I leave
+      to those more conversant with the subject to explain. An early nurse, the
+      first human being of whom I have any distinct recollection, unhesitatingly
+      attributed the unfortunate fact to my natural impatience; which quality
+      she at the same time predicted would lead me into even greater trouble, a
+      prophecy impressed by future events with the stamp of prescience. It was
+      from this same bony lady that I likewise learned the manner of my coming.
+      It seems that I arrived, quite unexpectedly, two hours after news had
+      reached the house of the ruin of my father's mines through inundation;
+      misfortunes, as it was expounded to me, never coming singly in this world
+      to any one. That all things might be of a piece, my poor mother,
+      attempting to reach the bell, fell against and broke the cheval-glass,
+      thus further saddening herself with the conviction&mdash;for no amount of
+      reasoning ever succeeded in purging her Welsh blood of its natural
+      superstition&mdash;that whatever might be the result of future battles
+      with my evil star, the first seven years of tiny existence had been, by
+      her act, doomed to disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I must confess,&rdquo; added the knobbly Mrs. Fursey, with a sigh, &ldquo;it does
+      look as though there must be some truth in the saying, after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then ain't I a lucky little boy?&rdquo; I asked. For hitherto it had been Mrs.
+      Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune. That I
+      could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less happily
+      placed children were deprived of their natural rest until eight or nine
+      o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding piece of luck.
+      Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which, in my more riotous
+      moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first sign of a cold it became
+      my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed gruel and sup off brimstone
+      and treacle&mdash;a compound named with deliberate intent to deceive the
+      innocent, the treacle, so far as taste is concerned, being wickedly
+      subordinated to the brimstone&mdash;was another example of Fortune's
+      favouritism: other little boys were so astoundingly unlucky as to be left
+      alone when they felt ill. If further proof were needed to convince that I
+      had been signalled out by Providence as its especial protege, there
+      remained always the circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey for my
+      nurse. The suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of children
+      was a new departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you! You are lucky enough,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;I was thinking of your poor
+      mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't mamma lucky?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn't it lucky, her having me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't say it was, at that particular time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't she want me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion that
+      the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of perpetual
+      apology for its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I daresay she could have done without you,&rdquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can see the picture plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair before
+      the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands, meanwhile Mrs.
+      Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble. At
+      that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time the problem of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, without moving, I said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did she take me in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, mamma. If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded
+      this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad that
+      she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window presented
+      itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and annoyed, looking
+      as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the fish he had been holding
+      out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna, and the kitchen door shut in
+      his face. Would the stork also have gone away thoughtfully scratching his
+      head with one of those long, compass-like legs of his, and muttering to
+      himself. And here, incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had
+      carried me. In the garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm,
+      and the worm, though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to
+      me nervous and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion?
+      And where would the stork have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs.
+      Fursey's: their cottage was the nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey would
+      not have taken me in; and next to them, at the first house in the village,
+      lived Mr. Chumdley, the cobbler, who was lame, and who sat all day
+      hammering boots with very dirty hands, in a little cave half under the
+      ground, his whole appearance suggesting a poor-spirited ogre. I should
+      have hated being his little boy. Possibly nobody would have taken me in. I
+      grew pensive, thinking of myself as the rejected of all the village. What
+      would the stork have done with me, left on his hands, so to speak. The
+      reflection prompted a fresh question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nurse, where did I come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?&rdquo; Mrs. Fursey paused for
+      quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was reflecting whether
+      such answer might not make me unduly conceited. Eventually she must have
+      decided to run that risk; other opportunities could be relied upon for
+      neutralising the effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, from Heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;not
+      where you comed from.&rdquo; I know I said &ldquo;comed,&rdquo; for I remember that at this
+      period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor mother.
+      &ldquo;Comed&rdquo; and &ldquo;goned,&rdquo; which I had worked out for myself, were particular
+      favourites of mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had been
+      pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my education,
+      my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same subject only
+      confused a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You came from Heaven,&rdquo; repeated Mrs. Fursey, &ldquo;and you'll go to Heaven&mdash;if
+      you're good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So they say.&rdquo; Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what might
+      possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took no
+      responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?&rdquo; Mrs. Fursey's reply to this
+      was decidedly more emphatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my eyes.
+      Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should be going
+      there&mdash;for so I was always assured; now, connected as it appeared to
+      be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a
+      fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my
+      fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's
+      egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Weren't they fond
+      of me up there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom, for
+      she answered more sympathetically than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to get
+      rid of you sometimes.&rdquo; There could be no doubt as to this last. Even at
+      the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was not
+      occasionally half-past five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted
+      either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was glad to
+      get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have done without me.
+      Nobody wanted me. Why was I here?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark room,
+      came into my childish brain the feeling that Something, somewhere, must
+      have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I belonged to and
+      that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part of me as I of It.
+      The feeling came back to me more than once during my childhood, though I
+      could never put it into words. Years later the son of the Portuguese Jew
+      explained to me my thought. But all that I myself could have told was that
+      in that moment I knew for the first time that I lived, that I was I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little boy,
+      sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions concerning
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What maggot has the child got into its head now?&rdquo; was her observation;
+      &ldquo;who hasn't got a husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, she ain't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the good of <i>him</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in
+      London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit
+      there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an
+      ungrateful little brat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of a
+      conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had said my aunt: &ldquo;There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I saw
+      such a thing to mope as a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled all
+      day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her&mdash;a favourite
+      attitude of hers&mdash;gazing through the high French window into the
+      garden beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the white and
+      yellow crocuses decking the grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want a husband,&rdquo; had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously
+      childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I was
+      reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; &ldquo;I hate
+      not having a husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help us and save us,&rdquo; my aunt had retorted; &ldquo;how many more does a girl
+      want? She's got one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the good of him all that way off,&rdquo; had pouted my mother; &ldquo;I want
+      him here where I can get at him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in London,
+      and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish endeavours
+      to square information with reflection had resulted in my assigning to him
+      an entirely spiritual existence. I agreed with my mother that such an one,
+      however to be revered, was no substitute for the flesh and blood father
+      possessed by luckier folk&mdash;the big, strong, masculine thing that
+      would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden, or take a chap to sail
+      in boats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't understand me, nurse,&rdquo; I explained; &ldquo;what I mean is a husband
+      you can get at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,&rdquo;
+       answered Mrs. Fursey. &ldquo;When he's ready for you he'll send for you, and
+      then you'll go to him in London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt that still Mrs. Fursey didn't understand. But I foresaw that
+      further explanation would only shock her, so contented myself with a
+      simple, matter-of-fact question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you get to London; do you have to die first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do think,&rdquo; said Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of resigned despair rather
+      than of surprise, &ldquo;that, without exception, you are the silliest little
+      boy I ever came across. I've no patience with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry, nurse,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations, &ldquo;you
+      shouldn't think. London,&rdquo; continued the good dame, her experience no doubt
+      suggesting that the shortest road to peace would be through my
+      understanding of this matter, &ldquo;is a big town, and you go there in a train.
+      Some time&mdash;soon now&mdash;your father will write to your mother that
+      everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your aunt will leave
+      this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And shan't we come back here ever any more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the
+      pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again.&rdquo; I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It
+      sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or you,
+      ever any more?&rdquo; In this moment of the crumbling from under me of all my
+      footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And I do
+      hope, Master Paul,&rdquo; added Mrs. Fursey, piously, &ldquo;it may be a better one.
+      That you will make up your mind to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have been,
+      fell upon deaf ears. Here was I face to face with yet another problem.
+      This life into which I had fallen: it was understandable! One went away,
+      leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to return to them. One
+      left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a new existence in a
+      strange land. One parted from the friends one had always known, one saw
+      them never again. Life was indeed a strange thing; and, would a body
+      comprehend it, then must a body sit staring into the fire, thinking very
+      hard, unheedful of all idle chatter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, when my mother came to kiss me good-night, I turned my face to
+      the wall and pretended to be asleep, for children as well as grown-ups
+      have their foolish moods; but when I felt the soft curls brush my cheek,
+      my pride gave way, and clasping my arms about her neck, and drawing her
+      face still closer down to mine; I voiced the question that all the evening
+      had been knocking at my heart:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you couldn't send me back now, could you? You see, you've had
+      me so long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send you back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I'd be too big for the stork to carry now, wouldn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother knelt down beside the bed so that her face and mine were on a
+      level, and looking into her eyes, the fear that had been haunting me fell
+      from me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who has been talking foolishly to a foolish little boy?&rdquo; asked my mother,
+      keeping my arms still clasped about her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;and she
+      said you could have done without me.&rdquo; Somehow, I did not mind repeating
+      the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother drew me closer to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what made her think that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;I came at a very awkward time, didn't I; when
+      you had a lot of other troubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother laughed, but the next moment looked grave again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know you thought about such things,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;we must be more
+      together, you and I, Paul, and you shall tell me all you think, because
+      nurse does not quite understand you. It is true what she said about the
+      trouble; it came just at that time. But I could not have done without you.
+      I was very unhappy, and you were sent to comfort me and help me to bear
+      it.&rdquo; I liked this explanation better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it was lucky, your having me?&rdquo; I said. Again my mother laughed, and
+      again there followed that graver look upon her childish face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you remember what I am going to say?&rdquo; She spoke so earnestly that I,
+      wriggling into a sitting posture, became earnest also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll try,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;but I ain't got a very good memory, have I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not very,&rdquo; smiled my mother; &ldquo;but if you think about it a good deal it
+      will not leave you. When you are a good boy, and later on, when you are a
+      good man, then I am the luckiest little mother in all the world. And every
+      time you fail, that means bad luck for me. You will remember that after
+      I'm gone, when you are a big man, won't you, Paul?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, both of us quite serious, I promised; and though I smile now when I
+      remember, seeing before me those two earnest, childish faces, yet I think,
+      however little success it may be I have to boast of, it would perhaps have
+      been still less had I entirely forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day my mother waxes in my memory; Mrs. Fursey, of the many
+      promontories, waning. There were sunny mornings in the neglected garden,
+      where the leaves played round us while we worked and read; twilight
+      evenings in the window seat where, half hidden by the dark red curtains,
+      we would talk in whispers, why I know not, of good men and noble women,
+      ogres, fairies, saints and demons; they were pleasant days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly our curriculum lacked method; maybe it was too varied and
+      extensive for my age, in consequence of which chronology became confused
+      within my brain, and fact and fiction more confounded than has usually
+      been considered permissible, even in history. I saw Aphrodite, ready armed
+      and risen from the sea, move with stately grace to meet King Canute, who,
+      throned upon the sand, bade her come no further lest she should wet his
+      feet. In forest glade I saw King Rufus fall from a poisoned arrow shot by
+      Robin Hood; but thanks to sweet Queen Eleanor, who sucked the poison from
+      his wound, I knew he lived. Oliver Cromwell, having killed King Charles,
+      married his widow, and was in turn stabbed by Hamlet. Ulysses, in the
+      Argo, it was fixed upon my mind, had discovered America. Romulus and Remus
+      had slain the wolf and rescued Little Red Riding Hood. Good King Arthur,
+      for letting the cakes burn, had been murdered by his uncle in the Tower of
+      London. Prometheus, bound to the Rock, had been saved by good St. George.
+      Paris had given the apple to William Tell. What matter! the information
+      was there. It needed rearranging, that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, of an afternoon, we would climb the steep winding pathway
+      through the woods, past awful precipices, spirit-haunted, by grassy swards
+      where fairies danced o' nights, by briar and bracken sheltered Caves where
+      fearsome creatures lurked, till high above the creeping sea we would reach
+      the open plateau where rose old Jacob's ruined tower. &ldquo;Jacob's Folly&rdquo; it
+      was more often called about the country side, and by some &ldquo;The Devil's
+      Tower;&rdquo; for legend had it that there old Jacob and his master, the Devil,
+      had often met in windy weather to wave false wrecking lights to troubled
+      ships. Who &ldquo;old Jacob&rdquo; was, I never, that I can remember, learned, nor how
+      nor why he built the Tower. Certain only it is his memory was unpopular,
+      and the fisher folk would swear that still on stormy nights strange lights
+      would gleam and flash from the ivy-curtained windows of his Folly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in day time no spot was more inviting, the short moss-grass before its
+      shattered door, the lichen on its crumbling stones. From its topmost
+      platform one saw the distant mountains, faint like spectres, and the
+      silent ships that came and vanished; and about one's feet the pleasant
+      farm lands and the grave, sweet river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Smaller and poorer the world has grown since then. Now, behind those hills
+      lie naught but smoky towns and dingy villages; but then they screened a
+      land of wonder where princesses dwelt in castles, where the cities were of
+      gold. Now the ocean is but six days' journey wide, ending at the New York
+      Custom House. Then, had one set one's sail upon it, one would have
+      travelled far and far, beyond the golden moonlight, beyond the gate of
+      clouds; to the magic land of the blood red shore, t'other side o' the sun.
+      I never dreamt in those days a world could be so small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the topmost platform a wooden seat ran round within the parapet, and
+      sitting there hand in hand, sheltered from the wind which ever blew about
+      the tower, my mother would people for me all the earth and air with the
+      forms of myth and legend&mdash;perhaps unwisely, yet I do not know. I took
+      no harm from it, good rather, I think. They were beautiful fancies, most
+      of them; or so my mother turned them, making for love and pity, as do all
+      the tales that live, whether poems or old wives fables. But at that time
+      of course they had no meaning for me other than the literal; so that my
+      mother, looking into my eyes, would often hasten to add: &ldquo;But that, you
+      know, is only an old superstition, and of course there are no such things
+      nowadays.&rdquo; Yet, forgetful sometimes of the time, and overtaken homeward by
+      the shadows, we would hasten swiftly through the darkening path, holding
+      each other tightly by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spring had waxed to summer, summer waned to autumn. Then my aunt and I one
+      morning, waiting at the breakfast table, saw through the open window my
+      mother skipping, dancing, pirouetting up the garden path. She held a
+      letter open in her hand, which as she drew near she waved about her head,
+      singing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then comes Wednesday morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She caught me to her and began dancing with me round the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observed my aunt, who continued steadily to eat bread and butter:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just like 'em all. Goes mad with joy. What for? Because she's going to
+      leave a decent house, to live in a poky hole in the East End of London,
+      and keep one servant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To my aunt the second person ever remained a grammatical superfluity.
+      Invariably she spoke not to but of a person, throwing out her conversation
+      in the form of commentary. This had the advantage of permitting the party
+      intended to ignore it as mere impersonal philosophy. Seeing it was
+      generally uncomplimentary, most people preferred so to regard it; but my
+      mother had never succeeded in schooling herself to indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not a poky hole,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;it's an old-fashioned house, near
+      the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plaistow marshes!&rdquo; ejaculated my aunt, &ldquo;calls it the river!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it is the river,&rdquo; returned my mother; &ldquo;the river is the other side of
+      the marshes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's hope it will always stop there,&rdquo; said my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it's got a garden,&rdquo; continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last
+      remark; &ldquo;which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it isn't
+      the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won't make me
+      miserable because I am too happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drat the woman!&rdquo; said my aunt, &ldquo;why can't she sit down and give us our
+      tea before it's all cold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a disagreeable thing!&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not half milk,&rdquo; said my aunt. My aunt was never in the least disturbed by
+      other people's opinion of her, which was perhaps well for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three days my mother packed and sang; and a dozen times a day unpacked
+      and laughed, looking for things wanted that were always found at the very
+      bottom of the very last box looked into, so that Anna, waiting for a
+      certain undergarment of my aunt's which shall be nameless, suggested a
+      saving of time:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were you, ma'am,&rdquo; said Anna, &ldquo;I'd look into the last box you're
+      going to look into first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was found eventually in the first box-the box, that is, my mother
+      had intended to search first, but which, acting on Anna's suggestion, she
+      had reserved till the last. This caused my mother to be quite short with
+      Anna, who she said had wasted her time. But by Tuesday afternoon all stood
+      ready: we were to start early Wednesday morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, missing my mother in the house, I sought her in the garden
+      and found her, as I had expected, on her favourite seat under the great
+      lime tree; but to my surprise there were tears in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought you were glad we were going,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I am,&rdquo; answered my mother, drying her eyes only to make room for fresh
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why are you crying?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I'm sorry to leave here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grown-up folks with their contradictory ways were a continual puzzle to me
+      in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now, myself
+      included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were up and off next day before the dawn. The sun rose as the wagon
+      reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our farewell
+      look at Old Jacob's Tower. My mother cried a little behind her veil; but
+      my aunt only said, &ldquo;I never did care for earwigs in my tea;&rdquo; and as for
+      myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much sentiment about
+      anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who in
+      his sleep&mdash;and he slept often&mdash;imagined me to be a piece of
+      stuffing out of place. Then, grunting and wriggling, he would endeavour to
+      rub me out, until the continued irritation of my head between the window
+      and his back would cause him to awake, when he would look down upon me
+      reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the carriage generally: &ldquo;It's a
+      funny thing, ain't it, nobody's ever made a boy yet that could keep still
+      for ten seconds.&rdquo; After which he would pat me heartily on the head, to
+      show he was not vexed with me, and fall to sleep again upon me. He was a
+      good-tempered man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had
+      found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat upon;
+      so I was left mainly to my own resources. When I could get my head free of
+      the big man's back, I gazed out of the window, and watched the flying
+      fragments as we shed the world. Now a village would fall from us, now the
+      yellow corn-land would cling to us for awhile, or a wood catch at our
+      rushing feet, and sometimes a strong town would stop us, and hold us,
+      panting for a space. Or, my eyes weary, I would sit and listen to the
+      hoarse singing of the wheels beneath my feet. It was a monotonous chaunt,
+      ever the same two lines:
+    </p>
+<p class="ml">
+     &ldquo;Here we suffer grief and pain,<br />
+     Here we meet to part again,&rdquo;
+ </p>
+    <p>
+      followed by a low, rumbling laugh. Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes
+      pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and ever
+      followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the iron
+      wheels sing to me that same song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my
+      having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring all
+      the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy in the
+      dragon's stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully overeaten
+      himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely undigested, including
+      Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson, against whom, at that
+      period, I entertained a strong prejudice by reason of our divergent views
+      upon the subject of spelling. Even in this hour of our mutual discomfort
+      Johnson would not leave me alone, but persisted in asking me how I spelt
+      Jonah. Nobody was looking, so I kicked him. He sprang up and came after
+      me. I tried to run away, but became wedged between Hop-o'-my-Thumb and
+      Julius Caesar. I suppose our tearing about must have hurt the dragon, for
+      at that moment he gave vent to a most fearful scream, and I awoke to find
+      the fat man rubbing his left shin, while we struggled slowly, with steps
+      growing ever feebler, against a sea of brick that every moment closed in
+      closer round us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that might have
+      been the dragon's home, where, to my alarm, my mother was immediately
+      swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why's he do that?&rdquo; I asked of my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he's a fool,&rdquo; answered my aunt; &ldquo;they all are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put my mother down and came towards us. He was a tall, thin man, with
+      eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively even then I
+      associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how he's grown,&rdquo; said the grey man, raising me in his arms until my
+      mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little person;
+      &ldquo;and solid too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother whispered something. I think from her face, for I knew the
+      signs, it was praise of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he's going to be our new fortune,&rdquo; she added aloud, as the grey man
+      lowered me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said my aunt, who had this while been sitting rigid upon a flat
+      black box, &ldquo;don't drop him down a coal-mine. That's all I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered at the time why the grey man's pale face should flush so
+      crimson, and why my mother should whisper angrily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you be so wicked, Fanny? How dare you say such a thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only said 'don't drop him down a coal-mine,'&rdquo; returned my aunt,
+      apparently much surprised; &ldquo;you don't want to drop him down a coal-mine,
+      do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed through glittering, joyous streets, piled high each side with
+      all the good things of the earth; toys and baubles, jewels and gold,
+      things good to eat and good to drink, things good to wear and good to see;
+      through pleasant ways where fountains splashed and flowers bloomed. The
+      people wore bright clothes, had happy faces. They rode in beautiful
+      carriages, they strolled about, greeting one another with smiles. The
+      children ran and laughed. London, thought I to myself, is the city of the
+      fairies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It passed, and we sank into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets,
+      wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the yellow
+      waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses, rock-bound.
+      Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none stayed to greet
+      another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless. London, then, said I to
+      myself, is the city of the giants. They must live in these towering
+      castles side by side, and these hurrying thousands are their driven
+      slaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this passed also, and we sank lower yet until we reached a third city,
+      where a pale mist filled each sombre street. None of the beautiful things
+      of the world were to be seen here, but only the things coarse and ugly.
+      And wearily to and fro its sunless passages trudged with heavy steps a
+      weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull, listless faces. And London, I
+      knew, was the city of the gnomes who labour sadly all their lives,
+      imprisoned underground; and a terror seized me lest I, too, should remain
+      chained here, deep down below the fairy city that was already but a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We stopped at last in a long, unfinished street. I remember our pushing
+      our way through a group of dirty urchins, all of whom, my aunt remarked in
+      passing, ought to be skinned. It was my aunt's one prescription for all to
+      whom she took objection; but really in the present instance I think it
+      would have been of service; nothing else whatever could have restored them
+      to cleanliness. Then the door closed behind us with an echoing clang, and
+      the small, cold rooms came forward stiffly to greet us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in grey went to the one window and drew back the curtain; it was
+      growing dusk now. My aunt sat on a straight, hard chair and stared fixedly
+      at the three-armed gaselier. My mother stood in the centre of the room
+      with one small ungloved hand upon the table, and I noticed&mdash;for I was
+      very near&mdash;that the poor little one-legged thing was trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course it's not what you've been accustomed to, Maggie,&rdquo; said the man
+      in grey; &ldquo;but it's only for a little while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back
+      being to the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother drew his arms around us both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the best home in all the world,&rdquo; she said; and thus we stayed for
+      awhile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; &ldquo;it's a poky
+      hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she's got a man
+      clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could rest where
+      he was put. Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man laughed&mdash;I
+      had not heard him laugh till then&mdash;and my mother ran to my aunt and
+      kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a
+      screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in the
+      evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued voices
+      awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and the man in
+      grey were talking together over their supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must buy land,&rdquo; said the voice of the grey man; &ldquo;London is coming this
+      way. The Somebodies&rdquo; (I forget the name my father mentioned) &ldquo;made all
+      their money by buying up land round New York for a mere song. Then, as the
+      city spread, they became worth millions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where will you get the money from, Luke?&rdquo; asked the voice of my
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice of the grey man answered airily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's merely a matter of business. You grant a mortgage. The
+      property goes up in value. You borrow more. Then you buy more&mdash;and so
+      on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Being on the spot gives one such an advantage,&rdquo; said the grey man. &ldquo;I
+      shall know just when to buy. It's a great thing, being on the spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, it must be,&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose I must have dozed, for the next words I heard the grey man say
+      were:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you have the park opposite, but then the house is small.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But shall we need a very large one?&rdquo; asked my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One never knows,&rdquo; said the grey man. &ldquo;If I should go into Parliament&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point a hissing sound arose from the neighbourhood of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>looks</i>,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;as if it were done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will hold the dish,&rdquo; said the grey man, &ldquo;I think I can pour it in
+      without spilling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I must have dozed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends,&rdquo; said the grey man, &ldquo;upon what he is going to be. For the
+      classics, of course, Oxford.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's going to be very clever,&rdquo; said my mother. She spoke as one who
+      knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll hope so,&rdquo; said the grey man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't be surprised,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;if he turned out a poet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grey man said something in a low tone that I did not hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not so sure,&rdquo; answered my mother, &ldquo;it's in the blood. I've often
+      thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never had the time,&rdquo; said the grey man. &ldquo;There were one or two little
+      things&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were very beautiful,&rdquo; interrupted my mother. The clatter of the
+      knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments. Then continued
+      the grey man:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There would be no harm, provided I made enough. It's the law of nature.
+      One generation earns, the next spends. We must see. In any case, I think I
+      should prefer Oxford for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be so hard parting from him,&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be the vacations,&rdquo; said the grey man, &ldquo;when we shall travel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The case of my father and mother was not normal. You understand they had
+      been separated for some years, and though they were not young in age&mdash;indeed,
+      before my childish eyes they loomed quite ancient folk, and in fact my
+      father must have been nearly forty and my mother quit of thirty&mdash;yet,
+      as you will come to think yourself, no doubt, during the course of my
+      story, they were in all the essentials of life little more than boy and
+      girl. This I came to see later on, but at that time, had I been consulted
+      by enquiring maid or bachelor, I might unwittingly have given wrong
+      impressions concerning marriage in the general. I should have described a
+      husband as a man who could never rest quite content unless his wife were
+      by his side; who twenty times a day would call from his office door:
+      &ldquo;Maggie, are you doing anything important? I want to talk to you about a
+      matter of business.&rdquo; ... &ldquo;Maggie, are you alone? Oh, all right, I'll come
+      down.&rdquo; Of a wife I should have said she was a woman whose eyes were ever
+      love-lit when resting on her man; who was glad where he was and troubled
+      where he was not. But in every case this might not have been correct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also, I should have had something to say concerning the alarms and
+      excursions attending residence with any married couple. I should have
+      recommended the holding up of feet under the table lest, mistaken for
+      other feet, they should be trodden on and pressed. Also, I should have
+      advised against entry into any room unpreceded by what in Stageland is
+      termed &ldquo;noise without.&rdquo; It is somewhat disconcerting to the nervous
+      incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound as of people
+      springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird scuttling of feet,
+      and then to discover the occupants sitting stiffly in opposite corners,
+      deeply engaged in book or needlework. But, as I have said, with regard to
+      some households, such precautions might be needless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Personally, I fear, I exercised little or no controlling influence upon my
+      parents in this respect, my intrusions coming soon to be greeted with:
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's only Spud,&rdquo; in a tone of relief, accompanied generally by the
+      sofa cushion; but of my aunt they stood more in awe. Not that she ever
+      said anything, and, indeed, to do her justice, in her efforts to spare
+      their feelings she erred, if at all, on the side of excess. Never did she
+      move a footstep about the house except to the music of a sustained and
+      penetrating cough. As my father once remarked, ungratefully, I must
+      confess, the volume of bark produced by my aunt in a single day would have
+      done credit to the dying efforts of a hospital load of consumptives; to a
+      robust and perfectly healthy lady the cost in nervous force must have been
+      prodigious. Also, that no fear should live with them that her eyes had
+      seen aught not intended for them, she would invariably enter backwards any
+      room in which they might be, closing the door loudly and with difficulty
+      before turning round: and through dark passages she would walk singing. No
+      woman alive could have done more; yet&mdash;such is human nature!&mdash;neither
+      my father nor my mother was grateful to her, so far as I could judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, strange as it may appear, the more sympathetic towards them she
+      showed herself, the more irritated against her did they become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe, Fanny, you hate seeing Luke and me happy together,&rdquo; said my
+      mother one day, coming up from the kitchen to find my aunt preparing for
+      entry into the drawing-room by dropping teaspoons at five-second intervals
+      outside the door: &ldquo;Don't make yourself so ridiculous.&rdquo; My mother spoke
+      really quite unkindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hate it!&rdquo; replied my aunt. &ldquo;Why should I? Why shouldn't a pair of turtle
+      doves bill and coo, when their united age is only a little over seventy,
+      the pretty dears?&rdquo; The mildness of my aunt's answers often surprised me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for my father, he grew positively vindictive. I remember the occasion
+      well. It was the first, though not the last time I knew him lose his
+      temper. What brought up the subject I forget, but my father stopped
+      suddenly; we were walking by the canal bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your aunt&rdquo;&mdash;my father may not have intended it, but his tone and
+      manner when speaking of my aunt always conveyed to me the impression that
+      he regarded me as personally responsible for her existence. This used to
+      weigh upon me. &ldquo;Your aunt is the most cantankerous, the most&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      broke off, and shook his fist towards the setting sun. &ldquo;I wish to God,&rdquo;
+       said my father, &ldquo;your aunt had a comfortable little income of her own,
+      with a freehold cottage in the country, by God I do!&rdquo; But the next moment,
+      ashamed, I suppose, of his brutality: &ldquo;Not but what sometimes, of course,
+      she can be very nice, you know,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;don't tell your mother what I
+      said just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another who followed with sympathetic interest the domestic comedy was
+      Susan, our maid-of-all-work, the first of a long and varied series,
+      extending unto the advent of Amy, to whom the blessing of Heaven. Susan
+      was a stout and elderly female, liable to sudden fits of sleepiness, the
+      result, we were given to understand, of trouble; but her heart, it was her
+      own proud boast, was always in the right place. She could never look at my
+      father and mother sitting anywhere near each other but she must flop down
+      and weep awhile; the sight of connubial bliss always reminding her, so she
+      would explain, of the past glories of her own married state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though an earnest enquirer, I was never able myself to grasp the ins and
+      outs of this past married life of Susan's. Whether her answers were
+      purposely framed to elude curiosity, or whether they were the result of a
+      naturally incoherent mind, I cannot say. Their tendency was to convey
+      confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On Monday I have seen Susan shed tears of regret into the Brussels
+      sprouts, that she had been debarred by the pressure of other duties from
+      lately watering &ldquo;his&rdquo; grave, which, I gathered, was at Manor Park. While
+      on Tuesday I have listened, blood chilled, to the recital of her
+      intentions should she ever again enjoy the luxury of getting her fingers
+      near the scruff of his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, I thought, Susan, he was dead,&rdquo; was my very natural comment upon
+      this outbreak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So did I, Master Paul,&rdquo; was Susan's rejoinder; &ldquo;that was his artfulness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get hold of
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he wasn't a good man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who says he ain't a good man?&rdquo; It was Susan's flying leaps from tense to
+      tense that most bewildered me. &ldquo;If anybody says he ain't I'll gouge their
+      eye out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hastened to assure Susan that my observation had been intended in the
+      nature of enquiry, not of assertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brings me a bottle of gin&mdash;for my headaches&mdash;every time he
+      comes home,&rdquo; continued Susan, showing cause for opinion, &ldquo;every blessed
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And at some such point as this I would retire to the clearer atmosphere of
+      German grammar or mixed fractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We suffered a good deal from Susan one way and another; for having regard
+      to the admirable position of her heart, we all felt it our duty to
+      overlook mere failings of the flesh&mdash;all but my aunt, that is, who
+      never made any pretence of being a sentimentalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a lazy hussy,&rdquo; was the opinion expressed of her one morning by my
+      aunt, who was rinsing; &ldquo;a gulping, snorting, lazy hussy, that's what she
+      is.&rdquo; There was some excuse for my aunt's indignation. It was then eleven
+      o'clock and Susan was still sleeping off an attack of what she called
+      &ldquo;new-ralgy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has seen a good deal of trouble,&rdquo; said my mother, who was wiping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if she was my cook and housemaid,&rdquo; replied my aunt, &ldquo;she would see
+      more, the slut!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not a good servant in many respects,&rdquo; admitted my mother, &ldquo;but I
+      think she's good-hearted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, drat her heart,&rdquo; was my aunt's retort. &ldquo;The right place for that
+      heart of hers is on the doorstep. And that's where I'd put it, and her and
+      her box alongside it, if I had my way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The departure of Susan did take place not long afterwards. It occurred one
+      Saturday night. My mother came upstairs looking pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Luke,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;do please run for the doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; asked my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Susan,&rdquo; gasped my mother, &ldquo;she's lying on the kitchen floor breathing in
+      the strangest fashion and quite unable to speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go for Washburn,&rdquo; said my father; &ldquo;if I am quick I shall catch him
+      at the dispensary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes later my father came back panting, followed by the doctor.
+      This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the knack of
+      looking bigger than even he really was. He came down the kitchen stairs
+      two at a time, shaking the whole house. He brushed my mother aside, and
+      bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her back with her mouth wide
+      open. Then he rose and looked at my father and mother, who were watching
+      him with troubled faces; and then he opened his mouth, and there came from
+      it a roar of laughter, the like of which sound I had never heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment he had seized a pail half full of water and had flung it
+      over the woman. She opened her eyes and sat up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feeling better?&rdquo; said the doctor, with the pail still in his hand; &ldquo;have
+      another dose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Susan began to gather herself together with the evident intention of
+      expressing her feelings; but before she could find the first word, he had
+      pushed the three of us outside and slammed the door behind us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the top of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous voice
+      raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the man's savage
+      roar of laughter. And, when for want of breath she would flag for a
+      moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting: &ldquo;Bravo! Go it,
+      my beauty, give it tongue! Bark, bark! I love to hear you,&rdquo; applauding
+      her, clapping his hands and stamping his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a beast of a man,&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is really a most interesting man when you come to know him,&rdquo; explained
+      my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Replied my mother, stiffly: &ldquo;I don't ever mean to know him.&rdquo; But it is
+      only concerning the past that we possess knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The riot from below ceased at length, and was followed by a new voice,
+      speaking quietly and emphatically, and then we heard the doctor's step
+      again upon the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother held her purse open in her hand, and as the man entered the room
+      she went forward to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much do we owe you, Doctor?&rdquo; said my mother. She spoke in a voice
+      trembling with severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He closed the purse and gently pushed it back towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A glass of beer and a chop, Mrs. Kelver,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;which I am coming
+      back in an hour to cook for myself. And as you will be without any
+      servant,&rdquo; he continued, while my mother stood staring at him incapable of
+      utterance, &ldquo;you had better let me cook some for you at the same time. I am
+      an expert at grilling chops.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, really, Doctor&mdash;&rdquo; my mother began. He laid his huge hand upon
+      her shoulder, and my mother sat down upon the nearest chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she's a person you never ought to have had
+      inside your house. She's promised me to be gone in half an hour, and I'm
+      coming back to see she keeps her word. Give her a month's wages, and have
+      a clear fire ready for me.&rdquo; And before my mother could reply, he had
+      slammed the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a very odd sort of a man,&rdquo; said my mother, recovering herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a character,&rdquo; said my father; &ldquo;you might not think it, but he's
+      worshipped about here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly know what to make of him,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;I suppose I had
+      better go out and get some chops;&rdquo; which she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susan went, as sober as a judge on Friday, as the saying is, her great
+      anxiety being to get out of the house before the doctor returned. The
+      doctor himself arrived true to his time, and I lay awake&mdash;for no
+      human being ever slept or felt he wanted to sleep while Dr. Washburn was
+      anywhere near&mdash;and listened to the gusts of laughter that swept
+      continually through the house. Even my aunt laughed that supper time, and
+      when the doctor himself laughed it seemed to me that the bed shook under
+      me. Not liking to be out of it, I did what spoilt little boys and even
+      spoilt little girls sometimes will do under similar stress of feeling,
+      wrapped the blanket round my legs and pattered down, with my face set to
+      express the sudden desire of a sensitive and possibly short-lived child
+      for parents' love. My mother pretended to be angry, but that I knew was
+      only her company manners. Besides, I really had, if not exactly a pain, an
+      extremely uncomfortable sensation (one common to me about that period) as
+      of having swallowed the dome of St. Paul's. The doctor said it was a
+      frequent complaint with children, the result of too early hours and too
+      much study; and, taking me on his knee, wrote then and there a diet chart
+      for me, which included one tablespoonful of golden syrup four times a day,
+      and one ounce of sherbet to be placed upon the tongue and taken neat ten
+      minutes before each meal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening will always live in my remembrance. My mother was brighter
+      than I had ever seen her. A flush was on her cheek and a sparkle in her
+      eye, and looking across at her as she sat holding a small painted screen
+      to shield her face from the fire, the sense of beauty became suddenly born
+      within me, and answering an impulse I could not have explained, I slipped
+      down, still with my blanket around me, from the doctor's knee, and
+      squatted on the edge of the fender, from where, when I thought no one was
+      noticing me, I could steal furtive glances up into her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So also my father seemed to me to have become all at once bigger and more
+      dignified, talking with a vigour and an enjoyment that sat newly on him.
+      Aunt Fan was quite witty and agreeable&mdash;for her; and even I asked one
+      or two questions, at which, for some reason or another, everybody laughed;
+      which determined me to remember and ask those same questions again on some
+      future occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the great charm of the man, that by the magnetic spell of his
+      magnificent vitality he drew from everyone their best. In his company
+      clever people waxed intellectual giants, while the dull sat amazed at
+      their own originality. Conversing with him, Podsnap might have been
+      piquant, Dogberry incisive. But better than all else, I found it listening
+      to his own talk. Of what he spoke I could tell you no more than could the
+      children of Hamelin have told the tune the Pied Piper played. I only know
+      that at the tangled music of his strong voice the walls of the mean room
+      faded away, and that beyond I saw a brave, laughing world that called to
+      me; a world full of joyous fight, where some won and some lost. But that
+      mattered not a jot, because whatever else came of it there was a right
+      royal game for all; a world where merry gentlemen feared neither life nor
+      death, and Fate was but the Master of the Revels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was my first introduction to Dr. Washburn, or to give him the name by
+      which he was known in every slum and alley of that quarter, Dr. Fighting
+      Hal; and in a minor key that evening was an index to the whole man. Often
+      he would wrinkle his nose as a dog before it bites, and then he was more
+      brute than man&mdash;brutish in his instincts, in his appetites, brutish
+      in his pleasure, brutish in his fun. Or his deep blue eyes would grow soft
+      as a mother's, and then you might have thought him an angel in a soft felt
+      hat and a coat so loose-fitting as to suggest the possibility of his wings
+      being folded away underneath. Often have I tried to make up my mind
+      whether it has been better for me or worse that I ever came to know him;
+      but as easy would it be for the tree to say whether the rushing winds and
+      the wild rains have shaped it or mis-shaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Susan's place remained vacant for some time. My mother would explain to
+      the few friends who occasionally came from afar to see us, that her
+      &ldquo;housemaid&rdquo; she had been compelled to suddenly discharge, and that we were
+      waiting for the arrival of a new and better specimen. But the months
+      passed and we still waited, and my father on the rare days when a client
+      would ring the office bell, would, after pausing a decent interval, open
+      the front door himself, and then call downstairs indignantly and loudly,
+      to know why &ldquo;Jane&rdquo; or &ldquo;Mary&rdquo; could not attend to their work. And my
+      mother, that the bread-boy or the milkman might not put it about the
+      neighbourhood that the Kelvers in the big corner house kept no servant,
+      would hide herself behind a thick veil and fetch all things herself from
+      streets a long way off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this family of whom I am writing were, I confess, weak and human.
+      Their poverty they were ashamed of as though it were a crime, and in
+      consequence their life was more full of paltry and useless subterfuge than
+      should be perhaps the life of brave men and women. The larder, I fancy,
+      was very often bare, but the port and sherry with the sweet biscuits stood
+      always on the sideboard; and the fire had often to be low in the grate
+      that my father's tall hat might shine resplendent and my mother's black
+      silk rustle on Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I would not have you sneer at them, thinking all pretence must spring
+      from snobbishness and never from mistaken self-respect. Some fine
+      gentleman writers there be&mdash;men whose world is bounded on the east by
+      Bond Street&mdash;who see in the struggles of poverty to hide its darns
+      only matter for jest. But myself, I cannot laugh at them. I know the long
+      hopes and fears that centre round the hired waiter; the long cost of the
+      cream and the ice jelly ordered the week before from the confectioner's.
+      But to me it is pathetic, not ridiculous. Heroism is not all of one
+      pattern. Dr. Washburn, had the Prince of Wales come to see him, would have
+      put his bread and cheese and jug of beer upon the table, and helped His
+      Royal Highness to half. But my father and mother's tea was very weak that
+      Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith might have a glass of wine should they come to
+      dinner. I remember the one egg for breakfast, my mother arguing that my
+      father should have it because he had his business to attend to; my father
+      insisting that my mother should eat it, she having to go out shopping, a
+      compromise being effected by their dividing it between them, each
+      clamouring for the white as the most nourishing. And I know however little
+      the meal looked upon the table when we started I always rose well
+      satisfied. These are small things to speak of, but then you must bear in
+      mind this is a story moving in narrow ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me this life came as a good time. That I was encouraged to eat treacle
+      in preference to butter seemed to me admirable. Personally, I preferred
+      sausages for dinner; and a supper of fried fish and potatoes, brought in
+      stealthily in a carpet bag, was infinitely more enjoyable than the set
+      meal where nothing was of interest till one came to the dessert. What fun
+      there was about it all! The cleaning of the doorstep by night, when from
+      the ill-lit street a gentleman with a piece of sacking round his legs
+      might very well pass for a somewhat tall charwoman. I would keep watch at
+      the gate to give warning should any one looking like a possible late
+      caller turn the corner of the street, coming back now and then in answer
+      to a low whistle to help my father grope about in the dark for the
+      hearthstone; he was always mislaying the hearthstone. How much better,
+      helping to clean the knives or running errands than wasting all one's
+      morning dwelling upon the shocking irregularity of certain classes of
+      French verbs; or making useless calculations as to how long X, walking
+      four and a quarter miles an hour, would be overtaking Y, whose powers were
+      limited to three and a half, but who had started two and three quarter
+      hours sooner; the whole argument being reduced to sheer pedantry by reason
+      of no information being afforded to the student concerning the respective
+      thirstiness of X and Y.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even my father and mother were able to take it lightly with plenty of
+      laughter and no groaning that I ever heard. For over all lay the morning
+      light of hope, and what prisoner, escaping from his dungeon, ever stayed
+      to think of his torn hands and knees when beyond the distant opening he
+      could see the sunlight glinting through the brambles?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had no idea,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;there was so much to do in a house. In
+      future I shall arrange for the servants to have regular hours, and a
+      little time to themselves, for rest. Don't you think it right, Luke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite right,&rdquo; replied my father; &ldquo;and I'll tell you another thing we'll
+      do. I shall insist on the landlord's putting a marble doorstep to the next
+      house we take; you pass a sponge over marble and it is always clean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or tesselated,&rdquo; suggested my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or tesselated,&rdquo; agreed my father; &ldquo;but marble is more uncommon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only once, can I recall a cloud. That was one Sunday when my mother,
+      speaking across the table in the middle of dinner, said to my father, &ldquo;We
+      might save the rest of that stew, Luke; there's an omelette coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father laid down the spoon. &ldquo;An omelette!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;I thought I would like to try again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father stepped into the back kitchen&mdash;we dined in the kitchen, as
+      a rule, it saved much carriage&mdash;returning with the wood chopper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ever are you going to do, Luke, with the chopper?&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Divide the omelette,&rdquo; replied my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Maggie&mdash;!&rdquo; said my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the other one was leathery,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;but it was the fault
+      of the oven, you know it was, Luke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;I only meant it as a joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like that sort of joke,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;it isn't nice of you,
+      Luke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't think, to be candid, my mother liked much any joke that was
+      against herself. Indeed, when I come to think of it, I have never met a
+      woman who did, nor man, either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had soon grown up a comradeship between my father and myself for he
+      was the youngest thing I had met with as yet. Sometimes my mother seemed
+      very young, and later I met boys and girls nearer to my own age in years;
+      but they grew, while my father remained always the same. The hair about
+      his temples was turning grey, and when you looked close you saw many
+      crow's feet and lines, especially about the mouth. But his eyes were the
+      eyes of a boy, his laugh the laugh of a boy, and his heart the heart of a
+      boy. So we were very close to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a narrow strip of ground we called our garden we would play a cricket
+      of our own, encompassed about by many novel rules, rendered necessary by
+      the locality. For instance, all hitting to leg was forbidden, as tending
+      to endanger neighbouring windows, while hitting to off was likewise not to
+      be encouraged, as causing a temporary adjournment of the game, while
+      batter and bowler went through the house and out into the street to
+      recover the ball from some predatory crowd of urchins to whom it had
+      evidently appeared as a gift direct from Heaven. Sometimes rising very
+      early we would walk across the marshes to bathe in a small creek that led
+      down to the river, but this was muddy work, necessitating much washing of
+      legs on the return home. And on rare days we would, taking the train to
+      Hackney and walking to the bridge, row up the river Lea, perhaps as far as
+      Ponder's End.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these sports being hedged around with difficulties, more commonly for
+      recreation we would take long walks. There were pleasant nooks even in the
+      neighbourhood of Plaistow marshes in those days. Here and there a graceful
+      elm still clung to the troubled soil. Surrounded on all sides by
+      hideousness, picturesque inns still remained hidden within green walls
+      where, if you were careful not to pry too curiously, you might sit and sip
+      your glass of beer beneath the oak and dream yourself where reeking
+      chimneys and mean streets were not. During such walks my father would talk
+      to me as he would talk to my mother, telling me all his wild, hopeful
+      plans, discussing with me how I was to lodge at Oxford, to what particular
+      branches of study and of sport I was to give my preference, speaking
+      always with such catching confidence that I came to regard my sojourn in
+      this brick and mortar prison as only a question of months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, talking of this future, and laughing as we walked briskly,
+      through the shrill streets, I told him the words my mother had said&mdash;long
+      ago, as it seemed to me, for life is as a stone rolling down-hill, and
+      moves but slowly at first; she and I sitting on the moss at the foot of
+      old &ldquo;Jacob's Folly&rdquo;&mdash;that he was our Prince fighting to deliver us
+      from the grim castle called &ldquo;Hard Times,&rdquo; guarded by the dragon Poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father laughed and his boyish face flushed with pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she was right, Paul,&rdquo; he whispered, pressing my small hand in his&mdash;it
+      was necessary to whisper, for the street where we were was very crowded,
+      but I knew that he wanted to shout. &ldquo;I will fight him and I will slay
+      him.&rdquo; My father made passes in the air with his walking-stick, and it was
+      evident from the way they drew aside that the people round about fancied
+      he was mad. &ldquo;I will batter down the iron gates and she shall be free. I
+      will, God help me, I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallant gentleman! How long and how bravely he fought! But in the end
+      it was the Dragon triumphed, the Knight that lay upon the ground, his
+      great heart still. I have read how, with the sword of Honest Industry, one
+      may always conquer this grim Dragon. But such was in foolish books. In
+      truth, only with the sword of Chicanery and the stout buckler of
+      Unscrupulousness shall you be certain of victory over him. If you care not
+      to use these, pray to your Gods, and take what comes with a stout heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louisa!&rdquo; roared my father down the kitchen stairs, &ldquo;are you all asleep?
+      Here have I had to answer the front door myself.&rdquo; Then my father strode
+      into his office, and the door slammed. My father could be very angry when
+      nobody was by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quarter of an hour later his bell rang with a quick, authoritative jangle.
+      My mother, who was peeling potatoes with difficulty in wash-leather
+      gloves, looked at my aunt who was shelling peas. The bell rang again
+      louder still this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once for Louisa, twice for James, isn't it?&rdquo; enquired my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go, Paul,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;say that Louisa&mdash;&rdquo; but with the
+      words a sudden flush overspread my mother's face, and before I could lay
+      down my slate she had drawn off her gloves and had passed me. &ldquo;No, don't
+      stop your lessons, I'll go myself,&rdquo; she said, and ran out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes later the kitchen door opened softly, and my mother's hand,
+      appearing through the jar, beckoned to me mysteriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk on your toes,&rdquo; whispered my mother, setting the example as she led
+      the way up the stairs; which after the manner of stairs showed their
+      disapproval of deception by creaking louder and more often than under any
+      other circumstances; and in this manner we reached my parents' bedroom,
+      where, in the old-fashioned wardrobe, relic of better days, reposed my
+      best suit of clothes, or, to be strictly grammatical, my better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never before had I worn these on a week-day morning, but all conversation
+      not germane to the question of getting into them quickly my mother swept
+      aside; and when I was complete, down even to the new shoes&mdash;Bluchers,
+      we called them in those days&mdash;took me by the hand, and together we
+      crept down as we had crept up, silent, stealthy and alert. My mother led
+      me to the street door and opened it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shan't I want my cap?&rdquo; I whispered. But my mother only shook her head and
+      closed the door with a bang; and then the explanation of the pantomime
+      came to me, for with such &ldquo;business&rdquo;&mdash;comic, shall I call it, or
+      tragic?&mdash;I was becoming familiar; and, my mother's hand upon my
+      shoulder, we entered my father's office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether from the fact that so often of an evening&mdash;our drawing-room
+      being reserved always as a show-room in case of chance visitors; Cowper's
+      poems, open face-downwards on the wobbly loo table; the half-finished
+      crochet work, suggestive of elegant leisure, thrown carelessly over the
+      arm of the smaller easy-chair&mdash;this office would become our
+      sitting-room, its books and papers, as things of no account, being huddled
+      out of sight; or whether from the readiness with which my father would
+      come out of it at all times to play at something else&mdash;at cricket in
+      the back garden on dry days or ninepins in the passage on wet, charging
+      back into it again whenever a knock sounded at the front door, I cannot
+      say. But I know that as a child it never occurred to me to regard my
+      father's profession as a serious affair. To me he was merely playing
+      there, surrounded by big books and bundles of documents, labelled
+      profusely but consisting only of blank papers; by japanned tin boxes,
+      lettered imposingly, but for the most part empty. &ldquo;Sutton Hampden, Esq.,&rdquo;
+       I remember was practically my mother's work-box. The &ldquo;Drayton Estates&rdquo;
+       yielded apparently nothing but apples, a fruit of which my father was
+      fond; while &ldquo;Mortgages&rdquo; it was not until later in life I discovered had no
+      connection with poems in manuscript, some in course of correction, others
+      completed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us. His hair stood up
+      from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked; and
+      this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an expression
+      of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were needed, to the
+      suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the youngster,&rdquo; said my father, taking me from my mother, and
+      passing me on. &ldquo;Tall for his age, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he was
+      smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held out a fat
+      and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine, brought to my mind
+      the picture of the walrus in my natural history book; with the other he
+      flapped me kindly on the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?&rdquo; he observed,
+      still holding my hand. &ldquo;And that,&rdquo; he added with a wink of one of his
+      small eyes towards my father, &ldquo;is about the 'ighest compliment I can pay
+      'im, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes were remarkably small, but marvellously bright and piercing; so
+      much so that when he turned them again upon me I tried to think quickly of
+      something nice about him, feeling sure that he could see right into me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where are you thinkin' of sendin' 'im?&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;Eton or
+      'Arrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We haven't quite made up our minds as yet,&rdquo; replied my father; &ldquo;at
+      present we are educating him at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take my tip,&rdquo; said the fat man, &ldquo;and learn all you can. Look at me!
+      If I'd 'ad the opportunity of being a schollard I wouldn't be here
+      offering your father an extravagant price for doin' my work; I'd be able
+      to do it myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to have got on very well without it,&rdquo; laughed my father; and in
+      truth his air of prosperity might have justified greater self-complacency.
+      Rings sparkled on his blunt fingers, and upon the swelling billows of his
+      waistcoat rose and sank a massive gold cable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd 'ave done better with it,&rdquo; he grunted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you look very clever,&rdquo; I said; and though divining with a child's
+      cuteness that it was desired I should make a favourable impression upon
+      him, I hoped this would please him, the words were yet spontaneous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed heartily, his whole body shaking like some huge jelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool,&rdquo; he assented, &ldquo;but I'd like
+      myself better if I could talk about something else than business, and
+      didn't drop my aitches. And so would my little gell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a daughter?&rdquo; asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond of
+      sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to
+      disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't tell you about 'er. But I'll just bring 'er to see you now and
+      then, ma'am, if you don't mind,&rdquo; answered Mr. Hasluck. &ldquo;She don't often
+      meet gentle-folks, an' it'll do 'er good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother glanced across at my father, but the man, intercepting her
+      question, replied to it himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't be afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me,&rdquo; he assured
+      her quite good-temperedly; &ldquo;nobody ever believes she's my daughter, except
+      me and the old woman. She's a little lady, she is. Freak o' nature, I call
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be delighted,&rdquo; explained my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you will when you see 'er,&rdquo; replied Mr. Hasluck, quite contentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pushed half-a-crown into my hand, overriding my parents'
+      susceptibilities with the easy good-temper of a man accustomed to have his
+      way in all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No squanderin' it on the 'eathen,&rdquo; was his parting injunction as I left
+      the room; &ldquo;you spend that on a Christian tradesman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that half-crown of
+      old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived from a new pair
+      of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which would then be all my
+      own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all less exalted visions
+      concerning the disposal of chance coins coming into my small hands. But on
+      this occasion I was left free to decide for myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of the
+      bewildering streets! Even advice when asked for was denied me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must learn to think for yourself,&rdquo; said my father, who spoke
+      eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what he
+      called &ldquo;commercial aptitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, dear,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you
+      like. If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked. Your father and
+      I want to see what you will do with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to people
+      in distress. For this I hated them with the malignity the lower nature
+      ever feels towards the higher. I consulted my aunt Fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If somebody gave you half-a-crown,&rdquo; I put it to her, &ldquo;what would you buy
+      with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Side-combs,&rdquo; said my aunt; she was always losing or breaking her
+      side-combs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I mean if you were me,&rdquo; I explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drat the child!&rdquo; said my aunt; &ldquo;how do I know what he wants if he don't
+      know himself? Idiot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shop windows into which I stared, my nose glued to the pane! The
+      things I asked the price of! The things I made up my mind to buy and then
+      decided that I wouldn't buy! Even my patient mother began to show signs of
+      irritation. It was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a family curse, was
+      old Hasluck's half-crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one day I made up my mind, and so ended the trouble. In the window of
+      a small plumber's shop in a back street near, stood on view among brass
+      taps, rolls of lead piping and cistern requisites, various squares of
+      coloured glass, the sort of thing chiefly used, I believe, for lavatory
+      doors and staircase windows. Some had stars in the centre, and others,
+      more elaborate, were enriched with designs, severe but inoffensive. I
+      purchased a dozen of these, the plumber, an affable man who appeared glad
+      to see me, throwing in two extra out of sheer generosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why I bought them I did not know at the time, and I do not know now. My
+      mother cried when she saw them. My father could get no further than: &ldquo;But
+      what are you going to do with them?&rdquo; to which I was unable to reply. My
+      aunt, alone, attempted comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If a person fancies coloured glass,&rdquo; said my aunt, &ldquo;then he's a fool not
+      to buy coloured glass when he gets the chance. We haven't all the same
+      tastes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end, I cut myself badly with them and consented to their being
+      thrown into the dust-bin. But looking back, I have come to regard myself
+      rather as the victim of Fate than of Folly. Many folks have I met since,
+      recipients of Hasluck's half-crowns&mdash;many a man who has slapped his
+      pocket and blessed the day he first met that &ldquo;Napoleon of Finance,&rdquo; as
+      later he came to be known among his friends&mdash;but it ever ended so;
+      coloured glass and cut fingers. Is it fairy gold that he and his kind
+      fling round? It would seem to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next time old Hasluck knocked at our front door a maid in cap and apron
+      opened it to him, and this was but the beginning of change. New oilcloth
+      glistened in the passage. Lace curtains, such as in that neighbourhood
+      were the hall-mark of the plutocrat, advertised our rising fortunes to the
+      street, and greatest marvel of all, at least to my awed eyes, my father's
+      Sunday clothes came into weekday wear, new ones taking their place in the
+      great wardrobe that hitherto had been the stronghold of our gentility; to
+      which we had ever turned for comfort when rendered despondent by
+      contemplation of the weakness of our outer walls. &ldquo;Seeing that everything
+      was all right&rdquo; is how my mother would explain it. She would lay the lilac
+      silk upon the bed, fondly soothing down its rustling undulations,
+      lingering lovingly over its deep frosted flounces of rich Honiton. Maybe
+      she had entered the room weary looking and depressed, but soon there would
+      proceed from her a gentle humming as from some small winged thing when the
+      sun first touches it and warms it, and sometimes by the time the Indian
+      shawl, which could go through a wedding ring, but never would when it was
+      wanted to, had been refolded and fastened again with the great cameo
+      brooch, and the poke bonnet, like some fractious child, shaken and petted
+      into good condition, she would be singing softly to herself, nodding her
+      head to the words: which were generally to the effect that somebody was
+      too old and somebody else too bold and another too cold, &ldquo;so he wouldn't
+      do for me;&rdquo; and stepping lightly as though the burden of the years had
+      fallen from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening&mdash;it was before the advent of this Hasluck&mdash;I
+      remember climbing out of bed, for trouble was within me. Creatures,
+      indescribable but heavy, had sat upon my chest, after which I had fallen
+      downstairs, slowly and reasonably for the first few hundred flights, then
+      with haste for the next million miles or so, until I found myself in the
+      street with nothing on but my nightshirt. Personally, I was shocked, but
+      nobody else seemed to mind, and I hailed a two-penny 'bus and climbed in.
+      But when I tried to pay I found I hadn't any pockets, so I jumped out and
+      ran away and the conductor came after me. My feet were like lead, and with
+      every step he gained on me, till with a scream I made one mighty effort
+      and awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Feeling the need of comfort after these unpleasant but by no means
+      unfamiliar experiences, I wrapped some clothes round me and crept
+      downstairs. The &ldquo;office&rdquo; was dark, but to my surprise a light shone from
+      under the drawing-room door, and I opened it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The candles in the silver candlesticks were lighted, and in state, one in
+      each easy-chair, sat my father and mother, both in their best clothes; my
+      father in the buckled shoes and the frilled shirt that I had never seen
+      him wear before, my mother with the Indian shawl about her shoulders, and
+      upon her head the cap of ceremony that reposed three hundred and sixty
+      days out of the year in its round wicker-work nest lined with silk. They
+      started guiltily as I pushed open the door, but I congratulate myself that
+      I had sense enough&mdash;or was it instinct&mdash;to ask no questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged, the
+      lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows, my
+      father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the change not
+      only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing, and even in
+      their very voices. My father brought over from the sideboard the sherry
+      and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a glass to my mother, and he
+      and my mother drank to each other, while I between them ate the biscuits,
+      and the conversation was of Byron's poems and the great glass palace in
+      Hyde Park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder am I disloyal setting this down? Maybe to others it shows but a
+      foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention. I dwell upon
+      such trifles because to me the memory of them is very tender. The virtues
+      of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis but what we expected of
+      them: how could they do otherwise? Their failings we would forget; no one
+      of us is perfect. But over their follies we love to linger, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon
+      made perhaps more difference than to any one else. My father now was busy
+      all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of the
+      giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every day more
+      social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left much to my own
+      resources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rambling&mdash;&ldquo;bummelling,&rdquo; as the Germans term it&mdash;was my bent.
+      This my mother would have checked, but my father said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't molly-coddle him. Let him learn to be smart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think the smart people are always the nicest,&rdquo; demurred my
+      mother. &ldquo;I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father appeared surprised, but reflected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should call myself smart&mdash;in a sense,&rdquo; he explained, after
+      consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are right, dear,&rdquo; replied my mother; &ldquo;and of course boys are
+      different from girls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded by
+      many small cottages in leafy gardens; or even reach as far as Clapton,
+      where old red brick Georgian houses still stood behind high palings, and
+      tall elms gave to the wide road on sunny afternoons an old-world air of
+      peace. But such excursions were the exception, for strange though it may
+      read, the narrow, squalid streets had greater hold on me. Not the few main
+      thoroughfares, filled ever with a dull, deep throbbing as of some tireless
+      iron machine; where the endless human files, streaming ever up and down,
+      crossing and recrossing, seemed mere rushing chains of flesh and blood,
+      working upon unseen wheels; but the dim, weary, lifeless streets&mdash;the
+      dark, tortuous roots, as I fancied them, of that grim forest of entangled
+      brick. Mystery lurked in their gloom. Fear whispered from behind their
+      silence. Dumb figures flitted swiftly to and fro, never pausing, never
+      glancing right nor left. Far-off footsteps, rising swiftly into sound, as
+      swiftly fading, echoed round their lonely comers. Dreading, yet drawn on,
+      I would creep along their pavements as through some city of the dead,
+      thinking of the eyes I saw not watching from the thousand windows;
+      starting at each muffled sound penetrating the long, dreary walls, behind
+      which that close-packed, writhing life lay hid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day there came a cry from behind a curtained window. I stood still for
+      a moment and then ran; but before I could get far enough away I heard it
+      again, a long, piercing cry, growing fiercer before it ceased; so that I
+      ran faster still, not heeding where I went, till I found myself in a raw,
+      unfinished street, ending in black waste land, bordering the river. I
+      stopped, panting, wondering how I should find my way again. To recover
+      myself and think I sat upon the doorstep of an empty house, and there came
+      dancing down the road with a curious, half-running, half-hopping step&mdash;something
+      like a water wagtail's&mdash;a child, a boy about my own age, who, after
+      eyeing me strangely sat down beside me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We watched each other for a few minutes; and I noticed that his mouth kept
+      opening and shutting, though he said nothing. Suddenly, edging closer to
+      me, he spoke in a thick whisper. It sounded as though his mouth were full
+      of wool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wot 'appens to yer when yer dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you're good you go to Heaven. If you're bad you go to Hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Long way off, both of 'em, ain't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Millions of miles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can't come after yer? Can't fetch yer back again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doorstep that we occupied was the last. A yard beyond began the black
+      waste of mud. From the other end of the street, now growing dark, he never
+      took his staring eyes for an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever seen a stiff 'un&mdash;a dead 'un?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 'ave&mdash;stuck a pin into 'im. 'E never felt it. Don't feel anything
+      when yer dead, do yer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms and
+      legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread, with
+      quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought then in
+      bakers' shops: he made me hungry, reminding me of such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. When you are dead you're not there, you know. Our bodies
+      are but senseless clay.&rdquo; I was glad I remembered that line. I tried to
+      think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it evaded me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like you,&rdquo; he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in the chest.
+      It was the token of palship among the youth of that neighbourhood, and
+      gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship with children is an
+      affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew him for my first chum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wormed himself up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yer won't tell?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that I
+      should agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say 'I swear.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like secret
+      oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, cockey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust it
+      into my hand. Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his ran off
+      across the mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going. He stumbled a
+      little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but
+      struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he would
+      sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself free
+      would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river, he fell
+      upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating feebler and
+      feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over him, and I
+      could detect nothing but a faint heaving underneath the mud. And after a
+      time even that ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late before I reached home, and fortunately my father and mother
+      were still out. I did not tell any one what I had seen, having sworn not
+      to; and as time went on the incident haunted me less and less until it
+      became subservient to my will. But of my fancy for those silent, lifeless
+      streets it cured me for the time. From behind their still walls I would
+      hear that long cry; down their narrow vistas see that writhing figure,
+      like some animated ginger-bread, hopping, springing, falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in the more crowded streets another trouble awaited me, one more
+      tangible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you ever noticed a pack of sparrows round some crumbs perchance that
+      you have thrown out from your window? Suddenly the rest of the flock will
+      set upon one. There is a tremendous Lilliputian hubbub, a tossing of tiny
+      wings and heads, a babel of shrill chirps. It is comical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spiteful little imps they are,&rdquo; you say to yourself, much amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I have heard good-tempered men and women calling out to one another
+      with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There go those young devils chivvying that poor little beggar again;
+      ought to be ashamed of theirselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, oh! the anguish of the poor little beggar! Can any one who has not
+      been through it imagine it! Reduced to its actualities, what was it? Gibes
+      and jeers that, after all, break no bones. A few pinches, kicks and slaps;
+      at worst a few hard knocks. But the dreading of it beforehand! Terror
+      lived in every street, hid, waiting for me, round each corner. The
+      half-dozen wrangling over their marbles&mdash;had they seen me? The boy
+      whistling as he stood staring into the print shop, would I get past him
+      without his noticing me; or would he, swinging round upon his heel, raise
+      the shrill whoop that brought them from every doorway to hunt me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shame, when caught at last and cornered: the grinning face that would
+      stop to watch; the careless jokes of passers-by, regarding the whole thing
+      but as a sparrows' squabble: worst of all, perhaps, the rare pity! The
+      after humiliation when, finally released, I would dart away, followed by
+      shouted taunts and laughter; every eye turned to watch me, shrinking by;
+      my whole small carcass shaking with dry sobs of bitterness and rage!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If only I could have turned and faced them! So far as the mere bearing of
+      pain was concerned, I knew myself brave. The physical suffering resulting
+      from any number of stand-up fights would have been trivial compared with
+      the mental agony I endured. That I, the comrade of a hundred heroes&mdash;I,
+      who nightly rode with Richard Coeur de Lion, who against Sir Lancelot
+      himself had couched a lance, and that not altogether unsuccessful, I to
+      whom all damsels in distress were wont to look for succour&mdash;that I
+      should run from varlets such as these!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend, my bosom friend, good Robin Hood! how would he have behaved
+      under similar circumstances? how Ivanhoe, my chosen companion in all
+      quests of knightly enterprise? how&mdash;to come to modern times&mdash;Jack
+      Harkaway, mere schoolboy though he might be? Would not one and all have
+      welcomed such incident with a joyous shout, and in a trice have scattered
+      to the winds the worthless herd?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, alas! upon my pale lips the joyous shout sank into an unheard
+      whisper, and the thing that became scattered to the wind was myself, the
+      first opening that occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes, the blood boiling in my veins, I would turn, thinking to go
+      back and at all risk defying my tormentors, prove to myself I was no
+      coward. But before I had retraced my steps a dozen paces, I would see in
+      imagination the whole scene again before me: the laughing crowd, the
+      halting passers-by, the spiteful, mocking little faces every way I turned;
+      and so instead would creep on home, and climbing stealthily up into my own
+      room, cry my heart out in the dark upon my bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until one blessed day, when a blessed Fairy, in the form of a small
+      kitten, lifted the spell that bound me, and set free my limbs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have always had a passionate affection for the dumb world, if it be
+      dumb. My first playmate, I remember, was a water rat. A stream ran at the
+      bottom of our garden; and sometimes, escaping the vigilant eye of Mrs.
+      Fursey, I would steal out with my supper and join him on the banks. There,
+      hidden behind the osiers, we would play at banquets, he, it is true, doing
+      most of the banqueting, and I the make-believe. But it was a good game;
+      added to which it was the only game I could ever get him to play, though I
+      tried. He was a one-ideaed rat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later I came into the possession of a white specimen all my own. He lived
+      chiefly in the outside breast pocket of my jacket, in company with my
+      handkerchief, so that glancing down I could generally see his little pink
+      eyes gleaming up at me, except on very cold days, when it would be only
+      his tail that I could see; and when I felt miserable, somehow he would
+      know it, and, swarming up, push his little cold snout against my ear. He
+      died just so, clinging round my neck; and from many of my fellow-men and
+      women have I parted with less pain. It sounds callous to say so; but,
+      after all, our feelings are not under our own control; and I have never
+      been able to understand the use of pretending to emotions one has not. All
+      this, however, comes later. Let me return now to my fairy kitten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard its cry of pain from afar, and instinctively hastened my steps.
+      Three or four times I heard it again, and at each call I ran faster, till,
+      breathless, I arrived upon the scene, the opening of a narrow court,
+      leading out of a by-street. At first I saw nothing but the backs of a
+      small mob of urchins. Then from the centre of them came another wailing
+      appeal for help, and without waiting for any invitation, I pushed my way
+      into the group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What I saw was Hecuba to me&mdash;gave me the motive and the cue for
+      passion, transformed me from the dull and muddy-mettled little
+      John-a-dreams I had been into a small, blind Fury. Pale Thought, that
+      mental emetic, banished from my system, I became the healthy, unreasoning
+      animal, and acted as such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From my methods, I frankly admit, science was absent. In simple, primitive
+      fashion that would have charmed a Darwinian disciple to observe, I &ldquo;went
+      for&rdquo; the whole crowd. To employ the expressive idiom of the neighbourhood,
+      I was &ldquo;all over it and inside.&rdquo; Something clung about my feet. By kicking
+      myself free and then standing on it I gained the advantage of quite an
+      extra foot in height; I don't know what it was and didn't care. I fought
+      with my arms and I fought with my legs; where I could get in with my head
+      I did. I fought whatever came to hand in a spirit of simple thankfulness,
+      grateful for what I could reach and indifferent to what was beyond me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the &ldquo;show&rdquo;&mdash;if again I may be permitted the local idiom&mdash;was
+      not entirely mine I was well aware. That not alone my person but my
+      property also was being damaged in the rear became dimly conveyed to me
+      through the sensation of draught. Already the world to the left of me was
+      mere picturesque perspective, while the growing importance of my nose was
+      threatening the absorption of all my other features. These things did not
+      trouble me. I merely noted them as phenomena and continued to punch
+      steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until I found that I was punching something soft and yet unyielding. I
+      looked up to see what this foreign matter that thus mysteriously had
+      entered into the mixture might be, and discovered it to be a policeman.
+      Still I did not care. The felon's dock! the prison cell! a fig for such
+      mere bogies. An impudent word, an insulting look, and I would have gone
+      for the Law itself. Pale Thought&mdash;it must have been a livid green by
+      this time&mdash;still trembled at respectful distance from me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately for all of us, he was not impertinent, and though he spoke the
+      language of his order, his tone disarmed offence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then. Now, then. What is all this about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no need for me to answer. A dozen voluble tongues were ready to
+      explain to him; and to explain wholly in my favour. This time the crowd
+      was with me. Let a man school himself to bear dispraise, for thereby alone
+      shall he call his soul his own. But let no man lie, saying he is
+      indifferent to popular opinion. That was my first taste of public
+      applause. The public was not select, and the applause might, by the
+      sticklers for English pure and undefiled, have been deemed ill-worded, but
+      to me it was the sweetest music I had ever heard, or have heard since. I
+      was called a &ldquo;plucky little devil,&rdquo; a &ldquo;fair 'ot 'un,&rdquo; not only a &ldquo;good
+      'un,&rdquo; but a &ldquo;good 'un&rdquo; preceded by the adjective that in the East bestows
+      upon its principal every admirable quality that can possibly apply. Under
+      the circumstances it likewise fitted me literally; but I knew it was
+      intended rather in its complimentary sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kind, if dirty, hands wiped my face. A neighbouring butcher presented me
+      with a choice morsel of steak, not to eat but to wear; and I found it, if
+      I may so express myself without infringing copyright, &ldquo;grateful and
+      comforting.&rdquo; My enemies had long since scooted, some of them, I had
+      rejoiced to notice, with lame and halting steps. The mutilated kitten had
+      been restored to its owner, a lady of ample bosom, who, carried beyond
+      judgment by emotion, publicly offered to adopt me on the spot. The Law
+      suggested, not for the first time, that everybody should now move on; and
+      slowly, followed by feminine commendation mingled with masculine advice as
+      to improved methods for the future, I was allowed to drift away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My bones ached, my flesh stung me, yet I walked as upon air. Gradually I
+      became conscious that I was not alone. A light, pattering step was trying
+      to keep pace with me. Graciously I slacked my speed, and the pattering
+      step settled down beside me. Every now and again she would run ahead and
+      then turn round to look up into my face, much as your small dog does when
+      he happens not to be misbehaving himself and desires you to note the fact.
+      Evidently she approved of me. I was not at my best, as far as appearance
+      was concerned, but women are kittle cattle, and I think she preferred me
+      so. Thus we walked for quite a long distance without speaking, I drinking
+      in the tribute of her worship and enjoying it. Then gaining confidence,
+      she shyly put her hand into mine, and finding I did not repel her,
+      promptly assumed possession of me, according to woman's way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For her age and station she must have been a person of means, for having
+      tried in vain various methods to make me more acceptable to followers and
+      such as having passed would turn their heads, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, gelatines;&rdquo; and disappearing into a sweetstuff shop, returned
+      with quite a quantity. With these, first sucked till glutinous, we joined
+      my many tatters. I still attracted attention, but felt warmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She informed me that her name was Cissy, and that her father's shop was in
+      Three Colt Street. I informed her that my name was Paul, and that my
+      father was a lawyer. I also pointed out to her that a lawyer is much
+      superior in social position to a shopkeeper, which she acknowledged
+      cheerfully. We parted at the corner of the Stainsby Road, and I let her
+      kiss me once. It was understood that in the Stainsby Road we might meet
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left Eliza gaping after me, the front door in her hand, and ran straight
+      up into my own room. Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, The Last of the Barons,
+      Rob Roy! I looked them all in the face and was not ashamed. I also was a
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother was much troubled when she saw me, but my father, hearing the
+      story, approved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he looks so awful,&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;In this world,&rdquo; said my father,
+      &ldquo;one must occasionally be aggressive&mdash;if necessary, brutal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father would at times be quite savage in his sentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM THE
+      ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL. AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare. The
+      jingle of the tram-bell and the rattle of the omnibus and cart mingle
+      continuously with the rain of many feet, beating ceaselessly upon its
+      pavements. But at the time of which I write it was an empty, voiceless
+      way, bounded on the one side by the long, echoing wall of the docks and on
+      the other by occasional small houses isolated amid market gardens, drying
+      grounds and rubbish heaps. Only one thing remains&mdash;or did remain last
+      time I passed along it, connecting it with its former self&mdash;and that
+      is the one-storeyed brick cottage at the commencement of the bridge, and
+      which was formerly the toll-house. I remember this toll-house so well
+      because it was there that my childhood fell from me, and sad and
+      frightened I saw the world beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot explain it better. I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on a
+      visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which to
+      keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have the half-crown in your hand,&rdquo; my mother would direct me, while
+      making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the bottom of
+      my knickerbocker pocket; &ldquo;but of course if he won't take it, why, you must
+      bring it home again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not sure, but I think he was some distant connection of ours; at all
+      events, I know he was a kind friend. I, seated in the velvet chair of
+      state, he would unroll his case of instruments before me, and ask me to
+      choose, recommending with affectionate eulogisms the most murderous
+      looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But on my opening my mouth to discuss the fearful topic, lo! a pair would
+      shoot from under his coat-sleeve, and almost before I knew what had
+      happened, the trouble would be over. After that we would have tea
+      together. He was an old bachelor, and his house stood in a great garden&mdash;for
+      Plaistow in those days was a picturesque village&mdash;and out of the
+      plentiful fruit thereof his housekeeper made the most wonderful of jams
+      and jellies. Oh, they were good, those teas! Generally our conversation
+      was of my mother who, it appeared, was once a little girl: not at all the
+      sort of little girl I should have imagined her; on the contrary, a
+      prankish, wilful little girl, though good company, I should say, if all
+      the tales he told of her were true. And I am inclined to think they were,
+      in spite of the fact that my mother, when I repeated them to her, would
+      laugh, saying she was sure she had no recollection of anything of the
+      kind, adding severely that it was a pity he and I could not find something
+      better to gossip about. Yet her next question would be:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what else did he say, if you please?&rdquo; explaining impatiently when my
+      answer was not of the kind expected: &ldquo;No, no, I mean about me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tea things cleared away, he would bring out his great microscope. To
+      me it was a peep-hole into a fairy world where dwelt strange dragons,
+      mighty monsters, so that I came to regard him as a sort of harmless
+      magician. It was his pet study, and looking back, I cannot help
+      associating his enthusiasm for all things microscopical with the fact that
+      he was an exceptionally little man himself, but one of the biggest hearted
+      that ever breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On leaving I would formally hand him my half-crown, &ldquo;with mamma's
+      compliments,&rdquo; and he would formally accept it. But on putting my hand into
+      my jacket pocket when outside the gate I would invariably find it there.
+      The first time I took it back to him, but unblushingly he repudiated all
+      knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must be another half-crown,&rdquo; he suggested; &ldquo;such things do happen. One
+      puts change into a pocket and overlooks it. Slippery things, half-crowns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning home on this particular day of days, I paused upon the bridge,
+      and watched for awhile the lazy barges manoeuvring their way between the
+      piers. It was one of those hushed summer evenings when the air even of
+      grim cities is full of whispering voices; and as, turning away from the
+      river, I passed through the white toll-gate, I had a sense of leaving
+      myself behind me on the bridge. So vivid was the impression, that I looked
+      back, half expecting to see myself still leaning over the iron parapet,
+      looking down into the sunlit water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounds foolish, but I leave it standing, wondering if to others a like
+      experience has ever come. The little chap never came back to me. He passed
+      away from me as a man's body may possibly pass away from him, leaving him
+      only remembrance and regret. For a time I tried to play his games, to
+      dream his dreams, but the substance was wanting. I was only a thin ghost,
+      making believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It troubled me for quite a spell of time, even to the point of tears, this
+      feeling that my childhood lay behind me, this sudden realisation that I
+      was travelling swiftly the strange road called growing up. I did not want
+      to grow up; could nothing be done to stop it? Rather would I be always as
+      I had been, playing, dreaming. The dark way frightened me. Must I go
+      forward?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then gradually, but very slowly, with the long months and years, came to
+      me the consciousness of a new being, new pulsations, sensories,
+      throbbings, rooted in but differing widely from the old; and little Paul,
+      the Paul of whom I have hitherto spoken, faded from my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So likewise must I let him fade with sorrow from this book. But before I
+      part with him entirely, let me recall what else I can remember of him.
+      Thus we shall be quit of him, and he will interfere with us no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chief among the pictures that I see is that of my aunt Fan, crouching over
+      the kitchen fire; her skirt and crinoline rolled up round her waist,
+      leaving as sacrifice to custom only her petticoat. Up and down her body
+      sways in rhythmic motion, her hands stroking affectionately her own knees;
+      the while I, with paper knife for sword, or horse of broomstick, stand
+      opposite her, flourishing and declaiming. Sometimes I am a knight and she
+      a wicked ogre. She is slain, growling and swearing, and at once becomes
+      the beautiful princess that I secure and bear away with me upon the
+      prancing broomstick. So long as the princess is merely holding sweet
+      converse with me from her high-barred window, the scene is realistic, at
+      least, to sufficiency; but the bearing away has to be make-believe; for my
+      aunt cannot be persuaded to leave her chair before the fire, and the
+      everlasting rubbing of her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At other times, with the assistance of the meat chopper, I am an Indian
+      brave, and then she is Laughing Water or Singing Sunshine, and we go out
+      scalping together; or in less bloodthirsty moods I am the Fairy Prince and
+      she the Sleeping Beauty. But in such parts she is not at her best. Better,
+      when seated in the centre of the up-turned table, I am Captain Cook, and
+      she the Cannibal Chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall skin him and hang him in the larder till Sunday week,&rdquo; says my
+      aunt, smacking her lips, &ldquo;then he'll be just in right condition; not too
+      tough and not too high.&rdquo; She was always strong in detail, was my aunt Fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not wish to deprive my aunt of any credit due to her, but the more I
+      exercise my memory for evidence, the more I am convinced that her
+      compliance on these occasions was not conceived entirely in the spirit of
+      self-sacrifice. Often would she suggest the game and even the theme; in
+      such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old theatrical
+      parlance, would have been termed the heavy lead, the dragons and the
+      wicked uncles, the fussy necromancers and the uninvited fairies. As
+      authoress of a new cookery book for use in giant-land, my aunt, I am sure,
+      would have been successful. Most recipes that one reads are so
+      monotonously meagre: &ldquo;Boil him,&rdquo; &ldquo;Put her on the spit and roast her for
+      supper,&rdquo; &ldquo;Cook 'em in a pie&mdash;with plenty of gravy;&rdquo; but my aunt into
+      the domestic economy of Ogredom introduced variety and daintiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, my dear,&rdquo; my aunt would direct, &ldquo;we'll have him stuffed with
+      chestnuts and served on toast. And don't forget the giblets. They make
+      such excellent sauce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With regard to the diet of imprisoned maidens she would advise:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too much fish&mdash;it spoils the flesh for roasting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The things that she would turn people into&mdash;king's sons, rightful
+      princesses, such sort of people&mdash;people who after a time, one would
+      think, must have quite forgotten what they started as. To let her have her
+      way was a lesson to me in natural history both present and pre-historic.
+      The most beautiful damsel that ever lived she would without a moment's
+      hesitation turn into a Glyptodon or a Hippocrepian. Afterwards, when I
+      could guess at the spelling, I would look these creatures up in the
+      illustrated dictionary, and feel that under no circumstances could I have
+      loved the lady ever again. Warriors and kings she would delight in
+      transforming into plaice or prawns, and haughty queens into Brussels
+      sprouts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With gusto would she plan a complicated slaughter, paying heed to every
+      detail: the sharpening of the knives, the having ready of mops and pails
+      of water for purposes of after cleaning up. As a writer she would have
+      followed the realistic school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her death, with which we invariably wound up the afternoon, was another
+      conscientious effort. Indeed, her groans and writhings would sometimes
+      frighten me. I always welcomed the last gurgle. That finished, but not a
+      moment before, my aunt would let down her skirt&mdash;in this way
+      suggesting the fall of the curtain upon our play&mdash;and set to work to
+      get the tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another frequently recurring picture that I see is of myself in
+      glazed-peaked cap explaining many things the while we walk through dingy
+      streets to yet a smaller figure curly haired and open eyed. Still every
+      now and then she runs ahead to turn and look admiringly into my face as on
+      the day she first became captive to the praise and fame of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad of her company for more reasons than she knew of. For one, she
+      protected me against my baser self. With her beside me I should not have
+      dared to flee from sudden foes. Indeed, together we courted adventure; for
+      once you get used to it this standing hazard of attack adds a charm to
+      outdoor exercise that older folk in districts better policed enjoy not. So
+      possibly my dog feels when together we take the air. To me it is a simple
+      walk, maybe a little tiresome, suggested rather by contemplation of my
+      waistband than by desire for walking for mere walking's sake; to him an
+      expedition full of danger and surprises: &ldquo;The gentleman asleep with one
+      eye open on The Chequer's doorstep! will he greet me with a friendly sniff
+      or try to bite my head off? This cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching
+      against the lamp-post! shall we pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,'
+      or become locked in a life and death struggle? Impossible to say. This
+      coming corner, now, 'Ware! Is anybody waiting round there to kill me, or
+      not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the trusting face beside me nerved me. As reward in lonely places I
+      would let her hold my hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second advantage I derived from her company was that of being less
+      trampled on, less walked over, less swept aside into doorway or gutter
+      than when alone. A pretty, winsome face had this little maid, if Memory
+      plays me not kindly false; but also she had a vocabulary; and when the
+      blind idiot, male or female, instead of passing us by walking round us,
+      would, after the custom of the blind idiot, seek to gain the other side of
+      us by walking through us, she would use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, where yer coming to, old glass-eye? We ain't sperrits. Can't
+      yer see us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And if they attempted reply, her child's treble, so strangely at variance
+      with her dainty appearance, would only rise more shrill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Garn! They'd run out of 'eads when they was making you. That's only a
+      turnip wot you've got stuck on top of yer!&rdquo; I offer but specimens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was it of the slightest use attempting personal chastisement, as
+      sometimes an irate lady or gentleman would be foolish enough to do. As
+      well might an hippopotamus attempt to reprove a terrier. The only result
+      was to provide comedy for the entire street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On these occasions our positions were reversed, I being the admiring
+      spectator of her prowess. Yet to me she was ever meek, almost irritatingly
+      submissive. She found out where I lived and would often come and wait for
+      me for hours, her little face pressed tight against the iron railings,
+      until either I came out or shook my head at her from my bedroom window,
+      when she would run off, the dying away into silence of her pattering feet
+      leaving me a little sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think I cared for her in a way, yet she never entered into my
+      day-dreams, which means that she existed for me only in the outer world of
+      shadows that lay round about me and was not of my real life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also, I think she was unwise, introducing me to the shop, for children and
+      dogs&mdash;one seems unconsciously to bracket them in one's thoughts&mdash;are
+      snobbish little wretches. If only her father had been a dealer in firewood
+      I could have soothed myself by imagining mistakes. It was a common
+      occurrence, as I well knew, for children of quite the best families to be
+      brought up by wood choppers. Fairies, the best intentioned in the world,
+      but born muddlers, were generally responsible for these mishaps, which,
+      however, always became righted in time for the wedding. Or even had he
+      been a pork butcher, and there were many in the neighbourhood, I could
+      have thought of him as a swineherd, and so found precedent for hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a fishmonger&mdash;from six in the evening a fried fishmonger! I
+      searched history in vain. Fried fishmongers were without the pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So gradually our meetings became less frequent, though I knew that every
+      afternoon she waited in the quiet Stainsby Road, where dwelt in
+      semi-detached, six-roomed villas the aristocracy of Poplar, and that after
+      awhile, for arriving late at times I have been witness to the sad fact,
+      tears would trace pathetic patterns upon her dust-besprinkled cheeks; and
+      with the advent of the world-illuminating Barbara, to which event I am
+      drawing near, they ceased altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So began and ended my first romance. One of these days&mdash;some quiet
+      summer's afternoon, when even the air of Pigott Street vibrates with
+      tenderness beneath the whispered sighs of Memory, I shall walk into the
+      little grocer's shop and boldly ask to see her. So far have I already gone
+      as to trace her, and often have I tried to catch sight of her through the
+      glass door, but hitherto in vain. I know she is the more or less troubled
+      mother of a numerous progeny. I am told she has grown stout, and probable
+      enough it is that her tongue has gained rather than lost in sharpness. Yet
+      under all the unrealities the clumsy-handed world has built about her, I
+      shall see, I know, the lithesome little maid with fond, admiring eyes.
+      What help they were to me I never knew till I had lost them. How hard to
+      gain such eyes I have learned since. Were we to write the truth in our
+      confession books, should we not admit the quality we most admire in others
+      is admiration of ourselves? And is it not a wise selection? If you would
+      have me admirable, my friend, admire me, and speak your commendation
+      without stint that in the sunshine of your praises I may wax. For
+      indifference maketh an indifferent man, and contempt a contemptible man.
+      Come, is it not true? Does not all that is worthy in us grow best by
+      honour?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chief among the remaining figures on my childhood's stage were the many
+      servants of our house, the &ldquo;generals,&rdquo; as they were termed. So rapid, as a
+      rule, was their transit through our kitchen that only one or two,
+      conspicuous by reason of their lingering, remain upon my view. It was a
+      neighbourhood in which domestic servants were not much required. Those
+      intending to take up the calling seriously went westward. The local ranks
+      were recruited mainly from the discontented or the disappointed, from
+      those who, unappreciated at home, hoped from the stranger more
+      discernment; or from the love-lorn, the jilted and the jealous, who took
+      the cap and apron as in an earlier age their like would have taken the
+      veil. Maybe, to the comparative seclusion of our basement, as contrasted
+      with the alternative frivolity of shop or factory, they felt in such mood
+      more attuned. With the advent of the new or the recovery of the old young
+      man they would plunge again into the vain world, leaving my poor mother to
+      search afresh amid the legions of the cursed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these I made such comradeship as I could, for I had no child friends.
+      Kind creatures were most of them, at least so I found them. They were poor
+      at &ldquo;making believe,&rdquo; but would always squeeze ten minutes from their work
+      to romp with me, and that, perhaps, was healthier for me. What, perhaps,
+      was not so good for me was that, staggered at the amount of
+      &ldquo;book-learning&rdquo; implied by my conversation (for the journalistic instinct,
+      I am inclined to think, was early displayed in me), they would listen
+      open-mouthed to all my information, regarding me as a precocious oracle.
+      Sometimes they would obtain permission to take me home with them to tea,
+      generously eager that their friends should also profit by me. Then,
+      encouraged by admiring, grinning faces, I would &ldquo;hold forth,&rdquo; keenly
+      enjoying the sound of my own proud piping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As good as a book, ain't he?&rdquo; was the tribute most often paid to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As good as a play,&rdquo; one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer, went
+      so far as to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already I regarded myself as among the Immortals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One girl, a dear, wholesome creature named Janet, stayed with us for
+      months and might have stayed years, but for her addiction to strong
+      language. The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the barge
+      &ldquo;Nancy Jane,&rdquo; trading between Purfleet and Ponder's End, her conversation
+      was at once my terror and delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Janet,&rdquo; my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up
+      instinctively to guard her ears, &ldquo;how can you use such words?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What words, mum?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The things you have just called the gas man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him! Well, did you see what he did, mum? Walked straight into my clean
+      kitchen, without even wiping his boots, the&mdash;&rdquo; And before my mother
+      could stop her, Janet had relieved her feelings by calling him it&mdash;or
+      rather them&mdash;again, without any idea that she had done aught else
+      than express in fitting phraseology a natural human emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were good friends, Janet and I, and therefore it was that I personally
+      undertook her reformation. It was not an occasion for mincing one's words.
+      The stake at issue was, I felt, too important. I told her bluntly that if
+      she persisted in using such language she would inevitably go to hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then where's my father going?&rdquo; demanded Janet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he use language?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I gathered from Janet that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of hearing
+      her father could ever again take interest in the feeble efforts of
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid, Janet,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;that if he doesn't give it up&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's the only way he can talk,&rdquo; interrupted Janet. &ldquo;He don't mean
+      anything by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I sighed, yet set my face against weakness. &ldquo;You see, Janet, people who
+      swear do go there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Janet would not believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God send my dear, kind father to hell just because he can't talk like the
+      gentlefolks! Don't you believe it of Him, Master Paul. He's got more
+      sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hope I pain no one by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should be
+      sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs of
+      childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than I can
+      tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of immeasurable
+      Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it comforted me to
+      whisper to myself: &ldquo;I don't believe it of Him. He's got more sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And about that period I had need of all the comfort I could get. As we
+      descend the road of life, the journey, demanding so much of our attention,
+      becomes of more importance than the journey's end; but to the child,
+      standing at the valley's gate, the terminating hills are clearly visible.
+      What lies beyond them is his constant wonder. I never questioned my
+      parents directly on the subject, shrinking as so strangely we all do, both
+      young and old, from discussion of the very matters of most moment to us;
+      and they, on their part, not guessing my need, contented themselves with
+      the vague generalities with which we seek to hide even from ourselves the
+      poverty of our beliefs. But there were foolish voices about me less
+      reticent; while the literature, illustrated and otherwise, provided in
+      those days for serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt
+      brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a fiery furnace for ever and
+      ever. Were your imagination weak you could turn to the accompanying
+      illustration, and see at a glance how you yourself would writhe and shrink
+      and scream, while cheerful devils, well organised, were busy stoking. I
+      had been burnt once, rather badly, in consequence of live coals, in course
+      of transit on a shovel, being let fall upon me. I imagined these burning
+      coals, not confined to a mere part of my body, but pressing upon me
+      everywhere, not snatched swiftly off by loving hands, the pain assuaged by
+      applications of soft soap and the blue bag, but left there, eating into my
+      flesh and veins. And this continued for eternity. You suffered for an
+      hour, a day, a thousand years, and were no nearer to the end; ten
+      thousand, a million years, and yet, as at the very first, it was for ever,
+      and for ever still it would always be for ever! I suffered also from
+      insomnia about this period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then be good,&rdquo; replied the foolish voices round me; &ldquo;never do wrong, and
+      so avoid this endless agony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was so easy to do wrong. There were so many wrong things to do, and
+      the doing of them was so natural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then repent,&rdquo; said the voices, always ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how did one repent? What was repentance? Did I &ldquo;hate my sin,&rdquo; as I was
+      instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to hell for it?
+      Because the latter, even my child's sense told me, was no true repentance.
+      Yet how could one know the difference?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above all else there haunted me the fear of the &ldquo;Unforgivable Sin.&rdquo; What
+      this was I was never able to discover. I dreaded to enquire too closely,
+      lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the terror of it
+      clung to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe,&rdquo; said the voices; &ldquo;so only shall you be saved.&rdquo; How believe? How
+      know you did believe? Hours would I kneel in the dark, repeating in a
+      whispered scream:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe, I believe. Oh, I do believe!&rdquo; and then rise with white
+      knuckles, wondering if I really did believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another question rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings I had
+      made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most disreputable
+      specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him. Our first meeting
+      had been outside a confectioner's window, in the Commercial Road, where he
+      had discovered me standing, my nose against the glass, a mere palpitating
+      Appetite on legs. He had seized me by the collar, and hauled me into the
+      shop. There, dropping me upon a stool, he bade me eat. Pride of race
+      prompted me politely to decline, but his language became so awful that in
+      fear and trembling I obeyed. So soon as I was finished&mdash;it cost him
+      two and fourpence, I remember&mdash;we walked down to the docks together,
+      and he told me stories of the sea and land that made my blood run cold.
+      Altogether, in the course of three weeks or a month, we met about half a
+      dozen times, when much the same programme was gone through. I think I was
+      a fairly frank child, but I said nothing about him at home, feeling
+      instinctively that if I did there would be an end of our comradeship,
+      which was dear to me: not merely by reason of the pastry, though I admit
+      that was a consideration, but also for his wondrous tales. I believed them
+      all implicitly, and so came to regard him as one of the most interesting
+      criminals as yet unhanged: and what was sad about the case, as I felt
+      myself, was that his recital of his many iniquities, instead of repelling,
+      attracted me to him. If ever there existed a sinner, here was one. He
+      chewed tobacco&mdash;one of the hundred or so deadly sins, according to my
+      theological library&mdash;and was generally more or less drunk. Not that a
+      stranger would have noticed this; the only difference being that when
+      sober he appeared constrained&mdash;was less his natural, genial self. In
+      a burst of confidence he once admitted to me that he was the biggest
+      blackguard in the merchant service. Unacquainted with the merchant
+      service, as at the time I was, I saw no reason to doubt him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night in a state of intoxication he walked over a gangway and was
+      drowned. Our mutual friend, the confectioner, seeing me pass the window,
+      came out to tell me so; and having heard, I walked on, heavy of heart, and
+      pondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About his eternal destination there could be no question. The known facts
+      precluded the least ray of hope. How could I be happy in heaven, supposing
+      I eventually did succeed in slipping in, knowing that he, the lovable old
+      scamp, was burning for ever in hell?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How could Janet, taking it that she reformed and thus escaped damnation,
+      be contented, knowing the father she loved doomed to torment? The heavenly
+      hosts, so I argued, could be composed only of the callous and indifferent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered how people could go about their business, eat, drink and be
+      merry, with tremendous fate hanging thus ever suspended over their heads.
+      When for a little space I myself forgot it, always it fell back upon me
+      with increased weight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was the contemplation of heaven itself particularly attractive to me,
+      for it was a foolish paradise these foolish voices had fashioned out of
+      their folly. You stood about and sang hymns&mdash;for ever! I was assured
+      that my fear of finding the programme monotonous was due only to my state
+      of original sin, that when I got there I should discover I liked it. But I
+      would have given much for the hope of avoiding both their heaven and their
+      hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately for my sanity I was not left long to brood unoccupied upon
+      such themes. Our worldly affairs, under the sunshine of old Hasluck's
+      round red face, prospered&mdash;for awhile; and one afternoon my father,
+      who had been away from home since breakfast time, calling me into his
+      office where also sat my mother, informed me that the long-talked-of
+      school was become at last a concrete thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The term commences next week,&rdquo; explained my father. &ldquo;It is not exactly
+      what I had intended, but it will do&mdash;for the present. Later, of
+      course, you will go to one of the big public schools; your mother and I
+      have not yet quite decided which.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will meet other boys there, good and bad,&rdquo; said my mother, who sat
+      clasping and unclasping her hands. &ldquo;Be very careful, dear, how you choose
+      your companions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will learn to take your own part,&rdquo; said my father. &ldquo;School is an
+      epitome of the world. One must assert oneself, or one is sat upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew not what to reply, the vista thus opened out to me was so
+      unexpected. My blood rejoiced, but my heart sank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take one of your long walks,&rdquo; said my father, smiling, &ldquo;and think it
+      over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if you are in any doubt, you know where to go for guidance, don't
+      you?&rdquo; whispered my mother, who was very grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet I went to bed, dreaming of quite other things that night: of Queens of
+      Beauty bending down to crown my brows with laurel: of wronged Princesses
+      for whose cause I rode to death or victory. For on my return home, being
+      called into the drawing-room by my father, I stood transfixed, my cap in
+      hand, staring with all my eyes at the vision that I saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No such wonder had I ever seen before, at all events, not to my
+      remembrance. The maidens that one meets in Poplar streets may be fair
+      enough in their way, but their millinery displays them not to advantage;
+      and the few lady visitors that came to us were of a staid and matronly
+      appearance. Only out of pictures hitherto had such witchery looked upon
+      me; and from these the spell faded as one gazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard old Hasluck's smoky voice saying, &ldquo;My little gell, Barbara,&rdquo; and I
+      went nearer to her, moving unconsciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can kiss 'er,&rdquo; said the smoky voice again; &ldquo;she won't bite.&rdquo; But I
+      did not kiss her. Nor ever felt I wanted to, upon the mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose she must have been about fourteen, and I a little over ten,
+      though tall for my age. Later I came to know she had that rare gold hair
+      that holds the light, so that upon her face, which seemed of dainty
+      porcelain, there ever fell a softened radiance as from some shining
+      aureole; those blue eyes where dwell mysteries, shadow veiled. At the time
+      I knew nothing, but that it seemed to me as though the fairy-tales had all
+      come true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled, understanding and well pleased with my confusion. Child though
+      I was&mdash;little more than child though she was, it flattered her
+      vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fair and sweet, you had but that one fault. Would it had been another,
+      less cruel to you yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Correct&rdquo; is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe Doctor
+      Florret and all his attributes. He was a large man, but not too large&mdash;just
+      the size one would select for the head-master of an important middle-class
+      school; stout, not fat, suggesting comfort, not grossness. His hands were
+      white and well shaped. On the left he wore a fine diamond ring, but it
+      shone rather than sparkled. He spoke of commonplace things in a voice that
+      lent dignity even to the weather. His face, which was clean-shaven,
+      radiated benignity tempered by discretion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So likewise all about him: his wife, the feminine counterpart of himself.
+      Seeing them side by side one felt tempted to believe that for his special
+      benefit original methods had been reverted to, and she fashioned, as his
+      particular helpmeet, out of one of his own ribs. His furniture was solid,
+      meant for use, not decoration. His pictures, following the rule laid down
+      for dress, graced without drawing attention to his walls. He ever said the
+      correct thing at the correct time in the correct manner. Doubtful of the
+      correct thing to do, one could always learn it by waiting till he did it;
+      when one at once felt that nothing else could possibly have been correct.
+      He held on all matters the correct views. To differ from him was to
+      discover oneself a revolutionary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In practice, as I learned at the cost of four more or less wasted years,
+      he of course followed the methods considered correct by English schoolmen
+      from the days of Edward VI. onwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heaven knows I worked hard. I wanted to learn. Ambition&mdash;the all
+      containing ambition of a boy that &ldquo;has its centre everywhere nor cares to
+      fix itself to form&rdquo; stirred within me. Did I pass a speaker at some
+      corner, hatless, perspiring, pointing Utopias in the air to restless
+      hungry eyes, at once I saw myself, a Demosthenes swaying multitudes, a
+      statesman holding the House of Commons spellbound, the Prime Minister of
+      England, worshipped by the entire country. Even the Opposition papers, had
+      I known of them, I should have imagined forced to reluctant admiration.
+      Did the echo of a distant drum fall upon my ear, then before me rose
+      picturesque fields of carnage, one figure ever conspicuous: Myself, well
+      to the front, isolated. Promotion in the British army of my dream being a
+      matter purely of merit, I returned Commander-in-Chief. Vast crowds
+      thronged every flag-decked street. I saw white waving hands from every
+      roof and window. I heard the dull, deep roar of welcome, as with superb
+      seat upon my snow-white charger&mdash;or should it be coal-black? The
+      point cost me much consideration, so anxious was I that the day should be
+      without a flaw&mdash;I slowly paced at the head of my victorious troops,
+      between wild waves of upturned faces: walked into a lamp-post or on to the
+      toes of some irascible old gentleman, and awoke. A drunken sailor stormed
+      from between swing doors and tacked tumultuously down the street: the
+      factory chimney belching smoke became a swaying mast. The costers round
+      about me shouted &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir. 'Ready, ay, ready.&rdquo; I was Christopher
+      Columbus, Drake, Nelson, rolled into one. Spurning the presumption of
+      modern geographers, I discovered new continents. I defeated the French&mdash;those
+      useful French! I died in the moment of victory. A nation mourned me and I
+      was buried in Westminster Abbey. Also I lived and was created a Duke.
+      Either alternative had its charm: personally I was indifferent. Boys who
+      on November the ninth, as explained by letters from their mothers, read by
+      Doctor Florret with a snort, were suffering from a severe toothache, told
+      me on November the tenth of the glories of Lord Mayor's Shows. I heard
+      their chatter fainter and fainter as from an ever-increasing distance. The
+      bells of Bow were ringing in my ears. I saw myself a merchant prince,
+      though still young. Nobles crowded my counting house. I lent them millions
+      and married their daughters. I listened, unobserved in a corner, to
+      discussion on some new book. Immediately I was a famous author. All men
+      praised me: for of reviewers and their density I, in those days, knew
+      nothing. Poetry, fiction, history, I wrote them all; and all men read, and
+      wondered. Only here was a crumpled rose leaf in the pillow on which I laid
+      my swelling head: penmanship was vexation to me, and spelling puzzled me,
+      so that I wrote with sorrow and many blots and scratchings out. Almost I
+      put aside the idea of becoming an author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But along whichever road I might fight my way to the Elysian Fields of
+      fame, education, I dimly but most certainly comprehended, was a necessary
+      weapon to my hand. And so, with aching heart and aching head, I pored over
+      my many books. I see myself now in my small bedroom, my elbows planted on
+      the shaky, one-legged table, startled every now and again by the frizzling
+      of my hair coming in contact with the solitary candle. On cold nights I
+      wear my overcoat, turned up about the neck, a blanket round my legs, and
+      often I must sit with my fingers in my ears, the better to shut out the
+      sounds of life, rising importunately from below. &ldquo;A song, Of a song, To a
+      song, A song, O! song!&rdquo; &ldquo;I love, Thou lovest, He she or it loves. I should
+      or would love&rdquo; over and over again, till my own voice seems some strange
+      buzzing thing about me, while my head grows smaller and smaller till I put
+      my hands up frightened, wondering if it still be entire upon my shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was I more stupid than the average, or is a boy's brain physically
+      incapable of the work our educational system demands of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Latin and Greek&rdquo; I hear repeating the suave tones of Doctor Florret,
+      echoing as ever the solemn croak of Correctness, &ldquo;are useful as mental
+      gymnastics.&rdquo; My dear Doctor Florret and Co., cannot you, out of the vast
+      storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better fitted
+      to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of ten-to-fourteen?
+      You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained by years of practice
+      to its subtlest uses, take me from your bookshelf, say, your Browning or
+      even your Shakespeare. Come, you know this language well. You have not
+      merely learned: it is your mother tongue. Construe for me this short
+      passage, these few verses: parse, analyse, resolve into component parts!
+      And now, will you maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained,
+      ink-bespattered little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's
+      Metamorphoses to treat in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible to
+      insist upon his practising his skinny little arms with hundred pounds
+      dumb-bells?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were the sons of City men, of not well-to-do professional men, of minor
+      officials, clerks, shopkeepers, our roads leading through the workaday
+      world. Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies utterly useless to
+      us. How I hated them, these youth-tormenting Shades. Homer! how I wished
+      the fishermen had asked him that absurd riddle earlier. Horace! why could
+      not that shipwreck have succeeded: it would have in the case of any one
+      but a classic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until one blessed day there fell into my hands a wondrous talisman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearken unto me, ye heavy burdened little brethren of mine. Waste not your
+      substance upon tops and marbles, nor yet upon tuck (Do ye still call it
+      &ldquo;tuck&rdquo;?), but scrape and save. For in the neighbourhood of Paternoster Row
+      there dwells a good magician who for silver will provide you with a &ldquo;Key&rdquo;
+       that shall open wide for you the gates of Hades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By its aid, the Frogs of Aristophanes became my merry friends. With
+      Ulysses I wandered eagerly through Wonderland. Doctor Florret was charmed
+      with my progress, which was real, for now, at last, I was studying
+      according to the laws of common sense, understanding first, explaining
+      afterwards. Let Youth, that the folly of Age would imprison in ignorance,
+      provide itself with &ldquo;Keys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But let me not seem to claim credit due to another. Dan it was&mdash;Dan
+      of the strong arm and the soft smile, Dan the wise hater of all useless
+      labour, sharp-witted, easy-going Dan, who made this grand discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan followed me a term later into the Lower Fourth, but before he had been
+      there a week was handling Latin verse with an ease and dexterity
+      suggestive of unholy dealings with the Devil. In a lonely corner of
+      Regent's Park, first making sure no one was within earshot, he revealed to
+      me his magic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tell the others,&rdquo; he commanded; &ldquo;or it will get out, and then
+      nobody will be any the better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is it right?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, young 'un,&rdquo; said Dan; &ldquo;what are you here for&mdash;what's your
+      father paying school fees for (it was the appeal to our conscientiousness
+      most often employed by Dr. Florret himself), for you to play a silly game,
+      or to learn something?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because if it's only a game&mdash;we boys against the masters,&rdquo; continued
+      Dan, &ldquo;then let's play according to rule. If we're here to learn&mdash;well,
+      you've been in the class four months and I've just come, and I bet I know
+      more Ovid than you do already.&rdquo; Which was true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I thanked Dan and shared with him his key; and all the Latin I
+      remember, for whatever good it may be to me, I take it I owe to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And knowledge of yet greater value do I owe to the good fortune that his
+      sound mother wit was ever at my disposal to correct my dreamy
+      unfeasibility; for from first to last he was my friend; and to have been
+      the chosen friend of Dan, shrewd judge of man and boy, I deem no
+      unimportant feather in my cap. He &ldquo;took to&rdquo; me, he said, because I was so
+      &ldquo;jolly green&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;such a rummy little mug.&rdquo; No other reason would he
+      ever give me, save only a sweet smile and a tumbling of my hair with his
+      great hand; but I think I understood. And I loved him because he was big
+      and strong and handsome and kind; no one but a little boy knows how brutal
+      or how kind a big boy can be. I was still somewhat of an effeminate little
+      chap, nervous and shy, with a pink and white face, and hair that no amount
+      of wetting would make straight. I was growing too fast, which took what
+      strength I had, and my journey every day, added to school work and home
+      work, maybe was too much for my years. Every morning I had to be up at
+      six, leaving the house before seven to catch the seven fifteen from Poplar
+      station; and from Chalk Farm I had to walk yet another couple of miles.
+      But that I did not mind, for at Chalk Farm station Dan was always waiting
+      for me. In the afternoon we walked back together also; and when I was
+      tired and my back ached&mdash;just as if some one had cut a piece out of
+      it, I felt&mdash;he would put his arm round me, for he always knew, and
+      oh, how strong and restful it was to lean against, so that one walked as
+      in an easy-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me, remembering how I would walk thus by his side, looking up
+      shyly into his face, thinking how strong and good he was, feeling so glad
+      he liked me, I can understand a little how a woman loves. He was so solid.
+      With his arm round me, it was good to feel weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first we were in the same class, the Lower Third. He had no business
+      there. He was head and shoulders taller than any of us and years older. It
+      was a disgrace to him that he was not in the Upper Fourth. The Doctor
+      would tell him so before us all twenty times a week. Old Waterhouse (I
+      call him &ldquo;Old Waterhouse&rdquo; because &ldquo;Mister Waterhouse, M.A.,&rdquo; would convey
+      no meaning to me, and I should not know about whom I was speaking) who
+      cordially liked him, was honestly grieved. We, his friends, though it was
+      pleasant to have him among us, suffered in our pride of him. The only
+      person quite contented was Dan himself. It was his way in all things.
+      Others had their opinion of what was good for him. He had his own, and his
+      own was the only opinion that ever influenced him. The Lower Third suited
+      him. For him personally the Upper Fourth had no attraction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even in the Lower Third he was always at the bottom. He preferred it.
+      He selected the seat and kept it, in spite of all allurements, in spite of
+      all reproaches. It was nearest to the door. It enabled him to be first out
+      and last in. Also it afforded a certain sense of retirement. Its occupant,
+      to an extent screened from observation, became in the course of time
+      almost forgotten. To Dan's philosophical temperament its practical
+      advantages outweighed all sentimental objection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only on one occasion do I remember his losing it. As a rule, tiresome
+      questions, concerning past participles, square roots, or meridians never
+      reached him, being snapped up in transit by arm-waving lovers of such
+      trifles. The few that by chance trickled so far he took no notice of. They
+      possessed no interest for him, and he never pretended that they did. But
+      one day, taken off his guard, he gave voice quite unconsciously to a
+      correct reply, with the immediate result of finding himself in an exposed
+      position on the front bench. I had never seen Dan out of temper before,
+      but that moment had any of us ventured upon a whispered congratulation we
+      would have had our head punched, I feel confident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Waterhouse thought that here at last was reformation. &ldquo;Come, Brian,&rdquo;
+       he cried, rubbing his long thin hands together with delight, &ldquo;after all,
+      you're not such a fool as you pretend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never said I was,&rdquo; muttered Dan to himself, with a backward glance of
+      regret towards his lost seclusion; and before the day was out he had
+      worked his way back to it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we were going out together, old Waterhouse passed us on the stairs:
+      &ldquo;Haven't you any sense of shame, my boy?&rdquo; he asked sorrowfully, laying his
+      hand kindly on Dan's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; answered Dan, with his frank smile; &ldquo;plenty. It isn't yours,
+      that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was an excellent fighter. In the whole school of over two hundred boys,
+      not half a dozen, and those only Upper Sixth boys&mdash;fellows who came
+      in top hats with umbrellas, and who wouldn't out of regard to their own
+      dignity&mdash;could have challenged him with any chance of success. Yet he
+      fought very seldom, and then always in a bored, lazy fashion, as though he
+      were doing it purely to oblige the other fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon, just as we were about to enter Regent's Park by the wicket
+      opposite Hanover Gate, a biggish boy, an errand boy carrying an empty
+      basket, and supported by two smaller boys, barred our way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't come in here,&rdquo; said the boy with the basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; inquired Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Cos if you do I shall kick you,&rdquo; was the simple explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without a word Dan turned away, prepared to walk on to the next opening.
+      The boy with the basket, evidently encouraged, followed us: &ldquo;Now, I'm
+      going to give you your coward's blow,&rdquo; he said, stepping in front of us;
+      &ldquo;will you take it quietly?&rdquo; It is a lonely way, the Outer Circle, on a
+      winter's afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you afterwards,&rdquo; said Dan, stopping short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy gave him a slight slap on the cheek. It could not have hurt, but
+      the indignity, of course, was great. No boy of honour, according to our
+      code, could have accepted it without retaliating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; asked Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all&mdash;for the present,&rdquo; replied the boy with the basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; said Dan, and walked on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad he didn't insist on fighting,&rdquo; remarked Dan, cheerfully, as we
+      proceeded; &ldquo;I'm going to a party tonight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet on another occasion, in a street off Lisson Grove, he insisted on
+      fighting a young rough half again his own weight, who, brushing up against
+      him, had knocked his hat off into the mud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't have said anything about his knocking it off,&rdquo; explained Dan
+      afterwards, tenderly brushing the poor bruised thing with his coat sleeve,
+      &ldquo;if he hadn't kicked it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On another occasion I remember, three or four of us, Dan among the number,
+      were on our way one broiling summer's afternoon to Hadley Woods. As we
+      turned off from the highroad just beyond Barnet and struck into the
+      fields, Dan drew from his pocket an enormous juicy-looking pear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you get that from?&rdquo; inquired one, Dudley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From that big greengrocer's opposite Barnet Church,&rdquo; answered Dan. &ldquo;Have
+      a bit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told me you hadn't any more money,&rdquo; retorted Dudley, in reproachful
+      tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more I had,&rdquo; replied Dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end of
+      his pocket-knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear,&rdquo; argued
+      Dudley, accepting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't buy it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say you stole it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a thief,&rdquo; denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away a
+      pip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it. So are you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the good of talking nonsense. You robbed an orchard only last
+      Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That isn't stealing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't the same thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. &ldquo;Stealing is
+      stealing,&rdquo; he would have it, &ldquo;whether you take it off a tree or out of a
+      basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a piece?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all had a
+      piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so. It did not
+      agitate him in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me,
+      and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes confusion. The
+      yearly examination was approaching. My father and mother said nothing, but
+      I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my father, to see
+      how much I had accomplished; my mother, how much I had endeavoured. I had
+      worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes depend less upon what
+      you know than upon what you can make others believe you know; which
+      applies to prizes beyond those of school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going in for anything, Dan?&rdquo; I asked him. We were discussing the
+      subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to ask
+      it of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're not giving away anything I particularly want,&rdquo; murmured Dan, in
+      his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it
+      must be confessed, not worth their cost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?&rdquo; he asked next, as I
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean to have a shot at the History,&rdquo; I admitted. &ldquo;Wish I was better at
+      dates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's always two-thirds dates,&rdquo; Dan assured me, to my discouragement. &ldquo;Old
+      Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that chap
+      Raleigh was born.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize,&rdquo; I explained to
+      him. I never felt shy with Dan. He never laughed at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You oughtn't to have done that,&rdquo; he said. I stared. &ldquo;It isn't fair to the
+      other fellows. That won't be your winning the prize; that will be your
+      getting it through favouritism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they can pray, too,&rdquo; I reminded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you all pray for it,&rdquo; answered Dan, &ldquo;then it will go, not to the
+      fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the
+      hardest. That isn't old Florret's idea, I'm sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we are told to pray for things we want,&rdquo; I insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beastly mean way of getting 'em,&rdquo; retorted Dan. And no argument that came
+      to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right thinking
+      on this point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would judge all matters for himself. In his opinion Achilles was a
+      coward, not a hero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of him
+      except his heel, and let them have a shot at that,&rdquo; he argued; &ldquo;King
+      Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it wasn't playing
+      the game. There's no pluck in fighting if you know you're bound to win.
+      Beastly cads, I call them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I won no prize that year. Oddly enough, Dan did, for arithmetic; the only
+      subject studied in the Lower Fourth that interested him. He liked to see
+      things coming right, he explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very curious, Paul,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you seem to know a good deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They asked me all the things I didn't know. They seemed to do it on
+      purpose,&rdquo; I blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm. My father crossed
+      the room and sat down beside me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spud!&rdquo; he said&mdash;it was a long time since he had called me by that
+      childish nickname&mdash;&ldquo;perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the
+      unlucky ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you unlucky?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Invariably,&rdquo; answered my father, rumpling his hair. &ldquo;I don't know why. I
+      try hard&mdash;I do the right thing, but it turns out wrong. It always
+      does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought Mr. Hasluck was bringing us such good fortune,&rdquo; I said,
+      looking up in surprise. &ldquo;We're getting on, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have thought so before, so often,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;and it has always
+      ended in a&mdash;in a collapse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to another
+      boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, when I married your mother,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I was a rich man. She
+      had everything she wanted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you will get it all back,&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I try to think so,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I do think so&mdash;generally speaking.
+      But there are times&mdash;you would not understand&mdash;they come to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she is happy,&rdquo; I persisted; &ldquo;we are all happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I watch her,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Women suffer more than we do. They live more in
+      the present. I see my hopes, but she&mdash;she sees only me, and I have
+      always been a failure. She has lost faith in me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I could say nothing. I understood but dimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul,&rdquo; he continued after a
+      silence. &ldquo;You can't think what a help education is to a man. I don't mean
+      it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it rather hampers
+      you. But it helps you to bear adversity. To a man with a well-stored mind,
+      life is interesting on a piece of bread and a cup of tea. I know. If it
+      were not for you and your mother I should not trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as I
+      remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh hope,
+      planning, scheming, dreaming again. It was never acting. A worse actor
+      never trod this stage on which we fret. His occasional attempts at a
+      cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our all three crying
+      in one another's arms. No; it was only when things were going well that
+      experience came to his injury. Child of misfortune, he ever rose,
+      Antaeus-like, renewed in strength from contact with his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of
+      prosperity, were oft recurring. Generally speaking, as he himself said, he
+      was full of confidence. Already had he fixed upon our new house in
+      Guilford Street, then still a good residential quarter; while at the same
+      time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently central for office
+      purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey's Inn and Bedford Row,
+      pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the Law's sad courtiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poplar,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;has disappointed me. It seemed a good idea&mdash;a
+      rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors. It ought to
+      have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There have been a few come,&rdquo; my mother reminded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of a sort,&rdquo; admitted my father; &ldquo;a criminal lawyer might gather something
+      of a practice here, I have no doubt. But for general work, of course, you
+      must be in a central position. Now, in Guilford Street people will come to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in,&rdquo; agreed my
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Later on,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;in case I want the whole house for offices,
+      we could live ourselves in Regent's Park. It is quite near to the Park.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?&rdquo; asked my mother, who of the
+      two was by far the more practical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For Hasluck,&rdquo; replied my father, &ldquo;it will be much more convenient. He
+      grumbles every time at the distance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never been quite able to understand,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;why Mr.
+      Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be
+      plenty of solicitors in the City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had heard of me,&rdquo; explained my father. &ldquo;A curious old fellow&mdash;likes
+      his own way of doing things. It's not everyone who would care for him as a
+      client. But I seem able to manage him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It was a
+      large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered, with a
+      balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the Foundling
+      Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having opened the
+      door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing rooms at our own
+      will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen Anne style, of which my
+      father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary expense; for, as my father
+      observed, good furniture is always worth its price, while to buy cheap is
+      pure waste of money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom
+      into the smaller room adjoining, &ldquo;I shall make your mother's boudoir. We
+      will have the walls in lavender and maple green&mdash;she is fond of soft
+      tones&mdash;and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will put
+      her writing-table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be quiet here,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;and we can shut out the bed and
+      the washstand with a screen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent&mdash;eight and sixpence a
+      week, including attendance&mdash;was somewhat more than at the time I
+      ought to have afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the
+      opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my
+      stout landlady, in later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass plate with
+      my father's name upon the door. &ldquo;Luke Kelver, Solicitor. Office hours, 10
+      till 4.&rdquo; A medical student thought he occupied my mother's boudoir. He was
+      a dull dog, full of tiresome talk. But I made acquaintanceship with him;
+      and often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while
+      pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that his
+      walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of wooden-looking
+      horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified prize-fighters, were in
+      reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple green; that at her
+      writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her soft curls
+      curtaining her quiet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE
+      LOVE-LIT EYES.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing missing,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;so far as I can find out.
+      Depend upon it, that's the explanation: she has got frightened and has run
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what was there to frighten her?&rdquo; said my father, pausing with a
+      decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the idea of the thing,&rdquo; replied my mother. &ldquo;She has never been
+      used to waiting at table. She was actually crying about it only last
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what's to be done?&rdquo; said my father. &ldquo;They will be here in less than
+      an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be no dinner for them,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;unless I put on an
+      apron and bring it up myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where does she live?&rdquo; asked my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Ilford,&rdquo; answered my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must make a joke of it,&rdquo; said my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for my
+      mother. A party to dinner&mdash;to a real dinner, beginning with anchovies
+      and ending with ices from the confectioner's; if only they would remain
+      ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences, present themselves as
+      cold custard&mdash;was an extraordinary departure from the even tenor of
+      our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect none previous. First there
+      had been the house to clean and rearrange almost from top to bottom;
+      endless small purchases to be made of articles that Need never misses, but
+      which Ostentation, if ever you let her sneering nose inside the door, at
+      once demands. Then the kitchen range&mdash;it goes without saying: one
+      might imagine them all members of a stove union, controlled by some
+      agitating old boiler out of work&mdash;had taken the opportunity to
+      strike, refusing to bake another dish except under permanently improved
+      conditions, necessitating weary days with plumbers. Fat cookery books,
+      long neglected on their shelf, had been consulted, argued with and abused;
+      experiments made, failures sighed over, successes noted; cost calculated
+      anxiously; means and ways adjusted, hope finally achieved, shadowed by
+      fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed from
+      her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be the
+      dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering table would
+      be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But between the two
+      yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word of warning, had
+      bolted&mdash;was probably by this time well on its way to Ilford. There
+      was excuse for my mother's tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it possible to get somebody else?&rdquo; asked my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible, in the time,&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;I had been training her for
+      the whole week. We had rehearsed it perfectly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have it in the kitchen,&rdquo; suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins to
+      look like ships, which they didn't in the least, &ldquo;and call it a picnic.&rdquo;
+       Really it seemed the only practical solution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a light knock at the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can't be anybody yet, surely,&rdquo; exclaimed my father in alarm, making
+      for his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Barbara, I expect,&rdquo; explained my mother. &ldquo;She promised to come round
+      and help me dress. But now, of course, I shan't want her.&rdquo; My mother's
+      nature was pessimistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon
+      myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the window
+      when Barbara came in at the door&mdash;in those days, I mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was so
+      quick. And at once they saw the humour of the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's going to be no dinner,&rdquo; laughed my father. &ldquo;We are going to look
+      surprised and pretend that it was yesterday. It will be fun to see their
+      faces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There will be a very nice dinner,&rdquo; smiled my mother, &ldquo;but it will be in
+      the kitchen, and there's no way of getting it upstairs.&rdquo; And they
+      explained to her the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood for an instant, her sweet face the gravest in the group. Then a
+      light broke upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get you someone,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, you don't even know the neighbourhood,&rdquo; began my mother. But
+      Barbara had snatched the latchkey from its nail and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With her disappearance, shadow fell again upon us. &ldquo;If there were only an
+      hotel in this beastly neighbourhood,&rdquo; said my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must entertain them by yourself, Luke,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;and I must
+      wait&mdash;that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be absurd, Maggie,&rdquo; cried my father, getting angry. &ldquo;Can't cook
+      bring it in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one can cook a dinner and serve it, too,&rdquo; answered my mother,
+      impatiently. &ldquo;Besides, she's not presentable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Fan?&rdquo; whispered my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother merely looked. It was sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paul?&rdquo; suggested my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; retorted my mother. &ldquo;I don't choose to have my son turned
+      into a footman, if you do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, hadn't you better go and dress?&rdquo; was my father's next remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won't take me long to put on an apron,&rdquo; was my mother's reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking forward to seeing you in that new frock,&rdquo; said my father.
+      In the case of another, one might have attributed such a speech to tact;
+      in the case of my father, one felt it was a happy accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother confessed&mdash;speaking with a certain indulgence, as one does
+      of one's own follies when past&mdash;that she herself also had looked
+      forward to seeing herself therein. Threatening discord melted into mutual
+      sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I so wanted everything to be all right, for your sake, Luke,&rdquo; said my
+      mother; &ldquo;I know you were hoping it would help on the business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only thinking of you, Maggie, dear,&rdquo; answered my father. &ldquo;You are
+      my business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, dear,&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;It is hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The key turned in the lock, and we all stood quiet to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's come back alone,&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;I knew it was hopeless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, ma'am,&rdquo; said the new parlour-maid, &ldquo;will I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood there, framed by the lintel, in the daintiest of aprons, the
+      daintiest of caps upon her golden hair; and every objection she swept
+      aside with the wind of her merry wilfulness. No one ever had their way
+      with her, nor wanted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall be footman,&rdquo; she ordered, turning to me&mdash;but this time my
+      mother only laughed. &ldquo;Wait here till I come down again.&rdquo; Then to my
+      mother: &ldquo;Now, ma'am, are you ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time I had seen my mother, or, indeed, any other flesh
+      and blood woman, in evening dress, and to tell the truth I was a little
+      shocked. Nay, more than a little, and showed it, I suppose; for my mother
+      flushed and drew her shawl over the gleaming whiteness of her shoulders,
+      pleading coldness. But Barbara cried out against this, saying it was a sin
+      such beauty should be hid; and my father, filching a shawl with a quick
+      hand, so dextrously indeed as to suggest some previous practice in the
+      feat, dropped on one knee&mdash;as though the world were some sweet
+      picture book&mdash;and raised my mother's hand with grave reverence to his
+      lips; and Barbara, standing behind my mother's chair, insisted on my
+      following suit, saying the Queen was receiving. So I knelt also, glancing
+      up shyly as towards the gracious face of some fair lady hitherto unknown,
+      thus Catching my first glimpse of the philosophy of clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed days
+      that swiftly followed, when my mother's eyes would flash towards my father
+      angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the moment he was
+      gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again and fill with
+      tears; when my father would sit with averted face and sullen lips tight
+      pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour forth a rapid flood of
+      savage speech; and fling out of the room, slamming the door behind him,
+      and I would find him hours afterwards, sitting alone in the dark, with
+      bowed head between his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their
+      passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold whispers;
+      and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung closer
+      to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have understood if
+      they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms clasping me tighter
+      and tighter with each quivering throb, then I hated my father, who I felt
+      had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet when my father drew me down upon
+      his knee, and I looked into his kind eyes so full of pain, then I felt
+      angry with my mother, remembering her bitter tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the
+      house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into each
+      other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow. The idea
+      grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline in the air,
+      feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently through the pokey
+      rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face before them. Now beside my
+      mother it would whisper in her ear; and the next moment, stealing across
+      to my father, answer for him with his voice, but strangely different. I
+      used to think I could hear it laughing to itself as it stepped back into
+      enfolding space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps man
+      and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face between
+      them. So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I see its
+      mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent laugh. So
+      that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the twilight, but I
+      see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them, creeping after them
+      with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me in quiet ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark valley
+      of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love's ordeal? testing the
+      feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet
+      again, the darkness passed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive
+      account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic
+      parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of
+      observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that was
+      clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann&mdash;or
+      Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which&mdash;a snuffy, mumbling old
+      frump, with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing
+      it so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long blank
+      walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother's right hand;
+      and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish seeming, how she could
+      be so interested in him, shouting much and often to him; for added to his
+      other disattractions he was very deaf, which necessitated his putting his
+      hand up to his ear at every other observation made to him, crying
+      querulously: &ldquo;Eh, what? What are you talking about? Say it again,&rdquo;&mdash;smiling
+      upon him and paying close attention to his every want. Even old Hasluck,
+      opposite to him, and who, though pleasant enough in his careless way, was
+      far from being a slave to politeness, roared himself purple, praising some
+      new disinfectant of which this same Teidelmann appeared to be the
+      proprietor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife swears by it,&rdquo; bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our drains!&rdquo; chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; &ldquo;well, you'd
+      hardly know there was any in the house since I've took to using it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they talking about?&rdquo; asked Teidelmann, appealing to my mother.
+      &ldquo;What's he say his wife does?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your disinfectant,&rdquo; explained my mother; &ldquo;Mrs. Hasluck swears by it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Hasluck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she? Delighted to hear it,&rdquo; grunted the old gentleman, evidently
+      bored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing like it for a sick-room,&rdquo; persisted Hasluck; &ldquo;might almost call
+      it a scent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makes one quite anxious to be ill,&rdquo; remarked my aunt, addressing no one
+      in particular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reminds me of cocoanuts,&rdquo; continued Hasluck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his
+      flattery should not be lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say it reminds me of cocoanuts.&rdquo; He screamed it this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, does it?&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't it you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't say it does,&rdquo; answered Teidelmann. &ldquo;As a matter of fact, don't know
+      much about it myself. Never use it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of the
+      subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my advice,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;and buy a bottle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buy a what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bottle,&rdquo; roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he say? What's he talking about now?&rdquo; asked Teidelmann, again
+      appealing to my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says you ought to buy a bottle,&rdquo; again explained my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of your own disinfectant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silly fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic
+      (which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely misjudged
+      the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say. I only know
+      that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly, and therefore
+      assume they reached round the table also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned, and
+      the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's quite right,&rdquo; was Hasluck's comment; &ldquo;that's what I am undoubtedly.
+      Because I can't talk about anything but shop myself, I think everybody
+      else is the same sort of fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the
+      passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time Teidelmann
+      was evidently interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you could spare the time, I'd be more obliged than I can tell
+      you,&rdquo; Hasluck was saying. &ldquo;I know absolutely nothing about pictures
+      myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ought to know,&rdquo; chuckled old Teidelmann. &ldquo;He's tried often enough to
+      palm off rubbish onto me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; &ldquo;been the
+      making of him, I should say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave him two thousand for the six,&rdquo; replied Teidelmann, &ldquo;and they'll
+      sell for twenty thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you'll never sell them?&rdquo; exclaimed my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; grunted old Teidelmann, &ldquo;but my widow will.&rdquo; There came a soft, low
+      laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Anderson's great disappointment,&rdquo; followed a languid, caressing
+      voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), &ldquo;that he has
+      never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art. He'll pay
+      thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed Madonna. Such a
+      waste of money, it appears to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,&rdquo; argued
+      my father's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would enhance the beauty of my neck,&rdquo; replied the musical voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An even more absolute waste of money,&rdquo; was my father's answer, spoken
+      low. And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is she?&rdquo; I asked Barbara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The second Mrs. Teidelmann,&rdquo; whispered Barbara. &ldquo;She is quite a swell.
+      Married him for his money&mdash;I don't like her myself, but she's very
+      beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As beautiful as you?&rdquo; I asked incredulously. We were sitting on the
+      stairs, sharing a jelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, me!&rdquo; answered Barbara. &ldquo;I'm only a child. Nobody takes any notice of
+      me&mdash;except other kids, like you.&rdquo; For some reason she appeared out of
+      conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But everybody thinks you beautiful,&rdquo; I maintained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; she asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Hal,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I was
+      positive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,&rdquo; Barbara
+      instructed me, &ldquo;and don't forget what he says this time. I'm curious.&rdquo; And
+      though it seemed to me a foolish command&mdash;for what could he say of
+      her more than I myself could tell her&mdash;I never questioned Barbara's
+      wishes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may have
+      clouded for a moment Barbara's sunny nature, surely there was no reason
+      for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention throughout the
+      dinner than the parlour-maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where ever did you get her from?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having just
+      descended the kitchen stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A neat-handed Phillis,&rdquo; commented Dr. Florret with approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take good care she never waits at my table,&rdquo; laughed the wife of our
+      minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman, mother of
+      eleven, eight of them boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell the truth,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;she's only here temporarily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a matter of fact,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck for
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't leave me out of it,&rdquo; laughed Hasluck; &ldquo;can't let the old girl take
+      all the credit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; at which Mrs.
+      Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that incident
+      could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was looking, pinched her
+      elbow, which would not have mattered had not the unexpectedness of it
+      drawn from her an involuntary &ldquo;augh,&rdquo; upon which, for the reputation of
+      the house, and the dinner being then towards its end; my mother deemed it
+      better to take the whole company into her confidence. Naturally the story
+      gained for Barbara still greater admiration, so that when with the
+      dessert, discarding the apron but still wearing the dainty cap, which
+      showed wisdom, she and the footman took their places among the guests, she
+      was even more than before the centre of attention and remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very nice of you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the circle of
+      compliments, &ldquo;and, as I always tell my girls, that is better than being
+      beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kind hearts,&rdquo; added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, &ldquo;are more than
+      coronets.&rdquo; Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct
+      quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell upon
+      the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like the Amen
+      in church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was a girl,&rdquo; said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing
+      silence, &ldquo;I used to look into the glass and say to myself: 'Fanny, you've
+      got to be amiable,' and I was amiable,&rdquo; added my aunt, challenging
+      contradiction with a look; &ldquo;nobody can say that I wasn't, for years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It didn't pay?&rdquo; suggested Hasluck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It attracted,&rdquo; replied my aunt, &ldquo;no attention whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many
+      experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old
+      Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the case
+      would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than business. It
+      was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida (I am speaking of
+      course of days then to come) that he arranged the details of his
+      celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion, so I have been told
+      and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise of the moment, once
+      during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa scheme becoming converted
+      to Quakerism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn and
+      Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence in the
+      East End.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr. Florret's
+      presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song once looked at by
+      an owl, so all originality grew silent under the cold stare of his
+      disapproving eye. But Dr. &ldquo;Fighting Hal&rdquo; was no gentle warbler of thought.
+      Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite argument as a
+      strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his partisans with him
+      further than they meant to go, and quite unable to turn back; leaving his
+      opponents clinging desperately&mdash;upside down, anyhow&mdash;to their
+      perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life!&rdquo; flung out Washburn&mdash;Dr. Florret had just laid down
+      unimpeachable rules for the conduct of all mankind on all occasions&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      do you respectable folk know of life? You are not men and women, you are
+      marionettes. You don't move to your natural emotions implanted by God; you
+      dance according to the latest book of etiquette. You live and love, laugh
+      and weep and sin by rule. Only one moment do you come face to face with
+      life; that is in the moment when you die, leaving the other puppets to be
+      dressed in black and make believe to cry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality of
+      us all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little doll,&rdquo; he had once called me, and I had resented the term.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all you are, little Paul,&rdquo; he had persisted, &ldquo;a good little
+      hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what it's
+      made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a gallant-hearted,
+      soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and primmest of dolls.
+      And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to be a man, but hasn't the
+      pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a trifle&mdash;a trifle whimsical on some subjects,&rdquo; explained my
+      father, on my repeating this conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are a certain class of men,&rdquo; explained my mother&mdash;&ldquo;you will
+      meet with them more as you grow up&mdash;who talk for talking's sake. They
+      don't know what they mean. And nobody else does either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what would you have?&rdquo; argued Dr. Florret, &ldquo;that every man should do
+      that which is right in his own eyes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what every
+      other fool thinks right,&rdquo; retorted Washburn. &ldquo;The other day I called to
+      see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His wife was washing
+      clothes in the front room. 'How's your husband?' I asked. 'I think he's
+      dead,' replied the woman. Then, without leaving off her work, 'Jim,' she
+      shouted, 'are you there?' No answer came from the inner room. 'He's a
+      goner,' she said, wringing out a stocking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely,&rdquo; said Dr. Florret, &ldquo;you don't admire a woman for being
+      indifferent to the death of her husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't admire her for that,&rdquo; replied Washburn, &ldquo;and I don't blame her. I
+      didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I do admire her
+      for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In Berkeley Square she'd
+      have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief to her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assume a virtue, if you have it not,&rdquo; murmured Dr. Florret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Washburn. &ldquo;How does it run? 'That monster, custom, who all
+      sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to the use of
+      actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put on.' So was the
+      lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the more an ass. Here asses
+      go about as asses, but there are lions also. I had a woman under my hands
+      only a little while ago. I could have cured her easily. Why she got worse
+      every day instead of better I could not understand. Then by accident
+      learned the truth: instead of helping me she was doing all she could to
+      kill herself. 'I must, Doctor,' she cried. 'I must. I have promised. If I
+      get well he will only leave me, and if I die now he has sworn to be good
+      to the children.' Here, I tell you, they live&mdash;think their thoughts,
+      work their will, kill those they hate, die for those they love; savages if
+      you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless dolls.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prefer the dolls,&rdquo; concluded Dr. Florret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admit they are pretty,&rdquo; answered Washburn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;the first masked ball I ever went to when I
+      was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal; everybody was
+      so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street and see faces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought they always unmasked at midnight,&rdquo; said the second Mrs.
+      Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not wait,&rdquo; explained my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a pity,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;I should have been interested to see what
+      they were like, underneath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might have been disappointed,&rdquo; answered my father. &ldquo;I agree with Dr.
+      Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would have
+      been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold eyes ever
+      restless behind the half-closed lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always she was very kind to me. Moreover, since the disappearance of Cissy
+      she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my small self.
+      My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was the one thing
+      needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take much pride in our
+      solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to our desires: like the
+      oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world than to ourselves. If others
+      there were who admired me, very guardedly must they have kept the secret I
+      would so gladly have shared with them. But this new friend of ours&mdash;or
+      had I not better at once say enemy&mdash;made me feel when in her presence
+      a person of importance. How it was accomplished I cannot explain. No word
+      of flattery nor even of mere approval ever passed her lips. Her charm to
+      me was not that she admired me, but that she led me by some mysterious
+      process to admire myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me, I
+      never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the sudden
+      raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting on
+      her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his eyes were
+      turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them back again. Once
+      she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some light jest of his,
+      and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick glance, saw that my
+      mother's eyes were watching also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have spoken of my father only as he then appeared to me, a child&mdash;an
+      older chum with many lines about his mobile mouth, the tumbled hair edged
+      round with grey; but looking back with older eyes, I see him a slightly
+      stooping, yet still tall and graceful man, with the face of a poet&mdash;the
+      face I mean a poet ought to possess but rarely does, nature apparently
+      abhorring the obvious&mdash;with the shy eyes of a boy, and a voice tender
+      as a woman's. Never the dingiest little drab that entered the kitchen but
+      adored him, speaking always of &ldquo;the master&rdquo; in tones of fond
+      proprietorship, for to the most slatternly his &ldquo;orders&rdquo; had ever the air
+      of requests for favours. Women, I so often read, can care for only
+      masterful men. But may there not be variety in women as in other species?
+      Or perhaps&mdash;if the suggestion be not over-daring&mdash;the many
+      writers, deeming themselves authorities upon this subject of woman, may in
+      this one particular have erred? I only know my father spoke to few women
+      whose eyes did not brighten. Yet hardly should I call him a masterful man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it's all right,&rdquo; whispered Hasluck to my father in the passage&mdash;they
+      were the last to go. &ldquo;What does she think of it, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she'll be with us,&rdquo; answered my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing like food for bringing people together,&rdquo; said Hasluck.
+      &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door closed, but Something had crept into the house. It stood between
+      my father and mother. It followed them silently up the narrow creaking
+      stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Better is little, than treasure and trouble therewith. Better a dinner of
+      herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. None but a
+      great man would have dared to utter such a glaring commonplace as that.
+      Not only on Sundays now, but all the week, came the hot joint to table,
+      and on every day there was pudding, till a body grew indifferent to
+      pudding; thus a joy-giving luxury of life being lost and but another item
+      added to the long list of uninteresting needs. Now we could eat and drink
+      without stint. No need now to organise for the morrow's hash. No need now
+      to cut one's bread instead of breaking it, thinking of Saturday's bread
+      pudding. But there the saying fails, for never now were we merry. A silent
+      unseen guest sat with us at the board, so that no longer we laughed and
+      teased as over the half pound of sausages or the two sweet-scented
+      herrings; but talked constrainedly of empty things that lay outside us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Easy enough would it have been for us to move to Guilford Street.
+      Occasionally in the spiritless tones in which they now spoke on all
+      subjects save the one, my mother and father would discuss the project; but
+      always into the conversation would fall, sooner or later, some loosened
+      thought to stir it to anger, and so the aching months went by, and the
+      cloud grew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one day the news came that old Teidelmann had died suddenly in his
+      counting house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are going to her?&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been sent for,&rdquo; said my father; &ldquo;I must&mdash;it may mean
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother laughed bitterly; why, at the time, I could not understand; and
+      my father flung out of the house. During the many hours that he was away
+      my mother remained locked in her room, and, stealing sometimes to the
+      door, I was sure I heard her crying; and that she should grieve so at old
+      Teidelmann's death puzzled me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came oftener to our house after that. Her mourning added, I think, to
+      her beauty, softening&mdash;or seeming to soften&mdash;the hardness of her
+      eyes. Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast beside her
+      appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her motive, she was
+      kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some trifling gift or plan
+      for affording me some childish treat. By instinct she understood exactly
+      what I desired and liked, the books that would appeal to me as those my
+      mother gave me never did, the pleasures that did please me as opposed to
+      the pleasures that should have pleased me. Often my mother, talking to me,
+      would chill me with the vista of the life that lay before me: a narrow,
+      viewless way between twin endless walls of &ldquo;Must&rdquo; and &ldquo;Must not.&rdquo; This
+      soft-voiced lady set me dreaming of life as of sunny fields through which
+      one wandered laughing, along the winding path of Will; so that, although
+      as I have said, there lurked at the bottom of my thoughts a fear of her;
+      yet something within me I seemed unable to control went out to her, drawn
+      by her subtle sympathy and understanding of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he ever seen a pantomime?&rdquo; she asked of my father one morning,
+      looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of her mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My heart leaped within me. My father raised his eyebrows: &ldquo;What would your
+      mother say, do you think?&rdquo; he asked. My heart sank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thinks,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;that theatres are very wicked places.&rdquo; It was
+      the first time that any doubt as to the correctness of my mother's
+      judgments had ever crossed my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Teidelmann's smile strengthened my doubt. &ldquo;Dear me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I am
+      afraid I must be very wicked. I have always regarded a pantomime as quite
+      a moral entertainment. All the bad people go down so very straight to&mdash;well,
+      to the fit and proper place for them. And we could promise to leave before
+      the Clown stole the sausages, couldn't we, Paul?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother was called and came; and I could not help thinking how
+      insignificant she looked with her pale face and plain dark frock, standing
+      stiffly beside this shining lady in her rustling clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will let him come, Mrs. Kelver,&rdquo; she pleaded in her soft caressing
+      tones; &ldquo;it's Dick Whittington, you know&mdash;such an excellent moral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother had stood silent, clasping and unclasping her hands, a childish
+      trick she had when troubled; and her lips were trembling. Important as the
+      matter loomed before my own eyes, I wondered at her agitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;it is very kind of you. But I would
+      rather he did not go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just this once,&rdquo; persisted Mrs. Teidelmann. &ldquo;It is holiday time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A ray of sunlight fell into the room, lighting upon her coaxing face,
+      making where my mother stood seem shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would rather he did not go,&rdquo; repeated my mother, and her voice sounded
+      harsh and grating. &ldquo;When he is older others must judge for him, but for
+      the present he must be guided by me&mdash;alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don't think there could be any harm, Maggie,&rdquo; urged my father.
+      &ldquo;Things have changed since we were young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That may be,&rdquo; answered my mother, still in the same harsh voice; &ldquo;it is
+      long ago since then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't intend it that way,&rdquo; said my father with a short laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I merely meant that I may be wrong,&rdquo; answered my mother. &ldquo;I seem so old
+      among you all&mdash;so out of place. I have tried to change, but I
+      cannot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will say no more about it,&rdquo; said Mrs. Teidelmann, sweetly. &ldquo;I merely
+      thought it would give him pleasure; and he has worked so hard this last
+      term, his father tells me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her hand caressingly on my shoulder, drawing me a little closer
+      to her; and it remained there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was very kind of you,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;I would do anything to give
+      him pleasure, anything&mdash;I could. He knows that. He understands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother's hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would not
+      see; and without another word she left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next afternoon
+      she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we saw a
+      magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer. She had dressed herself in a
+      prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was brighter and
+      gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing and talking
+      merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and sulky. At any other
+      time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me; but the wonders of the
+      great theatre that from other boys I had heard so much of, that from
+      gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for myself, were floating vague and
+      undefined before me in the air; and neither the open-mouthed sleeper,
+      swallowing his endless chain of rats; nor even the live rabbit found in
+      the stout old gentleman's hat&mdash;the last sort of person in whose hat
+      one would have expected to find such a thing&mdash;could draw away my mind
+      from the joy I had caught a glimpse of only to lose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but
+      little; and that night, waking&mdash;or rather half waking, as children do&mdash;I
+      thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed. I must
+      have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say whether the
+      intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to see it still
+      there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose from her knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions. &ldquo;It was a
+      silly dream I had,&rdquo; she explained &ldquo;I must have been thinking of the
+      conjurer we saw. I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you away
+      from me. I could not find you and was all alone in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me. And thus we
+      remained until again I must have fallen asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I
+      called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton. She
+      had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from terrible
+      headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was unable to come
+      out. She would be leaving England in a few days to travel. Would my mother
+      come and see her, she would like to say good-bye to her before she went.
+      My mother handed the letter across the table to my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you will go,&rdquo; said my father. &ldquo;Poor girl, I wonder what the
+      cause can be. She used to be so free from everything of the kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think it well for me to go?&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;What can she have to
+      say to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, just to say good-bye,&rdquo; answered my father. &ldquo;It would look so pointed
+      not to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a dull, sombre house without, but one entered through its
+      commonplace door as through the weed-grown rock into Aladdin's cave. Old
+      Teidelmann had been a great collector all his life, and his treasures, now
+      scattered through a dozen galleries, were then heaped there in curious
+      confusion. Pictures filled every inch of wall, stood propped against the
+      wonderful old furniture, were even stretched unframed across the ceilings.
+      Statues gleamed from every corner (a few of the statues were, I remember,
+      the only things out of the entire collection that Mrs. Teidelmann kept for
+      herself), carvings, embroideries, priceless china, miniatures framed in
+      gems, illuminated missals and gorgeously bound books crowded the room. The
+      ugly little thick-lipped man had surrounded himself with the beauty of
+      every age, brought from every land. He himself must have been the only
+      thing cheap and uninteresting to be found within his own walls; and now he
+      lay shrivelled up in his coffin, under a monument by means of which an
+      unknown cemetery became quite famous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instructions had been given that my mother was to be shown up into Mrs.
+      Teidelmann's boudoir. She was lying on a sofa near the fire when we
+      entered, asleep, dressed in a loose lace robe that fell away, showing her
+      thin but snow-white arms, her rich dark hair falling loose about her. In
+      sleep she looked less beautiful: harder and with a suggestion of
+      coarseness about the face, of which at other times it showed no trace. My
+      mother said she would wait, perhaps Mrs. Teidelmann would awake; and the
+      servant, closing the door softly, left us alone with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An old French clock standing on the mantelpiece, a heart supported by
+      Cupids, ticked with a muffled, soothing sound. My mother, choosing a chair
+      by the window, sat with her eyes fixed on the sleeping woman's face, and
+      it seemed to me&mdash;though this may have been but my fancy born of
+      after-thought&mdash;that a faint smile relaxed for a moment the sleeping
+      woman's pained, pressed lips. Neither I nor my mother spoke, the only
+      sound in the room being the hushed ticking of the great gilt clock. Until
+      the other woman after a few slight movements of unrest began to talk in
+      her sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only confused murmurs escaped her at first, and then I heard her whisper
+      my father's name. Very low&mdash;hardly more than breathed&mdash;were the
+      words, but upon the silence each syllable struck clear and distinct: &ldquo;Ah
+      no, we must not. Luke, my darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother rose swiftly from her chair, but she spoke in quite
+      matter-of-fact tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, Paul,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;wait for me downstairs;&rdquo; and noiselessly opening
+      the door, she pushed me gently out, and closed it again behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was half an hour or more before she came down, and at once we left the
+      house, letting ourselves out. All the way home my mother never once spoke,
+      but walked as one in a dream with eyes that saw not. With her hand upon
+      the lock of our gate she came back to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must say nothing, Paul, do you understand?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;When people
+      are delirious they use strange words that have no meaning. Do you
+      understand, Paul; you must never breathe a word&mdash;never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I promised, and we entered the house; and from that day my mother's whole
+      manner changed. Not another angry word ever again escaped her lips, never
+      an angry flash lighted up again her eyes. Mrs. Teidelmann remained away
+      three months. My father, of course, wrote to her often, for he was
+      managing all her affairs. But my mother wrote to her also&mdash;though
+      this my father, I do not think, knew&mdash;long letters that she would go
+      away by herself to pen, writing them always in the twilight, close to the
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you choose this time, just when it's getting dark, to write your
+      letters,&rdquo; my father would expostulate, when by chance he happened to look
+      into the room. &ldquo;Let me ring for the lamp, you will strain your eyes.&rdquo; But
+      my mother would always excuse herself, saying she had only a few lines to
+      finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can think better in this light,&rdquo; she would explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when Mrs. Teidelmann returned, it was my mother who was the first to
+      call upon her; before even my father knew that she was back. And from
+      thence onward one might have thought them the closest of friends, my
+      mother visiting her often, speaking of her to all in terms of praise and
+      liking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way peace returned unto the house, and my father was tender again
+      in all his words and actions towards my mother, and my mother thoughtful
+      as before of all his wants and whims, her voice soft and low, the sweet
+      smile ever lurking around her lips as in the old days before this evil
+      thing had come to dwell among us; and I might have forgotten it had ever
+      cast its blight upon our life but that every day my mother grew feebler,
+      the little ways that had seemed a part of her gone from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The summer came and went&mdash;that time in towns of panting days and
+      stifling nights, when through the open window crawls to one's face the hot
+      foul air, heavy with reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets; when
+      lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad mass
+      around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest; and my
+      mother moved about the house ever more listlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing really the matter with her,&rdquo; said Dr. Hal, &ldquo;only
+      weakness. It is the place. Cannot you get her away from it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot leave myself,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;just yet; but there is no reason
+      why you and the boy should not take a holiday. This year I can afford it,
+      and later I might possibly join you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother consented, as she did to all things now, and so it came about
+      that again of afternoons we climbed&mdash;though more slowly and with many
+      pauses&mdash;the steep path to the ruined tower old Jacob in his happy
+      foolishness had built upon the headland, rested once again upon its
+      topmost platform, sheltered from the wind that ever blew about its
+      crumbling walls, saw once more the distant mountains, faint like spectres,
+      and the silent ships that came and vanished, and about our feet the
+      pleasant farm lands, and the grave, sweet river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had taken lodgings in the village: smaller now it seemed than
+      previously; but wonderful its sunny calm, after the turmoil of the fierce
+      dark streets. Mrs. Fursey was there still, but quite another than the Mrs.
+      Fursey of my remembrance, a still angular but cheery dame, bent no longer
+      on suppressing me, but rather on drawing me out before admiring
+      neighbours, as one saying: &ldquo;The material was unpromising, as you know.
+      There were times when I almost despaired. But with patience, and&mdash;may
+      I say, a natural gift that way&mdash;you see what can be accomplished!&rdquo;
+       And Anna, now a buxom wife and mother, with an uncontrollable desire to
+      fall upon and kiss me at most unexpected moments, necessitating a never
+      sleeping watchfulness on my part, and a choosing of positions affording
+      means of ready retreat. And old Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny
+      cave. On the bench before him in a row they sat and watched him while he
+      tapped and tapped and hammered: pert little shoes piping &ldquo;Be quick, be
+      quick, we want to be toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how
+      much toddling there is to be done.&rdquo; Dapper boots, sighing: &ldquo;Oh, please
+      make haste, we are waiting to dance and to strut. Jack walks in the lane,
+      Jill waits by the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps.&rdquo; Stout sober boots,
+      saying: &ldquo;As soon as you can, old friend. Remember we've work to do.&rdquo;
+       Flat-footed old boots, rusty and limp, mumbling: &ldquo;We haven't much time,
+      Mr. Chumbley. Just a patch, that is all, we haven't much further to go.&rdquo;
+       And old Joe, still peddling his pack, with the help of the same old jokes.
+      And Tom Pinfold, still puzzled and scratching his head, the rejected fish
+      still hanging by its tail from his expostulating hand; one might almost
+      have imagined it the same fish. Grown-up folks had changed but little.
+      Only the foolish children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere
+      sucking babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I had
+      known now mincing it as men and women; such affectation annoyed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon&mdash;it was towards the close of the last week of our stay&mdash;my
+      mother and I had climbed, as was so often our wont, to the upper platform
+      of old Jacob's tower. My mother leant upon the parapet, her eyes fixed
+      dreamingly upon the distant mountains, and a smile crept to her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you thinking of?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, only of things that happened over there&rdquo;&mdash;she nodded her head
+      towards the distant hills as to some old crony with whom she shares
+      secrets&mdash;&ldquo;when I was a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lived there, long ago, didn't you, when you were young?&rdquo; I asked.
+      Boys do not always stop to consider whether their questions might or might
+      not be better expressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're very rude,&rdquo; said my mother&mdash;it was long since a tone of her
+      old self had rung from her in answer to any touch; &ldquo;it was a very little
+      while ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she raised her head and listened. Perhaps some twenty seconds she
+      remained so with her lips parted, and then from the woods came a faint,
+      long-drawn &ldquo;Coo-ee.&rdquo; We ran to the side of the tower commanding the
+      pathway from the village, and waited until from among the dark pines my
+      father emerged into the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing us, he shouted again and waved his stick, and from the light of his
+      eyes and his gallant bearing, and the spring of his step across the
+      heathery turf, we knew instinctively that trouble had come upon him. He
+      always rose to meet it with that look and air. It was the old Norse blood
+      in his veins, I suppose. So, one imagines, must those godless old Pirates
+      have sprung to their feet when the North wind, loosed as a hawk from the
+      leash, struck at the beaked prow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We heard his quick step on the rickety stair, and the next moment he was
+      between us, breathing a little hard, but laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood for awhile beside my mother without speaking, both of them gazing
+      at the distant hills among which, as my mother had explained, things had
+      happened long ago. And maybe, &ldquo;over there,&rdquo; their memories met and looked
+      upon each other with kind eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;we climbed up here&mdash;it was the
+      first walk we took together after coming here. We discussed our plans for
+      the future, how we would retrieve our fortunes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the future,&rdquo; answered my mother, &ldquo;has a way of making plans for us
+      instead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would seem so,&rdquo; replied my father, with a laugh. &ldquo;I am an unlucky
+      beggar, Maggie. I dropped all your money as well as my own down that
+      wretched mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the will&mdash;it was Fate, or whatever you call it,&rdquo; said my
+      mother. &ldquo;You could not help that, Luke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only that damned pump hadn't jambed,&rdquo; said my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember that Mrs. Tharand?&rdquo; asked my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, what of her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A worldly woman, I always thought her. She called on me the morning we
+      were leaving; I don't think you saw her. 'I've been through more worries
+      than you would think, to look at me,' she said to me, laughing. I've
+      always remembered her words: 'and of all the troubles that come to us in
+      this world, believe me, Mrs. Kelver, money troubles are the easiest to
+      bear.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could think so,&rdquo; said my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She rather irritated me at the time,&rdquo; continued my mother. &ldquo;I thought it
+      one of those commonplaces with which we console ourselves for other
+      people's misfortunes. But now I know she spoke the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence between them for awhile. Then said my father in a cheery
+      tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've broken with old Hasluck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you would be compelled to sooner or later,&rdquo; answered my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasluck,&rdquo; exclaimed my father, with sudden vehemence, &ldquo;is little better
+      than a thief; I told him so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; asked my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Laughed, and said that was better than some people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father laughed himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish to do the memory of Noel Hasluck no injustice. Ever was he a kind
+      friend to me; not only then, but in later years, when, having come to
+      learn that kindness is rarer in the world than I had dreamt, I was glad of
+      it. Added to which, if only for Barbara's sake, I would prefer to write of
+      him throughout in terms of praise. Yet even were his good-tempered,
+      thick-skinned ghost (and unless it were good-tempered and thick-skinned it
+      would be no true ghost of old Noel Hasluck) to be reading over my shoulder
+      the words as I write them down, I think it would agree with me&mdash;I do
+      not think it would be offended with me (for ever in his life he was an
+      admirer and a lover of the Truth, being one of those good fighters capable
+      of respecting even his foe, his enemy, against whom from ten to four,
+      occasionally a little later, he fought right valiantly) for saying that of
+      all the men who go down into the City each day in a cab or 'bus or train,
+      he was perhaps one of the most unprincipled: and whether that be saying
+      much or little I leave to those with more knowledge to decide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To do others, as it was his conviction, right or wrong, that they would do
+      him if ever he gave them half a chance, was his notion of &ldquo;business;&rdquo; and
+      in most of his transactions he was successful. &ldquo;I play a game,&rdquo; he would
+      argue, &ldquo;where cheating is the rule. Nine out of every ten men round the
+      table are sharpers like myself, and the tenth man is a fool who has no
+      business to be there. We prey upon each other, and the cutest of us is the
+      winner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the innocent people, lured by your fine promises,&rdquo; I ventured once to
+      suggest to him, &ldquo;the widows and the orphans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear lad,&rdquo; he said, with a laugh, laying his fat hand upon my
+      shoulder, &ldquo;I remember one of your widows writing me a pathetic letter
+      about some shares she had taken in a Silver Company of mine. Lord knows
+      where the mine is now&mdash;somewhere in Spain, I think. It looked as
+      though all her savings were gone. She had an only son, and it was nearly
+      all they possessed in the world, etc., etc.&mdash;you know the sort of
+      thing. Well, I did what I've often been numskull enough to do in similar
+      cases, wrote and offered to buy her out at par. A week later she answered,
+      thanking me, but saying it did not matter. There had occurred a momentary
+      rise, and she had sold out at a profit&mdash;to her own brother-in-law, as
+      I discovered, happening to come across the transfers. You can find widows
+      and orphans round the Monte Carlo card tables, if you like to look for
+      them; they are no more deserving of consideration than the rest of the
+      crowd. Besides, if it comes to that, I'm an orphan myself;&rdquo; and he laughed
+      again, one of his deep, hearty, honest laughs. No one ever possessed a
+      laugh more suggestive in its every cadence of simple, transparent honesty.
+      He used to say himself it was worth thousands to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Better from the Moralists' point of view had such a man been an
+      out-and-out rogue. Then might one have pointed, crying: &ldquo;Behold:
+      Dishonesty, as you will observe in the person of our awful example, to be
+      hated, needs but to be seen.&rdquo; But the duty of the Chronicler is to bear
+      witness to what he knows, leaving Truth with the whole case before her to
+      sum up and direct the verdict. In the City, old Hasluck had a bad
+      reputation and deserved it; in Stoke-Newington&mdash;then a green suburb,
+      containing many fine old houses, standing in great wooded gardens&mdash;he
+      was loved and respected. In his business, he was a man void of all moral
+      sense, without bowels of compassion for any living thing; in retirement, a
+      man with a strong sense of duty and a fine regard for the rights and
+      feelings of others, never happier than when planning to help or give
+      pleasure. In his office, he would have robbed his own mother. At home, he
+      would have spent his last penny to add to her happiness or comfort. I make
+      no attempt to explain. I only know that such men do exist, and that
+      Hasluck was one of them. One avoids difficulties by dismissing them as a
+      product of our curiously complex civilisation&mdash;a convenient phrase;
+      let us hope the recording angel may be equally impressed by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Casting about for some reason of excuse to myself for my liking of him, I
+      hit upon the expedient of regarding him as a modern Robin Hood, whom we
+      are taught to admire without shame, a Robin Hood up to date, adapted to
+      the changed conditions of modern environment; making his living relieving
+      the rich; taking pleasure relieving the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will you do?&rdquo; asked my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have to give up the office,&rdquo; answered my father. &ldquo;Without him
+      there's not enough to keep it going. He was quite good-tempered about the
+      matter&mdash;offered to divide the work, letting me retain the
+      straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth. But I declined.
+      Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you were quite right,&rdquo; agreed my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I blame myself for,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;is that I didn't see through
+      him before. Of course he has been making a mere tool of me from the
+      beginning. I ought to have seen through him. Why didn't I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother
+      listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to time, as
+      though there were something she could not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would take a situation in the City. One had been offered him. It might
+      sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must contrive to
+      live. The little money he had saved must be kept for investments&mdash;nothing
+      speculative&mdash;judicious &ldquo;dealings,&rdquo; by means of which a cool,
+      clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital. Here the training acquired
+      by working for old Hasluck would serve him well. One man my father knew&mdash;quite
+      a dull, commonplace man&mdash;starting a few years ago with only a few
+      hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands. Foresight was the necessary
+      qualification. You watched the &ldquo;tendency&rdquo; of things. So often had my
+      father said to himself: &ldquo;This is going to be a big thing. That other, it
+      is no good,&rdquo; and in every instance his prognostications had been verified.
+      He had &ldquo;felt it;&rdquo; some men had that gift. Now was the time to use it for
+      practical purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye upon
+      the surrounding scenery, &ldquo;would be a pleasant place to end one's days. The
+      house you had was very pretty and you liked it. We might enlarge it, the
+      drawing-room might be thrown out&mdash;perhaps another wing.&rdquo; I felt that
+      our good fortune as from this day was at last established.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled
+      glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned her
+      face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon, demanding
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some idea of it I had even then, watching her; and since I have come to
+      read it word for word: &ldquo;But that woman&mdash;that woman that loves you,
+      that you love. Ah, I know&mdash;why do you play with me? She is rich. With
+      her your life will be smooth. And the boy&mdash;it will be better far for
+      him. Cannot you three wait a little longer? What more can I do? Cannot you
+      see that I am surely dying&mdash;dying as quickly as I can&mdash;dying as
+      that poor creature your friend once told us of; knowing it was the only
+      thing she could do for those she loved. Be honest with me: I am no longer
+      jealous. All that is past: a man is ever younger than a woman, and a man
+      changes. I do not blame you. It is for the best. She and I have talked; it
+      is far better so. Only be honest with me, or at least silent. Will you not
+      honour me enough for even that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father did not answer, having that to speak of that put my mother's
+      question out of her mind for all time; so that until the end no word
+      concerning that other woman passed again between them. Twenty years later,
+      nearly, I myself happened to meet her, and then long physical suffering
+      had chased the wantonness away for ever from the pain-worn mouth; but in
+      that hour of waning voices, as some trouble of the fretful day when
+      evening falls, so she faded from their life; and if even the remembrance
+      of her returned at times to either of them, I think it must have been in
+      those moments when, for no seeming reason, shyly their hands sought one
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the truth of the sad ado&mdash;how far my mother's suspicions wronged
+      my father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that
+      was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain but in
+      the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true vision&mdash;I
+      never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth had been rolled
+      down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with Doctor Hal, who
+      must have seen something of the play and with more understanding eyes than
+      mine, and who thereupon delivered to me a short lecture on life in
+      general, a performance at which he excelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Flee from temptation and pray that you may be delivered from evil,&rdquo;
+       shouted the Doctor&mdash;(his was not the Socratic method)&mdash;&ldquo;but
+      remember this: that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a
+      time when, however fast you run, you will be overtaken&mdash;cornered&mdash;no
+      one to deliver you but yourself&mdash;the gods sitting round interested.
+      It is a grim fight, for the Thing, you may be sure, has chosen its right
+      moment. And every woman in the world will sympathise with you and be just
+      to you, not even despising you should you be overcome; for however they
+      may talk, every woman in the world knows that male and female cannot be
+      judged by the same standard. To woman, Nature and the Law speak with one
+      voice: 'Sin not, lest you be cursed of your sex!' It is no law of man: it
+      is the law of creation. When the woman sins, she sins not only against her
+      conscience, but against her every instinct. But to the man Nature
+      whispers: 'Yield.' It is the Law alone that holds him back. Therefore
+      every woman in the world, knowing this, will be just to you&mdash;every
+      woman in the world but one&mdash;the woman that loves you. From her, hope
+      for no sympathy, hope for no justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you think&mdash;&rdquo; I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said the Doctor, &ldquo;that your father loved your mother devotedly;
+      but he was one of those fighters that for the first half-dozen rounds or
+      so cause their backers much anxiety. It is a dangerous method.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you think my mother&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think your mother was a good woman, Paul; and the good woman will never
+      be satisfied with man till the Lord lets her take him to pieces and put
+      him together herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father had been pacing to and fro the tiny platform. Now he came to a
+      halt opposite my mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to help me, Maggie&mdash;help me to be brave. I have only a
+      year or two longer to live, and there's a lot to be done in that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly the anger died out of my mother's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember that fall I had when the cage broke,&rdquo; my father went on.
+      &ldquo;Andrews, as you know, feared from the first it might lead to that. But I
+      always laughed at him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long have you known?&rdquo; my mother asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, about six months. I felt it at the beginning of the year, but I
+      didn't say anything to Washburn till a month later. I thought it might be
+      only fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he is sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why have you never told me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; replied my father, with a laugh, &ldquo;I didn't want you to know. If
+      I could have done without you, I should not have told you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And at this there came a light into my mother's face that never altogether
+      left it until the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew him down beside her on the seat. I had come nearer; and my
+      father, stretching out his hand, would have had me with them. But my
+      mother, putting her arms about him, held him close to her, as though in
+      that moment she would have had him to herself alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The eighteen months that followed&mdash;for the end came sooner than we
+      had expected&mdash;were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother
+      had ever known; or if happy be not altogether the right word, let me say
+      the most beautiful, and most nearly perfect. To them it was as though God
+      in His sweet thoughtfulness had sent death to knock lightly at the door,
+      saying: &ldquo;Not yet. You have still a little longer to be together. In a
+      little while.&rdquo; In those last days all things false and meaningless they
+      laid aside. Nothing was of real importance to them but that they should
+      love each other, comforting each other, learning to understand each other.
+      Again we lived poorly; but there was now no pitiful straining to keep up
+      appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours might think. The
+      petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth a moment's thought,
+      the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from
+      them. There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity.
+      Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards all
+      things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me that we
+      make a mistake seeking to keep Death, God's go-between, ever from our
+      thoughts. Is it not closing the door to a friend who would help us would
+      we let him (for who knows life so well), whispering to us: &ldquo;In a little
+      while. Only a little longer that you have to be together. Is it worth
+      taking so much thought for self? Is it worth while being unkind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From them a graciousness emanated pervading all around. Even my aunt Fan
+      decided for the second time in her career to give amiability a trial. This
+      intention she announced publicly to my mother and myself one afternoon
+      soon after our return from Devonshire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a beast of an old woman,&rdquo; said my aunt, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't say that, Fan,&rdquo; urged my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the good of saying 'Don't say it' when I've just said it,&rdquo; snapped
+      back my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's your manner,&rdquo; explained my mother; &ldquo;people sometimes think you
+      disagreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'd be daft if they didn't,&rdquo; interrupted my aunt. &ldquo;Of course you don't
+      really mean it,&rdquo; continued my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stuff and nonsense,&rdquo; snorted my aunt; &ldquo;does she think I'm a fool? I like
+      being disagreeable. I like to see 'em squirming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can be agreeable,&rdquo; continued my aunt, &ldquo;if I choose. Nobody more so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why not choose?&rdquo; suggested my mother. &ldquo;I tried it once,&rdquo; said my
+      aunt, &ldquo;and it fell flat. Nothing could have fallen flatter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may not have attracted much attention,&rdquo; replied my mother, with a
+      smile, &ldquo;but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't only that,&rdquo; returned my aunt, &ldquo;it was that it gave no
+      satisfaction to anybody. It didn't suit me. A disagreeable person is at
+      their best when they are disagreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hardly agree with you there,&rdquo; answered my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could do it again,&rdquo; communed my aunt to herself. There was a suggestion
+      of vindictiveness in her tones. &ldquo;It's easy enough. Look at the sort of
+      fools that are agreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you could be if you tried,&rdquo; urged my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let 'em have it,&rdquo; continued my aunt, still to herself; &ldquo;that's the way to
+      teach 'em sense. Let 'em have it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother altogether
+      wrong. My father was the first to notice the change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?&rdquo; he asked. It was one
+      evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into effect.
+      &ldquo;Nothing happened, has there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered my mother, &ldquo;nothing that I know of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her manner is so strange,&rdquo; explained my father, &ldquo;so&mdash;so weird.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother smiled. &ldquo;Don't say anything to her. She's trying to be
+      agreeable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father laughed and then looked wistful. &ldquo;I almost wish she wouldn't,&rdquo;
+       he remarked; &ldquo;we were used to it, and she was rather amusing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same time
+      that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure. This was the
+      introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley. Properly
+      speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being the order in
+      which he had been christened in the year 1815. But in course of time, and
+      particularly during his school career, it had been borne in upon him that
+      Wellington is a burdensome name for a commonplace mortal to bear, and very
+      wisely he had reversed the arrangement. He was a slightly pompous but
+      simpleminded little old gentleman, very proud of his position as head
+      clerk to Mr. Stillwood, the solicitor to whom my father was now assistant.
+      Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back to the Georges, and was a firm
+      bound up with the history&mdash;occasionally shady&mdash;of aristocratic
+      England. True, in these later years its glory was dwindling. Old Mr.
+      Stillwood, its sole surviving representative, declined to be troubled with
+      new partners, explaining frankly, in answer to all applications, that the
+      business was a dying one, and that attempting to work it up again would be
+      but putting new wine into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a
+      yearly diminishing quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of
+      a good class, its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and
+      my father had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an
+      appointment. James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days
+      of its pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the
+      most important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street.
+      Nothing delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the many
+      strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been
+      concerned, all of which he had at his tongue's tip. Could he find a
+      hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional
+      reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, &ldquo;the
+      capital of, let us say, a foreign country,&rdquo; or &ldquo;a certain town not a
+      thousand miles from where we are now sitting.&rdquo; The majority of his
+      friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage
+      him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case were
+      one involving suspicion of mystery and crime. When, during their very
+      first conversation, he exclaimed: &ldquo;Now why&mdash;why, after keeping away
+      from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know
+      whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her?
+      That is what I want explained to me!&rdquo; he paused, as was his wont, for
+      sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a yawn:
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose,&rdquo; replied
+      with prompt intelligence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To murder her&mdash;by slow poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To murder her! But why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In order to marry the other woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What other woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The woman he had just met and fallen in love with. Before that it was
+      immaterial to him what had become of his wife. This woman had said to him:
+      'Come back to me a free man or never see my face again.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me! Now that's very curious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing of the sort. Plain common sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a
+      little later, and he did marry again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Told you so,&rdquo; remarked my aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light
+      thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human
+      action. Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y., for
+      into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark criminal
+      intent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are a little too severe,&rdquo; Mr. Gadley would now and then
+      plead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're all of us miserable sinners,&rdquo; my aunt would cheerfully affirm;
+      &ldquo;only we don't all get the same chances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in &ldquo;a western town once famous
+      as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name,&rdquo; my aunt was
+      convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged another
+      under which her children&mdash;should she ever marry and be blessed with
+      such&mdash;would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of seven
+      hundred pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always fascinated
+      Mr. Gadley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have to thank you, ma'am,&rdquo; he would remark on rising, &ldquo;for a most
+      delightful conversation. I may not be able to agree with your conclusions,
+      but they afford food for reflection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To which my aunt would reply, &ldquo;I hate talking to any one who agrees with
+      me. It's like taking a walk to see one's own looking-glass. I'd rather
+      talk to somebody who didn't, even if he were a fool,&rdquo; which for her was
+      gracious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a stout little gentleman with a stomach that protruded about a foot
+      in front of him, and of this he appeared to be quite unaware. Nor would it
+      have mattered had it not been for his desire when talking to approach as
+      close to his listener as possible. Gradually in the course of
+      conversation, his stomach acting as a gentle battering ram, he would in
+      this way drive you backwards round the room, sometimes, unless you were
+      artful, pinning you hopelessly into a corner, when it would surprise him
+      that in spite of all his efforts he never succeeded in getting any nearer
+      to you. His first evening at our house he was talking to my aunt from the
+      corner of his chair. As he grew more interested so he drew his chair
+      nearer and nearer, till at length, having withdrawn inch by inch to avoid
+      his encroachments, my aunt was sitting on the extreme edge of her own. His
+      next move sent her on to the floor. She said nothing, which surprised me;
+      but on the occasion of his next visit she was busy darning stockings, an
+      unusual occupation for her. He approached nearer and nearer as before; but
+      this time she sat her ground, and it was he who in course of time sprang
+      back with an exclamation foreign to the subject under discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever afterwards my aunt met him with stockings in her hand, and they
+      talked with a space between their chairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing further came of it, though his being a widower added to their
+      intercourse that spice of possibility no woman is ever too old to relish;
+      but that he admired her intellectually was evident. Once he even went so
+      far as to exclaim: &ldquo;Miss Davies, you should have been a solicitor's wife!&rdquo;
+       to his thinking the crown of feminine ambition. To which my aunt had
+      replied: &ldquo;Chances are I should have been if one had ever asked me.&rdquo; And
+      warmed by appreciation, my aunt's amiability took root and flourished,
+      though assuming, as all growth developed late is apt to, fantastic shape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came to her the idea, by no means ill-founded, that by flattery one
+      can most readily render oneself agreeable; so conscientiously she set to
+      work to flatter in season and out. I am sure she meant to give pleasure,
+      but the effect produced was that of thinly veiled sarcasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father would relate to us some trifling story, some incident noticed
+      during the day that had seemed to him amusing. At once she would break out
+      into enthusiasm, holding up her hands in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a funny man he is! And to think that it comes to him naturally
+      without an effort. What a gift it is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On my mother appearing in a new bonnet, or an old one retrimmed, an event
+      not unfrequent; for in these days my mother took more thought than ever
+      formerly for her appearance (you will understand, you women who have
+      loved), she would step back in simulated amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tell me it's a married woman with a boy getting on for fourteen.
+      It's a girl. A saucy, tripping girl. That's what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Persons have been known, I believe, whose vanity, not checked in time, has
+      grown into a hopeless disease. But I am inclined to think that a dose of
+      my aunt, about this period, would have cured the most obstinate case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So also, and solely for our benefit, she assumed a vivacity and
+      spriteliness that ill suited her, that having regard to her age and
+      tendency towards rheumatism must have cost her no small effort. From these
+      experiences there remains to me the perhaps immoral opinion that Virtue,
+      in common with all other things, is at her best when unassuming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally the old Adam&mdash;or should one say Eve&mdash;would assert
+      itself in my aunt, and then, still thoughtful for others, she would
+      descend into the kitchen and be disagreeable to Amy, our new servitor, who
+      never minded it. Amy was a philosopher who reconciled herself to all
+      things by the reflection that there were only twenty-four hours in a day.
+      It sounds a dismal theory, but from it Amy succeeded in extracting
+      perpetual cheerfulness. My mother would apologise to her for my aunt's
+      interference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord bless you, mum, it don't matter. If I wasn't listening to her
+      something else worse might be happening. Everything's all the same when
+      it's over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Amy had come to us merely as a stop gap, explaining to my mother that she
+      was about to be married and desired only a temporary engagement to bridge
+      over the few weeks between then and the ceremony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's rather unsatisfactory,&rdquo; had said my mother. &ldquo;I dislike changes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can quite understand it, mum,&rdquo; had replied Amy; &ldquo;I dislike 'em myself.
+      Only I heard you were in a hurry, and I thought maybe that while you were
+      on the lookout for somebody permanent&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So on that understanding she came. A month later my mother asked her when
+      she thought the marriage would actually take place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't think I'm wishing you to go,&rdquo; explained my mother, &ldquo;indeed I'd like
+      you to stop. I only want to know in time to make my arrangements.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, some time in the spring, I expect,&rdquo; was Amy's answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;I understood it was coming off almost immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Amy appeared shocked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must know a little bit more about him before I go as far as that,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't understand,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;you told me when you came to me
+      that you were going to be married in a few weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that one!&rdquo; Her tone suggested that an unfair strain was being put
+      upon her memory. &ldquo;I didn't feel I wanted him as much as I thought I did
+      when it came to the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had meantime met the other one?&rdquo; suggested my mother, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we can't help our feelings, can we, mum?&rdquo; admitted Amy, frankly,
+      &ldquo;and what I always say is&rdquo;&mdash;she spoke as one with experience even
+      then&mdash;&ldquo;better change your mind before it's too late afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Amiable, sweet-faced, broad-hearted Amy! most faithful of friends, but oh!
+      most faithless of lovers. Age has not withered nor custom staled her
+      liking for infinite variety. Butchers, bakers, soldiers, sailors, Jacks of
+      all trades! Does the sighing procession never pass before you, Amy,
+      pointing ghostly fingers of reproach! Still Amy is engaged. To whom at the
+      particular moment I cannot say, but I fancy to an early one who has lately
+      become a widower. After more exact knowledge I do not care to enquire; for
+      to confess ignorance on the subject, implying that one has treated as a
+      triviality and has forgotten the most important detail of a matter that to
+      her is of vital importance, is to hurt her feelings; while to angle for
+      information is but to entangle oneself. To speak of Him as &ldquo;Tom,&rdquo; when Tom
+      has belonged for weeks to the dead and buried past, to hastily correct
+      oneself to &ldquo;Dick&rdquo; when there hasn't been a Dick for years, clearly not to
+      know that he is now Harry, annoys her even more. In my mother's time we
+      always referred to him as &ldquo;Dearest.&rdquo; It was the title with which she
+      herself distinguished them all, and it avoided confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and how's Dearest?&rdquo; my mother would enquire, opening the door to
+      Amy on the Sunday evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, very well indeed, mum, thank you, and he sends you his respects,&rdquo; or,
+      &ldquo;Well, not so nicely as I could wish. I'm a little anxious about him, poor
+      dear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you are married you will be able to take good care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's really what he wants&mdash;some one to take care of him. It's what
+      they all want, the poor dears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And when is it coming off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the spring, mum.&rdquo; She always chose the spring when possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amy was nice to all men, and to Amy all men were nice. Could she have
+      married a dozen, she might have settled down, with only occasional regrets
+      concerning those left without in the cold. But to ask her to select only
+      one out of so many &ldquo;poor dears&rdquo; was to suggest shameful waste of
+      affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had meant to keep our grim secret to ourselves; but to hide one's
+      troubles long from Amy was like keeping cold hands from the fire. Very
+      soon she knew everything that was to be known, drawing it all from my
+      mother as from some overburdened child. Then she put my mother down into a
+      chair and stood over her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you leave the house and everything connected with it to me, mum,&rdquo;
+       commanded Amy; &ldquo;you've got something else to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And from that day we were in the hands of Amy, and had nothing else to do
+      but praise the Lord for His goodness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barbara also found out (from Washburn, I expect), though she said nothing,
+      but came often. Old Hasluck would have come himself, I am sure, had he
+      thought he would be welcome. As it was, he always sent kind messages and
+      presents of fruit and flowers by Barbara, and always welcomed me most
+      heartily whenever she allowed me to see her home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She brought, as ever, sunshine with her, making all trouble seem far off
+      and shadowy. My mother tended to the fire of love, but Barbara lit the
+      cheerful lamp of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with the lessening days my father seemed to grow younger, life lying
+      lighter on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One summer's night he and I were walking with Barbara to Poplar station,
+      for sometimes, when he was not looking tired, she would order him to fetch
+      his hat and stick, explaining to him with a caress, &ldquo;I like them tall and
+      slight and full grown. The young ones, they don't know how to flirt! We
+      will take the boy with us as gooseberry;&rdquo; and he, pretending to be anxious
+      that my mother did not see, would kiss her hand, and slip out quietly with
+      her arm linked under his. It was admirable the way he would enter into the
+      spirit of the thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last cloud faded from before the moon as we turned the corner, and
+      even the East India Dock Road lay restful in front of us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have always regarded myself,&rdquo; said my father, &ldquo;as a failure in life,
+      and it has troubled me.&rdquo; I felt him pulled the slightest little bit away
+      from me, as though Barbara, who held his other arm, had drawn him towards
+      her with a swift pressure. &ldquo;But do you know the idea that has come to me
+      within the last few months? That on the whole I have been successful. I am
+      like a man,&rdquo; continued my father, &ldquo;who in some deep wood has been
+      frightened, thinking he has lost his way, and suddenly coming to the end
+      of it, finds that by some lucky chance he has been guided to the right
+      point after all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the right point?&rdquo; asked Barbara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that I cannot tell you,&rdquo; answered my father, with a laugh. &ldquo;I only
+      know that for me it is here where I am. All the time I thought I was
+      wandering away from it I was drawing nearer to it. It is very wonderful. I
+      am just where I ought to be. If I had only known I never need have
+      worried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it would have troubled either him or my mother very much even had
+      it been otherwise I cannot say, for Life, so small a thing when looked at
+      beside Death, seemed to have lost all terror for them; but be that as it
+      may, I like to remember that Fortune at the last was kind to my father,
+      prospering his adventures, not to the extent his sanguine nature had
+      dreamt, but sufficiently: so that no fear for our future marred the
+      peaceful passing of his tender spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or should I award thanks not to Fate, but rather to sweet Barbara, and
+      behind her do I not detect shameless old Hasluck, grinning good-naturedly
+      in the background?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Uncle Luke, I want your advice. Dad's given me this cheque as a
+      birthday present. I don't want to spend it. How shall I invest it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, why not consult your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Uncle Luke, dad's a dear, especially after dinner, but you and I
+      know him. Giving me a present is one thing, doing business for me is
+      another. He'd unload on me. He'd never be able to resist the temptation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father would suggest, and Barbara would thank him. But a minute later
+      would murmur: &ldquo;You don't know anything about Argentinos.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My father did not, but Barbara did; to quite a remarkable extent for a
+      young girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That child has insisted on leaving this cheque with me and I have advised
+      her to buy Argentinos,&rdquo; my father would observe after she was gone. &ldquo;I am
+      going to put a few hundreds into them myself. I hope they will turn out
+      all right, if only for her sake. I have a presentiment somehow that they
+      will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A month later Barbara would greet him with: &ldquo;Isn't it lucky we bought
+      Argentinos!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; they haven't turned out badly, have they? I had a feeling, you know,
+      for Argentinos.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a genius, Uncle Luke. And now we will sell out and buy Calcuttas,
+      won't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sell out? But why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said so. You said, 'We will sell out in about a month and be quite
+      safe.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, I've no recollection of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Barbara had, and before she had done with him, so had he. And the next
+      day Argentinos would be sold&mdash;not any too soon&mdash;and Calcuttas
+      bought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could money so gained bring a blessing with it? The question would plague
+      my father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very much like gambling,&rdquo; he would mutter uneasily to himself at
+      each success, &ldquo;uncommonly like gambling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is for your mother,&rdquo; he would impress upon me. &ldquo;When she is gone,
+      Paul, put it aside, Keep it for doing good; that may make it clean. Start
+      your own life without any help from it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He need not have troubled. It went the road that all luck derived however
+      indirectly from old Hasluck ever went. Yet it served good purpose on its
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the most marvellous feat, to my thinking, ever accomplished by Barbara
+      was the bearing off of my father and mother to witness &ldquo;A Voice from the
+      Grave, or the Power of Love, New and Original Drama in five acts and
+      thirteen tableaux.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been bred in a narrow creed, both my father and my mother. That
+      Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has drowned
+      much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from hearsay do
+      foolishly to speak but ill of it. If ever earnest times should come again,
+      not how to enjoy but how to live being the question, Fate demanding of us
+      to show not what we have but what we are, we may regret that they are
+      fewer among us than formerly, those who trained themselves to despise all
+      pleasure, because in pleasure they saw the subtlest foe to principle and
+      duty. No graceful growth, this Puritanism, for its roots are in the hard,
+      stern facts of life; but it is strong, and from it has sprung all that is
+      worth preserving in the Anglo-Saxon character. Its men feared and its
+      women loved God, and if their words were harsh their hearts were tender.
+      If they shut out the sunshine from their lives it was that their eyes
+      might see better the glory lying beyond; and if their view be correct,
+      that earth's threescore years and ten are but as preparation for eternity,
+      then who shall call them even foolish for turning away their thoughts from
+      its allurements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I think I should like to have a look at one, just to see what it
+      is like,&rdquo; argued my father; &ldquo;one cannot judge of a thing that one knows
+      nothing about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I imagine it was his first argument rather than his second that convinced
+      my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I remember how shocked my poor father was
+      when he found me one night at the bedroom window reading Sir Walter Scott
+      by the light of the moon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the boy?&rdquo; said my father, for I had been included in the
+      invitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will all be wicked together,&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So an evening or two later the four of us stood at the corner of Pigott
+      Street waiting for the 'bus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a close evening,&rdquo; said my father; &ldquo;let's go the whole hog and ride
+      outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days for a lady to ride outside a 'bus was as in these days for a
+      lady to smoke in public. Surely my mother's guardian angel must have
+      betaken himself off in a huff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you keep close behind and see to my skirt?&rdquo; answered my mother,
+      commencing preparations. If you will remember that these were the days of
+      crinolines, that the &ldquo;knife-boards&rdquo; of omnibuses were then approached by a
+      perpendicular ladder, the rungs two feet apart, you will understand the
+      necessity for such precaution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which of us was the most excited throughout that long ride it would be
+      difficult to say. Barbara, feeling keenly her responsibility as prompter
+      and leader of the dread enterprise, sat anxious, as she explained to us
+      afterwards, hoping there would be nothing shocking in the play, nothing to
+      belie its innocent title; pleased with her success so far, yet still
+      fearful of failure, doubtful till the last moment lest we should suddenly
+      repent, and stopping the 'bus, flee from the wrath to come. My father was
+      the youngest of us all. Compared with him I was sober and contained. He
+      fidgeted: people remarked upon it. He hummed. But for the stern eye of a
+      thin young man sitting next to him trying to read a paper, I believe he
+      would have broken out into song. Every minute he would lean across to
+      enquire of my mother: &ldquo;How are you feeling&mdash;all right?&rdquo; To which my
+      mother would reply with a nod and a smile, She sat very silent herself,
+      clasping and unclasping her hands. As for myself, I remember feeling so
+      sorry for the crowds that passed us on their way home. It was sad to think
+      of the long dull evening that lay before them. I wondered how they could
+      face it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle. The lights were low
+      and the house only half full when we reached them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems very orderly and&mdash;and respectable,&rdquo; whispered my mother.
+      There seemed a touch of disappointment in her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are rather early,&rdquo; replied Barbara; &ldquo;it will be livelier when the band
+      comes in and they turn up the gas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But even when this happened my mother was not content. &ldquo;There is so little
+      room for the actors,&rdquo; she complained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was explained to her that the green curtain would go up, that the stage
+      lay behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we waited, my mother sitting stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat,
+      holding me tightly by the hand; I believe with some vague idea of flight,
+      should out of that vault-scented gloom the devil suddenly appear to claim
+      us for his own. But before the curtain was quite up she had forgotten him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You poor folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps
+      oftener, what do you know of plays? You see no drama, you see but
+      middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly pretending
+      to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the Chemist, making
+      believe to be a haughty Princess. How can you, a grown man, waste money on
+      a seat to witness such tomfoolery! What we saw was something very
+      different. A young and beautiful girl&mdash;true, not a lady by birth,
+      being merely the daughter of an honest yeoman, but one equal in all the
+      essentials of womanhood to the noblest in the land&mdash;suffered before
+      our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had one not seen it for
+      oneself, one would never have believed Fate could have accumulated upon
+      the head of any single individual. Beside her woes our own poor troubles
+      sank into insignificance. We had used to grieve, as my mother in a whisper
+      reminded my father, if now and again we had not been able to afford meat
+      for dinner. This poor creature, driven even from her wretched attic,
+      compelled to wander through the snow without so much as an umbrella to
+      protect her, had not even a crust to eat; and yet never lost her faith in
+      Providence. It was a lesson, as my mother remarked afterwards, that she
+      should never forget. And virtue had been triumphant, let shallow cynics
+      say what they will. Had we not proved it with our own senses? The villain&mdash;I
+      think his Christian name, if one can apply the word &ldquo;Christian&rdquo; in
+      connection with such a fiend, was Jasper&mdash;had never really loved the
+      heroine. He was incapable of love. My mother had felt this before he had
+      been on the stage five minutes, and my father&mdash;in spite of protests
+      from callous people behind who appeared to be utterly indifferent to what
+      was going on under their very noses&mdash;had agreed with her. What he was
+      in love with was her fortune&mdash;the fortune that had been left to her
+      by her uncle in Australia, but about which nobody but the villain knew
+      anything. Had she swerved a hair's breadth from the course of almost
+      supernatural rectitude, had her love for the hero ever weakened, her
+      belief in him&mdash;in spite of damning evidence to the contrary&mdash;for
+      a moment wavered, then wickedness might have triumphed. How at times,
+      knowing all the facts but helpless to interfere, we trembled, lest
+      deceived by the cruel lies the villain told her; she should yield to
+      importunity. How we thrilled when, in language eloquent though rude, she
+      flung his false love back into his teeth. Yet still we feared. We knew
+      well that it was not the hero who had done the murder. &ldquo;Poor dear,&rdquo; as Amy
+      would have called him, he was quite incapable of doing anything requiring
+      one-half as much smartness. We knew that it was not he, poor innocent
+      lamb! who had betrayed the lady with the French accent; we had heard her
+      on the subject and had formed a very shrewd conjecture. But appearances,
+      we could not help admitting, were terribly to his disfavour. The
+      circumstantial evidence against him would have hanged an Archbishop. Could
+      she in face of it still retain her faith? There were moments when my
+      mother restrained with difficulty her desire to rise and explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between the acts Barbara would whisper to her that she was not to mind,
+      because it was only a play, and that everything would be sure to come
+      right in the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, my dear,&rdquo; my mother would answer, laughing, &ldquo;it is very foolish
+      of me; I forget. Paul, when you see me getting excited, you must remind
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But of what use was I in such case! I, who only by holding on to the arms
+      of my seat could keep myself from swarming down on to the stage to fling
+      myself between this noble damsel and her persecutor&mdash;this
+      fair-haired, creamy angel in whose presence for the time being I had
+      forgotten even Barbara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The end came at last. The uncle from Australia was not dead. The villain&mdash;bungler
+      as well as knave&mdash;had killed the wrong man, somebody of no importance
+      whatever. As a matter of fact, the comic man himself was the uncle from
+      Australia&mdash;had been so all along. My mother had had a suspicion of
+      this from the very first. She told us so three times, to make up, I
+      suppose, for not having mentioned it before. How we cheered and laughed,
+      in spite of the tears in our eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By pure accident it happened to be the first night of the piece, and the
+      author, in response to much shouting and whistling, came before the
+      curtain. He was fat and looked commonplace; but I deemed him a genius, and
+      my mother said he had a good face, and waved her handkerchief wildly;
+      while my father shouted &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; long after everybody else had finished;
+      and people round about muttered &ldquo;packed house,&rdquo; which I didn't understand
+      at the time, but came to later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And stranger still, it happened to be before that very same curtain that
+      many years later I myself stepped forth to make my first bow as a
+      playwright. I saw the house but dimly, for on such occasion one's vision
+      is apt to be clouded. All that I saw clearly was in the front row of the
+      second circle&mdash;a sweet face laughing though the tears were in her
+      eyes; and she waved to me a handkerchief. And on one side of her stood a
+      gallant gentleman with merry eyes who shouted &ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; and on the other a
+      dreamy-looking lad; but he appeared disappointed, having expected better
+      work from me. And the fourth face I could not see, for it was turned away
+      from me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barbara, determined on completeness, insisted upon supper. In those days
+      respectability fed at home; but one resort possible there was, an
+      eating-house with some pretence to gaiety behind St. Clement Danes, and to
+      that she led us. It was a long, narrow room, divided into wooden
+      compartments, after the old coffee-house plan, a gangway down the centre.
+      Now we should call it a dismal hole, and closing the door hasten away. But
+      to Adam, Eve in her Sunday fig-leaves was a stylishly dressed woman; and
+      to my eyes, with its gilded mirrors and its flaring gas, the place seemed
+      a palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barbara ordered oysters, a fish that familiarity with its empty shell had
+      made me curious concerning. Truly no spot on the globe is so rich in
+      oyster shells as the East End of London. A stranger might be led to the
+      impression (erroneous) that the customary lunch of the East End labourer
+      consists of oysters. How they collect there in such quantities is a
+      mystery, though Washburn, to whom I once presented the problem, found no
+      difficulty in solving it to his own satisfaction: &ldquo;To the rich man the
+      oyster; to the poor man the shell; thus are the Creator's gifts divided
+      among all His creatures; none being sent empty away.&rdquo; For drink the others
+      had stout and I had ginger beer. The waiter, who called me &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; advised
+      against this mixture; but among us all the dominating sentiment by this
+      time was that nothing really mattered very much. Afterwards my father
+      called for a cigar and boldly lighted it, though my mother looked anxious;
+      and fortunately perhaps it would not draw. And then it came out that he
+      himself had once written a play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never told me of that,&rdquo; complained my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a long while ago,&rdquo; replied my father; &ldquo;nothing came of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might have been a success,&rdquo; said my mother; &ldquo;you always had a gift for
+      writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must look it over again,&rdquo; said my father; &ldquo;I had quite forgotten it. I
+      have an impression it wasn't at all bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can be of much help,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;a good play. It makes one
+      think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We put Barbara into a cab and rode home ourselves inside a 'bus. My mother
+      was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her to lean
+      against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. A
+      coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man's arm round her likewise, and
+      she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can do with a bit of nursing, can't they?&rdquo; said the man with a grin
+      to the conductor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they're just kids,&rdquo; agreed the conductor, sympathetically, &ldquo;that's
+      what they are, all of 'em, just kids.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the day ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without a
+      crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!&mdash;no comic
+      uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life! Even
+      my mother at moments was quite irritable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were much together again, my father and I, about this time. Often,
+      making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him, he
+      leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm. To this day I can
+      always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road. And on Saturday
+      afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb the hill and
+      sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together, watching the dim
+      vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying. The &ldquo;year to two&rdquo; of
+      life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in my
+      mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile he
+      himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I know it
+      was his great heart rising to his need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The comprehension came to me suddenly. It was one afternoon in early
+      spring. I was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was
+      then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always
+      much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a
+      block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely
+      crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful
+      jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of
+      physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror and
+      the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might be dead
+      before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a smile as
+      usual, and I flung myself sobbing into his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had had
+      a fear something had happened to him, for from that time forward he
+      dropped all reserve with me, and talked openly of our approaching parting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might have come to us earlier, my dear boy,&rdquo; he would say with his arm
+      round me, &ldquo;or it might have been a little later. A year or so one way or
+      the other, what does it matter? And it is only for a little while, Paul.
+      We shall meet again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I could not answer him, for clutch them to me as I would, all my
+      beliefs&mdash;the beliefs in which I had been bred, the beliefs that until
+      then I had never doubted, in that hour of their first trial, were falling
+      from me. I could not even pray. If I could have prayed for anything, it
+      would have been for my father's life. But if prayer were all powerful, as
+      they said, would our loved ones ever die? Man has not faith enough, they
+      would explain; if he had there would be no parting. So the Lord jests with
+      His creatures, offering with the one hand to snatch back with the other. I
+      flung the mockery from me. There was no firm foothold anywhere. What were
+      all the religions of the word but narcotics with which Humanity seeks to
+      dull its pain, drugs in which it drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble
+      that death pricks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not mean my thoughts took this form. I was little more than a lad,
+      and to the young all thought is dumb, speaking only with a cry. But they
+      were there, vague, inarticulate. Thoughts do not come to us as we grow
+      older. They are with us all our lives. We learn their language, that is
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One fair still evening it burst from me. We had lingered in the Park
+      longer than usual, slowly pacing the broad avenue leading from the
+      Observatory to the Heath. I poured forth all my doubts and fears&mdash;that
+      he was leaving me for ever, that I should never see him again, I could not
+      believe. What could I do to believe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you have spoken, Paul,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it would have been sad had we
+      parted not understanding each other. It has been my fault. I did not know
+      you had these doubts. They come to all of us sooner or later. But we hide
+      them from one another. It is foolish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But tell me,&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;what can I do? How can I make myself believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear lad,&rdquo; answered my father, &ldquo;how can it matter what we believe or
+      disbelieve? It will not alter God's facts. Would you liken Him to some
+      irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you believe,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;father, really I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The night had fallen. My father put his arm round me and drew me to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That we are God's children, little brother,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;that what He
+      wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be best. I
+      cannot think that He will let us die: that were to think of Him as without
+      purpose. But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him. 'Though
+      He slay me yet will I trust in Him.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity'&mdash;you remember the
+      verse&mdash;Faith in God's goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may be
+      fulfiled. But these concern but ourselves&mdash;the greatest of all is
+      Charity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and there
+      a point of light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be kind, that is all it means,&rdquo; continued my father. &ldquo;Often we do what we
+      think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We cannot
+      understand&mdash;maybe the old laws we have misread. But the new Law, that
+      we love one another&mdash;all creatures He has made; that is so clear. And
+      if it be that we are here together only for a little while, Paul, the
+      future dark, how much the greater need have we of one another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked up into my father's face, and the peace that shone from it slid
+      into my soul and gave me strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;down,&rdquo; but utterly impossible to make to cry: &ldquo;I give you
+      best;&rdquo; Neal the thin; and Dicky, &ldquo;dicky Dick&rdquo; 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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;by the uninitiated mistakable for jumbles&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you run?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered. As a matter of fact it was my one accomplishment, and
+      rumour of it maybe had reached him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run round the playground twice at your fastest,&rdquo; he commanded; &ldquo;let me
+      see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't the fellows like you?&rdquo; he asked bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If only I could have stepped out of my shyness, spoken my real thoughts!
+      &ldquo;O Lord of the Lower Fourth! You upon whom success&mdash;the only success
+      in life worth having&mdash;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&mdash;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?&mdash;Dicky, who runs away with their balls, snatches
+      their caps from off their heads, springs upon their backs when they are
+      least expecting it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;I
+      am good at sums&mdash;write their impositions for them, gladly take upon
+      myself their punishments, would they but return my service with a little
+      love and&mdash;more important still&mdash;a little admiration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But all I could find to say was, sulkily: &ldquo;They do like me, some of them.&rdquo;
+       I dared not, aloud, acknowledge the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tell lies,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;you know they don't&mdash;none of them.&rdquo;
+       And I hung my head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what I'll do,&rdquo; he continued in his lordly way; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the moment when the
+      sun breaks through the morning mists, and the world lies stretched before
+      us, our way clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we've only got one hare,&rdquo; cried one of them. &ldquo;We ought to have two,
+      you know, in case one gets blown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got two,&rdquo; answered the Duke. &ldquo;Think I don't know what I'm about?
+      Young Kelver's going to be the other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silence fell upon the meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, we don't want him,&rdquo; at last broke in a voice. &ldquo;He's a muff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can run,&rdquo; explained the Duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him run home,&rdquo; came another voice, which was greeted with laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll run home in a minute yourself,&rdquo; threatened the Duke, &ldquo;if I have
+      any of your cheek. Who's captain here&mdash;you or me? Now, young 'un, are
+      you ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had commenced unbuttoning my jacket, but my hands fell to my side. &ldquo;I
+      don't want to come,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;if they don't want me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll get his feet wet,&rdquo; suggested the boy who had spoken first. &ldquo;Don't
+      spoil him, he's his mother's pet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you coming or are you not?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, stop then,&rdquo; cried the Duke, who, like all authoritative
+      people, was impatient above all things of hesitation. &ldquo;Here, Keefe, you
+      take the bag and be off. It'll be dark before we start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My substitute snatched eagerly at the chance, and away went the hares,
+      while I, still keeping my face hid, moved slowly off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cry-baby!&rdquo; shouted a sharp-eyed youngster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him alone,&rdquo; growled the Duke; and I went on to where the cedars grew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I see it still, that pathetically ridiculous little figure, jogging
+      doggedly over the dank fields. Mile after mile it runs, the little idiot;
+      jumping&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they never catch you?&rdquo; asked my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, never; they never even get within sight of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be careful, dear,&rdquo; would advise my mother; &ldquo;don't overstrain yourself.&rdquo;
+       But I could see that she was proud of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are such an un-understandable chap,&rdquo; complained a fellow Clubman to
+      him once in my hearing. &ldquo;I sometimes ask myself if you have any opinions
+      at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate a crowd,&rdquo; was Dan's only confession of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;their thoughts, their actions, even
+      when these concerned himself&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, Kelver,&rdquo; would say the spokesman of one group; &ldquo;we're going
+      part of your way home. You can walk with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's coming with us this afternoon. He promised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he ain't, anyhow. See?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, isn't he? Who says he isn't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Punch his head, Dick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you do, Jimmy Blake, and I'll punch yours. Come, Kelver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a period it remained a mystery to me, until I asked explanation of
+      Norval&mdash;we called him &ldquo;Norval,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I walk home with you? Why do you want me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we like you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why do you like me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! Why, because you're such a funny chap. You say such funny things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be disagreeable, Kelver. Come with us and we will let you into the
+      team as an extra. I'll teach you batting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So I was to be their Fool&mdash;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&mdash;in this guise. Were the
+      gods still the heartless practical jokers poor Midas had found them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;how he
+      does it.&rdquo; Later in the afternoon he slipped his arm through mine, and drew
+      me away into an empty corner of the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Kelver,&rdquo; he broke out, the moment we were beyond hearing, &ldquo;you
+      really are funny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are you,&rdquo; I answered savagely, &ldquo;only you don't know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I'm not,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Wish I was. I say, Kelver&rdquo;&mdash;he glanced
+      round to see that no one was within earshot&mdash;&ldquo;do you think you could
+      teach me to be funny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and
+      men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think anybody would laugh at that?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How far off do you think any one could hear that?&rdquo; I would demand
+      anxiously, on recovering sufficient breath to speak at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it would depend upon whether you knew it was coming,&rdquo; Wakeham would
+      reply kindly, not wishing to discourage me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We abandoned the scheme by mutual consent at about the end of a fortnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it's something that you've got to have inside you,&rdquo; I suggested
+      to Wakeham in consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think the roof of your mouth can be quite the right shape for
+      it,&rdquo; concluded Wakeham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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. &ldquo;On this day a strange adventure
+      befell me. Walking in the garden, all unheeding, I suddenly&rdquo;&mdash;I did
+      not want to add the truth&mdash;&ldquo;tumbled into a dust-hole, six feet
+      square, that any one but a moon calf might have seen.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;an endless descent, terminating in a vast and gloomy chamber.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;my mother and a grey-bearded Stranger&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My talk with the Stranger came about in this wise. One evening I had taken
+      a walk to Victoria Park&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I drew nearer. He took no notice of me, and interested&mdash;though why, I
+      could not say&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, sir,&rdquo; I said, after awhile, &ldquo;could you tell me the right time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty minutes to eight,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you live?&rdquo; he turned and suddenly asked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, only over there,&rdquo; I answered, with a wave of my arm towards the
+      chimney-fringed horizon behind us. &ldquo;I needn't be in till half-past eight.
+      I like this Park so much,&rdquo; I added, &ldquo;I often come and sit here of an
+      evening.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you like to come and sit here?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma does not like the twilight time,&rdquo; I confided to him. &ldquo;It always
+      makes her cry. But then mamma is&mdash;not very young, you know, and has
+      had a deal of trouble; and that makes a difference, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his hand upon mine. We were sitting nearer to each other now. &ldquo;God
+      made women weak to teach us men to be tender,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But you, Paul,
+      like this 'twilight time'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;very much. Don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why do you like it?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;things come to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, fancies,&rdquo; I explained to him. &ldquo;I am going to be an author when I grow
+      up, and write books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took my hand in his and shook it gravely, and then returned it to me.
+      &ldquo;I, too, am a writer of books,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I knew what had drawn me to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So for the first time I understood the joy of talking &ldquo;shop&rdquo; with a fellow
+      craftsman. I told him my favourite authors&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to read silly stuff once,&rdquo; I confessed, &ldquo;Indian tales and that
+      sort of thing, you know. But mamma said I'd never be able to write if I
+      read that rubbish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find it so all through life, Paul,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;The things that
+      are nice are rarely good for us. And what do you read now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am reading Marlowe's Plays and De Quincey's Confessions just now,&rdquo; I
+      confided to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you understand them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fairly well,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Mamma says I'll like them better as I go on. I
+      want to learn to write very, very well indeed,&rdquo; I admitted to him; &ldquo;then
+      I'll be able to earn heaps of money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;So you don't believe in Art for Art's sake, Paul?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was puzzled. &ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means in our case, Paul,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;writing books for the pleasure
+      of writing books, without thinking of any reward, without desiring either
+      money or fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a new idea to me. &ldquo;Do many authors do that?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he said; and he glanced round with a whimsical expression of fear,
+      lest we might have been overheard. &ldquo;Between ourselves, Paul,&rdquo; he
+      continued, drawing me more closely towards him and whispering, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I promised I would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you must not think merely of the money and the fame, Paul,&rdquo; he added
+      the next moment, speaking more seriously. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I pondered. &ldquo;Mamma says it is a very noble calling, authorship,&rdquo; I
+      remembered, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you try to be good, Paul?&rdquo; he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;but it's very hard to be quite good&mdash;until of
+      course you're grown up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled, but more to himself than to me. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; Which, from a gentleman with a grey
+      beard, appeared to me a puzzling observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what else does mamma say about literature?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Can you
+      remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I pondered, and her words came back to me. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mother is a wise lady, Paul,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Remember her words always.
+      In later life let them come back to you; they will guide you better than
+      the chatter of the Clubs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what modern authors do you read?&rdquo; he asked after a silence: &ldquo;any of
+      them&mdash;Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, Dickens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have read 'The Last of the Barons,'&rdquo; I told him; &ldquo;I like that. And I've
+      been to Barnet and seen the church. And some of Mr. Dickens'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you think of Mr. Dickens?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like him very much,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;he makes you laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not always?&rdquo; he asked. He stopped his stone-throwing, and turned sharply
+      towards me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, not always,&rdquo; I admitted; &ldquo;but I like the funny bits best. I like
+      so much where Mr. Pickwick&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, damn Mr. Pickwick!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you like him?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I like him well enough, or used to,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;I'm a bit
+      tired of him, that's all. Does your mamma like Mr.&mdash;Mr. Dickens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the funny parts,&rdquo; I explained to him. &ldquo;She thinks he is occasionally&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he interrupted, rather irritably, I thought; &ldquo;a trifle vulgar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It surprised me that he should have guessed her exact words. &ldquo;I don't
+      think mamma has much sense of humour,&rdquo; I explained to him. &ldquo;Sometimes she
+      doesn't even see papa's jokes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that he laughed again. &ldquo;But she likes the other parts?&rdquo; he enquired,
+      &ldquo;the parts where Mr. Dickens isn't&mdash;vulgar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;She says he can be so beautiful and tender, when
+      he likes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Twilight was deepening. It occurred to me to enquire of him again the
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just over the quarter,&rdquo; he answered, looking at his watch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so sorry,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I must go now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I sorry, Paul,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Perhaps we shall meet again.
+      Good-bye.&rdquo; Then as our hands touched: &ldquo;You have never asked me my name,
+      Paul,&rdquo; he reminded me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, haven't I?&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Paul,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;and that makes me think of your future with hope.
+      You are an egotist, Paul; and that is the beginning of all art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And after that he would not tell me his name. &ldquo;Perhaps next time we meet,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;Good-bye, Paul. Good luck to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All out! All out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN WHICH PAUL IS SHIPWRECKED, AND CAST INTO DEEP WATERS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have left him sleeping,&rdquo; said my mother, who had slipped out very
+      quietly in her dressing-gown. &ldquo;Washburn gave him a draught last night. We
+      won't disturb him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a girl's voice, it sounded&mdash;passed, crying
+      shrilly: &ldquo;Watercreases, fine fresh watercreases with your
+      breakfast-a'penny a bundle watercreases;&rdquo; and further off a hoarse youth
+      was wailing: &ldquo;Mee-ilk-mee-ilk-oi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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 &ldquo;the very thing for us&rdquo; and would discuss its
+      possibilities from every point of view and find them good, we yet delayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must think it over,&rdquo; would say my mother; &ldquo;there is no hurry; for some
+      reasons I shall be sorry to leave Poplar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what reasons, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well, no particular reason, Paul. Only we have lived there so long,
+      you know. It will be a wrench leaving the old house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;do you remember?&mdash;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 &ldquo;home.&rdquo; 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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My aunt died as she had lived, grumbling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be glad to get rid of me, all of you!&rdquo; she said, dropping for
+      the first and last time I can recollect into the retort direct; &ldquo;and I
+      can't say I shall be very sorry to go myself. It hasn't been my idea of
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be foolish,&rdquo; said my mother, &ldquo;you're not going to die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use of talking like an idiot,&rdquo; retorted my aunt, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure we do all we can for you,&rdquo; said my mother. &ldquo;I know you do,&rdquo;
+       replied my aunt. &ldquo;I'm a burden to you. I always have been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a burden,&rdquo; corrected my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does the woman call it then,&rdquo; snapped back my aunt. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother put her arms about the poor old soul and kissed her. &ldquo;We should
+      miss you very much,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure I hope they all will!&rdquo; answered my aunt. &ldquo;It's the only thing
+      I've got to leave 'em, worth having.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe it's been a good thing for you, Maggie,&rdquo; grumbled my aunt; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot honestly say we ever wished her back; though we certainly did
+      miss her&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Amy, I believe she really regretted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One never knows what's good for one till one's lost it,&rdquo; sighed Amy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad to think you liked her,&rdquo; said my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, mum,&rdquo; explained Amy, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you are going to be married in a few weeks now,&rdquo; my mother reminded
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Amy remained despondent. &ldquo;They're poor things, the men, at a few
+      words, the best of them,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in luck's way, my boy, in luck's way,&rdquo; old Mr. Gadley had assured
+      me. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stillwood himself was an extremely old and feeble gentleman&mdash;so
+      old and feeble it seemed strange that he, a wealthy man, had not long ago
+      retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am always meaning to,&rdquo; he explained to me one day soon after my advent
+      in his office. &ldquo;When your poor father came to me he told me very frankly
+      the sad fact&mdash;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&mdash;or is it Mr. Jingle&mdash;tells us of; if the shafts were
+      drawn away I should probably collapse. So I jog on, I jog on.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;managing&rdquo; women who go through life under the impression that
+      making a disturbance is somehow &ldquo;putting things to rights.&rdquo; 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 &amp; Co.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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, &ldquo;what's bred in the bone
+      will come out in the flesh,&rdquo; scrub it and paint it and hide it away under
+      fine clothes as you will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her constant complaint against her husband was that he was only a
+      solicitor, a profession she considered vulgar; and nothing &ldquo;riled&rdquo; old
+      Gadley more than hearing her views upon this point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not fair to the gals,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; grunted
+      old Gadley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Stillwood called him a &ldquo;low beast&rdquo; in her most aristocratic tones,
+      and swept out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not that old Stillwood himself ever expressed fondness for the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at all sure, Kelver,&rdquo; I remember his saying to me on one
+      occasion, &ldquo;that you have done wisely in choosing the law. It makes one
+      regard humanity morally as the medical profession regards it physically:&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does not seem to have infected you, sir,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, Kelver, I hope not,&rdquo; the old gentleman replied; &ldquo;and yet, do
+      you know, I sometimes suspect myself&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laughing, he laid his hand upon my shoulder. &ldquo;One person always be
+      suspicious of, Kelver&mdash;yourself. Nobody can do you so much harm as
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of Washburn we saw more and more. &ldquo;Hal&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You rest me, Mrs. Kelver,&rdquo; he would say, lighting his pipe and sinking
+      down into the deep leathern chair that always waited for him in our
+      parlour. &ldquo;Your even voice, your soft eyes, your quiet hands, they soothe
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is good for a man,&rdquo; he would say, looking from one to the other of us
+      through the hanging smoke, &ldquo;to test his wisdom by two things: the face of
+      a good woman, and the ear of a child&mdash;I beg your pardon, Paul&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You should marry, Hal,&rdquo; my mother would say. It was her panacea for all
+      mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would, Mrs. Kelver,&rdquo; he answered her on one occasion, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you never fallen in love?&rdquo; asked my mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three of me have, but on each occasion the other five of me out-voted
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're sure six would be sufficient?&rdquo; queried my mother, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But my mother was not to be discouraged. &ldquo;You will find the woman one day,
+      Hal, who will be all of them to you&mdash;all of them that are worth
+      having, that is. And your eight-roomed house will be a kingdom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man is many, and a woman but one,&rdquo; answered Hal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what men say who are too blind to see more than one side of a
+      woman,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hal laid aside his pipe and leant forward in his chair. &ldquo;Now tell us, Mrs.
+      Kelver, for our guidance, we two young bachelors, what must the lover of a
+      young girl be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Always very serious on this subject of love, my mother answered gravely:
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like that way of putting it,&rdquo; answered my mother. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening &ldquo;Who are we that we should live?&rdquo; cried Hal. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Sodom and Gomorrah,&rdquo; reminded him my mother, &ldquo;would have been spared
+      for the sake of ten just men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much more sensible to have hurried the ten men out, leaving the remainder
+      to be buried with all their abominations under their own ashes,&rdquo; growled
+      Hal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we shall be purified,&rdquo; continued my mother, &ldquo;the evil in us washed
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo; He had
+      just come away from a meeting of Poor Law Guardians, and was in a state of
+      dissatisfaction with human nature generally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is His way,&rdquo; answered my mother. &ldquo;The precious stone lies hid in clay.
+      He has His purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the stone so very precious?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;heroism,
+      self-sacrifice, love stronger than death. Can you think He will waste it,
+      He who uses again even the dead leaf?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall the new leaf remember the new flower?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if it ever knew it. Shall memory be the only thing to die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature laid me by and forgot me for a couple of thousand years,&rdquo; was his
+      own explanation of himself. &ldquo;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.&rdquo; So in Poplar he remained, poor in fees but rich in honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Brutal Assault Upon a
+      Respected Resident&rdquo; (according to the local papers), the &ldquo;miscreants&rdquo;
+       always making and keeping good their escape, for he was an admirable
+      organiser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night it seemed to him necessary that a child should go at once into
+      the Infirmary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't no use my taking her now,&rdquo; explained the mother, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho! oho! oho!&rdquo; sang Hal, taking the child up in his arms and putting on
+      his hat. &ldquo;You follow me; we'll have some sport. Tally ho! tally ho!&rdquo; And
+      away we went, Hal heading our procession through the streets, shouting a
+      rollicking song, the baby staring at him openmouthed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now ring,&rdquo; cried Hal to the mother on our reaching the Workhouse gate.
+      &ldquo;Ring modestly, as becomes the poor ringing at the gate of Charity.&rdquo; And
+      the bell tinkled faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ring again!&rdquo; cried Hal, drawing back into the shadow; and at last the
+      wicket opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you please, sir, my baby&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blast your baby!&rdquo; answered a husky voice, &ldquo;what d'ye mean by coming here
+      this time of night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, sir, I'm afraid it's dying, and the Doctor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open the gate!&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;Open it quick, you blackguard! You gross vat-load of potato spirit, you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know as it was you, Doctor,&rdquo; explained the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gentleman came to reside in the district, a firm believer in the wisdom
+      of the couplet: &ldquo;A woman, a spaniel and a walnut tree, The more you beat
+      them the better they be.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he like?&rdquo; asked Hal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a big 'un,&rdquo; answered the woman who had come with the tale, &ldquo;and he's
+      good with his fists&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any likely time to catch him at it?&rdquo; asked Hal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saturdays it's as regular as early closing,&rdquo; answered the woman, &ldquo;but you
+      might have to wait a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll wait in your room, granny, next Saturday,&rdquo; suggested Hal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; agreed the woman, &ldquo;I'll risk it, even if I do get a bloody
+      head for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;And God blessed
+      them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waiting to pull your nose!&rdquo; answered Hal, suiting the action to the word.
+      And then laughing he ran down the street, I following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, between long, lifeless walls. I
+      looked into Hal's face from time to time, and he was laughing; but every
+      now and then he would look over his shoulder at the man behind him still
+      following doggedly, and then his face would be twisted into a comically
+      terrified grimace. Turning into a narrow cul-de-sac, Hal suddenly ducked
+      behind a wide brick buttress, and the man, still running, passed us. And
+      then Hal stood up and called to him, and the man turned, looked into Hal's
+      eyes, and understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not a coward. Besides, even a rat when cornered will fight for its
+      life. He made a rush at Hal, and Hal made no attempt to defend himself. He
+      stood there laughing, and the man struck him full in the face, and the
+      blood spurted out and flowed down into his mouth. The man came on again,
+      though terror was in every line of his face, all his desire being to
+      escape. But this time Hal drove him back again. They fought for awhile, if
+      one can call it fighting, till the man, mad for air, reeled against the
+      wall, stood there quivering convulsively, his mouth wide open, resembling
+      more than anything else some huge dying fish. And Hal drew away and
+      waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no desire to see again the sight I saw that quiet, still evening,
+      framed by those high, windowless walls, from behind which sounded with
+      ceaseless regularity the gentle swish of the incoming tide. All sense of
+      retribution was drowned in the sight of Hal's evident enjoyment of his
+      sport. The judge had disappeared, leaving the work to be accomplished by a
+      savage animal loosened for the purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wretched creature flung itself again towards its only door of escape,
+      fought with the vehemence of despair, to be flung back again, a hideous,
+      bleeding mass of broken flesh. I tried to cling to Hal's arm, but one jerk
+      of his steel muscles flung me ten feet away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep off, you fool!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I won't kill him. I'm keeping my head. I
+      shall know when to stop.&rdquo; And I crept away and waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hal joined me a little later, wiping the blood from his face. We made our
+      way to a small public-house near the river, and from there Hal sent a
+      couple of men on whom he could rely with instructions how to act. I never
+      heard any more of the matter. It was a subject on which I did not care to
+      speak to Hal. I can only hope that good came of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a spot&mdash;it has been cleared away since to make room for the
+      approach to Greenwich Tunnel&mdash;it was then the entrance to a grain
+      depot in connection with the Milwall Docks. A curious brick well it
+      resembled, in the centre of which a roadway wound downward, corkscrew
+      fashion, disappearing at the bottom into darkness under a yawning arch.
+      The place possessed the curious property of being ever filled with a
+      ceaseless murmur, as though it were some aerial maelstrom, drawing into
+      its silent vacuum all wandering waves of sound from the restless human
+      ocean flowing round it. No single tone could one ever distinguish: it was
+      a mingling of all voices, heard there like the murmur of a sea-soaked
+      shell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed through it on our return. Its work for the day was finished, its
+      strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons thundering up and
+      down its spiral way. Hal paused, leaning against the railings that
+      encircled its centre, and listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark, do you not hear it, Paul?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;It is the music of Humanity.
+      All human notes are needful to its making: the faint wail of the new-born,
+      the cry of the dying thief; the beating of the hammers, the merry trip of
+      dancers; the clatter of the teacups, the roaring of the streets; the
+      crooning of the mother to her babe, the scream of the tortured child; the
+      meeting kiss of lovers, the sob of those that part. Listen! prayers and
+      curses, sighs and laughter; the soft breathing of the sleeping, the
+      fretful feet of pain; voices of pity, voices of hate; the glad song of the
+      strong, the foolish complaining of the weak. Listen to it, Paul! Right and
+      wrong, good and evil, hope and despair, it is but one voice&mdash;a single
+      note, drawn by the sweep of the Player's hand across the quivering strings
+      of man. What is the meaning of it, Paul? Can you read it? Sometimes it
+      seems to me a note of joy, so full, so endless, so complete, that I cry:
+      'Blessed be the Lord whose hammers have beaten upon us, whose fires have
+      shaped us to His ends!' And sometimes it sounds to me a dying note, so
+      that I could curse Him who in wantonness has wrung it from the anguish of
+      His creatures&mdash;till I would that I could fling myself, Prometheus
+      like, between Him and His victims, calling: 'My darkness, but their light;
+      my agony, O God; their hope!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint light from a neighbouring gas-lamp fell upon his face that an
+      hour before I had seen the face of a wild beast. The ugly mouth was
+      quivering, tears stood in his great, tender eyes. Could his prayer in that
+      moment have been granted, could he have pressed against his bosom all the
+      pain of the world, he would have rejoiced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook himself together with a laugh. &ldquo;Come, Paul, we have had a busy
+      afternoon, and I'm thirsty. Let us drink some beer, my boy, good sound
+      beer, and plenty of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My mother fell ill that winter. Mountain born and mountain bred, the close
+      streets had never agreed with her, and scolded by all of us, she promised,
+      &ldquo;come the fine weather,&rdquo; to put sentiment behind her, and go away from
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinking she will,&rdquo; said Hal, gripping my shoulder with his strong
+      hand, &ldquo;but it'll be by herself that she'll go, lad. My wonder is,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;that she has held out so long. If anything, it is you that
+      have kept her alive. Now that you are off her mind to a certain extent,
+      she is worrying about your father, I expect. These women, they never will
+      believe a man can take care of himself, even in Heaven. She's never quite
+      trusted the Lord with him, and never will till she's there to give an eye
+      to things herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hal's prophecy fell true. She left &ldquo;come the fine weather,&rdquo; as she had
+      promised: I remember it was the first day primroses were hawked in the
+      street. But another death had occurred just before; which, concerning me
+      closely as it does, I had better here dispose of; and that was the death
+      of old Mr. Stillwood, who passed away rich in honour and regret, and was
+      buried with much ostentation and much sincere sorrow; for he had been to
+      many of his clients, mostly old folk, rather a friend than a mere man of
+      business, and had gained from all with whom he had come in contact,
+      respect, and from many real affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In conformity with the old legal fashions that in his life he had so
+      fondly clung to, his will was read aloud by Mr. Gadley after the return
+      from the funeral, and many were the tears its recital called forth.
+      Written years ago by himself and never altered, its quaint phraseology was
+      full of kindly thought and expression. No one had been forgotten. Clerks,
+      servants, poor relations, all had been treated with even-handed justice,
+      while for those with claim upon him, ample provision had been made. Few
+      wills, I think, could ever have been read less open to criticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Gadley slipped his arm into mine as we left the house. &ldquo;If you've
+      nothing to do, young 'un,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll get you to come with me to the
+      office. I have got all the keys in my pocket, and we shall be quiet. It
+      will be sad work for me, and I had rather we were alone. A couple of hours
+      will show us everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We lighted the wax candles&mdash;old Stillwood could never tolerate gas in
+      his own room&mdash;and opening the safe took out the heavy ledgers one by
+      one, and from them Gadley dictated figures which I wrote down and added
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty years I have kept these books for him,&rdquo; said old Gadley, as we
+      laid by the last of them, &ldquo;thirty years come Christmas next, he and I
+      together. No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now people
+      to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them about, drop
+      greasy crumbs upon them&mdash;I know their ways, the brutes!&mdash;scribble
+      all over them. And he who always would have everything so neat and
+      orderly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We came to the end of them in less than the time old Gadley had thought
+      needful: in such perfect order had everything been maintained. I was
+      preparing to go, but old Gadley had drawn a couple of small keys from his
+      pocket, and was shuffling again towards the safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only one more,&rdquo; he explained in answer to my look, &ldquo;his own private
+      ledger. It will merely be in the nature of a summary, but we'll just
+      glance through it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened an inner drawer and took from it a small thick volume bound in
+      green leather and closed with two brass locks. An ancient volume, it
+      appeared, its strong binding faded and stained. Old Gadley sat down with
+      it at the dead man's own desk, and snuffing the two shaded candles,
+      unlocked and opened it. I was standing opposite, so that the book to me
+      was upside down, but the date on the first page, &ldquo;1841,&rdquo; caught my eye, as
+      also the small neat writing now brown with age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So neat, so orderly he always was,&rdquo; murmured old Gadley again, smoothing
+      the page affectionately with his hand, and I waited for his dictation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no glib flow of figures fell from him. His eyebrows suddenly
+      contracted, his body stiffened itself. Then for the next quarter of an
+      hour nothing sounded in the quiet room but his turning of the creakling
+      pages. Once or twice he glanced round swiftly over his shoulder, as though
+      haunted by the idea of some one behind him; then back to the neat, closely
+      written folios, his little eyes, now exhibiting a comical look of horror,
+      starting out of his round red face. First slowly, then quickly with
+      trembling hands he turned the pages, till the continual ratling of the
+      leaves sounded like strange, mocking laughter through the silent, empty
+      room; almost one could imagine it coming from some watching creature
+      hidden in the shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The end reached, he sat staring before him, his whole body quivering,
+      great beads of sweat upon his shiny bald head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I mad?&rdquo; was all he could find to say. &ldquo;Kelver, am I mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He handed me the book. It was a cynically truthful record of fraud,
+      extending over thirty years. Every client, every friend, every relative
+      that had fallen into his net he had robbed: the fortunate ones of a part,
+      the majority of their all. Its very first entry debited him with the
+      proceeds of his own partner's estate. Its last ran&mdash;&ldquo;Re Kelver&mdash;various
+      sales of stock.&rdquo; To his credit were his payments year after year of
+      imaginary interests on imaginary securities, the surplus accounted for
+      with simple brevity: &ldquo;Transferred to own account.&rdquo; No record could have
+      been more clear, more frank. Beneath each transaction was written its true
+      history; the actual investments, sometimes necessary, carefully
+      distinguished from the false. In neat red ink would occur here and there a
+      note for his own guidance: &ldquo;Eldest child comes of age August, '73. Be
+      prepared for trustees desiring production.&rdquo; Turning to &ldquo;August, '73,&rdquo; one
+      found that genuine investment had been made, to be sold again a few months
+      later on. From beginning to end not a single false step had he committed.
+      Suspicious clients had been ear-marked: the trusting discriminated with
+      gratitude, and milked again and again to meet emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a piece of organisation it was magnificent. No one but a financial
+      genius could have picked a dozen steps through such a network of
+      chicanery. For half a lifetime he had moved among it, dignified, respected
+      and secure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether even he could have maintained his position for another month was
+      doubtful. Suicide, though hinted at, was proved to have been impossible.
+      It seemed as though with his amazing audacity he had tricked even Death
+      into becoming his accomplice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is impossible, Kelver!&rdquo; cried Gadley, &ldquo;this must be some dream.
+      Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal! What is the meaning of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took the book into his hands again, then burst into tears. &ldquo;You never
+      knew him,&rdquo; wailed the poor little man. &ldquo;Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal! I
+      came here as office boy fifty years ago. He was more like a friend to me
+      than&mdash;&rdquo; and again the sobs shook his little fat body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I locked the books away and put him into his hat and coat. But I had much
+      difficulty in getting him out of the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I daren't, young 'un,&rdquo; he cried, drawing back. &ldquo;Fifty years I have walked
+      out of this office, proud of it, proud of being connected with it. I
+      daren't face the street!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the way home his only idea was: Could it not be hidden? Honest, kindly
+      little man that he was, he seemed to have no thought for the unfortunate
+      victims. The good name of his master, of his friend, gone! Stillwood,
+      Waterhead and Royal, a by-word! To have avoided that I believe he would
+      have been willing for yet another hundred clients to be ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw him to his door, then turned homeward; and to my surprise in a dark
+      by-street heard myself laughing heartily. I checked myself instantly,
+      feeling ashamed of my callousness, of my seeming indifference to the
+      trouble even of myself and my mother. Yet as there passed before me the
+      remembrance of that imposing and expensive funeral with its mournful
+      following of tearful faces; the hushed reading of the will with its
+      accompaniment of rustling approval; the picture of the admirably
+      sympathetic clergyman consoling with white hands Mrs. Stillwood, inclined
+      to hysteria, but anxious concerning her two hundred pounds' worth of crape
+      which by no possibility of means could now be paid for&mdash;recurred to
+      me the obituary notice in &ldquo;The Chelsea Weekly Chronicle&rdquo;: the humour of
+      the thing swept all else before it, and I laughed again&mdash;I could not
+      help it&mdash;loud and long. It was my first introduction to the comedy of
+      life, which is apt to be more brutal than the comedy of fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nearing home, the serious side of the matter forced itself uppermost.
+      Fortunately, our supposed dividends had been paid to us by Mr. Stillwood
+      only the month before. Could I keep the thing from troubling my mother's
+      last days? It would be hard work. I should have to do it alone, for a
+      perhaps foolish pride prevented my taking Hal into my confidence, even
+      made his friendship a dread to me, lest he should come to learn and offer
+      help. There is a higher generosity, it is said, that can receive with
+      pleasure as well as bestow favour; but I have never felt it. Could I be
+      sure of acting my part, of not betraying myself to her sharp eyes, of
+      keeping newspapers and chance gossip away from her? Good shrewd Amy I
+      cautioned, but I shrank from even speaking on the subject to Hal, and my
+      fear was lest he should blunder into the subject, which for the usual nine
+      days occupied much public attention. But fortunately he appeared not even
+      to have heard of the scandal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly had the need lasted longer I might have failed, but as it was, a
+      few weeks saw the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't leave me to-day, Paul,&rdquo; whispered my mother to me one morning. So I
+      stayed, and in the evening my mother put her arms around my neck and I lay
+      beside her, my head upon her breast, as I used to when a little boy. And
+      when the morning came I was alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOOK II. <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Room to let for a single gentleman.&rdquo; Sometimes in an idle hour, impelled
+      by foolishness, I will knock at the door. It is opened after a longer or
+      shorter interval by the &ldquo;slavey&rdquo;&mdash;in the morning, slatternly, her
+      arms concealed beneath her apron; in the afternoon, smart in dirty cap and
+      apron. How well I know her! Unchanged, not grown an inch&mdash;her round
+      bewildered eyes, her open mouth, her touzled hair, her scored red hands.
+      With an effort I refrain from muttering: &ldquo;So sorry, forgot my key,&rdquo; from
+      pushing past her and mounting two at a time the narrow stairs, carpeted to
+      the first floor, but bare beyond. Instead, I say, &ldquo;Oh, what rooms have you
+      to let?&rdquo; when, scuttling to the top of the kitchen stairs, she will call
+      over the banisters: &ldquo;A gentleman to see the rooms.&rdquo; There comes up,
+      panting, a harassed-looking, elderly female, but genteel in black. She
+      crushes past the little &ldquo;slavey,&rdquo; and approaching, eyes me critically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a very nice room on the first floor,&rdquo; she informs me, &ldquo;and one
+      behind on the third.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I agree to see them, explaining that I am seeking them for a young friend
+      of mine. We squeeze past the hat and umbrella stand: there is just room,
+      but one must keep close to the wall. The first floor is rather an imposing
+      apartment, with a marble-topped sideboard measuring quite three feet by
+      two, the doors of which will remain closed if you introduce a wad of paper
+      between them. A green table-cloth, matching the curtains, covers the
+      loo-table. The lamp is perfectly safe so long as it stands in the exact
+      centre of the table, but should not be shifted. A paper fire-stove
+      ornament in some mysterious way bestows upon the room an air of chastity.
+      Above the mantelpiece is a fly-blown mirror, between the once gilt frame
+      and glass of which can be inserted invitation cards; indeed, one or two so
+      remain, proving that the tenants even of &ldquo;bed-sitting-rooms&rdquo; are not
+      excluded from social delights. The wall opposite is adorned by an
+      oleograph of the kind Cheap Jacks sell by auction on Saturday nights in
+      the Pimlico Road, and warrant as &ldquo;hand-made.&rdquo; Generally speaking, it is a
+      Swiss landscape. There appears to be more &ldquo;body&rdquo; in a Swiss landscape than
+      in scenes from less favoured localities. A dilapidated mill, a foaming
+      torrent, a mountain, a maiden and a cow can at the least be relied upon.
+      An easy chair (I disclaim all responsibility for the adjective), stuffed
+      with many coils of steel wire, each possessing a &ldquo;business end&rdquo; in
+      admirable working order, and covered with horsehair, highly glazed, awaits
+      the uninitiated. There is one way of sitting upon it, and only one: by
+      using the extreme edge, and planting your feet firmly on the floor. If you
+      attempt to lean back in it you inevitably slide out of it. When so treated
+      it seems to say to you: &ldquo;Excuse me, you are very heavy, and you would
+      really be much more comfortable upon the floor. Thank you so much.&rdquo; The
+      bed is behind the door, and the washstand behind the bed. If you sit
+      facing the window you can forget the bed. On the other hand, if more than
+      one friend come to call on you, you are glad of it. As a matter of fact,
+      experienced visitors prefer it&mdash;make straight for it, refusing with
+      firmness to exchange it for the easy chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this room is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight shillings a week, sir&mdash;with attendance, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any extras?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lamp, sir, is eighteenpence a week; and the kitchen fire, if the
+      gentleman wishes to dine at home, two shillings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And fire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sixpence a scuttle, sir, I charge for coals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's rather a small scuttle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlady bridles a little. &ldquo;The usual size, I think, sir.&rdquo; One
+      presumes there is a special size in coal-scuttles made exclusively for
+      lodging-house keepers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I agree that while I am about it I may as well see the other room, the
+      third floor back. The landlady opens the door for me, but remains herself
+      on the landing. She is a stout lady, and does not wish to dwarf the
+      apartment by comparison. The arrangement here does not allow of your
+      ignoring the bed. It is the life and soul of the room, and it declines to
+      efface itself. Its only possible rival is the washstand, straw-coloured;
+      with staring white basin and jug, together with other appurtenances. It
+      glares defiantly from its corner. &ldquo;I know I'm small,&rdquo; it seems to say;
+      &ldquo;but I'm very useful; and I won't be ignored.&rdquo; The remaining furniture
+      consists of a couple of chairs&mdash;there is no hypocrisy about them:
+      they are not easy and they do not pretend to be easy; a small chest of
+      light-painted drawers before the window, with white china handles, upon
+      which is a tiny looking-glass; and, occupying the entire remaining space,
+      after allowing three square feet for the tenant, when he arrives, an
+      attenuated four-legged table apparently home-made. The only ornament in
+      the room is, suspended above the fireplace, a funeral card, framed in beer
+      corks. As the corpse introduced by the ancient Egyptians into their
+      banquets, it is hung there perhaps to remind the occupant of the apartment
+      that the luxuries and allurements of life have their end; or maybe it
+      consoles him in despondent moments with the reflection that after all he
+      might be worse off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rent of this room is three-and-sixpence a week, also including
+      attendance; lamp, as for the first floor, eighteen-pence; but kitchen fire
+      a shilling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why should kitchen fire for the first floor be two shillings, and for
+      this only one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as a rule, sir, the first floor wants more cooking done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You are quite right, my dear lady, I was forgetting. The gentleman in the
+      third floor back! cooking for him is not a great tax upon the kitchen
+      fire. His breakfast, it is what, madam, we call plain, I think. His lunch
+      he takes out. You may see him, walking round the quiet square, up and down
+      the narrow street that, leading to nowhere in particular, is between
+      twelve and two somewhat deserted. He carries a paper bag, into which at
+      intervals, when he is sure nobody is looking, his mouth disappears. From
+      studying the neighbourhood one can guess what it contains. Saveloys
+      hereabouts are plentiful and only twopence each. There are pie shops,
+      where meat pies are twopence and fruit pies a penny. The lady behind the
+      counter, using deftly a broad, flat knife, lifts the little dainty with
+      one twist clean from its tiny dish: it is marvellous, having regard to the
+      thinness of the pastry, that she never breaks one. Roley-poley pudding,
+      sweet and wonderfully satisfying, more especially when cold, is but a
+      penny a slice. Peas pudding, though this is an awkward thing to eat out of
+      a bag, is comforting upon cold days. Then with his tea he takes two eggs
+      or a haddock, the fourpenny size; maybe on rare occasions, a chop or
+      steak; and you fry it for him, madam, though every time he urges on you
+      how much he would prefer it grilled, for fried in your one frying-pan its
+      flavour becomes somewhat confused. But maybe this is the better for him,
+      for, shutting his eyes and trusting only to smell and flavour, he can
+      imagine himself enjoying variety. He can begin with herrings, pass on to
+      liver and bacon, opening his eyes again for a moment perceive that he has
+      now arrived at the joint, and closing them again, wind up with distinct
+      suggestion of toasted cheese, thus avoiding monotony. For dinner he goes
+      out again. Maybe he is not hungry, late meals are a mistake; or, maybe,
+      putting his hand into his pocket and making calculations beneath a
+      lamp-post, appetite may come to him. Then there are places cheerful with
+      the sound of frizzling fat, where fried plaice brown and odorous may be
+      had for three halfpence, and a handful of sliced potatoes for a penny;
+      where for fourpence succulent stewed eels may be discussed; vinegar ad
+      lib.; or for sevenpence&mdash;but these are red-letter evenings&mdash;half
+      a sheep's head may be indulged in, which is a supper fit for any king, who
+      happened to be hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explain that I will discuss the matter with my young friend when he
+      arrives. The landlady says, &ldquo;Certainly, sir:&rdquo; she is used to what she
+      calls the &ldquo;wandering Christian;&rdquo; and easing my conscience by slipping a
+      shilling into the &ldquo;slavey's&rdquo; astonished, lukewarm hand, I pass out again
+      into the long, dreary street, now echoing maybe to the sad cry of
+      &ldquo;Muffins!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Or sometimes of an evening, the lamp lighted, the remnants of the meat tea
+      cleared away, the flickering firelight cosifying the dingy rooms, I go
+      a-visiting. There is no need for me to ring the bell, to mount the stairs.
+      Through the thin transparent walls I can see you plainly, old friends of
+      mine, fashions a little changed, that is all. We wore bell-shaped
+      trousers; eight-and-six to measure, seven-and-six if from stock; fastened
+      our neckties in dashing style with a horseshoe pin. I think in the matter
+      of waistcoats we had the advantage of you; ours were gayer, braver. Our
+      cuffs and collars were of paper: sixpence-halfpenny the dozen,
+      three-halfpence the pair. On Sunday they were white and glistening; on
+      Monday less aggressively obvious; on Tuesday morning decidedly dappled.
+      But on Tuesday evening, when with natty cane, or umbrella neatly rolled in
+      patent leather case, we took our promenade down Oxford Street&mdash;fashionable
+      hour nine to ten p.m.&mdash;we could shoot our arms and cock our chins
+      with the best. Your india-rubber linen has its advantages. Storm does not
+      wither it; it braves better the heat and turmoil of the day. The passing
+      of a sponge! and your &ldquo;Dicky&rdquo; is itself again. We had to use bread-crumbs,
+      and so sacrifice the glaze. Yet I cannot help thinking that for the first
+      few hours, at all events, our paper was more dazzling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the rest I see no change in you, old friends. I wave you greeting from
+      the misty street. God rest you, gallant gentlemen, lonely and friendless
+      and despised; making the best of joyless lives; keeping yourselves genteel
+      on twelve, fifteen, or eighteen (ah, but you are plutocrats!) shillings a
+      week; saving something even of that, maybe, to help the old mother in the
+      country, so proud of her &ldquo;gentleman&rdquo; son who has book learning and who is
+      &ldquo;something in the City.&rdquo; May nothing you dismay. Bullied, and badgered,
+      and baited from nine to six though you may be, from then till bedtime you
+      are rorty young dogs. The half-guinea topper, &ldquo;as worn by the Prince of
+      Wales&rdquo; (ah, how many a meal has it not cost!), warmed before the fire,
+      brushed and polished and coaxed, shines resplendent. The second pair of
+      trousers are drawn from beneath the bed; in the gaslight, with well-marked
+      crease from top to toe, they will pass for new. A pleasant evening to you!
+      May your cheap necktie make all the impression your soul can desire! May
+      your penny cigar be mistaken for Havana! May the barmaid charm your simple
+      heart by addressing you as &ldquo;Baby!&rdquo; May some sweet shop-girl throw a kindly
+      glance at you, inviting you to walk with her! May she snigger at your
+      humour; may other dogs cast envious looks at you, and may no harm come of
+      it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You dreamers of dreams, you who while your companions play and sleep will
+      toil upward in the night! You have read Mr. Smiles' &ldquo;Self-Help,&rdquo;
+       Longfellow's &ldquo;Psalm of Life,&rdquo; and so strengthened attack with confidence
+      &ldquo;French Without a Master,&rdquo; &ldquo;Bookkeeping in Six Lessons.&rdquo; With a sigh to
+      yourselves you turn aside from the alluring streets, from the bright,
+      bewitching eyes, into the stuffy air of Birkbeck Institutions, Polytechnic
+      Schools. May success compensate you for your youth devoid of pleasure! May
+      the partner's chair you seen in visions be yours before the end! May you
+      live one day in Clapham in a twelve-roomed house!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, after all, we have our moments, have we not? The Saturday night at
+      the play. The hours of waiting, they are short. We converse with kindred
+      souls of the British Drama, its past and future: we have our views. We
+      dream of Florence This, Kate That; in a little while we shall see her. Ah,
+      could she but know how we loved her! Her photo is on our mantelpiece,
+      transforming the dismal little room into a shrine. The poem we have so
+      often commenced! when it is finished we will post it to her. At least she
+      will acknowledge its receipt; we can kiss the paper her hand has rested
+      on. The great doors groan, then quiver. Ah, the wild thrill of that
+      moment! Now push for all you are worth: charge, wriggle, squirm! It is an
+      epitome of life. We are through&mdash;collarless, panting, pummelled from
+      top to toe: but what of that? Upward, still upward; then downward with
+      leaps at risk of our neck, from bench to bench through the gloom. We have
+      gained the front row! Would we exchange sensations with the stallite,
+      strolling languidly to his seat? The extravagant dinner once a week! We
+      banquet <i>a la Francais</i>, in Soho, for one-and-six, including wine.
+      Does Tortoni ever give his customers a repast they enjoy more? I trow not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first lodging was an attic in a square the other side of Blackfriars
+      Bridge. The rent of the room, if I remember rightly, was three shillings a
+      week with cooking, half-a-crown without. I purchased a methylated spirit
+      stove with kettle and frying-pan, and took it without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Hasluck would have helped me willingly, and there were others to whom
+      I might have appealed, but a boy's pride held me back. I would make my way
+      alone, win my place in the world by myself. To Hal, knowing he would
+      sympathise with me, I confided the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had your mother lived,&rdquo; he told me, &ldquo;I should have had something to say
+      on the subject. Of course, I knew what had happened, but as it is&mdash;well,
+      you need not be afraid, I shall not offer you help; indeed, I should
+      refuse it were you to ask. Put your Carlyle in your pocket: he is not all
+      voices, but he is the best maker of men I know. The great thing to learn
+      of life is not to be afraid of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look me up now and then,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and we'll talk about the stars, the
+      future of Socialism, and the Woman Question&mdash;anything you like except
+      about yourself and your twopenny-half-penny affairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From another it would have sounded brutal, but I understood him. And so we
+      shook hands and parted for longer than either of us at the time expected.
+      The Franco-German War broke out a few weeks later on, and Hal, the love of
+      adventure always strong within him, volunteered his services, which were
+      accepted. It was some years before we met again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the door-post of a house in Farringdon Street, not far from the Circus,
+      stood in those days a small brass plate, announcing that the &ldquo;Ludgate News
+      Rooms&rdquo; occupied the third and fourth floors, and that the admission to the
+      same was one penny. We were a seedy company that every morning crowded
+      into these rooms: clerks, shopmen, superior artisans, travellers,
+      warehousemen&mdash;all of us out of work. Most of us were young, but with
+      us was mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and these latter were always the
+      saddest and most silent of this little whispering army of the
+      down-at-heel. Roughly speaking, we were divided into two groups: the
+      newcomers, cheery, confident. These would flit from newspaper to newspaper
+      with buzz of pleasant anticipation, select their advertisement as one
+      choosing some dainty out of a rich and varied menu card, and replying to
+      it as one conferring favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Sir,&mdash;in reply to your advertisement in to-day's <i>Standard</i>,
+      I shall be pleased to accept the post vacant in your office. I am of good
+      appearance and address. I am an excellent&mdash;&rdquo; It was really marvellous
+      the quality and number of our attainments. French! we wrote and spoke it
+      fluently, <i>a la Ahn</i>. German! of this we possessed a slighter
+      knowledge, it was true, but sufficient for mere purposes of commerce.
+      Bookkeeping! arithmetic! geometry! we played with them. The love of work!
+      it was a passion with us. Our moral character! it would have adorned a
+      Free Kirk Elder. &ldquo;I could call on you to-morrow or Friday between eleven
+      and one, or on Saturday any time up till two. Salary required, two guineas
+      a week. An early answer will oblige. Yours truly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old stagers did not buzz. Hour after hour they sat writing, steadily,
+      methodically, with day by day less hope and heavier fears:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&mdash;Your advt. in to-day's <i>D. T.</i> I am&mdash;&rdquo; of such and
+      such an age. List of qualifications less lengthy, set forth with more
+      modesty; object desired being air of verisimilitude.&mdash;&ldquo;If you decide
+      to engage me I will endeavour to give you every satisfaction. Any time you
+      like to appoint I will call on you. I should not ask a high salary to
+      start with. Yours obediently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dozens of the first letter, hundreds of the second, I wrote with painful
+      care, pen carefully chosen, the one-inch margin down the left hand side of
+      the paper first portioned off with dots. To three or four I received a
+      curt reply, instructing me to call. But the shyness that had stood so in
+      my way during the earlier half of my school days had now, I know not why,
+      returned upon me, hampering me at every turn. A shy child grown-up folks
+      at all events can understand and forgive; but a shy young man is not
+      unnaturally regarded as a fool. I gave the impression of being awkward,
+      stupid, sulky. The more I strove against my temperament the worse I
+      became. My attempts to be at my ease, to assert myself, resulted&mdash;I
+      could see it myself&mdash;only in rudeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I have got to see one or two others. We will write and let you
+      know,&rdquo; was the conclusion of each interview, and the end, as far as I was
+      concerned, of the enterprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My few pounds, guard them how I would, were dwindling rapidly. Looking
+      back, it is easy enough to regard one's early struggles from a humorous
+      point of view. One knows the story, it all ended happily. But at the time
+      there is no means of telling whether one's biography is going to be comedy
+      or tragedy. There were moments when I felt confident it was going to be
+      the latter. Occasionally, when one is feeling well, it is not unpleasant
+      to contemplate with pathetic sympathy one's own death-bed. One thinks of
+      the friends and relations who at last will understand and regret one, be
+      sorry they had not behaved themselves better. But myself, there was no one
+      to regret. I felt very small, very helpless. The world was big. I feared
+      it might walk over me, trample me down, never seeing me. I seemed unable
+      to attract its attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning I found waiting for me at the Reading Room another of the
+      usual missives. It ran: &ldquo;Will Mr. P. Kelver call at the above address
+      to-morrow morning between ten-thirty and eleven.&rdquo; The paper was headed:
+      &ldquo;Lott and Co., Indian Commission Agents, Aldersgate Street.&rdquo; Without much
+      hope I returned to my lodgings, changed my clothes, donned my silk hat,
+      took my one pair of gloves, drew its silk case over my holey umbrella; and
+      so equipped for fight with Fate made my way to Aldersgate Street. For a
+      quarter of an hour or so, being too soon, I walked up and down the
+      pavement outside the house, gazing at the second-floor windows, behind
+      which, so the door-plate had informed me, were the offices of Lott &amp;
+      Co. I could not recall their advertisement, nor my reply to it. The firm
+      was evidently not in a very flourishing condition. I wondered idly what
+      salary they would offer. For a moment I dreamt of a Cheeryble Brother
+      asking me kindly if I thought I could do with thirty shillings a week as a
+      beginning; but the next I recalled my usual fate, and considered whether
+      it was even worth while to climb the stairs, go through what to me was a
+      painful ordeal, merely to be impressed again with the sense of my own
+      worthlessness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fine rain began to fall. I did not wish to unroll my umbrella, yet felt
+      nervous for my hat. It was five minutes to the half hour. Listlessly I
+      crossed the road and mounted the bare stairs to the second floor. Two
+      doors faced me, one marked &ldquo;Private.&rdquo; I tapped lightly at the second. Not
+      hearing any response, after a second or two I tapped again. A sound
+      reached me, but it was unintelligible. I knocked yet again, still louder.
+      This time I heard a reply in a shrill, plaintive tone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone was one of pathetic entreaty. I turned the handle and entered. It
+      was a small room, dimly lighted by a dirty window, the bottom half of
+      which was rendered opaque by tissue paper pasted to its panes. The place
+      suggested a village shop rather than an office. Pots of jam, jars of
+      pickles, bottles of wine, biscuit tins, parcels of drapery, boxes of
+      candles, bars of soap, boots, packets of stationery, boxes of cigars,
+      tinned provisions, guns, cartridges&mdash;things sufficient to furnish a
+      desert island littered every available corner. At a small desk under the
+      window sat a youth with a remarkably small body and a remarkably large
+      head; so disproportionate were the two I should hardly have been surprised
+      had he put up his hands and taken it off. Half in the room and half out, I
+      paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this Lott &amp; Co.?&rdquo; I enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;it's a room.&rdquo; One eye was fixed upon me, dull and
+      glassy; it never blinked, it never wavered. With the help of the other he
+      continued his writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; I explained, coming entirely into the room, &ldquo;are these the
+      offices of Lott &amp; Co.?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's one of them,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;the back one. If you're really anxious
+      for a job, you can shut the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I complied with his suggestion, and then announced that I was Mr. Kelver&mdash;Mr.
+      Paul Kelver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Minikin's my name,&rdquo; he returned, &ldquo;Sylvanus Minikin. You don't happen by
+      any chance to know what you've come for, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking at his body, my inclination was to pick my way among the goods
+      that covered the floor and pull his ears for him. From his grave and
+      massive face, he might, for all I knew, be the head clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have called to see Mr. Lott,&rdquo; I replied, with dignity; &ldquo;I have an
+      appointment.&rdquo; I produced the letter from my pocket, and leaning across a
+      sewing-machine, I handed it to him for his inspection. Having read it, he
+      suddenly took from its socket the eye with which he had been hitherto
+      regarding me, and proceeding to polish it upon his pocket handkerchief,
+      turned upon me his other. Having satisfied himself, he handed me back my
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want my advice?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought it might be useful to me, so replied in the affirmative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hook it,&rdquo; was his curt counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Isn't he a good employer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Replacing his glass eye, he turned again to his work. &ldquo;If employment is
+      what you want,&rdquo; answered Mr. Minikin, &ldquo;you'll get it. Best employer in
+      London. He'll keep you going for twenty-four hours a day, and then offer
+      you overtime at half salary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must get something to do,&rdquo; I confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down then,&rdquo; suggested Mr. Minikin. &ldquo;Rest while you can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took the chair; it was the only chair in the room, with the exception of
+      the one Minikin was sitting on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apart from his being a bit of a driver,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;what sort of a man is
+      he? Is he pleasant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never saw him put out but once,&rdquo; answered Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded well. &ldquo;When was that?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the time I've known him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My spirits continued to sink. Had I been left alone with Minikin much
+      longer, I might have ended by following his advice, &ldquo;hooking it&rdquo; before
+      Mr. Lott arrived. But the next moment I heard the other door open, and
+      some one entered the private office. Then the bell rang, and Minikin
+      disappeared, leaving the communicating door ajar behind him. The
+      conversation that I overheard was as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why isn't Mr. Skeat here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he hasn't come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under your nose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you answer me like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it's the truth. They are under your nose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you give Thorneycroft's man my message?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he answer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Said you were a liar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he did, did he! What did you reply?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Asked him to tell me something I didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought that clever, didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever faults might be laid to Mr. Lott's door, he at least, I
+      concluded, possesssed the virtue of self-control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anybody been here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Kelver&mdash;Mr. Paul Kelver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kelver, Kelver. Who's Kelver?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know what he is&mdash;a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's come after the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not bad looking; fair&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Idiot! I mean is he smart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just at present&mdash;got all his Sunday clothes on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send him in to me. Don't go, don't go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I send him in to you if I don't go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take these. Have you finished those bills of lading?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God! when will you have finished them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half an hour after I have begun them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out, get out! Has that door been open all the time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't suppose it's opened itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Minikin re-entered with papers in his hand. &ldquo;In you go,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Heaven
+      help you!&rdquo; And I passed in and closed the door behind me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was a replica of the one I had just left. If possible, it was
+      more crowded, more packed with miscellaneous articles. I picked my way
+      through these and approached the desk. Mr. Lott was a small, dingy-looking
+      man, with very dirty hands, and small, restless eyes. I was glad that he
+      was not imposing, or my shyness might have descended upon me; as it was, I
+      felt better able to do myself justice. At once he plunged into the
+      business by seizing and waving in front of my eyes a bulky bundle of
+      letters tied together with red tape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and seventeen answers to an advertisement,&rdquo; he cried with
+      evident satisfaction, &ldquo;in one day! That shows you the state of the labour
+      market!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I agreed it was appalling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor devils, poor devils!&rdquo; murmured Mr. Lott &ldquo;what will become of them?
+      Some of them will starve. Terrible death, starvation, Kelver; takes such a
+      long time&mdash;especially when you're young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here also I found myself in accord with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Living with your parents?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained to him my situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I informed him I was entirely dependent upon my own efforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any money? Anything coming in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I had a few pounds still remaining to me, but that after that
+      was gone I should be penniless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to think, Kelver, that there are hundreds, thousands of young fellows
+      precisely in your position! How sad, how very sad! How long have you been
+      looking for a berth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A month,&rdquo; I answered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought as much. Do you know why I selected your letter out of the
+      whole batch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied I hoped it was because he judged from it I should prove
+      satisfactory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it's the worst written of them all.&rdquo; He pushed it across to me.
+      &ldquo;Look at it. Awful, isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I admitted that handwriting was not my strong point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor spelling either,&rdquo; he added, and with truth. &ldquo;Who do you think will
+      engage you if I don't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody,&rdquo; he continued, without waiting for me to reply. &ldquo;A month hence
+      you will still be looking for a berth, and a month after that. Now, I'm
+      going to do you a good turn; save you from destitution; give you a start
+      in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I expressed my gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waived it aside. &ldquo;That is my notion of philanthropy: help those that
+      nobody else will help. That young fellow in the other room&mdash;he isn't
+      a bad worker, he's smart, but he's impertinent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured that I had gathered so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn't mean to be, can't help it. Noticed his trick of looking at you
+      with his glass eye, keeping the other turned away from you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied that I had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always does it. Used to irritate his last employer to madness. Said to
+      him one day: 'Do turn that signal lamp of yours off, Minikin, and look at
+      me with your real eye.' What do you think he answered? That it was the
+      only one he'd got, and that he didn't want to expose it to shocks.
+      Wouldn't have mattered so much if it hadn't been one of the ugliest men in
+      London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured my indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put up with him. Nobody else would. The poor fellow must live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I expressed admiration at Mr. Lott's humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mind work? You're not one of those good-for-nothings who sleep
+      all day and wake up when it's time to go home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured him that in whatever else I might fail I could promise him
+      industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With some of them,&rdquo; complained Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness, &ldquo;it's
+      nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets. Work, business&mdash;oh,
+      no. I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into the workhouse. No
+      thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds them, clothes them. How
+      much salary do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hesitated. I gathered this was not a Cheeryble Brother; it would be
+      necessary to be moderate in one's demands. &ldquo;Five-and-twenty shillings a
+      week,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He repeated the figure in a scream. &ldquo;Five-and-twenty shillings for writing
+      like that! And can't spell commission! Don't know anything about the
+      business. Five-and-twenty!&mdash;Tell you what I'll do: I'll give you
+      twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I can't live on twelve,&rdquo; I explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't live on twelve! Do you know why? Because you don't know how to
+      live. I know you all. One veal and ham pie, one roley-poley, one Dutch
+      cheese and a pint of bitter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His recital made my mouth water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You overload your stomachs, then you can't work. Half the diseases you
+      young fellows suffer from are brought about by overeating.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you take my advice,&rdquo; continued Mr. Lott; &ldquo;try vegetarianism. In the
+      morning, a little oatmeal. Wonderfully strengthening stuff, oatmeal: look
+      at the Scotch. For dinner, beans. Why, do you know there's more
+      nourishment in half a pint of lentil beans than in a pound of beefsteak&mdash;more
+      gluten. That's what you want, more gluten; no corpses, no dead bodies.
+      Why, I've known young fellows, vegetarians, who have lived like fighting
+      cocks on sevenpence a day. Seven times seven are forty-nine. How much do
+      you pay for your room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four-and-a-penny and two-and-six makes six-and-seven. That leaves you
+      five and fivepence for mere foolery. Good God! what more do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take eighteen, sir,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I can't really manage on less.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, I won't beat you down,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Fifteen shillings a
+      week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said eighteen,&rdquo; I persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and I said fifteen,&rdquo; he retorted, somewhat indignant at the
+      quibbling. &ldquo;That's splitting the difference, isn't it? I can't be fairer
+      than that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I dared not throw away the one opportunity that had occurred. Anything was
+      better than return to the Reading Rooms, and the empty days full of
+      despair. I accepted, and it was agreed that I should come the following
+      Monday morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nabbed?&rdquo; was Minikin's enquiry on my return to the back office for my
+      hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's he wasting on you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifteen shillings a week,&rdquo; I whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Felt sure somehow that he'd take a liking to you,&rdquo; answered Minikin.
+      &ldquo;Don't be ungrateful and look thin on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside the door I heard Mr. Lott's shrill voice demanding to know where
+      postage stamps were to be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the Post-office,&rdquo; was Minikin's reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hours were long&mdash;in fact, we had no office hours; we got away
+      when we could, which was rarely before seven or eight&mdash;but my work
+      was interesting. It consisted of buying for unfortunate clients in India
+      or the Colonies anything they might happen to want, from a stage coach to
+      a pot of marmalade; packing it and shipping it across to them. Our
+      &ldquo;commission&rdquo; was anything they could be persuaded to pay over and above
+      the value of the article. I was not much interfered with. There was that
+      to be said for Lott &amp; Co., so long as the work was done he was quite
+      content to leave one to one's own way of doing it. And hastening through
+      the busy streets, bargaining in shop or warehouse, bustling important in
+      and out the swarming docks, I often thanked my stars that I was not as
+      some poor two-pound-a-week clerk chained to a dreary desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fifteen shillings a week was a tight fit; but that was not my trouble.
+      Reduce your denominator&mdash;you know the quotation. I found it no
+      philosophical cant, but a practical solution of life. My food cost me on
+      the average a shilling a day. If more of us limited our commissariat bill
+      to the same figure, there would be less dyspepsia abroad. Generally I
+      cooked my own meals in my own frying-pan; but occasionally I would indulge
+      myself with a more orthodox dinner at a cook shop, or tea with hot
+      buttered toast at a coffee-shop; and but for the greasy table-cloth and
+      the dirty-handed waiter, such would have been even greater delights. The
+      shilling a week for amusements afforded me at least one, occasionally two,
+      visits to the theatre, for in those days there were Paradises where for
+      sixpence one could be a god. Fourpence a week on tobacco gave me
+      half-a-dozen cigarettes a day; I have spent more on smoke and derived less
+      satisfaction. Dress was my greatest difficulty. One anxiety in life the
+      poor man is saved: he knows not the haunting sense of debt. My tailor
+      never dunned me. His principle was half-a-crown down on receipt of order,
+      the balance on the handing over of the goods. No system is perfect; the
+      method avoided friction, it is true; yet on the other hand it was annoying
+      to be compelled to promenade, come Sundays, in shiny elbows and frayed
+      trousers, knowing all the while that finished, waiting, was a suit in
+      which one might have made one's mark&mdash;had only one shut one's eyes
+      passing that pastry-cook's window on pay-day. Surely there should be a
+      sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks to deal in cellars or behind drawn
+      blinds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Were it because of its mere material hardships that to this day I think of
+      that period of my life with a shudder, I should not here confess to it. I
+      was alone. I knew not a living soul to whom I dared to speak, who cared to
+      speak to me. For those first twelve months after my mother's death I lived
+      alone, thought alone, felt alone. In the morning, during the busy day, it
+      was possible to bear; but in the evenings the sense of desolation gripped
+      me like a physical pain. The summer evenings came again, bringing with
+      them the long, lingering light so laden with melancholy. I would walk into
+      the Parks and, sitting there, watch with hungry eyes the men and women,
+      boys and girls, moving all around me, talking, laughing, interested in one
+      another; feeling myself some speechless ghost, seeing but not seen, crying
+      to the living with a voice they heard not. Sometimes a solitary figure
+      would pass by and glance back at me; some lonely creature like myself
+      longing for human sympathy. In the teeming city must have been thousands
+      such&mdash;young men and women to whom a friendly ear, a kindly voice,
+      would have been as the water of life. Each imprisoned in his solitary cell
+      of shyness, we looked at one another through the grating with condoling
+      eyes; further than that was forbidden to us. Once, in Kensington Gardens,
+      a woman turned, then slowly retracing her steps, sat down beside me on the
+      bench. Neither of us spoke; had I done so she would have risen and moved
+      away; yet there was understanding between us. To each of us it was some
+      comfort to sit thus for a little while beside the other. Had she poured
+      out her heart to me, she could have told me nothing more than I knew: &ldquo;I,
+      too, am lonely, friendless; I, too, long for the sound of a voice, the
+      touch of a hand. It is hard for you, it is harder still for me, a girl;
+      shut out from the bright world that laughs around me; denied the right of
+      youth to joy and pleasure; denied the right of womanhood to love and
+      tenderness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The footsteps to and fro grew fewer. She moved to rise. Stirred by an
+      impulse, I stretched out my hand, then seeing the flush upon her face,
+      drew it back hastily. But the next moment, changing her mind, she held
+      hers out to me, and I took it. It was the first clasp of a hand I had felt
+      since six months before I had said good-bye to Hal. She turned and walked
+      quickly away. I stood watching her; she never looked round, and I never
+      saw her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I take no credit to myself for keeping straight, as it is termed, during
+      these days. For good or evil, my shyness prevented my taking part in the
+      flirtations of the streets. Whether inviting eyes were ever thrown to me
+      as to others, I cannot say. Sometimes, fancying so&mdash;hoping so, I
+      would follow. Yet never could I summon up sufficient resolution to face
+      the possible rebuff before some less timid swain would swoop down upon the
+      quarry. Then I would hurry on, cursing myself for the poorness of my
+      spirit, fancying mocking contempt in the laughter that followed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On a Sunday I would rise early and take long solitary walks into the
+      country. One winter's day&mdash;I remember it was on the road between
+      Edgware and Stanmore&mdash;there issued from a by-road a little ahead of
+      me a party of boys and girls, young people about my own age, bound
+      evidently on a skating expedition. I could hear the musical ring of their
+      blades, clattering as they walked, and the sound of their merry laughter
+      so clear and bell-like through the frosty air. And an aching anguish fell
+      upon me. I felt a mad desire to run after them, to plead with them to let
+      me walk with them a little way, to let me laugh and talk with them. Every
+      now and then they would pirouette to cry some jest to one another. I could
+      see their faces: the girls' so sweetly alluring, framed by their dainty
+      hats and furs, the bright colour in their cheeks, the light in their
+      teasing eyes. A little further on they turned aside into a by-lane, and I
+      stood at the corner listening till the last echo of their joyous voices
+      died away, and on a stone that still remains standing there I sat down and
+      sobbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would walk about the streets always till very late. I dreaded the
+      echoing clang of the little front door when I closed it behind me, the
+      climbing of the silent stairs, the solitude that waited for me in my empty
+      room. It would rise and come towards me like some living thing, kissing me
+      with cold lips. Often, unable to bear the closeness of its presence, I
+      would creep out into the streets. There, even though it followed me, I was
+      not alone with it. Sometimes I would pace them the whole night, sharing
+      them with the other outcasts while the city slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occasionally, during these nightly wanderings would come to me moments of
+      exaltation when fear fell from me and my blood would leap with joy at
+      prospect of the fierce struggle opening out before me. Then it was the
+      ghostly city sighing round me that seemed dead, I the only living thing
+      real among a world of shadows. In long, echoing streets I would laugh and
+      shout. Misunderstanding policemen would turn their bull's-eyes on me,
+      gruffly give me practical advice: they knew not who I was! I stood the
+      centre of a vast galanty-show: the phantom houses came and went; from some
+      there shone bright lights; the doors were open, and little figures flitted
+      in and out, the tiny coaches glided to and fro, manikins grotesque but
+      pitiful crept across the star-lit curtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mood would change. The city, grim and vast, stretched round me
+      endless. I crawled, a mere atom, within its folds, helpless,
+      insignificant, absurd. The houseless forms that shared my vigil were my
+      fellows. What were we? Animalcule upon its bosom, that it saw not, heeded
+      not. For company I would mingle with them: ragged men, frowsy women,
+      ageless youths, gathered round the red glow of some coffee stall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rarely would we speak to one another. More like animals we browsed there,
+      sipping the halfpenny cup of hot water coloured with coffee grounds (at
+      least it was warm), munching the moist slab of coarse cake; looking with
+      dull, indifferent eyes each upon the wretchedness of the others. Perhaps
+      some two would whisper to each other in listless, monotonous tone, broken
+      here and there by a short, mirthless laugh; some shivering creature, not
+      yet case-hardened to despair, seek, perhaps, the relief of curses that
+      none heeded. Later, a faint chill breeze would shake the shadows loose, a
+      thin, wan light streak the dark air with shade, and silently, stealthily,
+      we would fade away and disappear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY. AND BECOMES
+      CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All things pass, even the self-inflicted sufferings of shy young men,
+      condemned by temperament to solitude. Came the winter evenings, I took to
+      work: in it one may drown much sorrow for oneself. With its handful of
+      fire, its two candles lighted, my &ldquo;apartment&rdquo; was more inviting. I bought
+      myself paper, pens and ink. Great or small, what more can a writer do? He
+      is but the would-be medium: will the spirit voices employ him or reject
+      him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      London, with its million characters, grave and gay; its ten thousand
+      romances, its mysteries, its pathos, and its humour, lay to my hand. It
+      stretched before me, asking only intelligent observation, more or less
+      truthful report. But that I could make a story out of the things I really
+      knew never occurred to me. My tales were of cottage maidens, of bucolic
+      yeomen. My scenes were laid in windmills, among mountains, or in moated
+      granges. I fancy this phase of folly is common to most youthful
+      fictionists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A trail of gentle melancholy lay over them. Sentiment was more popular
+      then than it is now, and, as do all beginners, I scrupulously followed
+      fashion. Generally speaking, to be a heroine of mine was fatal. However
+      naturally her hair might curl&mdash;and curly hair, I believe, is the
+      hall-mark of vitality; whatever other indications of vigorous health she
+      might exhibit in the first chapter, such as &ldquo;dancing eyes,&rdquo; &ldquo;colour that
+      came and went,&rdquo; &ldquo;ringing laughter,&rdquo; &ldquo;fawn-like agility,&rdquo; she was tolerably
+      certain, poor girl, to end in an untimely grave. Snowdrops and early
+      primroses (my botany I worked up from a useful little volume, &ldquo;Our Garden
+      Favourites, Illustrated&rdquo;) grew there as in a forcing house; and if in the
+      neighbourhood of the coast, the sea-breezes would choose that particular
+      churchyard, somewhat irreverently, for their favourite playground. Years
+      later a white-haired man would come there leading little children by the
+      hand, and to them he would tell the tale anew, which must have been a
+      dismal entertainment for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, by way of change, it would be the gentleman who would fall a
+      victim of the deadly atmosphere of my literature. It was of no particular
+      consequence, so he himself would conclude in his last soliloquy; &ldquo;it was
+      better so.&rdquo; Snowdrops and primroses, for whatever consolation they might
+      have been to him, it was hopeless for him to expect; his grave, marked by
+      a rude cross, being as a rule situate in an exceptionally unfrequented
+      portion of the African veldt or amid burning sands. For description of
+      final scenery on these occasions a visit to the British Museum
+      reading-room would be necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dismal little fledgelings! And again and again would I drive them from the
+      nest; again and again they fluttered back to me, soiled, crumpled,
+      physically damaged. Yet one person had admired them, cried over them&mdash;myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All methods I tried. Sometimes I would send them forth accompanied by a
+      curt business note of the take-it-or-leave-it order. At other times I
+      would attach to it pathetic appeals for its consideration. Sometimes I
+      would give value to it, stating that the price was five guineas and
+      requesting that the cheque should be crossed; at other times seek to
+      tickle editorial cupidity by offering this, my first contribution to their
+      pages, for nothing&mdash;my sample packet, so to speak, sent gratis, one
+      trial surely sufficient. Now I would write sarcastically, enclosing
+      together with the stamped envelope for return a brutally penned note of
+      rejection. Or I would write frankly, explaining elaborately that I was a
+      beginner, and asking to be told my faults&mdash;if any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not one found a resting place for its feet. A month, a week, a couple of
+      days, they would remain away from me, then return. I never lost a single
+      one. I wished I had. It would have varied the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hated the poor little slavey who, bursting joyously into the room, would
+      hold them out to me from between her apron-hidden thumb and finger; her
+      chronic sniff I translated into contempt. If flying down the stairs at the
+      sound of the postman's knock I secured it from his hands, it seemed to me
+      he smiled. Tearing them from their envelopes, I would curse them, abuse
+      them, fling them into the fire sometimes; but before they were more than
+      scorched I would snatch them out, smooth them, reread them. The editor
+      himself could never have seen them; it was impossible; some jealous
+      underling had done this thing. I had sent them to the wrong paper. They
+      had arrived at the inopportune moment. Their triumph would come. Rewriting
+      the first and last sheets, I would send them forth again with fresh hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, understanding that the would-be happy warrior must shine in
+      camp as well as field, I sought to fit myself also for the social side of
+      life. Smoking and drinking were the twin sins I found most difficulty in
+      acquiring. I am not claiming a mental excellence so much as confessing a
+      bodily infirmity. The spirit had always been willing, but my flesh was
+      weak. Fired by emulation, I had at school occasionally essayed a
+      cigarette. The result had been distinctly unsatisfactory, and after some
+      two or three attempts, I had abandoned, for the time being, all further
+      endeavour; excusing my faint-heartedness by telling myself with
+      sanctimonious air that smoking was bad for growing boys; attempting to
+      delude myself by assuming, in presence of contemporaries of stronger
+      stomach, fine pose of disapproval; yet in my heart knowing myself a young
+      hypocrite, disguising physical cowardice in the robes of moral courage: a
+      self-deception to which human nature is prone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So likewise now and again I had tasted the wine that was red, and that
+      stood year in, year out, decanted on our sideboard. The true inwardness of
+      St. Paul's prescription had been revealed to me; the attitude&mdash;sometimes
+      sneered at&mdash;of those who drink it under doctor's orders, regarding it
+      purely as a medicine, appeared to me reasonable. I had noticed also that
+      others, some of them grown men even, making wry faces, when drinking my
+      mother's claret, and had concluded therefrom that taste for strong liquor
+      was an accomplishment less easily acquired than is generally supposed. The
+      lack of it in a young man could be no disgrace, and accordingly effort in
+      that direction also had I weakly postponed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now, a gentleman at large, my education could no longer be delayed. To
+      the artist in particular was training&mdash;and severe training&mdash;an
+      absolute necessity. Recently fashion has changed somewhat, but a quarter
+      of a century ago a genius who did not smoke and drink&mdash;and that more
+      than was good for him&mdash;would have been dismissed without further
+      evidence as an impostor. About the genius I was hopeful, but at no time
+      positively certain. As regarded the smoking and drinking, so much at least
+      I could make sure of. I set to work methodically, conscientiously.
+      Smoking, experience taught me, was better practised on Saturday nights,
+      Sunday affording me the opportunity of walking off the effects. Patience
+      and determination were eventually crowned with success: I learned to smoke
+      a cigarette to all appearance as though I were enjoying it. Young men of
+      less character might here have rested content, but attainment of the
+      highest has always been with me a motive force. The cigarette conquered, I
+      next proceeded to attack the cigar. My first one I remember well: most men
+      do. It was at a smoking concert held in the Islington Drill Hall, to which
+      Minikin had invited me. Not feeling sure whether my growing dizziness were
+      due solely to the cigar, or in part to the hot, over-crowded room, I made
+      my excuses and slipped out. I found myself in a small courtyard, divided
+      from a neighbouring garden by a low wall. The cause of my trouble was
+      clearly the cigar. My inclination was to take it from my mouth and see how
+      far I could throw it. Conscience, on the other hand, urged me to
+      persevere. It occurred to me that if climbing on to the wall I could walk
+      along it from end to end, there would be no excuse for my not heeding the
+      counsels of perfection. If, on the contrary, try as I might, the wall
+      proved not wide enough for my footsteps, then I should be entitled to lose
+      the beastly thing, and, as best I could, make my way home to bed. I
+      attained the wall with some difficulty and commenced my self-inflicted
+      ordeal. Two yards further I found myself lying across the wall, my legs
+      hanging down one side, my head overhanging the other. The position proving
+      suitable to my requirements, I maintained it. Inclination, again seizing
+      its opportunity, urged me then and there to take a solemn vow never to
+      smoke again. I am proud to write that through that hour of temptation I
+      remained firm; strengthening myself by whispering to myself: &ldquo;Never
+      despair. What others can do, so can you. Is not all victory won through
+      suffering?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A liking for drink I had found, if possible, even yet more difficult of
+      achievement. Spirits I almost despaired of. Once, confusing bottles, I
+      drank some hair oil in mistake for whiskey, and found it decidedly less
+      nauseous. But twice a week I would force myself to swallow a glass of
+      beer, standing over myself insisting on my draining it to the bitter
+      dregs. As reward afterwards, to take the taste out of my mouth, I would
+      treat myself to chocolates; at the same time comforting myself by assuring
+      myself that it was for my good, that there would come a day when I should
+      really like it, and be grateful to myself for having been severe with
+      myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In other and more sensible directions I sought also to progress. Gradually
+      I was overcoming my shyness. It was a slow process. I found the best plan
+      was not to mind being shy, to accept it as part of my temperament, and
+      with others laugh at it. The coldness of an indifferent world is of
+      service in hardening a too sensitive skin. The gradual rubbings of
+      existence were rounding off my many corners. I became possible to my
+      fellow creatures, and they to me. I began to take pleasure in their
+      company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By directing me to this particular house in Nelson Square, Fate had done
+      to me a kindness. I flatter myself we were an interesting menagerie
+      gathered together under its leaky roof. Mrs. Peedles, our landlady, who
+      slept in the basement with the slavey, had been an actress in Charles
+      Keane's company at the old Princess's. There, it is true, she had played
+      only insignificant parts. London, as she would explain to us was even then
+      but a poor judge of art, with prejudices. Besides an actor-manager,
+      hampered by a wife&mdash;we understood. But previously in the Provinces
+      there had been a career of glory: Juliet, Amy Robsart, Mrs. Haller in &ldquo;The
+      Stranger&rdquo;&mdash;almost the entire roll of the &ldquo;Legitimates&rdquo;. Showed we any
+      signs of disbelief, proof was forthcoming: handbills a yard long, rich in
+      notes of exclamation: &ldquo;On Tuesday Evening! By Special Desire!!!
+      Blessington's Theatre! In the Meadow, adjoining the Falcon Arms!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;On
+      Saturday! Under the Patronage of Col. Sir William and the Officers of the
+      74th!!!! In the Corn Exchange!&rdquo; Maybe it would convince us further were
+      she to run through a passage here and there, say Lady Macbeth's
+      sleep-walking scene, or from Ophelia's entrance in the fourth act? It
+      would be no trouble; her memory was excellent. We would hasten to assure
+      her of our perfect faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listening to her, it was difficult, as she herself would frankly admit, to
+      imagine her the once &ldquo;arch Miss Lucretia Barry;&rdquo; looking at her, to
+      remember there had been an evening when she had been &ldquo;the cynosure of
+      every eye.&rdquo; One found it necessary to fortify oneself with perusal of
+      underlined extracts from ancient journals, much thumbed and creased,
+      thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose. Since those days Fate had woven
+      round her a mantle of depression. She was now a faded, watery-eyed little
+      woman, prone on the slightest provocation to sit down suddenly on the
+      nearest chair and at once commence a history of her troubles. Quite
+      unconscious of this failing, it was an idea of hers that she was an
+      exceptionally cheerful person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there, fretting's no good. We must grin and bear things in this
+      world,&rdquo; she would conclude, wiping her eyes upon her apron. &ldquo;It's better
+      to laugh than to cry, I always say.&rdquo; And to prove that this was no mere
+      idle sentiment, she would laugh then and there upon the spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Much stair-climbing had bestowed upon her a shortness of breath, which no
+      amount of panting in her resting moments was able to make good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know 'ow to breathe,&rdquo; explained our second floor front to her
+      on one occasion, a kindly young man; &ldquo;you don't swallow it, you only
+      gargle with it. Take a good draught and shut your mouth; don't be
+      frightened of it; don't let it out again till it's done something: that's
+      what it's 'ere for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood over her with his handkerchief pressed against her mouth to
+      assist her; but it was of no use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There don't seem any room for it inside me,&rdquo; she explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bells had become to her the business of life; she lived listening for
+      them. Converse to her was a filling in of time while waiting for
+      interruptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present from
+      a commercial traveller in the way of business. Not liking whiskey myself,
+      it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the occasional comfort of
+      Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands to her side, she would sink
+      upon the chair nearest to my door. Her poor, washed-out face would lighten
+      at the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well,&rdquo; she would reply, &ldquo;I don't mind if I do. It's a poor heart that
+      never rejoices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, her tongue unloosened, she would sit there and tell me stories
+      of my predecessors, young men lodgers who like myself had taken her
+      bed-sitting-rooms, and of the woes and misfortunes that had overtaken
+      them. I gathered that a more unlucky house I could not have selected. A
+      former tenant of my own room, of whom I strangely reminded her, had
+      written poetry on my very table. He was now in Portland doing five years
+      for forgery. Mrs. Peedles appeared to regard the two accomplishments as
+      merely different expressions of the same art. Another of her young men, as
+      she affectionately called us, had been of studious ambition. His career up
+      to a point appeared to have been brilliant. &ldquo;What he mightn't have been,&rdquo;
+       according to Mrs. Peedles, there was practically no saying; what he
+      happened to be at the moment of conversation was an unpromising inmate of
+      the Hanwell lunatic asylum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've always noticed it,&rdquo; Mrs. Peedles would explain; &ldquo;it's always the
+      most deserving, those that try hardest, to whom trouble comes. I'm sure I
+      don't know why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad on the whole when that bottle of whiskey was finished. A second
+      might have driven me to suicide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no Mr. Peedles&mdash;at least, not for Mrs. Peedles, though as
+      an individual he continued to exist. He had been &ldquo;general utility&rdquo; at the
+      Princess's&mdash;the old terms were still in vogue at that time&mdash;a
+      fine figure of a man in his day, so I was given to understand, but one
+      easily led away, especially by minxes. Mrs. Peedles spoke bitterly of
+      general utilities as people of not much use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For working days Mrs. Peedles had one dress and one cap, both black and
+      void of ostentation; but on Sundays and holidays she would appear
+      metamorphosed. She had carefully preserved the bulk of her stage wardrobe,
+      even to the paste-decked shoes and tinsel jewelry. Shapeless in classic
+      garb as Hermia, or bulgy in brocade and velvet as Lady Teazle, she would
+      receive her few visitors on Sunday evenings, discarded puppets like
+      herself, with whom the conversation was of gayer nights before their wires
+      had been cut; or, her glory hid from the ribald street beneath a
+      mackintosh, pay her few calls. Maybe it was the unusual excitement that
+      then brought colour into her furrowed cheeks, that straightened and
+      darkened her eyebrows, at other times so singularly unobtrusive. Be this
+      how it may, the change was remarkable, only the thin grey hair and the
+      work-worn hands remaining for purposes of identification. Nor was the
+      transformation merely one of surface. Mrs. Peedles hung on her hook behind
+      the kitchen door, dingy, limp, discarded; out of the wardrobe with the
+      silks and satins was lifted down to be put on as an undergarment Miss
+      Lucretia Barry, like her costumes somewhat aged, somewhat withered, but
+      still distinctly &ldquo;arch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the room next to me lived a law-writer and his wife. They were very old
+      and miserably poor. The fault was none of theirs. Despite copy-books
+      maxims, there is in this world such a thing as ill-luck-persistent,
+      monotonous, that gradually wears away all power of resistance. I learned
+      from them their history: it was hopelessly simple, hopelessly
+      uninstructive. He had been a schoolmaster, she a pupil teacher; they had
+      married young, and for a while the world had smiled upon them. Then came
+      illness, attacking them both: nothing out of which any moral could be
+      deduced, a mere case of bad drains resulting in typhoid fever. They had
+      started again, saddled by debt, and after years of effort had succeeded in
+      clearing themselves, only to fall again, this time in helping a friend.
+      Nor was it even a case of folly: a poor man who had helped them in their
+      trouble, hardly could they have done otherwise without proving themselves
+      ungrateful. And so on, a tedious tale, commonplace, trivial. Now listless,
+      patient, hard working, they had arrived at an animal-like indifference to
+      their fate, content so long as they could obtain the bare necessities of
+      existence, passive when these were not forthcoming, their interest in life
+      limited to the one luxury of the poor&mdash;an occasional glass of beer or
+      spirits. Often days would go by without his obtaining any work, and then
+      they would more or less starve. Law documents are generally given out to
+      such men in the evening, to be returned finished the next morning. Waking
+      in the night, I would hear through the thin wooden partition that divided
+      our rooms the even scratching of his pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus cheek by jowl we worked, I my side of the screen, he his: youth and
+      age, hope and realisation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of him my fears fashioned a vision of the future. Past his door I
+      would slink on tiptoe, dread meeting him upon the stairs. Once had not he
+      said to himself: &ldquo;The world's mine oyster?&rdquo; May not the voices of the
+      night have proclaimed him also king? Might I not be but an idle dreamer,
+      mistaking desire for power? Would not the world prove stronger than I? At
+      such times I would see my life before me: the clerkship at thirty
+      shillings a week rising by slow instalments, it may be, to one hundred and
+      fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty,
+      perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling
+      children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was
+      not this the more likely picture?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our second floor front was a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman
+      was Young London personified&mdash;blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively
+      self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time frank;
+      shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. &ldquo;Never say die&rdquo; was his motto, and
+      anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long he was
+      noisy, and all night long he snored. He woke with a start, bathed like a
+      porpoise, sang while dressing, roared for his boots, and whistled during
+      his breakfast. His entrance and exit were always to an orchestration of
+      banging doors, directions concerning his meals shouted at the top of his
+      voice as he plunged up or down the stairs, the clattering and rattling of
+      brooms and pails flying before his feet. His departure always left behind
+      it the suggestion that the house was now to let; it came almost as a shock
+      to meet a human being on the landing. He would have conveyed an atmosphere
+      of bustle to the Egyptian pyramids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes carrying his own supper-tray, arranged for two, he would march
+      into my room. At first, resenting his familiarity, I would hint at my
+      desire to be alone, would explain that I was busy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fire away, Shakespeare Redivivus,&rdquo; he would reply. &ldquo;Don't delay the
+      tragedy. Why should London wait? I'll keep quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his notion of keeping quiet was to retire into a corner and there
+      amuse himself by enacting a tragedy of his own in a hoarse whisper,
+      accompanied by appropriate gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, ah!&rdquo; I would hear him muttering to himself, &ldquo;I 'ave killed 'er good
+      old father; I 'ave falsely accused 'er young man of all the crimes that I
+      'ave myself committed; I 'ave robbed 'er of 'er ancestral estates. Yet she
+      loves me not! It is streeange!&rdquo; Then changing his bass to a shrill
+      falsetto: &ldquo;It is a cold and dismal night: the snow falls fast. I will
+      leave me 'at and umbrella be'ind the door and go out for a walk with the
+      chee-ild. Aha! who is this? 'E also 'as forgotten 'is umbrella. Ah, now I
+      know 'im in the pitch dark by 'is cigarette! Villain, murderer, silly
+      josser! it is you!&rdquo; Then with lightning change of voice and gesture:
+      &ldquo;Mary, I love yer!&rdquo; &ldquo;Sir Jasper Murgatroyd, let me avail myself of this
+      opportunity to tell you what I think of you&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;No, no; the 'ouses
+      close in 'alf an hour; there is not tee-ime. Fly with me instead!&rdquo; &ldquo;Never!
+      Un'and me!&rdquo; &ldquo;'Ear me! Ah, what 'ave I done? I 'ave slipped upon a piece of
+      orange peel and broke me 'ead! If you will kindly ask them to turn off the
+      snow and give me a little moonlight, I will confess all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding it (much to Jarman's surprise) impossible to renew the thread of
+      my work, I would abandon my attempts at literature, and instead listen to
+      his talk, which was always interesting. His conversation was, it is true,
+      generally about himself, but it was none the less attractive on that
+      account. His love affairs, which appeared to be numerous, formed his chief
+      topic. There was no reserve about Jarman: his life contained no secret
+      chambers. What he &ldquo;told her straight,&rdquo; what she &ldquo;up and said to him&rdquo; in
+      reply was for all the world that cared to hear. So far his search after
+      the ideal had met with but ill success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Girls,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;they're all alike, till you know 'em. So long as
+      they're trying to palm themselves off on yer, they'll persuade you there
+      isn't such another article in all the market. When they've got yer order&mdash;ah,
+      then yer find out what they're really made of. And you take it from me,
+      'Omer Junior, most of 'em are put together cheap. Bah! it sickens me
+      sometimes to read the way you paper-stainers talk about 'em&mdash;angels,
+      goddesses, fairies! They've just been getting at yer. You're giving 'em
+      just the price they're asking without examining the article. Girls ain't a
+      special make, like what you seem to think 'em. We're all turned out of the
+      same old slop shop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I say, mind yer,&rdquo; he would continue, &ldquo;that there are none of the
+      right sort. They're to be 'ad&mdash;real good 'uns. All I say is, taking
+      'em at their own valuation ain't the way to do business with 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What he was on the look out for&mdash;to quote his own description&mdash;was
+      a really first class article, not something from which the paint would
+      come off almost before you got it home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're to be found,&rdquo; he would cheerfully affirm, &ldquo;but you've got to look
+      for 'em. They're not the sort that advertises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind Jarman in the second floor back resided one whom Jarman had
+      nicknamed &ldquo;The Lady 'Ortensia.&rdquo; I believe before my arrival there had been
+      love passages between the two; but neither of them, so I gathered, had
+      upon closer inspection satisfied the other's standard. Their present
+      attitude towards each other was that of insult thinly veiled under
+      exaggerated politeness. Miss Rosina Sellars was, in her own language, a
+      &ldquo;lady assistant,&rdquo; in common parlance, a barmaid at the Ludgate Hill
+      Station refreshment room. She was a large, flabby young woman. With less
+      powder, her complexion might by admirers have been termed creamy; as it
+      was, it presented the appearance rather of underdone pastry. To be on all
+      occasions &ldquo;quite the lady&rdquo; was her pride. There were those who held the
+      angle of her dignity to be exaggerated. Jarman would beg her for her own
+      sake to be more careful lest one day she should fall down backwards and
+      hurt herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly calculated to
+      check familiarity. Even stockbrokers' clerks&mdash;young men as a class
+      with the bump of reverence but poorly developed&mdash;would in her
+      presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of not
+      noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the noisiest
+      customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange it for
+      three of whiskey, which he had; take his money and return him his change
+      without ever seeing him, hearing him, or knowing he was there. It
+      shattered the self-assertion of the youngest of commercial travellers. Her
+      tone and manner, outside rare moments of excitement, were suggestive of an
+      offended but forgiving iceberg. Jarman invariably passed her with his coat
+      collar turned up to his ears, and even thus protected might have been
+      observed to shiver. Her stare, in conjunction with her &ldquo;I beg your
+      pardon!&rdquo; was a moral douche that would have rendered apologetic and
+      explanatory Don Juan himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me she was always gracious, which by contrast to her general attitude
+      towards my sex of studied disdain, I confess flattered me. She was good
+      enough to observe to Mrs. Peedles, who repeated it to me, that I was the
+      only gentleman in the house who knew how to behave himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entire first floor was occupied by an Irishman and&mdash;they never
+      minced the matter themselves, so hardly is there need for me to do so. She
+      was a charming little dark-eyed woman, an ex-tight-rope dancer, and always
+      greatly offended Mrs. Peedles by claiming Miss Lucretia Barry as a sister
+      artiste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I don't know how it may be now,&rdquo; would reply Mrs. Peedles, with
+      some slight asperity; &ldquo;but in my time we ladies of the legitimate stage
+      used to look down upon dancers and such sort. Of course, no offence to
+      you, Mrs. O'Kelly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither of them was in the least offended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, Mrs. Peedles, ye could never have looked down upon the Signora,&rdquo;
+       the O'Kelly would answer laughing. &ldquo;Ye had to lie back and look up to her.
+      Why, I've got the crick in me neck to this day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! my dear, and you don't know how nervous I was when glancing down I'd
+      see his handsome face just underneath me, thinking that with one false
+      step I might spoil it for ever,&rdquo; would reply the Signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me darling! I'd have died happy, just smothered in loveliness!&rdquo; would
+      return the O'Kelly; and he and the Signora would rush into each other's
+      arms, and the sound of their kisses would quite excite the little slavey
+      sweeping down the stairs outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a barrister attached in theory to the Western Circuit; in practice,
+      somewhat indifferent to it, much more attached to the lower strata of
+      Bohemia and the Signora. At the present he was earning all sufficient for
+      the simple needs of himself and the Signora as a teacher of music and
+      singing. His method was simple and suited admirably the locality. Unless
+      specially requested, he never troubled his pupils with such tiresome
+      things as scales and exercises. His plan was to discover the song the
+      young man fancied himself singing, the particular jingle the young lady
+      yearned to knock out of the piano, and to teach it to them. Was it &ldquo;Tom
+      Bowling?&rdquo; Well and good. Come on; follow your leader. The O'Kelly would
+      sing the first line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, try that. Don't be afraid. Just open yer mouth and gave it
+      tongue. That's all right. Everything has a beginning. Sure, later on,
+      we'll get the time and tune, maybe a little expression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether the system had any merit in it, I cannot answer. Certain it was
+      that as often as not it achieved success. Gradually&mdash;say, by the end
+      of twelve eighteen-penny lessons&mdash;out of storm and chaos &ldquo;Tom
+      Bowling&rdquo; would emerge, recognisable for all men to hear. Had the pupil any
+      voice to start with, the O'Kelly improved it; had he none, the O'Kelly
+      would help him to disguise the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it easy, now; take it easy,&rdquo; the O'Kelly would counsel. &ldquo;Sure, it's
+      a delicate organ, yer voice. Don't ye strain it now. Ye're at yer best
+      when ye're just low and sweet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So also with the blushing pianiste. At the end of a month a tune was
+      distinctly discernible; she could hear it herself, and was happy. His
+      repute spread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice already had he eloped with the Signora (and twice again was he to
+      repeat the operation, before I finally lost sight of him: to break oneself
+      of habit is always difficult) and once by well-meaning friends had he been
+      induced to return to home, if not to beauty. His wife, who was
+      considerably older than himself, possessed, so he would inform me with
+      tears in his eyes, every moral excellence that should attract mankind.
+      Upon her goodness and virtue, her piety and conscientiousness he would
+      descant to me by the half hour. His sincerity it was impossible to
+      question. It was beyond doubt that he respected her, admired her, honoured
+      her. She was a saint, an angel&mdash;a wretch, a villain such as he, was
+      not fit to breathe the same pure air. To do him justice, it must be
+      admitted he showed no particular desire to do so. As an aunt or
+      grandmother, I believe he would have suffered her gladly. He had nothing
+      to say against her, except that he found himself unable to live with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That she must have been a lady of exceptional merit one felt convinced.
+      The Signora, who had met her only once, and then under somewhat trying
+      conditions, spoke her praises with equal enthusiasm. Had she, the Signora,
+      enjoyed the advantage of meeting such a model earlier, she, the Signora,
+      might have been a better woman. It seemed a pity the introduction could
+      not have taken place sooner and under different circumstances. Could they
+      both have adopted her as a sort of mutual mother-in-law, it would have
+      given them, I am positive, the greatest satisfaction. On her occasional
+      visits they would have vied with each other in showing her affectionate
+      attention. For the deserted lady I tried to feel sorry, but could not
+      avoid the reflection that it would have been better for all parties had
+      she been less patient and forgiving. Her husband was evidently much more
+      suited to the Signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the relationship between these two was more a true marriage than
+      one generally meets with. No pair of love-birds could have been more snug
+      together. In their virtues and failings alike they fitted each other. When
+      sober the immorality of their behaviour never troubled them; in fact, when
+      sober nothing ever troubled them. They laughed, joked, played through
+      life, two happy children. To be shocked at them was impossible. I tried it
+      and failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now and again there came an evening when they were not sober. It
+      happened when funds were high. On such occasion the O'Kelly would return
+      laden with bottles of a certain sweet champagne, of which they were both
+      extremely fond; and a friend or two would be invited to share in the
+      festivity. Whether any exceptional quality resided in this particular
+      brand of champagne I am not prepared to argue; my own personal experience
+      of it has prompted me to avoid it for the rest of my life. Its effect upon
+      them was certainly unique. Instead of intoxicating them, it sobered them:
+      there is no other way of explaining it. With the third or fourth glass
+      they began to take serious views of life. Before the end of the second
+      bottle they would be staring at each other, appalled at contemplation of
+      their own transgression. The Signora, the tears streaming down her pretty
+      face, would declare herself a wicked, wicked woman; she had dragged down
+      into shame the most blameless, the most virtuous of men. Emptying her
+      glass, she would bury her face in her hands, and with her elbows on her
+      knees, in an agony of remorse, sit rocking to and fro. The O'Kelly,
+      throwing himself at her feet, would passionately abjure her to &ldquo;look up.&rdquo;
+       She had, it appeared, got hold of the thing at the wrong end; it was he
+      who had dragged her down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point metaphor would become confused. Each had been dragged down
+      by the other one and ruined; also each one was the other one's good angel.
+      All that was commendable in the Signora, she owed to the O'Kelly. Whatever
+      was not discreditable about the O'Kelly was in the nature of a loan from
+      the Signora. With the help of more champagne the right course would grow
+      plain to them. She would go back broken-hearted but repentant to the
+      tight-rope; he would return a better but a blighted man to Mrs. O'Kelly
+      and the Western Circuit. This would be their last evening together on
+      earth. A fresh bottle would be broached, and the guest or guests called
+      upon to assist in the ceremony of renunciation; glasses full to the brim
+      this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much tragedy did they continue to instil into the scene that on the
+      first occasion of my witnessing it I was unable to refrain from mingling
+      my tears with theirs. As, however, the next morning they had forgotten all
+      about it, and as nothing came of it, nor of several subsequent
+      repetitions, I should have believed a separation between them impossible
+      but that even while I was an inmate of the house the thing actually
+      happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came about in this wise. His friends, having discovered him, had
+      pointed out to him again his duty. The Signora&mdash;a really excellent
+      little woman so far as intention was concerned&mdash;had seconded their
+      endeavours, with the result that on a certain evening in autumn we of the
+      house assembled all of us on the first floor to support them on the
+      occasion of their final&mdash;so we all deemed it then&mdash;leave-taking.
+      For eleven o'clock two four-wheeled cabs had been ordered, one to
+      transport the O'Kelly with his belongings to Hampstead and respectability;
+      in the other the Signora would journey sorrowfully to the Tower Basin,
+      there to join a circus company sailing for the Continent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I knocked at the door some quarter of an hour before the appointed hour of
+      the party. I fancy the idea had originated with the Signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Willie has something to say to you,&rdquo; she had informed me that
+      morning on the stairs. &ldquo;He has taken a sincere liking to you, and it is
+      something very important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting one each side the fireplace, looking very serious; a
+      bottle of the sobering champagne stood upon the table. The Signora rose
+      and kissed me gravely on the brow; the O'Kelly laid both hands upon my
+      shoulders, and sat me down on a chair between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Kelver,&rdquo; said the Signora, &ldquo;you are very young.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hinted&mdash;it was one of those rare occasions upon which gallantry can
+      be combined with truth&mdash;that I found myself in company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signora smiled sadly, and shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Age,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly, &ldquo;is a matter of feeling. Kelver, may ye never be
+      as old as I am feeling now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As <i>we</i> are feeling,&rdquo; corrected the Signora. &ldquo;Kelver,&rdquo; said the
+      O'Kelly, pouring out a third glass of champagne, &ldquo;we want ye to promise us
+      something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will make us both happier,&rdquo; added the Signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ye will take warning,&rdquo; continued the O'Kelly, &ldquo;by our wretched
+      example. Paul, in this world there is only one path to possible happiness.
+      The path of strict&mdash;&rdquo; he paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Propriety,&rdquo; suggested the Signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of strict propriety,&rdquo; agreed the O'Kelly. &ldquo;Deviate from it,&rdquo; continued
+      the O'Kelly, impressively, &ldquo;and what is the result?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unutterable misery,&rdquo; supplied the Signora.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye think we two have been happy here together,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied that such was the conclusion to which observation had directed
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We tried to appear so,&rdquo; explained the Signora; &ldquo;it was merely on the
+      outside. In reality all the time we hated each other. Tell him, Willie,
+      dear, how we have hated each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly, finishing and putting down his
+      glass, &ldquo;to give ye any idea, Kelver, how we have hated each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How we have quarrelled!&rdquo; said the Signora. &ldquo;Tell him, dear, how we have
+      quarrelled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All day long and half the night,&rdquo; concluded the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fought,&rdquo; added the Signora. &ldquo;You see, Mr. Kelver, people in&mdash;in our
+      position always do. If it had been otherwise, if&mdash;if everything had
+      been proper, then of course we should have loved each other. As it is, it
+      has been a cat and dog existence. Hasn't it been a cat and dog existence,
+      Willie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's been just hell upon earth,&rdquo; murmured the O'Kelly, with his eyes
+      fixed gloomily upon the fire-stove ornament. Deadly in earnest though they
+      both were, I could not repress a laugh, their excellent intention was so
+      obvious. The Signora burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't believe us,&rdquo; she wailed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me dear,&rdquo; replied the O'Kelly, throwing up his part with promptness and
+      satisfaction, &ldquo;how could ye expect it? How could he believe that any man
+      could look at ye and hate ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all my fault,&rdquo; cried the little woman; &ldquo;I am such a wicked creature.
+      I cannot even be miserable when I am doing wrong. A decent woman in my
+      place would have been wretched and unhappy, and made everybody about her
+      wretched and unhappy, and so have set a good example and have been a
+      warning. I don't seem to have any conscience, and I do try.&rdquo; The poor
+      little lady was sobbing her heart out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When not shy I could be sensible, and of the O'Kelly and the Signora one
+      could be no more shy than of a pair of robin redbreasts. Besides, I was
+      really fond of them; they had been very good to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Miss Beltoni,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I am going to take warning by you both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed my hand. &ldquo;Oh, do, please do,&rdquo; she murmured. &ldquo;We really have
+      been miserable&mdash;now and then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am never going to be content,&rdquo; I assured her, &ldquo;until I find a lady as
+      charming and as amiable as you, and if ever I get her I'll take good care
+      never to run any risk of losing her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded well and pleased us all. The O'Kelly shook me warmly by the
+      hand, and this time spoke his real feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me boy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;all women are good&mdash;for somebody. But the woman
+      that is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who's the
+      best for somebody else. Ye understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eight o'clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived&mdash;as Flora MacDonald,
+      in green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking. As
+      a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles and the
+      subject of deserted wives in general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fine-looking man,&rdquo; allowed Mrs. Peedles, &ldquo;but weak&mdash;weak as
+      water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signora agreed that unfortunately there did exist such men: 'twas
+      pitiful but true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Peedles, &ldquo;she wasn't even a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signora expressed astonishment at the deterioration in Mr. Peedles'
+      taste thus implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't go so far as to say we never had a difference,&rdquo; continued Mrs.
+      Peedles, whose object appeared to be an impartial statement of the whole
+      case. &ldquo;There may have been incompatability of temperament, as they say.
+      Myself, I have always been of a playful disposition&mdash;frivolous, some
+      might call me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signora protested; the O'Kelly declined to listen to such aspersion on
+      her character even from Mrs. Peedles herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peedles, thus corrected, allowed that maybe frivolous was too
+      sweeping an accusation: say sportive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a good wife to him I always was,&rdquo; asserted Mrs. Peedles, with a fine
+      sense of justice; &ldquo;never flighty, like some of them. I challenge any one
+      to accuse me of having been flighty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We felt we should not believe any one who did, and told her so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a
+      confidential attitude. &ldquo;If they want to go, let 'em go, I always say,&rdquo; she
+      whispered loudly into the Signora's ear. &ldquo;Ten to one they'll find they've
+      only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. One can always comfort
+      oneself with that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles. Her virtuous
+      sympathies, I gathered, were with the Signora. Mr. O'Kelly's return to
+      Mrs. O'Kelly evidently manifested itself in the light of a shameful
+      desertion. Having regard to the fact, patent to all who knew him, that the
+      poor fellow was sacrificing every inclination to stern sense of duty, such
+      view of the matter was rough on him. But philosophers from all ages have
+      agreed that our good deeds are the whips with which Fate punishes us for
+      our bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Peedles, &ldquo;when Mr. Peedles left me I thought
+      that I should never smile again. Yet here you see me laughing away through
+      life, just as ever. You'll get over it all right.&rdquo; And Mrs. Peedles wiped
+      away her tears and smiled upon the Signora; upon which the Signora
+      commenced to cry again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Happily, timely diversion was made at this point by the bursting into the
+      room of Jarman, who upon perceiving Mrs. Peedles, at once gave vent to a
+      hoot, supposed to be expressive of Scottish joy, and without a moment's
+      hesitation commenced to dance a reel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My neighbours of the first floor knocked at the door a little while
+      afterwards; and genteelly late arrived Miss Rosina Sellars, coldly
+      gleaming in a decollete but awe-inspiring costume of mingled black and
+      scarlet, out of which her fair, if fleshy, neck and arms shone luxuriant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We did not go into supper; instead, supper came into us from the
+      restaurant at the corner of the Blackfriars Road. I cannot say that at
+      first it was a festive meal. The O'Kelly and the Signora made effort, as
+      in duty bound, to be cheerful, but for awhile were somewhat unsuccessful.
+      The third floor front wasted no time in speech, but ate and drank
+      copiously. Miss Sellars, retaining her gloves&mdash;which was perhaps
+      wise, her hands being her weak point&mdash;signalled me out, much to my
+      embarrassment, as the recipient of her most polite conversation. Mrs.
+      Peedles became reminiscent of parties generally. Seeing that most of Mrs.
+      Peedles' former friends and acquaintances were either dead or in more or
+      less trouble, her efforts did not tend to enliven the table. One
+      gathering, of which the present strangely reminded her, was a funeral,
+      chiefly remarkable from discovery of the romantic fact, late in the
+      proceedings, that the gentleman in whose honour the whole affair had been
+      organised was not dead at all; but instead, having taken advantage of an
+      error arising out of a railway accident, was at the moment eloping with
+      the wife of his own chief mourner. As Mrs. Peedles explained, and as one
+      could well credit, it had been an awkward position for all present. Nobody
+      had quite known whether to feel glad or sorry&mdash;with the exception of
+      the chief mourner, upon whose personal undertaking that the company might
+      regard the ceremony as merely postponed, festivities came to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman. As a delicate
+      attention to Mrs. Peedles and her costume he sunk his nationality and
+      became for the evening, according to his own declaration, &ldquo;a braw laddie.&rdquo;
+       With her&mdash;his &ldquo;sonsie lassie,&rdquo; so he termed her&mdash;he flirted in
+      the broadest, if not purest, Scotch. The O'Kelly for him became &ldquo;the
+      Laird;&rdquo; the third floor &ldquo;Jamie o' the Ilk;&rdquo; Miss Sellars, &ldquo;the bonnie wee
+      rose;&rdquo; myself, &ldquo;the chiel.&rdquo; Periods of silence were dispersed by
+      suggestions that we should &ldquo;hoot awa',&rdquo; Jarman himself setting us the
+      example.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the clearance away of the eatables, making room for the production of
+      a more varied supply of bottles, matters began to mend. Mrs. Peedles
+      became more arch, Jarman's Scotch more striking and extensive, the Lady
+      'Ortensia's remarks less depressingly genteel, her aitches less
+      accentuated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarman rose to propose the health of the O'Kelly, coupled with that of the
+      Signora. To the O'Kelly, in a burst of generosity, Jarman promised our
+      united patronage. To Jarman it appeared that by employing the O'Kelly to
+      defend us whenever we got into trouble with the police, and by
+      recommending him to our friends, a steady income should be assured to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly replied feelingly to the effect that Nelson Square,
+      Blackfriars, would ever remain engraved upon his memory as the fairest and
+      brightest spot on earth. Personally, nothing would have given him greater
+      pleasure than to die among the dear friends who now surrounded him. But
+      there was such a thing as duty, and he and the Signora had come to the
+      conclusion that true happiness could only be obtained by acting according
+      to one's conscience, even if it made one miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarman, warming to his work, then proposed the health of Mrs. Peedles, as
+      true-hearted and hard-breathing a lady as ever it had been his privilege
+      to know. Her talent for cheery conversation was familiar to us all, upon
+      it he need not enlarge; all he would say was that personally never did she
+      go out of his room without leaving him more cheerful than when she entered
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that&mdash;I forget in what&mdash;we drank the health of the Lady
+      'Ortensia. Persons there were&mdash;Jarman would not attempt to disguise
+      the fact&mdash;who complained that the Lady 'Ortensia was too distant,
+      &ldquo;too stand-offish.&rdquo; With such complaint he himself had no sympathy; but
+      tastes differed. If the Lady 'Ortensia were inclined to be exclusive, who
+      should blame her? Everybody knew their own business best. For use in a
+      second floor front he could not honestly recommend the Lady 'Ortensia; it
+      would not be giving her a fair chance, and it would not be giving the
+      second floor a fair chance. But for any gentleman fitting up marble halls,
+      for any one on the lookout for a really &ldquo;toney article,&rdquo; Jarman would say:
+      Inquire for Miss Rosina Sellars, and see that you get her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed my turn. There had been literary chaps in the past, Jarman
+      admitted so much. Against them he had nothing to say. They had no doubt
+      done their best. But the gentleman whose health Jarman wished the company
+      now to drink had this advantage over them: that they were dead, and he
+      wasn't. Some of this gentleman's work Jarman had read&mdash;in manuscript;
+      but that was a distinction purely temporary. He, Jarman, claimed to be no
+      judge of literature, but this he could and would say, it took a good deal
+      to make him miserable, yet this the literary efforts of Mr. Kelver
+      invariably accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peedles, speaking without rising, from personal observation in the
+      daytime&mdash;which she hoped would not be deemed a liberty; literature,
+      even in manuscript, being, so to speak, public property&mdash;found
+      herself in a position to confirm all that Mr. Jarman had remarked.
+      Speaking as one not entirely without authority on the subject of
+      literature and the drama, Mrs. Peedles could say that passages she had
+      read had struck her as distinctly not half bad. Some of the love-scenes,
+      in particular, had made her to feel quite a girl again. How he had
+      acquired such knowledge was not for her to say. Cries of &ldquo;Naughty!&rdquo; from
+      Jarman, and &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Kelver, I shall be quite afraid of you,&rdquo; roguishly
+      from Miss Sellars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly, who, having abandoned his favourite champagne for less
+      sobering liquor, had since supper-time become rapidly more cheerful, felt
+      sure there was a future before me. That he had not seen any of my work, so
+      he assured me, in no way lessened his opinion of it. One thing only would
+      he impress upon me: that the best work was the result of strict attention
+      to virtue. His advice to me was to marry young and be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My persevering efforts of the last few months towards the acquisition of
+      convivial habits appeared this evening to be receiving their reward. The
+      O'Kelly's sweet champagne I had drunk with less dislike than hitherto; a
+      white, syrupy sort of stuff, out of a fat and artistic-looking bottle, I
+      had found distinctly grateful to the palate. Dimly the quotation about
+      taking things at the flood, and so getting on quickly, floated through my
+      brain, coupled with another one about fortune favouring the bold. It had
+      seemed to me a good occasion to try for the second time in my life a full
+      flavoured cigar. I had selected with the caution of a connoisseur one of
+      mottled green complexion from the O'Kelly's largest box. And so far all
+      had gone well. An easy self-confidence, delightful by reason of its
+      novelty, had replaced my customary shyness; a sense of lightness&mdash;of
+      positive airiness, emanating from myself, pervaded all things. Tossing off
+      another glass of the champagne, I rose to reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Modesty in my present mood would have been affectation. To such dear and
+      well-beloved friends I had no hesitation in admitting the truth, that I
+      was a clever fellow&mdash;a damned clever fellow. I knew it, they knew it,
+      in a short time everybody would know it. But they need not fear that in
+      the hour of my pride, when it arrived, I should prove ungrateful. Never
+      should I forget their kindness to me, a lonely young man, alone in a
+      lonely&mdash;Here the pathos of my own situation overcame me; words seemed
+      weak. &ldquo;Jarman&mdash;&rdquo; I meant, putting my hand upon his head, to have
+      blessed him for his goodness to me; but he being not exactly where he
+      looked to be, I just missed him, and sat down on the edge of my chair,
+      which was a hard one. I had not intended this to be the end of my speech,
+      by a long one; but Jarman, whispering to me: &ldquo;Ended at exactly the right
+      moment; shows the born orator,&rdquo; strong inclination to remain seated, now
+      that I was down seconding his counsel, and the company being clearly
+      satisfied, I decided to leave things where they were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A delightful dreaminess was stealing over me. Everything and everybody
+      appeared to be a long way off, but, whether because of this or in spite of
+      it, exceedingly attractive. Never had I noticed the Signora so bewitching;
+      in a motherly sort of way even the third floor front was good to look
+      upon; Mrs. Peedles I could almost have believed to be the real Flora
+      MacDonald sitting in front of me. But the vision of Miss Rosina Sellars
+      made literally my head to swim. Never before had I dared to cast upon
+      female loveliness the satisfying gaze with which I now boldly regarded her
+      every movement. Evidently she noticed it, for she turned away her eyes. I
+      had heard that exceptionally strong-minded people merely by concentrating
+      their will could make other, ordinary people, do just whatever they, the
+      exceptionally strong-minded people, wished. I willed that Miss Rosina
+      Sellars should turn her eyes again towards me. Victory crowned my efforts.
+      Evidently I was one of these exceptionally strong-minded persons. Slowly
+      her eyes came round and met mine with a smile&mdash;a helpless, pathetic
+      smile that said, so I read it: &ldquo;You know no woman can resist you: be
+      merciful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Inflamed by the brutal lust of conquest, I suppose I must have willed
+      still further, for the next thing I remember is sitting with Miss Sellars
+      on the sofa, holding her hand, the while the O'Kelly sang a sentimental
+      ballad, only one line of which comes back to me: &ldquo;For the angels must have
+      told him, and he knows I love him now,&rdquo; much stress upon the &ldquo;now.&rdquo; The
+      others had their backs towards us. Miss Sellars, with a look that pierced
+      my heart, dropped her somewhat large head upon my shoulder, leaving, as I
+      observed the next day, a patch of powder on my coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sellars observed that one of the saddest things in the world was
+      unrequited love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied gallantly, &ldquo;Whateryou know about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you men, you men,&rdquo; murmured Miss Sellars; &ldquo;you're all alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggested a personal aspersion on my character. &ldquo;Not allus,&rdquo; I
+      murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know what love is,&rdquo; said Miss Sellars. &ldquo;You're not old enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly had passed on to Sullivan's &ldquo;Sweethearts,&rdquo; then in its first
+      popularity.
+    </p>
+<p class="ml">
+     &ldquo;Oh, love for a year&mdash;a week&mdash;a day!
+     But oh for the love that loves al-wa-ays!&rdquo;
+ </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sellars' languishing eyes were fixed upon me; Miss Sellars' red lips
+      pouted and twitched; Miss Sellars' white bosom rose and fell. Never, so it
+      seemed to me, had so large an amount of beauty been concentrated in one
+      being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeserdo,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stooped to kiss the red lips, but something was in my way. It turned out
+      to be a cold cigar. Miss Sellars thoughtfully removed it, and threw it
+      away. Our lips met. Her large arms closed about my neck and held me tight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm sure!&rdquo; came the voice of Mrs. Peedles, as from afar. &ldquo;Nice
+      goings on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have vague remembrance of a somewhat heated discussion, in which
+      everybody but myself appeared to be taking extreme interest&mdash;of Miss
+      Sellars in her most ladylike and chilling tones defending me against the
+      charge of &ldquo;being no gentleman,&rdquo; which Mrs. Peedles was explaining nobody
+      had said I wasn't. The argument seemed to be of the circular order. No
+      gentleman had ever kissed Miss Sellars who had not every right to do so,
+      nor ever would. To kiss Miss Sellars without such right was to declare
+      oneself no gentleman. Miss Sellars appealed to me to clear my character
+      from the aspersion of being no gentleman. I was trying to understand the
+      situation, when Jarman, seizing me somewhat roughly by the arm, suggested
+      my going to bed. Miss Sellars, seizing my other arm, suggested my refusing
+      to go to bed. So far I was with Miss Sellars. I didn't want to go to bed,
+      and said so. My desire to sit up longer was proof positive to Miss Sellars
+      that I was a gentleman, but to no one else. The argument shifted, the
+      question being now as to whether Miss Sellars were a lady. To prove the
+      point it was, according to Miss Sellars, necessary that I should repeat I
+      loved her. I did repeat it, adding, with faint remembrance of my own
+      fiction, that if a life's devotion was likely to be of the slightest
+      further proof, my heart's blood was at her service. This cleared the air,
+      Mrs. Peedles observing that under such circumstances it only remained for
+      her to withdraw everything she had said; to which Miss Sellars replied
+      graciously that she had always known Mrs. Peedles to be a good sort at the
+      bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, gaiety was gone from among us, and for this, in some way I
+      could not understand, I appeared to be responsible. Jarman was distinctly
+      sulky. The O'Kelly, suddenly thinking of the time, went to the door and
+      discovered that the two cabs were waiting. The third floor recollected
+      that work had to be finished. I myself felt sleepy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our host and hostess departed; Jarman again suggested bed, and this time I
+      agreed with him. After a slight misunderstanding with the door, I found
+      myself upon the stairs. I had never noticed before that they were quite
+      perpendicular. Adapting myself to the changed conditions, I climbed them
+      with the help of my hands. I accomplished the last flight somewhat
+      quickly, and feeling tired, sat down the moment I was within my own room.
+      Jarman knocked at the door. I told him to come in; but he didn't. It
+      occurred to me that the reason was I was sitting on the floor with my back
+      against the door. The discovery amused me exceedingly and I laughed; and
+      Jarman, baffled, descended to his own floor. I found getting into bed a
+      difficulty, owing to the strange behaviour of the room. It spun round and
+      round. Now the bed was just in front of me, now it was behind me. I
+      managed at last to catch it before it could get past me, and holding on by
+      the ironwork, frustrated its efforts to throw me out again on to the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was some time before I went to sleep, and over my intervening
+      experiences I draw a veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM. BUT BEFORE SETTING OUT, HE
+      WILL GO A-VISITING.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was streaming into my window when I woke in the morning. I sat up
+      and listened. The roar of the streets told me plainly that the day had
+      begun without me. I reached out my hand for my watch; it was not in its
+      usual place upon the rickety dressing-table. I raised myself still higher
+      and looked about me. My clothes lay scattered on the floor. One boot, in
+      solitary state, occupied the chair by the fireplace; the other I could not
+      see anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the night my head appeared to have grown considerably. I wondered
+      idly for the moment whether I had not made a mistake and put on Minikin's;
+      if so, I should be glad to exchange back for my own. This thing I had got
+      was a top-heavy affair, and was aching most confoundedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the recollection of the previous night rushed at me and shook me
+      awake. From a neighbouring steeple rang chimes: I counted with care.
+      Eleven o'clock. I sprang out of bed, and at once sat down upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remembered how, holding on to the bed, I had felt the room waltzing
+      wildly round and round. It had not quite steadied itself even yet. It was
+      still rotating, not whirling now, but staggering feebly, as though worn
+      out by its all-night orgie. Creeping to the wash-stand, I succeeded, after
+      one or two false plunges, in getting my head inside the basin. Then,
+      drawing on my trousers with difficulty and reaching the easy-chair, I sat
+      down and reviewed matters so far as I was able, commencing from the
+      present and working back towards the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was feeling very ill. That was quite clear. Something had disagreed with
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That strong cigar,&rdquo; I whispered feebly to myself; &ldquo;I ought never to have
+      ventured upon it. And then the little room with all those people in it.
+      Besides, I have been working very hard. I must really take more exercise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave me some satisfaction to observe that, shuffling and cowardly
+      though I might be, I was not a person easily bamboozled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; I told myself brutally; &ldquo;don't try to deceive me. You were
+      drunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not drunk,&rdquo; I pleaded; &ldquo;don't say drunk; it is such a coarse expression.
+      Some people cannot stand sweet champagne, so I have heard. It affected my
+      liver. Do please make it a question of liver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drunk,&rdquo; I persisted unrelentingly, &ldquo;hopelessly, vulgarly drunk&mdash;drunk
+      as any 'Arry after a Bank Holiday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the first time,&rdquo; I murmured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your first opportunity,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again,&rdquo; I promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The stock phrase,&rdquo; I returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nineteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you have not even the excuse of youth. How do you know that it will
+      not grow upon you; that, having thus commenced a downward career, you will
+      not sink lower and lower, and so end by becoming a confirmed sot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My heavy head dropped into my hands, and I groaned. Many a temperance tale
+      perused on Sunday afternoons came back to me. Imaginative in all
+      directions, I watched myself hastening toward a drunkard's grave, now
+      heroically struggling against temptation, now weakly yielding, the craving
+      growing upon me. In the misty air about me I saw my father's white face,
+      my mother's sad eyes. I thought of Barbara, of the scorn that could quiver
+      round that bewitching mouth; of Hal, with his tremendous contempt for all
+      forms of weakness. Shame of the present and terror of the future between
+      them racked my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shall be never again!&rdquo; I cried aloud. &ldquo;By God, it shall!&rdquo; (At nineteen
+      one is apt to be vehement.) &ldquo;I will leave this house at once,&rdquo; I continued
+      to myself aloud; &ldquo;I will get away from its unwholesome atmosphere. I will
+      wipe it out of my mind, and all connected with it. I will make a fresh
+      start. I will&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something I had been dimly conscious of at the back of my brain came
+      forward and stood before me: the flabby figure of Miss Rosina Sellars.
+      What was she doing here? What right had she to step between me and my
+      regeneration?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The right of your affianced bride,&rdquo; my other half explained, with a grim
+      smile to myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I really go so far as that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not go into details,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;I do not wish to dwell upon
+      them. That was the result.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was&mdash;I was not quite myself at the time. I did not know what I was
+      doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a rule, we don't when we do foolish things; but we have to abide by
+      the consequences, all the same. Unfortunately, it happened to be in the
+      presence of witnesses, and she is not the sort of lady to be easily got
+      rid of. You will marry her and settle down with her in two small rooms.
+      Her people will be your people. You will come to know them better before
+      many days are passed. Among them she is regarded as 'the lady,' from which
+      you can judge of them. A nice commencement of your career, is it not, my
+      ambitious young friend? A nice mess you have made of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to do?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word, I don't know,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I passed a wretched day. Ashamed to face Mrs. Peedles or even the slavey,
+      I kept to my room, with the door locked. At dusk, feeling a little better&mdash;or,
+      rather, less bad, I stole out and indulged in a simple meal, consisting of
+      tea without sugar and a kippered herring, at a neighbouring coffee-house.
+      Another gentleman, taking his seat opposite to me and ordering hot
+      buttered toast, I left hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At eight o'clock in the evening Minikin called round from the office to
+      know what had happened. Seeking help from shame, I confessed to him the
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought as much,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Seems to have been an A1 from the look of
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad it has happened, now it is over,&rdquo; I said to him. &ldquo;It will be a
+      lesson I shall never forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Minikin. &ldquo;Nothing like a fair and square drunk for making
+      you feel real good; better than a sermon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In my trouble I felt the need of advice; and Minikin, though my junior,
+      was, I knew, far more experienced in worldly affairs than I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not the worst,&rdquo; I confided to him. &ldquo;What do you think I've done?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Killed a policeman?&rdquo; suggested Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got myself engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one like you quiet fellows for going it when you do begin,&rdquo; commented
+      Minikin. &ldquo;Nice girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I only know I don't want her. How can I get
+      out of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Minikin removed his left eye and commenced to polish it upon his
+      handkerchief, a habit he had when in doubt. From looking into it he
+      appeared to derive inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take-her-own-part sort of a girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I intimated that he had diagnosed Miss Rosina Sellars correctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know how much you're earning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows I live up here in this attic and do my own cooking,&rdquo; I
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minikin glanced round the room. &ldquo;Must be fond of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thinks I'm clever,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;and that I shall make my way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she's willing to wait?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I should let her wait,&rdquo; replied Minikin, replacing his eye.
+      &ldquo;There's plenty of time before you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she's a barmaid, and she'll expect me to walk with her, to take her
+      out on Sundays, to go and see her friends. I can't do it. Besides, she's
+      right: I mean to get on. Then she'll stick to me. It's awful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; asked Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;I didn't know I had done it till it was over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anybody present?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-a-dozen of them,&rdquo; I groaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, and Jarman entered; he never troubled to knock anywhere.
+      In place of his usual noisy greeting, he crossed in silence and shook me
+      gravely by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friend of yours?&rdquo; he asked, indicating Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I introduced them to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Proud to meet you,&rdquo; said Jarman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to hear it,&rdquo; said Minikin. &ldquo;Don't look as if you'd got much else to
+      be stuck up about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mind him,&rdquo; I explained to Jarman. &ldquo;He was born like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderful gift&rdquo; replied Jarman. &ldquo;D'ye know what I should do if I 'ad it?&rdquo;
+       He did not wait for Minikin's reply. &ldquo;'Ire myself out to break up evening
+      parties. Ever thought of it seriously?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Minikin replied that he would give the idea consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make your fortune going round the suburbs,&rdquo; assured him Jarman. &ldquo;Pity you
+      weren't 'ere last night,&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;might 'ave saved our young friend
+      'ere a deal of trouble. Has 'e told you the news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that I had already put Minikin in possession of all the facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you've got a good, steady eye,&rdquo; said Jarman, upon whom Minikin,
+      according to his manner, had fixed his glass orb; &ldquo;'ow d'ye think 'e is
+      looking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As well as can be expected under the circumstances, don't you think?&rdquo;
+       answered Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does 'e know the circumstances? Has 'e seen the girl?&rdquo; asked Jarman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied he had not as yet enjoyed that privilege. &ldquo;Then 'e don't know
+      the worst,&rdquo; said Jarman. &ldquo;A hundred and sixty pounds of 'er, and still
+      growing! Bit of a load for 'im, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of 'em do have luck,&rdquo; was Minikin's rejoinder. Jarman leant forward
+      and took further stock for a few seconds of his new acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a fine 'ead of yours,&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;all your own? No offence,&rdquo;
+       continued Jarman, without giving Minikin time for repartee. &ldquo;I was merely
+      thinking there must be room for a lot of sense in it. Now, what do you, as
+      a practical man, advise 'im: dose of poison, or Waterloo Bridge and a
+      brick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose there's no doubt,&rdquo; I interjected, &ldquo;that we are actually
+      engaged?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a blooming shadow,&rdquo; assured me Jarman, cheerfully, &ldquo;so far as she's
+      concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall tell her plainly,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;that I was drunk at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And 'ow are you going to convince 'er of it?&rdquo; asked Jarman. &ldquo;You think
+      your telling 'er you loved 'er proves it. So it would to anybody else, but
+      not to 'er. You can't expect it. Besides, if every girl is going to give
+      up 'er catch just because the fellow 'adn't all 'is wits about 'im at the
+      time&mdash;well, what do you think?&rdquo; He appealed to Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Minikin it appeared that if such contention were allowed girls might as
+      well shut up shop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarman, who now that he had &ldquo;got even&rdquo; with Minikin, was more friendly
+      disposed towards that young man, drew his chair closer to him and entered
+      upon a private and confidential argument, from which I appeared to be
+      entirely excluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; explained Jarman, &ldquo;this ain't an ordinary case. This chap's
+      going to be the future Poet Laureate. Now, when the Prince of Wales
+      invites him to dine at Marlborough 'ouse, 'e don't want to go there tacked
+      on to a girl that carries aitches with her in a bag, and don't know which
+      end of the spoon out of which to drink 'er soup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes a difference, of course,&rdquo; agreed Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What we've got to do,&rdquo; said Jarman, &ldquo;is to get 'im out of it. And upon my
+      sivvy, blessed if I see 'ow to do it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She fancies him?&rdquo; asked Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What she fancies,&rdquo; explained Jarman, &ldquo;is that nature intended 'er to be a
+      lady. And it's no good pointing out to 'er the mistake she's making,
+      because she ain't got sense enough to see it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No good talking straight to her,&rdquo; suggested Minikin, &ldquo;telling her that it
+      can never be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's our difficulty,&rdquo; replied Jarman; &ldquo;it can be. This chap&rdquo;&mdash;I
+      listened as might a prisoner in the dock to the argument of counsel,
+      interested but impotent&mdash;&ldquo;don't know enough to come in out of the
+      rain, as the saying is. 'E's just the sort of chap this sort of thing does
+      'appen to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he don't want her,&rdquo; urged Minikin. &ldquo;He says he don't want her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to you and me,&rdquo; answered Jarman; &ldquo;and of course 'e don't. I'm not
+      saying 'e's a natural born idiot. But let 'er come along and do a snivel&mdash;tell
+      'im that 'e's breaking 'er 'eart, and appeal to 'im to be'ave as a
+      gentleman, and all that sort of thing, and what do you think will be the
+      result?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Minikin agreed that the problem presented difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, if 'twas you or me, we should just tell 'er to put 'erself
+      away somewhere where the moth couldn't get at 'er and wait till we sent
+      round for 'er; and there'd be an end of the matter. But with 'im it's
+      different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a bit of a soft,&rdquo; agreed Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Tain't 'is fault,&rdquo; explained Jarman; &ldquo;'twas the way 'e was brought up.
+      'E fancies girls are the sort of things one sees in plays, going about
+      saying 'Un'and me!' 'Let me pass!' Maybe some of 'em are, but this ain't
+      one of 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; asked Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ow does it 'appen nine times out of ten?&rdquo; returned Jarman. &ldquo;'E was a bit
+      misty, and she was wide awake. 'E gets a bit spoony, and&mdash;well, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Artful things, girls,&rdquo; commented Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't blame 'em,&rdquo; returned Jarman, with generosity; &ldquo;it's their business.
+      Got to dispose of themselves somehow. Oughtn't to be binding without a
+      written order dated the next morning; that'd make it all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't prove a prior engagement?&rdquo; suggested Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd want to see the girl first before she'd believe it&mdash;only
+      natural,&rdquo; returned Jarman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't get a girl?&rdquo; urged Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who could you trust?&rdquo; asked the cautious Jarman. &ldquo;Besides, there ain't
+      time. She's letting 'im rest to-day; to-morrow evening she'll be down on
+      'im.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't see anything for it,&rdquo; said Minikin, &ldquo;but for him to do a bunk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bad idea that,&rdquo; mused Jarman; &ldquo;only where's 'e to bunk to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Needn't go far,&rdquo; said Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd find 'im out and follow 'im,&rdquo; said Jarman. &ldquo;She can look after
+      herself, mind you. Don't you go doing 'er any injustice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He could change his name,&rdquo; suggested Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ow could 'e get a crib?&rdquo; asked Jarman; &ldquo;no character, no references.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got it,&rdquo; cried Jarman, starting up; &ldquo;the stage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can he act?&rdquo; asked Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can do anything,&rdquo; retorted my supporter, &ldquo;that don't want too much sense.
+      That's 'is sanctuary, the stage. No questions asked, no character wanted.
+      Lord! why didn't I think of it before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wants a bit of getting on to, doesn't it?&rdquo; suggested Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Depends upon where you want to get,&rdquo; replied Jarman. For the first time
+      since the commencement of the discussion he turned to me. &ldquo;Can you sing?&rdquo;
+       he asked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied that I could a little, though I had never done so in public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing something now,&rdquo; demanded Jarman; &ldquo;let's 'ear you. Wait a minute!&rdquo; he
+      cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He slipped out of the room. I heard him pause upon the landing below and
+      knock at the door of the fair Rosina's room. The next minute he returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right,&rdquo; he explained; &ldquo;she's not in yet. Now, sing for all
+      you're worth. Remember, it's for life and freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I sang &ldquo;Sally in Our Alley,&rdquo; not with much spirit, I am inclined to think.
+      With every mention of the lady's name there rose before me the abundant
+      form and features of my <i>fiancee</i>, which checked the feeling that
+      should have trembled through my voice. But Jarman, though not
+      enthusiastic, was content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't what I call a grand opera voice,&rdquo; he commented, &ldquo;but it ought to
+      do all right for a chorus where economy is the chief point to be
+      considered. Now, I'll tell you what to do. You go to-morrow straight to
+      the O'Kelly, and put the whole thing before 'im. 'E's a good sort; 'e'll
+      touch you up a bit, and maybe give you a few introductions. Lucky for you,
+      this is just the right time. There's one or two things comin' on, and if
+      Fate ain't dead against you, you'll lose your amorita, or whatever it's
+      called, and not find 'er again till it's too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not in the mood that evening to feel hopeful about anything; but I
+      thanked both of them for their kind intentions and promised to think the
+      suggestion over on the morrow, when, as it was generally agreed, I should
+      be in a more fitting state to bring cool judgment to bear upon the
+      subject; and they rose to take their departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving Minikin to descend alone, Jarman returned the next minute.
+      &ldquo;Consols are down a bit this week,&rdquo; he whispered, with the door in his
+      hand. &ldquo;If you want a little of the ready to carry you through, don't go
+      sellin' out. I can manage a few pounds. Suck a couple of lemons and you'll
+      be all right in the morning. So long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I followed his advice regarding the lemons, and finding it correct, went
+      to the office next morning as usual. Lott &amp; Co., in consideration of
+      my agreeing to a deduction of two shillings on the week's salary, allowed
+      himself to overlook the matter. I had intended acting on Jarman's advice,
+      to call upon the O'Kelly at his address of respectability in Hampstead
+      that evening, and had posted him a note saying I was coming. Before
+      leaving the office, however, I received a reply to the effect that he
+      would be out that evening, and asking me to make it the following Friday
+      instead. Disappointed, I returned to my lodgings in a depressed state of
+      mind. Jarman 's scheme, which had appeared hopeful and even attractive
+      during the daytime, now loomed shadowy and impossible before me. The
+      emptiness of the first floor parlour as I passed its open door struck a
+      chill upon me, reminding me of the disappearance of a friend to whom, in
+      spite of moral disapproval, I had during these last few months become
+      attached. Unable to work, the old pain of loneliness returned upon me. I
+      sat for awhile in the darkness, listening to the scratching of the pen of
+      my neighbour, the old law-writer, and the sense of despair that its sound
+      always communicated to me encompassed me about this evening with heavier
+      weight than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, was not the sympathy of the Lady 'Ortensia, stimulated for
+      personal purposes though it might be, better than nothing? At least, here
+      was some living creature to whom I belonged, to whom my existence or
+      nonexistence was of interest, who, if only for her own sake, was bound to
+      share my hopes, my fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in this mood that I heard a slight tap at the door. In the dim
+      passage stood the small slavey, holding out a note. I took it, and
+      returning, lighted my candle. The envelope was pink and scented. It was
+      addressed, in handwriting not so bad as I had expected, to &ldquo;Paul Kelver,
+      Esquire.&rdquo; I opened it and read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr mr. Paul&mdash;I herd as how you was took hill hafter the party. I
+      feer you are not strong. You must not work so hard or you will be hill and
+      then I shall be very cros with you. I hop you are well now. If so I am
+      going for a wark and you may come with me if you are good. With much love.
+      From your affechonat ROSIE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of the spelling, a curious, tingling sensation stole over me as I
+      read this my first love-letter. A faint mist swam before my eyes. Through
+      it, glorified and softened, I saw the face of my betrothed, pasty yet
+      alluring, her large white fleshy arms stretched out invitingly toward me.
+      Moved by a sudden hot haste that seized me, I dressed myself with
+      trembling hands; I appeared to be anxious to act without giving myself
+      time for thought. Complete, with a colour in my cheeks unusual to them,
+      and a burning in my eyes, I descended and knocked with a nervous hand at
+      the door of the second floor back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's that?&rdquo; came in answer Miss Sellars' sharp tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is I&mdash;Paul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, wait a minute, dear.&rdquo; The tone was sweeter. There followed the sound
+      of scurried footsteps, a rustling of clothes, a banging of drawers, a few
+      moments' dead silence, and then:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can come in now, dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I entered. It was a small, untidy room, smelling of smoky lamp; but all I
+      saw distinctly at the moment was Miss Sellars with her arms above her
+      head, pinning her hat upon her straw-coloured hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the sight of her before me in the flesh, my feelings underwent a
+      sudden revulsion. During the few minutes she had kept me waiting outside
+      the door I had suffered from an almost uncontrollable desire to turn the
+      handle and rush in. Now, had I acted on impulse, I should have run out.
+      Not that she was an unpleasant-looking girl by any means; it was the
+      atmosphere of coarseness, of commonness, around her that repelled me. The
+      fastidiousness&mdash;finikinness; if you will&mdash;that would so often
+      spoil my rare chop, put before me by a waitress with dirty finger-nails,
+      forced me to disregard the ample charms she no doubt did possess, to
+      fasten my eyes exclusively upon her red, rough hands and the one or two
+      warts that grew thereon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a very naughty boy,&rdquo; told me Miss Sellars, finishing the fastening
+      of her hat. &ldquo;Why didn't you come in and see me in the dinner-<i>h</i>our?
+      I've a great mind not to kiss you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The powder she had evidently dabbed on hastily was plainly visible upon
+      her face; the round, soft arms were hidden beneath ill-fitting sleeves of
+      some crapey material, the thought of which put my teeth on edge. I wished
+      her intention had been stronger. Instead, relenting, she offered me her
+      flowery cheek, which I saluted gingerly, the taste of it reminding me of
+      certain pale, thin dough-cakes manufactured by the wife of our school
+      porter and sold to us in playtime at four a penny, and which, having
+      regard to their satisfying quality, had been popular with me in those
+      days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the top of the kitchen stairs Miss Sellars paused and called down
+      shrilly to Mrs. Peedles, who in course of time appeared, panting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, me and Mr. Kelver are going out for a short walk, Mrs. Peedles. I
+      shan't want any supper. Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good night, my dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Peedles. &ldquo;Hope you'll enjoy
+      yourselves. Is Mr. Kelver there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's round the corner,&rdquo; I heard Miss Sellars explain in a lower voice;
+      and there followed a snigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a bit shy, ain't he?&rdquo; suggested Mrs. Peedles in a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had enough of the other sort,&rdquo; was Miss Sellars' answer in low
+      tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, well; it's the shy ones that come out the strongest after a bit&mdash;leastways,
+      that's been my experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll do all right. So long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Sellars, buttoning a burst glove, rejoined me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you've never had a sweetheart before?&rdquo; asked Miss Sellars, as
+      we turned into the Blackfriars Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I admitted that this was my first experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't a-bear a flirty man,&rdquo; explained Miss Sellars. &ldquo;That's why I took
+      to you from the beginning. You was so quiet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to wish that nature had bestowed upon me a noisier temperament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anybody could see you was a gentleman,&rdquo; continued Miss Sellars. &ldquo;Heaps
+      and heaps of hoffers I've had&mdash;<i>h</i>undreds you might almost say.
+      But what I've always told 'em is, 'I like you very much indeed as a
+      friend, but I'm not going to marry any one but a gentleman.' Don't you
+      think I was right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured it was only what I should have expected of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may take my harm, if you like,&rdquo; suggested Miss Sellars, as we crossed
+      St. George's Circus; and linked, we pursued our way along the Kennington
+      Park Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fortunately, there was not much need for me to talk. Miss Sellars was
+      content to supply most of the conversation herself, and all of it was
+      about herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I learned that her instincts since childhood had been toward gentility.
+      Nor was this to be wondered at, seeing that her family&mdash;on her
+      mother's side, at all events,&mdash;were connected distinctly with &ldquo;the <i>h</i>ighest
+      in the land.&rdquo; <i>Mesalliances</i>, however, are common in all communities,
+      and one of them, a particularly flagrant specimen&mdash;her &ldquo;Mar&rdquo; had,
+      alas! contracted, having married&mdash;what did I think? I should never
+      guess&mdash;a waiter! Miss Sellars, stopping in the act of crossing
+      Newington Butts to shudder at the recollection of her female parent's
+      shame, was nearly run down by a tramcar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. and Mrs. Sellars did not appear to have &ldquo;hit it off&rdquo; together. Could
+      one wonder: Mrs. Sellars with an uncle on the Stock Exchange, and Mr.
+      Sellars with one on Peckham Rye? I gathered his calling to have been,
+      chiefly, &ldquo;three shies a penny.&rdquo; Mrs. Sellars was now, however, happily
+      dead; and if no other good thing had come out of the catastrophe, it had
+      determined Miss Sellars to take warning by her mother's error and avoid
+      connection with the lowly born. She it was who, with my help, would lift
+      the family back again to its proper position in society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It used to be a joke against me,&rdquo; explained Miss Sellars, &ldquo;heven when I
+      was quite a child. I never could tolerate anything low. Why, one day when
+      I was only seven years old, what do you think happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I confessed my inability to guess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll tell you,&rdquo; said Miss Sellars; &ldquo;it'll just show you. Uncle
+      Joseph&mdash;that was father's uncle, you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured Miss Sellars that the point was fixed in my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one day when he came to see us he takes a cocoanut out of his
+      pocket and offers it to me. 'Thank you,' I says; 'I don't heat cocoanuts
+      that have been shied at by just anybody and missed!' It made him so wild.
+      After that,&rdquo; explained Miss Sellars, &ldquo;they used to call me at home the
+      Princess of Wales.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured it was a pretty fancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some people,&rdquo; replied Miss Sellars, with a giggle, &ldquo;says it fits me; but,
+      of course, that's only their nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not knowing what to reply, I remained silent, which appeared to somewhat
+      disappoint Miss Sellars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the Clapham Road we turned into a by-street of two-storeyed houses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll come in and have a bit of supper?&rdquo; suggested Miss Sellars. &ldquo;Mar's
+      quite hanxious to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I found sufficient courage to say I was not feeling well, and would much
+      rather return home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but you must just come in for five minutes, dear. It'll look so funny
+      if you don't. I told 'em we was coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would really rather not,&rdquo; I urged; &ldquo;some other evening.&rdquo; I felt a
+      presentiment, I confided to her, that on this particular evening I should
+      not shine to advantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you mustn't be so shy,&rdquo; said Miss Sellars. &ldquo;I don't like shy fellows&mdash;not
+      too shy. That's silly.&rdquo; And Miss Sellars took my arm with a decided grip,
+      making it clear to me that escape could be obtained only by an unseemly
+      struggle in the street; not being prepared for which, I meekly yielded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We knocked at the door of one of the small houses, Miss Sellars retaining
+      her hold upon me until it had been opened to us by a lank young man in his
+      shirt-sleeves and closed behind us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't gentlemen wear coats of a hevening nowadays?&rdquo; asked Miss Sellars,
+      tartly, of the lank young man. &ldquo;New fashion just come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what gentlemen wear in the evening or what they don't,&rdquo;
+       retorted the lank young man, who appeared to be in an aggressive mood. &ldquo;If
+      I can find one in this street, I'll ast him and let you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother in the droaring-room?&rdquo; enquired Miss Sellars, ignoring the retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're all of 'em in the parlour, if that's what you mean,&rdquo; returned the
+      lank young man, &ldquo;the whole blooming shoot. If you stand up against the
+      wall and don't breathe, there'll just be room for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sweeping by the lank young man, Miss Sellars opened the parlour door, and
+      towing me in behind her, shut it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mar, here we are,&rdquo; announced Miss Sellars. An enormously stout
+      lady, ornamented with a cap that appeared to have been made out of a
+      bandanna handkerchief, rose to greet us, thus revealing the fact that she
+      had been sitting upon an extremely small horsehair-covered easy-chair, the
+      disproportion between the lady and her support being quite pathetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am charmed, Mr.&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kelver,&rdquo; supplied Miss Sellars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kelver, to make your ac-quain-tance,&rdquo; recited Mrs. Sellars in the tone of
+      one repeating a lesson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bowed, and murmured that the honour was entirely mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mention it,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Sellars. &ldquo;Pray be seated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sellars herself set the example by suddenly giving way and dropping
+      down into her chair, which thus again became invisible. It received her
+      with an agonised groan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, the insistence with which this article of furniture throughout the
+      evening called attention to its sufferings was really quite distracting.
+      With every breath that Mrs. Sellars took it moaned wearily. There were
+      moments when it literally shrieked. I could not have accepted Mrs.
+      Sellars' offer had I wished, there being no chair vacant and no room for
+      another. A young man with watery eyes, sitting just behind me between a
+      fat young lady and a lean one, rose and suggested my taking his place.
+      Miss Sellars introduced me to him as her cousin Joseph something or other,
+      and we shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The watery-eyed Joseph remarked that it had been a fine day between the
+      showers, and hoped that the morrow would be either wet or dry; upon which
+      the lean young lady, having slapped him, asked admiringly of the fat young
+      lady if he wasn't a &ldquo;silly fool;&rdquo; to which the fat young lady replied,
+      with somewhat unnecessary severity, I thought, that no one could help
+      being what they were born. To this the lean young lady retorted that it
+      was with precisely similar reflection that she herself controlled her own
+      feelings when tempted to resent the fat young lady's &ldquo;nasty jealous
+      temper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The threatened quarrel was nipped in the bud by the discretion of Miss
+      Sellars, who took the opportunity of the fat young lady's momentary
+      speechlessness to introduce me promptly to both of them. They also, I
+      learned, were cousins. The lean girl said she had &ldquo;erd on me,&rdquo; and
+      immediately fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggles; of which the
+      watery-eyed Joseph requested me to take no notice, explaining that she
+      always went off like that at exactly three-quarters to the half-hour every
+      evening, Sundays and holidays excepted; that she had taken everything
+      possible for it without effect, and that what he himself advised was that
+      she should have it off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fat girl, seizing the chance afforded her, remarked genteelly that she
+      too had &ldquo;heard hof me,&rdquo; with emphasis upon the &ldquo;hof.&rdquo; She also remarked it
+      was a long walk from Blackfriars Bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All depends upon the company, eh? Bet they didn't find it too long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This came from a loud-voiced, red-faced man sitting on the sofa beside a
+      somewhat melancholy-looking female dressed in bright green. These twain I
+      discovered to be Uncle and Aunt Gutton. From an observation dropped later
+      in the evening concerning government restrictions on the sale of
+      methylated spirit, and hastily smothered, I gathered that their line was
+      oil and colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Gutton's forte appeared to be badinage. He it was who, on my
+      explaining my heightened colour as due to the closeness of the evening,
+      congratulated his niece on having secured so warm a partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will be jolly handy,&rdquo; shouted Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;for Rosina, seeing she's
+      always complaining of her cold feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the lank young man attempted to squeeze himself into the room, but
+      found his entrance barred by the square, squat figure of the watery-eyed
+      young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't push,&rdquo; advised the watery-eyed young man. &ldquo;Walk over me quietly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, why don't yer get out of the way,&rdquo; growled the lank young man, now
+      coated, but still aggressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where am I to get to?&rdquo; asked the watery-eyed young man, with some reason.
+      &ldquo;Say the word and I'll 'ang myself up to the gas bracket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my courting days,&rdquo; roared Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;the girls used to be able to
+      find seats, even if there wasn't enough chairs to go all round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sentiment was received with varying degrees of approbation. The
+      watery-eyed young man, sitting down, put the lean young lady on his knee,
+      and in spite of her struggles and sounding slaps, heroically retained her
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, Rosie,&rdquo; shouted Uncle Gutton, who appeared to have constituted
+      himself master of the ceremonies, &ldquo;don't stand about, my girl; you'll get
+      tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Left to herself, I am inclined to think my <i>fiancee</i> would have
+      spared me; but Uncle Gutton, having been invited to a love comedy, was not
+      to be cheated of any part of the performance, and the audience clearly
+      being with him, there was nothing for it but compliance. I seated myself,
+      and amid plaudits accommodated the ample and heavy Rosina upon my knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; called out to me the watery-eyed young man, as behind the fair
+      Rosina I disappeared from his view. &ldquo;See you again later on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to be a plump girl myself before I married,&rdquo; observed Aunt Gutton.
+      &ldquo;Plump as butter I was at one time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't what one eats,&rdquo; said the maternal Sellars. &ldquo;I myself don't eat
+      enough to keep a fly, and my legs&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do, Mar,&rdquo; interrupted the filial Sellars, tartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only going to say, my dear&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We all know what you was going to say, Mar,&rdquo; retorted Miss Sellars.
+      &ldquo;We've heard it before, and it isn't interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Sellars relapsed into silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ard work and plenty of it keeps you thin enough, I notice,&rdquo; remarked the
+      lank young man, with bitterness. To him I was now introduced, he being Mr.
+      George Sellars. &ldquo;Seen 'im before,&rdquo; was his curt greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At supper&mdash;referred to by Mrs. Sellars again in the tone of one
+      remembering a lesson, as a cold col-la-tion, with the accent on the &ldquo;tion&rdquo;&mdash;I
+      sat between Miss Sellars and the lean young lady, with Aunt and Uncle
+      Gutton opposite to us. It was remarked with approval that I did not appear
+      to be hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had too many kisses afore he started,&rdquo; suggested Uncle Gutton, with his
+      mouth full of cold roast pork and pickles. &ldquo;Wonderfully nourishing thing,
+      kisses, eh? Look at mother and me. That's all we live on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Gutton sighed, and observed that she had always been a poor feeder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The watery-eyed young man, observing he had never tasted them himself&mdash;at
+      which sally there was much laughter&mdash;said he would not mind trying a
+      sample if the lean young lady would kindly pass him one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lean young lady opined that, not being used to high living, it might
+      disagree with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just one,&rdquo; pleaded the watery-eyed young man, &ldquo;to go with this bit of
+      cracklin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lean young lady, amid renewed applause, first thoughtfully wiping her
+      mouth, acceded to his request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The watery-eyed young man turned it over with the air of a gourmet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not bad,&rdquo; was his verdict. &ldquo;Reminds me of onions.&rdquo; At this there was
+      another burst of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, ain't Paul goin' to have one?&rdquo; shouted Uncle Gutton, when the
+      laughter had subsided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amid silence, feeling as wretched as perhaps I have ever felt in my life
+      before or since, I received one from the gracious Miss Sellars, wet and
+      sounding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks better for it already,&rdquo; commented the delighted Uncle Gutton.
+      &ldquo;He'll soon get fat on 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too many at first,&rdquo; advised the watery-eyed young man. &ldquo;Looks to me
+      as if he's got a weak stomach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think, had the meal lasted much longer, I should have made a dash for
+      the street; the contemplation of such step was forming in my mind. But
+      Miss Sellars, looking at her watch, declared we must be getting home at
+      once, for the which I could have kissed her voluntarily; and, being a
+      young lady of decision, at once rose and commenced leave-taking. Polite
+      protests were attempted, but these, with enthusiastic assistance from
+      myself, she swept aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't want any one to walk home with you?&rdquo; suggested Uncle Gutton. &ldquo;Sure
+      you won't feel lonely by yourselves, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shan't come to no harm,&rdquo; assured him Miss Sellars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;P'raps you're right,&rdquo; agreed Uncle Gutton. &ldquo;There don't seem to be much
+      of the fiery and untamed about him, so far as I can see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Slow waters run deep,'&rdquo; reminded us Aunt Gutton, with a waggish shake of
+      her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No question about the slow,&rdquo; assented Uncle Gutton. &ldquo;If you don't like
+      him&mdash;&rdquo; observed Miss Sellars, speaking with dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be quite candid with you, my girl, I don't,&rdquo; answered Uncle Gutton,
+      whose temper, maybe as the result of too much cold pork and whiskey,
+      seemed to have suddenly changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he happens to be good enough for me,&rdquo; recommenced Miss Sellars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry to hear a niece of mine say so,&rdquo; interrupted Uncle Gutton. &ldquo;If
+      you want my opinion of him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ever I do I'll call round some time when you're sober and ast you for
+      it,&rdquo; returned Miss Sellars. &ldquo;And as for being your niece, you was here
+      when I came, and I don't see very well as how I could have got out of it.
+      You needn't throw that in my teeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gust was dispersed by the practical remark of brother George to the
+      effect that the last tram for Walworth left the Oval at eleven-thirty; to
+      which he further added the suggestion that the Clapham Road was wide and
+      well adapted to a row.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ain't going to be no rows,&rdquo; replied Uncle Gutton, returning to
+      amiability as suddenly as he had departed from it. &ldquo;We understand each
+      other, don't we, my girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right, uncle. I know what you mean,&rdquo; returned Miss Sellars,
+      with equal handsomeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring him round again when he's feeling better,&rdquo; added Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;and
+      we'll have another look at him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you want,&rdquo; advised the watery-eyed young man on shaking hands with
+      me, &ldquo;is complete rest and a tombstone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wished at the time I could have followed his prescription.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maternal Sellars waddled after us into the passage, which she
+      completely blocked. She told me she was delight-ted to have met me, and
+      that she was always at home on Sundays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said I would remember it, and thanked her warmly for a pleasant evening,
+      at Miss Sellars' request calling her Ma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside, Miss Sellars agreed that my presentiment had proved correct&mdash;that
+      I had not shone to advantage. Our journey home on a tramcar was a somewhat
+      silent proceeding. At the door of her room she forgave me, and kissed me
+      good night. Had I been frank with her, I should have thanked her for that
+      evening's experience. It had made my course plain to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day, which was Thursday, I wandered about the streets till two
+      o'clock in the morning, when I slipped in quietly, passing Miss Sellars'
+      door with my boots in my hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Mr. Lott's departure on Friday, which, fortunately, was pay-day, I
+      set my desk in order and confided to Minikin written instructions
+      concerning all matters unfinished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not be here to-morrow,&rdquo; I told him. &ldquo;Going to follow your
+      advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Found anything to do?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose you can't get anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the worst comes to the worst,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;I can hang myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know the girl. Maybe you are right,&rdquo; he agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope it won't throw much extra work on you,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shan't be catching it if it does,&rdquo; was his answer. &ldquo;That's all
+      right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked with me to the &ldquo;Angel,&rdquo; and there we parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do get on to the stage,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and it's anything worth seeing,
+      and you send me an order, and I can find the time, maybe I'll come and see
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thanked him for his promised support and jumped upon the tram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly's address was in Belsize Square. I was about to ring and
+      knock, as requested by a highly-polished brass plate, when I became aware
+      of pieces of small coal falling about me on the doorstep. Looking up, I
+      perceived the O'Kelly leaning out of an attic window. From signs I
+      gathered I was to retire from the doorstep and wait. In a few minutes the
+      door opened and his hand beckoned me to enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Walk quietly,&rdquo; he whispered; and on tip-toe we climbed up to the attic
+      from where had fallen the coal. &ldquo;I've been waiting for ye,&rdquo; explained the
+      O'Kelly, speaking low. &ldquo;Me wife&mdash;a good woman, Paul; sure, a better
+      woman never lived; ye'll like her when ye know her, later on&mdash;she
+      might not care about ye're calling. She'd want to know where I met ye, and&mdash;ye
+      understand? Besides,&rdquo; added the O'Kelly, &ldquo;we can smoke up here;&rdquo; and
+      seating himself where he could keep an eye upon the door, near to a small
+      cupboard out of which he produced a pipe still alight, the O'Kelly
+      prepared himself to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him briefly the reason of my visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my fault, Paul,&rdquo; he was good enough to say; &ldquo;my fault entirely.
+      Between ourselves, it was a damned silly idea, that party, the whole thing
+      altogether. Don't ye think so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied that I was naturally prejudiced against it myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most unfortunate for me,&rdquo; continued the O'Kelly; &ldquo;I know that. Me cabman
+      took me to Hammersmith instead of Hampstead; said I told him Hammersmith.
+      Didn't get home here till three o'clock in the morning. Most unfortunate&mdash;under
+      the circumstances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I could quite imagine it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'm glad ye've come,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly. &ldquo;I had a notion ye did
+      something foolish that evening, but I couldn't remember precisely what.
+      It's been worrying me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's been worrying me also, I can assure you,&rdquo; I told him; and I gave him
+      an account of my Wednesday evening's experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go round to-morrow morning,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and see one or two people.
+      It's not a bad idea, that of Jarman's. I think I may be able to arrange
+      something for ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He fixed a time for me to call again upon him the next day, when Mrs.
+      O'Kelly would be away from home. He instructed me to walk quietly up and
+      down on the opposite side of the road with my eye on the attic window, and
+      not to come across unless he waved a handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rising to go, I thanked him for his kindness. &ldquo;Don't put it that way, me
+      dear Paul,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;If I don't get ye out of this scrape I shall
+      never forgive meself. If we damned silly fools don't help one another,&rdquo; he
+      added, with his pleasant laugh, &ldquo;who is to help us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We crept downstairs as we had crept up. As we reached the first floor, the
+      drawing-room door suddenly opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William!&rdquo; cried a sharp voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me dear,&rdquo; answered the O'Kelly, snatching his pipe from his mouth and
+      thrusting it, still alight, into his trousers pocket. I made the rest of
+      the descent by myself, and slipping out, closed the door behind me as
+      noiselessly as possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I did not return to Nelson Square until the early hours, and the
+      next morning did not venture out until I had heard Miss Sellars, who
+      appeared to be in a bad temper, leave the house. Then running to the top
+      of the kitchen stairs, I called for Mrs. Peedles. I told her I was going
+      to leave her, and, judging the truth to be the simplest explanation, I
+      told her the reason why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said Mrs. Peedles, &ldquo;I am only too glad to hear it. It wasn't
+      for me to interfere, but I couldn't help seeing you were making a fool of
+      yourself. I only hope you'll get clear off, and you may depend upon me to
+      do all I can to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't think I'm acting dishonourably, do you, Mrs. Peedles?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Peedles, &ldquo;it's a difficult world to live in&mdash;leastways,
+      that's been my experience of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had just completed my packing&mdash;it had not taken me long&mdash;when
+      I heard upon the stairs the heavy panting that always announced to me the
+      up-coming of Mrs. Peedles. She entered with a bundle of old manuscripts
+      under her arm, torn and tumbled booklets of various shapes and sizes.
+      These she plumped down upon the rickety table, and herself upon the
+      nearest chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put them in your box, my dear,&rdquo; said Mrs. Peedles. &ldquo;They'll come in
+      useful to you later on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I glanced at the bundle. I saw it was a collection of old plays in
+      manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined. The top one I
+      noticed was &ldquo;The Bloodspot: Or the Maiden, the Miser and the Murderer;&rdquo;
+       the second, &ldquo;The Female Highwayman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody's forgotten 'em,&rdquo; explained Mrs. Peedles, &ldquo;but there's some
+      good stuff in all of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what am I to do with them?&rdquo; I enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just whatever you like, my dear,&rdquo; explained Mrs. Peedles. &ldquo;It's quite
+      safe. They're all of 'em dead, the authors of 'em. I've picked 'em out
+      most carefully. You just take a scene from one and a scene from the other.
+      With judgment and your talent you'll make a dozen good plays out of that
+      little lot when your time comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they wouldn't be my plays, Mrs. Peedles,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will if I give them to you,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Peedles. &ldquo;You put 'em in
+      your box. And never mind the bit of rent,&rdquo; added Mrs. Peedles; &ldquo;you can
+      pay me that later on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I kissed the kind old soul good-bye and took her gift with me to my new
+      lodgings in Camden Town. Many a time have I been hard put to it for plot
+      or scene, and more than once in weak mood have I turned with guilty intent
+      the torn and crumpled pages of Mrs. Peedles's donation to my literary
+      equipment. It is pleasant to be able to put my hand upon my heart and
+      reflect that never yet have I yielded to the temptation. Always have I
+      laid them back within their drawer, saying to myself, with stern reproof:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, Paul. Stand or fall by your own merits. Never plagiarise&mdash;in
+      any case, not from this 'little lot.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LEADS TO A MEETING.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be nervous,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly, &ldquo;and don't try to do too much. You
+      have a very fair voice, but it's not powerful. Keep cool and open your
+      mouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was eleven o'clock in the morning. We were standing at the entrance of
+      the narrow court leading to the stage door. For a fortnight past the
+      O'Kelly had been coaching me. It had been nervous work for both of us, but
+      especially for the O'Kelly. Mrs. O'Kelly, a thin, acid-looking lady, of
+      whom I once or twice had caught a glimpse while promenading Belsize Square
+      awaiting the O'Kelly's signal, was a serious-minded lady, with a
+      conscientious objection to all music not of a sacred character. With the
+      hope of winning the O'Kelly from one at least of his sinful tendencies,
+      the piano had been got rid of, and its place in the drawing-room filled by
+      an American organ of exceptionally lugubrious tone. With this we had had
+      to make shift, and though the O'Kelly&mdash;a veritable musical genius&mdash;had
+      succeeded in evolving from it an accompaniment to &ldquo;Sally in Our Alley&rdquo;
+       less misleading and confusing than might otherwise have been the case, the
+      result had not been to lighten our labours. My rendering of the famous
+      ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not intended by the
+      composer. Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ a definition
+      since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad. Involuntarily
+      one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as satisfactorily as the
+      young man appeared to anticipate. Was there not, when one came to think of
+      it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained within the temperament of the
+      complainful hero that would ill assort with those instincts toward
+      frivolity the careful observer could not avoid discerning in the charming
+      yet nevertheless somewhat shallow character of Sally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lighter, lighter. Not so soulful,&rdquo; would demand the O'Kelly, as the
+      solemn notes rolled jerkily from the groaning instrument beneath his
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once we were nearly caught, Mrs. O'Kelly returning from a district
+      visitors' committee meeting earlier than was expected. Hastily I was
+      hidden in a small conservatory adjutting from the first floor landing,
+      where, crouching behind flower-pots, I listened in fear and trembling to
+      the severe cross-examination of the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William, do not prevaricate. It was not a hymn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me dear, so much depends upon the time. Let me give ye an example of what
+      I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;William, pray in my presence not to play tricks with sacred melodies. If
+      you have no respect for religion, please remember that I have. Besides,
+      why should you be playing hymns in any time at ten o'clock in the morning?
+      It is not like you, William, and I do not credit your explanation. And you
+      were singing. I distinctly heard the word 'Sally' as I opened the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Salvation, me dear,&rdquo; corrected the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your enunciation, William, is not usually so much at fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little hoarseness, me dear,&rdquo; explained the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your voice did not sound hoarse. Perhaps it will be better if we do not
+      pursue the subject further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this the O'Kelly appeared to agree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lady a little difficult to get on with when ye're feeling well and
+      strong,&rdquo; so the O'Kelly would explain her; &ldquo;but if ye happen to be ill,
+      one of the kindest, most devoted of women. When I was down with typhoid
+      three years ago, a tenderer nurse no man could have had. I shall never
+      forget it. And so she would be again to-morrow, if there was anything
+      serious the matter with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured the well-known quotation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. O'Kelly to a T,&rdquo; concurred the O'Kelly. &ldquo;I sometimes wonder if Lady
+      Scott may not have been the same sort of woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The unfortunate part of it is,&rdquo; continued the O'Kelly, &ldquo;that I'm such a
+      healthy beggar; it don't give her a chance. If I were only a chronic
+      invalid, now, there's nothing that woman would not do to make me happy. As
+      it is&mdash;&rdquo; The O'Kelly struck a chord. We resumed our studies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to our conversation at the stage door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meet me at the Cheshire Cheese at one o'clock,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly, shaking
+      hands. &ldquo;If ye don't get on here, we'll try something else; but I've spoken
+      to Hodgson, and I think ye will. Good luck to ye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went his way and I mine. In a glass box just behind the door a
+      curved-nose, round-eyed little man, looking like an angry bird in a cage,
+      demanded of me my business. I showed him my letter of appointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up the passage, across the stage, along the corridor, first floor, second
+      door on the right,&rdquo; he instructed me in one breath, and shut the window
+      with a snap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I proceeded up the passage. It somewhat surprised me to discover that I
+      was not in the least excited at the thought of this, my first introduction
+      to &ldquo;behind the scenes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I recall my father's asking a young soldier on his return from the Crimea
+      what had been his sensations at the commencement of his first charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; replied the young fellow, &ldquo;I was worrying all the time,
+      remembering I had rushed out leaving the beer tap running in the canteen,
+      and I could not forget it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So far as the stage I found my way in safety. Pausing for a moment and
+      glancing round, my impression was not so much disillusionment concerning
+      all things theatrical as realisation of my worst forebodings. In that one
+      moment all glamour connected with the stage fell from me, nor has it since
+      ever returned to me. From the tawdry decorations of the auditorium to the
+      childish make-belief littered around on the stage, I saw the Theatre a
+      painted thing of shreds and patches&mdash;the grown child's doll's-house.
+      The Drama may improve us, elevate us, interest and teach us. I am sure it
+      does; long may it flourish! But so likewise does the dressing and
+      undressing of dolls, the opening of the front of the house, and the
+      tenderly putting of them away to bed in rooms they completely fill, train
+      our little dears to the duties and the joys of motherhood. Toys! what wise
+      child despises them? Art, fiction, the musical glasses: are they not
+      preparing us for the time, however distant, when we shall at last be grown
+      up?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a maze of ways beyond the stage I lost myself, but eventually, guided
+      by voices, came to a large room furnished barely with many chairs and worn
+      settees, and here I found some twenty to thirty ladies and gentlemen
+      already seated. They were of varying ages, sizes and appearance, but all
+      of them alike in having about them that impossible-to-define but
+      impossible-to-mistake suggestion of theatricality. The men were chiefly
+      remarkable for having no hair on their faces, but a good deal upon their
+      heads; the ladies, one and all, were blessed with remarkably pink and
+      white complexions and exceptionally bright eyes. The conversation, carried
+      on in subdued but penetrating voices, was chiefly of &ldquo;him&rdquo; and &ldquo;her.&rdquo;
+       Everybody appeared to be on an affectionate footing with everybody else,
+      the terms of address being &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; &ldquo;My love,&rdquo; &ldquo;Old girl,&rdquo; &ldquo;Old
+      chappie,&rdquo; Christian names&mdash;when name of any sort was needful&mdash;alone
+      being employed. I hesitated for a minute with the door in my hand, fearing
+      I had stumbled upon a family gathering. As, however, nobody seemed
+      disconcerted at my entry, I ventured to take a vacant seat next to an
+      extremely small and boyish-looking gentleman and to ask him if this was
+      the room in which I, an applicant for a place in the chorus of the
+      forthcoming comic opera, ought to be waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had large, fishy eyes, with which he looked me up and down. For such a
+      length of time he remained thus regarding me in silence that a massive
+      gentleman sitting near, who had overheard, took it upon himself to reply
+      in the affirmative, adding that from what he knew of Butterworth we would
+      all of us be waiting here a damned sight longer than any gentleman should
+      keep other ladies and gentlemen waiting for no reason at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it exceedingly bad form,&rdquo; observed the fishy-eyed gentleman, in
+      deep contralto tones, &ldquo;for any gentleman to take it upon himself to reply
+      to a remark addressed to quite another gentleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; retorted the large gentleman. &ldquo;I thought you were
+      asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it very ill manners,&rdquo; remarked the small gentlemen in the same
+      slow and impressive tones, &ldquo;for any gentleman to tell another gentleman,
+      who happens to be wide awake, that he thought he was asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; returned the massive gentleman, assuming with the help of a large
+      umbrella a quite Johnsonian attitude, &ldquo;I decline to alter my manners to
+      suit your taste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you are satisfied with them,&rdquo; replied the small gentleman, &ldquo;I cannot
+      help it. But I think you are making a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does anybody know what the opera is about?&rdquo; asked a bright little woman
+      at the other end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does anybody ever know what a comic opera is about?&rdquo; asked another lady,
+      whose appearance suggested experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I once asked the author,&rdquo; observed a weary-looking gentleman, speaking
+      from a corner. &ldquo;His reply was: 'Well, if you had asked me at the beginning
+      of the rehearsals I might have been able to tell you, but damned if I
+      could now!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't surprise me,&rdquo; observed a good-looking gentleman in a velvet
+      coat, &ldquo;if there occurred somewhere in the proceedings a drinking chorus
+      for male voices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly, if we are good,&rdquo; added a thin lady with golden hair, &ldquo;the
+      heroine will confide to us her love troubles, which will interest us and
+      excite us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door at the further end of the room opened and a name was called. An
+      elderly lady rose and went out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor old Gertie!&rdquo; remarked sympathetically the thin lady with the golden
+      hair. &ldquo;I'm told that she really had a voice once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When poor young Bond first came to London,&rdquo; said the massive gentleman
+      who was sitting on my left, &ldquo;I remember his telling me he applied to Lord
+      Barrymore's 'tiger,' Alexander Lee, I mean, of course, who was then
+      running the Strand Theatre, for a place in the chorus. Lee heard him sing
+      two lines, and then jumped up. 'Thanks, that'll do; good morning,' says
+      Lee. Bond knew he had got a good voice, so he asked Lee what was wrong.
+      'What's wrong?' shouts Lee. 'Do you think I hire a chorus to show up my
+      principals?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Having regard to the company present,&rdquo; commented the fishy-eyed
+      gentleman, &ldquo;I consider that anecdote as distinctly lacking in tact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The feeling of the company appeared to be with the fish-eyed young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the next half hour the door at the further end of the room continued
+      to open and close, devouring, ogre-fashion, each time some dainty human
+      morsel, now chorus gentleman, now chorus lady. Conversation among our
+      thinning ranks became more fitful, a growing anxiety making for silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, &ldquo;Mr. Horace Moncrieff&rdquo; called the voice of the unseen Charon.
+      In common with the rest, I glanced round languidly to see what sort of man
+      &ldquo;Mr. Horace Moncrieff&rdquo; might be. The door was pushed open further. Charon,
+      now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a drooping moustache, put his
+      head into the room and repeated impatiently his invitation to the
+      apparently coy Moncrieff. It suddenly occurred to me that I was Mr. Horace
+      Moncrieff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So glad you've found yourself,&rdquo; said the pale-faced young man, as I
+      joined him at the door. &ldquo;Please don't lose yourself again; we're rather
+      pressed for time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I crossed with him through a deserted refreshment bar&mdash;one of the
+      saddest of sights&mdash;into a room beyond. A melancholy-looking gentleman
+      was seated at the piano. Beside him stood a tall, handsome man, who was
+      opening and reading rapidly from a bundle of letters he held in his hand.
+      A big, burly, bored-looking gentleman was making desperate efforts to be
+      amused at the staccato conversation of a sharp-faced, restless-eyed
+      gentleman, whose peculiarity was that he never by any chance looked at the
+      person to whom he was talking, but always at something or somebody else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moncrieff?&rdquo; enquired the tall, handsome man&mdash;whom I later discovered
+      to be Mr. Hodgson, the manager&mdash;without raising his eyes from his
+      letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pale-faced gentleman responded for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fire away,&rdquo; said Mr. Hodgson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked of me wearily the melancholy gentleman at the piano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Sally in Our Alley,'&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you?&rdquo; interrupted Mr. Hodgson. He had never once looked at me,
+      and did not now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tenor,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;Not a full tenor,&rdquo; I added, remembering the
+      O'Kelly's instructions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Utterly impossible to fill a tenor,&rdquo; remarked the restless-eyed
+      gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking gentleman.
+      &ldquo;Ever tried?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody laughed, with the exception of the melancholy gentleman at the
+      piano, Mr. Hodgson throwing in his contribution without raising his eyes
+      from his letters. Throughout the proceedings the restless-eyed gentleman
+      continued to make humorous observations of this nature, at which everybody
+      laughed, excepting always the melancholy pianist&mdash;a short, sharp,
+      mechanical laugh, devoid of the least suggestion of amusement. The
+      restless-eyed gentleman, it appeared, was the leading low comedian of the
+      theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said the melancholy gentleman, and commenced the accompaniment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me when he's going to begin,&rdquo; remarked Mr. Hodgson at the conclusion
+      of the first verse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has a fair voice,&rdquo; said my accompanist. &ldquo;He's evidently nervous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a prejudice throughout theatrical audiences,&rdquo; observed Mr.
+      Hodgson, &ldquo;in favour of a voice they can hear. That is all I am trying to
+      impress upon him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The second verse, so I imagined, I sang in the voice of a trumpet. The
+      burly gentleman&mdash;the translator of the French libretto, as he turned
+      out to be; the author of the English version, as he preferred to be called&mdash;acknowledged
+      to having distinctly detected a sound. The restless-eyed comedian
+      suggested an announcement from the stage requesting strict silence during
+      my part of the performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sickness of fear was stealing over me. My voice, so it seemed to me,
+      disappointed at the effect it had produced, had retired, sulky, into my
+      boots, whence it refused to emerge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your voice is all right&mdash;very good,&rdquo; whispered the musical
+      conductor. &ldquo;They want to hear the best you can do, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this my voice ran up my legs and out of my mouth. &ldquo;Thirty shillings a
+      week, half salary for rehearsals. If that's all right, Mr. Catchpole will
+      give you your agreement. If not, very much obliged. Good morning,&rdquo; said
+      Mr. Hodgson, still absorbed in his correspondence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the pale-faced young man I retired to a desk in the corner, where a
+      few seconds sufficed for the completion of the business. Leaving, I sought
+      to catch the eye of my melancholy friend, but he appeared too sunk in
+      dejection to notice anything. The restless-eyed comedian, looking at the
+      author of the English version and addressing me as Boanerges, wished me
+      good morning, at which the everybody laughed; and, informed as to the way
+      out by the pale-faced Mr. Catchpole, I left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first &ldquo;call&rdquo; was for the following Monday at two o'clock. I found the
+      theatre full of life and bustle. The principals, who had just finished
+      their own rehearsal, were talking together in a group. We ladies and
+      gentlemen of the chorus filled the centre of the stage. I noticed the lady
+      I had heard referred to as Gertie; as also the thin lady with the golden
+      hair. The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed young man were again in
+      close proximity; so long as I knew them they always were together,
+      possessed, apparently, of a sympathetic antipathy for each other. The
+      fishy-eyed young gentleman was explaining the age at which he thought
+      decayed chorus singers ought, in justice to themselves and the public, to
+      retire from the profession; the massive gentleman, the age and size at
+      which he thought parcels of boys ought to be learning manners across their
+      mother's knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hodgson, still reading letters exactly as I had left him four days
+      ago, stood close to the footlights. My friend, the musical director, armed
+      with a violin and supported by about a dozen other musicians, occupied the
+      orchestra. The adapter and the stage manager&mdash;a Frenchman whom I
+      found it good policy to mistake for a born Englishman&mdash;sat deep in
+      confabulation at a small table underneath a temporary gas jet. Quarter of
+      an hour or so passed by, and then the stage manager, becoming suddenly in
+      a hurry, rang a small bell furiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clear, please; all clear,&rdquo; shouted a small boy, with important air
+      suggestive of a fox terrier; and, following the others, I retreated to the
+      wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The comedian and the leading lady&mdash;whom I knew well from the front,
+      but whom I should never have recognised&mdash;severed themselves from
+      their companions and joined Mr. Hodgson by the footlights. As a
+      preliminary we were sorted out, according to our sizes, into loving
+      couples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said the stage manager, casting an admiring gaze upon the fishy-eyed
+      young man, whose height might have been a little over five feet two, &ldquo;I
+      have the very girl for you&mdash;a beauty!&rdquo; Darting into the group of
+      ladies, he returned with quite the biggest specimen, a lady of magnificent
+      proportions, whom, with the air of the virtuous uncle of melodrama, he
+      bestowed upon the fishy-eyed young man. To the massive gentleman was given
+      a sharp-faced little lady, who at a distance appeared quite girlish.
+      Myself I found mated to the thin lady with the golden hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last complete, we took our places in the then approved semi-circle, and
+      the attenuated orchestra struck up the opening chorus. My music, which had
+      been sent me by post, I had gone over with the O'Kelly, and about that I
+      felt confident; but for the rest, ill at ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; said the thin lady, &ldquo;I must ask you to put your arm round
+      my waist. It's very shocking, I know, but, you see, our salary depends
+      upon it. Do you think you could manage it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I glanced into her face. A whimsical expression of fun replied to me and
+      drove away my shyness. I carried out her instructions to the best of my
+      ability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The indefatigable stage manager ran in and out among us while we sang,
+      driving this couple back a foot or so, this other forward, herding this
+      group closer together, throughout another making space, suggesting the
+      idea of a sheep-dog at work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, very good indeed,&rdquo; commented Mr. Hodgson at the conclusion.
+      &ldquo;We will go over it once more, and this time in tune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we will make love,&rdquo; added the stage manager; &ldquo;not like marionettes,
+      but like ladies and gentlemen all alive.&rdquo; Seizing the lady nearest to him,
+      he explained to us by object lesson how the real peasant invariably
+      behaves when under influence of the grand passion, standing gracefully
+      with hands clasped upon heart, head inclined at an angle of forty-five,
+      his whole countenance eloquent with tender adoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he expects&rdquo; remarked the massive gentleman <i>sotto voce</i> to an
+      experienced-looking young lady, &ldquo;a performance of Romeo thrown in, I, for
+      one, shall want an extra ten shillings a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Casting the lady aside and seizing upon a gentleman, our stage manager
+      then proceeded to show the ladies how a village maiden should receive
+      affectionate advances: one shoulder a trifle higher than the other, body
+      from the waist upward gently waggling, roguish expression in left eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he's a bit new to it,&rdquo; replied the experienced young lady. &ldquo;He'll get
+      over all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again we started. Whether others attempted to follow the stage manager's
+      directions I cannot say, my whole attention being centred upon the
+      fishy-eyed young man, who did, implicitly. Soon it became apparent that
+      the whole of us were watching the fishy-eyed young man to the utter
+      neglect of our own business. Mr. Hodgson even looked up from his letters;
+      the orchestra was playing out of time; the author of the English version
+      and the leading lady exchanged glances. Three people only appeared not to
+      be enjoying themselves: the chief comedian, the stage manager and the
+      fishy-eyed young gentleman himself, who pursued his labours methodically
+      and conscientiously. There was a whispered confabulation between the
+      leading low comedian, Mr. Hodgson and the stage manager. As a result, the
+      music ceased and the fishy-eyed young gentleman was requested to explain
+      what he was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only making love,&rdquo; replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were playing the fool, sir,&rdquo; retorted the leading low comedian,
+      severely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a very unkind remark,&rdquo; replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman,
+      evidently hurt, &ldquo;to make to a gentleman who is doing his best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hodgson behind his letters was laughing. &ldquo;Poor fellow,&rdquo; he murmured;
+      &ldquo;I suppose he can't help it. Go on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are not producing a pantomime, you know,&rdquo; urged our comedian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to give him a chance, poor devil,&rdquo; explained Mr. Hodgson in a
+      lower voice. &ldquo;Only support of a widowed mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our comedian appeared inclined to argue; but at this point Mr. Hodgson's
+      correspondence became absorbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the chorus the second act was a busy one. We opened as soldiers and
+      vivandieres, every warrior in this way possessing his own private
+      travelling bar. Our stage manager again explained to us by example how a
+      soldier behaves, first under stress of patriotic emotion, and secondly
+      under stress of cheap cognac, the difference being somewhat subtle:
+      patriotism displaying itself by slaps upon the chest, and cheap cognac by
+      slaps upon the forehead. A little later we were conspirators; our stage
+      manager, with the help of a tablecloth, showed us how to conspire. Next we
+      were a mob, led by the sentimental baritone; our stage manager, ruffling
+      his hair, expounded to us how a mob led by a sentimental baritone would
+      naturally behave itself. The act wound up with a fight. Our stage manager,
+      minus his coat, demonstrated to us how to fight and die, the dying being a
+      painful and dusty performance, necessitating, as it did, much rolling
+      about on the stage. The fishy-eyed young gentleman throughout the whole of
+      it was again the centre of attraction. Whether he were solemnly slapping
+      his chest and singing about glory, or solemnly patting his head and
+      singing about grapes, was immaterial: he was the soldier for us. What the
+      plot was about did not matter, so long as he was in it. Who led the mob
+      one did not care; one's desire was to see him lead. How others fought and
+      died was matter of no moment; to see him slaughtered was sufficient.
+      Whether his unconsciousness was assumed or natural I cannot say; in either
+      case it was admirable. An earnest young man, over-anxious, if anything, to
+      do his duty by his employers, was the extent of the charge that could be
+      brought against him. Our chief comedian frowned and fumed; our stage
+      manager was in despair. Mr. Hodgson and the author of the English version,
+      on the contrary, appeared kindly disposed towards the gentleman. In
+      addition to the widowed mother, Mr. Hodgson had invented for him five
+      younger brothers and sisters utterly destitute but for his earnings. To
+      deprive so exemplary a son and brother of the means of earning a
+      livelihood for dear ones dependent upon him was not in Mr. Hodgson's
+      heart. Our chief comedian dissociated himself from all uncharitable
+      feelings&mdash;would subscribe towards the subsistence of the young man
+      out of his own pocket, his only concern being the success of the opera.
+      The author of the English version was convinced the young man would not
+      accept a charity; had known him for years&mdash;was a most sensitive
+      creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rehearsal proceeded. In the last act it became necessary for me to
+      kiss the thin lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very sorry,&rdquo; said the thin lady, &ldquo;but duty is duty. It has to be
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I followed directions. The thin lady was good enough to congratulate
+      me on my performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last three or four rehearsals we performed in company with the
+      principals. Divided counsels rendered them decidedly harassing. Our chief
+      comedian had his views, and they were decided; the leading lady had hers,
+      and was generous with them. The author of the English version possessed
+      his also, but of these nobody took much notice. Once every twenty minutes
+      the stage manager washed his hands of the whole affair and left the
+      theatre in despair, and anybody's hat that happened to be handy, to return
+      a few minutes later full of renewed hope. The sentimental baritone was
+      sarcastic, the tenor distinctly rude to everybody. Mr. Hodgson's method
+      was to agree with all and listen to none. The smaller fry of the company,
+      together with the more pushing of the chorus, supported each in turn, when
+      the others were not looking. Up to the dress rehearsal it was anybody's
+      opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About one thing, and about one thing, only, had the principals fallen into
+      perfect agreement, and that was that the fishy-eyed young gentleman was
+      out of place in a romantic opera. The tenor would be making impassioned
+      love to the leading lady. Perception would come to both of them that,
+      though they might be occupying geographically the centre of the stage,
+      dramatically they were not. Without a shred of evidence, yet with perfect
+      justice, they would unhesitatingly blame for this the fishy-eyed young
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't doing anything,&rdquo; he would explain meekly. &ldquo;I was only looking.&rdquo;
+       It was perfectly true; that was all he was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then don't look,&rdquo; would comment the tenor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fishy-eyed young gentleman obediently would turn his face away from
+      them; and in some mysterious manner the situation would thereupon become
+      even yet more hopelessly ridiculous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My scene, I think, sir!&rdquo; would thunder our chief comedian, a little later
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am only doing what I was told to do,&rdquo; answered the fishy-eyed young
+      gentleman; and nobody could say that he was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a circus, and run him as a side-show,&rdquo; counselled our comedian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid he would never be any good as a side-show,&rdquo; replied Mr.
+      Hodgson, who was reading letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the first night, passing the gallery entrance on my way to the stage
+      door, the sight of the huge crowd assembled there waiting gave me my first
+      taste of artistic joy. I was a part of what they had come to see, to
+      praise or to condemn, to listen to, to watch. Within the theatre there was
+      an atmosphere of suppressed excitement, amounting almost to hysteria. The
+      bird-like gentleman in his glass cage was fluttering, agitated. The hands
+      of the stage carpenters putting the finishing touches to the scenery were
+      trembling, their voices passionate with anxiety; the fox-terrier-like
+      call-boy was pale with sense of responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made my way to the dressing-room&mdash;a long, low, wooden corridor,
+      furnished from end to end with a wide shelf that served as common
+      dressing-table, lighted by a dozen flaring gas-jets, wire-shielded. Here
+      awaited us gentlemen of the chorus the wigmaker's assistant, whose duty it
+      was to make us up. From one to another he ran, armed with his hare's foot,
+      his box of paints and his bundle of crepe hair. My turn arriving, he
+      seized me by the head, jabbed a wig upon me, and in less than a couple of
+      minutes I left his hands the orthodox peasant of the stage, white of
+      forehead and pink of cheek, with curly moustache and lips of coral.
+      Glancing into the glass, I could not help feeling pleased with myself; a
+      moustache, without doubt, suited me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chorus ladies, when I met them on the stage, were a revelation to me.
+      Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist of chiefly, yet
+      in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that artificial glare, it
+      seemed fit and fascinating. The close approximation to so much bare flesh,
+      its curious, subtle odour was almost intoxicating. Dr. Johnson's excuse to
+      Garrick for the rarity of his visits to the theatre recurred to me with
+      understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you like my costume?&rdquo; asked the thin lady with the golden hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you&mdash;&rdquo; We were standing apart behind a piece of projecting
+      scenery. She laid her hand upon my mouth, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo; she asked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't that a rude question?&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I don't ask your age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mine,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;entitles me to talk to you as I should to a boy of
+      my own&mdash;I had one once. Get out of this life if you can. It's bad for
+      a woman; it's worse still for a man. To you especially it will be
+      harmful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why to me in particular?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are an exceedingly foolish little boy,&rdquo; she answered, with
+      another laugh, &ldquo;and are rather nice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She slipped away and joined the others. The chorus was now entirely
+      assembled on the stage. The sound of the rapidly-filling house reached us,
+      softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull, continuous droning, as
+      of water pouring into some huge cistern. Suddenly there fell upon our ears
+      a startling crash; the overture had commenced. The stage manager&mdash;more
+      suggestive of a sheep-dog than ever, but lacking the calm dignity, the
+      self-possession born of conscious capability distinctive of his prototype;
+      a fussy, argumentative sheep-dog&mdash;rushed into the midst of us and
+      worried us into our positions, where the more experienced continued to
+      converse in whispers, the rest of us waiting nervously, trying to remember
+      our words. The chorus master, taking his stand with his back to the
+      proscenium, held his white-gloved hand in readiness. The curtain rushed
+      up, the house, a nightmare of white faces, appearing to run towards us.
+      The chorus-master's white-gloved hand flung upward. A roar of voices
+      struck upon my ear, but whether my own were of them I could not say; if I
+      were singing at all it was unconsciously, mechanically. Later, I found
+      myself standing in the wings beside the thin lady; the stage was in the
+      occupation of the principals. On my next entrance my senses were more with
+      me; I was able to look about me. Here and there a strongly-marked face
+      among the audience stood out, but the majority were as indistinguishable
+      as so many blades of grass. Looked at from the stage, the house seemed no
+      more real than from the front do the painted faces upon a black cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The curtain fell amid the usual applause, sounding to us behind it like
+      the rattle of tiny stones against a window-pane. Three times it rose and
+      fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then followed a scamper
+      for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being filled with the rustling
+      of skirts and the scurrying of feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into his
+      own. The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the tenor and
+      the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with the exquisite
+      delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that its further
+      presence might be embarrassing, it turned to go, half to the east, the
+      other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man, starting from the
+      centre, was the last to leave the stage. In another moment he would have
+      disappeared from view. There came a voice from the gallery, clear,
+      distinct, pathetic with entreaty:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go. Get behind a tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The request was instantly seconded by a roar of applause from every part
+      of the house, followed by laughter. From that point onward the house was
+      chiefly concerned with the fortunes of the fishy-eyed young gentleman. At
+      his next entrance, disguised as a conspirator, he was welcomed with
+      enthusiasm, his passing away regretted loudly. At the fall of the curtain,
+      the tenor, furious, rushed up to him, and, shaking a fist in his face,
+      demanded what he meant by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't doing anything,&rdquo; explained the fishy-eyed young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You went off sideways!&rdquo; roared the tenor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you told me not to look at you,&rdquo; explained meekly the fishy-eyed
+      young gentleman. &ldquo;I must go off somehow. I regard you as a very difficult
+      man to please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the final fall of the curtain the house appeared divided as regarded
+      the merits of the opera; but for &ldquo;Goggles&rdquo; there was a unanimous and
+      enthusiastic call, and the while we were dressing a message came for
+      &ldquo;Goggles&rdquo; that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his private room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can make a funny face, no doubt about it,&rdquo; commented one gentleman, as
+      &ldquo;Goggles&rdquo; left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I defy him to make a funnier one than God Almighty's made for him,&rdquo;
+       responded the massive gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a deal in luck,&rdquo; observed, with a sigh, another, a tall, handsome
+      young gentleman possessed of a rich bass voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting upon
+      the pavement outside. Not interested in them myself, I was hurrying past,
+      when one laid a hand upon my shoulder. I turned. He was a big,
+      broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vandyke beard and soft, dreamy eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dan!&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;In the
+      second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it. Are you in a
+      hurry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write my
+      notice to-morrow. Come and have supper with me at the Albion and we will
+      talk. You look tired, young 'un.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I assured him, &ldquo;only excited&mdash;partly at meeting you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed, and drew my arm through his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories. They revealed points of
+      similarity. Leaving school some considerable time earlier than myself, Dan
+      had gone to Cambridge; but two years later, in consequence of the death of
+      his father, of a wound contracted in the Indian Mutiny and never cured,
+      had been compelled to bring his college career to an untimely termination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might not have expected that to grieve me,&rdquo; said Dan, with a smile,
+      &ldquo;but, as a matter of fact, it was a severe blow to me. At Cambridge I
+      discovered that I was by temperament a scholar. The reason why at school I
+      took no interest in learning was because learning was, of set purpose,
+      made as uninteresting as possible. Like a Cook's tourist party through a
+      picture gallery, we were rushed through education; the object being not
+      that we should see and understand, but that we should be able to say that
+      we had done it. At college I chose my own subjects, studied them in my own
+      way. I fed on knowledge, was not stuffed with it like a Strassburg goose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning to London, he had taken a situation in a bank, the chairman of
+      which had been an old friend of his father. The advantage was that while
+      earning a small income he had time to continue his studies; but the deadly
+      monotony of the work had appalled him, and upon the death of his mother he
+      had shaken the cloying dust of the City from his brain and joined a small
+      &ldquo;fit-up&rdquo; theatrical company. On the stage he had remained for another
+      eighteen months; had played all roles, from &ldquo;Romeo&rdquo; to &ldquo;Paul Pry,&rdquo; had
+      helped to paint the scenery, had assisted in the bill-posting. The latter,
+      so he told me, he had found one of the most difficult of accomplishments,
+      the paste-laden poster having an innate tendency to recoil upon the
+      amateur's own head, and to stick there. Wearying of the stage proper, he
+      had joined a circus company, had been &ldquo;Signor Ricardo, the daring
+      bare-back rider,&rdquo; also one of the &ldquo;Brothers Roscius in their marvellous
+      trapeze act;&rdquo; inclining again towards respectability, had been a waiter
+      for three months at Ostend; from that, a footman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One never knows,&rdquo; remarked Dan. &ldquo;I may come to be a society novelist; if
+      so, inside knowledge of the aristocracy will give me decided advantage
+      over the majority of my competitors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Other callings he had sampled: had tramped through Ireland with a fiddle;
+      through Scotland with a lecture on Palestine, assisted by dissolving
+      views; had been a billiard-marker; next a schoolmaster. For the last three
+      months he had been a journalist, dramatic and musical critic to a Sunday
+      newspaper. Often had I dreamt of such a position for myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you obtain it?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The idea occurred to me,&rdquo; replied Dan, &ldquo;late one afternoon, sauntering
+      down the Strand, wondering what I should do next. I was on my beam ends,
+      with only a few shillings in my pocket; but luck has always been with me.
+      I entered the first newspaper office I came to, walked upstairs to the
+      first floor, and opening the first door without knocking, passed through a
+      small, empty room into a larger one, littered with books and papers. It
+      was growing dark. A gentleman of extremely youthful figure was running
+      round and round, cursing to himself because of three things: he had upset
+      the ink, could not find the matches, and had broken the bell-pull. In the
+      gloom, assuming him to be the office boy, I thought it would be fun to
+      mistake him for the editor. As a matter of fact, he turned out to be the
+      editor. I lit the gas for him, and found him another ink-pot. He was a
+      slim young man with the voice and manner of a schoolboy. I don't suppose
+      he is any more than five or six-and-twenty. He owes his position to the
+      fact of his aunt's being the proprietress. He asked me if he knew me.
+      Before I could tell him that he didn't, he went on talking. He appeared to
+      be labouring under a general sense of injury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'People come into this office,' he said; 'they seem to look upon it as a
+      shelter from the rain&mdash;people I don't know from Adam. And that damned
+      fool downstairs lets them march straight up&mdash;anybody, men with
+      articles on safety valves, people who have merely come to kick up a row
+      about something or another. Half my work I have to do on the stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I recommended to him that he should insist upon strangers writing their
+      business upon a slip of paper. He thought it a good idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'For the last three-quarters of an hour,' he said, 'have I been trying to
+      finish this one column, and four times have I been interrupted.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At that precise moment there came another knock at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I won't see him!' he cried. 'I don't care who he is; I won't see him.
+      Send him away! Send everybody away!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went to the door. He was an elderly gentleman. He made to sweep by me;
+      but I barred his way, and closed the editorial door behind me. He seemed
+      surprised; but I told him it was impossible for him to see the editor that
+      afternoon, and suggested his writing his business on a sheet of paper,
+      which I handed to him for the purpose. I remained in that ante-room for
+      half an hour, and during that time I suppose I must have sent away about
+      ten or a dozen people. I don't think their business could have been
+      important, or I should have heard about it afterwards. The last to come
+      was a tired-looking gentleman, smoking a cigarette. I asked him his name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked at me in surprise, and then answered, 'Idiot!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remained firm, however, and refused to let him pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It's a bit awkward,' he retorted. 'Don't you think you could make an
+      exception in favour of the sub-editor on press night?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I replied that such would be contrary to my instructions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, all right,' he answered. 'I'd like to know who's going to the
+      Royalty to-night, that's all. It's seven o'clock already.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An idea occurred to me. If the sub-editor of a paper doesn't know whom to
+      send to a theatre, it must mean that the post of dramatic critic on that
+      paper is for some reason or another vacant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, that's all right,' I told him. 'I shall be in time enough.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He appeared neither pleased nor displeased. 'Have you arranged with the
+      Guv'nor?' he asked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'm just waiting to see him again for a few minutes,' I returned. 'It'll
+      be all right. Have you got the ticket?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Haven't seen it,' he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'About a column?' I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Three-quarters,' he preferred, and went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The moment he was gone, I slipped downstairs and met a printer's boy
+      coming up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What's the name of your sub?' I asked him. 'Tall man with a black
+      moustache, looks tired.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Oh, you mean Penton,' explained the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'That's the name,' I answered; 'couldn't think of it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I walked straight into the editor; he was still irritable. 'What is it?
+      What is it now?' he snapped out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I only want the ticket for the Royalty Theatre,' I answered. 'Penton
+      says you've got it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I don't know where it is,' he growled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found it after some little search upon his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Who's going?' he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I am,' I said. And I went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have never discovered to this day that I appointed myself. Penton
+      thinks I am some relation of the proprietress, and in consequence
+      everybody treats me with marked respect. Mrs. Wallace herself, the
+      proprietress, thinks I am the discovery of Penton, in whose judgment she
+      has great faith; and with her I get on admirably. The paper I don't think
+      is doing too well, and the salary is small, but sufficient. Journalism
+      suits my temperament, and I dare say I shall keep to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've been somewhat of a rolling stone hitherto,&rdquo; I commented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;From the stone's point of view,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;I never could
+      see the advantage of being smothered in moss. I should always prefer
+      remaining the stone, unhidden, able to move and see about me. But now, to
+      speak of other matters, what are your plans for the immediate future? Your
+      opera, thanks to the gentlemen, the gods have dubbed 'Goggles,' will, I
+      fancy, run through the winter. Are you getting any salary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty shillings a week,&rdquo; I explained to him, &ldquo;with full salary for
+      matinees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say two pounds,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;With my three we could set up an
+      establishment of our own. I have an idea that is original. Shall we work
+      it out together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured him with fervour that nothing would please me better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are four delightful rooms in Queen's Square,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;They
+      are charmingly furnished: a fine sitting-room in the front, with two
+      bedrooms and a kitchen behind. Their last tenant was a Polish
+      Revolutionary, who, three months ago, poor fellow, was foolish enough to
+      venture back to Russia, and who is now living rent free. The landlord of
+      the house is an original old fellow, Deleglise the engraver. He occupies
+      the rest of the house himself. He has told me I can have the rooms for
+      anything I like to offer, and I should suggest thirty shillings a week,
+      though under ordinary circumstances they would be worth three or four
+      pounds. But he will only let us have them on the understanding that we 'do
+      for' ourselves. He is quite an oddity. He hates petticoats, especially
+      elderly petticoats. He has one servant, an old Frenchwoman, who, I
+      believe, was housekeeper to his mother, and he and she do the housework
+      together, most of their time quarrelling over it. Nothing else of the
+      genus domestic female will he allow inside the door; not even an
+      occasional charwoman would be permitted to us. On the other hand, it is a
+      beautiful old Georgian house, with Adams mantelpieces, a stone staircase,
+      and oak-panelled rooms; and our portion would be the entire second floor:
+      no pianos and no landlady. He is a widower with one child, a girl of about
+      fourteen or maybe a little older. Now, what do you say? I am a very fair
+      cook; will you be house-and-parlour-maid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I needed no pressing. A week later we were installed there, and for nearly
+      two years we lived there. At the risk of offending an adorable but
+      somewhat touchy sex, convinced that man, left to himself, is capable of
+      little more than putting himself to bed, and that only in a
+      rough-and-ready fashion, truth compels me to record the fact that without
+      female assistance or supervision of any kind we passed through those two
+      years, and yet exist to tell the tale. Dan had not idly boasted. Better
+      plain cooking I never want to taste; so good a cup of coffee, omelette, or
+      devilled kidney I rarely have tasted. Had he always confined his efforts
+      within the boundaries of his abilities, there would be little to record
+      beyond continuous and monotonous success. But stirred into dangerous
+      ambition at the call of an occasional tea or supper party, lured out of
+      his depths by the example of old Deleglise, our landlord&mdash;a man who
+      for twenty years had made cooking his hobby&mdash;Dan would at intervals
+      venture upon experiment. Pastry, it became evident, was a thing he should
+      never have touched: his hand was heavy and his temperament too serious.
+      There was a thing called lemon sponge, necessitating much beating of eggs.
+      In the cookery-book&mdash;a remarkably fat volume, luscious with
+      illustrations of highly-coloured food&mdash;it appeared an airy and
+      graceful structure of dazzling whiteness. Served as Dan sent it to table,
+      it suggested rather in form and colour a miniature earthquake. Spongy it
+      undoubtedly was. One forced it apart with the assistance of one's spoon
+      and fork; it yielded with a gentle tearing sound. Another favourite dainty
+      of his was manna-cake. Concerning it I would merely remark that if it in
+      any way resembled anything the Children of Israel were compelled to eat,
+      then there is explanation for that fretfulness and discontent for which
+      they have been, perhaps, unjustly blamed&mdash;some excuse even for their
+      backward-flung desires in the direction of the Egyptian fleshpots. Moses
+      himself may have been blessed with exceptional digestion. It was
+      substantial, one must say that for it. One slice of it&mdash;solid, firm,
+      crusty on the outside, towards the centre marshy&mdash;satisfied most
+      people to a sense of repletion. For supper parties Dan would essay trifles&mdash;by
+      no means open to the criticism of being light as air&mdash;souffle's that
+      guests, in spite of my admonishing kicks, would persist in alluding to as
+      pudding; and in winter-time, pancakes. Later, as regards these latter, he
+      acquired some skill; but at first the difficulty was the tossing. I think
+      myself a safer plan would have been to turn them by the aid of a knife and
+      fork; it is less showy, but more sure. At least, you avoid all danger of
+      catching the half-baked thing upon your head instead of in the pan, of
+      dropping it into the fire, or among the cinders. But &ldquo;Thorough&rdquo; was always
+      Dan's motto; and after all, small particles of coal or a few hairs can
+      always be detected by the careful feeder, and removed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A more even-tempered man than Dan for twenty-three hours out of every
+      twenty-four surely never breathed. It was a revelation to me to discover
+      that for the other he could be uncertain, irritable, even ungrateful. At
+      first, in a spirit of pure good nature, I would offer him counsel and
+      advice; explain to him why, as it seemed to me, the custard was pimply,
+      the mayonnaise sauce suggestive of hair oil. What was my return? Sneers,
+      insult and abuse, followed, if I did not clear out quickly, by spoilt
+      tomatoes, cold coffee grounds&mdash;anything that happened to be handy.
+      Pained, saddened, I would withdraw, he would kick the door to after me.
+      His greatest enemy appeared to be the oven. The oven it was that set
+      itself to thwart his best wrought schemes. Always it was the oven's fault
+      that the snowy bun appeared to have been made of red sandstone, the
+      macaroni cheese of Cambrian clay. One might have sympathised with him more
+      had his language been more restrained. As it was, the virulence of his
+      reproaches almost inclined one to take the part of the oven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Concerning our house-maid, I can speak in terms of unqualified praise.
+      There are, alas, fussy house-maids&mdash;who has not known and suffered
+      them?&mdash;who overdo the thing, have no repose, no instinct telling them
+      when to ease up and let the place alone. I have always held the perpetual
+      stirring up of dust a scientific error; left to itself, it is harmless,
+      may even be regarded as a delicate domestic bloom, bestowing a touch of
+      homeliness upon objects that without it gleam cold and unsympathetic. Let
+      sleeping dogs lie. Why be continually waking up the stuff, filling the air
+      with all manner of unhealthy germs? Nature in her infinite wisdom has
+      ordained that upon table, floor, or picture frame it shall sink and
+      settle. There it remains, quiet and inoffensive; there it will continue to
+      remain so long as nobody interferes with it: why worry it? So also with
+      crumbs, odd bits of string, particles of egg-shell, stumps of matches,
+      ends of cigarettes: what fitter place for such than under the nearest mat?
+      To sweep them up is tiresome work. They cling to the carpet, you get cross
+      with them, curse them for their obstinacy, and feel ashamed of yourself
+      for your childishness. For every one you do persuade into the dust-pan,
+      two jump out again. You lose your temper, feel bitter towards the man that
+      dropped them. Your whole character becomes deteriorated. Under the mat
+      they are always willing to go. Compromise is true statesmanship. There
+      will come a day when you will be glad of an excuse for not doing something
+      else that you ought to be doing. Then you can take up the mats and feel
+      quite industrious, contemplating the amount of work that really must be
+      done&mdash;some time or another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To differentiate between the essential and the non-essential, that is
+      where woman fails. In the name of common sense, what is the use of washing
+      a cup that half an hour later is going to be made dirty again? If the cat
+      be willing and able to so clean a plate that not one speck of grease
+      remain upon it, why deprive her of pleasure to inflict toil upon yourself?
+      If a bed looks made and feels made, then for all practical purposes it is
+      made; why upset it merely to put it straight again? It would surprise most
+      women the amount of labour that can be avoided in a house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For needlework, I confess, I never acquired skill. Dan had learnt to
+      handle a thimble, but my own second finger was ever reluctant to come
+      forward when wanted. It had to be found, all other fingers removed out of
+      its way. Then, feebly, nervously, it would push, slip, get itself pricked
+      badly with the head of the needle, and, thoroughly frightened, remain
+      incapable of further action. More practical I found it to push the needle
+      through by help of the door or table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The opera, as Dan had predicted, ran far into the following year. When it
+      was done with, another&mdash;in which &ldquo;Goggles&rdquo; appeared as one of the
+      principals&mdash;took its place, and was even more successful. After the
+      experience of Nelson Square, my present salary of thirty-five shillings,
+      occasionally forty shillings, a week seemed to me princely. There floated
+      before my eyes the possibility of my becoming a great opera singer. On six
+      hundred pounds a week, I felt I could be content. But the O'Kelly set
+      himself to dispel this dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye'd be making a mistake, me boy,&rdquo; explained the O'Kelly. &ldquo;Ye'd be just
+      wasting ye're time. I wouldn't tell ye so if I weren't convinced of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it is not powerful,&rdquo; I admitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye might almost call it thin,&rdquo; added the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It might be good enough for comic opera,&rdquo; I argued. &ldquo;People appear to
+      succeed in comic opera without much voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure, there ye're right,&rdquo; agreed the O'Kelly, with a sigh. &ldquo;An' of course
+      if ye had an exceptionally fine presence and were strikingly handsome&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One can do a good deal with make-up,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly shook his head. &ldquo;It's never quite the same thing. It would
+      depend upon your acting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I dreamt of becoming a second Kean, of taking Macready's place. It need
+      not interfere with my literary ambition. I could combine the two: fill
+      Drury Lane in the evening, turn out epoch-making novels in the morning,
+      write my own plays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every day I studied in the reading-room of the British Museum. Wearying of
+      success in Art, I might eventually go into Parliament: a Prime Minister
+      with a thorough knowledge of history: why not? With Ollendorf for guide, I
+      continued French and German. It might be the diplomatic service that would
+      appeal to me in my old age. An ambassadorship! It would be a pleasant
+      termination to a brilliant career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was excuse for my optimistic mood about this period. All things were
+      going well with me. A story of mine had been accepted. I forget for the
+      moment the name of the journal: it is dead now. Most of the papers in
+      which my early efforts appeared are dead. My contributions might be
+      likened to their swan songs. Proofs had been sent me, which I had
+      corrected and returned. But proofs are not facts. This had happened to me
+      once before, and I had been lifted to the skies only to fall the more
+      heavily. The paper had collapsed before my story had appeared. (Ah, why
+      had they delayed? It might have saved them!) This time I remembered the
+      proverb, and kept my own counsel, slipping out early each morning on the
+      day of publication to buy the paper, to scan eagerly its columns. For
+      weeks I suffered hope deferred. But at last, one bright winter's day in
+      January, walking down the Harrow Road, I found myself standing still,
+      suddenly stunned, before a bill outside a small news-vendor's shop. It was
+      the first time I had seen my real name in print: &ldquo;The Witch of Moel
+      Sarbod: a legend of Mona, by Paul Kelver.&rdquo; (For this I had even risked
+      discovery by the Lady 'Ortensia.) My legs trembling under me, I entered
+      the shop. A ruffianly-looking man in dirty shirt-sleeves, who appeared
+      astonished that any one should want a copy, found one at length on the
+      floor underneath the counter. With it in my pocket, I retraced my
+      footsteps as in a dream. On a seat in Paddington Green I sat down and read
+      it. The hundred best books! I have waded through them all; they have never
+      charmed me as charmed me that one short story in that now forgotten
+      journal. Need I add it was a sad and sentimental composition. Once upon a
+      time there lived a mighty King; one&mdash;but with the names I will not
+      bore you; they are somewhat unpronounceable. Their selection had cost me
+      many hours of study in the British Museum reading-rooms, surrounded by
+      lexicons of the Welsh language, gazetteers, translations from the early
+      Celtic poets&mdash;with footnotes. He loved and was beloved by a beautiful
+      Princess, whose name, being translated, was Purity. One day the King,
+      hunting, lost his way, and being weary, lay down and fell asleep. And by
+      chance the spot whereon he lay was near to a place which by infinite
+      pains, with the aid of a magnifying glass, I had discovered upon the map,
+      and which means in English the Cave of the Waters, where dwelt a wicked
+      Sorceress, who, while he slept, cast her spells upon him, so that he awoke
+      to forget his kingly honour and the good of all his people, his only
+      desire being towards the Witch of Moel Sarbod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, there lived in this Kingdom by the sea a great Magician; and Purity,
+      who loved the King far better than herself, bethought her of him, and of
+      all she had heard concerning his power and wisdom; and went to him and
+      besought his aid that she might save the King. There was but one way to
+      accomplish this: with bare feet Purity must climb the rocky path leading
+      to the Witch's dwelling, go boldly up to her, not fearing her sharp claws
+      nor her strong teeth, and kiss her upon the mouth. In this way the spirit
+      of Purity would pass into the Witch's soul, and she would become a woman.
+      But the form and spirit of the Witch would pass into Purity, transforming
+      her, and in the Cave of the Waters she must forever abide. Thus Purity
+      gave herself that the King might live. With bleeding feet she climbed the
+      rocky path, clasped the Witch's form within her arms, kissed her on the
+      mouth. And the Witch became a woman and reigned with the King over his
+      people, wisely and helpfully. But Purity became a hideous witch, and to
+      this day abides on Moel Sarbod, where is the Cave of the Waters. And they
+      who climb the mountain's side still hear above the roaring of the cataract
+      the sobbing of Purity, the King's betrothed. But many liken it rather to a
+      joyous song of love triumphant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No writer worth his salt was ever satisfied with anything he ever wrote,
+      so I have been told, and so I try to believe. Evidently I am not worth my
+      salt. Candid friends, and others, to whom in my salad days I used to show
+      my work, asking for a frank opinion, meaning, of course, though never
+      would they understand me, their unadulterated praise, would assure me for
+      my good, that this, my first to whom the gods gave life, was but a feeble,
+      ill-shaped child: its attempted early English a cross between &ldquo;The
+      Pilgrim's Progress&rdquo; and &ldquo;Old Moore's Almanac;&rdquo; its scenery&mdash;which had
+      cost me weeks of research&mdash;an apparent attempt to sum up in the
+      language of a local guide book the leading characteristics of the Garden
+      of Eden combined with Dante's Inferno; its pathos of the penny-plain and
+      two-penny-coloured order. Maybe they were right. Much have I written since
+      that at the time appeared to me good, that I have read later with regret,
+      with burning cheek, with frowning brow. But of this, my first-born, the
+      harbinger of all my hopes, I am no judge. Touching the yellowing,
+      badly-printed pages, I feel again the deep thrill of joy with which I
+      first unfolded them and read. Again I am a youngster, and life opens out
+      before me&mdash;inmeasurable, no goal too high. This child of my brain, my
+      work: it shall spread my name throughout the world. It shall be a
+      household world in lands that I shall never see. Friends whose voices I
+      shall never hear will speak of me. I shall die, but it shall live, yield
+      fresh seed, bear fruit I know not of. Generations yet unborn shall read it
+      and remember me. My thoughts, my words, my spirit: in it I shall live
+      again; it shall keep my memory green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long, long thoughts of boyhood! We elders smile at them. The little
+      world spins round; the little voices of an hour sink hushed. The crawling
+      generations come and go. The solar system drops from space. The eternal
+      mechanism reforms and shapes itself anew. Time, turning, ploughs another
+      furrow. So, growing sleepy, we murmur with a yawn. Is it that we see
+      clearer, or that our eyes are growing dim? Let the young men see their
+      visions, dream their dreams, hug to themselves their hopes of enduring
+      fame; so shall they serve the world better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I brushed the tears from my eyes and looked up. Half-a-dozen urchins, male
+      and female, were gaping at me open-mouthed. They scattered shouting,
+      whether compliment or insult I know not: probably the latter. I flung them
+      a handful of coppers, which for the moment silenced them; and went upon my
+      way. How bright, how fair the bustling streets, golden in the winter
+      sunshine, thronged with life, with effort! Laughter rang around me. Sweet
+      music rolled from barrel-organs. The strenuous voices of the costermongers
+      called invitation to the fruitful earth. Errand boys passed me whistling
+      shrilly joyous melodies. Perspiring tradesmen shouted generous offers to
+      the needy. Men and women hurried by with smiling faces. Sleek cats purred
+      in sheltered nooks, till merry dogs invited them to sport. The sparrows,
+      feasting in the roadway, chirped their hymn of praise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Marble Arch I jumped upon a 'bus. I mentioned to the conductor in
+      mounting that it was a fine day. He replied that he had noticed it
+      himself. The retort struck me as a brilliant repartee. Our coachman, all
+      but run into by a hansom cab driven by a surly old fellow of patriarchal
+      appearance, remarked upon the danger of allowing horses out in charge of
+      bits of boys. How full the world of wit and humour!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost without knowing it, I found myself in earnest conversation with a
+      young man sitting next to me. We conversed of life, of love. Not until
+      afterwards, reflecting upon the matter, did it surprise me that to a mere
+      chance acquaintance of the moment he had spoken of the one thing dearest
+      to his heart: a sweet but clearly wayward maiden, the Hebe of a small,
+      old-fashioned coffee-shop the 'bus was at that moment passing. Hitherto I
+      had not been the recipient of confidences. It occurred to me that as a
+      rule not even my friends spoke much to me concerning their own affairs;
+      generally it was I who spoke to them of mine. I sympathised with him,
+      advised him&mdash;how, I do not recollect. He said, however, he thought
+      that I was right; and at Regent Street he left me, expressing his
+      determination to follow my counsel, whatever it may have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between Berners Street and the Circus I lent a shilling to a couple of
+      young ladies who had just discovered with amusement, quickly swallowed by
+      despair, that they neither of them had any money with them. (They returned
+      it next day in postage stamps, with a charming note.) The assurance with
+      which I tendered the slight service astonished me myself. At any other
+      time I should have hesitated, argued with my fears, offered it with an
+      appearance of sulky constraint, and been declined. For a moment they were
+      doubtful, then, looking at me, accepted with a delightful smile. They
+      consulted me as to the way to Paternoster Row. I instructed them, adding a
+      literary anecdote, which seemed to interest them. I even ventured on a
+      compliment, neatly phrased, I am inclined to think. Evidently it pleased&mdash;a
+      result hitherto unusual in the case of my compliments. At the corner of
+      Southampton Row I parted from them with regret. Why had I never noticed
+      before how full of pleasant people this sweet and smiling London?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner of Queen's Square a decent-looking woman stopped me to ask
+      the way to the Children's Hospital at Chelsea, explaining she had made a
+      mistake, thinking it was the one in Great Ormond Street where her child
+      lay. I directed her, then glancing into her face, noticed how tired she
+      looked, and a vista of the weary pavements she would have to tramp flashed
+      before me. I slipped some money into her hand and told her to take a 'bus.
+      She flushed, then thanked me. I turned a few yards further on; she was
+      starting after me, amazement on her face. I laughed and waved my hand to
+      her. She smiled back in return, and went her way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rain began to fall. I paused upon the doorstep for a minute, enjoying
+      the cool drops upon by upturned face, the tonic sharpness of the keen east
+      wind; then slipped my key into the lock and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of old Deleglise's studio on the first floor happened to be open.
+      Hitherto, beyond the usual formal salutations, when by chance we met upon
+      the stairs, I had exchanged but few words with my eccentric landlord; but
+      remembering his kindly face, the desire came upon me to tell him my good
+      fortune. I felt sure his eyes would lighten with delight. By instinct I
+      knew him for a young man's man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tapped lightly; no answer came. Someone was talking; it sounded like a
+      girl's voice. I pushed the door further open and walked in; such was the
+      custom of the house. It was a large room, built over the yard, lighted by
+      one high window, before which was the engraving desk, shaded under a
+      screen of tissue paper. At the further end of the room stood a large
+      cheval-glass, and in front of this, its back towards me, was a figure that
+      excited my curiosity; so that remaining where I was, partly hidden behind
+      a large easel, I watched it for awhile in silence. Above a heavily
+      flounced blue skirt, which fell in creases on the floor and trailed a
+      couple of yards or so behind, it wore a black low-cut sleeveless bodice&mdash;much
+      too big for it&mdash;of the fashion early Victorian. A good deal of
+      dark-brown hair, fastened up by hair-pins that stuck out in all directions
+      like quills upon a porcupine, suggesting collapse with every movement, was
+      ornamented by three enormous green feathers, one of which hung limply over
+      the lady's left ear. Three times, while I watched, unnoticed, the lady
+      propped it into a more befitting attitude, and three times, limp and
+      intoxicated-looking, it fell back into its former foolish position. Her
+      long, thin arms, displaying a pair of brilliantly red elbows, pointed to
+      quite a dangerous degree, terminated in hands so very sunburnt as to
+      convey the impression of a pair of remarkably well-fitting gloves. Her
+      right hand grasped and waved with determination a large lace fan, her left
+      clutched fiercely the front of her skirt. With a sweeping curtsey to
+      herself in the glass, which would have been more effective could she have
+      avoided tying her legs together with her skirt&mdash;a <i>contretemps</i>
+      necessitating the use of both hands and a succession of jumps before she
+      could disentangle herself&mdash;she remarked so soon as she had recovered
+      her balance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So sorry I am late. My carriage was unfortunately delayed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The excuse, I gathered, was accepted, for with a gracious smile and a
+      vigorous bow, by help of which every hairpin made distinct further advance
+      towards freedom, she turned, and with much dignity and head over the right
+      shoulder took a short walk to the left. At the end of six short steps she
+      stopped and began kicking. For what reason, I, at first, could not
+      comprehend. It dawned upon me after awhile that her object was the
+      adjustment of her train. Finding the manoeuvre too difficult of
+      accomplishment by feet alone, she stooped, and, taking the stuff up in her
+      hands, threw it behind her. Then, facing north, she retraced her steps to
+      the glass, talking to herself, as she walked, in the high-pitched drawl,
+      distinctive, as my stage knowledge told me, of aristocratic society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do you think so&mdash;really? Ah, yes; you say that. Certainly not! I
+      shouldn't think of it.&rdquo; There followed what I am inclined to believe was
+      intended for a laugh, musical but tantalising. If so, want of practice
+      marred the effort. The performance failed to satisfy even herself. She
+      tried again; it was still only a giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the glass she paused, and with a haughty inclination of her head
+      succeeded for the third time in displacing the intoxicated feather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, bother the silly thing!&rdquo; she said in a voice so natural as to be, by
+      contrast with her previous tone, quite startling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She fixed it again with difficulty, muttering something inarticulate.
+      Then, her left hand resting on an imaginary coat-sleeve, her right holding
+      her skirt sufficiently high to enable her to move, she commenced to
+      majestically gyrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether, hampered as she was by excess of skirt, handicapped by the
+      natural clumsiness of her age, catastrophe in any case would not sooner or
+      later have overtaken her, I have my doubts. I have since learnt her own
+      view to be that but for catching sight, in turning, of my face, staring at
+      her through the bars of the easel, all would have gone well and
+      gracefully. Avoiding controversy on this point, the facts to be recorded
+      are, that, seeing me, she uttered a sudden exclamation of surprise,
+      dropped her skirt, trod on her train, felt her hair coming down, tried to
+      do two things at once, and sat upon the floor. I ran to her assistance.
+      With flaming face and flashing eyes she sprang to her feet. There was a
+      sound as of the rushing down of avalanches. The blue flounced skirt lay
+      round her on the floor. She stood above its billowy folds, reminiscent of
+      Venus rising from the waves&mdash;a gawky, angular Venus in a short serge
+      frock, reaching a little below her knees, black stockings and a pair of
+      prunella boots of a size suggesting she had yet some inches to grow before
+      reaching her full height.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you haven't hurt yourself,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment I didn't care whether she had or whether she hadn't. She
+      did not reply to my kindly meant enquiry. Instead, her hand swept through
+      the air in the form of an ample semi-circle. It terminated on my ear. It
+      was not a small hand; it was not a soft hand; it was not that sort of
+      hand. The sound of the contact rang through the room like a pistol shot; I
+      heard it with my other ear. I sprang at her, and catching her before she
+      had recovered her equilibrium, kissed her. I did not kiss her because I
+      wanted to. I kissed her because I could not box her ears back in return,
+      which I should have preferred doing. I kissed her, hoping it would make
+      her mad. It did. If a look could have killed me, such would have been the
+      tragic ending of this story. It did not kill me; it did me good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You horrid boy!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;You horrid, horrid boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There, I admit, she scored. I did not in the least object to her thinking
+      me horrid, but at nineteen one does object to being mistaken for a boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not a boy,&rdquo; I explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you are,&rdquo; she retorted; &ldquo;a beast of a boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do it again,&rdquo; I warned her&mdash;a sudden movement on her part
+      hinting to me the possibility&mdash;&ldquo;I'll kiss you again! I mean it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave the room!&rdquo; she commanded, pointing with her angular arm towards the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not wish to remain. I was about to retire with as much dignity as
+      circumstances permitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boy!&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that I turned. &ldquo;Now I won't go!&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;See if I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We stood glaring at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What right have you in here?&rdquo; she demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to see Mr. Deleglise,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I suppose you are Miss
+      Deleglise. It doesn't seem to me that you know how to treat a visitor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Horace Moncrieff,&rdquo; I replied. I was using at the period both my names
+      indiscriminately, but for this occasion Horace Moncrieff I judged the more
+      awe-inspiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She snorted. &ldquo;I know. You're the house-maid. You sweep all the crumbs
+      under the mats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now this was a subject about which at the time I was feeling somewhat
+      sore. &ldquo;Needs must when the Devil drives;&rdquo; but as matters were, Dan and I
+      could well have afforded domestic assistance. It rankled in my mind that
+      to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the future Dickens,
+      Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps rolled into one,
+      should be compelled to the performance of menial duties. On this morning
+      of all others, my brilliant literary career just commenced, the anomaly of
+      the thing appeared naturally more glaring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides, how came she to know I swept the crumbs under the mat&mdash;that
+      it was my method? Had she and Dan been discussing me, ridiculing me behind
+      my back? What right had Dan to reveal the secrets of our menage to this
+      chit of a school-girl? Had he done so? or had she been prying, poking her
+      tilted nose into matters that did not concern her? Pity it was she had no
+      mother to occasionally spank her, teach her proper behaviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where I sweep our crumbs is nothing to do with you,&rdquo; I replied with some
+      spirit. &ldquo;That I have to sweep them at all is the fault of your father. A
+      sensible girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dare you speak against my father!&rdquo; she interrupted me with blazing
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not discuss the question further,&rdquo; I answered, with sense and
+      dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you had better not!&rdquo; she retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning her back on me, she commenced to gather up her hairpins&mdash;there
+      must have been about a hundred of them. I assisted her to the extent of
+      picking up about twenty, which I handed to her with a bow: it may have
+      been a little stiff, but that was only to be expected. I wished to show
+      her that her bad example had not affected my own manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry my presence should have annoyed you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It was quite an
+      accident. I entered the room thinking your father was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you saw he wasn't, you might have gone out again,&rdquo; she replied,
+      &ldquo;instead of hiding yourself behind a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't hide myself,&rdquo; I explained. &ldquo;The easel happened to be in the
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you stopped there and watched me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked round and our eyes met. They were frank, grey eyes. An
+      expression of merriment shot into them. I laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she laughed: it was a delightful laugh, the laugh one would have
+      expected from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might at least have coughed,&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was so amusing,&rdquo; I pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it was,&rdquo; she agreed, and held out her hand. &ldquo;Did I hurt you?&rdquo;
+       she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you did,&rdquo; I answered, taking it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it was enough to annoy me, wasn't it?&rdquo; she suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Evidently,&rdquo; I agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to a ball next week,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;a grown-up ball, and
+      I've got to wear a skirt. I wanted to see if I could manage a train.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to be candid, you can't,&rdquo; I assured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does seem difficult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I show you?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you know about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I see it done every night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes; of course, you're on the stage. Yes, do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We readjusted the torn skirt, accommodating it better to her figure by the
+      help of hairpins. I showed her how to hold the train, and, I humming a
+      tune, we commenced to waltz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't count my steps,&rdquo; I suggested to her. &ldquo;It takes your mind away
+      from the music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't waltz well,&rdquo; she admitted meekly. &ldquo;I know I don't do anything
+      well&mdash;except play hockey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And try not to tread on your partner's feet. That's a very bad fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do try not to,&rdquo; she explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It comes with practice,&rdquo; I assured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get Tom to give me half an hour every evening,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He dances
+      beautifully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's Tom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you call your father Tom? It doesn't sound respectful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he likes it; and it suits him so much better than father. Besides, he
+      isn't like a real father. He does everything I want him to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that good for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it's very bad for me&mdash;everybody says so. When you come to think
+      of it, of course it isn't the way to bring up a girl. I tell him, but he
+      merely laughs&mdash;says it's the only way he knows. I do hope I turn out
+      all right. Am I doing it better now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little. Don't be too anxious about it. Don't look at your feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I don't they go all wrong. It was you who trod on mine that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I'm sorry. It's a little difficult not to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I holding my train all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there's no need to grip it as if you were afraid it would run away.
+      It will follow all right. Hold it gracefully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I wasn't a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you'll get used to it.&rdquo; We concluded our dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I do&mdash;say 'Thank you'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, prettily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he takes you back to your chaperon, or suggests refreshment, or you
+      sit and talk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate talking. I never know what to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's his duty. He'll try and amuse you, then you must laugh. You
+      have a nice laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I never know when to laugh. If I laugh when I want to it always
+      offends people. What do you do if somebody asks you to dance and you don't
+      want to dance with them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you say your programme is full.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if it isn't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you tell a lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't I say I don't dance well, and that I'm sure they'd get on better
+      with somebody else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be the truth, but they might not believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope nobody asks me that I don't want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he won't a second time, anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are rude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are only a school-girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I look a woman in my new frock, I really do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should doubt it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall see me, then you'll be polite. It is because you are a boy you
+      are rude. Men are much nicer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You will be, when you are a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of voices rose suddenly in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom!&rdquo; cried Miss Deleglise; and collecting her skirt in both hands,
+      bolted down the corkscrew staircase leading to the kitchen, leaving me
+      standing in the centre of the studio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened and old Deleglise entered, accompanied by a small, slight
+      man with red hair and beard and somewhat watery eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deleglise himself was a handsome old fellow, then a man of about
+      fifty-five. His massive, mobile face, illuminated by bright, restless
+      eyes, was crowned with a lion-like mane of iron-grey hair. Till a few
+      years ago he had been a painter of considerable note. But in questions of
+      art his temper was short. Pre-Raphaelism had gone out of fashion for the
+      time being; the tendency of the new age was towards impressionism, and in
+      disgust old Deleglise had broken his palette across his knee, and swore
+      never to paint again. Artistic work of some sort being necessary to his
+      temperament, he contented himself now with engraving. At the moment he was
+      engaged upon the reproduction of Memlinc's Shrine of St. Ursula, with
+      photographs of which he had just returned from Bruges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sight of me his face lighted with a smile, and he advanced with
+      outstretched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah; my lad, so you have got over your shyness and come to visit the old
+      bear in his den. Good boy. I like young faces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a clear, musical voice, ever with the suggestion of a laugh behind
+      it. He laid his hand upon my shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you are looking as if you had come into a fortune,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and
+      didn't know what a piece of bad luck that can be to a young fellow like
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could it be bad luck?&rdquo; I asked, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Takes all the sauce out of life, young man,&rdquo; answered Deleglise. &ldquo;What
+      interest is there in running a race with the prize already in your
+      possession, tell me that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not that kind of fortune,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;it is another. I have had
+      my first story accepted. It is in print. Look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I handed him the paper. He spread it out upon the engraving board before
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that's better,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that's better. Charlie,&rdquo; he turned to the
+      red-headed man, who had seated himself listlessly in the one easy-chair
+      the room contained, &ldquo;come here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-headed man rose and wandered towards us. &ldquo;Let me introduce you to
+      Mr. Paul Kelver, our new fellow servant. Our lady has accepted him. He has
+      just been elected; his first story is in print.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-haired man stretched out his long thin hand. &ldquo;I have thirty years
+      of fame,&rdquo; said the red-haired man&mdash;&ldquo;could I say world-wide?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned for confirmation to old Deleglise, who laughed. &ldquo;I think you
+      can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could give it you would you exchange with me&mdash;at this moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would be a fool if you did,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;One's first success, one's
+      first victory! It is the lover's first kiss. Fortune grows old and
+      wrinkled, frowns more often than she smiles. We become indifferent to her,
+      quarrel with her, make it up again. But the joy of her first kiss after
+      the long wooing! Burn it into your memory, my young friend, that it may
+      live with you always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strolled away. Old Deleglise took up the parable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes; one's first success, Paul! Laugh, my boy, cry! Shut yourself up
+      in your room, shout, dance! Throw your hat into the air and cry hurrah!
+      Make the most of it, Paul. Hug it to your heart, think of it, dream of it.
+      This is the finest hour of your life, my boy. There will never come
+      another like it&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He crossed the studio, and taking from its nail a small oil painting,
+      brought it over and laid it on the board beside my paper. It was a
+      fascinating little picture, painted with that exquisite minutiae and
+      development of detail that a newer school was then ridiculing: as though
+      Art had but one note to her voice. The dead figure of an old man lay upon
+      a bed. A child had crept into the darkened room, and supporting itself by
+      clutching tightly at the sheet, was gazing with solemn curiosity upon the
+      white, still face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was mine,&rdquo; said old Deleglise. &ldquo;It was hung in the Academy
+      thirty-six years ago, and bought for ten guineas by a dentist at Bury St.
+      Edmunds. He went mad a few years later and died in a lunatic asylum. I had
+      never lost sight of it, and the executors were quite agreeable to my
+      having it back again for the same ten guineas. I used to go every morning
+      to the Academy to look at it. I thought it the cleverest bit of work in
+      the whole gallery, and I'm not at all sure that it wasn't. I saw myself a
+      second Teniers, another Millet. Look how that light coming through the
+      open door is treated; isn't it good? Somebody will pay a thousand guineas
+      for it before I have been dead a dozen years, and it is worth it. But I
+      wouldn't sell it myself now for five thousand. One's first success; it is
+      worth all the rest of life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All?&rdquo; queried the red-haired man from his easy-chair. We looked round.
+      The lady of the skirt had entered, now her own proper self: a young girl
+      of about fifteen, angular, awkward-looking, but bringing into the room
+      with her that atmosphere of life, of hope, that is the eternal message of
+      youth. She was not beautiful, not then&mdash;plain one might almost have
+      called her but for her frank, grey eyes, her mass of dark-brown hair now
+      gathered into a long thick plait. A light came into old Deleglise's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right, not all,&rdquo; he murmured to the red-haired man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came forward shyly. I found it difficult to recognise in her the
+      flaming Fury that a few minutes before had sprung at me from the billows
+      of her torn blue skirt. She shook hands with the red-haired man and kissed
+      her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My daughter,&rdquo; said old Deleglise, introducing me to her. &ldquo;Mr. Paul
+      Kelver, a literary gent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Kelver and I have met already,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;He has been waiting
+      for you here in the studio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have you been entertaining him?&rdquo; asked Deleglise. &ldquo;Oh, yes, I
+      entertained him,&rdquo; she replied. Her voice was singularly like her father's,
+      with just the same suggestion of ever a laugh behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We entertained each other,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right,&rdquo; said old Deleglise. &ldquo;Stop and lunch with us. We will
+      make ourselves a curry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      OF THE GLORY AND GOODNESS AND THE EVIL THAT GO TO THE MAKING OF LOVE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;sometimes the losing&mdash;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 &ldquo;rogue&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are still in love with me? I wondered if you would be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you know that I was in love with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have been blind if I had not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I was only a boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were not the usual type of boy. You are not going to be the usual
+      type of man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not mind my loving you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot help it, can I? Nor can you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall always love you,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;but it is with a curious sort of
+      love. I do not understand it myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she commanded, still with a smile about her lips, &ldquo;describe it
+      to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed a light mocking laugh. &ldquo;I should prefer to be the queen. The
+      role of priestess would not suit me. Temples are so cold.&rdquo; A slight shiver
+      passed through her. She made a movement with her hand, beckoning me to her
+      feet. &ldquo;That is how you shall love me, Paul,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;adoring me,
+      worshipping me&mdash;blindly. I will be your queen and treat you&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took my face between her hands, and bending over me, looked long and
+      steadfastly into my eyes. &ldquo;You understand, Paul, the queen can do no wrong&mdash;never,
+      never.&rdquo; There had crept into her voice a note of vehemence, in her face
+      was a look almost of appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My queen can do no wrong,&rdquo; I repeated. And she laughed and let her hands
+      fall back upon her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must do nothing again, Paul,&rdquo; she commanded, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so that passed; and although my love for her&mdash;as I know well she
+      wished and sought it should&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My tale finished, &ldquo;Now I will tell you mine,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am going to be
+      married soon. I shall be a Countess, Paul, the Countess Huescar&mdash;I
+      will teach you how to pronounce it&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he very rich?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As poor,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he love you?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tells me so,&rdquo; she answered, with a laugh. &ldquo;How uncourtier-like you
+      are, Paul! Do you suggest that any man could see me and not love me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang to her feet. &ldquo;I do not want his love,&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;it would
+      bore me. Women hate love they cannot return. I don't mean love like yours,
+      devout little Paul,&rdquo; she added, with a laugh. &ldquo;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&mdash;it would be horrible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt myself growing older. For the moment my goddess became a child
+      needing help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But have you thought&mdash;&rdquo; I commenced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; she interrupted me quickly, &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;&mdash;it seemed to me she checked herself abruptly&mdash;&ldquo;Jones
+      or Brown it would remember, however rich I might be. I am vain, Paul,
+      caring for power&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you need not be mere Mrs. anybody commonplace,&rdquo; I argued. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never come, the man I could love,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Because, my
+      little Paul, he has come already. Hush, Paul, the queen can do no wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;May I not know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Paul,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;you shall know; I want you to know, then you
+      shall tell me that I have acted rightly. Do you hear me, Paul?&mdash;quite
+      rightly&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he so commonplace a man,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;the man you love? I cannot
+      believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is not commonplace,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;It is I who am commonplace. The
+      things I desire, they are beneath him; he will never trouble himself to
+      secure them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not even for love of you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he say?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I tell you?&rdquo; She laughed a little bitterly. &ldquo;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.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were what I could imagine his saying. I heard the strong ring of
+      his voice through her mocking mimicry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hal!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;It is he.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he never seemed to take much notice of you,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up and see me. I am a prisoner in this damned hole till the weather
+      breaks. Hal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw you from the window,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped me with his long bony hand. &ldquo;Sit down, and let me hear my voice
+      using again its mother tongue&mdash;you were always a good listener&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly: &ldquo;What is she doing?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Do you ever see her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is playing in&mdash;&rdquo; I mentioned the name of a comic opera then
+      running in Paris. &ldquo;No; I have not seen her for some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his white, wasted hand on mine. &ldquo;What a pity you and I could not
+      have rolled ourselves into one, Paul&mdash;you, the saint, and I, the
+      satyr. Together we should have made her perfect lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; I asked&mdash;&ldquo;I loved her, knowing her: I was not blind. Whose
+      fault was it? Yours or hers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;Whose fault, Paul? God made us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I made to speak, but he interrupted me, continuing: &ldquo;Ah, yes, it might
+      have been better. That is easy to say, not knowing. So, too, it might have
+      been worse&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that was not the end,&rdquo; I reminded him. &ldquo;If the curtain had fallen
+      then, I could have forgiven you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grinned. &ldquo;That fatal last act. Even yours don't always come right, so
+      the critics tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grin faded from his face. &ldquo;We may never see each other again, Paul,&rdquo;
+       he went on; &ldquo;don't think too badly of me. I found I had made a second
+      mistake&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;'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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;how he must have longed to
+      laugh in my silly face&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;you
+      remember how long it was&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I leant across and put my arms around him; I suppose it was un-English;
+      there are times when one forgets these points. &ldquo;I did not know! I did not
+      know,&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pressed me to him with his feeble arms. &ldquo;What a cad you must have
+      thought me, Paul,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But you might have given me credit for better
+      taste. I was always rather a gourmet than a gourmand where women were
+      concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have never seen him either again?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>fiancee</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if you know, my friend, how wise you are,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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!&rdquo;&mdash;he made a gesture
+      of disgust&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hal did not return to England till the end of the year, by which time the
+      Count and Countess Huescar&mdash;though I had her permission still to call
+      her Barbara, I never availed myself of it; the &ldquo;Countess&rdquo; fitted my mood
+      better&mdash;had taken up residence in the grand Paris house old Hasluck
+      had bought for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Foreign Counts,&rdquo; he grumbled to me laughingly, one day, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have laid the foundation, you shall raise the edifice,&rdquo; so he told her
+      one evening I was spending with them, caressing her golden hair with his
+      blunt, fat fingers. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to understand the influences that had gone towards the making&mdash;or
+      marring&mdash;of Barbara's character. I had never guessed he had cared for
+      anything beyond money and the making of money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,
+      &ldquo;becomingly dressed in grey veiling spotted white, with an encrustation of
+      mousseline de soie,&rdquo; I learnt the next day from the <i>Morning Post</i>.
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it over?&rdquo; he asked. He was mopping his face on a huge handkerchief,
+      and had a small looking-glass in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All over,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;they are waiting for you to start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always perspire so when I'm excited,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Keep me out of it
+      as much as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;everything went off all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody's gone off all right, so far,&rdquo; he grunted. He was crouching
+      over the fire, though the weather was still warm, one hand spread out
+      towards the blaze. &ldquo;Now I've got to go off, that's the only thing they're
+      waiting for. Then everything will be in order.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think they are wanting you to go off,&rdquo; I answered, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some of them hatch all right,&rdquo; I replied. The simile was becoming
+      somewhat confused: in conversation similes are apt to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to die this week,&rdquo; he said&mdash;he paused, completing mental
+      calculations, &ldquo;I should be worth, roughly speaking, a couple of million.
+      This time next year I may be owing a million.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I sat down opposite to him. &ldquo;Why run risks?&rdquo; I suggested. &ldquo;Surely you have
+      enough. Why not give it up&mdash;retire?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;Do you think I haven't said that to myself, lad&mdash;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&mdash;men I once knew well; I
+      think of them sometimes, and wish I didn't&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kicked the fire into a blaze. A roaring flame made the room light
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that won't be just yet awhile,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;and before it does, I'll
+      be the richest man in Europe. I keep my head cool&mdash;that's the great
+      secret.&rdquo; Leaning over towards me, he sunk his voice to a whisper, &ldquo;Drink,
+      Paul&mdash;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&mdash;that's the secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is it worth it all?&rdquo; I suggested. &ldquo;Surely you have enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means power, Paul.&rdquo; He slapped his trousers pocket, making the handful
+      of gold and silver he always carried there jingle musically. &ldquo;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&mdash;why not? It's happened before. My children, the
+      children of old Noel Hasluck, son of a Whitechapel butcher! Here's my
+      pedigree!&rdquo; Again be slapped his tuneful pocket. &ldquo;It's an older one than
+      theirs! It's coming into its own at last! It's money&mdash;we men of money&mdash;that
+      are the true kings now. It's our family that rules the world&mdash;the
+      great money family; I mean to be its head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blaze died out, leaving the room almost in darkness, and for awhile we
+      sat in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quiet, isn't it?&rdquo; said old Hasluck, raising his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The settling of the falling embers was the only sound about us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess we'll always be like this, now,&rdquo; continued old Hasluck. &ldquo;Old woman
+      goes to bed, you see, immediately after dinner. It used to be different
+      when <i>she</i> was about. Somehow, the house and the lackeys and all the
+      rest of it seemed to be a more natural sort of thing when <i>she</i> 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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be visiting them,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;and they will be coming to stop
+      with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed, wishing to cheer him, though I knew he was right. &ldquo;Surely your
+      daughter belongs to your own class,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo; he asked, with a grin. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe. &ldquo;Ring the bell, Paul, will
+      you?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Let's have some light and something to drink. Don't take
+      any notice of me. I've got the hump to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a minute or two before the lamp came. He put his arm upon my
+      shoulder, leaning upon me somewhat heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to fancy sometimes, Paul,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Of old Deleglise's Sunday suppers, which, costumed from head to foot in
+      spotless linen, he cooked himself in his great kitchen, moving with
+      flushed, earnest face about the gleaming stove, while behind him his
+      guests waited, ranged round the massive oaken table glittering with cut
+      glass and silver, among which fluttered the deft hands of Madeline, his
+      ancient whitecapped Bonne, much has been already recorded, and by those
+      possessed of greater knowledge. They who sat there talking in whispers
+      until such time as old Deleglise turned towards them again, radiant with
+      consciousness of success, the savoury triumph steaming between his hands,
+      when, like the sudden swell of the Moonlight Sonata, the talk would rush
+      once more into a roar, were men whose names were then&mdash;and some are
+      still&mdash;more or less household words throughout the English-speaking
+      world. Artists, musicians, actors, writers, scholars, droles, their wit
+      and wisdom, their sayings and their doings must be tolerably familiar to
+      readers of memoir and biography; and if to such their epigrams appear less
+      brilliant, their jests less laughable than to us who heard them spoken,
+      that is merely because fashion in humour and in understanding changes as
+      in all else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You, gentle reader of my book, I shall not trouble with second-hand record
+      of that which you can read elsewhere. For me it will be but to write
+      briefly of my own brief glimpse into that charmed circle. Concerning this
+      story more are the afternoon At Homes held by Dan and myself upon the
+      second floor of the old Georgian house in pleasant, quiet Queen Square.
+      For cook and house-maid on these days it would be a busy morning. Failing
+      other supervision, Dan and I agreed that to secure success on these
+      important occasions each of us should criticise the work of the other. I
+      passed judgment on Dan's cooking, he upon my house-work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much soda,&rdquo; I would declare, sampling the cake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You silly Juggins! It's meant to taste of soda&mdash;it's a soda cake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that. It isn't meant to taste of nothing but soda. There wants to
+      be some cake about it also. This thing, so far as flavour is concerned, is
+      nothing but a Seidlitz powder. You can't give people solidified Seidlitz
+      powders for tea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan would fume, but I would remain firm. The soda cake would be laid
+      aside, and something else attempted. His cookery was the one thing Dan was
+      obstinate about. He would never admit that anything could possibly be
+      wrong with it. His most ghastly failures he would devour himself later on
+      with pretended enjoyment. I have known him finish a sponge cake, the
+      centre of which had to be eaten with a teaspoon, declaring it was
+      delicious; that eating a dry sponge cake was like eating dust; that a
+      sponge cake ought to be a trifle syrupy towards the centre. Afterwards he
+      would be strangely silent and drink brandy out of a wine-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call these knives clean?&rdquo; It would be Dan's turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan would draw his finger across one, producing chiaro-oscuro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if you go fingering them. Why don't you leave them alone and go on
+      with your own work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've just wiped them, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there isn't any knife-powder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, it ruins knives, over-cleaning them&mdash;takes all the edge
+      off. We shall want them pretty sharp to cut those lemon buns of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over-cleaning them! You don't take any pride in the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord! Don't I work from morning to night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lazy young devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Makes one lazy, your cooking. How can a man work when he is suffering all
+      day long from indigestion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dan would not be content until I had found the board and cleaned the
+      knives to his complete satisfaction. Perhaps it was as well that in this
+      way all things once a week were set in order. After lunch house-maid and
+      cook would vanish, two carefully dressed gentlemen being left alone to
+      receive their guests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These would be gathered generally from among Dan's journalistic
+      acquaintances and my companions of the theatre. Occasionally, Minikin and
+      Jarman would be of the number, Mrs. Peedles even once or twice arriving
+      breathless on our landing. Left to myself, I perhaps should not have
+      invited them, deeming them hardly fitting company to mingle with our other
+      visitors; but Dan, having once been introduced to them, overrode such
+      objection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Lord Chamberlain,&rdquo; Dan would reply, &ldquo;an ounce of originality is
+      worth a ton of convention. Little tin ladies and gentlemen all made to
+      pattern! One can find them everywhere. Your friends would be an
+      acquisition to any society.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are they quite good form?&rdquo; I hinted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what we will do,&rdquo; replied Dan. &ldquo;We'll forget that Mrs.
+      Peedles keeps a lodging-house in Blackfriars. We will speak of her as our
+      friend, 'that dear, quaint old creature, Lady P.' A title that is an
+      oddity, whose costume always suggests the wardrobe of a provincial
+      actress! My dear Paul, your society novelist would make a fortune out of
+      such a character. The personages of her amusing anecdotes, instead of
+      being third-rate theatrical folk, shall be Earl Blank and the Baroness de
+      Dash. The editors of society journals shall pay me a shilling a line for
+      them. Jarman&mdash;yes, Jarman shall be the son of a South American
+      millionaire. Vulgar? Nonsense! you mean racy. Minikin&mdash;he looks much
+      more like forty than twenty&mdash;he shall be an eminent scientist. His
+      head will then appear the natural size; his glass eye, the result of a
+      chemical experiment, a touch of distinction; his uncompromising rudeness,
+      a lovable characteristic. We will make him buy a yard of red ribbon and
+      wear it across his shirt-front, and address him as Herr Professor. It will
+      explain slight errors of English grammar and all peculiarities of accent.
+      They shall be our lions. You leave it to me. We will invite commonplace,
+      middle-class folk to meet them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this, to my terror and alarm, Dan persisted in doing. Jarman entered
+      into the spirit of the joke with gusto. So far as he was concerned, our
+      guests, from the beginning to the end, were one and all, I am confident,
+      deceived. The more he swaggered, the more he boasted, the more he talked
+      about himself&mdash;and it was a failing he was prone to&mdash;the greater
+      was his success. At the persistent endeavours of Dan's journalistic
+      acquaintances to excite his cupidity by visions of new journals, to be
+      started with a mere couple of thousand pounds and by the inherent merit of
+      their ideas to command at once a circulation of hundreds of thousands, I
+      could afford to laugh. But watching the tremendous efforts of my actress
+      friends to fascinate him&mdash;luring him into corners, gazing at him with
+      languishing eyes, trotting out all their little tricks for his exclusive
+      benefit, quarrelling about him among themselves&mdash;my conscience would
+      prick me, lest our jest should end in a contretemps. Fortunately, Jarman
+      himself, was a gentleman of uncommon sense, or my fears might have been
+      realised. I should have been sorry myself to have been asked to remain
+      stone under the blandishments of girls young and old, of women handsome
+      and once, no doubt, good looking, showered upon him during that winter.
+      But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no slave to female charms. He
+      enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and eventually married the eldest
+      daughter of a small blacking factory. She was a plain girl, but pleasant,
+      and later brought to Jarman possession of the factory. When I meet him&mdash;he
+      is now stout and rubicund&mdash;he gives me the idea of a man who has
+      attained to his ideals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Minikin we had more trouble. People turned up possessed of scientific
+      smattering. We had to explain that the Professor never talked shop. Others
+      were owners of unexpected knowledge of German, which they insisted upon
+      airing. We had to explain that the Herr Professor was in London to learn
+      English, and had taken a vow during his residence neither to speak nor
+      listen to his native tongue. It was remarked that his acquaintance with
+      colloquial English slang, for a foreigner, was quite unusual. Occasionally
+      he was too rude, even for a scientist, informing ladies, clamouring to
+      know how he liked English women, that he didn't like them silly; telling
+      one gentleman, a friend of Dan, a rather important man who once asked him,
+      referring to his yard of ribbon, what he got it for, that he got it for
+      fourpence. We had to explain him as a gentleman who had been soured by a
+      love disappointment. The ladies forgave him; the gentlemen said it was a
+      damned lucky thing for the girl. Altogether, Minikin took a good deal of
+      explaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Peedles, our guests decided among themselves, must be the widow of
+      some one in the City who had been knighted in a crowd. They made fun of
+      her behind her back, but to her face were most effusive. &ldquo;My dear Lady
+      Peedles&rdquo; was the phrase most often heard in our rooms whenever she was
+      present. At the theatre &ldquo;my friend Lady Peedles&rdquo; became a person much
+      spoken of&mdash;generally in loud tones. My own social position I found
+      decidedly improved by reason of her ladyship's evident liking for myself.
+      It went abroad that I was her presumptive heir. I was courted as a
+      gentleman of expectations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fishy-eyed young man became one of our regular guests. Dan won his
+      heart by never laughing at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like talking to you,&rdquo; said the fishy-eyed young man one afternoon to
+      Dan. &ldquo;You don't go into fits of laughter when I remark that it has been a
+      fine day; most people do. Of course, on the stage I don't mind. I know I
+      am a funny little devil. I get my living by being a funny little devil.
+      There is a photograph of me hanging in the theatre lobby. I saw a workman
+      stop and look at it the other day as he passed; I was just behind him. He
+      burst into a roar of laughter. 'Little&mdash;! He makes me laugh to look
+      at him!' he cluttered to himself. Well, that's all right; I want the man
+      in the gallery to think me funny, but it annoys me when people laugh at me
+      off the stage. If I am out to dinner anywhere and ask somebody to pass the
+      mustard, I never get it; instead, they burst out laughing. I don't want
+      people to laugh at me when I am having my dinner. I want my dinner. It
+      makes me very angry sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; agreed Dan, sympathetically. &ldquo;The world never grasps the fact
+      that man is a collection, not a single exhibit. I remember being at a
+      house once where the chief guest happened to be a great Hebrew scholar.
+      One tea time, a Miss Henman, passing the butter to some one in a hurry,
+      let it slip out of her hand. 'Why is Miss Henman like a caterpillar?'
+      asked our learned guest in a sepulchral voice. Nobody appeared to know.
+      'Because she makes the butter fly.' It never occurred to any one of us
+      that the Doctor could possibly joke. There was dead silence for about a
+      minute. Then our hostess, looking grave, remarked: 'Oh, do you really
+      think so?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to enter a room full of people,&rdquo; said the fishy-eyed young man,
+      &ldquo;and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus, they would
+      think it the funniest story they had heard in years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he
+      undoubtedly who was drawing the house. But he was not happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not a comic actor, really,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;I could play Romeo, so
+      far as feeling is concerned, and play it damned well. There is a fine vein
+      of poetry in me. But of course it's no good to me with this face of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you not sinning your mercies, you fellows?&rdquo; Dan replied. &ldquo;There
+      is young Kelver here. At school it was always his trouble that he could
+      give us a good time and make us laugh, which nobody else in the whole
+      school could do. His ambition was to kick a ball as well as a hundred
+      other fellows could kick it. He could tell us a good story now if he would
+      only write what the Almighty intended him to write, instead of gloomy
+      rigmaroles about suffering Princesses in Welsh caves. I don't say it's
+      bad, but a hundred others could write the same sort of thing better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you understand,&rdquo; answered the little man; &ldquo;the poorest tragedian
+      that ever lived never wished himself the best of low comedians. The court
+      fool had an excellent salary, no doubt; and, likely enough, had got
+      two-thirds of all the brain there was in the palace. But not a
+      wooden-headed man-at-arms but looked down upon him. Every gallery boy who
+      pays a shilling to laugh at me regards himself as my intellectual
+      superior; while to a fourth-rate spouter of blank verse he looks up in
+      admiration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does it so very much matter,&rdquo; suggested Dan, &ldquo;how the wooden-headed
+      man-at-arms or the shilling gallery boy happens to regard you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it does,&rdquo; retorted Goggles, &ldquo;because we happen to agree with them.
+      If I could earn five pounds a week as juvenile lead, I would never play a
+      comic part again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There I cannot follow you,&rdquo; returned Dan. &ldquo;I can understand the artist
+      who would rather be the man of action, the poet who would rather be the
+      statesman or the warrior; though personally my sympathies are precisely
+      the other way&mdash;with Wolfe who thought it a more glorious work, the
+      writing of a great poem, than the burning of so many cities and the
+      killing of so many men. We all serve the community. It is difficult,
+      looking at the matter from the inside, to say who serves it best. Some
+      feed it, some clothe it. The churchman and the policeman between them look
+      after its morals, keep it in order. The doctor mends it when it injures
+      itself; the lawyer helps it to quarrel, the soldier teaches it to fight.
+      We Bohemians amuse it, instruct it. We can argue that we are the most
+      important. The others cater for its body, we for its mind. But their work
+      is more showy than ours and attracts more attention; and to attract
+      attention is the aim and object of most of us. But for Bohemians to worry
+      among themselves which is the greatest, is utterly without reason. The
+      story-teller, the musician, the artist, the clown, we are members of a
+      sharing troupe; one, with the ambition of the fat boy in Pickwick, makes
+      the people's flesh creep; another makes them hold their sides with
+      laughter. The tragedian, soliloquising on his crimes, shows us how wicked
+      we are; you, looking at a pair of lovers from under a scratch wig, show us
+      how ridiculous we are. Both lessons are necessary: who shall say which is
+      the superior teacher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I am not a philosopher,&rdquo; replied the little man, with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; returned Dan, with another, &ldquo;and I am not a comic actor on my way to
+      a salary of a hundred a week. We all of us want the other boy's cake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly was another frequent visitor of ours. The attic in Belsize
+      Square had been closed. In vain had the O'Kelly wafted incense, burned
+      pastilles and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne. In vain had he talked of rats,
+      hinted at drains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A wonderful woman,&rdquo; groaned the O'Kelly in tones of sorrowful admiration.
+      &ldquo;There's no deceiving her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why submit?&rdquo; was our natural argument. &ldquo;Why not say you are going to
+      smoke, and do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's her theory, me boy,&rdquo; explained the O'Kelly, &ldquo;that the home should be
+      kept pure&mdash;a sort of a temple, ye know. She's convinced that in time
+      it is bound to exercise an influence upon me. It's a beautiful idea, when
+      ye come to think of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, in the rooms of half-a-dozen sinful men the O'Kelly kept his
+      own particular pipe, together with his own particular smoking mixture; and
+      one such pipe and one such tobacco jar stood always on our mantelpiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the spring the forces of temptation raged round that feeble but most
+      excellently intentioned citadel, the O'Kelly's conscience. The Signora had
+      returned to England, was performing then at Ashley's Theatre. The O'Kelly
+      would remain under long spells of silence, puffing vigorously at his pipe.
+      Or would fortify himself with paeans in praise of Mrs. O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If anything could ever make a model man of me&rdquo;&mdash;he spoke in the
+      tones of one whose doubts are stronger than his hopes&mdash;&ldquo;it would be
+      the example of that woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one Saturday afternoon. I had just returned from the matinee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe,&rdquo; continued the O'Kelly, &ldquo;I don't really believe she has
+      ever done one single thing she oughtn't to, or left undone one single
+      thing she ought, in the whole course of her life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe she has, and you don't know of it,&rdquo; I suggested, perceiving the
+      idea might comfort him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I could think so,&rdquo; returned the O'Kelly. &ldquo;I don't mean anything
+      really wrong,&rdquo; he corrected himself quickly, &ldquo;but something just a little
+      wrong. I feel&mdash;I really feel I should like her better if she had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that I mean I don't like her as it is, ye understand,&rdquo; corrected
+      himself the O'Kelly a second time. &ldquo;I respect that woman&mdash;I cannot
+      tell ye, me boy, how much I respect her. Ye don't know her. There was one
+      morning, about a month ago. That woman&mdash;she's down at six every morning,
+      summer and winter; we have prayers at half-past. I was a trifle late
+      meself: it was never me strong point, as ye know, early rising. Seven
+      o'clock struck; she didn't appear, and I thought she had overslept
+      herself. I won't say I didn't feel pleased for the moment; it was an
+      unworthy sentiment, but I almost wished she had. I ran up to her room. The
+      door was open, the bedclothes folded down as she always leaves them. She
+      came in five minutes later. She had got up at four that morning to welcome
+      a troupe of native missionaries from East Africa on their arrival at
+      Waterloo Station. She's a saint, that woman; I am not worthy of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't dwell too much on that phase of the subject,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help it, me boy,&rdquo; replied the O'Kelly. &ldquo;I feel I am not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't for a moment say you are,&rdquo; I returned; &ldquo;but I shouldn't harp upon
+      the idea. I don't think it good for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never will be,&rdquo; he persisted gloomily, &ldquo;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Evidently he was started on a dangerous train of reflection. With the idea
+      of luring him away from it, I led the conversation to the subject of
+      champagne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most people like it dry,&rdquo; admitted the O'Kelly. &ldquo;Meself, I have always
+      preferred it with just a suggestion of fruitiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a champagne,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you used to be rather fond of when we&mdash;years
+      ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know the one ye mean,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly. &ldquo;It wasn't at all bad,
+      considering the price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't happen to remember where you got it?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was in Bridge Street,&rdquo; remembered the O'Kelly, &ldquo;not so very far from
+      the Circus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a pleasant evening,&rdquo; I remarked; &ldquo;let us take a walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We found the place, half wine-shop, half office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the same,&rdquo; commented the O'Kelly as we pushed open the door and
+      entered. &ldquo;Not altered a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As in all probability barely twelve months had elapsed since his last
+      visit, the fact in itself was not surprising. Clearly the O'Kelly had been
+      calculating time rather by sensation. I ordered a bottle; and we sat down.
+      Myself, being prejudiced against the brand, I called for a glass of
+      claret. The O'Kelly finished the bottle. I was glad to notice my ruse had
+      been successful. The virtue of that wine had not departed from it. With
+      every glass the O'Kelly became morally more elevated. He left the place,
+      determined that he would be worthy of Mrs. O'Kelly. Walking down the
+      Embankment, he asserted his determination of buying an alarm-clock that
+      very evening. At the corner of Westminster Bridge he became suddenly
+      absorbed in his own thoughts. Looking to discover the cause of his
+      silence, I saw that his eyes were resting on a poster representing a
+      charming lady standing on one leg upon a wire; below her&mdash;at some
+      distance&mdash;appeared the peaks of mountains; the artist had even caught
+      the likeness. I cursed the luck that had directed our footsteps, but the
+      next moment, lacking experience, was inclined to be reassured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me dear Paul,&rdquo; said the O'Kelly&mdash;he laid a fatherly hand upon my
+      shoulder&mdash;&ldquo;there are fair-faced, laughing women&mdash;sweet
+      creatures, that ye want to put yer arm around and dance with.&rdquo; He shook
+      his head disapprovingly. &ldquo;There are the sainted women, who lead us up,
+      Paul&mdash;up, always up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A look, such as the young man with the banner might have borne with him to
+      the fields of snow and ice, suffused the O'Kelly's handsome face. Without
+      another word he crossed the road and entered an American store, where for
+      six-and-elevenpence he purchased an alarm-clock the man assured us would
+      awake an Egyptian mummy. With this in his hand he waved me a good-bye, and
+      jumped upon a Hampstead 'bus, and alone I strolled on to the theatre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hal returned a little after Christmas and started himself in chambers in
+      the City. It was the nearest he dared venture, so he said, to
+      civilisation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd be no good in the West End,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;For a season I might
+      attract as an eccentricity, but your swells would never stand me for
+      longer&mdash;no more would any respectable folk, anywhere: we don't get on
+      together. I commenced at Richmond. It was a fashionable suburb then, and I
+      thought I was going to do wonders. I had everything in my favour, except
+      myself. I do know my work, nobody can deny that of me. My father spent
+      every penny he had, poor gentleman, in buying me an old-established
+      practice: fine house, carriage and pair, white-haired butler&mdash;everything
+      correct, except myself. It was of no use. I can hold myself in for a month
+      or two; then I break out, the old original savage that I am under my frock
+      coat. I feel I must run amuck, stabbing, hacking at the prim, smiling Lies
+      mincing round about me. I can fool a silly woman for half-a-dozen visits;
+      bow and rub my hands, purr round her sympathetically. All the while I am
+      longing to tell her the truth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Go home. Wash your face; don't block up the pores of your skin with
+      paint. Let out your corsets. You are thirty-three round the abdomen if you
+      are an inch: how can you expect your digestion to do its work when you're
+      squeezing it into twenty-one? Give up gadding about half your day and most
+      of your night; you are old enough to have done with that sort of thing.
+      Let the children come, and suckle them yourself. You'll be all the better
+      for them. Don't loll in bed all the morning. Get up like a decent animal
+      and do something for your living. Use your brain, what there is of it, and
+      your body. At that price you can have health to-morrow, and at no other. I
+      can do nothing for you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And sooner or later I blurt it out.&rdquo; He laughed his great roar. &ldquo;Lord!
+      you should see the real face coming out of the simpering mask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pompous old fools, strutting into me like turkey-cocks! By Jove, it was
+      worth it! They would dribble out, looking half their proper size after I
+      had done telling them what was the matter with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Do you want to know what you are really suffering from?' I would shout
+      at them, when I could contain myself no longer. 'Gluttony, my dear sir;
+      gluttony and drunkenness, and over-indulgence in other vices that shall be
+      nameless. Live like a man; get a little self-respect from somewhere; give
+      up being an ape. Treat your body properly and it will treat you properly.
+      That's the only prescription that will do you any good.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed again. &ldquo;'Tell the truth, you shame the Devil.' But the Devil
+      replies by starving you. It's a fairly effective retort. I am not the
+      stuff successful family physicians are made of. In the City I may manage
+      to rub along. One doesn't see so much of one's patients; they come and go.
+      Clerks and warehousemen my practice will be among chiefly. The poor man
+      does not so much mind being told the truth about himself; it is a blessing
+      to which he is accustomed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We spoke but once of Barbara. A photograph of her in her bride's dress
+      stood upon my desk. Occasionally, first fitting the room for the ceremony,
+      sweeping away all impurity even from under the mats, and dressing myself
+      with care, I would centre it amid flowers, and kneeling, kiss her hand
+      where it rested on the back of the top-heavy looking chair without which
+      no photographic studio is complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day he took it up, and looked at it long and hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The forehead denotes intellectuality; the eyes tenderness and courage.
+      The lower part of the face, on the other hand, suggests a good deal of
+      animalism: the finely cut nostrils show egotism&mdash;another word for
+      selfishness; the nose itself, vanity; the lips, sensuousness and love of
+      luxury. I wonder what sort of woman she really is.&rdquo; He laid the photograph
+      back upon the desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know you were so firm a believer in Lavater,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only when he agrees with what I know,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Have I not described
+      her rightly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care to discuss her in that vein,&rdquo; I replied, feeling the blood
+      mounting to my cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too sacred a subject?&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;It is the one ingredient of manhood I
+      lack, ideality&mdash;an unfortunate deficiency for me. I must probe,
+      analyse, dissect, see the thing as it really is, know it for what it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she is the Countess Huescar now,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;For God's sake, leave
+      her alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to me with the snarl of a beast. &ldquo;How do you know she is the
+      Countess Huescar? Is it a special breed of woman made on purpose? How do
+      you know she isn't my wife&mdash;brain and heart, flesh and blood, mine?
+      If she was, do you think I should give her up because some fool has stuck
+      his label on her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt the anger burning in my eyes. &ldquo;Yours, his! She is no man's
+      property. She is herself,&rdquo; I cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wrinkles round his nose and mouth smoothed themselves out. &ldquo;You need
+      not be afraid,&rdquo; he sneered. &ldquo;As you say, she is the Countess Huescar. Can
+      you imagine her as Mrs. Doctor Washburn? I can't.&rdquo; He took her photograph
+      in his hand again. &ldquo;The lower part of the face is the true index to the
+      character. It shows the animal, and it is the animal that rules. The soul,
+      the intellect, it comes and goes; the animal remains always. Sensuousness,
+      love of luxury, vanity, those are the strings to which she dances. To be a
+      Countess is of more importance to her than to be a woman. She is his, not
+      mine. Let him keep her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not know her,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;you never have. You listen to what she
+      says. She does not know herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at me queerly. &ldquo;What do you think her to be?&rdquo; he asked me. &ldquo;A
+      true woman, not the shallow thing she seems?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A true woman,&rdquo; I persisted stoutly, &ldquo;that you have not eyes enough to
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You little fool!&rdquo; he muttered, with the same queer look&mdash;&ldquo;you little
+      fool. But let us hope you are wrong, Paul. Let us hope, for her sake, you
+      are wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at one of Deleglise's Sunday suppers that I first met Urban Vane.
+      The position, nor even the character, I fear it must be confessed, of his
+      guests was never enquired into by old Deleglise. A simple-minded, kindly
+      old fellow himself, it was his fate to be occasionally surprised and
+      grieved at the discovery that even the most entertaining of supper
+      companions could fall short of the highest standard of conventional
+      morality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear me!&rdquo; he would complain, pacing up and down his studio with
+      puzzled visage. &ldquo;The last man in the world of whom I should have expected
+      to hear it. So original in all his ideas. Are you quite sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid there can be no doubt about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't believe it! I really can't believe it! One of the most amusing
+      men I ever met!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember a well-known artist one evening telling us with much sense of
+      humour how he had just completed the sale of an old Spanish cabinet to two
+      distinct and separate purchasers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sold it first,&rdquo; recounted the little gentleman with glee, &ldquo;to old Jong,
+      the dealer. He has been worrying me about it for the last three months,
+      and on Saturday afternoon, hearing that I was clearing out and going
+      abroad, he came round again. 'Well, I am not sure I am in a position to
+      sell it,' I told him. 'Who'll know?' he asked. 'They are not in, are
+      they?' 'Not yet,' I answered, 'but I expect they will be some time on
+      Monday.' 'Tell your man to open the door to me at eight o'clock on Monday
+      morning,' he replied, 'we'll have it away without any fuss. There needn't
+      be any receipt. I'm lending you a hundred pounds, in cash.' I worked him
+      up to a hundred and twenty, and he paid me. Upon my word, I should never
+      have thought of it, if he hadn't put the idea into my head. But turning
+      round at the door: 'You won't go and sell it to some one else,' he
+      suggested, 'between now and Monday?' It serves him right for his damned
+      impertinence. 'Send and take it away to-day if you are at all nervous,' I
+      told him. He looked at the thing, it is about twelve feet high altogether.
+      'I would if I could get a cart,' he muttered. Then an idea struck him.
+      'Does the top come off?' 'See for yourself,' I answered; 'it's your
+      cabinet, not mine.' I was feeling rather annoyed with him. He examined it.
+      'That's all right,' he said; 'merely a couple of screws. I'll take the top
+      with me now on my cab.' He got a man in, and they took the upper cupboard
+      away, leaving me the bottom. Two hours later old Sir George called to see
+      me about his wife's portrait. The first thing he set eyes on was the
+      remains of the cabinet: he had always admired it. 'Hallo,' he asked, 'are
+      you breaking up the studio literally? What have you done with the other
+      half?' 'I've sent it round to Jong's&mdash;' He didn't give me time to
+      finish. 'Save Jong's commission and sell it to me direct,' he said. 'We
+      won't argue about the price and I'll pay you in cash.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if Providence comes forward and insists on taking charge of a man,
+      it is hardly good manners to flout her. Besides, his wife's portrait is
+      worth twice as much as he is paying for it. He handed me over the money in
+      notes. 'Things not going quite smoothly with you just at the moment?' he
+      asked me. 'Oh, about the same as usual,' I told him. 'You won't be
+      offended at my taking it away with me this evening?' he asked. 'Not in the
+      least,' I answered; 'you'll get it on the top of a four-wheeled cab.' We
+      called in a couple of men, and I helped them down with it, and
+      confoundedly heavy it was. 'I shall send round to Jong's for the other
+      half on Monday morning,' he said, speaking with his head through the cab
+      window, 'and explain it to him.' 'Do,' I answered; 'he'll understand.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry I'm going away so early in the morning,&rdquo; concluded the little
+      gentleman. &ldquo;I'd give back Jong ten per cent. of his money to see his face
+      when he enters the studio.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody laughed; but after the little gentleman was gone, the subject
+      cropped up again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I wake sufficiently early,&rdquo; remarked one, &ldquo;I shall find an excuse to
+      look in myself at eight o'clock. Jong's face will certainly be worth
+      seeing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather rough both on him and Sir George,&rdquo; observed another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he hasn't really done anything of the kind,&rdquo; chimed in old Deleglise
+      in his rich, sweet voice. &ldquo;He made that all up. It's just his fun; he's
+      full of humour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am inclined to think that would be his idea of a joke,&rdquo; asserted the
+      first speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Deleglise would not hear of it; but a week or two later I noticed an
+      addition to old Deleglise's studio furniture in the shape of a handsome
+      old carved cabinet twelve feet high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He really had done it,&rdquo; explained old Deleglise, speaking in a whisper,
+      though only he and I were present. &ldquo;Of course, it was only his fun; but it
+      might have been misunderstood. I thought it better to put the thing
+      straight. I shall get the money back from him when he returns. A most
+      amusing little man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Deleglise possessed a house in Gower Street which fell vacant. One of
+      his guests, a writer of poetical drama, was a man who three months after
+      he had earned a thousand pounds never had a penny with which to bless
+      himself. They are dying out, these careless, good-natured, conscienceless
+      Bohemians; but quarter of a century ago they still lingered in Alsatian
+      London. Turned out of his lodgings by a Philistine landlord, his sole
+      possession in the wide world, two acts of a drama, for which he had
+      already been paid, the problem of his future, though it troubled him but
+      little, became acute to his friends. Old Deleglise, treating the matter as
+      a joke, pretending not to know who was the landlord, suggested he should
+      apply to the agents for position as caretaker. Some furniture was found
+      for him, and the empty house in Gower Street became his shelter. The
+      immediate present thus provided for, kindly old Deleglise worried himself
+      a good deal concerning what would become of his friend when the house was
+      let. There appeared to be no need for worry. Weeks, months went by.
+      Applications were received by the agents in fair number, view cards signed
+      by the dozen; but prospective tenants were never seen again. One Sunday
+      evening our poet, warmed by old Deleglise's Burgundy, forgetful whose
+      recommendation had secured him the lowly but timely appointment, himself
+      revealed the secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most convenient place I've got,&rdquo; so he told old Deleglise. &ldquo;Whole house
+      to myself. I wander about; it just suits me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad to hear that,&rdquo; murmured old Deleglise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and see me, and I'll cook you a chop,&rdquo; continued the other. &ldquo;I've
+      had the kitchen range brought up into the back drawing-room; saves going
+      up and down stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil you have!&rdquo; growled old Deleglise. &ldquo;What do you think the owner
+      of the house will say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't the least idea who the poor old duffer is myself. They've put me
+      in as caretaker&mdash;an excellent arrangement: avoids all argument about
+      rent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid it will soon come to an end, that excellent arrangement;&rdquo; remarked
+      old Deleglise, drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Why should it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A house in Gower Street oughtn't to remain vacant long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This one will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might tell me,&rdquo; asked old Deleglise, with a grim smile; &ldquo;how do you
+      manage it? What happens when people come to look over the house&mdash;don't
+      you let them in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried that at first,&rdquo; explained the poet, &ldquo;but they would go on
+      knocking, and boys and policemen passing would stop and help them. It got
+      to be a nuisance; so now I have them in, and get the thing over. I show
+      them the room where the murder was committed. If it's a nervous-looking
+      party, I let them off with a brief summary. If that doesn't do, I go into
+      details and show them the blood-spots on the floor. It's an interesting
+      story of the gruesome order. Come round one morning and I'll tell it to
+      you. I'm rather proud of it. With the blinds down and a clock in the next
+      room that ticks loudly, it goes well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet this was a man who, were the merest acquaintance to call upon him and
+      ask for his assistance, would at once take him by the arm and lead him
+      upstairs. All notes and cheques that came into his hands he changed at
+      once into gold. Into some attic half filled with lumber he would fling it
+      by the handful; then, locking the door, leave it there. On their hands and
+      knees he and his friends, when they wanted any, would grovel for it,
+      poking into corners, hunting under boxes, groping among broken furniture,
+      feeling between cracks and crevices. Nothing gave him greater delight than
+      an expedition of this nature to what he termed his gold-field; it had for
+      him, as he would explain, all the excitements of mining without the
+      inconvenience and the distance. He never knew how much was there. For a
+      certain period a pocketful could be picked up in five minutes. Then he
+      would entertain a dozen men at one of the best restaurants in London, tip
+      cabmen and waiters with half-sovereigns, shower half-crowns as he walked
+      through the streets, lend or give to anybody for the asking. Later,
+      half-an-hour's dusty search would be rewarded with a single coin. It made
+      no difference to him; he would dine in Soho for eighteenpence, smoke shag,
+      and run into debt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-haired man, to whom Deleglise had introduced me on the day of my
+      first meeting with the Lady of the train, was another of his most constant
+      visitors. It flattered my vanity that the red-haired man, whose name was
+      famous throughout Europe and America, should condescend to confide to me&mdash;as
+      he did and at some length&mdash;the deepest secrets of his bosom. Awed&mdash;at
+      all events at first&mdash;I would sit and listen while by the hour he
+      would talk to me in corners, telling me of the women he had loved. They
+      formed a somewhat large collection. Julias, Marias, Janets, even Janes&mdash;he
+      had madly worshipped, deliriously adored so many it grew bewildering. With
+      a far-away look in his eyes, pain trembling through each note of his
+      musical, soft voice, he would with bitter jest, with passionate outburst,
+      recount how he had sobbed beneath the stars for love of Isabel, bitten his
+      own flesh in frenzied yearning for Lenore. He appeared from his own
+      account&mdash;if in connection with a theme so poetical I may be allowed a
+      commonplace expression&mdash;to have had no luck with any of them. Of the
+      remainder, an appreciable percentage had been mere passing visions, seen
+      at a distance in the dawn, at twilight&mdash;generally speaking, when the
+      light must have been uncertain. Never again, though he had wandered in the
+      neighbourhood for months, had he succeeded in meeting them. It would occur
+      to me that enquiries among the neighbours, applications to the local
+      police, might possibly have been efficacious; but to have broken in upon
+      his exalted mood with such suggestions would have demanded more nerve than
+      at the time I possessed. In consequence, my thoughts I kept to myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God, boy!&rdquo; he would conclude, &ldquo;may you never love as I loved that
+      woman Miriam&rdquo;&mdash;or Henrietta, or Irene, as the case might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For my sympathetic attitude towards the red-haired man I received one
+      evening commendation from old Deleglise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good boy,&rdquo; said old Deleglise, laying his hand on my shoulder. We were
+      standing in the passage. We had just shaken hands with the red-haired man,
+      who, as usual, had been the last to leave. &ldquo;None of the others will listen
+      to him. He used to stop and confide it all to me after everybody else had
+      gone. Sometimes I have dropped asleep, to wake an hour later and find him
+      still talking. He gets it over early now. Good boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon I learnt it was characteristic of the artist to be willing&mdash;nay,
+      anxious, to confide his private affairs to any one and every one who would
+      only listen. Another characteristic appeared to be determination not to
+      listen to anybody else's. As attentive recipient of other people's
+      troubles and emotions I was subjected to practically no competition
+      whatever. One gentleman, a leading actor of that day, I remember,
+      immediately took me aside on my being introduced to him, and consulted me
+      as to his best course of procedure under the extremely painful conditions
+      that had lately arisen between himself and his wife. We discussed the
+      unfortunate position at some length, and I did my best to counsel fairly
+      and impartially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would lunch with me at White's to-morrow,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We can
+      talk it over quietly. Say half-past one. By the bye, I didn't catch your
+      name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I spelt it to him: he wrote the appointment down on his shirt-cuff. I went
+      to White's the next day and waited an hour, but he did not turn up. I met
+      him three weeks later at a garden-party with his wife. But he appeared to
+      have forgotten me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observing old Deleglise's guests, comparing them with their names, it
+      surprised me the disconnection between the worker and the work. Writers of
+      noble sentiment, of elevated ideality, I found contained in men of
+      commonplace appearance, of gross appetites, of conventional ideas. It
+      seemed doubtful whether they fully comprehended their own work; certainly
+      it had no effect upon their own lives. On the other hand, an innocent,
+      boyish young man, who lived the most correct of lives with a
+      girlish-looking wife in an ivy-covered cottage near Barnes Common, I
+      discovered to be the writer of decadent stories at which the Empress
+      Theodora might have blushed. The men whose names were widest known were
+      not the men who shone the brightest in Deleglise's kitchen; more often
+      they appeared the dull dogs, listening enviously, or failing pathetically
+      when they tried to compete with others who to the public were
+      comparatively unknown. After a time I ceased to confound the artist with
+      the man, thought no more of judging the one by the other than of evolving
+      a tenant from the house to which circumstances or carelessness might have
+      directed him. Clearly they were two creations originally independent of
+      each other, settling down into a working partnership for purposes merely
+      of mutual accommodation; the spirit evidently indifferent as to the
+      particular body into which he crept, anxious only for a place to work in,
+      easily contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak. Cabinet
+      Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped from
+      Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries disguised in
+      grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that with six strokes of
+      the pen they could set half London laughing at whom they would; raw
+      laddies with the burr yet clinging to their tongues, but who we knew would
+      one day have the people dancing to the music of their words. Neither
+      wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor position counted. Was a man interesting,
+      amusing; had he ideas and thoughts of his own? Then he was welcome. Men
+      who had come, men who were coming, met there on equal footing. Among them,
+      as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my place&mdash;somewhat to my
+      dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I have shocked them by the
+      originality of my views, impressed them with the depth of my judgments.
+      They declined to be startled, refused to be impressed; instead, they
+      laughed. Nor from these men could I obtain sympathy in my disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, you villain!&rdquo; roared Deleglise's caretaker at me one
+      evening on entering the kitchen. &ldquo;How dare you waste your time writing
+      this sort of stuff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a copy of the paper containing my &ldquo;Witch of Moel Sarbod&rdquo; in his
+      hand&mdash;then some months old. He screwed it up into a ball and flung it
+      in my face. &ldquo;I've only just read it. What did you get for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing!&rdquo; he screamed. &ldquo;You got off for nothing? You ought to have been
+      whipped at the cart's tail!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come, it's not as bad as that,&rdquo; suggested old Deleglise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not bad! There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There wasn't intended to be,&rdquo; I interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not, you swindler? What were you sent into the world to do? To make
+      it laugh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to make it think,&rdquo; I told him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it think! Hasn't it got enough to think about? Aren't there ten
+      thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers, long-eared
+      philosophers, boring it to death? Who are you to turn up your nose at your
+      work and tell the Almighty His own business? You are here to make us
+      laugh. Get on with your work, you confounded young idiot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Urban Vane was the only one among them who understood me, who agreed with
+      me that I was fitted for higher things than merely to minister to the
+      world's need of laughter. He alone it was who would listen with approval
+      to my dreams of becoming a famous tragedian, a writer of soul-searching
+      books, of passion-analysing plays. I never saw him laugh himself,
+      certainly not at anything funny. &ldquo;Humour!&rdquo; he would explain in his languid
+      drawl, &ldquo;personally it doesn't amuse me.&rdquo; One felt its introduction into
+      the scheme of life had been an error. He was a large, fleshy man, with a
+      dreamy, caressing voice and strangely impassive face. Where he came from,
+      who he was, nobody knew. Without ever passing a remark himself that was
+      worth listening to, he, nevertheless, by some mysterious trick of manner I
+      am unable to explain, soon established himself, even throughout that
+      company, where as a rule men found their proper level, as a silent
+      authority in all contests of wit or argument. Stories at which he
+      listened, bored, fell flat. The <i>bon mot</i> at which some faint
+      suggestion of a smile quivered round his clean-shaven lips was felt to be
+      the crown of the discussion. I can only conclude his secret to have been
+      his magnificent assumption of superiority, added to a sphinx-like
+      impenetrability behind which he could always retire from any danger of
+      exposure. Subjects about which he knew nothing&mdash;and I have come to
+      the conclusion they were more numerous than was suspected&mdash;became in
+      his presence topics outside the radius of cultivated consideration: one
+      felt ashamed of having introduced them. His own subjects&mdash;they were
+      few but exclusive&mdash;he had the knack of elevating into intellectual
+      tests: one felt ashamed, reflecting how little one knew about them.
+      Whether he really did possess a charm of manner, or whether the sense of
+      his superiority with which he had imbued me it was that made any
+      condescension he paid me a thing to grasp at, I am unable to say. Certain
+      it is that when he suggested I should throw up chorus singing and
+      accompany him into the provinces as manager of a theatrical company he was
+      then engaging to run a wonderful drama that was going to revolutionise the
+      English stage and educate the English public, I allowed myself not a
+      moment for consideration, but accepted his proposal with grateful delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; asked Dan. Somehow he had never impressed Dan; but then Dan
+      was a fellow to impress whom was slow work. As he himself confessed, he
+      had no instinct for character. &ldquo;I judge,&rdquo; he would explain, &ldquo;purely by
+      observation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that matter?&rdquo; was my reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does he know about the business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why he wants me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you know about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's not much to know. I can find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take care you don't find out that there's more to know than you think.
+      What is this wonderful play of his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven't seen it yet; I don't think it's finished. It's something from
+      the Spanish or the Russian, I'm not sure. I'm to put it into shape when
+      he's done the translation. He wants me to put my name to it as the
+      adaptor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonder he hasn't asked you to wear his clothes. Has he got any money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he has money. How can you run a theatrical company without
+      money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen the money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't carry it about with him in a bag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have thought your ambition to be to act, not to manage. Managers
+      are to be had cheap enough. Why should he want some one who knows nothing
+      about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to act. I'm going to play a leading part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll do the management really himself; I shall simply advise him. But he
+      doesn't want his own name to appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His people might object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are his people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do I know? What a suspicious chap you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;You are not an actor, you never will be; you
+      are not a business man. You've made a start at writing, that's your proper
+      work. Why not go on with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't get on with it. That one thing was accepted, and never paid for;
+      everything else comes back regularly, just as before. Besides, I can go on
+      writing wherever I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got friends here to help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, clever nonsense is worth writing. It's better than stodgy sense:
+      literature is blocked up with that. Why not follow their advice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because I don't believe they are right. I'm not a clown; I don't mean to
+      be. Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he has nothing
+      else. That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the highest. I have
+      knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct. I mean to prove it
+      to you all. Vane's the only man that understands me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan lit his pipe. &ldquo;Have you made up your mind to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I have. It's an opportunity that doesn't occur twice. 'There's
+      a tide in the affairs&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; interrupted Dan; &ldquo;I've heard it before. Well, if you've made up
+      your mind, there's an end of the matter. Good luck to you! You are young,
+      and it's easier to learn things then than later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You talk,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;as if you were old enough to be my grandfather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled and laid both hands upon my shoulders. &ldquo;So I am,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;quite old enough, little boy Paul. Don't be angry; you'll always be
+      little Paul to me.&rdquo; He put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the
+      window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What'll you do?&rdquo; I enquired. &ldquo;Will you keep on these rooms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I shall accept an offer that has been made to me to
+      take the sub-editorship of a big Yorkshire paper. It is an important
+      position and will give me experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll never be happy mewed up in a provincial town,&rdquo; I told him. &ldquo;I
+      shall want a London address, and I can easily afford it. Let's keep them
+      on together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head. &ldquo;It wouldn't be the same thing,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there came a morning when we said good-bye. Before Dan returned from
+      the office I should be gone. They had been pleasant months that we had
+      spent together in these pretty rooms. Though my life was calling to me
+      full of hope, I felt the pain of leaving them. Two years is a long period
+      in a young man's life, when the sap is running swiftly. My affections had
+      already taken root there. The green leaves in summer, in winter the bare
+      branches of the square, the sparrows that chirped about the window-sills,
+      the quiet peace of the great house, Dan, kindly old Deleglise: around them
+      my fibres clung, closer than I had known. The Lady of the train: she
+      managed it now less clumsily. Her hands and feet had grown smaller, her
+      elbows rounder. I found myself smiling as I thought of her&mdash;one
+      always did smile when one thought of Norah, everybody did;&mdash;of her
+      tomboy ways, her ringing laugh&mdash;there were those who termed it noisy;
+      her irrepressible frankness&mdash;there were times when it was
+      inconvenient. Would she ever become lady-like, sedate, proper? One doubted
+      it. I tried to picture her a wife, the mistress of a house. I found the
+      smile deepening round my mouth. What a jolly wife she would make! I could
+      see her bustling, full of importance; flying into tempers, lasting
+      possibly for thirty seconds; then calling herself names, saving all
+      argument by undertaking her own scolding, and doing it well. I followed
+      her to motherhood. What a joke it would be! What would she do with them?
+      She would just let them do what they liked with her. She and they would be
+      a parcel of children together, she the most excited of them all. No; on
+      second thoughts I could detect in her a strong vein of common sense. They
+      would have to mind their p's and q's. I could see her romping with them,
+      helping them to tear their clothes; but likewise I could see her flying
+      after them, bringing back an armful struggling, bathing it, physicking it.
+      Perhaps she would grow stout, grow grey; but she would still laugh more
+      often than sigh, speak her mind, be quick, good-tempered Norah to the end.
+      Her character precluded all hope of surprise. That, as I told myself, was
+      its defect. About her were none of those glorious possibilities that make
+      of some girls charming mysteries. A woman, said I to myself, should be a
+      wondrous jewel, hiding unknown lights and shadows. You, my dear Norah&mdash;I
+      spoke my thoughts aloud, as had become a habit with me: those who live
+      much alone fall into this way&mdash;you are merely a crystal, not shallow&mdash;no,
+      I should not call you shallow by any mans, but transparent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What would he be, her lover? Some plain, matter-of-fact, business-like
+      young fellow, a good player of cricket and football, fond of his dinner.
+      What a very uninteresting affair the love-making would be! If she liked
+      him&mdash;well, she would probably tell him so; if she didn't, he would
+      know it in five minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for inducing her to change her mind, wooing her, cajoling her&mdash;I
+      heard myself laughing at the idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a quick rap at the door. &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; I cried; and she entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to say good-bye to you,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;I'm just going out. What
+      were you laughing at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, at an idea that occurred to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A funny one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell it me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it was something in connection with yourself. It might offend you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't trouble you much if it did, would it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't suppose it would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why not tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking of your lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It did offend her; I thought it would. But she looked really interesting
+      when she was cross. Her grey eyes would flash, and her whole body quiver.
+      There was a charming spice of danger always about making her cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you think I shall never have one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary, I think you will have a good many.&rdquo; I had not thought so
+      before then. I formed the idea for the first time in that moment, while
+      looking straight into her angry face. It was still a childish face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anger died out of it as it always did within the minute, and she
+      laughed. &ldquo;It would be fun, wouldn't it. I wonder what I should do with
+      him? It makes you feel very serious being in love, doesn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever been in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hesitated for a moment. Then the delight of talking about it overcame my
+      fear of being chaffed. Besides, when she felt it, nobody could be more
+      delightfully sympathetic. I determined to adventure it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;ever since I was a boy. If you are going to be
+      foolish,&rdquo; I added, for I saw the laugh before it came, &ldquo;I shan't talk to
+      you about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not&mdash;I won't, really,&rdquo; she pleaded, making her face serious
+      again. &ldquo;What is she like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took from my breast pocket Barbara's photograph, and handed it to her in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she really as beautiful as that?&rdquo; she asked, gazing at it evidently
+      fascinated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More so,&rdquo; I assured her. &ldquo;Her expression is the most beautiful part of
+      her. Those are only her features.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sighed. &ldquo;I wish I was beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are at an awkward age,&rdquo; I told her. &ldquo;It is impossible to say what you
+      are going to be like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mamma was a lovely woman, everybody says so; and Tom I call awfully
+      handsome. Perhaps I'll be better when I'm filled out a bit more.&rdquo; A small
+      Venetian mirror hung between the two windows; she glanced up into it.
+      &ldquo;It's my nose that irritates me,&rdquo; she said. She rubbed it viciously, as if
+      she would rub it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some people admire snub noses,&rdquo; I explained to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, really?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tennyson speaks of them as 'tip-tilted like the petals of a rose.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How nice of him! Do you think he meant my sort?&rdquo; She rubbed it again, but
+      in a kinder fashion; then looked again at Barbara's photograph. &ldquo;Who is
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was Miss Hasluck,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;she is the Countess Huescar now. She
+      was married last summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I remember; you told us about her. You were children together.
+      But what's the good of your being in love with her if she's married?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes my whole life beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wanting somebody you can't have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you were in love with her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She handed me back the photograph, and I replaced it in my pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't understand that sort of love,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;If I loved anybody I
+      should want to have them with me always.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is with me always,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;in my thoughts.&rdquo; She looked at me
+      with her clear grey eyes. I found myself blinking. Something seemed to be
+      slipping from me, something I did not want to lose. I remember a similar
+      sensation once at the moment of waking from a strange, delicious dream to
+      find the sunlight pouring in upon me through an open window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That isn't being in love,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That's being in love with the idea
+      of being in love. That's the way I used to go to balls&rdquo;&mdash;she laughed&mdash;&ldquo;in
+      front of the glass. You caught me once, do you remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was it not sweeter,&rdquo; I argued, &ldquo;the imagination? You were the belle
+      of the evening; you danced divinely every dance, were taken in to supper
+      by the Lion. In reality you trod upon your partner's toes, bumped and were
+      bumped, were left a wallflower more than half the time, had a headache the
+      next day. Were not the dream balls the more delightful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, they weren't,&rdquo; she answered without the slightest hesitation. &ldquo;One
+      real dance, when at last it came, was worth the whole of them. Oh, I know,
+      I've heard you talking, all of you&mdash;of the faces that you see in
+      dreams and that are ever so much more beautiful than the faces that you
+      see when you're awake; of the wonderful songs that nobody ever sings, the
+      wonderful pictures that nobody ever paints, and all the rest of it. I
+      don't believe a word of it. It's tommyrot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you wouldn't use slang.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you know what I mean. What is the proper word? Give it me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you mean cant,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't. Cant is something that you don't believe in yourself. It's
+      tommyrot: there isn't any other word. When I'm in love it will be with
+      something that is real.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was feeling angry with her. &ldquo;I know just what he will be like. He will
+      be a good-natured, commonplace&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever he is,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;he'll be alive, and he'll want me and
+      I shall want him. Dreams are silly. I prefer being up.&rdquo; She clapped her
+      hands. &ldquo;That's it.&rdquo; Then, silent, she looked at me with an expression of
+      new interest. &ldquo;I've been wondering and wondering what it was: you are not
+      really awake yet. You've never got up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my brain
+      was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the truth. And if
+      so, what would &ldquo;waking up,&rdquo; as she termed it, be like? A flash of memory
+      recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking Bridge, when, as it had
+      seemed to me, the little childish Paul had slipped away from me, leaving
+      me lonely and bewildered to find another Self. Was my boyhood in like
+      manner now falling from me? I found myself clinging to it with vague
+      terror. Its thoughts, its feelings&mdash;dreams: they had grown sweet to
+      me; must I lose them? This cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to receive me:
+      I shrank away from it with fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, I think you will be rather nice when you wake up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her words recalled me to myself. &ldquo;Perhaps I never shall wake up,&rdquo; I said.
+      &ldquo;I don't want to wake up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but one can't go on dreaming all one's life,&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;You'll
+      wake up, and fall in love with somebody real.&rdquo; She came across to me, and
+      taking the lapels of my coat in both her hands, gave me a vigorous shake.
+      &ldquo;I hope she'll be somebody nice. I am rather afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to think me a fool!&rdquo; I was still angry with her, without quite
+      knowing why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook me again. &ldquo;You know I don't. But it isn't the nice people that
+      take best care of themselves. Tom can't. I have to take care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, really. You should hear me scold him. I like taking care of people.
+      Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out her hand. It was white now and shapely, but one could not
+      have called it small. Strong it felt and firm as it gripped mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      I left London, the drums beating in my heart, the flags waving in my
+      brain. Somewhat more than a year later, one foggy wet December evening, I
+      sneaked back to it defeated&mdash;ah, that is a small thing, capable of
+      redress&mdash;disgraced. I returned to it as to a hiding-place where, lost
+      in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such time as I could
+      summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my dead life. I had been
+      ambitious&mdash;dwelling again amid the bitterness of the months that
+      followed my return, I write in the past tense. I had been eager to make a
+      name, a position for myself. But were I to claim no higher aim, I should
+      be doing injustice to my blood&mdash;to the great-souled gentleman whose
+      whole life had been an ode to honour, to her of simple faith who had known
+      no other prayer to teach me than the childish cry, &ldquo;God help me to be
+      good!&rdquo; I had wished to be a great man, but it was to have been a great
+      good man. The world was to have admired me, but to have respected me also.
+      I was to have been the knight without fear, but, rarer yet, without
+      reproach&mdash;Galahad, not Launcelot. I had learnt myself to be a feeble,
+      backboneless fighter, conquered by the first serious assault of evil, a
+      creature of mean fears, slave to every crack of the devil's whip, a feeder
+      with swine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Urban Vane I had discovered to be a common swindler. His play he had
+      stolen from the desk of a well-known dramatist whose acquaintance he had
+      made in Deleglise's kitchen. The man had fallen ill, and Vane had been
+      constant in his visits. Partly recovering, the man had gone abroad to
+      Italy. Had he died there, as at the time was expected, the robbery might
+      never have come to light. News reached us in a small northern town that he
+      had taken a fresh lease of life and was on his way back to England. Then
+      it was that Vane with calm indifference, smoking his cigar over a bottle
+      of wine to which he had invited me, told me the bald truth, adorning it
+      with some touches of wit. Had the recital come upon me sooner, I might
+      have acted differently; but six months' companionship with Urban Vane, if
+      it had not, by grace of the Lord, destroyed the roots of whatever flower
+      of manhood might have been implanted in me, had most certainly withered
+      its leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man was clever. That he was not clever enough to perceive from the
+      beginning what he has learnt since: that honesty is the best policy&mdash;at
+      least, for men with brains&mdash;remains somewhat of a mystery to me.
+      Where once he made his hundreds among shady ways, he now, I suppose, makes
+      his thousands in the broad daylight of legitimate enterprise. Chicanery in
+      the blood, one might imagine, has to be worked out. Urban Vanes are to be
+      found in all callings. They commence as scamps; years later, to one's
+      astonishment, one finds them ornaments to their profession. Wild oats are
+      of various quality, according to the soil from which they are preserved.
+      We sow them in our various ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first I stormed. Vane sat with an amused smile upon his lips and
+      listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your language, my dear Kelver,&rdquo; he replied, my vocabulary exhausted,
+      &ldquo;might wound me were I able to accept you as an authority upon this vexed
+      question of morals. With the rest of the world you preach one thing and
+      practise another. I have noticed it so often. It is perhaps sad, but the
+      preaching has ceased to interest me. You profess to be very indignant with
+      me for making use of another man's ideas. It is done every day. You
+      yourself were quite ready to take credit not due to you. For months we
+      have been travelling with this play: 'Drama, in five acts, by Mr. Horace
+      Moncrieff.' Not more than two hundred lines of it are your own&mdash;excellent
+      lines, I admit, but they do not constitute the play.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This aspect of the affair had not occurred to me. &ldquo;But you asked me to put
+      my name to it,&rdquo; I stammered. &ldquo;You said you did not want your own to appear&mdash;for
+      private reasons. You made a point of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He waved away the smoke from his cigar. &ldquo;The man you are posing as would
+      never have put his name to work not his own. You never hesitated; on the
+      contrary, you jumped at the chance of so easy an opening to your career as
+      playwright. My need, as you imagined it, was your opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said it was from the French,&rdquo; I argued; &ldquo;you had merely
+      translated it, I adapted it. I don't defend the custom, but it is the
+      custom: the man who adapts a play calls himself the author. They all do
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;It has always amused me. Our sick friend himself,
+      whom I am sure we are both delighted to welcome back to life, has done it
+      more than once, and made a very fair profit on the transaction. Indeed,
+      from internal evidence, I am strongly of opinion that this present play is
+      a case in point. Well, chickens come home to roost: I adapt from him. What
+      is the difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Simply this,&rdquo; he continued, pouring himself out another glass of wine,
+      &ldquo;that whereas, owing to the anomalous state of the copyright laws,
+      stealing from the foreign author is legal and commendable, against
+      stealing from the living English author there is a certain prejudice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the consequences, I am afraid, you will find somewhat unpleasant,&rdquo; I
+      suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed: it was not a frivolity to which he was prone. &ldquo;You mean, my
+      dear Kelver that you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't look so dumbfounded,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;You cannot be so stupid as you
+      are pretending to be. The original manuscript at the Lord Chamberlain's
+      office is in your handwriting. You knew our friend as well as I did, and
+      visited him. Why, the whole tour has been under your management. You have
+      arranged everything&mdash;most excellently; I have been quite surprised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My anger came later. For the moment, the sudden light blinded me to
+      everything but fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you told me,&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;it was only a matter of form, that you wanted
+      to keep your name out of it because&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking at me with an expression of genuine astonishment. My words
+      began to appear humorous even to myself. I found it difficult to believe I
+      had been the fool I was now seeing myself to have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I am really sorry. I took you for a man of the
+      world. I thought you merely did not wish to know anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, to my shame, fear was the thing uppermost in my heart. &ldquo;You are not
+      going to put it all on to me?&rdquo; I pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had risen. He laid his hand upon my shoulder. Instead of flinging it
+      off, I was glad of its kindly pressure. He was the only man to whom I
+      could look for help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't take it so seriously,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He will merely think the
+      manuscript has been lost. As likely as not, he will be unable to remember
+      whether he wrote it or merely thought of writing it. No one in the company
+      will say anything: it isn't their business. We must set to work. I had
+      altered it a good deal before you saw it, and changed all the names of the
+      characters. We will retain the third act: it is the only thing of real
+      value in the play. The situation is not original; you have as much right
+      to dish it up as he had. In a fortnight we will have the whole thing so
+      different that if he saw it himself he would only imagine we had got hold
+      of the idea and had forestalled him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There were moments during the next few weeks when I listened to the voice
+      of my good angel, when I saw clearly that even from the lowest point of
+      view he was giving me sound advice. I would go to the man, tell him
+      frankly the whole truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Vane never left my elbow. Suspecting, I suppose, he gave me clearly to
+      understand that if I did so, I must expect no mercy from him. My story,
+      denounced by him as an outrageous lie, would be regarded as the
+      funk-inspired subterfuge of a young rogue. At the best I should handicap
+      myself with suspicion that would last me throughout my career. On the
+      other hand, what harm had we done? Presented in some twenty or so small
+      towns, where it would soon be forgotten, a play something like. Most plays
+      were something like. Our friend would produce his version and reap a rich
+      harvest; ours would disappear. If by any unlikely chance discussion should
+      arise, the advertisement would be to his advantage. So soon as possible we
+      would replace it by a new piece altogether. A young man of my genius could
+      surely write something better than hotch-potch such as this; experience
+      was all that I had lacked. As regarded one's own conscience, was not the
+      world's honesty a mere question of convention? Had he been a young man,
+      and had we diddled him out of his play for a ten-pound note, we should
+      have been applauded as sharp men of business. The one commandment of the
+      world was: Don't get found out. The whole trouble, left alone, would sink
+      and fade. Later, we should tell it as a good joke&mdash;and be laughed
+      with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I fell from mine own esteem. Vane helping me&mdash;and he had brains&mdash;I
+      set feverishly to work. I am glad to remember that every line I wrote was
+      born in misery. I tried to persuade Vane to let me make a new play
+      altogether, which I offered to give him for nothing. He expressed himself
+      as grateful, but his frequently declared belief in my dramatic talent
+      failed to induce his acceptance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Later on, my dear Kelver,&rdquo; was his reply. &ldquo;For the present this is doing
+      very well. Going on as we are, we shall soon improve it out of all
+      recognition, while at the same time losing nothing that is essential. All
+      your ideas are excellent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the end of about three weeks we had got together a concoction that, so
+      far as dialogue and characters were concerned, might be said to be our
+      own. There was good work in it, here and there. Under other conditions I
+      might have been proud of much that I had written. As it was, I experienced
+      only the terror of the thief dodging the constable: my cleverness might
+      save me; it afforded me no further satisfaction. My humour, when I heard
+      the people laughing at it, I remembered I had forged listening in vague
+      fear to every creak upon the stairs, wondering in what form discovery
+      might come upon me. There was one speech, addressed by the hero to the
+      villain: &ldquo;Yes, I admit it; I do love her. But there is that which I love
+      better&mdash;my self-respect!&rdquo; Stepping down to the footlights and
+      slapping his chest (which according to stage convention would appear to be
+      a sort of moral jewel-box bursting with assorted virtues), our juvenile
+      lead&mdash;a gentleman who led a somewhat rabbit-like existence,
+      perpetually diving down openings to avoid service of writs, at the
+      instance of his wife, for alimony&mdash;would invariably bring down the
+      house upon this sentiment. Every night, listening to the applause, I would
+      shudder, recalling how I had written it with burning cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a character in the piece, a vicious old man, that from the
+      beginning Vane had wanted me to play. I had disliked the part and had
+      refused, choosing instead to act a high-souled countryman, in the
+      portrayal of whose irreproachable emotions I had taken pleasure. Vane now
+      renewed his arguments, and my power of resistance seeming to have departed
+      from me, I accepted the exchange. Certainly the old gentleman's scenes
+      went with more snap, but at a cost of further degradation to myself. Upon
+      an older actor the effect might have been harmless, but the growing tree
+      springs back less surely; I found myself taking pleasure in the coarse
+      laughter that rewarded my suggestive leers, calling up all the evil in my
+      nature to help me in the development of fresh &ldquo;business.&rdquo; Vane was
+      enthusiastic in his praises, generous with his assistance. Under his
+      tuition I succeeded in making the part as unpleasant as we dared. I had
+      genius, so Vane told me; I understood so much of human nature. One proof
+      of the moral deterioration creeping over me was that I was beginning to
+      like Vane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking back at the man as I see him plainly now, a very ordinary scamp,
+      his pretension not even amusing, I find it difficult to present him as he
+      appeared to my boyish eyes. He was well educated and well read. He gave
+      himself the airs of a superior being by freak of fate compelled to abide
+      in a world of inferior creatures. To live among them in comfort it was
+      necessary for him to outwardly conform to their conventions but to respect
+      their reasoning would have been beneath him. To accept their laws as
+      binding on one's own conscience was, using the common expression, to give
+      oneself away, to confess oneself commonplace. Every decent instinct a man
+      might own to was proof in Vane's eyes of his being &ldquo;suburban,&rdquo; &ldquo;bourgeois&rdquo;&mdash;everything
+      that was unintellectual. It was the first time I had heard this sort of
+      talk. Vane was one of the pioneers of the movement, which has since become
+      somewhat tiresome. To laugh at it is easy to a man of the world; boys are
+      impressed by it. From him I first heard the now familiar advocacy of pure
+      Hedonism. Pan, enticed from his dark groves, was to sit upon Olympus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My lower nature rose within me to proclaim the foolish chatterer as a
+      prophet. So life was not as I had been taught&mdash;a painful struggle
+      between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless
+      epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but
+      rather through joyous expression of the animal lay advancement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Villains&mdash;workers in wrong for aesthetic pleasure of the art&mdash;are
+      useful characters in fiction; in real life they do not exist. I am
+      convinced the man believed most of the rubbish he talked. Since the time
+      of which I write he has done some service to the world. I understand he is
+      an excellent husband and father, a considerate master, a delightful host.
+      He intended, I have no doubt, to improve me, to enlarge my understanding,
+      to free me from soul-stifling bondage of convention. Not to credit him
+      with this well-meaning intention would be to assume him something quite
+      inhuman, to bestow upon him a dignity beyond his deserts. I find it easier
+      to regard him merely as a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our leading lady was a handsome but coarse woman, somewhat over-developed.
+      Starting life as a music-hall singer, she had married a small tradesman in
+      the south of London. Some three or four years previous, her Juno-like
+      charms had turned the head of a youthful novelist&mdash;a refined,
+      sensitive man, of whom great things in literature had been expected, and,
+      judging from his earlier work, not unreasonably. He had run away with her,
+      and eventually married her; the scandal was still fresh. Already she had
+      repented of her bargain. These women regard their infatuated lovers merely
+      as steps in the social ladder, and he had failed to appreciably advance
+      her. Under her demoralising spell his ambition had died in him. He no
+      longer wrote, no longer took interest in anything beyond his own
+      debasement. He was with us in the company, playing small parts, and
+      playing them badly; he would have remained with us as bill-poster rather
+      than have been sent away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vane planned to bring this woman and myself together. To her he pictured
+      me a young gentleman of means, a coming author, who would soon be earning
+      an income sufficient to keep her in every luxury. To me he hinted that she
+      had fallen in love with me. I was never attracted to her by any feeling
+      stronger than the admiration with which one views a handsome animal. It
+      was my vanity upon which he worked. He envied me; any man would envy me;
+      experience of life was what I needed to complete my genius. The great
+      intellects of this earth must learn all lessons, even at the cost of
+      suffering to themselves and others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As years before I had laboured to acquire a liking for cigars and whiskey,
+      deeming it an accomplishment necessary to a literary career, so
+      painstakingly I now applied myself to the cultivation of a pretty taste in
+      passion. According to the literature, fictional and historical, Vane was
+      kind enough to supply me with, men of note were invariably sad dogs. That
+      my temperament was not that of the sad dog, that I lacked instinct and
+      inclination for the part, appeared to this young idiot of whom I am
+      writing in the light of a defect. That her languishing glances irritated
+      rather than maddened me, that the occasional covert pressure of her hot,
+      thick hand left me cold, I felt a reproach to my manhood. I would fall in
+      love with her. Surely my blood was red like other men's. Besides, was I
+      not an artist, and was not profligacy the hall-mark of the artist?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one grows tired of the confessional. Fate saved me from playing the
+      part Vane had assigned me in this vulgar comedy, dragged me from my
+      entanglement, flung me on my feet again. She was a little brusque in the
+      process; but I do not feel inclined to blame the kind lady for that. The
+      mud was creeping upward fast, and a quick hand must needs be rough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our dramatic friend produced his play sooner than we had expected. It
+      crept out that something very like it had been seen in the Provinces.
+      Argument followed, enquiries were set on foot. &ldquo;It will blow over,&rdquo; said
+      Vane. But it seemed to be blowing our way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salaries, as a rule, were paid by me on Friday night. Vane, in the
+      course of the evening, would bring me the money for me to distribute after
+      the performance. We were playing in the north of Ireland. I had not seen
+      Vane all that day. So soon as I had changed my clothes I left my
+      dressing-room to seek him. The box-office keeper, meeting me, put a note
+      into my hand. It was short and to the point. Vane had pocketed the
+      evening's takings, and had left by the seven-fifty train! He regretted
+      causing inconvenience, but life was replete with small comedies; the wise
+      man attached no seriousness to them. We should probably meet again and
+      enjoy a laugh over our experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some rumour had got about. I looked up from the letter to find myself
+      surrounded by suspicious faces. With dry lips I told them the truth. Only
+      they happened not to regard it as the truth. Vane throughout had contrived
+      cleverly to them I was the manager, the sole person responsible. My
+      wearily spoken explanations were to them incomprehensible lies. The
+      quarter of an hour might have been worse for me had I been sufficiently
+      alive to understand or care what they were saying. A dull, listless apathy
+      had come over me. I felt the scene only stupid, ridiculous, tiresome.
+      There was some talk of giving me &ldquo;a damned good hiding.&rdquo; I doubt whether I
+      should have known till the next morning whether the suggestion had been
+      carried out or not. I gathered that the true history of the play, the
+      reason for the sudden alterations, had been known to them all along. They
+      appeared to have reserved their virtuous indignation till this evening. As
+      explanation of my apparent sleepiness, somebody, whether in kindness to me
+      or not I cannot say, suggested I was drunk. Fortunately, it carried
+      conviction. No further trains left the town that night; I was allowed to
+      depart. A deputation promised to be round at my lodgings early in the
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our leading lady had left the theatre immediately on the fall of the
+      curtain; it was not necessary for her to wait, her husband acting as her
+      business man. On reaching my rooms, I found her sitting by the fire. It
+      reminded me that our agent in advance having fallen ill, her husband had,
+      at her suggestion, been appointed in his place, and had left us on the
+      Wednesday to make the necessary preparations in the next town on our list.
+      I thought that perhaps she had come round for her money, and the idea
+      amused me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; she said, with her one smile. I had been doing my best for some
+      months to regard it as soul-consuming, but without any real success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I answered. It bored me, her being there. I wanted to be alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem overjoyed to see me. What's the matter with you? What's
+      happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed. &ldquo;Vane's bolted and taken the week's money with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The beast!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I knew he was that sort. What ever made you take
+      up with him? Will it make much difference to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes a difference all round,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;There's no money to pay any
+      of you. There's nothing to pay your fares back to London.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen. &ldquo;Here, let me understand this,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Are you the rich
+      mug Vane's been representing you to be, or only his accomplice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mug and the accomplice both,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;without the rich. It's his
+      tour. He put my name to it because he didn't want his own to appear&mdash;for
+      family reasons. It's his play; he stole it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She interrupted me with a whistle. &ldquo;I thought it looked a bit fishy, all
+      those alterations. But such funny things do happen in this profession!
+      Stole it, did he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole thing in manuscript. I put my name to it for the same reason&mdash;he
+      didn't want his own to appear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She dropped into her chair and laughed&mdash;a good-tempered laugh, loud
+      and long. &ldquo;Well, I'm damned!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;The first man who has ever taken
+      me in. I should never have signed if I had thought it was his show. I
+      could see the sort he was with half an eye.&rdquo; She jumped up from the chair.
+      &ldquo;Here, let me get out of this,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I just looked in to know what
+      time to-morrow; I'd forgotten. You needn't say I came.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hand upon the door, laughter seized her again, so that for support she
+      had to lean against the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know why I really did come?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You'll guess when you come
+      to think it over, so I may as well tell you. It's a bit of a joke. I came
+      to say 'yes' to what you asked me last night. Have you forgotten?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stared at her. Last night! It seemed a long while ago&mdash;so very
+      unimportant what I might have said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed again. &ldquo;So help me! if you haven't. Well, you asked me to run
+      away with you&mdash;that's all, to let our two souls unite. Damned lucky I
+      took a day to think it over! Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; I answered, without moving. I was gripping a chair to
+      prevent myself from rushing at her, pushing her out of the room, and
+      locking the door. I wanted to be alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I heard her turn the handle. &ldquo;Got a pound or two to carry you over?&rdquo; It
+      was a woman's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I put my hand into my pocket. &ldquo;One pound seventeen,&rdquo; I answered, counting
+      it. &ldquo;It will pay my fare to London&mdash;or buy me a dinner and a
+      second-hand revolver. I haven't quite decided yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you get back and pull yourself together,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You're only a
+      kid. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put a few things into a small bag and walked thirty miles that night
+      into Belfast. Arrived in London, I took a lodging in Deptford, where I was
+      least likely to come in contact with any face I had ever seen before. I
+      maintained myself by giving singing lessons at sixpence the half-hour,
+      evening lessons in French and German (the Lord forgive me!) to ambitious
+      shop-boys at eighteen pence a week, making up tradesmen's books. A few
+      articles of jewellery I had retained enabled me to tide over bad periods.
+      For some four months I existed there, never going outside the
+      neighbourhood. Occasionally, wandering listlessly about the streets, some
+      object, some vista, would strike me by reason of its familiarity. Then I
+      would turn and hasten back into my grave of dim, weltering streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of thoughts, emotions, during these dead days I was unconscious. Somewhere
+      in my brain they may have been stirring, contending; but myself I lived as
+      in a long, dull dream. I ate, and drank, and woke, and slept, and walked
+      and walked, and lounged by corners; staring by the hour together, seeing
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has surprised me since to find the scenes I must then have witnessed
+      photographed so clearly on my mind. Tragedies, dramas, farces, played
+      before me in that teeming underworld&mdash;the scenes present themselves
+      to me distinct, complete; yet I have no recollection of ever having seen
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I fell ill. It must have been some time in April, but I kept no count of
+      days. Nobody came near me, nobody knew of me. I occupied a room at the top
+      of a huge block of workmen's dwellings. A woman who kept a second-hand
+      store had lent me for a shilling a week a few articles of furniture. Lying
+      upon my chair-bedstead, I listened to the shrill sounds around me, that
+      through the light and darkness never ceased. A pint of milk, left each
+      morning on the stone landing, kept me alive. I would wait for the man's
+      descending footsteps, then crawl to the door. I hoped I was going to die,
+      regretting my returning strength, the desire for food that drove me out
+      into the streets again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night, a week or two after my partial recovery, I had wandered on and
+      on for hour after hour. The breaking dawn recalled me to myself. I was
+      outside the palings of a park. In the faint shadowy light it looked
+      strange and unfamiliar. I was too tired to walk further. I scrambled over
+      the low wooden fencing, and reaching a seat, dropped down and fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sitting in a sunny avenue; birds were singing joyously, bright
+      flowers were all around me. Norah was beside me, her frank, sweet eyes
+      were looking into mine; they were full of tenderness, mingled with wonder.
+      It was a delightful dream: I felt myself smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly I started to my feet. Norah's strong hand drew me down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was in the broad walk, Regent's Park, where, I remembered, Norah often
+      walked before breakfast. A park-keeper, the only other human creature
+      within sight, was eyeing me suspiciously. I saw myself&mdash;without a
+      looking-glass&mdash;unkempt, ragged. My intention was to run, but Norah
+      was holding me by the arm. Savagely I tried to shake her off. I was weak
+      from my recent illness, and, I suppose, half starved; it angered me to
+      learn she was the stronger of the two. In spite of my efforts, she dragged
+      me back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ashamed of my weakness, ashamed of everything about me, I burst into
+      tears; and that of course made me still more ashamed. To add to my
+      discomfort, I had no handkerchief. Holding me with one hand&mdash;it was
+      quite sufficient&mdash;Norah produced her own, and wiped my eyes. The
+      park-keeper, satisfied, I suppose, that at all events I was not dangerous,
+      with a grin passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you been, and what have you been doing?&rdquo; asked Norah. She
+      still retained her grip upon me, and in her grey eyes was quiet
+      determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with my face turned away from her, I told her the whole miserable
+      story, taking strange satisfaction in exaggerating, if anything, my own
+      share of the disgrace. My recital ended, I sat staring down the long,
+      shadow-freckled way, and for awhile there was no sound but the chirping of
+      the sparrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then behind me I heard a smothered laugh. It was impossible to imagine it
+      could come from Norah. I turned quickly to see who had stolen upon us. It
+      was Norah who was laughing; though to do her justice she was trying to
+      suppress it, holding her handkerchief to her face. It was of no use, it
+      would out; she abandoned the struggle, and gave way to it. It astonished
+      the sparrows into silence; they stood in a row upon the low iron border
+      and looked at one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you think it funny,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is funny,&rdquo; she persisted. &ldquo;Don't say you have lost your sense of
+      humour, Paul; it was the one real thing you possessed. You were so cocky&mdash;you
+      don't know how cocky you were! Everybody was a fool but Vane; nobody else
+      but he appreciated you at your true worth. You and he between you were
+      going to reform the stage, to educate the public, to put everything and
+      everybody to rights. I am awfully sorry for all you've gone through; but
+      now that it is over, can't you see yourself that it is funny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faintly, dimly, this aspect of the case, for the very first time, began to
+      present itself to me; but I should have preferred Norah to have been
+      impressed by its tragedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not all,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I nearly ran away with another man's wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad to notice that sobered her somewhat. &ldquo;Nearly? Why not quite?&rdquo;
+       she asked more seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She thought I was some young idiot with money,&rdquo; I replied bitterly,
+      pleased with the effect I had produced. &ldquo;Vane had told her a pack of lies.
+      When she found out I was only a poor devil, ruined, disgraced, without a
+      sixpence&mdash;-&rdquo; I made a gesture expressive of eloquent contempt for
+      female nature generally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said Norah; &ldquo;I told you you would fall in love with
+      something real.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her words irritated me, unreasonably, I confess. &ldquo;In love!&rdquo; I replied;
+      &ldquo;good God, I was never in love with her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why did you nearly run away with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was wishing now I had not mentioned the matter; it promised to be
+      difficult of explanation. &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; I replied irritably. &ldquo;I thought
+      she was in love with me. She was very beautiful&mdash;at least, other
+      people seemed to think she was. Artists are not like ordinary men. You
+      must live&mdash;understand life, before you can teach it to others. When a
+      beautiful woman is in love with you&mdash;or pretends to be, you&mdash;you
+      must say something. You can't stand like a fool and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again her laughter interrupted me; this time she made no attempt to hide
+      it. The sparrows chirped angrily, and flew off to continue their
+      conversation somewhere where there would be less noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the biggest baby, Paul,&rdquo; she said, so soon as she could speak, &ldquo;I
+      ever heard of.&rdquo; She seized me by the shoulders, and turned me round. &ldquo;If
+      you weren't looking so ill and miserable, I would shake you, Paul, till
+      there wasn't a bit of breath left in your body.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much money do you owe?&rdquo; she asked&mdash;&ldquo;to the people in the company
+      and anybody else, I mean&mdash;roughly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About a hundred and fifty pounds,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you rest day or night, Paul, till you have paid that hundred and
+      fifty&mdash;every penny of it&mdash;I'll think you the meanest cad in
+      London!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her grey eyes were flashing quite alarmingly. I felt almost afraid of her.
+      She could be so vehement at times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can I?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go straight home,&rdquo; she commanded, &ldquo;and write something funny: an article,
+      story&mdash;anything you like; only mind that it is funny. Post it to me
+      to-morrow, at the latest. Dan is in London, editing a new weekly. I'll
+      have it copied out and sent to him. I shan't say who it is from. I shall
+      merely ask him to read it and reply, at once. If you've a grain of grit
+      left in you, you'll write something that he will be glad to have and to
+      pay for. Pawn that ring on your finger and get yourself a good breakfast&rdquo;&mdash;it
+      was my mother's wedding-ring, the only piece of dispensable property I had
+      not parted with&mdash;&ldquo;<i>she</i> won't mind helping you. But nobody else
+      is going to&mdash;except yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her watch. &ldquo;I must be off.&rdquo; She turned again. &ldquo;There is
+      something I was forgetting. B&mdash;&ldquo;&mdash;she mentioned the name of the
+      dramatist whose play Vane had stolen&mdash;&ldquo;has been looking for you for
+      the last three months. If you hadn't been an idiot you might have saved
+      yourself a good deal of trouble. He is quite certain it was Vane stole the
+      manuscript. He asked the nurse to bring it to him an hour after Vane had
+      left the house, and it couldn't be found. Besides, the man's character is
+      well known. And so is yours. I won't tell it you,&rdquo; she laughed; &ldquo;anyhow,
+      it isn't that of a knave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made a step towards me, then changed her mind. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I
+      shan't shake hands with you till you have paid the last penny that you
+      owe. Then I shall know that you are a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not look back. I watched her, till the sunlight, streaming in my
+      eyes, raised a golden mist between us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I went to my work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It took me three years to win that handshake. For the first six months I
+      remained in Deptford. There was excellent material to be found there for
+      humorous articles, essays, stories; likewise for stories tragic and
+      pathetic. But I owed a hundred and fifty pounds&mdash;a little over two
+      hundred it reached to, I found, when I came to add up the actual figures.
+      So I paid strict attention to business, left the tears to be garnered by
+      others&mdash;better fitted maybe for the task; kept to my own patch,
+      reaped and took to market only the laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning I sent each manuscript to Norah; she had it copied out,
+      debited me with the cost received payment, and sent me the balance. At
+      first my earnings were small; but Norah was an excellent agent; rapidly
+      they increased. Dan grew quite cross with her, wrote in pained surprise at
+      her greed. The &ldquo;matter&rdquo; was fair, but in no way remarkable. Any friend of
+      hers, of course, he was anxious to assist; but business was business. In
+      justice to his proprietors, he could not and would not pay more than the
+      market value. Miss Deleglise, replying curtly in the third person, found
+      herself in perfect accord with Mr. Brian as to business being business. If
+      Mr. Brian could not afford to pay her price for material so excellent,
+      other editors with whom Miss Deleglise was equally well acquainted could
+      and would. Answer by return would greatly oblige, pending which the
+      manuscript then in her hands she retained. Mr. Brian, understanding he had
+      found his match, grumbled but paid. Whether he had any suspicion who &ldquo;Jack
+      Homer&rdquo; might be, he never confessed; but he would have played the game,
+      pulled his end of the rope, in either case. Nor was he allowed to decide
+      the question for himself. Competition was introduced into the argument. Of
+      purpose a certain proportion of my work my agent sent elsewhere. &ldquo;Jack
+      Homer&rdquo; grew to be a commodity in demand. For, seated at my rickety table,
+      I laughed as I wrote, the fourth wall of the dismal room fading before my
+      eyes revealing vistas beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, it was slow work. Humour is not an industrious maid; declines to be
+      bustled, will work only when she feels inclined&mdash;does not often feel
+      inclined; gives herself a good many unnecessary airs; if worried, packs up
+      and goes off, Heaven knows where! comes back when she thinks she will: a
+      somewhat unreliable young person. To my literary labours I found it
+      necessary to add journalism. I lacked Dan's magnificent assurance. Fate
+      never befriends the nervous. Had I burst into the editorial sanctum, the
+      editor most surely would have been out; if in, would have been a man of
+      short ways, would have seen to it that I went out quickly. But the idea
+      was not to be thought of; Robert Macaire himself in my one coat would have
+      been diffident, apologetic. I joined the ranks of the penny-a-liners&mdash;to
+      be literally exact, three halfpence a liners. In company with half a dozen
+      other shabby outsiders&mdash;some of them young men like myself seeking to
+      climb; others, older men who had sunk&mdash;I attended inquests, police
+      courts; flew after fire engines; rejoiced in street accidents; yearned for
+      murders. Somewhat vulture-like we lived precariously upon the misfortunes
+      of others. We made occasional half crowns by providing the public with
+      scandal, occasional crowns by keeping our information to ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, gentlemen,&rdquo; would explain our spokesman in a hoarse whisper, on
+      returning to the table, &ldquo;I think the corpse's brother-in-law is anxious
+      that the affair, if possible, should be kept out of the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The closeness and attention with which we would follow that particular
+      case, the fulness and completeness of our notes, would be quite
+      remarkable. Our spokesman would rise, drift carelessly away, to return
+      five minutes later, wiping his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a very interesting case, gentlemen, I don't think. Shall we say five
+      shillings apiece?&rdquo; Sometimes a sense of the dignity of our calling would
+      induce us to stand out for ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here also my sense of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an undue
+      advantage over my competitors. Twelve good men and true had been asked to
+      say how a Lascar sailor had met his death. It was perfectly clear how he
+      had met his death. A plumber, working on the roof of a small two-storeyed
+      house, had slipped and fallen on him. The plumber had escaped with a few
+      bruises; the unfortunate sailor had been picked up dead. Some blame
+      attached to the plumber. His mate, an excellent witness, told us the whole
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was fixing a gas-pipe on the first floor,&rdquo; said the man. &ldquo;The prisoner
+      was on the roof.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We won't call him 'the prisoner,'&rdquo; interrupted the coroner, &ldquo;at least,
+      not yet. Refer to him, if you please, as the 'last witness.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last witness,&rdquo; corrected himself the man. &ldquo;He shouts down the chimney
+      to know if I was ready for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ready and waiting,' I says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Right,' he says; 'I'm coming in through the window.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Wait a bit,' I says; 'I'll go down and move the ladder for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It's all right,' he says; 'I can reach it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'No, you can't,' I says. 'It's the other side of the chimney.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I can get round,' he says.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, before I knew what had happened, I hears him go, smack! I rushes to
+      the window and looks out: I see him on the pavement, sitting up like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Hullo, Jim,' I says. 'Have you hurt yourself?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I think I'm all right,' he says, 'as far as I can tell. But I wish you'd
+      come down. This bloke I've fallen on looks a bit sick.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The others headed their flimsy &ldquo;Sad Accident,&rdquo; a title truthful but not
+      alluring. I altered mine to &ldquo;Plumber in a Hurry&mdash;Fatal Result.&rdquo;
+       Saying as little as possible about the unfortunate sailor, I called the
+      attention of plumbers generally to the coroner's very just remarks upon
+      the folly of undue haste; pointed out to them, as a body, the trouble that
+      would arise if somehow they could not cure themselves of this tendency to
+      rush through their work without a moment's loss of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It established for me a useful reputation. The sub-editor of one evening
+      paper condescended so far as to come out in his shirt-sleeves and shake
+      hands with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the sort of thing we want,&rdquo; he told me; &ldquo;a light touch, a bit of
+      humour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I snatched fun from fires (I sincerely trust the insurance premiums were
+      not overdue); culled quaintness from street rows; extracted merriment from
+      catastrophes the most painful, and prospered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though often within a stone's throw of the street, I unremittingly avoided
+      the old house at Poplar. I was suffering inconvenience at this period by
+      reason of finding myself two distinct individuals, contending with each
+      other. My object was to encourage the new Paul&mdash;the sensible,
+      practical, pushful Paul, whose career began to look promising; to drive
+      away from interfering with me his strangely unlike twin&mdash;the old
+      childish Paul of the sad, far-seeing eyes. Sometimes out of the cracked
+      looking-glass his wistful, yearning face would plead to me; but I would
+      sternly shake my head. I knew well his cunning. Had I let him have his
+      way, he would have led me through the maze of streets he knew so well,
+      past the broken railings (outside which he would have left my body
+      standing), along the weedy pathway, through the cracked and dented door,
+      up the creaking staircase to the dismal little chamber where we once&mdash;he
+      and I together&mdash;had sat dreaming foolish dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he would whisper; &ldquo;it is so near. Let us push aside the chest of
+      drawers very quietly, softly raise the broken sash, prop it open with the
+      Latin dictionary, lean our elbows on the sill, listen to the voices of the
+      weary city, voices calling to us from the darkness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was too wary to be caught. &ldquo;Later on,&rdquo; I would reply to him; &ldquo;when I
+      have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your wheedling. Then I
+      will go with you, if you are still in existence, my sentimental little
+      friend. We will dream again the old impractical, foolish dreams&mdash;and
+      laugh at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he would fade away, and in his place would nod to me approvingly a
+      businesslike-looking, wide-awake young fellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to one sentimental temptation I succumbed. My position was by now
+      assured; there was no longer any reason for my hiding myself. I determined
+      to move westward. I had not intended to soar so high, but passing through
+      Guildford Street one day, the creeper-covered corner house that my father
+      had once thought of taking recalled itself to me. A card was in the
+      fanlight. I knocked and made enquiries. A bed-sitting-room upon the third
+      floor was vacant. I remembered it well the moment the loquacious landlady
+      opened its door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This shall be your room, Paul,&rdquo; said my father. So clearly his voice
+      sounded behind me that I turned, forgetting for the moment it was but a
+      memory. &ldquo;You will be quiet here, and we can shut out the bed and washstand
+      with a screen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So my father had his way. It was a pleasant, sunny little room,
+      overlooking the gardens of the hospital. I followed my father's
+      suggestion, shut out the bed and washstand with a screen. And sometimes of
+      an evening it would amuse me to hear my father turn the handle of the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you getting on&mdash;all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Famously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Often there came back to me the words he had once used. &ldquo;You must be the
+      practical man, Paul, and get on. Myself, I have always been somewhat of a
+      dreamer. I meant to do such great things in the world, and somehow I
+      suppose I aimed too high. I wasn't&mdash;practical.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But ought not one to aim high?&rdquo; I had asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My father had fidgeted in his chair. &ldquo;It is very difficult to say. It is
+      all so&mdash;so very ununderstandable. You aim high and you don't hit
+      anything&mdash;at least, it seems as if you didn't. Perhaps, after all, it
+      is better to aim at something low, and&mdash;and hit it. Yet it seems a
+      pity&mdash;one's ideals, all the best part of one&mdash;I don't know why
+      it is. Perhaps we do not understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some months I had been writing over my own name. One day a letter was
+      forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed. It was a
+      short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to the wedding
+      of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had almost forgotten the
+      incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not unsatisfactory to learn
+      that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I judged from an invitation
+      having been sent me, that the lady wished me to be witness of the fact
+      that my desertion had not left her disconsolate. So much gratification I
+      felt I owed her, and accordingly, purchasing a present as expensive as my
+      means would permit, I made my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock
+      coat and light grey trousers, to Kennington Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ceremony was already in progress. Creeping on tiptoe up the aisle, I
+      was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was laid upon my sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're all here,&rdquo; whispered the O'Kelly; &ldquo;just room for ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Squeezing his hand as I passed, I sat down between the Signora and Mrs.
+      Peedles. Both ladies were weeping; the Signora silently, one tear at a
+      time clinging fondly to her pretty face as though loath to fall from it;
+      Mrs. Peedles copiously, with explosive gurgles, as of water from a bottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is such a beautiful service,&rdquo; murmured the Signora, pressing my hand
+      as I settled myself down. &ldquo;I should so&mdash;so love to be married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me darling,&rdquo; whispered the O'Kelly, seizing her other hand and kissing it
+      covertly behind his open Prayer Book, &ldquo;perhaps ye will be&mdash;one day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Signora through her tears smiled at him, but with a sigh shook her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Peedles, clad, so far as the dim November light enabled me to judge,
+      in the costume of Queen Elizabeth&mdash;nothing regal; the sort of thing
+      one might assume to have been Her Majesty's second best, say third best,
+      frock&mdash;explained that weddings always reminded her how fleeting a
+      thing was love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor dears!&rdquo; she sobbed. &ldquo;But there, there's no telling. Perhaps
+      they'll be happy. I'm sure I hope they may be. He looks harmless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jarman, stretching out a hand to me from the other side of Mrs. Peedles,
+      urged me to cheer up. &ldquo;Don't wear your 'eart upon your sleeve,&rdquo; he
+      advised. &ldquo;Try and smile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the vestry I met old friends. The maternal Sellars, stouter than ever,
+      had been accommodated with a chair&mdash;at least, I assumed so, she being
+      in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence. She greeted me
+      with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after my health with
+      pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that, until the explanation
+      broke upon me, somewhat puzzled me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much impressed,
+      I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good fortune. He
+      expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me, shook me
+      heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't be my fault if we're not,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Come and see us whenever you
+      like.&rdquo; He repeated this three times. I gathered the general sentiment to
+      be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of generosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received my
+      salute to a subdued murmur of applause. She looked to my eyes handsomer
+      than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing less
+      exacting. She also trusted she might always regard me as a friend. I
+      replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour; whereupon she
+      kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother, shed some tears,
+      explaining the reason to be that everybody was so good to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of enormous
+      white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register, whispering to
+      me sympathetically: &ldquo;Better luck next time, old cock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fat young lady&mdash;or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter, I
+      cannot say for certain&mdash;who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I
+      assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her
+      opinion, I was worth all the others put together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so I told her,&rdquo; added the fat young lady&mdash;or the lean one grown
+      stouter, &ldquo;a dozen times if I told her once. But there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured my obligations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of his
+      watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take my tip,&rdquo; advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, &ldquo;and keep out
+      of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak from experience?&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm as fond of a joke,&rdquo; said the watery-eyed Joseph, &ldquo;as any man. But
+      when it comes to buckets of water&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered for
+      eleven o'clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph's
+      revelations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See you again, perhaps,&rdquo; he murmured, and pushed past me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold col-la-shon
+      had been arranged for at a restaurant near by. I walked there in company
+      with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I particularly desired their
+      companionship, but because Uncle Gutton, seizing me by the arm, left me no
+      alternative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, young man,&rdquo; commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously so
+      soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the others,
+      &ldquo;if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away. I shan't mind, and maybe
+      it'll do you good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all right,&rdquo; returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed. &ldquo;If you're
+      willing to forgive and forget, so am I. I never liked you, as I daresay
+      you saw, and so I told Rosie. 'He may be cleverer than he looks,' I says,
+      'or he may be a bigger fool than I think him, though that's hardly likely.
+      You take my advice and get a full-grown article, then you'll know what
+      you're doing.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you think so,&rdquo; he returned, somewhat puzzled; &ldquo;though if you
+      wanted to call me names I shouldn't have blamed you. Anyhow, you've took
+      it like a sensible chap. You've got over it, as I always told her you
+      would. Young men out of story-books don't die of broken hearts, even if
+      for a month or two they do feel like standing on their head in the
+      water-butt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I was in love myself three times,&rdquo; explained Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;before I
+      married the old woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Gutton sighed and said she was afraid gentlemen didn't feel these
+      things as much as they ought to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've got their living to earn,&rdquo; retorted Uncle Gutton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I agreed with Uncle Gutton that life could not be wasted in vain regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for the rest,&rdquo; admitted Uncle Gutton, handsomely, &ldquo;I was wrong. You've
+      turned out better than I expected you would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thanked him for his improved opinion, and as we entered the restaurant
+      we shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Minikin we found there waiting for us. He explained that having been able
+      to obtain only limited leave of absence from business, he had concluded
+      the time would be better employed at the restaurant than at the church.
+      Others were there also with whom I was unacquainted, young sparks,
+      admirers, I presume, of the Lady 'Ortensia in her professional capacity,
+      fellow-clerks of Mr. Clapper, who was something in the City. Altogether we
+      must have numbered a score.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast was laid in a large room on the first floor. The wedding
+      presents stood displayed upon a side-table. My own, with my card attached,
+      had not been seen by Mrs. Clapper till that moment. She and her mother
+      lingered, examining it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Real silver!&rdquo; I heard the maternal Sellars whisper, &ldquo;Must have paid a ten
+      pound note for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you'll find it useful,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maternal Sellars, drifting away, joined the others gathered together
+      at the opposite end of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you think I set my cap at you merely because you were a
+      gentleman,&rdquo; said the Lady 'Ortensia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't let's talk about it,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;We were both foolish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want you to think it was merely that,&rdquo; continued the Lady
+      'Ortensia. &ldquo;I did like you. And I wouldn't have disgraced you&mdash;at
+      least, I'd have tried not to. We women are quick to learn. You never gave
+      me time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me, things are much better as they are,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I was a fool.&rdquo; She glanced round; we still
+      had the corner to ourselves. &ldquo;I told a rare pack of lies,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I
+      didn't seem able to help it; I was feeling sore all over. But I have
+      always been ashamed of myself. I'll tell them the truth, if you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought I saw a way of making her mind easy. &ldquo;My dear girl,&rdquo; I said,
+      &ldquo;you have taken the blame upon yourself, and let me go scot-free. It was
+      generous of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The truth,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;would shift all the shame on to me. It was I who
+      broke my word, acted shabbily from beginning to end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't looked at it in that light,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Very well, I'll hold
+      my tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My place at breakfast was to the left of the maternal Sellars, the Signora
+      next to me, and the O'Kelly opposite. Uncle Gutton faced the bride and
+      bridegroom. The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by flowers, so
+      that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my ears, embellished
+      with the mysterious significance of the unseen oracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first quarter of an hour or so the meal proceeded almost in
+      silence. The maternal Sellars when not engaged in whispered argument with
+      the perspiring waiter, was furtively occupied in working sums upon the
+      table-cloth by aid of a blunt pencil. The Signora, strangely unlike her
+      usual self, was not in talkative mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was so kind of them to invite me,&rdquo; said the Signora, speaking low.
+      &ldquo;But I feel I ought not to have come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; I asked
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not fit to be here,&rdquo; murmured the Signora in a broken voice. &ldquo;What
+      right have I at wedding breakfasts? Of course, for dear Willie it is
+      different. He has been married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly, who never when the Signora was present seemed to care much
+      for conversation in which she was unable to participate, took advantage of
+      his neighbour's being somewhat deaf to lapse into abstraction. Jarman
+      essayed a few witticisms of a general character, of which nobody took any
+      notice. The professional admirers of the Lady 'Ortensia, seated together
+      at a corner of the table, appeared to be enjoying a small joke among
+      themselves. Occasionally, one or another of them would laugh nervously.
+      But for the most part the only sounds to be heard were the clatter of the
+      knives and forks, the energetic shuffling of the waiter, and a curious
+      hissing noise as of escaping gas, caused by Uncle Gutton drinking
+      champagne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the cutting, or, rather, the smashing into a hundred fragments, of
+      the wedding cake&mdash;a work that taxed the united strength of bride and
+      bridegroom to the utmost&mdash;the atmosphere lost something of its
+      sombreness. The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of being
+      nearly done, commenced to simmer. The maternal Sellars, putting away with
+      her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced the table
+      with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is a sad thing,&rdquo; sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment, with
+      a shake of her huge head, &ldquo;when your daughter marries, and goes away and
+      leaves you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damned sight sadder,&rdquo; commented Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;when she don't go off, but
+      hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive
+      benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre that
+      lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly girl,
+      bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be Miss
+      Gutton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't seem to me,&rdquo; said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the table,
+      &ldquo;that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got to know a bit about it, I expect,&rdquo; sounded the small, shrill voice of
+      the unseen Joseph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my thinking,&rdquo; exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, &ldquo;one of the evils
+      crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly
+      needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings.&rdquo; He spoke rapidly and
+      with warmth. &ldquo;Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man's
+      luxury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the
+      occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The plain fact of the matter is,&rdquo; said Jarman, &ldquo;girls have gone up in
+      value. Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with a
+      useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays&mdash;well,
+      it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a
+      really first-class article.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional brilliancy,
+      possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have envied him: the
+      ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a laugh instinct with
+      all the characteristics of genuine delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give and take,&rdquo; observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper's
+      roar had died away; &ldquo;that's what you've got to do when you're married.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't want&mdash;that
+      sums it up,&rdquo; came the bitter voice of the unseen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, do be quiet, Joe,&rdquo; advised the stout young lady, from which I
+      concluded she had once been the lean young lady. &ldquo;You talk enough for a
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't I open my mouth?&rdquo; demanded the indignant oracle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look less foolish when you keep it shut,&rdquo; returned the stout young
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll show them how to get on,&rdquo; observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her
+      bridegroom, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When me and the old girl there fixed things up,&rdquo; said Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;we
+      didn't talk no nonsense, and we didn't start with no misunderstandings.
+      'I'm not a duke,' I says&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had she been mistaking you for one?&rdquo; enquired Minikin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh. I
+      feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton's little eyes should leave his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool,&rdquo; replied Uncle Gutton, glaring
+      at the unabashed Minikin, &ldquo;she did not. 'I'm not a duke,' I says, and <i>she</i>
+      had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic like. 'I'm not
+      offering you a life of luxury and ease. I'm offering you myself, just what
+      you see, and nothing more.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She took it?&rdquo; asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She accepted me, sir,&rdquo; returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would have
+      awed any one but Minikin. &ldquo;Can you give me any good reason for her not
+      doing so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No need to get mad with me,&rdquo; explained Minikin. &ldquo;I'm not blaming the poor
+      woman. We all have our moments of despair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate Clapper again exploded. Uncle Gutton rose to his feet. The
+      ready Jarman saved the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ear! 'ear!&rdquo; cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two
+      knives. &ldquo;Silence for Uncle Gutton! 'E's going to propose a toast. 'Ear,
+      'ear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into applause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say&mdash;&rdquo; began Uncle
+      Gutton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good old Uncle Gutton!&rdquo; persisted the determined Jarman. &ldquo;Bride and
+      bridegroom&mdash;long life to 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against Minikin
+      to evaporate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Uncle Gutton, &ldquo;if you think I'm the one to do it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The response was unmistakable. In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses and
+      upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her
+      chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task.
+      Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to
+      assign to him the duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he
+      suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce
+      censure of the Adulteration Act. Reminded of the time by the maternal
+      Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with such
+      questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly
+      interested, and directed himself to the main argument. To his, Uncle
+      Gutton's, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity, Mr.
+      Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness. Uncle Gutton it was who
+      had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair Rosina would come
+      eventually to desire&mdash;a plain, simple, hard-working, level-headed
+      sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him: such an one, in short,
+      as Mr. Clapper himself&mdash;(at this Mr. Clapper expressed approval by a
+      lengthy laugh)&mdash;a gentleman who, so far as Uncle Gutton's knowledge
+      went, had but one fault: a silly habit of laughing when there was nothing
+      whatever to laugh at; of which, it was to be hoped, the cares and
+      responsibilities of married life would cure him. (To the rest of the
+      discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a gravity painfully maintained.) There
+      had been moments, Uncle Gutton was compelled to admit, when the fair
+      Rosina had shown inclination to make a fool of herself&mdash;to desire in
+      place of honest worth mere painted baubles. He used the term in no
+      offensive sense. Speaking for himself, what a man wanted beyond his weekly
+      newspaper, he, Uncle Gutton, was unable to understand; but if there were
+      fools in the world who wanted to read rubbish written by other fools, then
+      the other fools would of course write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them.
+      He mentioned no names, but what he would say was: a plain man for a
+      sensible girl, and no painted baubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect that
+      if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it was about
+      full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring his speech to a
+      premature conclusion. The bride and bridegroom were hustled into their
+      clothes. There followed much female embracing and male hand-shaking. The
+      rice having been forgotten, the waiter was almost thrown downstairs, with
+      directions to at once procure some. There appearing danger of his not
+      returning in time, the resourceful Jarman suggested cold semolina pudding
+      as a substitute. But the idea was discouraged by the bride. A slipper of
+      remarkable antiquity, discovered on the floor and regarded as a gift from
+      Providence, was flung from the window by brother George, with admirable
+      aim, and alighted on the roof of the cab. The waiter, on his return, not
+      being able to find it, seemed surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora, who
+      were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had not seen the
+      O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years before, so that
+      we had much to tell each other. For the third time now had the O'Kelly
+      proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of the lady to whom he
+      still referred as his &ldquo;dear good wife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, under the circumstances, would it not be better,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;for
+      her to obtain a divorce? Then you and the Signora could marry and there
+      would be an end to the whole trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From a strictly worldly point of view,&rdquo; replied the O'Kelly, &ldquo;it
+      certainly would be; but Mrs. O'Kelly&rdquo;&mdash;his voice took to itself
+      unconsciously a tone of reverence&mdash;&ldquo;is not an ordinary woman. You can
+      have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness. I had a letter from
+      her only two months ago, a few weeks after the&mdash;the last occurrence.
+      Not one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed against her even unto
+      seven times seven she would still consider it her duty to forgive me; that
+      the 'home' would always be there for me to return to and repent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tear stood in the O'Kelly's eye. &ldquo;A beautiful nature,&rdquo; he commented.
+      &ldquo;There are not many women like her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one in a million!&rdquo; added the Signora, with enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The O'Kelly spoke quite angrily. &ldquo;Don't ye say a word against her! I won't
+      listen to it. Ye don't understand her. She never will despair of reforming
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Mr. Kelver,&rdquo; explained the Signora, &ldquo;the whole difficulty arises
+      from my unfortunate profession. It is impossible for me to keep out of
+      dear Willie's way. If I could earn my living by any other means, I would;
+      but I can't. And when he sees my name upon the posters, it's all over with
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do wish, Willie, dear,&rdquo; added the Signora in tones of gentle reproof,
+      &ldquo;that you were not quite so weak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me dear,&rdquo; replied the O'Kelly, &ldquo;ye don't know how attractive ye are or ye
+      wouldn't blame me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed. &ldquo;Why don't you be firm,&rdquo; I suggested to the Signora, &ldquo;send him
+      packing about his business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to,&rdquo; admitted the Signora. &ldquo;I always mean to, until I see him.
+      Then I don't seem able to say anything&mdash;not anything I ought to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye do say it,&rdquo; contradicted the O'Kelly. &ldquo;Ye're an angel, only I won't
+      listen to ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't say it as if I meant it,&rdquo; persisted the Signora. &ldquo;It's evident I
+      don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I still think it a pity,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;someone does not explain to Mrs.
+      O'Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is difficult to decide,&rdquo; argued the Signora. &ldquo;If ever you should want
+      to leave me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me darling!&rdquo; exclaimed the O'Kelly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you may,&rdquo; insisted the Signora. &ldquo;Something may happen to help you, to
+      show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you will
+      go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a saint,&rdquo; agreed Willie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards
+      Fleet Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied chambers
+      in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the 'Ortensia marriage,
+      I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting me suggested the
+      necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything of his friends
+      beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he pushed me down into
+      the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the fire, filled and lighted
+      his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I left you alone,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You had to go through it, your slough of
+      despond. It lies across every path&mdash;that leads to anywhere. Clear of
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; I replied, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are on the high road,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;You have only to walk steadily.
+      Sure you have left nothing behind you&mdash;in the slough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing worth bringing out of it,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Why do you ask so seriously?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't leave him behind you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;the little boy Paul&mdash;Paul the
+      dreamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I laughed. &ldquo;Oh, he! He was only in my way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, here,&rdquo; answered Dan. &ldquo;This is not his world. He is of no use to you
+      here; won't help you to bread and cheese&mdash;no, nor kisses either. But
+      keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has
+      been the real Paul&mdash;the living, growing Paul; the other&mdash;the
+      active, worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his
+      fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been driving him away,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;He is so&mdash;so impracticable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan shook his head gravely. &ldquo;It is not his world,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;We must
+      eat, drink&mdash;be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is
+      the child. Take care of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat in silence for a little while&mdash;for longer, perhaps, than it
+      seemed to us&mdash;Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied
+      with his own thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have an excellent agent,&rdquo; said Dan; &ldquo;retain her services as long as
+      you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as
+      regards your affairs. Women never have where they&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He broke off to stir the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You like her?&rdquo; I asked. The words sounded feeble. It is only the writer
+      who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often selects by
+      contrast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is my ideal woman,&rdquo; returned Dan; &ldquo;true and strong and tender; clear
+      as crystal, pure as dawn. Like her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He knocked the ashes from his pipe. &ldquo;We do not marry our ideals,&rdquo; he went
+      on. &ldquo;We love with our hearts, not with our souls. The woman I shall marry&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face&mdash;&ldquo;she will be some
+      sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield's Dora. Only I am not
+      Doady, who always seems to me to have been somewhat of a&mdash;He reminds
+      me of you, Paul, a little. Dickens was right; her helplessness, as time
+      went on, would have bored him more and more instead of appealing to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the women,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;do they marry their ideals?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;Ask them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference between men and women,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;is very slight; we
+      exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he is,
+      Norah's ideal? Can't you imagine him?&mdash;But I can tell you the type of
+      man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his
+      eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A nice enough fellow&mdash;clever, perhaps, but someone&mdash;well,
+      someone who will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who
+      will appeal to the mother side of her&mdash;not her ideal man, but the man
+      for whom nature intended her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps with her help,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;he may in time become her ideal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a long road before him,&rdquo; growled Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopement with
+      Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old Hasluck a
+      month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had
+      insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed. His
+      buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a fretful eagerness
+      had become his motive force. At first he had talked boastingly: Had I seen
+      the <i>Post</i> for last Monday, the <i>Court Circular</i> for the week
+      before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown Prince, that the
+      Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a Grand Duke? What
+      did I think of that! and such like. Was not money
+      master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made to acknowledge it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No children,&rdquo; he had whispered to me across the table; &ldquo;that's what I
+      can't understand. Nearly four years and no children! What'll be the good
+      of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten popinjays!
+      What do they think we buy them for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was the
+      talk of the town for the next day&mdash;and the following eight. She had
+      heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and
+      see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you would rather hear it quietly,&rdquo; said Norah, &ldquo;than learn it
+      from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did
+      wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has done
+      right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she derived
+      from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought it.
+      I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My goddess
+      had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself. From her
+      cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world. So some
+      youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the Great Queen
+      was but a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years
+      later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a
+      theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had
+      commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the
+      extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon
+      the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me that
+      Madame G&mdash;&mdash; would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain
+      I went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table
+      were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her glass, a loose
+      shawl about her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse my shaking hands,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;This damned hole is like a furnace;
+      I have to make up fresh after each act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with
+      grease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D'you know my husband?&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;Baron G&mdash;; Mr. Paul Kelver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man. &ldquo;Delighted to
+      meet Mr. Kelver,&rdquo; he said, speaking in excellent English. &ldquo;Any friend of
+      my wife's is always a friend of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach much
+      importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether he was
+      offended or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad I saw you,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;Do you remember a girl called
+      Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;I remember her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago.&rdquo; She was rubbing paint into
+      her cheeks as she spoke. &ldquo;She asked me if ever I saw you to give you this.
+      I have been carrying it about with me ever since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn as a
+      girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed it upon
+      her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's office
+      framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my outstretched
+      palm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite a pretty little romance,&rdquo; laughed the Baron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all,&rdquo; added the woman at the glass. &ldquo;She said you would
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never to
+      see again that look upon a woman's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I shall
+      always wear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      PAUL FINDS HIS WAY.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying
+      strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of the sad
+      eyes, would seek to lure me from my work. But for my vehement
+      determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my
+      honesty, my desire&mdash;growing day by day, till it became almost a
+      physical hunger&mdash;to feel again the pressure of Norah's strong white
+      hand in mine, he might possibly have succeeded. Heaven only knows what
+      then he might have made of me: politician, minor poet, more or less able
+      editor, hampered by convictions&mdash;something most surely of but little
+      service to myself. Now and again, with a week to spare&mdash;my humour
+      making holiday, nothing to be done but await patiently its return&mdash;I
+      would write stories for my own pleasure. They made no mark; but success in
+      purposeful work is of slower growth. Had I persisted&mdash;but there was
+      money to be earned. And by the time my debts were paid, I had established
+      a reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madness!&rdquo; argued practical friends. &ldquo;You would be throwing away a certain
+      fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence. The one you know you can
+      do, the other&mdash;it would be beginning your career all over again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would find it almost impossible now,&rdquo; explained those who spoke, I
+      knew, words of wisdom, of experience. &ldquo;The world would never listen to
+      you. Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic actor
+      insist upon playing Hamlet. It might be the best Hamlet ever seen upon the
+      stage; the audience would only laugh&mdash;or stop away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, &ldquo;Goggles&rdquo; and I, seeking some quiet
+      corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other. He would lay
+      before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo&mdash;an excellent
+      conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to interest me.
+      Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo. But I listened with
+      every sign of encouragement. It was the price I paid him for, in turn,
+      listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how monumental
+      literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and built up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps in a future existence,&rdquo; laughed Goggles, one evening, rising as
+      the clock struck seven, &ldquo;I shall be a great tragedian, and you a famous
+      poet. Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we are both
+      sinning our mercies. After all, to live is the most important thing in
+      life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him to
+      get into his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take my advice&rdquo;&mdash;tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy
+      eyes upon me. Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should have
+      laughed, his expression was so comical. &ldquo;Marry some dear little woman&rdquo; (he
+      was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own weight); &ldquo;one
+      never understands life properly till the babies come to explain it to
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned to my easy-chair before the fire. Wife, children, home! After
+      all, was not that the true work of man&mdash;of the live man, not the
+      dreamer? I saw them round me, giving to my life dignity, responsibility.
+      The fair, sweet woman, helper, comrade, comforter, the little faces
+      fashioned in our image, their questioning voices teaching us the answers
+      to life's riddles. All other hopes, ambitions, dreams, what were they?
+      Phantoms of the morning mist fading in the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hodgson came to me one evening. &ldquo;I want you to write me a comic opera,&rdquo; he
+      said. He had an open letter in his hand which he was reading. &ldquo;The public
+      seem to be getting tired of these eternal translations from the French. I
+      want something English, something new and original.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The English is easy enough,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;but I shouldn't clamour for
+      anything new and original if I were you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he asked, looking up from his letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might get it,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Then you would be disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;Well, you know what I mean&mdash;something we could refer to
+      as 'new and original' on the programme. What do you say? It will be a big
+      chance for you, and I'm willing to risk it. I'm sure you can do it. People
+      are beginning to talk about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had written a few farces, comediettas, and they had been successful. But
+      the chief piece of the evening is a serious responsibility. A young man
+      may be excused for hesitating. It can make, but also it can mar him. A
+      comic opera above all other forms of art&mdash;if I may be forgiven for
+      using the sacred word in connection with such a subject&mdash;demands
+      experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained my fears. I did not explain that in my desk lay a four-act
+      drama throbbing with humanity, with life, with which it had been my hope&mdash;growing
+      each day fainter&mdash;to take the theatrical public by storm, to
+      establish myself as a serious playwright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very simple,&rdquo; urged Hodgson. &ldquo;Provide Atherton plenty of comic
+      business; you ought to be able to do that all right. Give Gleeson
+      something pretty in waltz time, and Duncan a part in which she can change
+      her frock every quarter of an hour or so, and the thing is done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what,&rdquo; continued Hodgson, &ldquo;I'll take the whole crowd down
+      to Richmond on Sunday. We'll have a coach, and leave the theatre at
+      half-past ten. It will be an opportunity for you to study them. You'll be
+      able to have a talk with them and get to know just what they can do.
+      Atherton has ideas in his head; he'll explain them to you. Then, next
+      week, we'll draw up a contract and set to work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too good an opportunity to let slip, though I knew that if
+      successful I should find myself pinned down firmer than ever to my role of
+      jester. But it is remunerative, the writing of comic opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A small crowd had gathered in the Strand to see us start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing wrong, is there?&rdquo; enquired the leading lady, in a tone of some
+      anxiety, alighting a quarter of an hour late from her cab. &ldquo;It isn't a
+      fire, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merely assembled to see you,&rdquo; explained Mr. Hodgson, without raising his
+      eyes from his letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good gracious!&rdquo; cried the leading lady, &ldquo;do let us get away quickly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Box seat, my dear,&rdquo; returned Mr. Hodgson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leading lady, accepting the proffered assistance of myself and three
+      other gentlemen, mounted the ladder with charming hesitation. Some delay
+      in getting off was caused by our low comedian, who twice, making believe
+      to miss his footing, slid down again into the arms of the stolid
+      door-keeper. The crowd, composed for the most part of small boys approving
+      the endeavour to amuse them, laughed and applauded. Our low comedian thus
+      encouraged, made a third attempt upon his hands and knees, and, gaining
+      the roof, sat down upon the tenor, who smiled somewhat mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first dozen or so 'busses we passed our low comedian greeted by rising
+      to his feet and bowing profoundly, afterwards falling back upon either the
+      tenor or myself. Except by the tenor and myself his performance appeared
+      to be much appreciated. Charing Cross passed, and nobody seeming to be
+      interested in our progress, to the relief of the tenor and myself, he
+      settled down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People sometimes ask me,&rdquo; said the low comedian, brushing the dust off
+      his knees, &ldquo;why I do this sort of thing off the stage. It amuses me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was coming up to London the other day from Birmingham,&rdquo; he continued.
+      &ldquo;At Willesden, when the ticket collector opened the door, I sprang out of
+      the carriage and ran off down the platform. Of course, he ran after me,
+      shouting to all the others to stop me. I dodged them for about a minute.
+      You wouldn't believe the excitement there was. Quite fifty people left
+      their seats to see what it was all about. I explained to them when they
+      caught me that I had been travelling second with a first-class ticket,
+      which was the fact. People think I do it to attract attention. I do it for
+      my own pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be a troublesome way of amusing oneself,&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly what my wife says,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;she can never understand the
+      desire that comes over us all, I suppose, at times, to play the fool. As a
+      rule, when she is with me I don't do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not here today?&rdquo; I asked, glancing round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She suffers so from headaches,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;she hardly ever goes
+      anywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry.&rdquo; I spoke not out of mere politeness; I really did feel sorry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the drive to Richmond this irrepressible desire to amuse himself
+      got the better of him more than once or twice. Through Kensington he
+      attracted a certain amount of attention by balancing the horn upon his
+      nose. At Kew he stopped the coach to request of a young ladies' boarding
+      school change for sixpence. At the foot of Richmond Hill he caused a crowd
+      to assemble while trying to persuade a deaf old gentleman in a Bath-chair
+      to allow his man to race us up the hill for a shilling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At these antics and such like our party laughed uproariously, with the
+      exception of Hodgson, who had his correspondence to attend to, and an
+      elegant young lady of some social standing who had lately emerged from the
+      Divorce Court with a reputation worth to her in cash a hundred pounds a
+      week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arriving at the hotel quarter of an hour or so before lunch time, we
+      strolled into the garden. Our low comedian, observing an elderly gentleman
+      of dignified appearance sipping a glass of Vermouth at a small table,
+      stood for a moment rooted to the earth with astonishment, then, making a
+      bee-line for the stranger, seized and shook him warmly by the hand. We
+      exchanged admiring glances with one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charlie is in good form to-day,&rdquo; we told one another, and followed at his
+      heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elderly gentleman had risen; he looked puzzled. &ldquo;And how's Aunt
+      Martha?&rdquo; asked him our low comedian. &ldquo;Dear old Aunt Martha! Well, I am
+      glad! You do look bonny! How is she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid&mdash;&rdquo; commenced the elderly gentleman. Our low comedian
+      started back. Other visitors had gathered round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tell me anything has happened to her! Not dead? Don't tell me
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seized the bewildered gentleman by the shoulders and presented to him a
+      face distorted by terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really have not the faintest notion what you are talking about,&rdquo;
+       returned the gentleman, who seemed annoyed. &ldquo;I don't know you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not know me? Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten&mdash;? Isn't your
+      name Steggles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it isn't,&rdquo; returned the stranger, somewhat shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mistake,&rdquo; replied our low comedian. He tossed off at one gulp what
+      remained of the stranger's Vermouth and walked away rapidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The elderly gentleman, not seeing the humour of the joke, one of our party
+      to soothe him explained to him that it was Atherton, <i>the</i> Atherton&mdash;Charlie
+      Atherton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, is it,&rdquo; growled the elderly gentleman. &ldquo;Then will you tell him from
+      me that when I want his damned tomfoolery I'll come to the theatre and pay
+      for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a disagreeable man,&rdquo; we said, as, following our low comedian, we
+      made our way into the hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During lunch he continued in excellent spirits; kissed the bald back of
+      the waiter's head, pretending to mistake it for a face, called for hot
+      mustard and water, made believe to steal the silver, and when the
+      finger-bowls arrived, took off his coat and requested the ladies to look
+      the other way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After lunch he became suddenly serious, and slipping his arm through mine,
+      led me by unfrequented paths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, about this new opera,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;we don't want any of the old stale
+      business. Give us something new.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I suggested that to do so might be difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;Now, my idea is this. I am a young fellow, and
+      I'm in love with a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I promised to make a note of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her father, apoplectic old idiot&mdash;make him comic: 'Damme, sir! By
+      gad!' all that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By persuading him that I understood what he meant, I rose in his
+      estimation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't have anything to say to me&mdash;thinks I'm an ass. I'm a simple
+      sort of fellow&mdash;on the outside. But I'm not such a fool as I look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't think we are getting too much out of the groove?&rdquo; I enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His opinion was that the more so the better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. Then, in the second act I disguise myself. I'll come on as an
+      organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a policeman, or a
+      young swell about town. Give me plenty of opportunity, that's the great
+      thing&mdash;opportunity to be really funny, I mean. We don't want any of
+      the old stale tricks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I promised him my support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put a little pathos in it,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;give me a scene where I can show
+      them I've something else in me besides merely humour. We don't want to
+      make them howl, but just to feel a little. Let's send them out of the
+      theatre saying: 'Well, Charlie's often made me laugh, but I'm damned if I
+      knew he could make me cry before!' See what I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him I thought I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leading lady, meeting us on our return, requested, with pretty tone of
+      authority, everybody else to go away and leave us. There were cries of
+      &ldquo;Naughty!&rdquo; The leading lady, laughing girlishly, took me by the hand and
+      ran away with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to talk to you,&rdquo; said the leading lady, as soon as we had reached
+      a secluded seat overlooking the river, &ldquo;about my part in the new opera.
+      Now, can't you give me something original? Do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her pleading was so pretty, there was nothing for it but to pledge
+      compliance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so tired of being the simple village maiden,&rdquo; said the leading lady;
+      &ldquo;what I want is a part with some opportunity in it&mdash;a coquettish
+      part. I can flirt,&rdquo; assured me the leading lady, archly. &ldquo;Try me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I satisfied her of my perfect faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might,&rdquo; said the leading lady, &ldquo;see your way to making the plot
+      depend upon me. It always seems to me that the woman's part is never made
+      enough of in comic opera. I am sure a comic opera built round a woman
+      would be a really great success. Don't you agree with me, Mr. Kelver,&rdquo;
+       pouted the leading lady, laying her pretty hand on mine. &ldquo;We are much more
+      interesting than the men&mdash;now, aren't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Personally, as I told her, I agreed with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tenor, sipping tea with me on the balcony, beckoned me aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About this new opera,&rdquo; said the tenor; &ldquo;doesn't it seem to you the time
+      has come to make more of the story&mdash;that the public might prefer a
+      little more human interest and a little less clowning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I admitted that a good plot was essential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; said the tenor, &ldquo;that if you could write an opera round
+      an interesting love story, you would score a success. Of course, let there
+      be plenty of humour, but reduce it to its proper place. As a support, it
+      is excellent; when it is made the entire structure, it is apt to be
+      tiresome&mdash;at least, that is my view.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied with sincerity that there seemed to me much truth in what he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, so far as I am personally concerned,&rdquo; went on the tenor, &ldquo;it
+      is immaterial. I draw the same salary whether I'm on the stage five
+      minutes or an hour. But when you have a man of my position in the cast,
+      and give him next to nothing to do&mdash;well, the public are
+      disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most naturally,&rdquo; I commented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lover,&rdquo; whispered the tenor, noticing the careless approach towards
+      us of the low comedian, &ldquo;that's the character they are thinking about all
+      the time&mdash;men and women both. It's human nature. Make your lover
+      interesting&mdash;that's the secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Waiting for the horses to be put to, I became aware of the fact that I was
+      standing some distance from the others in company with a tall, thin,
+      somewhat oldish-looking man. He spoke in low, hurried tones, fearful
+      evidently of being overheard and interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll forgive me, Mr. Kelver,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;Trevor, Marmaduke Trevor.
+      I play the Duke of Bayswater in the second act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was unable to recall him for the moment; there were quite a number of
+      small parts in the second act. But glancing into his sensitive face, I
+      shrank from wounding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A capital performance,&rdquo; I lied. &ldquo;It has always amused me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He flushed with pleasure. &ldquo;I made a great success some years ago,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;in America with a soda-water syphon, and it occurred to me that if
+      you could, Mr. Kelver, in a natural sort of way, drop in a small part
+      leading up to a little business with a soda-water syphon, it might help
+      the piece.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wrote him his soda-water scene, I am glad to remember, and insisted upon
+      it, in spite of a good deal of opposition. Some of the critics found fault
+      with the incident, as lacking in originality. But Marmaduke Trevor was
+      quite right, it did help a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our return journey was an exaggerated repetition of our morning drive. Our
+      low comedian produced hideous noises from the horn, and entered into
+      contests of running wit with 'bus drivers&mdash;a decided mistake from his
+      point of view, the score generally remaining with the 'bus driver. At
+      Hammersmith, seizing the opportunity of a block in the traffic, he assumed
+      the role of Cheap Jack, and, standing up on the back seat, offered all our
+      hats for sale at temptingly low prices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got any ideas out of them?&rdquo; asked Hodgson, when the time came for us to
+      say good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm thinking, if you don't mind,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;of going down into the
+      country and writing the piece quietly, away from everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you are right,&rdquo; agreed Hodgson. &ldquo;Too many cooks&mdash;Be sure and
+      have it ready for the autumn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wrote it with some pleasure to myself amid the Yorkshire Wolds, and was
+      able to read it to the whole company assembled before the close of the
+      season. My turning of the last page was followed by a dead silence. The
+      leading lady was the first to speak. She asked if the clock upon the
+      mantelpiece could be relied upon; because, if so, by leaving at once, she
+      could just catch her train. Hodgson, consulting his watch, thought, if
+      anything, it was a little fast. The leading lady said she hoped it was,
+      and went. The only comforting words were spoken by the tenor. He recalled
+      to our mind a successful comic opera produced some years before at the
+      Philharmonic. He distinctly remembered that up to five minutes before the
+      raising of the curtain everybody had regarded it as rubbish. He also had a
+      train to catch. Marmaduke Trevor, with a covert shake of the hand, urged
+      me not to despair. The low comedian, the last to go, told Hodgson he
+      thought he might be able to do something with parts of it, if given a free
+      hand. Hodgson and I left alone, looked at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no good,&rdquo; said Hodgson, &ldquo;from a box-office point of view. Very
+      clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know it is no good from a box-office point of view?&rdquo; I
+      ventured to enquire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never made a mistake in my life,&rdquo; replied Hodgson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have produced one or two failures,&rdquo; I reminded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And shall again,&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;The right thing isn't easy to get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheer up,&rdquo; he added kindly, &ldquo;this is only your first attempt. We must try
+      and knock it into shape at rehearsal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their notion of &ldquo;knocking it into shape&rdquo; was knocking it to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what we'll do,&rdquo; would say the low comedian; &ldquo;we'll cut that
+      scene out altogether.&rdquo; Joyously he would draw his pencil through some four
+      or five pages of my manuscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is essential to the story,&rdquo; I would argue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is. It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and
+      falls in love with the gipsy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that. I meet Roderick at the
+      ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?' 'Oh, I have escaped from prison.'
+      'Good business. And how's Miriam?' 'Well and happy&mdash;she is going to
+      be my wife!' What more do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson,&rdquo; would observe the leading lady,
+      &ldquo;and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter, I
+      fell in love with John&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But John is in love with Arabella.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we've cut out Arabella. I can sing all her songs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tenor would lead me into a corner. &ldquo;I want you to write in a little
+      scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first act. I'll
+      talk to her about it. I think it will be rather pretty. I want her&mdash;the
+      second time I see her&mdash;to have come out of her room on to a balcony,
+      and to be standing there bathed in moonlight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the first act takes place in the early morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've thought of that. We must alter it to the evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the opera opens with a hunting scene. People don't go hunting by
+      moonlight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a novelty. That's what's wanted for comic opera. The ordinary
+      hunting scene! My dear boy, it has been done to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stood this sort of thing for a week. &ldquo;They are people of experience,&rdquo; I
+      argued to myself; &ldquo;they must know more about it than I do.&rdquo; By the end of
+      the week I had arrived at the conclusion that anyhow they didn't. Added to
+      which I lost my temper. It is a thing I should advise any lady or
+      gentleman thinking of entering the ranks or dramatic authorship to lose as
+      soon as possible. I took both manuscripts with me, and, entering Mr.
+      Hodgson's private room, closed the door behind me. One parcel was the
+      opera as I had originally written it, a neat, intelligible manuscript,
+      whatever its other merits. The second, scored, interlined, altered, cut,
+      interleaved, rewritten, reversed, turned inside out and topsy-turvy&mdash;one
+      long, hopeless confusion from beginning to end&mdash;was the opera, as,
+      everybody helping, we had &ldquo;knocked it into shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's your opera,&rdquo; I said, pushing across to him the bulkier bundle. &ldquo;If
+      you can understand it, if you can make head or tail of it, if you care to
+      produce it, it is yours, and you are welcome to it. This is mine!&rdquo; I laid
+      it on the table beside the other. &ldquo;It may be good, it may be bad. If it is
+      played at all it is played as it is written. Regard the contract as
+      cancelled, and make up your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He argued with force, and he argued with eloquence. He appealed to my
+      self-interest, he appealed to my better nature. It occupied him forty
+      minutes by the clock. Then he called me an obstinate young fool, flung the
+      opera as &ldquo;knocked into shape&rdquo; into the waste-paper basket&mdash;which was
+      the only proper place for it, and, striding into the middle of the
+      company, gave curt directions that the damned opera was to be played as it
+      was written, and be damned to it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The company shrugged its shoulders, and for the next month kept them
+      shrugged. For awhile Hodgson remained away from the rehearsals, then
+      returning, developed by degrees a melancholy interest in the somewhat
+      gloomy proceedings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far I had won, but my difficulty was to maintain the position. The low
+      comedian, reciting his lines with meaningless monotony, would pause
+      occasionally to ask of me politely, whether this or that passage was
+      intended to be serious or funny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think,&rdquo; the leading lady would enquire, more in sorrow than in anger,
+      &ldquo;that any girl would behave in this way&mdash;any real girl, I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps the audience will understand it,&rdquo; would console himself hopefully
+      the tenor. &ldquo;Myself, I confess I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sinking heart concealed beneath an aggressively disagreeable
+      manner, I remained firm in my &ldquo;pigheaded conceit,&rdquo; as it was regarded,
+      Hodgson generously supporting me against his own judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's bound to be a failure,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;I am spending some twelve to
+      fifteen hundred pounds to teach you a lesson. When you have learnt it
+      we'll square accounts by your writing me an opera that will pay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if it does succeed?&rdquo; I suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear boy,&rdquo; replied Hodgson, &ldquo;I never make mistakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From all which a dramatic author of more experience would have gathered
+      cheerfulness and hope, knowing that the time to be depressed is when the
+      manager and company unanimously and unhesitatingly predict a six months'
+      run. But new to the business, I regarded my literary career as already at
+      an end. Belief in oneself is merely the match with which one lights
+      oneself. The oil is supplied by the belief in one of others; if that be
+      not forthcoming, one goes out. Later on I might try to light myself again,
+      but for the present I felt myself dark and dismal. My desire was to get
+      away from my own smoke and smell. The final dress rehearsal over, I took
+      my leave of all concerned. The next morning I would pack a knapsack and
+      start upon a walking tour through Holland. The English papers would not
+      reach me. No human being should know my address. In a month or so I would
+      return, the piece would have disappeared&mdash;would be forgotten. With
+      courage, I might be able to forget it myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall run it for three weeks,&rdquo; said Hodgson, &ldquo;then we'll withdraw it
+      quietly, 'owing to previous arrangements'; or Duncan can suddenly fall ill&mdash;she's
+      done it often enough to suit herself; she can do it this once to suit me.
+      Don't be upset. There's nothing to be ashamed of in the piece; indeed,
+      there is a good deal that will be praised. The idea is distinctly
+      original. As a matter of fact, that's the fault with it,&rdquo; added Hodgson,
+      &ldquo;it's too original.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you wanted it original,&rdquo; I reminded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed. &ldquo;Yes, but original for the stage, I meant&mdash;the old dolls
+      in new frocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thanked him for all his kindness, and went home and packed my knapsack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two months I wandered, avoiding beaten tracks, my only comrades a few
+      books, belonging to no age, no country. My worries fell from me, the
+      personal affairs of Paul Kelver ceasing to appear the be all and the end
+      all of the universe. But for a chance meeting with Wellbourne, Deleglise's
+      amateur caretaker of Gower Street fame, I should have delayed yet longer
+      my return. It was in one of the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee. I was
+      sitting under the lindens on the grass-grown quay, awaiting a slow,
+      crawling boat that, four miles off, I watched a moving speck across the
+      level pastures. I heard his footsteps in the empty market-place behind me,
+      and turned my head. I did not rise, felt even no astonishment; anything
+      might come to pass in that still land of dreams. He seated himself beside
+      me with a nod, and for awhile we smoked in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All well with you?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid not,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;the poor fellow is in great trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not Wellbourne himself,&rdquo; he went on, in answer to my look; &ldquo;I am only
+      his spirit. Have you ever tested that belief the Hindoos hold: that a man
+      may leave his body, wander at will for a certain period, remembering only
+      to return ere the thread connecting him with flesh and blood be stretched
+      to breaking point? It is quite correct. I often lock the door of my
+      lodging, leave myself behind, wander a free Spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coins and looked at them.
+      &ldquo;The thread that connects us, I am sorrow to say, is wearing somewhat
+      thin,&rdquo; he sighed; &ldquo;I shall have to be getting back to him before long&mdash;concern
+      myself again with his troubles, follies. It is somewhat vexing. Life is
+      really beautiful, when one is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the trouble?&rdquo; I enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Haven't you heard?&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;Tom died five weeks ago, quite suddenly,
+      of syncope. We had none of us any idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Norah was alone in the world. I rose to my feet. The slowly moving
+      speck had grown into a thin, dark streak; minute by minute it took shape
+      and form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way, I have to congratulate you,&rdquo; said Wellbourne. &ldquo;Your opera
+      looked like being a big thing when I left London. You didn't sell
+      outright, I hope?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;Hodgson never expressed any desire to buy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucky for you,&rdquo; said Wellbourne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I reached London the next evening. Passing the theatre on my way to
+      Queen's Square, it occurred to me to stop my cab for a few minutes and
+      look in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I met the low comedian on his way to his dressing-room. He shook me warmly
+      by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we're pulling them in. I was right, you see, 'Give me
+      plenty of opportunity.' That's what I told you, didn't I? Come and see the
+      piece. I think you will agree with me that I have done you justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thanked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; he returned; &ldquo;it's a pleasure to work, when you've got
+      something good to work on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I paid my respects to the leading lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am so grateful to you,&rdquo; said the leading lady. &ldquo;It is so delightful to
+      play a real live woman, for a change.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tenor was quite fatherly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is what I have been telling Hodgson for years,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;give them a
+      simple human story.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crossing the stage, I ran against Marmaduke Trevor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will stay for my scene,&rdquo; he urged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another night,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I have only just returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sank his voice to a whisper. &ldquo;I want to talk to you on business, when
+      you have the time. I am thinking of taking a theatre myself&mdash;not just
+      now, but later on. Of course, I don't want it to get about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured him of my secrecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it comes off, I want you to write for me. You understand the public.
+      We will talk it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed onward with stealthy tread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found Hodgson in the front of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two stalls not sold and six seats in the upper circle,&rdquo; he informed me;
+      &ldquo;not bad for a Thursday night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I expressed my gratification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew you could do it,&rdquo; said Hodgson, &ldquo;I felt sure of it merely from
+      seeing that comedietta of yours at the Queen's. I never make a mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Correction under the circumstances would have been unkind. Promising to
+      see him again in the morning, I left him with his customary good conceit
+      of himself unimpaired, and went on to the Square. I rang twice, but there
+      was no response. I was about to sound a third and final summons, when
+      Norah joined me on the step. She had been out shopping and was laden with
+      parcels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must wait to shake hands,&rdquo; she laughed, as she opened the door. &ldquo;I
+      hope you have not been kept long. Poor Annette grows deafer every day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you nobody in the house with you but Annette?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one. You know it was a whim of his. I used to get quite cross with him
+      at times. But I should not like to go against his wishes&mdash;now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was there any reason for it?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;if there had been I could have argued him out of it.&rdquo;
+       She paused at the door of the studio. &ldquo;I'll just get rid of these,&rdquo; she
+      said, &ldquo;and then I will be with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A wood fire was burning on the open hearth, flashing alternate beams of
+      light and shadow down the long bare room. The high oak stool stood in its
+      usual place beside the engraving desk, upon which lay old Deleglise's last
+      unfinished plate, emitting a dull red glow. I paced the creaking boards
+      with halting steps, as through some ghostly gallery hung with dim
+      portraits of the dead and living. In a little while Norah entered and came
+      to me with outstretched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not light the lamp,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the firelight is so pleasant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I want to see you,&rdquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had seated herself upon the broad stone kerb. With her hand she
+      stirred the logs; they shot into a clear white flame. Thus, the light upon
+      her face, she raised it gravely towards mine. It spoke to me with fuller
+      voice. The clear grey eyes were frank and steadfast as ever, but shadow
+      had passed into them, deepening them, illuminating them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a space we talked of our two selves, our trivial plans and doings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tom left something to you,&rdquo; said Norah, rising, &ldquo;not in his will, that
+      was only a few lines. He told me to give it to you, with his love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She brought it to me. It was the picture he had always treasured, his
+      first success; a child looking on death; &ldquo;The Riddle&rdquo; he had named it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We spoke of him, of his work, which since had come to be appraised at
+      truer value, for it was out of fashion while he lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was he a disappointed man, do you think?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Norah. &ldquo;I am sure not. He was too fond of his work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he dreamt of becoming a second Millet. He confessed it to me once.
+      And he died an engraver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they were good engravings,&rdquo; smiled Norah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember a favourite saying of his,&rdquo; continued Norah, after a pause; &ldquo;I
+      do not know whether it was original or not. 'The stars guide us. They are
+      not our goal.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, we aim at the moon and&mdash;hit the currant bush.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is necessary always to allow for deflection,&rdquo; laughed Norah.
+      &ldquo;Apparently it takes a would-be poet to write a successful comic opera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you do not understand!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;It was not mere ambition; cap and
+      bells or laurel wreath! that is small matter. I wanted to help. The
+      world's cry of pain, I used to hear it as a boy. I hear it yet. I meant to
+      help. They that are heavy laden. I hear their cry. They cry from dawn to
+      dawn and none heed them: we pass upon the other side. Man and woman, child
+      and beast. I hear their dumb cry in the night. The child's sob in the
+      silence, the man's fierce curse of wrong. The dog beneath the vivisector's
+      knife, the overdriven brute, the creature tortured for an hour that a
+      gourmet may enjoy an instant's pleasure; they cried to me. The wrong and
+      the sorrow and the pain, the long, low, endless moan God's ears are weary
+      of; I hear it day and night. I thought to help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had risen. She took my face between her quiet, cool hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do we know? We see but a corner of the scheme. This fortress of
+      laughter that a few of you have been set apart to guard&mdash;this
+      rallying-point for all the forces of joy and gladness! how do you know it
+      may not be the key to the whole battle! It is far removed from the grand
+      charges and you think yourself forgotten. Trust your leader, be true to
+      your post.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked into her sweet grey eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always help me,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I?&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I am so glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her firm white hand in mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL KELVER ***</div>
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diff --git a/old/1334-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/1334-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1334-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/old/old/1334.txt b/old/old/1334.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1,15705 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Paul Kelver, by Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Paul Kelver
+
+Author: Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1334]
+Release Date: June, 1998
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAUL KELVER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ron Burkey
+
+
+
+
+
+PAUL KELVER
+
+By Jerome K. Jerome
+
+(Jerome Klapka), 1859-1927
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Items in [brackets] are editorial comments added
+in proofing. Italicized text is delimited by _underscores_. The pound
+(currency) symbol has been replaced by the word "pound".
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+BOOK I
+
+I. PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET
+THE MAN IN GREY
+
+II. IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH
+
+III. HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY
+
+IV. PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM
+THE ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL, AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS
+
+V. IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY
+
+VI. OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE
+LOVE-LIT EYES
+
+VII. OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW
+
+VIII. HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING
+
+IX. OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL
+
+X. IN WHICH PAUL IS SHIPWRECKED, AND CAST INTO DEEP WATERS
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+I. DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED
+
+II. PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY, AND
+BECOMES CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN
+
+III. GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM. BUT BEFORE SETTING OUT,
+HE WILL GO A-VISITING
+
+IV. LEADS TO A MEETING
+
+V. HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL
+
+VI. OF THE GLORY AND GOODNESS AND THE EVIL THAT GO TO THE MAKING OF LOVE
+
+VII. HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST
+
+VIII. AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN
+
+IX. THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING
+
+X. PAUL FINDS HIS WAY
+
+
+
+
+
+PAUL KELVER
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+
+IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SEEKS TO CAST THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THIS STORY UPON
+ANOTHER.
+
+At the corner of a long, straight, brick-built street in the far East
+End of London--one of those lifeless streets, made of two drab walls
+upon which the level lines, formed by the precisely even window-sills
+and doorsteps, stretch in weary perspective from end to end, suggesting
+petrified diagrams proving dead problems--stands a house that ever draws
+me to it; so that often, when least conscious of my footsteps, I awake
+to find myself hurrying through noisy, crowded thoroughfares, where
+flaring naphtha lamps illumine fierce, patient, leaden-coloured faces;
+through dim-lit, empty streets, where monstrous shadows come and go
+upon the close-drawn blinds; through narrow, noisome streets, where the
+gutters swarm with children, and each ever-open doorway vomits riot;
+past reeking corners, and across waste places, till at last I reach the
+dreary goal of my memory-driven desire, and, coming to a halt beside the
+broken railings, find rest.
+
+The house, larger than its fellows, built when the street was still
+a country lane, edging the marshes, strikes a strange note of
+individuality amid the surrounding harmony of hideousness. It is
+encompassed on two sides by what was once a garden, though now but a
+barren patch of stones and dust where clothes--it is odd any one should
+have thought of washing--hang in perpetuity; while about the door
+continue the remnants of a porch, which the stucco falling has left
+exposed in all its naked insincerity.
+
+Occasionally I drift hitherward in the day time, when slatternly women
+gossip round the area gates, and the silence is broken by the
+hoarse, wailing cry of "Coals--any coals--three and sixpence a
+sack--co-o-o-als!" chanted in a tone that absence of response has
+stamped with chronic melancholy; but then the street knows me not, and
+my old friend of the corner, ashamed of its shabbiness in the unpitying
+sunlight, turns its face away, and will not see me as I pass.
+
+Not until the Night, merciful alone of all things to the ugly, draws her
+veil across its sordid features will it, as some fond old nurse, sought
+out in after years, open wide its arms to welcome me. Then the teeming
+life it now shelters, hushed for a time within its walls, the flickering
+flare from the "King of Prussia" opposite extinguished, will it talk
+with me of the past, asking me many questions, reminding me of
+many things I had forgotten. Then into the silent street come the
+well-remembered footsteps; in and out the creaking gate pass, not seeing
+me, the well-remembered faces; and we talk concerning them; as two
+cronies, turning the torn leaves of some old album where the faded
+portraits in forgotten fashions, speak together in low tones of those
+now dead or scattered, with now a smile and now a sigh, and many an "Ah
+me!" or "Dear, dear!"
+
+This bent, worn man, coming towards us with quick impatient steps, which
+yet cease every fifty yards or so, while he pauses, leaning heavily upon
+his high Malacca cane: "It is a handsome face, is it not?" I ask, as I
+gaze upon it, shadow framed.
+
+"Aye, handsome enough," answers the old House; "and handsomer still it
+must have been before you and I knew it, before mean care had furrowed
+it with fretful lines."
+
+"I never could make out," continues the old House, musingly, "whom you
+took after; for they were a handsome pair, your father and your mother,
+though Lord! what a couple of children!"
+
+"Children!" I say in surprise, for my father must have been past five
+and thirty before the House could have known him, and my mother's face
+is very close to mine, in the darkness, so that I see the many grey
+hairs mingling with the bonny brown.
+
+"Children," repeats the old House, irritably, so it seems to me, not
+liking, perhaps, its opinions questioned, a failing common to old folk;
+"the most helpless pair of children I ever set eyes upon. Who but
+a child, I should like to know, would have conceived the notion of
+repairing his fortune by becoming a solicitor at thirty-eight, or,
+having conceived such a notion, would have selected the outskirts of
+Poplar as a likely centre in which to put up his door-plate?"
+
+"It was considered to be a rising neighbourhood," I reply, a little
+resentful. No son cares to hear the family wisdom criticised, even
+though at the bottom of his heart he may be in agreement with the
+critic. "All sorts and conditions of men, whose affairs were in
+connection with the sea would, it was thought, come to reside hereabout,
+so as to be near to the new docks; and had they, it is not unreasonable
+to suppose they would have quarrelled and disputed with one another,
+much to the advantage of a cute solicitor, convenient to their hand."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense," retorts the old House, shortly; "why, the mere
+smell of the place would have been sufficient to keep a sensible man
+away. And"--the grim brick face before me twists itself into a goblin
+smile--"he, of all men in the world, as 'the cute solicitor,' giving
+advice to shady clients, eager to get out of trouble by the shortest
+way, can you fancy it! he who for two years starved himself, living on
+five shillings a week--that was before you came to London, when he
+was here alone. Even your mother knew nothing of it till years
+afterwards--so that no man should be a penny the poorer for having
+trusted his good name. Do you think the crew of chandlers and brokers,
+dock hustlers and freight wreckers would have found him a useful man of
+business, even had they come to settle here?"
+
+I have no answer; nor does the old House wait for any, but talks on.
+
+"And your mother! would any but a child have taken that soft-tongued
+wanton to her bosom, and not have seen through acting so transparent?
+Would any but the veriest child that never ought to have been let out
+into the world by itself have thought to dree her weird in such folly?
+Children! poor babies they were, both of them."
+
+"Tell me," I say--for at such times all my stock of common sense is not
+sufficient to convince me that the old House is but clay. From its walls
+so full of voices, from its floors so thick with footsteps, surely it
+has learned to live; as a violin, long played on, comes to learn at last
+a music of its own. "Tell me, I was but a child to whom life speaks in a
+strange tongue, was there any truth in the story?"
+
+"Truth!" snaps out the old House; "just truth enough to plant a lie
+upon; and Lord knows not much ground is needed for that weed. I saw
+what I saw, and I know what I know. Your mother had a good man, and
+your father a true wife, but it was the old story: a man's way is not a
+woman's way, and a woman's way is not a man's way, so there lives ever
+doubt between them."
+
+"But they came together in the end," I say, remembering.
+
+"Aye, in the end," answers the House. "That is when you begin to
+understand, you men and women, when you come to the end."
+
+The grave face of a not too recently washed angel peeps shyly at
+me through the railings, then, as I turn my head, darts back and
+disappears.
+
+"What has become of her?" I ask.
+
+"She? Oh, she is well enough," replies the House. "She lives close here.
+You must have passed the shop. You might have seen her had you looked
+in. She weighs fourteen stone, about; and has nine children living. She
+would be pleased to see you."
+
+"Thank you," I say, with a laugh that is not wholly a laugh; "I do not
+think I will call." But I still hear the pit-pat of her tiny feet, dying
+down the long street.
+
+The faces thicken round me. A large looming, rubicund visage smiles
+kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of
+instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn
+from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth
+and the loveliest eyes I ever have known in a man.
+
+"Was he as bad, do you think, as they said?" I ask of my ancient friend.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," the old House answers. "I never knew a worse--nor a
+better."
+
+The wind whisks it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling
+nimbly by aid of a stick. Three corkscrew curls each side of her head
+bob with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the
+most alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to
+herself some fascinating secret, "I'd like to skin 'em. I'd like to skin
+'em all. I'd like to skin 'em all alive!"
+
+It sounds a fiendish sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old
+lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond
+my ken.
+
+Then, as though choosing contrasts, follows a fair, laughing face. I saw
+it in the life only a few hours ago--at least, not it, but the poor daub
+that Evil has painted over it, hating the sweetness underlying. And as
+I stand gazing at it, wishing it were of the dead who change not, there
+drifts back from the shadows that other face, the one of the wicked
+mouth and the tender eyes, so that I stand again helpless between the
+two I loved so well, he from whom I learned my first steps in manhood,
+she from whom I caught my first glimpse of the beauty and the mystery of
+woman. And again the cry rises from my heart, "Whose fault was it--yours
+or hers?" And again I hear his mocking laugh as he answers, "Whose
+fault? God made us." And thinking of her and of the love I bore her,
+which was as the love of a young pilgrim to a saint, it comes into my
+blood to hate him. But when I look into his eyes and see the pain that
+lives there, my pity grows stronger than my misery, and I can only echo
+his words, "God made us."
+
+Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but
+the centre round which they circle remains always the one: a little
+lad with golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy,
+awkward ways and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.
+
+And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask: "Would he know me,
+could he see me, do you think?"
+
+"How should he," answers the old House, "you are so different to what he
+would expect. Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?"
+
+"It is sad to think he would not recognise me," I say.
+
+"It might be sadder if he did," grumbles the old House.
+
+We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House is
+thinking. Soon it speaks as I expected.
+
+"You--writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him? There is
+something that you know."
+
+It is the favourite theme of the old House. I never visit it but it
+suggests to me this idea.
+
+"But he has done nothing?" I say.
+
+"He has lived," answers the old House. "Is not that enough?"
+
+"Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times," I persist. "How
+of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?"
+
+The old House waxes impatient of me.
+
+"'The people!'" it retorts, "what are you all but children in a dim-lit
+room, waiting until one by one you are called out to sleep. And one
+mounts upon a stool and tells a tale to the others who have gathered
+round. Who shall say what will please them, what will not."
+
+Returning home with musing footsteps through the softly breathing
+streets, I ponder the words of the old House. Is it but as some foolish
+mother thinking all the world interested in her child, or may there
+lie wisdom in its counsel? Then to my guidance or misguidance comes the
+thought of a certain small section of the Public who often of an evening
+commands of me a story; and who, when I have told her of the dreadful
+giants and of the gallant youths who slay them, of the wood-cutter's
+sons who rescue maidens from Ogre-guarded castles; of the Princesses the
+most beautiful in all the world, of the Princes with magic swords, still
+unsatisfied, creeps closer yet, saying: "Now tell me a real story,"
+adding for my comprehending: "You know: about a little girl who lived in
+a big house with her father and mother, and who was sometimes naughty,
+you know."
+
+So perhaps among the many there may be some who for a moment will turn
+aside from tales of haughty Heroes, ruffling it in Court and Camp, to
+listen to the story of a very ordinary lad who lived with very ordinary
+folk in a modern London street, and who grew up to be a very ordinary
+sort of man, loving a little and grieving a little, helping a few and
+harming a few, struggling and failing and hoping; and if any such there
+be, let them come round me.
+
+But let not those who come to me grow indignant as they listen, saying:
+"This rascal tells us but a humdrum story, where nothing is as it should
+be;" for I warn all beforehand that I tell but of things that I have
+seen. My villains, I fear, are but poor sinners, not altogether bad;
+and my good men but sorry saints. My princes do not always slay their
+dragons; alas, sometimes, the dragon eats the prince. The wicked
+fairies often prove more powerful than the good. The magic thread leads
+sometimes wrong, and even the hero is not always brave and true.
+
+So let those come round me only who will be content to hear but their
+own story, told by another, saying as they listen, "So dreamt I. Ah,
+yes, that is true, I remember."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET
+THE MAN IN GREY.
+
+Fate intended me for a singularly fortunate man. Properly, I ought to
+have been born in June, which being, as is well known, the luckiest
+month in all the year for such events, should, by thoughtful parents, be
+more generally selected. How it was I came to be born in May, which is,
+on the other hand, of all the twelve the most unlucky, as I have proved,
+I leave to those more conversant with the subject to explain. An early
+nurse, the first human being of whom I have any distinct recollection,
+unhesitatingly attributed the unfortunate fact to my natural impatience;
+which quality she at the same time predicted would lead me into even
+greater trouble, a prophecy impressed by future events with the stamp of
+prescience. It was from this same bony lady that I likewise learned the
+manner of my coming. It seems that I arrived, quite unexpectedly, two
+hours after news had reached the house of the ruin of my father's mines
+through inundation; misfortunes, as it was expounded to me, never coming
+singly in this world to any one. That all things might be of a piece,
+my poor mother, attempting to reach the bell, fell against and broke the
+cheval-glass, thus further saddening herself with the conviction--for
+no amount of reasoning ever succeeded in purging her Welsh blood of
+its natural superstition--that whatever might be the result of future
+battles with my evil star, the first seven years of tiny existence had
+been, by her act, doomed to disaster.
+
+"And I must confess," added the knobbly Mrs. Fursey, with a sigh, "it
+does look as though there must be some truth in the saying, after all."
+
+"Then ain't I a lucky little boy?" I asked. For hitherto it had been
+Mrs. Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune.
+That I could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less
+happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until eight
+or nine o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding piece of
+luck. Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which, in my more
+riotous moments, I envied them. Again, that at the first sign of a cold
+it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed gruel and sup
+off brimstone and treacle--a compound named with deliberate intent to
+deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as taste is concerned, being
+wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was another example of Fortune's
+favouritism: other little boys were so astoundingly unlucky as to be
+left alone when they felt ill. If further proof were needed to convince
+that I had been signalled out by Providence as its especial protege,
+there remained always the circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey
+for my nurse. The suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of
+children was a new departure.
+
+The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct
+it.
+
+"Oh, you! You are lucky enough," she replied; "I was thinking of your
+poor mother."
+
+"Isn't mamma lucky?"
+
+"Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came."
+
+"Wasn't it lucky, her having me?"
+
+"I can't say it was, at that particular time."
+
+"Didn't she want me?"
+
+Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion
+that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of
+perpetual apology for its existence.
+
+"Well, I daresay she could have done without you," was the answer.
+
+I can see the picture plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair before
+the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands, meanwhile Mrs.
+Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble.
+At that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time the problem
+of life.
+
+Suddenly, without moving, I said:
+
+"Then why did she take me in?"
+
+The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.
+
+"Took you in! What's the child talking about? Who's took you in?"
+
+"Why, mamma. If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?"
+
+But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded
+this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad
+that she had. The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window
+presented itself to my imagination. I saw the stork, perplexed and
+annoyed, looking as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the fish
+he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna, and
+the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone away
+thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long, compass-like
+legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here, incidentally, I fell
+a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the garden I had often
+watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm, though no doubt
+really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous and uncomfortable.
+Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And where would the stork
+have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs. Fursey's: their cottage was the
+nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey would not have taken me in; and
+next to them, at the first house in the village, lived Mr. Chumdley,
+the cobbler, who was lame, and who sat all day hammering boots with
+very dirty hands, in a little cave half under the ground, his whole
+appearance suggesting a poor-spirited ogre. I should have hated being
+his little boy. Possibly nobody would have taken me in. I grew pensive,
+thinking of myself as the rejected of all the village. What would the
+stork have done with me, left on his hands, so to speak. The reflection
+prompted a fresh question.
+
+"Nurse, where did I come from?"
+
+"Why, I've told you often. The stork brought you."
+
+"Yes, I know. But where did the stork get me from?" Mrs. Fursey paused
+for quite a long while before replying. Possibly she was reflecting
+whether such answer might not make me unduly conceited. Eventually she
+must have decided to run that risk; other opportunities could be relied
+upon for neutralising the effect.
+
+"Oh, from Heaven."
+
+"But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to," I answered; "not
+where you comed from." I know I said "comed," for I remember that at
+this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor
+mother. "Comed" and "goned," which I had worked out for myself, were
+particular favourites of mine.
+
+Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had
+been pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my
+education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same
+subject only confused a child.
+
+"You came from Heaven," repeated Mrs. Fursey, "and you'll go to
+Heaven--if you're good."
+
+"Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?"
+
+"So they say." Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what
+might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took
+no responsibility.
+
+"And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?" Mrs. Fursey's reply to this
+was decidedly more emphatic.
+
+"Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?"
+
+At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my
+eyes. Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should
+be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as it
+appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm
+disappeared.
+
+But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a
+fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my
+fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's
+egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.
+
+"Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?" I asked. "Weren't they
+fond of me up there?"
+
+The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom,
+for she answered more sympathetically than usual.
+
+"Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to
+get rid of you sometimes." There could be no doubt as to this last. Even
+at the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was not
+occasionally half-past five.
+
+The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted
+either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was glad
+to get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have done without
+me. Nobody wanted me. Why was I here?
+
+And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark room,
+came into my childish brain the feeling that Something, somewhere, must
+have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I belonged to and
+that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part of me as I of It.
+The feeling came back to me more than once during my childhood, though I
+could never put it into words. Years later the son of the Portuguese Jew
+explained to me my thought. But all that I myself could have told was
+that in that moment I knew for the first time that I lived, that I was
+I.
+
+The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little
+boy, sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions
+concerning life.
+
+Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an old.
+
+"Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?"
+
+Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.
+
+"What maggot has the child got into its head now?" was her observation;
+"who hasn't got a husband?"
+
+"Why, mamma."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a
+husband."
+
+"No, she ain't."
+
+"And don't contradict. Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives in
+London."
+
+"What's the good of _him_!"
+
+Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.
+
+"You wicked child, you; where's your commandments? Your father is in
+London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit
+there and say 'What's the good of him!' I'd be ashamed to be such an
+ungrateful little brat."
+
+I had not meant to be ungrateful. My words were but the repetition of
+a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my
+aunt.
+
+Had said my aunt: "There she goes, moping again. Drat me if ever I saw
+such a thing to mope as a woman."
+
+My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject. She herself grumbled all
+day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.
+
+My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite
+attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the garden
+beyond. It must have been spring time, for I remember the white and
+yellow crocuses decking the grass.
+
+"I want a husband," had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously
+childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I was
+reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; "I hate
+not having a husband."
+
+"Help us and save us," my aunt had retorted; "how many more does a girl
+want? She's got one."
+
+"What's the good of him all that way off," had pouted my mother; "I want
+him here where I can get at him."
+
+I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in
+London, and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish
+endeavours to square information with reflection had resulted in my
+assigning to him an entirely spiritual existence. I agreed with my
+mother that such an one, however to be revered, was no substitute for
+the flesh and blood father possessed by luckier folk--the big, strong,
+masculine thing that would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden,
+or take a chap to sail in boats.
+
+"You don't understand me, nurse," I explained; "what I mean is a husband
+you can get at."
+
+"Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,"
+answered Mrs. Fursey. "When he's ready for you he'll send for you, and
+then you'll go to him in London."
+
+I felt that still Mrs. Fursey didn't understand. But I foresaw that
+further explanation would only shock her, so contented myself with a
+simple, matter-of-fact question.
+
+"How do you get to London; do you have to die first?"
+
+"I do think," said Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of resigned despair rather
+than of surprise, "that, without exception, you are the silliest little
+boy I ever came across. I've no patience with you."
+
+"I am very sorry, nurse," I answered; "I thought--"
+
+"Then," interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations, "you
+shouldn't think. London," continued the good dame, her experience no
+doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would be through my
+understanding of this matter, "is a big town, and you go there in a
+train. Some time--soon now--your father will write to your mother that
+everything is ready. Then you and your mother and your aunt will leave
+this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of you."
+
+"And shan't we come back here ever any more?"
+
+"Never again."
+
+"And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the
+pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?"
+
+"Never again." I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase. It
+sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.
+
+"And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or
+you, ever any more?" In this moment of the crumbling from under me of
+all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey
+herself.
+
+"Never any more. You'll go away and begin an entirely new life. And I do
+hope, Master Paul," added Mrs. Fursey, piously, "it may be a better one.
+That you will make up your mind to--"
+
+But Mrs. Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have been,
+fell upon deaf ears. Here was I face to face with yet another problem.
+This life into which I had fallen: it was understandable! One went away,
+leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to return to them.
+One left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a new existence in a
+strange land. One parted from the friends one had always known, one saw
+them never again. Life was indeed a strange thing; and, would a body
+comprehend it, then must a body sit staring into the fire, thinking very
+hard, unheedful of all idle chatter.
+
+That night, when my mother came to kiss me good-night, I turned my
+face to the wall and pretended to be asleep, for children as well as
+grown-ups have their foolish moods; but when I felt the soft curls brush
+my cheek, my pride gave way, and clasping my arms about her neck, and
+drawing her face still closer down to mine; I voiced the question that
+all the evening had been knocking at my heart:
+
+"I suppose you couldn't send me back now, could you? You see, you've had
+me so long."
+
+"Send you back?"
+
+"Yes. I'd be too big for the stork to carry now, wouldn't I?"
+
+My mother knelt down beside the bed so that her face and mine were on
+a level, and looking into her eyes, the fear that had been haunting me
+fell from me.
+
+"Who has been talking foolishly to a foolish little boy?" asked my
+mother, keeping my arms still clasped about her neck.
+
+"Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know," I answered, "and she
+said you could have done without me." Somehow, I did not mind repeating
+the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's fun.
+
+My mother drew me closer to her.
+
+"And what made her think that?"
+
+"Well, you see," I replied, "I came at a very awkward time, didn't I;
+when you had a lot of other troubles."
+
+My mother laughed, but the next moment looked grave again.
+
+"I did not know you thought about such things," she said; "we must be
+more together, you and I, Paul, and you shall tell me all you think,
+because nurse does not quite understand you. It is true what she said
+about the trouble; it came just at that time. But I could not have done
+without you. I was very unhappy, and you were sent to comfort me and
+help me to bear it." I liked this explanation better.
+
+"Then it was lucky, your having me?" I said. Again my mother laughed,
+and again there followed that graver look upon her childish face.
+
+"Will you remember what I am going to say?" She spoke so earnestly that
+I, wriggling into a sitting posture, became earnest also.
+
+"I'll try," I answered; "but I ain't got a very good memory, have I?"
+
+"Not very," smiled my mother; "but if you think about it a good deal it
+will not leave you. When you are a good boy, and later on, when you are
+a good man, then I am the luckiest little mother in all the world. And
+every time you fail, that means bad luck for me. You will remember that
+after I'm gone, when you are a big man, won't you, Paul?"
+
+So, both of us quite serious, I promised; and though I smile now when
+I remember, seeing before me those two earnest, childish faces, yet I
+think, however little success it may be I have to boast of, it would
+perhaps have been still less had I entirely forgotten.
+
+From that day my mother waxes in my memory; Mrs. Fursey, of the many
+promontories, waning. There were sunny mornings in the neglected garden,
+where the leaves played round us while we worked and read; twilight
+evenings in the window seat where, half hidden by the dark red curtains,
+we would talk in whispers, why I know not, of good men and noble women,
+ogres, fairies, saints and demons; they were pleasant days.
+
+Possibly our curriculum lacked method; maybe it was too varied and
+extensive for my age, in consequence of which chronology became confused
+within my brain, and fact and fiction more confounded than has usually
+been considered permissible, even in history. I saw Aphrodite, ready
+armed and risen from the sea, move with stately grace to meet King
+Canute, who, throned upon the sand, bade her come no further lest
+she should wet his feet. In forest glade I saw King Rufus fall from a
+poisoned arrow shot by Robin Hood; but thanks to sweet Queen Eleanor,
+who sucked the poison from his wound, I knew he lived. Oliver Cromwell,
+having killed King Charles, married his widow, and was in turn stabbed
+by Hamlet. Ulysses, in the Argo, it was fixed upon my mind, had
+discovered America. Romulus and Remus had slain the wolf and rescued
+Little Red Riding Hood. Good King Arthur, for letting the cakes burn,
+had been murdered by his uncle in the Tower of London. Prometheus, bound
+to the Rock, had been saved by good St. George. Paris had given the
+apple to William Tell. What matter! the information was there. It needed
+rearranging, that was all.
+
+Sometimes, of an afternoon, we would climb the steep winding pathway
+through the woods, past awful precipices, spirit-haunted, by grassy
+swards where fairies danced o' nights, by briar and bracken sheltered
+Caves where fearsome creatures lurked, till high above the creeping sea
+we would reach the open plateau where rose old Jacob's ruined tower.
+"Jacob's Folly" it was more often called about the country side, and by
+some "The Devil's Tower;" for legend had it that there old Jacob and his
+master, the Devil, had often met in windy weather to wave false wrecking
+lights to troubled ships. Who "old Jacob" was, I never, that I can
+remember, learned, nor how nor why he built the Tower. Certain only it
+is his memory was unpopular, and the fisher folk would swear that
+still on stormy nights strange lights would gleam and flash from the
+ivy-curtained windows of his Folly.
+
+But in day time no spot was more inviting, the short moss-grass before
+its shattered door, the lichen on its crumbling stones. From its topmost
+platform one saw the distant mountains, faint like spectres, and the
+silent ships that came and vanished; and about one's feet the pleasant
+farm lands and the grave, sweet river.
+
+Smaller and poorer the world has grown since then. Now, behind those
+hills lie naught but smoky towns and dingy villages; but then they
+screened a land of wonder where princesses dwelt in castles, where the
+cities were of gold. Now the ocean is but six days' journey wide, ending
+at the New York Custom House. Then, had one set one's sail upon it, one
+would have travelled far and far, beyond the golden moonlight, beyond
+the gate of clouds; to the magic land of the blood red shore, t'other
+side o' the sun. I never dreamt in those days a world could be so small.
+
+Upon the topmost platform a wooden seat ran round within the parapet,
+and sitting there hand in hand, sheltered from the wind which ever blew
+about the tower, my mother would people for me all the earth and air
+with the forms of myth and legend--perhaps unwisely, yet I do not
+know. I took no harm from it, good rather, I think. They were beautiful
+fancies, most of them; or so my mother turned them, making for love and
+pity, as do all the tales that live, whether poems or old wives fables.
+But at that time of course they had no meaning for me other than the
+literal; so that my mother, looking into my eyes, would often hasten
+to add: "But that, you know, is only an old superstition, and of course
+there are no such things nowadays." Yet, forgetful sometimes of the
+time, and overtaken homeward by the shadows, we would hasten swiftly
+through the darkening path, holding each other tightly by the hand.
+
+Spring had waxed to summer, summer waned to autumn. Then my aunt and I
+one morning, waiting at the breakfast table, saw through the open window
+my mother skipping, dancing, pirouetting up the garden path. She held
+a letter open in her hand, which as she drew near she waved about her
+head, singing:
+
+"Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then comes Wednesday morning."
+
+She caught me to her and began dancing with me round the room.
+
+Observed my aunt, who continued steadily to eat bread and butter:
+
+"Just like 'em all. Goes mad with joy. What for? Because she's going to
+leave a decent house, to live in a poky hole in the East End of London,
+and keep one servant."
+
+To my aunt the second person ever remained a grammatical superfluity.
+Invariably she spoke not to but of a person, throwing out her
+conversation in the form of commentary. This had the advantage
+of permitting the party intended to ignore it as mere impersonal
+philosophy. Seeing it was generally uncomplimentary, most people
+preferred so to regard it; but my mother had never succeeded in
+schooling herself to indifference.
+
+"It's not a poky hole," she replied; "it's an old-fashioned house, near
+the river."
+
+"Plaistow marshes!" ejaculated my aunt, "calls it the river!"
+
+"So it is the river," returned my mother; "the river is the other side
+of the marshes."
+
+"Let's hope it will always stop there," said my aunt.
+
+"And it's got a garden," continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last
+remark; "which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it
+isn't the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won't make
+me miserable because I am too happy."
+
+"Drat the woman!" said my aunt, "why can't she sit down and give us our
+tea before it's all cold?"
+
+"You are a disagreeable thing!" said my mother.
+
+"Not half milk," said my aunt. My aunt was never in the least disturbed
+by other people's opinion of her, which was perhaps well for her.
+
+For three days my mother packed and sang; and a dozen times a day
+unpacked and laughed, looking for things wanted that were always found
+at the very bottom of the very last box looked into, so that Anna,
+waiting for a certain undergarment of my aunt's which shall be nameless,
+suggested a saving of time:
+
+"If I were you, ma'am," said Anna, "I'd look into the last box you're
+going to look into first."
+
+But it was found eventually in the first box-the box, that is, my mother
+had intended to search first, but which, acting on Anna's suggestion,
+she had reserved till the last. This caused my mother to be quite short
+with Anna, who she said had wasted her time. But by Tuesday afternoon
+all stood ready: we were to start early Wednesday morning.
+
+That evening, missing my mother in the house, I sought her in the garden
+and found her, as I had expected, on her favourite seat under the great
+lime tree; but to my surprise there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"But I thought you were glad we were going," I said.
+
+"So I am," answered my mother, drying her eyes only to make room for
+fresh tears.
+
+"Then why are you crying?"
+
+"Because I'm sorry to leave here."
+
+Grown-up folks with their contradictory ways were a continual puzzle to
+me in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now, myself
+included.
+
+We were up and off next day before the dawn. The sun rose as the wagon
+reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our farewell
+look at Old Jacob's Tower. My mother cried a little behind her veil; but
+my aunt only said, "I never did care for earwigs in my tea;" and as
+for myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much sentiment about
+anything.
+
+On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who
+in his sleep--and he slept often--imagined me to be a piece of stuffing
+out of place. Then, grunting and wriggling, he would endeavour to rub
+me out, until the continued irritation of my head between the window
+and his back would cause him to awake, when he would look down upon me
+reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the carriage generally: "It's
+a funny thing, ain't it, nobody's ever made a boy yet that could keep
+still for ten seconds." After which he would pat me heartily on the
+head, to show he was not vexed with me, and fall to sleep again upon me.
+He was a good-tempered man.
+
+My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had
+found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat
+upon; so I was left mainly to my own resources. When I could get my head
+free of the big man's back, I gazed out of the window, and watched the
+flying fragments as we shed the world. Now a village would fall from us,
+now the yellow corn-land would cling to us for awhile, or a wood catch
+at our rushing feet, and sometimes a strong town would stop us, and hold
+us, panting for a space. Or, my eyes weary, I would sit and listen to
+the hoarse singing of the wheels beneath my feet. It was a monotonous
+chaunt, ever the same two lines:
+
+     "Here we suffer grief and pain,
+     Here we meet to part again,"
+
+followed by a low, rumbling laugh. Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes
+pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and
+ever followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the
+iron wheels sing to me that same song.
+
+Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my
+having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring all
+the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy in the
+dragon's stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully overeaten
+himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely undigested, including
+Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson, against whom, at that
+period, I entertained a strong prejudice by reason of our divergent
+views upon the subject of spelling. Even in this hour of our mutual
+discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone, but persisted in asking me
+how I spelt Jonah. Nobody was looking, so I kicked him. He sprang up
+and came after me. I tried to run away, but became wedged between
+Hop-o'-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar. I suppose our tearing about must
+have hurt the dragon, for at that moment he gave vent to a most fearful
+scream, and I awoke to find the fat man rubbing his left shin, while
+we struggled slowly, with steps growing ever feebler, against a sea of
+brick that every moment closed in closer round us.
+
+We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that
+might have been the dragon's home, where, to my alarm, my mother was
+immediately swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.
+
+"Why's he do that?" I asked of my aunt.
+
+"Because he's a fool," answered my aunt; "they all are."
+
+He put my mother down and came towards us. He was a tall, thin man, with
+eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively even then
+I associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white horse.
+
+"Why, how he's grown," said the grey man, raising me in his arms until
+my mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little
+person; "and solid too."
+
+My mother whispered something. I think from her face, for I knew the
+signs, it was praise of me.
+
+"And he's going to be our new fortune," she added aloud, as the grey man
+lowered me.
+
+"Then," said my aunt, who had this while been sitting rigid upon a flat
+black box, "don't drop him down a coal-mine. That's all I say."
+
+I wondered at the time why the grey man's pale face should flush so
+crimson, and why my mother should whisper angrily:
+
+"How can you be so wicked, Fanny? How dare you say such a thing?"
+
+"I only said 'don't drop him down a coal-mine,'" returned my aunt,
+apparently much surprised; "you don't want to drop him down a coal-mine,
+do you?"
+
+We passed through glittering, joyous streets, piled high each side with
+all the good things of the earth; toys and baubles, jewels and gold,
+things good to eat and good to drink, things good to wear and good to
+see; through pleasant ways where fountains splashed and flowers bloomed.
+The people wore bright clothes, had happy faces. They rode in beautiful
+carriages, they strolled about, greeting one another with smiles. The
+children ran and laughed. London, thought I to myself, is the city of
+the fairies.
+
+It passed, and we sank into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets,
+wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the yellow
+waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses, rock-bound.
+Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none stayed to greet
+another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless. London, then, said I
+to myself, is the city of the giants. They must live in these towering
+castles side by side, and these hurrying thousands are their driven
+slaves.
+
+But this passed also, and we sank lower yet until we reached a third
+city, where a pale mist filled each sombre street. None of the beautiful
+things of the world were to be seen here, but only the things coarse
+and ugly. And wearily to and fro its sunless passages trudged with heavy
+steps a weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull, listless faces. And
+London, I knew, was the city of the gnomes who labour sadly all their
+lives, imprisoned underground; and a terror seized me lest I, too,
+should remain chained here, deep down below the fairy city that was
+already but a dream.
+
+We stopped at last in a long, unfinished street. I remember our pushing
+our way through a group of dirty urchins, all of whom, my aunt remarked
+in passing, ought to be skinned. It was my aunt's one prescription for
+all to whom she took objection; but really in the present instance I
+think it would have been of service; nothing else whatever could have
+restored them to cleanliness. Then the door closed behind us with an
+echoing clang, and the small, cold rooms came forward stiffly to greet
+us.
+
+The man in grey went to the one window and drew back the curtain; it
+was growing dusk now. My aunt sat on a straight, hard chair and stared
+fixedly at the three-armed gaselier. My mother stood in the centre of
+the room with one small ungloved hand upon the table, and I noticed--for
+I was very near--that the poor little one-legged thing was trembling.
+
+"Of course it's not what you've been accustomed to, Maggie," said the
+man in grey; "but it's only for a little while."
+
+He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back
+being to the light.
+
+My mother drew his arms around us both.
+
+"It is the best home in all the world," she said; and thus we stayed for
+awhile.
+
+"Nonsense," said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; "it's a poky
+hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she's got a
+man clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could rest
+where he was put. Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up."
+
+It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man laughed--I
+had not heard him laugh till then--and my mother ran to my aunt and
+kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.
+
+For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a
+screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in the
+evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued voices
+awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and the man in
+grey were talking together over their supper.
+
+"We must buy land," said the voice of the grey man; "London is coming
+this way. The Somebodies" (I forget the name my father mentioned) "made
+all their money by buying up land round New York for a mere song. Then,
+as the city spread, they became worth millions."
+
+"But where will you get the money from, Luke?" asked the voice of my
+mother.
+
+The voice of the grey man answered airily:
+
+"Oh, that's merely a matter of business. You grant a mortgage. The
+property goes up in value. You borrow more. Then you buy more--and so
+on."
+
+"I see," said my mother.
+
+"Being on the spot gives one such an advantage," said the grey man. "I
+shall know just when to buy. It's a great thing, being on the spot."
+
+"Of course, it must be," said my mother.
+
+I suppose I must have dozed, for the next words I heard the grey man say
+were:
+
+"Of course you have the park opposite, but then the house is small."
+
+"But shall we need a very large one?" asked my mother.
+
+"One never knows," said the grey man. "If I should go into Parliament--"
+
+At this point a hissing sound arose from the neighbourhood of the fire.
+
+"It _looks_," said my mother, "as if it were done."
+
+"If you will hold the dish," said the grey man, "I think I can pour it
+in without spilling."
+
+Again I must have dozed.
+
+"It depends," said the grey man, "upon what he is going to be. For the
+classics, of course, Oxford."
+
+"He's going to be very clever," said my mother. She spoke as one who
+knows.
+
+"We'll hope so," said the grey man.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," said my mother, "if he turned out a poet."
+
+The grey man said something in a low tone that I did not hear.
+
+"I'm not so sure," answered my mother, "it's in the blood. I've often
+thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet."
+
+"I never had the time," said the grey man. "There were one or two little
+things--"
+
+"They were very beautiful," interrupted my mother. The clatter of the
+knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments. Then continued
+the grey man:
+
+"There would be no harm, provided I made enough. It's the law of nature.
+One generation earns, the next spends. We must see. In any case, I think
+I should prefer Oxford for him."
+
+"It will be so hard parting from him," said my mother.
+
+"There will be the vacations," said the grey man, "when we shall
+travel."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH.
+
+The case of my father and mother was not normal. You understand they
+had been separated for some years, and though they were not young in
+age--indeed, before my childish eyes they loomed quite ancient folk,
+and in fact my father must have been nearly forty and my mother quit of
+thirty--yet, as you will come to think yourself, no doubt, during the
+course of my story, they were in all the essentials of life little more
+than boy and girl. This I came to see later on, but at that time, had I
+been consulted by enquiring maid or bachelor, I might unwittingly have
+given wrong impressions concerning marriage in the general. I should
+have described a husband as a man who could never rest quite content
+unless his wife were by his side; who twenty times a day would call from
+his office door: "Maggie, are you doing anything important? I want to
+talk to you about a matter of business." ... "Maggie, are you alone? Oh,
+all right, I'll come down." Of a wife I should have said she was a woman
+whose eyes were ever love-lit when resting on her man; who was glad
+where he was and troubled where he was not. But in every case this might
+not have been correct.
+
+Also, I should have had something to say concerning the alarms and
+excursions attending residence with any married couple. I should have
+recommended the holding up of feet under the table lest, mistaken for
+other feet, they should be trodden on and pressed. Also, I should have
+advised against entry into any room unpreceded by what in Stageland
+is termed "noise without." It is somewhat disconcerting to the nervous
+incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound as of people
+springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird scuttling of feet,
+and then to discover the occupants sitting stiffly in opposite corners,
+deeply engaged in book or needlework. But, as I have said, with regard
+to some households, such precautions might be needless.
+
+Personally, I fear, I exercised little or no controlling influence upon
+my parents in this respect, my intrusions coming soon to be greeted
+with: "Oh, it's only Spud," in a tone of relief, accompanied generally
+by the sofa cushion; but of my aunt they stood more in awe. Not that she
+ever said anything, and, indeed, to do her justice, in her efforts to
+spare their feelings she erred, if at all, on the side of excess.
+Never did she move a footstep about the house except to the music of
+a sustained and penetrating cough. As my father once remarked,
+ungratefully, I must confess, the volume of bark produced by my aunt in
+a single day would have done credit to the dying efforts of a hospital
+load of consumptives; to a robust and perfectly healthy lady the cost in
+nervous force must have been prodigious. Also, that no fear should live
+with them that her eyes had seen aught not intended for them, she would
+invariably enter backwards any room in which they might be, closing the
+door loudly and with difficulty before turning round: and through dark
+passages she would walk singing. No woman alive could have done more;
+yet--such is human nature!--neither my father nor my mother was grateful
+to her, so far as I could judge.
+
+Indeed, strange as it may appear, the more sympathetic towards them she
+showed herself, the more irritated against her did they become.
+
+"I believe, Fanny, you hate seeing Luke and me happy together," said my
+mother one day, coming up from the kitchen to find my aunt preparing
+for entry into the drawing-room by dropping teaspoons at five-second
+intervals outside the door: "Don't make yourself so ridiculous." My
+mother spoke really quite unkindly.
+
+"Hate it!" replied my aunt. "Why should I? Why shouldn't a pair of
+turtle doves bill and coo, when their united age is only a little over
+seventy, the pretty dears?" The mildness of my aunt's answers often
+surprised me.
+
+As for my father, he grew positively vindictive. I remember the occasion
+well. It was the first, though not the last time I knew him lose his
+temper. What brought up the subject I forget, but my father stopped
+suddenly; we were walking by the canal bank.
+
+"Your aunt"--my father may not have intended it, but his tone and manner
+when speaking of my aunt always conveyed to me the impression that he
+regarded me as personally responsible for her existence. This used to
+weigh upon me. "Your aunt is the most cantankerous, the most--" he broke
+off, and shook his fist towards the setting sun. "I wish to God," said
+my father, "your aunt had a comfortable little income of her own, with
+a freehold cottage in the country, by God I do!" But the next moment,
+ashamed, I suppose, of his brutality: "Not but what sometimes, of
+course, she can be very nice, you know," he added; "don't tell your
+mother what I said just now."
+
+Another who followed with sympathetic interest the domestic comedy was
+Susan, our maid-of-all-work, the first of a long and varied series,
+extending unto the advent of Amy, to whom the blessing of Heaven. Susan
+was a stout and elderly female, liable to sudden fits of sleepiness, the
+result, we were given to understand, of trouble; but her heart, it was
+her own proud boast, was always in the right place. She could never look
+at my father and mother sitting anywhere near each other but she must
+flop down and weep awhile; the sight of connubial bliss always reminding
+her, so she would explain, of the past glories of her own married state.
+
+Though an earnest enquirer, I was never able myself to grasp the ins
+and outs of this past married life of Susan's. Whether her answers were
+purposely framed to elude curiosity, or whether they were the result of
+a naturally incoherent mind, I cannot say. Their tendency was to convey
+confusion.
+
+On Monday I have seen Susan shed tears of regret into the Brussels
+sprouts, that she had been debarred by the pressure of other duties from
+lately watering "his" grave, which, I gathered, was at Manor Park.
+While on Tuesday I have listened, blood chilled, to the recital of her
+intentions should she ever again enjoy the luxury of getting her fingers
+near the scruff of his neck.
+
+"But, I thought, Susan, he was dead," was my very natural comment upon
+this outbreak.
+
+"So did I, Master Paul," was Susan's rejoinder; "that was his
+artfulness."
+
+"Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?"
+
+"Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get hold
+of him."
+
+"Then he wasn't a good man?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Your husband."
+
+"Who says he ain't a good man?" It was Susan's flying leaps from tense
+to tense that most bewildered me. "If anybody says he ain't I'll gouge
+their eye out!"
+
+I hastened to assure Susan that my observation had been intended in the
+nature of enquiry, not of assertion.
+
+"Brings me a bottle of gin--for my headaches--every time he comes home,"
+continued Susan, showing cause for opinion, "every blessed time."
+
+And at some such point as this I would retire to the clearer atmosphere
+of German grammar or mixed fractions.
+
+We suffered a good deal from Susan one way and another; for having
+regard to the admirable position of her heart, we all felt it our duty
+to overlook mere failings of the flesh--all but my aunt, that is, who
+never made any pretence of being a sentimentalist.
+
+"She's a lazy hussy," was the opinion expressed of her one morning by my
+aunt, who was rinsing; "a gulping, snorting, lazy hussy, that's what she
+is." There was some excuse for my aunt's indignation. It was then eleven
+o'clock and Susan was still sleeping off an attack of what she called
+"new-ralgy."
+
+"She has seen a good deal of trouble," said my mother, who was wiping.
+
+"And if she was my cook and housemaid," replied my aunt, "she would see
+more, the slut!"
+
+"She's not a good servant in many respects," admitted my mother, "but I
+think she's good-hearted."
+
+"Oh, drat her heart," was my aunt's retort. "The right place for that
+heart of hers is on the doorstep. And that's where I'd put it, and her
+and her box alongside it, if I had my way."
+
+The departure of Susan did take place not long afterwards. It occurred
+one Saturday night. My mother came upstairs looking pale.
+
+"Luke," she said, "do please run for the doctor."
+
+"What's the matter?" asked my father.
+
+"Susan," gasped my mother, "she's lying on the kitchen floor breathing
+in the strangest fashion and quite unable to speak."
+
+"I'll go for Washburn," said my father; "if I am quick I shall catch him
+at the dispensary."
+
+Five minutes later my father came back panting, followed by the doctor.
+This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the knack of
+looking bigger than even he really was. He came down the kitchen stairs
+two at a time, shaking the whole house. He brushed my mother aside, and
+bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her back with her mouth wide
+open. Then he rose and looked at my father and mother, who were watching
+him with troubled faces; and then he opened his mouth, and there came
+from it a roar of laughter, the like of which sound I had never heard.
+
+The next moment he had seized a pail half full of water and had flung it
+over the woman. She opened her eyes and sat up.
+
+"Feeling better?" said the doctor, with the pail still in his hand;
+"have another dose?"
+
+Susan began to gather herself together with the evident intention of
+expressing her feelings; but before she could find the first word, he
+had pushed the three of us outside and slammed the door behind us.
+
+From the top of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous voice
+raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the man's
+savage roar of laughter. And, when for want of breath she would flag for
+a moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting: "Bravo!
+Go it, my beauty, give it tongue! Bark, bark! I love to hear you,"
+applauding her, clapping his hands and stamping his feet.
+
+"What a beast of a man," said my mother.
+
+"He is really a most interesting man when you come to know him,"
+explained my father.
+
+Replied my mother, stiffly: "I don't ever mean to know him." But it is
+only concerning the past that we possess knowledge.
+
+The riot from below ceased at length, and was followed by a new voice,
+speaking quietly and emphatically, and then we heard the doctor's step
+again upon the stairs.
+
+My mother held her purse open in her hand, and as the man entered the
+room she went forward to meet him.
+
+"How much do we owe you, Doctor?" said my mother. She spoke in a voice
+trembling with severity.
+
+He closed the purse and gently pushed it back towards her.
+
+"A glass of beer and a chop, Mrs. Kelver," he answered, "which I am
+coming back in an hour to cook for myself. And as you will be without
+any servant," he continued, while my mother stood staring at him
+incapable of utterance, "you had better let me cook some for you at the
+same time. I am an expert at grilling chops."
+
+"But, really, Doctor--" my mother began. He laid his huge hand upon her
+shoulder, and my mother sat down upon the nearest chair.
+
+"My dear lady," he said, "she's a person you never ought to have had
+inside your house. She's promised me to be gone in half an hour, and
+I'm coming back to see she keeps her word. Give her a month's wages, and
+have a clear fire ready for me." And before my mother could reply, he
+had slammed the front door.
+
+"What a very odd sort of a man," said my mother, recovering herself.
+
+"He's a character," said my father; "you might not think it, but he's
+worshipped about here."
+
+"I hardly know what to make of him," said my mother; "I suppose I had
+better go out and get some chops;" which she did.
+
+Susan went, as sober as a judge on Friday, as the saying is, her great
+anxiety being to get out of the house before the doctor returned. The
+doctor himself arrived true to his time, and I lay awake--for no human
+being ever slept or felt he wanted to sleep while Dr. Washburn was
+anywhere near--and listened to the gusts of laughter that swept
+continually through the house. Even my aunt laughed that supper time,
+and when the doctor himself laughed it seemed to me that the bed shook
+under me. Not liking to be out of it, I did what spoilt little boys
+and even spoilt little girls sometimes will do under similar stress of
+feeling, wrapped the blanket round my legs and pattered down, with
+my face set to express the sudden desire of a sensitive and possibly
+short-lived child for parents' love. My mother pretended to be angry,
+but that I knew was only her company manners. Besides, I really had, if
+not exactly a pain, an extremely uncomfortable sensation (one common to
+me about that period) as of having swallowed the dome of St. Paul's. The
+doctor said it was a frequent complaint with children, the result of too
+early hours and too much study; and, taking me on his knee, wrote then
+and there a diet chart for me, which included one tablespoonful of
+golden syrup four times a day, and one ounce of sherbet to be placed
+upon the tongue and taken neat ten minutes before each meal.
+
+That evening will always live in my remembrance. My mother was brighter
+than I had ever seen her. A flush was on her cheek and a sparkle in her
+eye, and looking across at her as she sat holding a small painted screen
+to shield her face from the fire, the sense of beauty became suddenly
+born within me, and answering an impulse I could not have explained, I
+slipped down, still with my blanket around me, from the doctor's knee,
+and squatted on the edge of the fender, from where, when I thought no
+one was noticing me, I could steal furtive glances up into her face.
+
+So also my father seemed to me to have become all at once bigger and
+more dignified, talking with a vigour and an enjoyment that sat newly on
+him. Aunt Fan was quite witty and agreeable--for her; and even I asked
+one or two questions, at which, for some reason or another, everybody
+laughed; which determined me to remember and ask those same questions
+again on some future occasion.
+
+That was the great charm of the man, that by the magnetic spell of his
+magnificent vitality he drew from everyone their best. In his company
+clever people waxed intellectual giants, while the dull sat amazed at
+their own originality. Conversing with him, Podsnap might have been
+piquant, Dogberry incisive. But better than all else, I found it
+listening to his own talk. Of what he spoke I could tell you no more
+than could the children of Hamelin have told the tune the Pied Piper
+played. I only know that at the tangled music of his strong voice
+the walls of the mean room faded away, and that beyond I saw a brave,
+laughing world that called to me; a world full of joyous fight, where
+some won and some lost. But that mattered not a jot, because whatever
+else came of it there was a right royal game for all; a world where
+merry gentlemen feared neither life nor death, and Fate was but the
+Master of the Revels.
+
+Such was my first introduction to Dr. Washburn, or to give him the
+name by which he was known in every slum and alley of that quarter, Dr.
+Fighting Hal; and in a minor key that evening was an index to the whole
+man. Often he would wrinkle his nose as a dog before it bites, and then
+he was more brute than man--brutish in his instincts, in his appetites,
+brutish in his pleasure, brutish in his fun. Or his deep blue eyes would
+grow soft as a mother's, and then you might have thought him an angel
+in a soft felt hat and a coat so loose-fitting as to suggest the
+possibility of his wings being folded away underneath. Often have I
+tried to make up my mind whether it has been better for me or worse that
+I ever came to know him; but as easy would it be for the tree to
+say whether the rushing winds and the wild rains have shaped it or
+mis-shaped.
+
+Susan's place remained vacant for some time. My mother would explain
+to the few friends who occasionally came from afar to see us, that her
+"housemaid" she had been compelled to suddenly discharge, and that
+we were waiting for the arrival of a new and better specimen. But the
+months passed and we still waited, and my father on the rare days when
+a client would ring the office bell, would, after pausing a decent
+interval, open the front door himself, and then call downstairs
+indignantly and loudly, to know why "Jane" or "Mary" could not attend to
+their work. And my mother, that the bread-boy or the milkman might not
+put it about the neighbourhood that the Kelvers in the big corner house
+kept no servant, would hide herself behind a thick veil and fetch all
+things herself from streets a long way off.
+
+For this family of whom I am writing were, I confess, weak and human.
+Their poverty they were ashamed of as though it were a crime, and in
+consequence their life was more full of paltry and useless subterfuge
+than should be perhaps the life of brave men and women. The larder,
+I fancy, was very often bare, but the port and sherry with the sweet
+biscuits stood always on the sideboard; and the fire had often to be low
+in the grate that my father's tall hat might shine resplendent and my
+mother's black silk rustle on Sundays.
+
+But I would not have you sneer at them, thinking all pretence must
+spring from snobbishness and never from mistaken self-respect. Some fine
+gentleman writers there be--men whose world is bounded on the east by
+Bond Street--who see in the struggles of poverty to hide its darns only
+matter for jest. But myself, I cannot laugh at them. I know the long
+hopes and fears that centre round the hired waiter; the long cost of the
+cream and the ice jelly ordered the week before from the confectioner's.
+But to me it is pathetic, not ridiculous. Heroism is not all of one
+pattern. Dr. Washburn, had the Prince of Wales come to see him, would
+have put his bread and cheese and jug of beer upon the table, and helped
+His Royal Highness to half. But my father and mother's tea was very weak
+that Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith might have a glass of wine should they come
+to dinner. I remember the one egg for breakfast, my mother arguing that
+my father should have it because he had his business to attend to; my
+father insisting that my mother should eat it, she having to go out
+shopping, a compromise being effected by their dividing it between them,
+each clamouring for the white as the most nourishing. And I know however
+little the meal looked upon the table when we started I always rose well
+satisfied. These are small things to speak of, but then you must bear in
+mind this is a story moving in narrow ways.
+
+To me this life came as a good time. That I was encouraged to eat
+treacle in preference to butter seemed to me admirable. Personally, I
+preferred sausages for dinner; and a supper of fried fish and potatoes,
+brought in stealthily in a carpet bag, was infinitely more enjoyable
+than the set meal where nothing was of interest till one came to the
+dessert. What fun there was about it all! The cleaning of the doorstep
+by night, when from the ill-lit street a gentleman with a piece
+of sacking round his legs might very well pass for a somewhat tall
+charwoman. I would keep watch at the gate to give warning should any
+one looking like a possible late caller turn the corner of the street,
+coming back now and then in answer to a low whistle to help my father
+grope about in the dark for the hearthstone; he was always mislaying
+the hearthstone. How much better, helping to clean the knives or running
+errands than wasting all one's morning dwelling upon the shocking
+irregularity of certain classes of French verbs; or making useless
+calculations as to how long X, walking four and a quarter miles an hour,
+would be overtaking Y, whose powers were limited to three and a half,
+but who had started two and three quarter hours sooner; the whole
+argument being reduced to sheer pedantry by reason of no information
+being afforded to the student concerning the respective thirstiness of X
+and Y.
+
+Even my father and mother were able to take it lightly with plenty of
+laughter and no groaning that I ever heard. For over all lay the morning
+light of hope, and what prisoner, escaping from his dungeon, ever stayed
+to think of his torn hands and knees when beyond the distant opening he
+could see the sunlight glinting through the brambles?
+
+"I had no idea," said my mother, "there was so much to do in a house.
+In future I shall arrange for the servants to have regular hours, and a
+little time to themselves, for rest. Don't you think it right, Luke?"
+
+"Quite right," replied my father; "and I'll tell you another thing we'll
+do. I shall insist on the landlord's putting a marble doorstep to the
+next house we take; you pass a sponge over marble and it is always
+clean."
+
+"Or tesselated," suggested my mother.
+
+"Or tesselated," agreed my father; "but marble is more uncommon."
+
+Only once, can I recall a cloud. That was one Sunday when my mother,
+speaking across the table in the middle of dinner, said to my father,
+"We might save the rest of that stew, Luke; there's an omelette coming."
+
+My father laid down the spoon. "An omelette!"
+
+"Yes," said my mother. "I thought I would like to try again."
+
+My father stepped into the back kitchen--we dined in the kitchen, as a
+rule, it saved much carriage--returning with the wood chopper.
+
+"What ever are you going to do, Luke, with the chopper?" said my mother.
+
+"Divide the omelette," replied my father.
+
+My mother began to cry.
+
+"Why, Maggie--!" said my father.
+
+"I know the other one was leathery," said my mother, "but it was the
+fault of the oven, you know it was, Luke."
+
+"My dear," said my father, "I only meant it as a joke."
+
+"I don't like that sort of joke," said my mother; "it isn't nice of you,
+Luke."
+
+I don't think, to be candid, my mother liked much any joke that was
+against herself. Indeed, when I come to think of it, I have never met a
+woman who did, nor man, either.
+
+There had soon grown up a comradeship between my father and myself for
+he was the youngest thing I had met with as yet. Sometimes my mother
+seemed very young, and later I met boys and girls nearer to my own age
+in years; but they grew, while my father remained always the same. The
+hair about his temples was turning grey, and when you looked close you
+saw many crow's feet and lines, especially about the mouth. But his eyes
+were the eyes of a boy, his laugh the laugh of a boy, and his heart the
+heart of a boy. So we were very close to each other.
+
+In a narrow strip of ground we called our garden we would play a cricket
+of our own, encompassed about by many novel rules, rendered necessary by
+the locality. For instance, all hitting to leg was forbidden, as tending
+to endanger neighbouring windows, while hitting to off was likewise not
+to be encouraged, as causing a temporary adjournment of the game, while
+batter and bowler went through the house and out into the street to
+recover the ball from some predatory crowd of urchins to whom it had
+evidently appeared as a gift direct from Heaven. Sometimes rising very
+early we would walk across the marshes to bathe in a small creek that
+led down to the river, but this was muddy work, necessitating much
+washing of legs on the return home. And on rare days we would, taking
+the train to Hackney and walking to the bridge, row up the river Lea,
+perhaps as far as Ponder's End.
+
+But these sports being hedged around with difficulties, more commonly
+for recreation we would take long walks. There were pleasant nooks even
+in the neighbourhood of Plaistow marshes in those days. Here and there
+a graceful elm still clung to the troubled soil. Surrounded on all sides
+by hideousness, picturesque inns still remained hidden within green
+walls where, if you were careful not to pry too curiously, you might
+sit and sip your glass of beer beneath the oak and dream yourself where
+reeking chimneys and mean streets were not. During such walks my father
+would talk to me as he would talk to my mother, telling me all his wild,
+hopeful plans, discussing with me how I was to lodge at Oxford, to what
+particular branches of study and of sport I was to give my preference,
+speaking always with such catching confidence that I came to regard my
+sojourn in this brick and mortar prison as only a question of months.
+
+One day, talking of this future, and laughing as we walked briskly,
+through the shrill streets, I told him the words my mother had
+said--long ago, as it seemed to me, for life is as a stone rolling
+down-hill, and moves but slowly at first; she and I sitting on the moss
+at the foot of old "Jacob's Folly"--that he was our Prince fighting
+to deliver us from the grim castle called "Hard Times," guarded by the
+dragon Poverty.
+
+My father laughed and his boyish face flushed with pleasure.
+
+"And she was right, Paul," he whispered, pressing my small hand in
+his--it was necessary to whisper, for the street where we were was very
+crowded, but I knew that he wanted to shout. "I will fight him and I
+will slay him." My father made passes in the air with his walking-stick,
+and it was evident from the way they drew aside that the people round
+about fancied he was mad. "I will batter down the iron gates and she
+shall be free. I will, God help me, I will."
+
+The gallant gentleman! How long and how bravely he fought! But in the
+end it was the Dragon triumphed, the Knight that lay upon the ground,
+his great heart still. I have read how, with the sword of Honest
+Industry, one may always conquer this grim Dragon. But such was in
+foolish books. In truth, only with the sword of Chicanery and the stout
+buckler of Unscrupulousness shall you be certain of victory over him. If
+you care not to use these, pray to your Gods, and take what comes with a
+stout heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY.
+
+"Louisa!" roared my father down the kitchen stairs, "are you all asleep?
+Here have I had to answer the front door myself." Then my father strode
+into his office, and the door slammed. My father could be very angry
+when nobody was by.
+
+Quarter of an hour later his bell rang with a quick, authoritative
+jangle. My mother, who was peeling potatoes with difficulty in
+wash-leather gloves, looked at my aunt who was shelling peas. The bell
+rang again louder still this time.
+
+"Once for Louisa, twice for James, isn't it?" enquired my aunt.
+
+"You go, Paul," said my mother; "say that Louisa--" but with the words a
+sudden flush overspread my mother's face, and before I could lay down
+my slate she had drawn off her gloves and had passed me. "No, don't stop
+your lessons, I'll go myself," she said, and ran out.
+
+A few minutes later the kitchen door opened softly, and my mother's
+hand, appearing through the jar, beckoned to me mysteriously.
+
+"Walk on your toes," whispered my mother, setting the example as she
+led the way up the stairs; which after the manner of stairs showed their
+disapproval of deception by creaking louder and more often than under
+any other circumstances; and in this manner we reached my parents'
+bedroom, where, in the old-fashioned wardrobe, relic of better days,
+reposed my best suit of clothes, or, to be strictly grammatical, my
+better.
+
+Never before had I worn these on a week-day morning, but all
+conversation not germane to the question of getting into them quickly
+my mother swept aside; and when I was complete, down even to the new
+shoes--Bluchers, we called them in those days--took me by the hand, and
+together we crept down as we had crept up, silent, stealthy and alert.
+My mother led me to the street door and opened it.
+
+"Shan't I want my cap?" I whispered. But my mother only shook her
+head and closed the door with a bang; and then the explanation of the
+pantomime came to me, for with such "business"--comic, shall I call
+it, or tragic?--I was becoming familiar; and, my mother's hand upon my
+shoulder, we entered my father's office.
+
+Whether from the fact that so often of an evening--our drawing-room
+being reserved always as a show-room in case of chance visitors;
+Cowper's poems, open face-downwards on the wobbly loo table; the
+half-finished crochet work, suggestive of elegant leisure, thrown
+carelessly over the arm of the smaller easy-chair--this office would
+become our sitting-room, its books and papers, as things of no account,
+being huddled out of sight; or whether from the readiness with which my
+father would come out of it at all times to play at something else--at
+cricket in the back garden on dry days or ninepins in the passage on
+wet, charging back into it again whenever a knock sounded at the front
+door, I cannot say. But I know that as a child it never occurred to
+me to regard my father's profession as a serious affair. To me he was
+merely playing there, surrounded by big books and bundles of documents,
+labelled profusely but consisting only of blank papers; by japanned
+tin boxes, lettered imposingly, but for the most part empty. "Sutton
+Hampden, Esq.," I remember was practically my mother's work-box. The
+"Drayton Estates" yielded apparently nothing but apples, a fruit of
+which my father was fond; while "Mortgages" it was not until later in
+life I discovered had no connection with poems in manuscript, some in
+course of correction, others completed.
+
+Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us. His hair stood up
+from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked; and
+this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an expression
+of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were needed, to the
+suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.
+
+"This is the youngster," said my father, taking me from my mother, and
+passing me on. "Tall for his age, isn't he?"
+
+With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he was
+smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held out a
+fat and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine, brought to
+my mind the picture of the walrus in my natural history book; with the
+other he flapped me kindly on the head.
+
+"Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?" he observed,
+still holding my hand. "And that," he added with a wink of one of his
+small eyes towards my father, "is about the 'ighest compliment I can pay
+'im, eh?"
+
+His eyes were remarkably small, but marvellously bright and piercing; so
+much so that when he turned them again upon me I tried to think quickly
+of something nice about him, feeling sure that he could see right into
+me.
+
+"And where are you thinkin' of sendin' 'im?" he continued; "Eton or
+'Arrow?"
+
+"We haven't quite made up our minds as yet," replied my father; "at
+present we are educating him at home."
+
+"You take my tip," said the fat man, "and learn all you can. Look at
+me! If I'd 'ad the opportunity of being a schollard I wouldn't be here
+offering your father an extravagant price for doin' my work; I'd be able
+to do it myself."
+
+"You seem to have got on very well without it," laughed my father;
+and in truth his air of prosperity might have justified greater
+self-complacency. Rings sparkled on his blunt fingers, and upon the
+swelling billows of his waistcoat rose and sank a massive gold cable.
+
+"I'd 'ave done better with it," he grunted.
+
+"But you look very clever," I said; and though divining with a child's
+cuteness that it was desired I should make a favourable impression upon
+him, I hoped this would please him, the words were yet spontaneous.
+
+He laughed heartily, his whole body shaking like some huge jelly.
+
+"Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool," he assented, "but I'd
+like myself better if I could talk about something else than business,
+and didn't drop my aitches. And so would my little gell."
+
+"You have a daughter?" asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond
+of sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to
+disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.
+
+"I won't tell you about 'er. But I'll just bring 'er to see you now and
+then, ma'am, if you don't mind," answered Mr. Hasluck. "She don't often
+meet gentle-folks, an' it'll do 'er good."
+
+My mother glanced across at my father, but the man, intercepting her
+question, replied to it himself.
+
+"You needn't be afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me," he assured
+her quite good-temperedly; "nobody ever believes she's my daughter,
+except me and the old woman. She's a little lady, she is. Freak o'
+nature, I call it."
+
+"We shall be delighted," explained my mother.
+
+"Well, you will when you see 'er," replied Mr. Hasluck, quite
+contentedly.
+
+He pushed half-a-crown into my hand, overriding my parents'
+susceptibilities with the easy good-temper of a man accustomed to have
+his way in all things.
+
+"No squanderin' it on the 'eathen," was his parting injunction as I left
+the room; "you spend that on a Christian tradesman."
+
+It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that half-crown
+of old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived from a new
+pair of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which would then be all
+my own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all less exalted visions
+concerning the disposal of chance coins coming into my small hands. But
+on this occasion I was left free to decide for myself.
+
+The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of
+the bewildering streets! Even advice when asked for was denied me.
+
+"You must learn to think for yourself," said my father, who spoke
+eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what
+he called "commercial aptitude."
+
+"No, dear," said my mother, "Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you
+like. If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked. Your father
+and I want to see what you will do with it."
+
+The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to people
+in distress. For this I hated them with the malignity the lower nature
+ever feels towards the higher. I consulted my aunt Fan.
+
+"If somebody gave you half-a-crown," I put it to her, "what would you
+buy with it?"
+
+"Side-combs," said my aunt; she was always losing or breaking her
+side-combs.
+
+"But I mean if you were me," I explained.
+
+"Drat the child!" said my aunt; "how do I know what he wants if he don't
+know himself? Idiot!"
+
+The shop windows into which I stared, my nose glued to the pane! The
+things I asked the price of! The things I made up my mind to buy and
+then decided that I wouldn't buy! Even my patient mother began to show
+signs of irritation. It was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a family
+curse, was old Hasluck's half-crown.
+
+Then one day I made up my mind, and so ended the trouble. In the window
+of a small plumber's shop in a back street near, stood on view among
+brass taps, rolls of lead piping and cistern requisites, various squares
+of coloured glass, the sort of thing chiefly used, I believe, for
+lavatory doors and staircase windows. Some had stars in the centre,
+and others, more elaborate, were enriched with designs, severe but
+inoffensive. I purchased a dozen of these, the plumber, an affable
+man who appeared glad to see me, throwing in two extra out of sheer
+generosity.
+
+Why I bought them I did not know at the time, and I do not know now.
+My mother cried when she saw them. My father could get no further than:
+"But what are you going to do with them?" to which I was unable to
+reply. My aunt, alone, attempted comfort.
+
+"If a person fancies coloured glass," said my aunt, "then he's a fool
+not to buy coloured glass when he gets the chance. We haven't all the
+same tastes."
+
+In the end, I cut myself badly with them and consented to their being
+thrown into the dust-bin. But looking back, I have come to regard myself
+rather as the victim of Fate than of Folly. Many folks have I met since,
+recipients of Hasluck's half-crowns--many a man who has slapped his
+pocket and blessed the day he first met that "Napoleon of Finance,"
+as later he came to be known among his friends--but it ever ended so;
+coloured glass and cut fingers. Is it fairy gold that he and his kind
+fling round? It would seem to be.
+
+Next time old Hasluck knocked at our front door a maid in cap and apron
+opened it to him, and this was but the beginning of change. New oilcloth
+glistened in the passage. Lace curtains, such as in that neighbourhood
+were the hall-mark of the plutocrat, advertised our rising fortunes to
+the street, and greatest marvel of all, at least to my awed eyes, my
+father's Sunday clothes came into weekday wear, new ones taking their
+place in the great wardrobe that hitherto had been the stronghold of
+our gentility; to which we had ever turned for comfort when rendered
+despondent by contemplation of the weakness of our outer walls. "Seeing
+that everything was all right" is how my mother would explain it. She
+would lay the lilac silk upon the bed, fondly soothing down its rustling
+undulations, lingering lovingly over its deep frosted flounces of rich
+Honiton. Maybe she had entered the room weary looking and depressed, but
+soon there would proceed from her a gentle humming as from some small
+winged thing when the sun first touches it and warms it, and sometimes
+by the time the Indian shawl, which could go through a wedding ring, but
+never would when it was wanted to, had been refolded and fastened again
+with the great cameo brooch, and the poke bonnet, like some fractious
+child, shaken and petted into good condition, she would be singing
+softly to herself, nodding her head to the words: which were generally
+to the effect that somebody was too old and somebody else too bold and
+another too cold, "so he wouldn't do for me;" and stepping lightly as
+though the burden of the years had fallen from her.
+
+One evening--it was before the advent of this Hasluck--I remember
+climbing out of bed, for trouble was within me. Creatures, indescribable
+but heavy, had sat upon my chest, after which I had fallen downstairs,
+slowly and reasonably for the first few hundred flights, then with haste
+for the next million miles or so, until I found myself in the street
+with nothing on but my nightshirt. Personally, I was shocked, but nobody
+else seemed to mind, and I hailed a two-penny 'bus and climbed in. But
+when I tried to pay I found I hadn't any pockets, so I jumped out and
+ran away and the conductor came after me. My feet were like lead, and
+with every step he gained on me, till with a scream I made one mighty
+effort and awoke.
+
+Feeling the need of comfort after these unpleasant but by no means
+unfamiliar experiences, I wrapped some clothes round me and crept
+downstairs. The "office" was dark, but to my surprise a light shone from
+under the drawing-room door, and I opened it.
+
+The candles in the silver candlesticks were lighted, and in state,
+one in each easy-chair, sat my father and mother, both in their best
+clothes; my father in the buckled shoes and the frilled shirt that I had
+never seen him wear before, my mother with the Indian shawl about her
+shoulders, and upon her head the cap of ceremony that reposed three
+hundred and sixty days out of the year in its round wicker-work nest
+lined with silk. They started guiltily as I pushed open the door, but I
+congratulate myself that I had sense enough--or was it instinct--to ask
+no questions.
+
+The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged,
+the lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows,
+my father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the change
+not only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing, and even
+in their very voices. My father brought over from the sideboard the
+sherry and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a glass to my
+mother, and he and my mother drank to each other, while I between them
+ate the biscuits, and the conversation was of Byron's poems and the
+great glass palace in Hyde Park.
+
+I wonder am I disloyal setting this down? Maybe to others it shows but
+a foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention. I dwell
+upon such trifles because to me the memory of them is very tender. The
+virtues of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis but what we
+expected of them: how could they do otherwise? Their failings we would
+forget; no one of us is perfect. But over their follies we love to
+linger, smiling.
+
+To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon
+made perhaps more difference than to any one else. My father now was
+busy all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of
+the giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every day
+more social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left much to
+my own resources.
+
+Rambling--"bummelling," as the Germans term it--was my bent. This my
+mother would have checked, but my father said:
+
+"Don't molly-coddle him. Let him learn to be smart."
+
+"I don't think the smart people are always the nicest," demurred my
+mother. "I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke."
+
+My father appeared surprised, but reflected.
+
+"I should call myself smart--in a sense," he explained, after
+consideration.
+
+"Perhaps you are right, dear," replied my mother; "and of course boys
+are different from girls."
+
+Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded by
+many small cottages in leafy gardens; or even reach as far as Clapton,
+where old red brick Georgian houses still stood behind high palings, and
+tall elms gave to the wide road on sunny afternoons an old-world air of
+peace. But such excursions were the exception, for strange though it may
+read, the narrow, squalid streets had greater hold on me. Not the few
+main thoroughfares, filled ever with a dull, deep throbbing as of some
+tireless iron machine; where the endless human files, streaming ever up
+and down, crossing and recrossing, seemed mere rushing chains of flesh
+and blood, working upon unseen wheels; but the dim, weary, lifeless
+streets--the dark, tortuous roots, as I fancied them, of that grim
+forest of entangled brick. Mystery lurked in their gloom. Fear whispered
+from behind their silence. Dumb figures flitted swiftly to and fro,
+never pausing, never glancing right nor left. Far-off footsteps, rising
+swiftly into sound, as swiftly fading, echoed round their lonely comers.
+Dreading, yet drawn on, I would creep along their pavements as through
+some city of the dead, thinking of the eyes I saw not watching from the
+thousand windows; starting at each muffled sound penetrating the long,
+dreary walls, behind which that close-packed, writhing life lay hid.
+
+One day there came a cry from behind a curtained window. I stood still
+for a moment and then ran; but before I could get far enough away I
+heard it again, a long, piercing cry, growing fiercer before it ceased;
+so that I ran faster still, not heeding where I went, till I found
+myself in a raw, unfinished street, ending in black waste land,
+bordering the river. I stopped, panting, wondering how I should find
+my way again. To recover myself and think I sat upon the doorstep of
+an empty house, and there came dancing down the road with a curious,
+half-running, half-hopping step--something like a water wagtail's--a
+child, a boy about my own age, who, after eyeing me strangely sat down
+beside me.
+
+We watched each other for a few minutes; and I noticed that his mouth
+kept opening and shutting, though he said nothing. Suddenly, edging
+closer to me, he spoke in a thick whisper. It sounded as though his
+mouth were full of wool.
+
+"Wot 'appens to yer when yer dead?"
+
+"If you're good you go to Heaven. If you're bad you go to Hell."
+
+"Long way off, both of 'em, ain't they?"
+
+"Yes. Millions of miles."
+
+"They can't come after yer? Can't fetch yer back again?"
+
+"No, never."
+
+The doorstep that we occupied was the last. A yard beyond began the
+black waste of mud. From the other end of the street, now growing dark,
+he never took his staring eyes for an instant.
+
+"Ever seen a stiff 'un--a dead 'un?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I 'ave--stuck a pin into 'im. 'E never felt it. Don't feel anything
+when yer dead, do yer?"
+
+All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms
+and legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread, with
+quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought then in
+bakers' shops: he made me hungry, reminding me of such.
+
+"Of course not. When you are dead you're not there, you know. Our bodies
+are but senseless clay." I was glad I remembered that line. I tried to
+think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it evaded me.
+
+"I like you," he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in
+the chest. It was the token of palship among the youth of that
+neighbourhood, and gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship
+with children is an affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew him
+for my first chum.
+
+He wormed himself up.
+
+"Yer won't tell?" he said.
+
+I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that I
+should agree.
+
+"Say 'I swear.'"
+
+"I swear."
+
+The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like secret
+oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.
+
+"Good-bye, cockey."
+
+But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust it
+into my hand. Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his ran
+off across the mud.
+
+I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going. He stumbled
+a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but
+struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.
+
+I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he would
+sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself
+free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river,
+he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating
+feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over
+him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving underneath the mud.
+And after a time even that ceased.
+
+It was late before I reached home, and fortunately my father and mother
+were still out. I did not tell any one what I had seen, having sworn not
+to; and as time went on the incident haunted me less and less until
+it became subservient to my will. But of my fancy for those silent,
+lifeless streets it cured me for the time. From behind their still walls
+I would hear that long cry; down their narrow vistas see that writhing
+figure, like some animated ginger-bread, hopping, springing, falling.
+
+Yet in the more crowded streets another trouble awaited me, one more
+tangible.
+
+Have you ever noticed a pack of sparrows round some crumbs perchance
+that you have thrown out from your window? Suddenly the rest of the
+flock will set upon one. There is a tremendous Lilliputian hubbub,
+a tossing of tiny wings and heads, a babel of shrill chirps. It is
+comical.
+
+"Spiteful little imps they are," you say to yourself, much amused.
+
+So I have heard good-tempered men and women calling out to one another
+with a laugh.
+
+"There go those young devils chivvying that poor little beggar again;
+ought to be ashamed of theirselves."
+
+But, oh! the anguish of the poor little beggar! Can any one who has not
+been through it imagine it! Reduced to its actualities, what was it?
+Gibes and jeers that, after all, break no bones. A few pinches,
+kicks and slaps; at worst a few hard knocks. But the dreading of it
+beforehand! Terror lived in every street, hid, waiting for me, round
+each corner. The half-dozen wrangling over their marbles--had they seen
+me? The boy whistling as he stood staring into the print shop, would I
+get past him without his noticing me; or would he, swinging round upon
+his heel, raise the shrill whoop that brought them from every doorway to
+hunt me?
+
+The shame, when caught at last and cornered: the grinning face that
+would stop to watch; the careless jokes of passers-by, regarding the
+whole thing but as a sparrows' squabble: worst of all, perhaps, the rare
+pity! The after humiliation when, finally released, I would dart away,
+followed by shouted taunts and laughter; every eye turned to watch me,
+shrinking by; my whole small carcass shaking with dry sobs of bitterness
+and rage!
+
+If only I could have turned and faced them! So far as the mere bearing
+of pain was concerned, I knew myself brave. The physical suffering
+resulting from any number of stand-up fights would have been trivial
+compared with the mental agony I endured. That I, the comrade of a
+hundred heroes--I, who nightly rode with Richard Coeur de Lion,
+who against Sir Lancelot himself had couched a lance, and that not
+altogether unsuccessful, I to whom all damsels in distress were wont to
+look for succour--that I should run from varlets such as these!
+
+My friend, my bosom friend, good Robin Hood! how would he have behaved
+under similar circumstances? how Ivanhoe, my chosen companion in all
+quests of knightly enterprise? how--to come to modern times--Jack
+Harkaway, mere schoolboy though he might be? Would not one and all
+have welcomed such incident with a joyous shout, and in a trice have
+scattered to the winds the worthless herd?
+
+But, alas! upon my pale lips the joyous shout sank into an unheard
+whisper, and the thing that became scattered to the wind was myself, the
+first opening that occurred.
+
+Sometimes, the blood boiling in my veins, I would turn, thinking to go
+back and at all risk defying my tormentors, prove to myself I was no
+coward. But before I had retraced my steps a dozen paces, I would see
+in imagination the whole scene again before me: the laughing crowd,
+the halting passers-by, the spiteful, mocking little faces every way I
+turned; and so instead would creep on home, and climbing stealthily up
+into my own room, cry my heart out in the dark upon my bed.
+
+Until one blessed day, when a blessed Fairy, in the form of a small
+kitten, lifted the spell that bound me, and set free my limbs.
+
+I have always had a passionate affection for the dumb world, if it be
+dumb. My first playmate, I remember, was a water rat. A stream ran at
+the bottom of our garden; and sometimes, escaping the vigilant eye of
+Mrs. Fursey, I would steal out with my supper and join him on the banks.
+There, hidden behind the osiers, we would play at banquets, he, it is
+true, doing most of the banqueting, and I the make-believe. But it was
+a good game; added to which it was the only game I could ever get him to
+play, though I tried. He was a one-ideaed rat.
+
+Later I came into the possession of a white specimen all my own. He
+lived chiefly in the outside breast pocket of my jacket, in company with
+my handkerchief, so that glancing down I could generally see his little
+pink eyes gleaming up at me, except on very cold days, when it would be
+only his tail that I could see; and when I felt miserable, somehow he
+would know it, and, swarming up, push his little cold snout against
+my ear. He died just so, clinging round my neck; and from many of my
+fellow-men and women have I parted with less pain. It sounds callous to
+say so; but, after all, our feelings are not under our own control; and
+I have never been able to understand the use of pretending to emotions
+one has not. All this, however, comes later. Let me return now to my
+fairy kitten.
+
+I heard its cry of pain from afar, and instinctively hastened my steps.
+Three or four times I heard it again, and at each call I ran faster,
+till, breathless, I arrived upon the scene, the opening of a narrow
+court, leading out of a by-street. At first I saw nothing but the backs
+of a small mob of urchins. Then from the centre of them came another
+wailing appeal for help, and without waiting for any invitation, I
+pushed my way into the group.
+
+What I saw was Hecuba to me--gave me the motive and the cue for passion,
+transformed me from the dull and muddy-mettled little John-a-dreams I
+had been into a small, blind Fury. Pale Thought, that mental emetic,
+banished from my system, I became the healthy, unreasoning animal, and
+acted as such.
+
+From my methods, I frankly admit, science was absent. In simple,
+primitive fashion that would have charmed a Darwinian disciple to
+observe, I "went for" the whole crowd. To employ the expressive idiom of
+the neighbourhood, I was "all over it and inside." Something clung about
+my feet. By kicking myself free and then standing on it I gained the
+advantage of quite an extra foot in height; I don't know what it was and
+didn't care. I fought with my arms and I fought with my legs; where I
+could get in with my head I did. I fought whatever came to hand in
+a spirit of simple thankfulness, grateful for what I could reach and
+indifferent to what was beyond me.
+
+That the "show"--if again I may be permitted the local idiom--was not
+entirely mine I was well aware. That not alone my person but my property
+also was being damaged in the rear became dimly conveyed to me through
+the sensation of draught. Already the world to the left of me was mere
+picturesque perspective, while the growing importance of my nose was
+threatening the absorption of all my other features. These things did
+not trouble me. I merely noted them as phenomena and continued to punch
+steadily.
+
+Until I found that I was punching something soft and yet unyielding.
+I looked up to see what this foreign matter that thus mysteriously had
+entered into the mixture might be, and discovered it to be a policeman.
+Still I did not care. The felon's dock! the prison cell! a fig for such
+mere bogies. An impudent word, an insulting look, and I would have gone
+for the Law itself. Pale Thought--it must have been a livid green by
+this time--still trembled at respectful distance from me.
+
+Fortunately for all of us, he was not impertinent, and though he spoke
+the language of his order, his tone disarmed offence.
+
+"Now, then. Now, then. What is all this about?"
+
+There was no need for me to answer. A dozen voluble tongues were ready
+to explain to him; and to explain wholly in my favour. This time the
+crowd was with me. Let a man school himself to bear dispraise, for
+thereby alone shall he call his soul his own. But let no man lie, saying
+he is indifferent to popular opinion. That was my first taste of public
+applause. The public was not select, and the applause might, by the
+sticklers for English pure and undefiled, have been deemed ill-worded,
+but to me it was the sweetest music I had ever heard, or have heard
+since. I was called a "plucky little devil," a "fair 'ot 'un," not only
+a "good 'un," but a "good 'un" preceded by the adjective that in
+the East bestows upon its principal every admirable quality that can
+possibly apply. Under the circumstances it likewise fitted me literally;
+but I knew it was intended rather in its complimentary sense.
+
+Kind, if dirty, hands wiped my face. A neighbouring butcher presented me
+with a choice morsel of steak, not to eat but to wear; and I found it,
+if I may so express myself without infringing copyright, "grateful and
+comforting." My enemies had long since scooted, some of them, I had
+rejoiced to notice, with lame and halting steps. The mutilated kitten
+had been restored to its owner, a lady of ample bosom, who, carried
+beyond judgment by emotion, publicly offered to adopt me on the spot.
+The Law suggested, not for the first time, that everybody should now
+move on; and slowly, followed by feminine commendation mingled with
+masculine advice as to improved methods for the future, I was allowed to
+drift away.
+
+My bones ached, my flesh stung me, yet I walked as upon air. Gradually
+I became conscious that I was not alone. A light, pattering step was
+trying to keep pace with me. Graciously I slacked my speed, and the
+pattering step settled down beside me. Every now and again she would run
+ahead and then turn round to look up into my face, much as your small
+dog does when he happens not to be misbehaving himself and desires you
+to note the fact. Evidently she approved of me. I was not at my best,
+as far as appearance was concerned, but women are kittle cattle, and
+I think she preferred me so. Thus we walked for quite a long distance
+without speaking, I drinking in the tribute of her worship and enjoying
+it. Then gaining confidence, she shyly put her hand into mine, and
+finding I did not repel her, promptly assumed possession of me,
+according to woman's way.
+
+For her age and station she must have been a person of means, for having
+tried in vain various methods to make me more acceptable to followers
+and such as having passed would turn their heads, she said:
+
+"I know, gelatines;" and disappearing into a sweetstuff shop, returned
+with quite a quantity. With these, first sucked till glutinous, we
+joined my many tatters. I still attracted attention, but felt warmer.
+
+She informed me that her name was Cissy, and that her father's shop was
+in Three Colt Street. I informed her that my name was Paul, and that
+my father was a lawyer. I also pointed out to her that a lawyer is much
+superior in social position to a shopkeeper, which she acknowledged
+cheerfully. We parted at the corner of the Stainsby Road, and I let her
+kiss me once. It was understood that in the Stainsby Road we might meet
+again.
+
+I left Eliza gaping after me, the front door in her hand, and ran
+straight up into my own room. Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, The Last of
+the Barons, Rob Roy! I looked them all in the face and was not ashamed.
+I also was a gentleman.
+
+My mother was much troubled when she saw me, but my father, hearing the
+story, approved.
+
+"But he looks so awful," said my mother. "In this world," said my
+father, "one must occasionally be aggressive--if necessary, brutal."
+
+My father would at times be quite savage in his sentiments.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM THE
+ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL. AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS.
+
+The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare. The
+jingle of the tram-bell and the rattle of the omnibus and cart mingle
+continuously with the rain of many feet, beating ceaselessly upon its
+pavements. But at the time of which I write it was an empty, voiceless
+way, bounded on the one side by the long, echoing wall of the docks and
+on the other by occasional small houses isolated amid market gardens,
+drying grounds and rubbish heaps. Only one thing remains--or did remain
+last time I passed along it, connecting it with its former self--and
+that is the one-storeyed brick cottage at the commencement of the
+bridge, and which was formerly the toll-house. I remember this
+toll-house so well because it was there that my childhood fell from me,
+and sad and frightened I saw the world beyond.
+
+I cannot explain it better. I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on a
+visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which to
+keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing nature.
+
+"Have the half-crown in your hand," my mother would direct me, while
+making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the bottom
+of my knickerbocker pocket; "but of course if he won't take it, why, you
+must bring it home again."
+
+I am not sure, but I think he was some distant connection of ours; at
+all events, I know he was a kind friend. I, seated in the velvet chair
+of state, he would unroll his case of instruments before me, and ask me
+to choose, recommending with affectionate eulogisms the most murderous
+looking.
+
+But on my opening my mouth to discuss the fearful topic, lo! a pair
+would shoot from under his coat-sleeve, and almost before I knew what
+had happened, the trouble would be over. After that we would have
+tea together. He was an old bachelor, and his house stood in a great
+garden--for Plaistow in those days was a picturesque village--and out of
+the plentiful fruit thereof his housekeeper made the most wonderful
+of jams and jellies. Oh, they were good, those teas! Generally our
+conversation was of my mother who, it appeared, was once a little girl:
+not at all the sort of little girl I should have imagined her; on the
+contrary, a prankish, wilful little girl, though good company, I should
+say, if all the tales he told of her were true. And I am inclined to
+think they were, in spite of the fact that my mother, when I repeated
+them to her, would laugh, saying she was sure she had no recollection of
+anything of the kind, adding severely that it was a pity he and I could
+not find something better to gossip about. Yet her next question would
+be:
+
+"And what else did he say, if you please?" explaining impatiently when
+my answer was not of the kind expected: "No, no, I mean about me."
+
+The tea things cleared away, he would bring out his great microscope.
+To me it was a peep-hole into a fairy world where dwelt strange dragons,
+mighty monsters, so that I came to regard him as a sort of harmless
+magician. It was his pet study, and looking back, I cannot help
+associating his enthusiasm for all things microscopical with the fact
+that he was an exceptionally little man himself, but one of the biggest
+hearted that ever breathed.
+
+On leaving I would formally hand him my half-crown, "with mamma's
+compliments," and he would formally accept it. But on putting my hand
+into my jacket pocket when outside the gate I would invariably find
+it there. The first time I took it back to him, but unblushingly he
+repudiated all knowledge.
+
+"Must be another half-crown," he suggested; "such things do happen.
+One puts change into a pocket and overlooks it. Slippery things,
+half-crowns."
+
+Returning home on this particular day of days, I paused upon the bridge,
+and watched for awhile the lazy barges manoeuvring their way between the
+piers. It was one of those hushed summer evenings when the air even of
+grim cities is full of whispering voices; and as, turning away from the
+river, I passed through the white toll-gate, I had a sense of leaving
+myself behind me on the bridge. So vivid was the impression, that I
+looked back, half expecting to see myself still leaning over the iron
+parapet, looking down into the sunlit water.
+
+It sounds foolish, but I leave it standing, wondering if to others a
+like experience has ever come. The little chap never came back to me.
+He passed away from me as a man's body may possibly pass away from him,
+leaving him only remembrance and regret. For a time I tried to play his
+games, to dream his dreams, but the substance was wanting. I was only a
+thin ghost, making believe.
+
+It troubled me for quite a spell of time, even to the point of tears,
+this feeling that my childhood lay behind me, this sudden realisation
+that I was travelling swiftly the strange road called growing up. I did
+not want to grow up; could nothing be done to stop it? Rather would I
+be always as I had been, playing, dreaming. The dark way frightened me.
+Must I go forward?
+
+Then gradually, but very slowly, with the long months and years, came
+to me the consciousness of a new being, new pulsations, sensories,
+throbbings, rooted in but differing widely from the old; and little
+Paul, the Paul of whom I have hitherto spoken, faded from my life.
+
+So likewise must I let him fade with sorrow from this book. But before
+I part with him entirely, let me recall what else I can remember of him.
+Thus we shall be quit of him, and he will interfere with us no more.
+
+Chief among the pictures that I see is that of my aunt Fan, crouching
+over the kitchen fire; her skirt and crinoline rolled up round her
+waist, leaving as sacrifice to custom only her petticoat. Up and down
+her body sways in rhythmic motion, her hands stroking affectionately
+her own knees; the while I, with paper knife for sword, or horse of
+broomstick, stand opposite her, flourishing and declaiming. Sometimes I
+am a knight and she a wicked ogre. She is slain, growling and swearing,
+and at once becomes the beautiful princess that I secure and bear away
+with me upon the prancing broomstick. So long as the princess is merely
+holding sweet converse with me from her high-barred window, the scene
+is realistic, at least, to sufficiency; but the bearing away has to be
+make-believe; for my aunt cannot be persuaded to leave her chair before
+the fire, and the everlasting rubbing of her knees.
+
+At other times, with the assistance of the meat chopper, I am an Indian
+brave, and then she is Laughing Water or Singing Sunshine, and we go out
+scalping together; or in less bloodthirsty moods I am the Fairy Prince
+and she the Sleeping Beauty. But in such parts she is not at her best.
+Better, when seated in the centre of the up-turned table, I am Captain
+Cook, and she the Cannibal Chief.
+
+"I shall skin him and hang him in the larder till Sunday week," says my
+aunt, smacking her lips, "then he'll be just in right condition; not too
+tough and not too high." She was always strong in detail, was my aunt
+Fan.
+
+I do not wish to deprive my aunt of any credit due to her, but the more
+I exercise my memory for evidence, the more I am convinced that her
+compliance on these occasions was not conceived entirely in the spirit
+of self-sacrifice. Often would she suggest the game and even the theme;
+in such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old theatrical
+parlance, would have been termed the heavy lead, the dragons and the
+wicked uncles, the fussy necromancers and the uninvited fairies. As
+authoress of a new cookery book for use in giant-land, my aunt, I am
+sure, would have been successful. Most recipes that one reads are so
+monotonously meagre: "Boil him," "Put her on the spit and roast her for
+supper," "Cook 'em in a pie--with plenty of gravy;" but my aunt into the
+domestic economy of Ogredom introduced variety and daintiness.
+
+"I think, my dear," my aunt would direct, "we'll have him stuffed with
+chestnuts and served on toast. And don't forget the giblets. They make
+such excellent sauce."
+
+With regard to the diet of imprisoned maidens she would advise:
+
+"Not too much fish--it spoils the flesh for roasting."
+
+The things that she would turn people into--king's sons, rightful
+princesses, such sort of people--people who after a time, one would
+think, must have quite forgotten what they started as. To let her
+have her way was a lesson to me in natural history both present and
+pre-historic. The most beautiful damsel that ever lived she would
+without a moment's hesitation turn into a Glyptodon or a Hippocrepian.
+Afterwards, when I could guess at the spelling, I would look these
+creatures up in the illustrated dictionary, and feel that under no
+circumstances could I have loved the lady ever again. Warriors and kings
+she would delight in transforming into plaice or prawns, and haughty
+queens into Brussels sprouts.
+
+With gusto would she plan a complicated slaughter, paying heed to every
+detail: the sharpening of the knives, the having ready of mops and pails
+of water for purposes of after cleaning up. As a writer she would have
+followed the realistic school.
+
+Her death, with which we invariably wound up the afternoon, was another
+conscientious effort. Indeed, her groans and writhings would sometimes
+frighten me. I always welcomed the last gurgle. That finished, but not a
+moment before, my aunt would let down her skirt--in this way suggesting
+the fall of the curtain upon our play--and set to work to get the tea.
+
+Another frequently recurring picture that I see is of myself in
+glazed-peaked cap explaining many things the while we walk through dingy
+streets to yet a smaller figure curly haired and open eyed. Still every
+now and then she runs ahead to turn and look admiringly into my face as
+on the day she first became captive to the praise and fame of me.
+
+I was glad of her company for more reasons than she knew of. For one,
+she protected me against my baser self. With her beside me I should
+not have dared to flee from sudden foes. Indeed, together we courted
+adventure; for once you get used to it this standing hazard of attack
+adds a charm to outdoor exercise that older folk in districts better
+policed enjoy not. So possibly my dog feels when together we take the
+air. To me it is a simple walk, maybe a little tiresome, suggested
+rather by contemplation of my waistband than by desire for walking for
+mere walking's sake; to him an expedition full of danger and surprises:
+"The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's doorstep!
+will he greet me with a friendly sniff or try to bite my head off? This
+cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the lamp-post! shall we
+pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become locked in a life and
+death struggle? Impossible to say. This coming corner, now, 'Ware! Is
+anybody waiting round there to kill me, or not?"
+
+But the trusting face beside me nerved me. As reward in lonely places I
+would let her hold my hand.
+
+A second advantage I derived from her company was that of being less
+trampled on, less walked over, less swept aside into doorway or gutter
+than when alone. A pretty, winsome face had this little maid, if Memory
+plays me not kindly false; but also she had a vocabulary; and when the
+blind idiot, male or female, instead of passing us by walking round us,
+would, after the custom of the blind idiot, seek to gain the other side
+of us by walking through us, she would use it.
+
+"Now, then, where yer coming to, old glass-eye? We ain't sperrits. Can't
+yer see us?"
+
+And if they attempted reply, her child's treble, so strangely at
+variance with her dainty appearance, would only rise more shrill.
+
+"Garn! They'd run out of 'eads when they was making you. That's only a
+turnip wot you've got stuck on top of yer!" I offer but specimens.
+
+Nor was it of the slightest use attempting personal chastisement, as
+sometimes an irate lady or gentleman would be foolish enough to do. As
+well might an hippopotamus attempt to reprove a terrier. The only result
+was to provide comedy for the entire street.
+
+On these occasions our positions were reversed, I being the admiring
+spectator of her prowess. Yet to me she was ever meek, almost
+irritatingly submissive. She found out where I lived and would often
+come and wait for me for hours, her little face pressed tight against
+the iron railings, until either I came out or shook my head at her from
+my bedroom window, when she would run off, the dying away into silence
+of her pattering feet leaving me a little sad.
+
+I think I cared for her in a way, yet she never entered into my
+day-dreams, which means that she existed for me only in the outer world
+of shadows that lay round about me and was not of my real life.
+
+Also, I think she was unwise, introducing me to the shop, for children
+and dogs--one seems unconsciously to bracket them in one's thoughts--are
+snobbish little wretches. If only her father had been a dealer in
+firewood I could have soothed myself by imagining mistakes. It was
+a common occurrence, as I well knew, for children of quite the
+best families to be brought up by wood choppers. Fairies, the best
+intentioned in the world, but born muddlers, were generally responsible
+for these mishaps, which, however, always became righted in time for the
+wedding. Or even had he been a pork butcher, and there were many in the
+neighbourhood, I could have thought of him as a swineherd, and so found
+precedent for hope.
+
+But a fishmonger--from six in the evening a fried fishmonger! I searched
+history in vain. Fried fishmongers were without the pale.
+
+So gradually our meetings became less frequent, though I knew that
+every afternoon she waited in the quiet Stainsby Road, where dwelt in
+semi-detached, six-roomed villas the aristocracy of Poplar, and that
+after awhile, for arriving late at times I have been witness to the
+sad fact, tears would trace pathetic patterns upon her dust-besprinkled
+cheeks; and with the advent of the world-illuminating Barbara, to which
+event I am drawing near, they ceased altogether.
+
+So began and ended my first romance. One of these days--some quiet
+summer's afternoon, when even the air of Pigott Street vibrates with
+tenderness beneath the whispered sighs of Memory, I shall walk into the
+little grocer's shop and boldly ask to see her. So far have I already
+gone as to trace her, and often have I tried to catch sight of her
+through the glass door, but hitherto in vain. I know she is the more
+or less troubled mother of a numerous progeny. I am told she has grown
+stout, and probable enough it is that her tongue has gained rather than
+lost in sharpness. Yet under all the unrealities the clumsy-handed world
+has built about her, I shall see, I know, the lithesome little maid with
+fond, admiring eyes. What help they were to me I never knew till I had
+lost them. How hard to gain such eyes I have learned since. Were we to
+write the truth in our confession books, should we not admit the quality
+we most admire in others is admiration of ourselves? And is it not a
+wise selection? If you would have me admirable, my friend, admire me,
+and speak your commendation without stint that in the sunshine of your
+praises I may wax. For indifference maketh an indifferent man, and
+contempt a contemptible man. Come, is it not true? Does not all that is
+worthy in us grow best by honour?
+
+Chief among the remaining figures on my childhood's stage were the many
+servants of our house, the "generals," as they were termed. So rapid,
+as a rule, was their transit through our kitchen that only one or two,
+conspicuous by reason of their lingering, remain upon my view. It was a
+neighbourhood in which domestic servants were not much required. Those
+intending to take up the calling seriously went westward. The local
+ranks were recruited mainly from the discontented or the disappointed,
+from those who, unappreciated at home, hoped from the stranger more
+discernment; or from the love-lorn, the jilted and the jealous, who took
+the cap and apron as in an earlier age their like would have taken the
+veil. Maybe, to the comparative seclusion of our basement, as contrasted
+with the alternative frivolity of shop or factory, they felt in such
+mood more attuned. With the advent of the new or the recovery of the old
+young man they would plunge again into the vain world, leaving my poor
+mother to search afresh amid the legions of the cursed.
+
+With these I made such comradeship as I could, for I had no child
+friends. Kind creatures were most of them, at least so I found them.
+They were poor at "making believe," but would always squeeze ten minutes
+from their work to romp with me, and that, perhaps, was healthier for
+me. What, perhaps, was not so good for me was that, staggered at
+the amount of "book-learning" implied by my conversation (for the
+journalistic instinct, I am inclined to think, was early displayed in
+me), they would listen open-mouthed to all my information, regarding me
+as a precocious oracle. Sometimes they would obtain permission to take
+me home with them to tea, generously eager that their friends should
+also profit by me. Then, encouraged by admiring, grinning faces, I would
+"hold forth," keenly enjoying the sound of my own proud piping.
+
+"As good as a book, ain't he?" was the tribute most often paid to me.
+
+"As good as a play," one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer, went
+so far as to say.
+
+Already I regarded myself as among the Immortals.
+
+One girl, a dear, wholesome creature named Janet, stayed with us for
+months and might have stayed years, but for her addiction to strong
+language. The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the
+barge "Nancy Jane," trading between Purfleet and Ponder's End, her
+conversation was at once my terror and delight.
+
+"Janet," my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up
+instinctively to guard her ears, "how can you use such words?"
+
+"What words, mum?"
+
+"The things you have just called the gas man."
+
+"Him! Well, did you see what he did, mum? Walked straight into my clean
+kitchen, without even wiping his boots, the--" And before my mother
+could stop her, Janet had relieved her feelings by calling him it--or
+rather them--again, without any idea that she had done aught else than
+express in fitting phraseology a natural human emotion.
+
+We were good friends, Janet and I, and therefore it was that I
+personally undertook her reformation. It was not an occasion for mincing
+one's words. The stake at issue was, I felt, too important. I told
+her bluntly that if she persisted in using such language she would
+inevitably go to hell.
+
+"Then where's my father going?" demanded Janet.
+
+"Does he use language?"
+
+I gathered from Janet that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of
+hearing her father could ever again take interest in the feeble efforts
+of herself.
+
+"I am afraid, Janet," I explained, "that if he doesn't give it up--"
+
+"But it's the only way he can talk," interrupted Janet. "He don't mean
+anything by it."
+
+I sighed, yet set my face against weakness. "You see, Janet, people who
+swear do go there."
+
+But Janet would not believe.
+
+"God send my dear, kind father to hell just because he can't talk like
+the gentlefolks! Don't you believe it of Him, Master Paul. He's got more
+sense."
+
+I hope I pain no one by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should
+be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs
+of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than
+I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of
+immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it
+comforted me to whisper to myself: "I don't believe it of Him. He's got
+more sense."
+
+And about that period I had need of all the comfort I could get. As
+we descend the road of life, the journey, demanding so much of our
+attention, becomes of more importance than the journey's end; but to the
+child, standing at the valley's gate, the terminating hills are
+clearly visible. What lies beyond them is his constant wonder. I never
+questioned my parents directly on the subject, shrinking as so strangely
+we all do, both young and old, from discussion of the very matters
+of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my need,
+contented themselves with the vague generalities with which we seek
+to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs. But there were
+foolish voices about me less reticent; while the literature, illustrated
+and otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered
+all questionings with blunt brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a
+fiery furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could
+turn to the accompanying illustration, and see at a glance how you
+yourself would writhe and shrink and scream, while cheerful devils, well
+organised, were busy stoking. I had been burnt once, rather badly, in
+consequence of live coals, in course of transit on a shovel, being let
+fall upon me. I imagined these burning coals, not confined to a mere
+part of my body, but pressing upon me everywhere, not snatched swiftly
+off by loving hands, the pain assuaged by applications of soft soap and
+the blue bag, but left there, eating into my flesh and veins. And this
+continued for eternity. You suffered for an hour, a day, a thousand
+years, and were no nearer to the end; ten thousand, a million years, and
+yet, as at the very first, it was for ever, and for ever still it would
+always be for ever! I suffered also from insomnia about this period.
+
+"Then be good," replied the foolish voices round me; "never do wrong,
+and so avoid this endless agony."
+
+But it was so easy to do wrong. There were so many wrong things to do,
+and the doing of them was so natural.
+
+"Then repent," said the voices, always ready.
+
+But how did one repent? What was repentance? Did I "hate my sin," as I
+was instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to hell for
+it? Because the latter, even my child's sense told me, was no true
+repentance. Yet how could one know the difference?
+
+Above all else there haunted me the fear of the "Unforgivable Sin." What
+this was I was never able to discover. I dreaded to enquire too closely,
+lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the terror of it
+clung to me.
+
+"Believe," said the voices; "so only shall you be saved." How believe?
+How know you did believe? Hours would I kneel in the dark, repeating in
+a whispered scream:
+
+"I believe, I believe. Oh, I do believe!" and then rise with white
+knuckles, wondering if I really did believe.
+
+Another question rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings I
+had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most disreputable
+specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him. Our first
+meeting had been outside a confectioner's window, in the Commercial
+Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against the glass, a
+mere palpitating Appetite on legs. He had seized me by the collar, and
+hauled me into the shop. There, dropping me upon a stool, he bade me
+eat. Pride of race prompted me politely to decline, but his language
+became so awful that in fear and trembling I obeyed. So soon as I was
+finished--it cost him two and fourpence, I remember--we walked down to
+the docks together, and he told me stories of the sea and land that made
+my blood run cold. Altogether, in the course of three weeks or a month,
+we met about half a dozen times, when much the same programme was gone
+through. I think I was a fairly frank child, but I said nothing about
+him at home, feeling instinctively that if I did there would be an end
+of our comradeship, which was dear to me: not merely by reason of
+the pastry, though I admit that was a consideration, but also for his
+wondrous tales. I believed them all implicitly, and so came to regard
+him as one of the most interesting criminals as yet unhanged: and what
+was sad about the case, as I felt myself, was that his recital of his
+many iniquities, instead of repelling, attracted me to him. If ever
+there existed a sinner, here was one. He chewed tobacco--one of the
+hundred or so deadly sins, according to my theological library--and was
+generally more or less drunk. Not that a stranger would have
+noticed this; the only difference being that when sober he appeared
+constrained--was less his natural, genial self. In a burst of confidence
+he once admitted to me that he was the biggest blackguard in the
+merchant service. Unacquainted with the merchant service, as at the time
+I was, I saw no reason to doubt him.
+
+One night in a state of intoxication he walked over a gangway and was
+drowned. Our mutual friend, the confectioner, seeing me pass the window,
+came out to tell me so; and having heard, I walked on, heavy of heart,
+and pondering.
+
+About his eternal destination there could be no question. The known
+facts precluded the least ray of hope. How could I be happy in heaven,
+supposing I eventually did succeed in slipping in, knowing that he, the
+lovable old scamp, was burning for ever in hell?
+
+How could Janet, taking it that she reformed and thus escaped damnation,
+be contented, knowing the father she loved doomed to torment? The
+heavenly hosts, so I argued, could be composed only of the callous and
+indifferent.
+
+I wondered how people could go about their business, eat, drink and
+be merry, with tremendous fate hanging thus ever suspended over their
+heads. When for a little space I myself forgot it, always it fell back
+upon me with increased weight.
+
+Nor was the contemplation of heaven itself particularly attractive to
+me, for it was a foolish paradise these foolish voices had fashioned out
+of their folly. You stood about and sang hymns--for ever! I was assured
+that my fear of finding the programme monotonous was due only to my
+state of original sin, that when I got there I should discover I liked
+it. But I would have given much for the hope of avoiding both their
+heaven and their hell.
+
+Fortunately for my sanity I was not left long to brood unoccupied upon
+such themes. Our worldly affairs, under the sunshine of old Hasluck's
+round red face, prospered--for awhile; and one afternoon my father, who
+had been away from home since breakfast time, calling me into his office
+where also sat my mother, informed me that the long-talked-of school was
+become at last a concrete thing.
+
+"The term commences next week," explained my father. "It is not exactly
+what I had intended, but it will do--for the present. Later, of course,
+you will go to one of the big public schools; your mother and I have not
+yet quite decided which."
+
+"You will meet other boys there, good and bad," said my mother, who
+sat clasping and unclasping her hands. "Be very careful, dear, how you
+choose your companions."
+
+"You will learn to take your own part," said my father. "School is an
+epitome of the world. One must assert oneself, or one is sat upon."
+
+I knew not what to reply, the vista thus opened out to me was so
+unexpected. My blood rejoiced, but my heart sank.
+
+"Take one of your long walks," said my father, smiling, "and think it
+over."
+
+"And if you are in any doubt, you know where to go for guidance, don't
+you?" whispered my mother, who was very grave.
+
+Yet I went to bed, dreaming of quite other things that night: of
+Queens of Beauty bending down to crown my brows with laurel: of wronged
+Princesses for whose cause I rode to death or victory. For on my
+return home, being called into the drawing-room by my father, I stood
+transfixed, my cap in hand, staring with all my eyes at the vision that
+I saw.
+
+No such wonder had I ever seen before, at all events, not to my
+remembrance. The maidens that one meets in Poplar streets may be fair
+enough in their way, but their millinery displays them not to advantage;
+and the few lady visitors that came to us were of a staid and matronly
+appearance. Only out of pictures hitherto had such witchery looked upon
+me; and from these the spell faded as one gazed.
+
+I heard old Hasluck's smoky voice saying, "My little gell, Barbara," and
+I went nearer to her, moving unconsciously.
+
+"You can kiss 'er," said the smoky voice again; "she won't bite." But I
+did not kiss her. Nor ever felt I wanted to, upon the mouth.
+
+I suppose she must have been about fourteen, and I a little over ten,
+though tall for my age. Later I came to know she had that rare gold
+hair that holds the light, so that upon her face, which seemed of dainty
+porcelain, there ever fell a softened radiance as from some shining
+aureole; those blue eyes where dwell mysteries, shadow veiled. At the
+time I knew nothing, but that it seemed to me as though the fairy-tales
+had all come true.
+
+She smiled, understanding and well pleased with my confusion. Child
+though I was--little more than child though she was, it flattered her
+vanity.
+
+Fair and sweet, you had but that one fault. Would it had been another,
+less cruel to you yourself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY.
+
+"Correct" is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe
+Doctor Florret and all his attributes. He was a large man, but not
+too large--just the size one would select for the head-master of an
+important middle-class school; stout, not fat, suggesting comfort, not
+grossness. His hands were white and well shaped. On the left he wore
+a fine diamond ring, but it shone rather than sparkled. He spoke of
+commonplace things in a voice that lent dignity even to the weather. His
+face, which was clean-shaven, radiated benignity tempered by discretion.
+
+So likewise all about him: his wife, the feminine counterpart of
+himself. Seeing them side by side one felt tempted to believe that
+for his special benefit original methods had been reverted to, and she
+fashioned, as his particular helpmeet, out of one of his own ribs.
+His furniture was solid, meant for use, not decoration. His pictures,
+following the rule laid down for dress, graced without drawing attention
+to his walls. He ever said the correct thing at the correct time in the
+correct manner. Doubtful of the correct thing to do, one could always
+learn it by waiting till he did it; when one at once felt that nothing
+else could possibly have been correct. He held on all matters
+the correct views. To differ from him was to discover oneself a
+revolutionary.
+
+In practice, as I learned at the cost of four more or less wasted
+years, he of course followed the methods considered correct by English
+schoolmen from the days of Edward VI. onwards.
+
+Heaven knows I worked hard. I wanted to learn. Ambition--the all
+containing ambition of a boy that "has its centre everywhere nor cares
+to fix itself to form" stirred within me. Did I pass a speaker at some
+corner, hatless, perspiring, pointing Utopias in the air to restless
+hungry eyes, at once I saw myself, a Demosthenes swaying multitudes, a
+statesman holding the House of Commons spellbound, the Prime Minister of
+England, worshipped by the entire country. Even the Opposition papers,
+had I known of them, I should have imagined forced to reluctant
+admiration. Did the echo of a distant drum fall upon my ear, then before
+me rose picturesque fields of carnage, one figure ever conspicuous:
+Myself, well to the front, isolated. Promotion in the British army of
+my dream being a matter purely of merit, I returned Commander-in-Chief.
+Vast crowds thronged every flag-decked street. I saw white waving hands
+from every roof and window. I heard the dull, deep roar of welcome, as
+with superb seat upon my snow-white charger--or should it be coal-black?
+The point cost me much consideration, so anxious was I that the day
+should be without a flaw--I slowly paced at the head of my victorious
+troops, between wild waves of upturned faces: walked into a lamp-post
+or on to the toes of some irascible old gentleman, and awoke. A drunken
+sailor stormed from between swing doors and tacked tumultuously down the
+street: the factory chimney belching smoke became a swaying mast. The
+costers round about me shouted "Ay, ay, sir. 'Ready, ay, ready." I
+was Christopher Columbus, Drake, Nelson, rolled into one. Spurning
+the presumption of modern geographers, I discovered new continents.
+I defeated the French--those useful French! I died in the moment of
+victory. A nation mourned me and I was buried in Westminster Abbey.
+Also I lived and was created a Duke. Either alternative had its charm:
+personally I was indifferent. Boys who on November the ninth, as
+explained by letters from their mothers, read by Doctor Florret with a
+snort, were suffering from a severe toothache, told me on November
+the tenth of the glories of Lord Mayor's Shows. I heard their chatter
+fainter and fainter as from an ever-increasing distance. The bells of
+Bow were ringing in my ears. I saw myself a merchant prince, though
+still young. Nobles crowded my counting house. I lent them millions
+and married their daughters. I listened, unobserved in a corner, to
+discussion on some new book. Immediately I was a famous author. All men
+praised me: for of reviewers and their density I, in those days, knew
+nothing. Poetry, fiction, history, I wrote them all; and all men read,
+and wondered. Only here was a crumpled rose leaf in the pillow on which
+I laid my swelling head: penmanship was vexation to me, and spelling
+puzzled me, so that I wrote with sorrow and many blots and scratchings
+out. Almost I put aside the idea of becoming an author.
+
+But along whichever road I might fight my way to the Elysian Fields
+of fame, education, I dimly but most certainly comprehended, was a
+necessary weapon to my hand. And so, with aching heart and aching head,
+I pored over my many books. I see myself now in my small bedroom, my
+elbows planted on the shaky, one-legged table, startled every now and
+again by the frizzling of my hair coming in contact with the solitary
+candle. On cold nights I wear my overcoat, turned up about the neck, a
+blanket round my legs, and often I must sit with my fingers in my ears,
+the better to shut out the sounds of life, rising importunately from
+below. "A song, Of a song, To a song, A song, O! song!" "I love, Thou
+lovest, He she or it loves. I should or would love" over and over again,
+till my own voice seems some strange buzzing thing about me, while
+my head grows smaller and smaller till I put my hands up frightened,
+wondering if it still be entire upon my shoulders.
+
+Was I more stupid than the average, or is a boy's brain physically
+incapable of the work our educational system demands of it?
+
+"Latin and Greek" I hear repeating the suave tones of Doctor Florret,
+echoing as ever the solemn croak of Correctness, "are useful as mental
+gymnastics." My dear Doctor Florret and Co., cannot you, out of the vast
+storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better fitted
+to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of ten-to-fourteen?
+You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained by years of practice
+to its subtlest uses, take me from your bookshelf, say, your Browning or
+even your Shakespeare. Come, you know this language well. You have not
+merely learned: it is your mother tongue. Construe for me this short
+passage, these few verses: parse, analyse, resolve into component parts!
+And now, will you maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained,
+ink-bespattered little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's
+Metamorphoses to treat in like manner? Would it not be just as sensible
+to insist upon his practising his skinny little arms with hundred pounds
+dumb-bells?
+
+We were the sons of City men, of not well-to-do professional men, of
+minor officials, clerks, shopkeepers, our roads leading through the
+workaday world. Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies utterly
+useless to us. How I hated them, these youth-tormenting Shades. Homer!
+how I wished the fishermen had asked him that absurd riddle earlier.
+Horace! why could not that shipwreck have succeeded: it would have in
+the case of any one but a classic.
+
+Until one blessed day there fell into my hands a wondrous talisman.
+
+Hearken unto me, ye heavy burdened little brethren of mine. Waste not
+your substance upon tops and marbles, nor yet upon tuck (Do ye still
+call it "tuck"?), but scrape and save. For in the neighbourhood of
+Paternoster Row there dwells a good magician who for silver will provide
+you with a "Key" that shall open wide for you the gates of Hades.
+
+By its aid, the Frogs of Aristophanes became my merry friends. With
+Ulysses I wandered eagerly through Wonderland. Doctor Florret was
+charmed with my progress, which was real, for now, at last, I was
+studying according to the laws of common sense, understanding first,
+explaining afterwards. Let Youth, that the folly of Age would imprison
+in ignorance, provide itself with "Keys."
+
+But let me not seem to claim credit due to another. Dan it was--Dan of
+the strong arm and the soft smile, Dan the wise hater of all useless
+labour, sharp-witted, easy-going Dan, who made this grand discovery.
+
+Dan followed me a term later into the Lower Fourth, but before he had
+been there a week was handling Latin verse with an ease and dexterity
+suggestive of unholy dealings with the Devil. In a lonely corner of
+Regent's Park, first making sure no one was within earshot, he revealed
+to me his magic.
+
+"Don't tell the others," he commanded; "or it will get out, and then
+nobody will be any the better."
+
+"But is it right?" I asked.
+
+"Look here, young 'un," said Dan; "what are you here for--what's
+your father paying school fees for (it was the appeal to our
+conscientiousness most often employed by Dr. Florret himself), for you
+to play a silly game, or to learn something?
+
+"Because if it's only a game--we boys against the masters," continued
+Dan, "then let's play according to rule. If we're here to learn--well,
+you've been in the class four months and I've just come, and I bet I
+know more Ovid than you do already." Which was true.
+
+So I thanked Dan and shared with him his key; and all the Latin I
+remember, for whatever good it may be to me, I take it I owe to him.
+
+And knowledge of yet greater value do I owe to the good fortune that
+his sound mother wit was ever at my disposal to correct my dreamy
+unfeasibility; for from first to last he was my friend; and to have
+been the chosen friend of Dan, shrewd judge of man and boy, I deem no
+unimportant feather in my cap. He "took to" me, he said, because I was
+so "jolly green"--"such a rummy little mug." No other reason would he
+ever give me, save only a sweet smile and a tumbling of my hair with his
+great hand; but I think I understood. And I loved him because he was
+big and strong and handsome and kind; no one but a little boy knows
+how brutal or how kind a big boy can be. I was still somewhat of an
+effeminate little chap, nervous and shy, with a pink and white face, and
+hair that no amount of wetting would make straight. I was growing too
+fast, which took what strength I had, and my journey every day, added
+to school work and home work, maybe was too much for my years. Every
+morning I had to be up at six, leaving the house before seven to catch
+the seven fifteen from Poplar station; and from Chalk Farm I had to walk
+yet another couple of miles. But that I did not mind, for at Chalk Farm
+station Dan was always waiting for me. In the afternoon we walked back
+together also; and when I was tired and my back ached--just as if some
+one had cut a piece out of it, I felt--he would put his arm round
+me, for he always knew, and oh, how strong and restful it was to lean
+against, so that one walked as in an easy-chair.
+
+It seems to me, remembering how I would walk thus by his side, looking
+up shyly into his face, thinking how strong and good he was, feeling so
+glad he liked me, I can understand a little how a woman loves. He was so
+solid. With his arm round me, it was good to feel weak.
+
+At first we were in the same class, the Lower Third. He had no business
+there. He was head and shoulders taller than any of us and years older.
+It was a disgrace to him that he was not in the Upper Fourth. The Doctor
+would tell him so before us all twenty times a week. Old Waterhouse
+(I call him "Old Waterhouse" because "Mister Waterhouse, M.A.,"
+would convey no meaning to me, and I should not know about whom I
+was speaking) who cordially liked him, was honestly grieved. We, his
+friends, though it was pleasant to have him among us, suffered in our
+pride of him. The only person quite contented was Dan himself. It was
+his way in all things. Others had their opinion of what was good
+for him. He had his own, and his own was the only opinion that ever
+influenced him. The Lower Third suited him. For him personally the Upper
+Fourth had no attraction.
+
+And even in the Lower Third he was always at the bottom. He preferred
+it. He selected the seat and kept it, in spite of all allurements, in
+spite of all reproaches. It was nearest to the door. It enabled him
+to be first out and last in. Also it afforded a certain sense of
+retirement. Its occupant, to an extent screened from observation,
+became in the course of time almost forgotten. To Dan's philosophical
+temperament its practical advantages outweighed all sentimental
+objection.
+
+Only on one occasion do I remember his losing it. As a rule, tiresome
+questions, concerning past participles, square roots, or meridians never
+reached him, being snapped up in transit by arm-waving lovers of such
+trifles. The few that by chance trickled so far he took no notice of.
+They possessed no interest for him, and he never pretended that they
+did. But one day, taken off his guard, he gave voice quite unconsciously
+to a correct reply, with the immediate result of finding himself in an
+exposed position on the front bench. I had never seen Dan out of
+temper before, but that moment had any of us ventured upon a whispered
+congratulation we would have had our head punched, I feel confident.
+
+Old Waterhouse thought that here at last was reformation. "Come, Brian,"
+he cried, rubbing his long thin hands together with delight, "after all,
+you're not such a fool as you pretend."
+
+"Never said I was," muttered Dan to himself, with a backward glance of
+regret towards his lost seclusion; and before the day was out he had
+worked his way back to it again.
+
+As we were going out together, old Waterhouse passed us on the stairs:
+"Haven't you any sense of shame, my boy?" he asked sorrowfully, laying
+his hand kindly on Dan's shoulder.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Dan, with his frank smile; "plenty. It isn't yours,
+that's all."
+
+He was an excellent fighter. In the whole school of over two hundred
+boys, not half a dozen, and those only Upper Sixth boys--fellows who
+came in top hats with umbrellas, and who wouldn't out of regard to their
+own dignity--could have challenged him with any chance of success. Yet
+he fought very seldom, and then always in a bored, lazy fashion, as
+though he were doing it purely to oblige the other fellow.
+
+One afternoon, just as we were about to enter Regent's Park by the
+wicket opposite Hanover Gate, a biggish boy, an errand boy carrying an
+empty basket, and supported by two smaller boys, barred our way.
+
+"Can't come in here," said the boy with the basket.
+
+"Why not?" inquired Dan.
+
+"'Cos if you do I shall kick you," was the simple explanation.
+
+Without a word Dan turned away, prepared to walk on to the next opening.
+The boy with the basket, evidently encouraged, followed us: "Now, I'm
+going to give you your coward's blow," he said, stepping in front of us;
+"will you take it quietly?" It is a lonely way, the Outer Circle, on a
+winter's afternoon.
+
+"I'll tell you afterwards," said Dan, stopping short.
+
+The boy gave him a slight slap on the cheek. It could not have hurt, but
+the indignity, of course, was great. No boy of honour, according to our
+code, could have accepted it without retaliating.
+
+"Is that all?" asked Dan.
+
+"That's all--for the present," replied the boy with the basket.
+
+"Good-bye," said Dan, and walked on.
+
+"Glad he didn't insist on fighting," remarked Dan, cheerfully, as we
+proceeded; "I'm going to a party tonight."
+
+Yet on another occasion, in a street off Lisson Grove, he insisted
+on fighting a young rough half again his own weight, who, brushing up
+against him, had knocked his hat off into the mud.
+
+"I wouldn't have said anything about his knocking it off," explained
+Dan afterwards, tenderly brushing the poor bruised thing with his coat
+sleeve, "if he hadn't kicked it."
+
+On another occasion I remember, three or four of us, Dan among the
+number, were on our way one broiling summer's afternoon to Hadley Woods.
+As we turned off from the highroad just beyond Barnet and struck into
+the fields, Dan drew from his pocket an enormous juicy-looking pear.
+
+"Where did you get that from?" inquired one, Dudley.
+
+"From that big greengrocer's opposite Barnet Church," answered Dan.
+"Have a bit?"
+
+"You told me you hadn't any more money," retorted Dudley, in reproachful
+tones.
+
+"No more I had," replied Dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end of
+his pocket-knife.
+
+"You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear," argued
+Dudley, accepting.
+
+"Didn't buy it."
+
+"Do you mean to say you stole it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're a thief," denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away a
+pip.
+
+"I know it. So are you."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"What's the good of talking nonsense. You robbed an orchard only last
+Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache."
+
+"That isn't stealing."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It isn't the same thing."
+
+"What's the difference?"
+
+And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference. "Stealing is
+stealing," he would have it, "whether you take it off a tree or out of a
+basket. You're a thief, Dudley; so am I. Anybody else say a piece?"
+
+The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack. We all had
+a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so. It did
+not agitate him in the least.
+
+To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand me,
+and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes confusion.
+The yearly examination was approaching. My father and mother said
+nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the result; my
+father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how much I had
+endeavoured. I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing that prizes
+depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make others
+believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of school.
+
+"Are you going in for anything, Dan?" I asked him. We were discussing
+the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.
+
+I knew the question absurd. I asked it of him because I wanted him to
+ask it of me.
+
+"They're not giving away anything I particularly want," murmured Dan, in
+his lazy drawl: looked at from that point of view, school prizes are, it
+must be confessed, not worth their cost.
+
+"You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?" he asked next, as I
+expected.
+
+"I mean to have a shot at the History," I admitted. "Wish I was better
+at dates."
+
+"It's always two-thirds dates," Dan assured me, to my discouragement.
+"Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that
+chap Raleigh was born."
+
+"I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize," I explained to
+him. I never felt shy with Dan. He never laughed at me.
+
+"You oughtn't to have done that," he said. I stared. "It isn't fair to
+the other fellows. That won't be your winning the prize; that will be
+your getting it through favouritism."
+
+"But they can pray, too," I reminded him.
+
+"If you all pray for it," answered Dan, "then it will go, not to the
+fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the
+hardest. That isn't old Florret's idea, I'm sure."
+
+"But we are told to pray for things we want," I insisted.
+
+"Beastly mean way of getting 'em," retorted Dan. And no argument that
+came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right
+thinking on this point.
+
+He would judge all matters for himself. In his opinion Achilles was a
+coward, not a hero.
+
+"He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of
+him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that," he argued;
+"King Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it wasn't
+playing the game. There's no pluck in fighting if you know you're bound
+to win. Beastly cads, I call them all."
+
+I won no prize that year. Oddly enough, Dan did, for arithmetic; the
+only subject studied in the Lower Fourth that interested him. He liked
+to see things coming right, he explained.
+
+My father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me
+himself.
+
+"It's very curious, Paul," he said, "you seem to know a good deal."
+
+"They asked me all the things I didn't know. They seemed to do it on
+purpose," I blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm. My father crossed
+the room and sat down beside me.
+
+"Spud!" he said--it was a long time since he had called me by that
+childish nickname--"perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the
+unlucky ones."
+
+"Are you unlucky?" I asked.
+
+"Invariably," answered my father, rumpling his hair. "I don't know why.
+I try hard--I do the right thing, but it turns out wrong. It always
+does."
+
+"But I thought Mr. Hasluck was bringing us such good fortune," I said,
+looking up in surprise. "We're getting on, aren't we?"
+
+"I have thought so before, so often," said my father, "and it has always
+ended in a--in a collapse."
+
+I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to
+another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.
+
+"You see, when I married your mother," he went on, "I was a rich man.
+She had everything she wanted."
+
+"But you will get it all back," I cried.
+
+"I try to think so," he answered. "I do think so--generally speaking.
+But there are times--you would not understand--they come to you."
+
+"But she is happy," I persisted; "we are all happy."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I watch her," he said. "Women suffer more than we do. They live more
+in the present. I see my hopes, but she--she sees only me, and I have
+always been a failure. She has lost faith in me."
+
+I could say nothing. I understood but dimly.
+
+"That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul," he continued after
+a silence. "You can't think what a help education is to a man. I don't
+mean it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it rather
+hampers you. But it helps you to bear adversity. To a man with a
+well-stored mind, life is interesting on a piece of bread and a cup
+of tea. I know. If it were not for you and your mother I should not
+trouble."
+
+And yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as I
+remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh hope,
+planning, scheming, dreaming again. It was never acting. A worse actor
+never trod this stage on which we fret. His occasional attempts at a
+cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our all three crying
+in one another's arms. No; it was only when things were going well
+that experience came to his injury. Child of misfortune, he ever rose,
+Antaeus-like, renewed in strength from contact with his mother.
+
+Nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of
+prosperity, were oft recurring. Generally speaking, as he himself said,
+he was full of confidence. Already had he fixed upon our new house in
+Guilford Street, then still a good residential quarter; while at the
+same time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently central for
+office purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey's Inn and Bedford
+Row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the Law's sad
+courtiers.
+
+"Poplar," said my father, "has disappointed me. It seemed a good idea--a
+rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors. It ought to
+have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn't."
+
+"There have been a few come," my mother reminded him.
+
+"Of a sort," admitted my father; "a criminal lawyer might gather
+something of a practice here, I have no doubt. But for general work,
+of course, you must be in a central position. Now, in Guilford Street
+people will come to me."
+
+"It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in," agreed
+my mother.
+
+"Later on," said my father, "in case I want the whole house for offices,
+we could live ourselves in Regent's Park. It is quite near to the Park."
+
+"Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?" asked my mother, who of the
+two was by far the more practical.
+
+"For Hasluck," replied my father, "it will be much more convenient. He
+grumbles every time at the distance."
+
+"I have never been quite able to understand," said my mother, "why Mr.
+Hasluck should have come so far out of his way. There must surely be
+plenty of solicitors in the City."
+
+"He had heard of me," explained my father. "A curious old
+fellow--likes his own way of doing things. It's not everyone who would
+care for him as a client. But I seem able to manage him."
+
+Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street. It was
+a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper covered,
+with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the gardens of the
+Foundling Hospital. The wizened old caretaker knew us well, and having
+opened the door, would leave us to wander through the empty, echoing
+rooms at our own will. We furnished them handsomely in later Queen
+Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing no necessary
+expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is always worth its
+price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.
+
+"This," said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom
+into the smaller room adjoining, "I shall make your mother's boudoir.
+We will have the walls in lavender and maple green--she is fond of soft
+tones--and the window looks out upon the gardens. There we will put her
+writing-table."
+
+My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.
+
+"You will be quiet here," said my father, "and we can shut out the bed
+and the washstand with a screen."
+
+Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent--eight and sixpence a week,
+including attendance--was somewhat more than at the time I ought to have
+afforded. Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the opportunity of being
+an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown to my stout landlady, in
+later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass plate with my father's
+name upon the door. "Luke Kelver, Solicitor. Office hours, 10 till 4."
+A medical student thought he occupied my mother's boudoir. He was a dull
+dog, full of tiresome talk. But I made acquaintanceship with him;
+and often of an evening would smoke my pipe there in silence while
+pretending to be listening to his monotonous brag.
+
+The poor thing! he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost;
+that his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints
+of wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified
+prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple
+green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother, her
+soft curls curtaining her quiet face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE
+LOVE-LIT EYES.
+
+"There's nothing missing," said my mother, "so far as I can find out.
+Depend upon it, that's the explanation: she has got frightened and has
+run away.
+
+"But what was there to frighten her?" said my father, pausing with a
+decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.
+
+"It was the idea of the thing," replied my mother. "She has never been
+used to waiting at table. She was actually crying about it only last
+night."
+
+"But what's to be done?" said my father. "They will be here in less than
+an hour."
+
+"There will be no dinner for them," said my mother, "unless I put on an
+apron and bring it up myself."
+
+"Where does she live?" asked my father.
+
+"At Ilford," answered my mother.
+
+"We must make a joke of it," said my father.
+
+My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for my
+mother. A party to dinner--to a real dinner, beginning with anchovies
+and ending with ices from the confectioner's; if only they would remain
+ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences, present themselves
+as cold custard--was an extraordinary departure from the even tenor of
+our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect none previous. First there
+had been the house to clean and rearrange almost from top to bottom;
+endless small purchases to be made of articles that Need never misses,
+but which Ostentation, if ever you let her sneering nose inside the
+door, at once demands. Then the kitchen range--it goes without saying:
+one might imagine them all members of a stove union, controlled by some
+agitating old boiler out of work--had taken the opportunity to strike,
+refusing to bake another dish except under permanently improved
+conditions, necessitating weary days with plumbers. Fat cookery books,
+long neglected on their shelf, had been consulted, argued with and
+abused; experiments made, failures sighed over, successes noted; cost
+calculated anxiously; means and ways adjusted, hope finally achieved,
+shadowed by fear.
+
+And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed
+from her hand at the last moment! Downstairs in the kitchen would be
+the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering table
+would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner. But between the
+two yawned an impassable gulf. The bridge, without a word of warning,
+had bolted--was probably by this time well on its way to Ilford. There
+was excuse for my mother's tears.
+
+"Isn't it possible to get somebody else?" asked my father.
+
+"Impossible, in the time," said my mother. "I had been training her for
+the whole week. We had rehearsed it perfectly."
+
+"Have it in the kitchen," suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins to
+look like ships, which they didn't in the least, "and call it a picnic."
+Really it seemed the only practical solution.
+
+There came a light knock at the front door.
+
+"It can't be anybody yet, surely," exclaimed my father in alarm, making
+for his coat.
+
+"It's Barbara, I expect," explained my mother. "She promised to come
+round and help me dress. But now, of course, I shan't want her." My
+mother's nature was pessimistic.
+
+But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon
+myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the window
+when Barbara came in at the door--in those days, I mean.
+
+She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was so
+quick. And at once they saw the humour of the thing.
+
+"There's going to be no dinner," laughed my father. "We are going to
+look surprised and pretend that it was yesterday. It will be fun to see
+their faces."
+
+"There will be a very nice dinner," smiled my mother, "but it will be
+in the kitchen, and there's no way of getting it upstairs." And they
+explained to her the situation.
+
+She stood for an instant, her sweet face the gravest in the group. Then
+a light broke upon it.
+
+"I'll get you someone," she said.
+
+"My dear, you don't even know the neighbourhood," began my mother. But
+Barbara had snatched the latchkey from its nail and was gone.
+
+With her disappearance, shadow fell again upon us. "If there were only
+an hotel in this beastly neighbourhood," said my father.
+
+"You must entertain them by yourself, Luke," said my mother; "and I must
+wait--that's all."
+
+"Don't be absurd, Maggie," cried my father, getting angry. "Can't cook
+bring it in?"
+
+"No one can cook a dinner and serve it, too," answered my mother,
+impatiently. "Besides, she's not presentable."
+
+"What about Fan?" whispered my father.
+
+My mother merely looked. It was sufficient.
+
+"Paul?" suggested my father.
+
+"Thank you," retorted my mother. "I don't choose to have my son turned
+into a footman, if you do."
+
+"Well, hadn't you better go and dress?" was my father's next remark.
+
+"It won't take me long to put on an apron," was my mother's reply.
+
+"I was looking forward to seeing you in that new frock," said my father.
+In the case of another, one might have attributed such a speech to tact;
+in the case of my father, one felt it was a happy accident.
+
+My mother confessed--speaking with a certain indulgence, as one does of
+one's own follies when past--that she herself also had looked forward to
+seeing herself therein. Threatening discord melted into mutual sympathy.
+
+"I so wanted everything to be all right, for your sake, Luke," said my
+mother; "I know you were hoping it would help on the business."
+
+"I was only thinking of you, Maggie, dear," answered my father. "You are
+my business."
+
+"I know, dear," said my mother. "It is hard."
+
+The key turned in the lock, and we all stood quiet to listen.
+
+"She's come back alone," said my mother. "I knew it was hopeless."
+
+The door opened.
+
+"Please, ma'am," said the new parlour-maid, "will I do?"
+
+She stood there, framed by the lintel, in the daintiest of aprons, the
+daintiest of caps upon her golden hair; and every objection she swept
+aside with the wind of her merry wilfulness. No one ever had their way
+with her, nor wanted it.
+
+"You shall be footman," she ordered, turning to me--but this time my
+mother only laughed. "Wait here till I come down again." Then to my
+mother: "Now, ma'am, are you ready?"
+
+It was the first time I had seen my mother, or, indeed, any other flesh
+and blood woman, in evening dress, and to tell the truth I was a little
+shocked. Nay, more than a little, and showed it, I suppose; for my
+mother flushed and drew her shawl over the gleaming whiteness of her
+shoulders, pleading coldness. But Barbara cried out against this, saying
+it was a sin such beauty should be hid; and my father, filching a shawl
+with a quick hand, so dextrously indeed as to suggest some previous
+practice in the feat, dropped on one knee--as though the world were some
+sweet picture book--and raised my mother's hand with grave reverence to
+his lips; and Barbara, standing behind my mother's chair, insisted on
+my following suit, saying the Queen was receiving. So I knelt also,
+glancing up shyly as towards the gracious face of some fair lady
+hitherto unknown, thus Catching my first glimpse of the philosophy of
+clothes.
+
+My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed
+days that swiftly followed, when my mother's eyes would flash towards
+my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the
+moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again
+and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and
+sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour forth
+a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room, slamming the
+door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards, sitting alone in
+the dark, with bowed head between his hands.
+
+Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their
+passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold
+whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.
+
+In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung closer
+to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have understood
+if they had. When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms clasping me
+tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I hated my father,
+who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her. Yet when my father drew
+me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind eyes so full of pain,
+then I felt angry with my mother, remembering her bitter tongue.
+
+It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the
+house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into
+each other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow. The
+idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline in
+the air, feel a chillness as it passed me. It trod silently through the
+pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face before them.
+Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and the next moment,
+stealing across to my father, answer for him with his voice, but
+strangely different. I used to think I could hear it laughing to itself
+as it stepped back into enfolding space.
+
+To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps
+man and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face
+between them. So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I
+see its mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent
+laugh. So that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the
+twilight, but I see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them,
+creeping after them with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me in
+quiet ways.
+
+Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark
+valley of the shadow of dead love? Is it Love's ordeal? testing the
+feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet
+again, the darkness passed?
+
+Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive
+account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic
+parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of
+observation through the crack of the door were afforded me. All that
+was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann--or
+Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which--a snuffy, mumbling old frump,
+with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it
+so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long blank
+walls, bordering the Limehouse reach. He sat at my mother's right hand;
+and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish seeming, how she
+could be so interested in him, shouting much and often to him; for added
+to his other disattractions he was very deaf, which necessitated his
+putting his hand up to his ear at every other observation made to
+him, crying querulously: "Eh, what? What are you talking about? Say it
+again,"--smiling upon him and paying close attention to his every want.
+Even old Hasluck, opposite to him, and who, though pleasant enough
+in his careless way, was far from being a slave to politeness, roared
+himself purple, praising some new disinfectant of which this same
+Teidelmann appeared to be the proprietor.
+
+"My wife swears by it," bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.
+
+"Our drains!" chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; "well,
+you'd hardly know there was any in the house since I've took to using
+it."
+
+"What are they talking about?" asked Teidelmann, appealing to my mother.
+"What's he say his wife does?"
+
+"Your disinfectant," explained my mother; "Mrs. Hasluck swears by it."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mrs. Hasluck."
+
+"Does she? Delighted to hear it," grunted the old gentleman, evidently
+bored.
+
+"Nothing like it for a sick-room," persisted Hasluck; "might almost call
+it a scent."
+
+"Makes one quite anxious to be ill," remarked my aunt, addressing no one
+in particular.
+
+"Reminds me of cocoanuts," continued Hasluck.
+
+Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his
+flattery should not be lost.
+
+"I say it reminds me of cocoanuts." He screamed it this time.
+
+"Oh, does it?" was the reply.
+
+"Doesn't it you?"
+
+"Can't say it does," answered Teidelmann. "As a matter of fact, don't
+know much about it myself. Never use it."
+
+Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of
+the subject.
+
+"Take my advice," he shouted, "and buy a bottle."
+
+"Buy a what?"
+
+"A bottle," roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his
+strength.
+
+"What's he say? What's he talking about now?" asked Teidelmann, again
+appealing to my mother.
+
+"He says you ought to buy a bottle," again explained my mother.
+
+"What of?"
+
+"Of your own disinfectant."
+
+"Silly fool!"
+
+Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic
+(which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely misjudged
+the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say. I only know
+that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly, and therefore
+assume they reached round the table also.
+
+A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned,
+and the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.
+
+"He's quite right," was Hasluck's comment; "that's what I am
+undoubtedly. Because I can't talk about anything but shop myself, I
+think everybody else is the same sort of fool."
+
+But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the
+passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time Teidelmann
+was evidently interested.
+
+"Well, if you could spare the time, I'd be more obliged than I can tell
+you," Hasluck was saying. "I know absolutely nothing about pictures
+myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in Europe."
+
+"He ought to know," chuckled old Teidelmann. "He's tried often enough to
+palm off rubbish onto me."
+
+"That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young--"
+Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; "been the
+making of him, I should say."
+
+"I gave him two thousand for the six," replied Teidelmann, "and they'll
+sell for twenty thousand."
+
+"But you'll never sell them?" exclaimed my father.
+
+"No," grunted old Teidelmann, "but my widow will." There came a soft,
+low laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.
+
+"It's Anderson's great disappointment," followed a languid, caressing
+voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), "that he has
+never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art. He'll pay
+thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed Madonna. Such
+a waste of money, it appears to me."
+
+"But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,"
+argued my father's voice.
+
+"It would enhance the beauty of my neck," replied the musical voice.
+
+"An even more absolute waste of money," was my father's answer, spoken
+low. And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.
+
+"Who is she?" I asked Barbara.
+
+"The second Mrs. Teidelmann," whispered Barbara. "She is quite a swell.
+Married him for his money--I don't like her myself, but she's very
+beautiful."
+
+"As beautiful as you?" I asked incredulously. We were sitting on the
+stairs, sharing a jelly.
+
+"Oh, me!" answered Barbara. "I'm only a child. Nobody takes any notice
+of me--except other kids, like you." For some reason she appeared out of
+conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of mind.
+
+"But everybody thinks you beautiful," I maintained.
+
+"Who?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Dr. Hal," I answered.
+
+We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.
+
+"What did he say?" she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in
+it.
+
+I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I was
+positive.
+
+"Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,"
+Barbara instructed me, "and don't forget what he says this time. I'm
+curious." And though it seemed to me a foolish command--for what could
+he say of her more than I myself could tell her--I never questioned
+Barbara's wishes.
+
+Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may have
+clouded for a moment Barbara's sunny nature, surely there was no reason
+for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention throughout the
+dinner than the parlour-maid.
+
+"Where ever did you get her from?" asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having
+just descended the kitchen stairs.
+
+"A neat-handed Phillis," commented Dr. Florret with approval.
+
+"I'll take good care she never waits at my table," laughed the wife
+of our minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman,
+mother of eleven, eight of them boys.
+
+"To tell the truth," said my mother, "she's only here temporarily."
+
+"As a matter of fact," said my father, "we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck
+for her."
+
+"Don't leave me out of it," laughed Hasluck; "can't let the old girl
+take all the credit."
+
+Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as "My dear," at which
+Mrs. Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that
+incident could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was
+looking, pinched her elbow, which would not have mattered had not the
+unexpectedness of it drawn from her an involuntary "augh," upon which,
+for the reputation of the house, and the dinner being then towards
+its end; my mother deemed it better to take the whole company into
+her confidence. Naturally the story gained for Barbara still greater
+admiration, so that when with the dessert, discarding the apron but
+still wearing the dainty cap, which showed wisdom, she and the footman
+took their places among the guests, she was even more than before the
+centre of attention and remark.
+
+"It was very nice of you," said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the circle
+of compliments, "and, as I always tell my girls, that is better than
+being beautiful."
+
+"Kind hearts," added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, "are more than
+coronets." Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct
+quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell
+upon the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like
+the Amen in church.
+
+Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.
+
+"When I was a girl," said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing
+silence, "I used to look into the glass and say to myself: 'Fanny,
+you've got to be amiable,' and I was amiable," added my aunt,
+challenging contradiction with a look; "nobody can say that I wasn't,
+for years."
+
+"It didn't pay?" suggested Hasluck.
+
+"It attracted," replied my aunt, "no attention whatever."
+
+Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many
+experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old
+Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the
+case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than
+business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida (I
+am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the details
+of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion, so I have
+been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise of the
+moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa scheme
+becoming converted to Quakerism.
+
+But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn and
+Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence in the
+East End.
+
+As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr.
+Florret's presence. As no bird, it is said, can continue its song once
+looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the cold stare
+of his disapproving eye. But Dr. "Fighting Hal" was no gentle warbler
+of thought. Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept through all polite
+argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood, carrying his
+partisans with him further than they meant to go, and quite unable to
+turn back; leaving his opponents clinging desperately--upside down,
+anyhow--to their perches, angry, their feathers much ruffled.
+
+"Life!" flung out Washburn--Dr. Florret had just laid down unimpeachable
+rules for the conduct of all mankind on all occasions--"what do you
+respectable folk know of life? You are not men and women, you are
+marionettes. You don't move to your natural emotions implanted by God;
+you dance according to the latest book of etiquette. You live and love,
+laugh and weep and sin by rule. Only one moment do you come face to face
+with life; that is in the moment when you die, leaving the other puppets
+to be dressed in black and make believe to cry."
+
+It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality
+of us all.
+
+"Little doll," he had once called me, and I had resented the term.
+
+"That's all you are, little Paul," he had persisted, "a good little
+hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what
+it's made to think. We are all dolls. Your father is a gallant-hearted,
+soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and primmest of dolls.
+And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to be a man, but hasn't
+the pluck. We are only dolls, little Paul."
+
+"He's a trifle--a trifle whimsical on some subjects," explained my
+father, on my repeating this conversation.
+
+"There are a certain class of men," explained my mother--"you will meet
+with them more as you grow up--who talk for talking's sake. They don't
+know what they mean. And nobody else does either."
+
+"But what would you have?" argued Dr. Florret, "that every man should do
+that which is right in his own eyes?"
+
+"Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what every
+other fool thinks right," retorted Washburn. "The other day I called
+to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not. His wife was
+washing clothes in the front room. 'How's your husband?' I asked. 'I
+think he's dead,' replied the woman. Then, without leaving off her work,
+'Jim,' she shouted, 'are you there?' No answer came from the inner room.
+'He's a goner,' she said, wringing out a stocking."
+
+"But surely," said Dr. Florret, "you don't admire a woman for being
+indifferent to the death of her husband?"
+
+"I don't admire her for that," replied Washburn, "and I don't blame her.
+I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it. What I do admire
+her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel. In Berkeley Square
+she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face and a handkerchief
+to her eyes.
+
+"Assume a virtue, if you have it not," murmured Dr. Florret.
+
+"Go on," said Washburn. "How does it run? 'That monster, custom, who all
+sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to the use
+of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put on.' So was
+the lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the more an ass. Here
+asses go about as asses, but there are lions also. I had a woman under
+my hands only a little while ago. I could have cured her easily. Why she
+got worse every day instead of better I could not understand. Then by
+accident learned the truth: instead of helping me she was doing all
+she could to kill herself. 'I must, Doctor,' she cried. 'I must. I have
+promised. If I get well he will only leave me, and if I die now he has
+sworn to be good to the children.' Here, I tell you, they live--think
+their thoughts, work their will, kill those they hate, die for those
+they love; savages if you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless
+dolls."
+
+"I prefer the dolls," concluded Dr. Florret.
+
+"I admit they are pretty," answered Washburn.
+
+"I remember," said my father, "the first masked ball I ever went to when
+I was a student in Paris. It struck me just as you say, Hal; everybody
+was so exactly alike. I was glad to get out into the street and see
+faces."
+
+"But I thought they always unmasked at midnight," said the second Mrs.
+Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.
+
+"I did not wait," explained my father.
+
+"That was a pity," she replied. "I should have been interested to see
+what they were like, underneath."
+
+"I might have been disappointed," answered my father. "I agree with Dr.
+Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement."
+
+Barbara was right. She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would
+have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold
+eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.
+
+Always she was very kind to me. Moreover, since the disappearance of
+Cissy she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my
+small self. My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was the
+one thing needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take much
+pride in our solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to our
+desires: like the oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world than to
+ourselves. If others there were who admired me, very guardedly must they
+have kept the secret I would so gladly have shared with them. But this
+new friend of ours--or had I not better at once say enemy--made me feel
+when in her presence a person of importance. How it was accomplished
+I cannot explain. No word of flattery nor even of mere approval ever
+passed her lips. Her charm to me was not that she admired me, but that
+she led me by some mysterious process to admire myself.
+
+And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me,
+I never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the
+sudden raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.
+
+She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting
+on her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his
+eyes were turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them back
+again. Once she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some light
+jest of his, and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick glance,
+saw that my mother's eyes were watching also.
+
+I have spoken of my father only as he then appeared to me, a child--an
+older chum with many lines about his mobile mouth, the tumbled hair
+edged round with grey; but looking back with older eyes, I see him a
+slightly stooping, yet still tall and graceful man, with the face of a
+poet--the face I mean a poet ought to possess but rarely does, nature
+apparently abhorring the obvious--with the shy eyes of a boy, and a
+voice tender as a woman's. Never the dingiest little drab that entered
+the kitchen but adored him, speaking always of "the master" in tones of
+fond proprietorship, for to the most slatternly his "orders" had ever
+the air of requests for favours. Women, I so often read, can care for
+only masterful men. But may there not be variety in women as in other
+species? Or perhaps--if the suggestion be not over-daring--the many
+writers, deeming themselves authorities upon this subject of woman, may
+in this one particular have erred? I only know my father spoke to
+few women whose eyes did not brighten. Yet hardly should I call him a
+masterful man.
+
+"I think it's all right," whispered Hasluck to my father in the
+passage--they were the last to go. "What does she think of it, eh?"
+
+"I think she'll be with us," answered my father.
+
+"Nothing like food for bringing people together," said Hasluck.
+"Good-night."
+
+The door closed, but Something had crept into the house. It stood
+between my father and mother. It followed them silently up the narrow
+creaking stairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW.
+
+Better is little, than treasure and trouble therewith. Better a dinner
+of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. None
+but a great man would have dared to utter such a glaring commonplace as
+that. Not only on Sundays now, but all the week, came the hot joint to
+table, and on every day there was pudding, till a body grew indifferent
+to pudding; thus a joy-giving luxury of life being lost and but another
+item added to the long list of uninteresting needs. Now we could eat and
+drink without stint. No need now to organise for the morrow's hash.
+No need now to cut one's bread instead of breaking it, thinking of
+Saturday's bread pudding. But there the saying fails, for never now were
+we merry. A silent unseen guest sat with us at the board, so that no
+longer we laughed and teased as over the half pound of sausages or the
+two sweet-scented herrings; but talked constrainedly of empty things
+that lay outside us.
+
+Easy enough would it have been for us to move to Guilford Street.
+Occasionally in the spiritless tones in which they now spoke on all
+subjects save the one, my mother and father would discuss the project;
+but always into the conversation would fall, sooner or later, some
+loosened thought to stir it to anger, and so the aching months went by,
+and the cloud grew.
+
+Then one day the news came that old Teidelmann had died suddenly in his
+counting house.
+
+"You are going to her?" said my mother.
+
+"I have been sent for," said my father; "I must--it may mean business."
+
+My mother laughed bitterly; why, at the time, I could not understand;
+and my father flung out of the house. During the many hours that he was
+away my mother remained locked in her room, and, stealing sometimes to
+the door, I was sure I heard her crying; and that she should grieve so
+at old Teidelmann's death puzzled me.
+
+She came oftener to our house after that. Her mourning added, I think,
+to her beauty, softening--or seeming to soften--the hardness of her
+eyes. Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast beside her
+appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her motive, she was
+kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some trifling gift or plan
+for affording me some childish treat. By instinct she understood exactly
+what I desired and liked, the books that would appeal to me as those my
+mother gave me never did, the pleasures that did please me as opposed to
+the pleasures that should have pleased me. Often my mother, talking
+to me, would chill me with the vista of the life that lay before me:
+a narrow, viewless way between twin endless walls of "Must" and "Must
+not." This soft-voiced lady set me dreaming of life as of sunny fields
+through which one wandered laughing, along the winding path of Will; so
+that, although as I have said, there lurked at the bottom of my thoughts
+a fear of her; yet something within me I seemed unable to control went
+out to her, drawn by her subtle sympathy and understanding of it.
+
+"Has he ever seen a pantomime?" she asked of my father one morning,
+looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of her mouth.
+
+My heart leaped within me. My father raised his eyebrows: "What would
+your mother say, do you think?" he asked. My heart sank.
+
+"She thinks," I replied, "that theatres are very wicked places." It
+was the first time that any doubt as to the correctness of my mother's
+judgments had ever crossed my mind.
+
+Mrs. Teidelmann's smile strengthened my doubt. "Dear me," she said, "I
+am afraid I must be very wicked. I have always regarded a pantomime as
+quite a moral entertainment. All the bad people go down so very straight
+to--well, to the fit and proper place for them. And we could promise to
+leave before the Clown stole the sausages, couldn't we, Paul?"
+
+My mother was called and came; and I could not help thinking how
+insignificant she looked with her pale face and plain dark frock,
+standing stiffly beside this shining lady in her rustling clothes.
+
+"You will let him come, Mrs. Kelver," she pleaded in her soft caressing
+tones; "it's Dick Whittington, you know--such an excellent moral."
+
+My mother had stood silent, clasping and unclasping her hands, a
+childish trick she had when troubled; and her lips were trembling.
+Important as the matter loomed before my own eyes, I wondered at her
+agitation.
+
+"I am very sorry," said my mother, "it is very kind of you. But I would
+rather he did not go."
+
+"Just this once," persisted Mrs. Teidelmann. "It is holiday time."
+
+A ray of sunlight fell into the room, lighting upon her coaxing face,
+making where my mother stood seem shadow.
+
+"I would rather he did not go," repeated my mother, and her voice
+sounded harsh and grating. "When he is older others must judge for him,
+but for the present he must be guided by me--alone."
+
+"I really don't think there could be any harm, Maggie," urged my father.
+"Things have changed since we were young."
+
+"That may be," answered my mother, still in the same harsh voice; "it is
+long ago since then."
+
+"I didn't intend it that way," said my father with a short laugh.
+
+"I merely meant that I may be wrong," answered my mother. "I seem so old
+among you all--so out of place. I have tried to change, but I cannot."
+
+"We will say no more about it," said Mrs. Teidelmann, sweetly. "I merely
+thought it would give him pleasure; and he has worked so hard this last
+term, his father tells me."
+
+She laid her hand caressingly on my shoulder, drawing me a little closer
+to her; and it remained there.
+
+"It was very kind of you," said my mother, "I would do anything to give
+him pleasure, anything--I could. He knows that. He understands."
+
+My mother's hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would
+not see; and without another word she left the room.
+
+My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next
+afternoon she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we
+saw a magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer. She had dressed herself in
+a prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was brighter
+and gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing and talking
+merrily. But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and sulky. At any
+other time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me; but the wonders
+of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard so much of, that
+from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for myself, were floating
+vague and undefined before me in the air; and neither the open-mouthed
+sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of rats; nor even the live rabbit
+found in the stout old gentleman's hat--the last sort of person in whose
+hat one would have expected to find such a thing--could draw away my
+mind from the joy I had caught a glimpse of only to lose.
+
+So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but
+little; and that night, waking--or rather half waking, as children do--I
+thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed. I must
+have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say whether the
+intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to see it still
+there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose from her knees.
+
+She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions. "It was
+a silly dream I had," she explained "I must have been thinking of the
+conjurer we saw. I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you away
+from me. I could not find you and was all alone in the world."
+
+She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me. And thus we
+remained until again I must have fallen asleep.
+
+It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I
+called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton.
+She had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from
+terrible headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was
+unable to come out. She would be leaving England in a few days to
+travel. Would my mother come and see her, she would like to say good-bye
+to her before she went. My mother handed the letter across the table to
+my father.
+
+"Of course you will go," said my father. "Poor girl, I wonder what the
+cause can be. She used to be so free from everything of the kind."
+
+"Do you think it well for me to go?" said my mother. "What can she have
+to say to me?"
+
+"Oh, just to say good-bye," answered my father. "It would look so
+pointed not to go."
+
+It was a dull, sombre house without, but one entered through its
+commonplace door as through the weed-grown rock into Aladdin's cave. Old
+Teidelmann had been a great collector all his life, and his treasures,
+now scattered through a dozen galleries, were then heaped there in
+curious confusion. Pictures filled every inch of wall, stood propped
+against the wonderful old furniture, were even stretched unframed across
+the ceilings. Statues gleamed from every corner (a few of the statues
+were, I remember, the only things out of the entire collection that Mrs.
+Teidelmann kept for herself), carvings, embroideries, priceless china,
+miniatures framed in gems, illuminated missals and gorgeously bound
+books crowded the room. The ugly little thick-lipped man had surrounded
+himself with the beauty of every age, brought from every land. He
+himself must have been the only thing cheap and uninteresting to be
+found within his own walls; and now he lay shrivelled up in his coffin,
+under a monument by means of which an unknown cemetery became quite
+famous.
+
+Instructions had been given that my mother was to be shown up into Mrs.
+Teidelmann's boudoir. She was lying on a sofa near the fire when we
+entered, asleep, dressed in a loose lace robe that fell away, showing
+her thin but snow-white arms, her rich dark hair falling loose about
+her. In sleep she looked less beautiful: harder and with a suggestion of
+coarseness about the face, of which at other times it showed no trace.
+My mother said she would wait, perhaps Mrs. Teidelmann would awake; and
+the servant, closing the door softly, left us alone with her.
+
+An old French clock standing on the mantelpiece, a heart supported by
+Cupids, ticked with a muffled, soothing sound. My mother, choosing a
+chair by the window, sat with her eyes fixed on the sleeping woman's
+face, and it seemed to me--though this may have been but my fancy born
+of after-thought--that a faint smile relaxed for a moment the sleeping
+woman's pained, pressed lips. Neither I nor my mother spoke, the only
+sound in the room being the hushed ticking of the great gilt clock.
+Until the other woman after a few slight movements of unrest began to
+talk in her sleep.
+
+Only confused murmurs escaped her at first, and then I heard her whisper
+my father's name. Very low--hardly more than breathed--were the words,
+but upon the silence each syllable struck clear and distinct: "Ah no, we
+must not. Luke, my darling."
+
+My mother rose swiftly from her chair, but she spoke in quite
+matter-of-fact tones.
+
+"Go, Paul," she said, "wait for me downstairs;" and noiselessly opening
+the door, she pushed me gently out, and closed it again behind me.
+
+It was half an hour or more before she came down, and at once we left
+the house, letting ourselves out. All the way home my mother never once
+spoke, but walked as one in a dream with eyes that saw not. With her
+hand upon the lock of our gate she came back to life.
+
+"You must say nothing, Paul, do you understand?" she said. "When people
+are delirious they use strange words that have no meaning. Do you
+understand, Paul; you must never breathe a word--never."
+
+I promised, and we entered the house; and from that day my mother's
+whole manner changed. Not another angry word ever again escaped her
+lips, never an angry flash lighted up again her eyes. Mrs. Teidelmann
+remained away three months. My father, of course, wrote to her often,
+for he was managing all her affairs. But my mother wrote to her
+also--though this my father, I do not think, knew--long letters that she
+would go away by herself to pen, writing them always in the twilight,
+close to the window.
+
+"Why do you choose this time, just when it's getting dark, to write your
+letters," my father would expostulate, when by chance he happened to
+look into the room. "Let me ring for the lamp, you will strain your
+eyes." But my mother would always excuse herself, saying she had only a
+few lines to finish.
+
+"I can think better in this light," she would explain.
+
+And when Mrs. Teidelmann returned, it was my mother who was the first
+to call upon her; before even my father knew that she was back. And from
+thence onward one might have thought them the closest of friends, my
+mother visiting her often, speaking of her to all in terms of praise and
+liking.
+
+In this way peace returned unto the house, and my father was tender
+again in all his words and actions towards my mother, and my mother
+thoughtful as before of all his wants and whims, her voice soft and low,
+the sweet smile ever lurking around her lips as in the old days before
+this evil thing had come to dwell among us; and I might have forgotten
+it had ever cast its blight upon our life but that every day my mother
+grew feebler, the little ways that had seemed a part of her gone from
+her.
+
+The summer came and went--that time in towns of panting days and
+stifling nights, when through the open window crawls to one's face the
+hot foul air, heavy with reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets;
+when lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad
+mass around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest; and
+my mother moved about the house ever more listlessly.
+
+"There's nothing really the matter with her," said Dr. Hal, "only
+weakness. It is the place. Cannot you get her away from it?"
+
+"I cannot leave myself," said my father, "just yet; but there is no
+reason why you and the boy should not take a holiday. This year I can
+afford it, and later I might possibly join you."
+
+My mother consented, as she did to all things now, and so it came about
+that again of afternoons we climbed--though more slowly and with many
+pauses--the steep path to the ruined tower old Jacob in his happy
+foolishness had built upon the headland, rested once again upon its
+topmost platform, sheltered from the wind that ever blew about its
+crumbling walls, saw once more the distant mountains, faint like
+spectres, and the silent ships that came and vanished, and about our
+feet the pleasant farm lands, and the grave, sweet river.
+
+We had taken lodgings in the village: smaller now it seemed than
+previously; but wonderful its sunny calm, after the turmoil of the
+fierce dark streets. Mrs. Fursey was there still, but quite another than
+the Mrs. Fursey of my remembrance, a still angular but cheery dame,
+bent no longer on suppressing me, but rather on drawing me out before
+admiring neighbours, as one saying: "The material was unpromising, as
+you know. There were times when I almost despaired. But with
+patience, and--may I say, a natural gift that way--you see what can
+be accomplished!" And Anna, now a buxom wife and mother, with an
+uncontrollable desire to fall upon and kiss me at most unexpected
+moments, necessitating a never sleeping watchfulness on my part, and
+a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat. And old
+Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave. On the bench before
+him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and tapped and
+hammered: pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we want to be
+toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much toddling there
+is to be done." Dapper boots, sighing: "Oh, please make haste, we are
+waiting to dance and to strut. Jack walks in the lane, Jill waits by
+the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps." Stout sober boots, saying: "As
+soon as you can, old friend. Remember we've work to do." Flat-footed old
+boots, rusty and limp, mumbling: "We haven't much time, Mr. Chumbley.
+Just a patch, that is all, we haven't much further to go." And old Joe,
+still peddling his pack, with the help of the same old jokes. And Tom
+Pinfold, still puzzled and scratching his head, the rejected fish still
+hanging by its tail from his expostulating hand; one might almost have
+imagined it the same fish. Grown-up folks had changed but little. Only
+the foolish children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere
+sucking babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I
+had known now mincing it as men and women; such affectation annoyed me.
+
+One afternoon--it was towards the close of the last week of our stay--my
+mother and I had climbed, as was so often our wont, to the upper
+platform of old Jacob's tower. My mother leant upon the parapet, her
+eyes fixed dreamingly upon the distant mountains, and a smile crept to
+her lips.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, only of things that happened over there"--she nodded her head
+towards the distant hills as to some old crony with whom she shares
+secrets--"when I was a girl."
+
+"You lived there, long ago, didn't you, when you were young?" I asked.
+Boys do not always stop to consider whether their questions might or
+might not be better expressed.
+
+"You're very rude," said my mother--it was long since a tone of her old
+self had rung from her in answer to any touch; "it was a very little
+while ago."
+
+Suddenly she raised her head and listened. Perhaps some twenty seconds
+she remained so with her lips parted, and then from the woods came a
+faint, long-drawn "Coo-ee." We ran to the side of the tower commanding
+the pathway from the village, and waited until from among the dark pines
+my father emerged into the sunlight.
+
+Seeing us, he shouted again and waved his stick, and from the light of
+his eyes and his gallant bearing, and the spring of his step across the
+heathery turf, we knew instinctively that trouble had come upon him.
+He always rose to meet it with that look and air. It was the old Norse
+blood in his veins, I suppose. So, one imagines, must those godless old
+Pirates have sprung to their feet when the North wind, loosed as a hawk
+from the leash, struck at the beaked prow.
+
+We heard his quick step on the rickety stair, and the next moment he was
+between us, breathing a little hard, but laughing.
+
+He stood for awhile beside my mother without speaking, both of them
+gazing at the distant hills among which, as my mother had explained,
+things had happened long ago. And maybe, "over there," their memories
+met and looked upon each other with kind eyes.
+
+"Do you remember," said my father, "we climbed up here--it was the first
+walk we took together after coming here. We discussed our plans for the
+future, how we would retrieve our fortunes."
+
+"And the future," answered my mother, "has a way of making plans for us
+instead."
+
+"It would seem so," replied my father, with a laugh. "I am an unlucky
+beggar, Maggie. I dropped all your money as well as my own down that
+wretched mine."
+
+"It was the will--it was Fate, or whatever you call it," said my mother.
+"You could not help that, Luke."
+
+"If only that damned pump hadn't jambed," said my father.
+
+"Do you remember that Mrs. Tharand?" asked my mother.
+
+"Yes, what of her?"
+
+"A worldly woman, I always thought her. She called on me the morning we
+were leaving; I don't think you saw her. 'I've been through more worries
+than you would think, to look at me,' she said to me, laughing. I've
+always remembered her words: 'and of all the troubles that come to us in
+this world, believe me, Mrs. Kelver, money troubles are the easiest to
+bear.'"
+
+"I wish I could think so," said my father.
+
+"She rather irritated me at the time," continued my mother. "I thought
+it one of those commonplaces with which we console ourselves for other
+people's misfortunes. But now I know she spoke the truth."
+
+There was silence between them for awhile. Then said my father in a
+cheery tone:
+
+"I've broken with old Hasluck."
+
+"I thought you would be compelled to sooner or later," answered my
+mother.
+
+"Hasluck," exclaimed my father, with sudden vehemence, "is little better
+than a thief; I told him so."
+
+"What did he say?" asked my mother.
+
+"Laughed, and said that was better than some people."
+
+My father laughed himself.
+
+I wish to do the memory of Noel Hasluck no injustice. Ever was he a kind
+friend to me; not only then, but in later years, when, having come to
+learn that kindness is rarer in the world than I had dreamt, I was glad
+of it. Added to which, if only for Barbara's sake, I would prefer
+to write of him throughout in terms of praise. Yet even were his
+good-tempered, thick-skinned ghost (and unless it were good-tempered
+and thick-skinned it would be no true ghost of old Noel Hasluck) to
+be reading over my shoulder the words as I write them down, I think it
+would agree with me--I do not think it would be offended with me (for
+ever in his life he was an admirer and a lover of the Truth, being one
+of those good fighters capable of respecting even his foe, his enemy,
+against whom from ten to four, occasionally a little later, he fought
+right valiantly) for saying that of all the men who go down into the
+City each day in a cab or 'bus or train, he was perhaps one of the most
+unprincipled: and whether that be saying much or little I leave to those
+with more knowledge to decide.
+
+To do others, as it was his conviction, right or wrong, that they would
+do him if ever he gave them half a chance, was his notion of "business;"
+and in most of his transactions he was successful. "I play a game,"
+he would argue, "where cheating is the rule. Nine out of every ten men
+round the table are sharpers like myself, and the tenth man is a fool
+who has no business to be there. We prey upon each other, and the cutest
+of us is the winner."
+
+"But the innocent people, lured by your fine promises," I ventured once
+to suggest to him, "the widows and the orphans?"
+
+"My dear lad," he said, with a laugh, laying his fat hand upon my
+shoulder, "I remember one of your widows writing me a pathetic letter
+about some shares she had taken in a Silver Company of mine. Lord knows
+where the mine is now--somewhere in Spain, I think. It looked as though
+all her savings were gone. She had an only son, and it was nearly all
+they possessed in the world, etc., etc.--you know the sort of thing.
+Well, I did what I've often been numskull enough to do in similar cases,
+wrote and offered to buy her out at par. A week later she answered,
+thanking me, but saying it did not matter. There had occurred
+a momentary rise, and she had sold out at a profit--to her own
+brother-in-law, as I discovered, happening to come across the transfers.
+You can find widows and orphans round the Monte Carlo card tables, if
+you like to look for them; they are no more deserving of consideration
+than the rest of the crowd. Besides, if it comes to that, I'm an orphan
+myself;" and he laughed again, one of his deep, hearty, honest laughs.
+No one ever possessed a laugh more suggestive in its every cadence
+of simple, transparent honesty. He used to say himself it was worth
+thousands to him.
+
+Better from the Moralists' point of view had such a man been an
+out-and-out rogue. Then might one have pointed, crying: "Behold:
+Dishonesty, as you will observe in the person of our awful example, to
+be hated, needs but to be seen." But the duty of the Chronicler is to
+bear witness to what he knows, leaving Truth with the whole case before
+her to sum up and direct the verdict. In the City, old Hasluck had a
+bad reputation and deserved it; in Stoke-Newington--then a green suburb,
+containing many fine old houses, standing in great wooded gardens--he
+was loved and respected. In his business, he was a man void of all moral
+sense, without bowels of compassion for any living thing; in retirement,
+a man with a strong sense of duty and a fine regard for the rights and
+feelings of others, never happier than when planning to help or give
+pleasure. In his office, he would have robbed his own mother. At home,
+he would have spent his last penny to add to her happiness or comfort. I
+make no attempt to explain. I only know that such men do exist, and that
+Hasluck was one of them. One avoids difficulties by dismissing them as a
+product of our curiously complex civilisation--a convenient phrase; let
+us hope the recording angel may be equally impressed by it.
+
+Casting about for some reason of excuse to myself for my liking of him,
+I hit upon the expedient of regarding him as a modern Robin Hood, whom
+we are taught to admire without shame, a Robin Hood up to date, adapted
+to the changed conditions of modern environment; making his living
+relieving the rich; taking pleasure relieving the poor.
+
+"What will you do?" asked my mother.
+
+"I shall have to give up the office," answered my father. "Without him
+there's not enough to keep it going. He was quite good-tempered
+about the matter--offered to divide the work, letting me retain
+the straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth. But I
+declined. Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do with
+him."
+
+"I think you were quite right," agreed my mother.
+
+"What I blame myself for," said my father, "is that I didn't see through
+him before. Of course he has been making a mere tool of me from the
+beginning. I ought to have seen through him. Why didn't I?"
+
+They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother
+listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to time,
+as though there were something she could not understand.
+
+He would take a situation in the City. One had been offered him. It
+might sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must
+contrive to live. The little money he had saved must be kept for
+investments--nothing speculative--judicious "dealings," by means of
+which a cool, clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital. Here the
+training acquired by working for old Hasluck would serve him well. One
+man my father knew--quite a dull, commonplace man--starting a few years
+ago with only a few hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands. Foresight
+was the necessary qualification. You watched the "tendency" of things.
+So often had my father said to himself: "This is going to be a
+big thing. That other, it is no good," and in every instance his
+prognostications had been verified. He had "felt it;" some men had that
+gift. Now was the time to use it for practical purposes.
+
+"Here," said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye upon
+the surrounding scenery, "would be a pleasant place to end one's days.
+The house you had was very pretty and you liked it. We might enlarge it,
+the drawing-room might be thrown out--perhaps another wing." I felt that
+our good fortune as from this day was at last established.
+
+But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled
+glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned
+her face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon, demanding
+answer.
+
+Some idea of it I had even then, watching her; and since I have come to
+read it word for word: "But that woman--that woman that loves you, that
+you love. Ah, I know--why do you play with me? She is rich. With her
+your life will be smooth. And the boy--it will be better far for him.
+Cannot you three wait a little longer? What more can I do? Cannot you
+see that I am surely dying--dying as quickly as I can--dying as that
+poor creature your friend once told us of; knowing it was the only thing
+she could do for those she loved. Be honest with me: I am no longer
+jealous. All that is past: a man is ever younger than a woman, and a man
+changes. I do not blame you. It is for the best. She and I have talked;
+it is far better so. Only be honest with me, or at least silent. Will
+you not honour me enough for even that?"
+
+My father did not answer, having that to speak of that put my mother's
+question out of her mind for all time; so that until the end no word
+concerning that other woman passed again between them. Twenty years
+later, nearly, I myself happened to meet her, and then long physical
+suffering had chased the wantonness away for ever from the pain-worn
+mouth; but in that hour of waning voices, as some trouble of the fretful
+day when evening falls, so she faded from their life; and if even the
+remembrance of her returned at times to either of them, I think it must
+have been in those moments when, for no seeming reason, shyly their
+hands sought one another.
+
+So the truth of the sad ado--how far my mother's suspicions wronged my
+father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that
+was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain
+but in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true
+vision--I never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth
+had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with
+Doctor Hal, who must have seen something of the play and with more
+understanding eyes than mine, and who thereupon delivered to me a short
+lecture on life in general, a performance at which he excelled.
+
+"Flee from temptation and pray that you may be delivered from evil,"
+shouted the Doctor--(his was not the Socratic method)--"but remember
+this: that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a time when,
+however fast you run, you will be overtaken--cornered--no one to deliver
+you but yourself--the gods sitting round interested. It is a grim fight,
+for the Thing, you may be sure, has chosen its right moment. And every
+woman in the world will sympathise with you and be just to you, not even
+despising you should you be overcome; for however they may talk, every
+woman in the world knows that male and female cannot be judged by the
+same standard. To woman, Nature and the Law speak with one voice: 'Sin
+not, lest you be cursed of your sex!' It is no law of man: it is the
+law of creation. When the woman sins, she sins not only against her
+conscience, but against her every instinct. But to the man Nature
+whispers: 'Yield.' It is the Law alone that holds him back. Therefore
+every woman in the world, knowing this, will be just to you--every woman
+in the world but one--the woman that loves you. From her, hope for no
+sympathy, hope for no justice."
+
+"Then you think--" I began.
+
+"I think," said the Doctor, "that your father loved your mother
+devotedly; but he was one of those fighters that for the first
+half-dozen rounds or so cause their backers much anxiety. It is a
+dangerous method."
+
+"Then you think my mother--"
+
+"I think your mother was a good woman, Paul; and the good woman will
+never be satisfied with man till the Lord lets her take him to pieces
+and put him together herself."
+
+My father had been pacing to and fro the tiny platform. Now he came to a
+halt opposite my mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders.
+
+"I want you to help me, Maggie--help me to be brave. I have only a year
+or two longer to live, and there's a lot to be done in that time."
+
+Slowly the anger died out of my mother's face.
+
+"You remember that fall I had when the cage broke," my father went on.
+"Andrews, as you know, feared from the first it might lead to that. But
+I always laughed at him."
+
+"How long have you known?" my mother asked.
+
+"Oh, about six months. I felt it at the beginning of the year, but I
+didn't say anything to Washburn till a month later. I thought it might
+be only fancy."
+
+"And he is sure?"
+
+My father nodded.
+
+"But why have you never told me?"
+
+"Because," replied my father, with a laugh, "I didn't want you to know.
+If I could have done without you, I should not have told you now."
+
+And at this there came a light into my mother's face that never
+altogether left it until the end.
+
+She drew him down beside her on the seat. I had come nearer; and my
+father, stretching out his hand, would have had me with them. But my
+mother, putting her arms about him, held him close to her, as though in
+that moment she would have had him to herself alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING.
+
+The eighteen months that followed--for the end came sooner than we had
+expected--were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother had ever
+known; or if happy be not altogether the right word, let me say the most
+beautiful, and most nearly perfect. To them it was as though God in
+His sweet thoughtfulness had sent death to knock lightly at the door,
+saying: "Not yet. You have still a little longer to be together. In a
+little while." In those last days all things false and meaningless they
+laid aside. Nothing was of real importance to them but that they should
+love each other, comforting each other, learning to understand each
+other. Again we lived poorly; but there was now no pitiful straining
+to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours
+might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth
+a moment's thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure
+ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider
+charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs,
+overflowing towards all things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it
+has seemed to me that we make a mistake seeking to keep Death, God's
+go-between, ever from our thoughts. Is it not closing the door to a
+friend who would help us would we let him (for who knows life so well),
+whispering to us: "In a little while. Only a little longer that you have
+to be together. Is it worth taking so much thought for self? Is it worth
+while being unkind?"
+
+From them a graciousness emanated pervading all around. Even my aunt Fan
+decided for the second time in her career to give amiability a trial.
+This intention she announced publicly to my mother and myself one
+afternoon soon after our return from Devonshire.
+
+"I'm a beast of an old woman," said my aunt, suddenly.
+
+"Don't say that, Fan," urged my mother.
+
+"What's the good of saying 'Don't say it' when I've just said it,"
+snapped back my aunt.
+
+"It's your manner," explained my mother; "people sometimes think you
+disagreeable."
+
+"They'd be daft if they didn't," interrupted my aunt. "Of course you
+don't really mean it," continued my mother.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense," snorted my aunt; "does she think I'm a fool? I
+like being disagreeable. I like to see 'em squirming."
+
+My mother laughed.
+
+"I can be agreeable," continued my aunt, "if I choose. Nobody more so."
+
+"Then why not choose?" suggested my mother. "I tried it once," said my
+aunt, "and it fell flat. Nothing could have fallen flatter."
+
+"It may not have attracted much attention," replied my mother, with a
+smile, "but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention."
+
+"It wasn't only that," returned my aunt, "it was that it gave no
+satisfaction to anybody. It didn't suit me. A disagreeable person is at
+their best when they are disagreeable."
+
+"I can hardly agree with you there," answered my mother.
+
+"I could do it again," communed my aunt to herself. There was a
+suggestion of vindictiveness in her tones. "It's easy enough. Look at
+the sort of fools that are agreeable."
+
+"I'm sure you could be if you tried," urged my mother.
+
+"Let 'em have it," continued my aunt, still to herself; "that's the way
+to teach 'em sense. Let 'em have it."
+
+And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother
+altogether wrong. My father was the first to notice the change.
+
+"Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?" he asked. It was one
+evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into effect.
+"Nothing happened, has there?"
+
+"No," answered my mother, "nothing that I know of."
+
+"Her manner is so strange," explained my father, "so--so weird."
+
+My mother smiled. "Don't say anything to her. She's trying to be
+agreeable."
+
+My father laughed and then looked wistful. "I almost wish she wouldn't,"
+he remarked; "we were used to it, and she was rather amusing."
+
+But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same
+time that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure. This
+was the introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley.
+Properly speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being the
+order in which he had been christened in the year 1815. But in course
+of time, and particularly during his school career, it had been borne in
+upon him that Wellington is a burdensome name for a commonplace mortal
+to bear, and very wisely he had reversed the arrangement. He was a
+slightly pompous but simpleminded little old gentleman, very proud of
+his position as head clerk to Mr. Stillwood, the solicitor to whom my
+father was now assistant. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back
+to the Georges, and was a firm bound up with the history--occasionally
+shady--of aristocratic England. True, in these later years its glory
+was dwindling. Old Mr. Stillwood, its sole surviving representative,
+declined to be troubled with new partners, explaining frankly, in
+answer to all applications, that the business was a dying one, and
+that attempting to work it up again would be but putting new wine
+into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a yearly diminishing
+quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of a good class,
+its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and my father
+had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment.
+James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days of its
+pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the most
+important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street.
+Nothing delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the
+many strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been
+concerned, all of which he had at his tongue's tip. Could he find a
+hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional
+reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, "the
+capital of, let us say, a foreign country," or "a certain town not
+a thousand miles from where we are now sitting." The majority of his
+friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage
+him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case
+were one involving suspicion of mystery and crime. When, during their
+very first conversation, he exclaimed: "Now why--why, after keeping away
+from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know
+whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her?
+That is what I want explained to me!" he paused, as was his wont, for
+sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a
+yawn: "Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose,"
+replied with prompt intelligence:
+
+"To murder her--by slow poison."
+
+"To murder her! But why?"
+
+"In order to marry the other woman."
+
+"What other woman?"
+
+"The woman he had just met and fallen in love with. Before that it was
+immaterial to him what had become of his wife. This woman had said to
+him: 'Come back to me a free man or never see my face again.'"
+
+"Dear me! Now that's very curious."
+
+"Nothing of the sort. Plain common sense."
+
+"I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a
+little later, and he did marry again."
+
+"Told you so," remarked my aunt.
+
+In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light
+thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human
+action. Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y., for
+into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark criminal
+intent.
+
+"I think you are a little too severe," Mr. Gadley would now and then
+plead.
+
+"We're all of us miserable sinners," my aunt would cheerfully affirm;
+"only we don't all get the same chances."
+
+An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in "a western town once
+famous as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name," my aunt
+was convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged
+another under which her children--should she ever marry and be blessed
+with such--would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of seven
+hundred pounds.
+
+The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always
+fascinated Mr. Gadley.
+
+"I have to thank you, ma'am," he would remark on rising, "for a
+most delightful conversation. I may not be able to agree with your
+conclusions, but they afford food for reflection."
+
+To which my aunt would reply, "I hate talking to any one who agrees with
+me. It's like taking a walk to see one's own looking-glass. I'd rather
+talk to somebody who didn't, even if he were a fool," which for her was
+gracious.
+
+He was a stout little gentleman with a stomach that protruded about a
+foot in front of him, and of this he appeared to be quite unaware. Nor
+would it have mattered had it not been for his desire when talking to
+approach as close to his listener as possible. Gradually in the course
+of conversation, his stomach acting as a gentle battering ram, he would
+in this way drive you backwards round the room, sometimes, unless
+you were artful, pinning you hopelessly into a corner, when it would
+surprise him that in spite of all his efforts he never succeeded in
+getting any nearer to you. His first evening at our house he was talking
+to my aunt from the corner of his chair. As he grew more interested so
+he drew his chair nearer and nearer, till at length, having withdrawn
+inch by inch to avoid his encroachments, my aunt was sitting on the
+extreme edge of her own. His next move sent her on to the floor. She
+said nothing, which surprised me; but on the occasion of his next
+visit she was busy darning stockings, an unusual occupation for her.
+He approached nearer and nearer as before; but this time she sat
+her ground, and it was he who in course of time sprang back with an
+exclamation foreign to the subject under discussion.
+
+Ever afterwards my aunt met him with stockings in her hand, and they
+talked with a space between their chairs.
+
+Nothing further came of it, though his being a widower added to their
+intercourse that spice of possibility no woman is ever too old to
+relish; but that he admired her intellectually was evident. Once he
+even went so far as to exclaim: "Miss Davies, you should have been a
+solicitor's wife!" to his thinking the crown of feminine ambition. To
+which my aunt had replied: "Chances are I should have been if one had
+ever asked me." And warmed by appreciation, my aunt's amiability took
+root and flourished, though assuming, as all growth developed late is
+apt to, fantastic shape.
+
+There came to her the idea, by no means ill-founded, that by flattery
+one can most readily render oneself agreeable; so conscientiously she
+set to work to flatter in season and out. I am sure she meant to give
+pleasure, but the effect produced was that of thinly veiled sarcasm.
+
+My father would relate to us some trifling story, some incident noticed
+during the day that had seemed to him amusing. At once she would break
+out into enthusiasm, holding up her hands in astonishment.
+
+"What a funny man he is! And to think that it comes to him naturally
+without an effort. What a gift it is!"
+
+On my mother appearing in a new bonnet, or an old one retrimmed, an
+event not unfrequent; for in these days my mother took more thought than
+ever formerly for her appearance (you will understand, you women who
+have loved), she would step back in simulated amazement.
+
+"Don't tell me it's a married woman with a boy getting on for fourteen.
+It's a girl. A saucy, tripping girl. That's what it is."
+
+Persons have been known, I believe, whose vanity, not checked in time,
+has grown into a hopeless disease. But I am inclined to think that a
+dose of my aunt, about this period, would have cured the most obstinate
+case.
+
+So also, and solely for our benefit, she assumed a vivacity and
+spriteliness that ill suited her, that having regard to her age and
+tendency towards rheumatism must have cost her no small effort. From
+these experiences there remains to me the perhaps immoral opinion that
+Virtue, in common with all other things, is at her best when unassuming.
+
+Occasionally the old Adam--or should one say Eve--would assert itself in
+my aunt, and then, still thoughtful for others, she would descend into
+the kitchen and be disagreeable to Amy, our new servitor, who never
+minded it. Amy was a philosopher who reconciled herself to all things
+by the reflection that there were only twenty-four hours in a day.
+It sounds a dismal theory, but from it Amy succeeded in extracting
+perpetual cheerfulness. My mother would apologise to her for my aunt's
+interference.
+
+"Lord bless you, mum, it don't matter. If I wasn't listening to her
+something else worse might be happening. Everything's all the same when
+it's over."
+
+Amy had come to us merely as a stop gap, explaining to my mother that
+she was about to be married and desired only a temporary engagement to
+bridge over the few weeks between then and the ceremony.
+
+"It's rather unsatisfactory," had said my mother. "I dislike changes."
+
+"I can quite understand it, mum," had replied Amy; "I dislike 'em
+myself. Only I heard you were in a hurry, and I thought maybe that while
+you were on the lookout for somebody permanent--"
+
+So on that understanding she came. A month later my mother asked her
+when she thought the marriage would actually take place.
+
+"Don't think I'm wishing you to go," explained my mother, "indeed I'd
+like you to stop. I only want to know in time to make my arrangements."
+
+"Oh, some time in the spring, I expect," was Amy's answer.
+
+"Oh!" said my mother, "I understood it was coming off almost
+immediately."
+
+Amy appeared shocked.
+
+"I must know a little bit more about him before I go as far as that,"
+she said.
+
+"But I don't understand," said my mother; "you told me when you came to
+me that you were going to be married in a few weeks."
+
+"Oh, that one!" Her tone suggested that an unfair strain was being put
+upon her memory. "I didn't feel I wanted him as much as I thought I did
+when it came to the point."
+
+"You had meantime met the other one?" suggested my mother, with a smile.
+
+"Well, we can't help our feelings, can we, mum?" admitted Amy, frankly,
+"and what I always say is"--she spoke as one with experience even
+then--"better change your mind before it's too late afterwards."
+
+Amiable, sweet-faced, broad-hearted Amy! most faithful of friends, but
+oh! most faithless of lovers. Age has not withered nor custom staled her
+liking for infinite variety. Butchers, bakers, soldiers, sailors, Jacks
+of all trades! Does the sighing procession never pass before you, Amy,
+pointing ghostly fingers of reproach! Still Amy is engaged. To whom at
+the particular moment I cannot say, but I fancy to an early one who has
+lately become a widower. After more exact knowledge I do not care to
+enquire; for to confess ignorance on the subject, implying that one has
+treated as a triviality and has forgotten the most important detail of
+a matter that to her is of vital importance, is to hurt her feelings;
+while to angle for information is but to entangle oneself. To speak of
+Him as "Tom," when Tom has belonged for weeks to the dead and buried
+past, to hastily correct oneself to "Dick" when there hasn't been a Dick
+for years, clearly not to know that he is now Harry, annoys her even
+more. In my mother's time we always referred to him as "Dearest." It was
+the title with which she herself distinguished them all, and it avoided
+confusion.
+
+"Well, and how's Dearest?" my mother would enquire, opening the door to
+Amy on the Sunday evening.
+
+"Oh, very well indeed, mum, thank you, and he sends you his respects,"
+or, "Well, not so nicely as I could wish. I'm a little anxious about
+him, poor dear!"
+
+"When you are married you will be able to take good care of him."
+
+"That's really what he wants--some one to take care of him. It's what
+they all want, the poor dears."
+
+"And when is it coming off?"
+
+"In the spring, mum." She always chose the spring when possible.
+
+Amy was nice to all men, and to Amy all men were nice. Could she have
+married a dozen, she might have settled down, with only occasional
+regrets concerning those left without in the cold. But to ask her to
+select only one out of so many "poor dears" was to suggest shameful
+waste of affection.
+
+We had meant to keep our grim secret to ourselves; but to hide one's
+troubles long from Amy was like keeping cold hands from the fire. Very
+soon she knew everything that was to be known, drawing it all from my
+mother as from some overburdened child. Then she put my mother down into
+a chair and stood over her.
+
+"Now you leave the house and everything connected with it to me, mum,"
+commanded Amy; "you've got something else to do."
+
+And from that day we were in the hands of Amy, and had nothing else to
+do but praise the Lord for His goodness.
+
+Barbara also found out (from Washburn, I expect), though she said
+nothing, but came often. Old Hasluck would have come himself, I am
+sure, had he thought he would be welcome. As it was, he always sent
+kind messages and presents of fruit and flowers by Barbara, and always
+welcomed me most heartily whenever she allowed me to see her home.
+
+She brought, as ever, sunshine with her, making all trouble seem far off
+and shadowy. My mother tended to the fire of love, but Barbara lit the
+cheerful lamp of laughter.
+
+And with the lessening days my father seemed to grow younger, life lying
+lighter on him.
+
+One summer's night he and I were walking with Barbara to Poplar station,
+for sometimes, when he was not looking tired, she would order him to
+fetch his hat and stick, explaining to him with a caress, "I like them
+tall and slight and full grown. The young ones, they don't know how to
+flirt! We will take the boy with us as gooseberry;" and he, pretending
+to be anxious that my mother did not see, would kiss her hand, and slip
+out quietly with her arm linked under his. It was admirable the way he
+would enter into the spirit of the thing.
+
+The last cloud faded from before the moon as we turned the corner, and
+even the East India Dock Road lay restful in front of us.
+
+"I have always regarded myself," said my father, "as a failure in life,
+and it has troubled me." I felt him pulled the slightest little bit
+away from me, as though Barbara, who held his other arm, had drawn him
+towards her with a swift pressure. "But do you know the idea that has
+come to me within the last few months? That on the whole I have been
+successful. I am like a man," continued my father, "who in some deep
+wood has been frightened, thinking he has lost his way, and suddenly
+coming to the end of it, finds that by some lucky chance he has been
+guided to the right point after all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it
+is to me.
+
+"What is the right point?" asked Barbara.
+
+"Ah, that I cannot tell you," answered my father, with a laugh. "I only
+know that for me it is here where I am. All the time I thought I was
+wandering away from it I was drawing nearer to it. It is very wonderful.
+I am just where I ought to be. If I had only known I never need have
+worried."
+
+Whether it would have troubled either him or my mother very much even
+had it been otherwise I cannot say, for Life, so small a thing when
+looked at beside Death, seemed to have lost all terror for them; but be
+that as it may, I like to remember that Fortune at the last was kind
+to my father, prospering his adventures, not to the extent his sanguine
+nature had dreamt, but sufficiently: so that no fear for our future
+marred the peaceful passing of his tender spirit.
+
+Or should I award thanks not to Fate, but rather to sweet Barbara,
+and behind her do I not detect shameless old Hasluck, grinning
+good-naturedly in the background?
+
+"Now, Uncle Luke, I want your advice. Dad's given me this cheque as a
+birthday present. I don't want to spend it. How shall I invest it?"
+
+"My dear, why not consult your father?"
+
+"Now, Uncle Luke, dad's a dear, especially after dinner, but you and
+I know him. Giving me a present is one thing, doing business for me
+is another. He'd unload on me. He'd never be able to resist the
+temptation."
+
+My father would suggest, and Barbara would thank him. But a minute later
+would murmur: "You don't know anything about Argentinos."
+
+My father did not, but Barbara did; to quite a remarkable extent for a
+young girl.
+
+"That child has insisted on leaving this cheque with me and I have
+advised her to buy Argentinos," my father would observe after she was
+gone. "I am going to put a few hundreds into them myself. I hope they
+will turn out all right, if only for her sake. I have a presentiment
+somehow that they will."
+
+A month later Barbara would greet him with: "Isn't it lucky we bought
+Argentinos!"
+
+"Yes; they haven't turned out badly, have they? I had a feeling, you
+know, for Argentinos."
+
+"You're a genius, Uncle Luke. And now we will sell out and buy
+Calcuttas, won't we?"
+
+"Sell out? But why?"
+
+"You said so. You said, 'We will sell out in about a month and be quite
+safe.'"
+
+"My dear, I've no recollection of it."
+
+But Barbara had, and before she had done with him, so had he. And the
+next day Argentinos would be sold--not any too soon--and Calcuttas
+bought.
+
+Could money so gained bring a blessing with it? The question would
+plague my father.
+
+"It's very much like gambling," he would mutter uneasily to himself at
+each success, "uncommonly like gambling."
+
+"It is for your mother," he would impress upon me. "When she is gone,
+Paul, put it aside, Keep it for doing good; that may make it clean.
+Start your own life without any help from it."
+
+He need not have troubled. It went the road that all luck derived
+however indirectly from old Hasluck ever went. Yet it served good
+purpose on its way.
+
+But the most marvellous feat, to my thinking, ever accomplished by
+Barbara was the bearing off of my father and mother to witness "A Voice
+from the Grave, or the Power of Love, New and Original Drama in five
+acts and thirteen tableaux."
+
+They had been bred in a narrow creed, both my father and my mother. That
+Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has drowned
+much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from hearsay
+do foolishly to speak but ill of it. If ever earnest times should
+come again, not how to enjoy but how to live being the question, Fate
+demanding of us to show not what we have but what we are, we may regret
+that they are fewer among us than formerly, those who trained themselves
+to despise all pleasure, because in pleasure they saw the subtlest foe
+to principle and duty. No graceful growth, this Puritanism, for its
+roots are in the hard, stern facts of life; but it is strong, and from
+it has sprung all that is worth preserving in the Anglo-Saxon character.
+Its men feared and its women loved God, and if their words were harsh
+their hearts were tender. If they shut out the sunshine from their lives
+it was that their eyes might see better the glory lying beyond; and if
+their view be correct, that earth's threescore years and ten are but
+as preparation for eternity, then who shall call them even foolish for
+turning away their thoughts from its allurements.
+
+"Still, I think I should like to have a look at one, just to see what it
+is like," argued my father; "one cannot judge of a thing that one knows
+nothing about."
+
+I imagine it was his first argument rather than his second that
+convinced my mother.
+
+"That is true," she answered. "I remember how shocked my poor father
+was when he found me one night at the bedroom window reading Sir Walter
+Scott by the light of the moon."
+
+"What about the boy?" said my father, for I had been included in the
+invitation.
+
+"We will all be wicked together," said my mother.
+
+So an evening or two later the four of us stood at the corner of Pigott
+Street waiting for the 'bus.
+
+"It is a close evening," said my father; "let's go the whole hog and
+ride outside."
+
+In those days for a lady to ride outside a 'bus was as in these days for
+a lady to smoke in public. Surely my mother's guardian angel must have
+betaken himself off in a huff.
+
+"Will you keep close behind and see to my skirt?" answered my mother,
+commencing preparations. If you will remember that these were the days
+of crinolines, that the "knife-boards" of omnibuses were then approached
+by a perpendicular ladder, the rungs two feet apart, you will understand
+the necessity for such precaution.
+
+Which of us was the most excited throughout that long ride it would be
+difficult to say. Barbara, feeling keenly her responsibility as prompter
+and leader of the dread enterprise, sat anxious, as she explained to us
+afterwards, hoping there would be nothing shocking in the play, nothing
+to belie its innocent title; pleased with her success so far, yet
+still fearful of failure, doubtful till the last moment lest we should
+suddenly repent, and stopping the 'bus, flee from the wrath to come.
+My father was the youngest of us all. Compared with him I was sober and
+contained. He fidgeted: people remarked upon it. He hummed. But for
+the stern eye of a thin young man sitting next to him trying to read
+a paper, I believe he would have broken out into song. Every minute he
+would lean across to enquire of my mother: "How are you feeling--all
+right?" To which my mother would reply with a nod and a smile, She sat
+very silent herself, clasping and unclasping her hands. As for myself,
+I remember feeling so sorry for the crowds that passed us on their way
+home. It was sad to think of the long dull evening that lay before them.
+I wondered how they could face it.
+
+Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle. The lights were low
+and the house only half full when we reached them.
+
+"It seems very orderly and--and respectable," whispered my mother. There
+seemed a touch of disappointment in her tone.
+
+"We are rather early," replied Barbara; "it will be livelier when the
+band comes in and they turn up the gas."
+
+But even when this happened my mother was not content. "There is so
+little room for the actors," she complained.
+
+It was explained to her that the green curtain would go up, that the
+stage lay behind.
+
+So we waited, my mother sitting stiffly on the extreme edge of her
+seat, holding me tightly by the hand; I believe with some vague idea of
+flight, should out of that vault-scented gloom the devil suddenly appear
+to claim us for his own. But before the curtain was quite up she had
+forgotten him.
+
+You poor folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps
+oftener, what do you know of plays? You see no drama, you see but
+middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly
+pretending to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the
+Chemist, making believe to be a haughty Princess. How can you, a grown
+man, waste money on a seat to witness such tomfoolery! What we saw was
+something very different. A young and beautiful girl--true, not a lady
+by birth, being merely the daughter of an honest yeoman, but one equal
+in all the essentials of womanhood to the noblest in the land--suffered
+before our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had one not seen it
+for oneself, one would never have believed Fate could have accumulated
+upon the head of any single individual. Beside her woes our own poor
+troubles sank into insignificance. We had used to grieve, as my mother
+in a whisper reminded my father, if now and again we had not been able
+to afford meat for dinner. This poor creature, driven even from her
+wretched attic, compelled to wander through the snow without so much as
+an umbrella to protect her, had not even a crust to eat; and yet never
+lost her faith in Providence. It was a lesson, as my mother remarked
+afterwards, that she should never forget. And virtue had been
+triumphant, let shallow cynics say what they will. Had we not proved it
+with our own senses? The villain--I think his Christian name, if one
+can apply the word "Christian" in connection with such a fiend, was
+Jasper--had never really loved the heroine. He was incapable of love. My
+mother had felt this before he had been on the stage five minutes, and
+my father--in spite of protests from callous people behind who appeared
+to be utterly indifferent to what was going on under their very
+noses--had agreed with her. What he was in love with was her
+fortune--the fortune that had been left to her by her uncle in
+Australia, but about which nobody but the villain knew anything. Had
+she swerved a hair's breadth from the course of almost supernatural
+rectitude, had her love for the hero ever weakened, her belief in
+him--in spite of damning evidence to the contrary--for a moment wavered,
+then wickedness might have triumphed. How at times, knowing all the
+facts but helpless to interfere, we trembled, lest deceived by the
+cruel lies the villain told her; she should yield to importunity. How
+we thrilled when, in language eloquent though rude, she flung his false
+love back into his teeth. Yet still we feared. We knew well that it was
+not the hero who had done the murder. "Poor dear," as Amy would have
+called him, he was quite incapable of doing anything requiring one-half
+as much smartness. We knew that it was not he, poor innocent lamb! who
+had betrayed the lady with the French accent; we had heard her on the
+subject and had formed a very shrewd conjecture. But appearances,
+we could not help admitting, were terribly to his disfavour. The
+circumstantial evidence against him would have hanged an Archbishop.
+Could she in face of it still retain her faith? There were moments when
+my mother restrained with difficulty her desire to rise and explain.
+
+Between the acts Barbara would whisper to her that she was not to mind,
+because it was only a play, and that everything would be sure to come
+right in the end.
+
+"I know, my dear," my mother would answer, laughing, "it is very foolish
+of me; I forget. Paul, when you see me getting excited, you must remind
+me."
+
+But of what use was I in such case! I, who only by holding on to the
+arms of my seat could keep myself from swarming down on to the stage
+to fling myself between this noble damsel and her persecutor--this
+fair-haired, creamy angel in whose presence for the time being I had
+forgotten even Barbara.
+
+The end came at last. The uncle from Australia was not dead. The
+villain--bungler as well as knave--had killed the wrong man, somebody of
+no importance whatever. As a matter of fact, the comic man himself was
+the uncle from Australia--had been so all along. My mother had had a
+suspicion of this from the very first. She told us so three times, to
+make up, I suppose, for not having mentioned it before. How we cheered
+and laughed, in spite of the tears in our eyes.
+
+By pure accident it happened to be the first night of the piece, and
+the author, in response to much shouting and whistling, came before the
+curtain. He was fat and looked commonplace; but I deemed him a genius,
+and my mother said he had a good face, and waved her handkerchief
+wildly; while my father shouted "Bravo!" long after everybody else had
+finished; and people round about muttered "packed house," which I didn't
+understand at the time, but came to later.
+
+And stranger still, it happened to be before that very same curtain
+that many years later I myself stepped forth to make my first bow as a
+playwright. I saw the house but dimly, for on such occasion one's vision
+is apt to be clouded. All that I saw clearly was in the front row of the
+second circle--a sweet face laughing though the tears were in her eyes;
+and she waved to me a handkerchief. And on one side of her stood a
+gallant gentleman with merry eyes who shouted "Bravo!" and on the other
+a dreamy-looking lad; but he appeared disappointed, having expected
+better work from me. And the fourth face I could not see, for it was
+turned away from me.
+
+Barbara, determined on completeness, insisted upon supper. In those
+days respectability fed at home; but one resort possible there was, an
+eating-house with some pretence to gaiety behind St. Clement Danes,
+and to that she led us. It was a long, narrow room, divided into wooden
+compartments, after the old coffee-house plan, a gangway down the
+centre. Now we should call it a dismal hole, and closing the door hasten
+away. But to Adam, Eve in her Sunday fig-leaves was a stylishly dressed
+woman; and to my eyes, with its gilded mirrors and its flaring gas, the
+place seemed a palace.
+
+Barbara ordered oysters, a fish that familiarity with its empty shell
+had made me curious concerning. Truly no spot on the globe is so rich in
+oyster shells as the East End of London. A stranger might be led to the
+impression (erroneous) that the customary lunch of the East End labourer
+consists of oysters. How they collect there in such quantities is a
+mystery, though Washburn, to whom I once presented the problem, found no
+difficulty in solving it to his own satisfaction: "To the rich man the
+oyster; to the poor man the shell; thus are the Creator's gifts divided
+among all His creatures; none being sent empty away." For drink the
+others had stout and I had ginger beer. The waiter, who called me "Sir,"
+advised against this mixture; but among us all the dominating sentiment
+by this time was that nothing really mattered very much. Afterwards my
+father called for a cigar and boldly lighted it, though my mother looked
+anxious; and fortunately perhaps it would not draw. And then it came out
+that he himself had once written a play.
+
+"You never told me of that," complained my mother.
+
+"It was a long while ago," replied my father; "nothing came of it."
+
+"It might have been a success," said my mother; "you always had a gift
+for writing."
+
+"I must look it over again," said my father; "I had quite forgotten it.
+I have an impression it wasn't at all bad."
+
+"It can be of much help," said my mother, "a good play. It makes one
+think."
+
+We put Barbara into a cab and rode home ourselves inside a 'bus. My
+mother was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her
+to lean against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his
+shoulder. A coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man's arm round her
+likewise, and she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his coat.
+
+"They can do with a bit of nursing, can't they?" said the man with a
+grin to the conductor.
+
+"Ah, they're just kids," agreed the conductor, sympathetically, "that's
+what they are, all of 'em, just kids."
+
+So the day ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without
+a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!--no comic
+uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life!
+Even my mother at moments was quite irritable.
+
+We were much together again, my father and I, about this time. Often,
+making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him, he
+leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm. To this day I can
+always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road. And on Saturday
+afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb the hill and
+sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together, watching the
+dim vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.
+
+At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying. The "year to two"
+of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in
+my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile
+he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I
+know it was his great heart rising to his need.
+
+The comprehension came to me suddenly. It was one afternoon in early
+spring. I was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was
+then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always
+much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a
+block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely
+crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful
+jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of
+physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror
+and the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might
+be dead before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a
+smile as usual, and I flung myself sobbing into his arms.
+
+I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had
+had a fear something had happened to him, for from that time forward
+he dropped all reserve with me, and talked openly of our approaching
+parting.
+
+"It might have come to us earlier, my dear boy," he would say with his
+arm round me, "or it might have been a little later. A year or so one
+way or the other, what does it matter? And it is only for a little
+while, Paul. We shall meet again."
+
+But I could not answer him, for clutch them to me as I would, all my
+beliefs--the beliefs in which I had been bred, the beliefs that until
+then I had never doubted, in that hour of their first trial, were
+falling from me. I could not even pray. If I could have prayed for
+anything, it would have been for my father's life. But if prayer were
+all powerful, as they said, would our loved ones ever die? Man has not
+faith enough, they would explain; if he had there would be no parting.
+So the Lord jests with His creatures, offering with the one hand to
+snatch back with the other. I flung the mockery from me. There was no
+firm foothold anywhere. What were all the religions of the word but
+narcotics with which Humanity seeks to dull its pain, drugs in which it
+drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble that death pricks.
+
+I do not mean my thoughts took this form. I was little more than a lad,
+and to the young all thought is dumb, speaking only with a cry. But they
+were there, vague, inarticulate. Thoughts do not come to us as we grow
+older. They are with us all our lives. We learn their language, that is
+all.
+
+One fair still evening it burst from me. We had lingered in the Park
+longer than usual, slowly pacing the broad avenue leading from the
+Observatory to the Heath. I poured forth all my doubts and fears--that
+he was leaving me for ever, that I should never see him again, I could
+not believe. What could I do to believe?
+
+"I am glad you have spoken, Paul," he said, "it would have been sad had
+we parted not understanding each other. It has been my fault. I did not
+know you had these doubts. They come to all of us sooner or later. But
+we hide them from one another. It is foolish."
+
+"But tell me," I cried, "what can I do? How can I make myself believe?"
+
+"My dear lad," answered my father, "how can it matter what we believe or
+disbelieve? It will not alter God's facts. Would you liken Him to some
+irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?"
+
+"What do you believe," I asked, "father, really I mean."
+
+The night had fallen. My father put his arm round me and drew me to him.
+
+"That we are God's children, little brother," he answered, "that what He
+wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be best.
+I cannot think that He will let us die: that were to think of Him as
+without purpose. But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him.
+'Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.'"
+
+We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.
+
+"'Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity'--you remember
+the verse--Faith in God's goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may
+be fulfiled. But these concern but ourselves--the greatest of all is
+Charity."
+
+Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and
+there a point of light.
+
+"Be kind, that is all it means," continued my father. "Often we do what
+we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We
+cannot understand--maybe the old laws we have misread. But the new Law,
+that we love one another--all creatures He has made; that is so clear.
+And if it be that we are here together only for a little while, Paul,
+the future dark, how much the greater need have we of one another."
+
+I looked up into my father's face, and the peace that shone from it slid
+into my soul and gave me strength.
+
+
+
+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!
+"O 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, between long, lifeless walls. I
+looked into Hal's face from time to time, and he was laughing; but every
+now and then he would look over his shoulder at the man behind him still
+following doggedly, and then his face would be twisted into a comically
+terrified grimace. Turning into a narrow cul-de-sac, Hal suddenly ducked
+behind a wide brick buttress, and the man, still running, passed us.
+And then Hal stood up and called to him, and the man turned, looked into
+Hal's eyes, and understood.
+
+He was not a coward. Besides, even a rat when cornered will fight for
+its life. He made a rush at Hal, and Hal made no attempt to defend
+himself. He stood there laughing, and the man struck him full in the
+face, and the blood spurted out and flowed down into his mouth. The
+man came on again, though terror was in every line of his face, all his
+desire being to escape. But this time Hal drove him back again. They
+fought for awhile, if one can call it fighting, till the man, mad for
+air, reeled against the wall, stood there quivering convulsively, his
+mouth wide open, resembling more than anything else some huge dying
+fish. And Hal drew away and waited.
+
+I have no desire to see again the sight I saw that quiet, still evening,
+framed by those high, windowless walls, from behind which sounded with
+ceaseless regularity the gentle swish of the incoming tide. All sense of
+retribution was drowned in the sight of Hal's evident enjoyment of his
+sport. The judge had disappeared, leaving the work to be accomplished by
+a savage animal loosened for the purpose.
+
+The wretched creature flung itself again towards its only door of
+escape, fought with the vehemence of despair, to be flung back again, a
+hideous, bleeding mass of broken flesh. I tried to cling to Hal's arm,
+but one jerk of his steel muscles flung me ten feet away.
+
+"Keep off, you fool!" he cried. "I won't kill him. I'm keeping my head.
+I shall know when to stop." And I crept away and waited.
+
+Hal joined me a little later, wiping the blood from his face. We made
+our way to a small public-house near the river, and from there Hal sent
+a couple of men on whom he could rely with instructions how to act. I
+never heard any more of the matter. It was a subject on which I did not
+care to speak to Hal. I can only hope that good came of it.
+
+There was a spot--it has been cleared away since to make room for the
+approach to Greenwich Tunnel--it was then the entrance to a grain depot
+in connection with the Milwall Docks. A curious brick well it resembled,
+in the centre of which a roadway wound downward, corkscrew fashion,
+disappearing at the bottom into darkness under a yawning arch. The place
+possessed the curious property of being ever filled with a ceaseless
+murmur, as though it were some aerial maelstrom, drawing into its
+silent vacuum all wandering waves of sound from the restless human ocean
+flowing round it. No single tone could one ever distinguish: it was
+a mingling of all voices, heard there like the murmur of a sea-soaked
+shell.
+
+We passed through it on our return. Its work for the day was finished,
+its strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons thundering
+up and down its spiral way. Hal paused, leaning against the railings
+that encircled its centre, and listened.
+
+"Hark, do you not hear it, Paul?" he asked. "It is the music of
+Humanity. All human notes are needful to its making: the faint wail of
+the new-born, the cry of the dying thief; the beating of the hammers,
+the merry trip of dancers; the clatter of the teacups, the roaring of
+the streets; the crooning of the mother to her babe, the scream of the
+tortured child; the meeting kiss of lovers, the sob of those that part.
+Listen! prayers and curses, sighs and laughter; the soft breathing of
+the sleeping, the fretful feet of pain; voices of pity, voices of hate;
+the glad song of the strong, the foolish complaining of the weak. Listen
+to it, Paul! Right and wrong, good and evil, hope and despair, it is but
+one voice--a single note, drawn by the sweep of the Player's hand across
+the quivering strings of man. What is the meaning of it, Paul? Can you
+read it? Sometimes it seems to me a note of joy, so full, so endless,
+so complete, that I cry: 'Blessed be the Lord whose hammers have beaten
+upon us, whose fires have shaped us to His ends!' And sometimes it
+sounds to me a dying note, so that I could curse Him who in wantonness
+has wrung it from the anguish of His creatures--till I would that
+I could fling myself, Prometheus like, between Him and His victims,
+calling: 'My darkness, but their light; my agony, O God; their hope!'"
+
+The faint light from a neighbouring gas-lamp fell upon his face that
+an hour before I had seen the face of a wild beast. The ugly mouth was
+quivering, tears stood in his great, tender eyes. Could his prayer in
+that moment have been granted, could he have pressed against his bosom
+all the pain of the world, he would have rejoiced.
+
+He shook himself together with a laugh. "Come, Paul, we have had a busy
+afternoon, and I'm thirsty. Let us drink some beer, my boy, good sound
+beer, and plenty of it."
+
+My mother fell ill that winter. Mountain born and mountain bred, the
+close streets had never agreed with her, and scolded by all of us, she
+promised, "come the fine weather," to put sentiment behind her, and go
+away from them.
+
+"I'm thinking she will," said Hal, gripping my shoulder with his strong
+hand, "but it'll be by herself that she'll go, lad. My wonder is," he
+continued, "that she has held out so long. If anything, it is you that
+have kept her alive. Now that you are off her mind to a certain extent,
+she is worrying about your father, I expect. These women, they never
+will believe a man can take care of himself, even in Heaven. She's never
+quite trusted the Lord with him, and never will till she's there to give
+an eye to things herself."
+
+Hal's prophecy fell true. She left "come the fine weather," as she had
+promised: I remember it was the first day primroses were hawked in the
+street. But another death had occurred just before; which, concerning me
+closely as it does, I had better here dispose of; and that was the death
+of old Mr. Stillwood, who passed away rich in honour and regret, and was
+buried with much ostentation and much sincere sorrow; for he had been to
+many of his clients, mostly old folk, rather a friend than a mere man
+of business, and had gained from all with whom he had come in contact,
+respect, and from many real affection.
+
+In conformity with the old legal fashions that in his life he had so
+fondly clung to, his will was read aloud by Mr. Gadley after the return
+from the funeral, and many were the tears its recital called forth.
+Written years ago by himself and never altered, its quaint phraseology
+was full of kindly thought and expression. No one had been forgotten.
+Clerks, servants, poor relations, all had been treated with even-handed
+justice, while for those with claim upon him, ample provision had
+been made. Few wills, I think, could ever have been read less open to
+criticism.
+
+Old Gadley slipped his arm into mine as we left the house. "If you've
+nothing to do, young 'un," he said, "I'll get you to come with me to the
+office. I have got all the keys in my pocket, and we shall be quiet.
+It will be sad work for me, and I had rather we were alone. A couple of
+hours will show us everything."
+
+We lighted the wax candles--old Stillwood could never tolerate gas in
+his own room--and opening the safe took out the heavy ledgers one by
+one, and from them Gadley dictated figures which I wrote down and added
+up.
+
+"Thirty years I have kept these books for him," said old Gadley, as we
+laid by the last of them, "thirty years come Christmas next, he and I
+together. No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now people
+to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them about,
+drop greasy crumbs upon them--I know their ways, the brutes!--scribble
+all over them. And he who always would have everything so neat and
+orderly!"
+
+We came to the end of them in less than the time old Gadley had thought
+needful: in such perfect order had everything been maintained. I was
+preparing to go, but old Gadley had drawn a couple of small keys from
+his pocket, and was shuffling again towards the safe.
+
+"Only one more," he explained in answer to my look, "his own private
+ledger. It will merely be in the nature of a summary, but we'll just
+glance through it."
+
+He opened an inner drawer and took from it a small thick volume bound
+in green leather and closed with two brass locks. An ancient volume, it
+appeared, its strong binding faded and stained. Old Gadley sat down
+with it at the dead man's own desk, and snuffing the two shaded candles,
+unlocked and opened it. I was standing opposite, so that the book to me
+was upside down, but the date on the first page, "1841," caught my eye,
+as also the small neat writing now brown with age.
+
+"So neat, so orderly he always was," murmured old Gadley again,
+smoothing the page affectionately with his hand, and I waited for his
+dictation.
+
+But no glib flow of figures fell from him. His eyebrows suddenly
+contracted, his body stiffened itself. Then for the next quarter of an
+hour nothing sounded in the quiet room but his turning of the creakling
+pages. Once or twice he glanced round swiftly over his shoulder, as
+though haunted by the idea of some one behind him; then back to the
+neat, closely written folios, his little eyes, now exhibiting a comical
+look of horror, starting out of his round red face. First slowly, then
+quickly with trembling hands he turned the pages, till the continual
+ratling of the leaves sounded like strange, mocking laughter through
+the silent, empty room; almost one could imagine it coming from some
+watching creature hidden in the shadows.
+
+The end reached, he sat staring before him, his whole body quivering,
+great beads of sweat upon his shiny bald head.
+
+"Am I mad?" was all he could find to say. "Kelver, am I mad?"
+
+He handed me the book. It was a cynically truthful record of fraud,
+extending over thirty years. Every client, every friend, every relative
+that had fallen into his net he had robbed: the fortunate ones of a
+part, the majority of their all. Its very first entry debited him
+with the proceeds of his own partner's estate. Its last ran--"Re
+Kelver--various sales of stock." To his credit were his payments year
+after year of imaginary interests on imaginary securities, the surplus
+accounted for with simple brevity: "Transferred to own account." No
+record could have been more clear, more frank. Beneath each transaction
+was written its true history; the actual investments, sometimes
+necessary, carefully distinguished from the false. In neat red ink would
+occur here and there a note for his own guidance: "Eldest child comes of
+age August, '73. Be prepared for trustees desiring production." Turning
+to "August, '73," one found that genuine investment had been made, to
+be sold again a few months later on. From beginning to end not a single
+false step had he committed. Suspicious clients had been ear-marked:
+the trusting discriminated with gratitude, and milked again and again to
+meet emergency.
+
+As a piece of organisation it was magnificent. No one but a financial
+genius could have picked a dozen steps through such a network of
+chicanery. For half a lifetime he had moved among it, dignified,
+respected and secure.
+
+Whether even he could have maintained his position for another month was
+doubtful. Suicide, though hinted at, was proved to have been impossible.
+It seemed as though with his amazing audacity he had tricked even Death
+into becoming his accomplice.
+
+"But it is impossible, Kelver!" cried Gadley, "this must be some dream.
+Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal! What is the meaning of it?"
+
+He took the book into his hands again, then burst into tears. "You never
+knew him," wailed the poor little man. "Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal!
+I came here as office boy fifty years ago. He was more like a friend to
+me than--" and again the sobs shook his little fat body.
+
+I locked the books away and put him into his hat and coat. But I had
+much difficulty in getting him out of the office.
+
+"I daren't, young 'un," he cried, drawing back. "Fifty years I have
+walked out of this office, proud of it, proud of being connected with
+it. I daren't face the street!"
+
+All the way home his only idea was: Could it not be hidden? Honest,
+kindly little man that he was, he seemed to have no thought for the
+unfortunate victims. The good name of his master, of his friend, gone!
+Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal, a by-word! To have avoided that I
+believe he would have been willing for yet another hundred clients to be
+ruined.
+
+I saw him to his door, then turned homeward; and to my surprise in
+a dark by-street heard myself laughing heartily. I checked myself
+instantly, feeling ashamed of my callousness, of my seeming indifference
+to the trouble even of myself and my mother. Yet as there passed before
+me the remembrance of that imposing and expensive funeral with its
+mournful following of tearful faces; the hushed reading of the will with
+its accompaniment of rustling approval; the picture of the admirably
+sympathetic clergyman consoling with white hands Mrs. Stillwood,
+inclined to hysteria, but anxious concerning her two hundred pounds'
+worth of crape which by no possibility of means could now be paid
+for--recurred to me the obituary notice in "The Chelsea Weekly
+Chronicle": the humour of the thing swept all else before it, and I
+laughed again--I could not help it--loud and long. It was my first
+introduction to the comedy of life, which is apt to be more brutal than
+the comedy of fiction.
+
+But nearing home, the serious side of the matter forced itself
+uppermost. Fortunately, our supposed dividends had been paid to us
+by Mr. Stillwood only the month before. Could I keep the thing from
+troubling my mother's last days? It would be hard work. I should have to
+do it alone, for a perhaps foolish pride prevented my taking Hal into my
+confidence, even made his friendship a dread to me, lest he should come
+to learn and offer help. There is a higher generosity, it is said, that
+can receive with pleasure as well as bestow favour; but I have never
+felt it. Could I be sure of acting my part, of not betraying myself to
+her sharp eyes, of keeping newspapers and chance gossip away from her?
+Good shrewd Amy I cautioned, but I shrank from even speaking on the
+subject to Hal, and my fear was lest he should blunder into the subject,
+which for the usual nine days occupied much public attention. But
+fortunately he appeared not even to have heard of the scandal.
+
+Possibly had the need lasted longer I might have failed, but as it was,
+a few weeks saw the end.
+
+"Don't leave me to-day, Paul," whispered my mother to me one morning. So
+I stayed, and in the evening my mother put her arms around my neck and I
+lay beside her, my head upon her breast, as I used to when a little boy.
+And when the morning came I was alone.
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED.
+
+"Room to let for a single gentleman." Sometimes in an idle hour,
+impelled by foolishness, I will knock at the door. It is opened after a
+longer or shorter interval by the "slavey"--in the morning, slatternly,
+her arms concealed beneath her apron; in the afternoon, smart in dirty
+cap and apron. How well I know her! Unchanged, not grown an inch--her
+round bewildered eyes, her open mouth, her touzled hair, her scored red
+hands. With an effort I refrain from muttering: "So sorry, forgot
+my key," from pushing past her and mounting two at a time the narrow
+stairs, carpeted to the first floor, but bare beyond. Instead, I say,
+"Oh, what rooms have you to let?" when, scuttling to the top of the
+kitchen stairs, she will call over the banisters: "A gentleman to see
+the rooms." There comes up, panting, a harassed-looking, elderly
+female, but genteel in black. She crushes past the little "slavey," and
+approaching, eyes me critically.
+
+"I have a very nice room on the first floor," she informs me, "and one
+behind on the third."
+
+I agree to see them, explaining that I am seeking them for a young
+friend of mine. We squeeze past the hat and umbrella stand: there is
+just room, but one must keep close to the wall. The first floor is
+rather an imposing apartment, with a marble-topped sideboard measuring
+quite three feet by two, the doors of which will remain closed if you
+introduce a wad of paper between them. A green table-cloth, matching the
+curtains, covers the loo-table. The lamp is perfectly safe so long as
+it stands in the exact centre of the table, but should not be shifted.
+A paper fire-stove ornament in some mysterious way bestows upon the room
+an air of chastity. Above the mantelpiece is a fly-blown mirror, between
+the once gilt frame and glass of which can be inserted invitation
+cards; indeed, one or two so remain, proving that the tenants even of
+"bed-sitting-rooms" are not excluded from social delights. The wall
+opposite is adorned by an oleograph of the kind Cheap Jacks sell
+by auction on Saturday nights in the Pimlico Road, and warrant as
+"hand-made." Generally speaking, it is a Swiss landscape. There appears
+to be more "body" in a Swiss landscape than in scenes from less favoured
+localities. A dilapidated mill, a foaming torrent, a mountain, a maiden
+and a cow can at the least be relied upon. An easy chair (I disclaim
+all responsibility for the adjective), stuffed with many coils of steel
+wire, each possessing a "business end" in admirable working order, and
+covered with horsehair, highly glazed, awaits the uninitiated. There is
+one way of sitting upon it, and only one: by using the extreme edge, and
+planting your feet firmly on the floor. If you attempt to lean back in
+it you inevitably slide out of it. When so treated it seems to say to
+you: "Excuse me, you are very heavy, and you would really be much more
+comfortable upon the floor. Thank you so much." The bed is behind the
+door, and the washstand behind the bed. If you sit facing the window you
+can forget the bed. On the other hand, if more than one friend come
+to call on you, you are glad of it. As a matter of fact, experienced
+visitors prefer it--make straight for it, refusing with firmness to
+exchange it for the easy chair.
+
+"And this room is?"
+
+"Eight shillings a week, sir--with attendance, of course."
+
+"Any extras?"
+
+"The lamp, sir, is eighteenpence a week; and the kitchen fire, if the
+gentleman wishes to dine at home, two shillings."
+
+"And fire?"
+
+"Sixpence a scuttle, sir, I charge for coals."
+
+"It's rather a small scuttle."
+
+The landlady bridles a little. "The usual size, I think, sir." One
+presumes there is a special size in coal-scuttles made exclusively for
+lodging-house keepers.
+
+I agree that while I am about it I may as well see the other room,
+the third floor back. The landlady opens the door for me, but remains
+herself on the landing. She is a stout lady, and does not wish to dwarf
+the apartment by comparison. The arrangement here does not allow of your
+ignoring the bed. It is the life and soul of the room, and it
+declines to efface itself. Its only possible rival is the washstand,
+straw-coloured; with staring white basin and jug, together with other
+appurtenances. It glares defiantly from its corner. "I know I'm small,"
+it seems to say; "but I'm very useful; and I won't be ignored."
+The remaining furniture consists of a couple of chairs--there is no
+hypocrisy about them: they are not easy and they do not pretend to be
+easy; a small chest of light-painted drawers before the window, with
+white china handles, upon which is a tiny looking-glass; and, occupying
+the entire remaining space, after allowing three square feet for the
+tenant, when he arrives, an attenuated four-legged table apparently
+home-made. The only ornament in the room is, suspended above the
+fireplace, a funeral card, framed in beer corks. As the corpse
+introduced by the ancient Egyptians into their banquets, it is hung
+there perhaps to remind the occupant of the apartment that the luxuries
+and allurements of life have their end; or maybe it consoles him in
+despondent moments with the reflection that after all he might be worse
+off.
+
+The rent of this room is three-and-sixpence a week, also including
+attendance; lamp, as for the first floor, eighteen-pence; but kitchen
+fire a shilling.
+
+"But why should kitchen fire for the first floor be two shillings, and
+for this only one?"
+
+"Well, as a rule, sir, the first floor wants more cooking done."
+
+You are quite right, my dear lady, I was forgetting. The gentleman
+in the third floor back! cooking for him is not a great tax upon the
+kitchen fire. His breakfast, it is what, madam, we call plain, I think.
+His lunch he takes out. You may see him, walking round the quiet square,
+up and down the narrow street that, leading to nowhere in particular, is
+between twelve and two somewhat deserted. He carries a paper bag,
+into which at intervals, when he is sure nobody is looking, his mouth
+disappears. From studying the neighbourhood one can guess what it
+contains. Saveloys hereabouts are plentiful and only twopence each.
+There are pie shops, where meat pies are twopence and fruit pies a
+penny. The lady behind the counter, using deftly a broad, flat knife,
+lifts the little dainty with one twist clean from its tiny dish: it is
+marvellous, having regard to the thinness of the pastry, that she never
+breaks one. Roley-poley pudding, sweet and wonderfully satisfying, more
+especially when cold, is but a penny a slice. Peas pudding, though this
+is an awkward thing to eat out of a bag, is comforting upon cold days.
+Then with his tea he takes two eggs or a haddock, the fourpenny size;
+maybe on rare occasions, a chop or steak; and you fry it for him, madam,
+though every time he urges on you how much he would prefer it grilled,
+for fried in your one frying-pan its flavour becomes somewhat confused.
+But maybe this is the better for him, for, shutting his eyes and
+trusting only to smell and flavour, he can imagine himself enjoying
+variety. He can begin with herrings, pass on to liver and bacon, opening
+his eyes again for a moment perceive that he has now arrived at the
+joint, and closing them again, wind up with distinct suggestion of
+toasted cheese, thus avoiding monotony. For dinner he goes out again.
+Maybe he is not hungry, late meals are a mistake; or, maybe, putting
+his hand into his pocket and making calculations beneath a lamp-post,
+appetite may come to him. Then there are places cheerful with the sound
+of frizzling fat, where fried plaice brown and odorous may be had for
+three halfpence, and a handful of sliced potatoes for a penny; where for
+fourpence succulent stewed eels may be discussed; vinegar ad lib.; or
+for sevenpence--but these are red-letter evenings--half a sheep's head
+may be indulged in, which is a supper fit for any king, who happened to
+be hungry.
+
+I explain that I will discuss the matter with my young friend when he
+arrives. The landlady says, "Certainly, sir:" she is used to what she
+calls the "wandering Christian;" and easing my conscience by slipping a
+shilling into the "slavey's" astonished, lukewarm hand, I pass out
+again into the long, dreary street, now echoing maybe to the sad cry of
+"Muffins!"
+
+Or sometimes of an evening, the lamp lighted, the remnants of the meat
+tea cleared away, the flickering firelight cosifying the dingy rooms,
+I go a-visiting. There is no need for me to ring the bell, to mount the
+stairs. Through the thin transparent walls I can see you plainly,
+old friends of mine, fashions a little changed, that is all. We wore
+bell-shaped trousers; eight-and-six to measure, seven-and-six if from
+stock; fastened our neckties in dashing style with a horseshoe pin. I
+think in the matter of waistcoats we had the advantage of you; ours were
+gayer, braver. Our cuffs and collars were of paper: sixpence-halfpenny
+the dozen, three-halfpence the pair. On Sunday they were white and
+glistening; on Monday less aggressively obvious; on Tuesday morning
+decidedly dappled. But on Tuesday evening, when with natty cane, or
+umbrella neatly rolled in patent leather case, we took our promenade
+down Oxford Street--fashionable hour nine to ten p.m.--we could shoot
+our arms and cock our chins with the best. Your india-rubber linen has
+its advantages. Storm does not wither it; it braves better the heat and
+turmoil of the day. The passing of a sponge! and your "Dicky" is itself
+again. We had to use bread-crumbs, and so sacrifice the glaze. Yet I
+cannot help thinking that for the first few hours, at all events, our
+paper was more dazzling.
+
+For the rest I see no change in you, old friends. I wave you greeting
+from the misty street. God rest you, gallant gentlemen, lonely and
+friendless and despised; making the best of joyless lives; keeping
+yourselves genteel on twelve, fifteen, or eighteen (ah, but you are
+plutocrats!) shillings a week; saving something even of that, maybe, to
+help the old mother in the country, so proud of her "gentleman" son who
+has book learning and who is "something in the City." May nothing you
+dismay. Bullied, and badgered, and baited from nine to six though you
+may be, from then till bedtime you are rorty young dogs. The half-guinea
+topper, "as worn by the Prince of Wales" (ah, how many a meal has it not
+cost!), warmed before the fire, brushed and polished and coaxed, shines
+resplendent. The second pair of trousers are drawn from beneath the bed;
+in the gaslight, with well-marked crease from top to toe, they will pass
+for new. A pleasant evening to you! May your cheap necktie make all the
+impression your soul can desire! May your penny cigar be mistaken for
+Havana! May the barmaid charm your simple heart by addressing you as
+"Baby!" May some sweet shop-girl throw a kindly glance at you, inviting
+you to walk with her! May she snigger at your humour; may other dogs
+cast envious looks at you, and may no harm come of it!
+
+You dreamers of dreams, you who while your companions play and sleep
+will toil upward in the night! You have read Mr. Smiles' "Self-Help,"
+Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," and so strengthened attack with confidence
+"French Without a Master," "Bookkeeping in Six Lessons." With a sigh to
+yourselves you turn aside from the alluring streets, from the bright,
+bewitching eyes, into the stuffy air of Birkbeck Institutions,
+Polytechnic Schools. May success compensate you for your youth devoid
+of pleasure! May the partner's chair you seen in visions be yours before
+the end! May you live one day in Clapham in a twelve-roomed house!
+
+And, after all, we have our moments, have we not? The Saturday night at
+the play. The hours of waiting, they are short. We converse with kindred
+souls of the British Drama, its past and future: we have our views. We
+dream of Florence This, Kate That; in a little while we shall see
+her. Ah, could she but know how we loved her! Her photo is on our
+mantelpiece, transforming the dismal little room into a shrine. The poem
+we have so often commenced! when it is finished we will post it to her.
+At least she will acknowledge its receipt; we can kiss the paper her
+hand has rested on. The great doors groan, then quiver. Ah, the wild
+thrill of that moment! Now push for all you are worth: charge, wriggle,
+squirm! It is an epitome of life. We are through--collarless, panting,
+pummelled from top to toe: but what of that? Upward, still upward; then
+downward with leaps at risk of our neck, from bench to bench through the
+gloom. We have gained the front row! Would we exchange sensations with
+the stallite, strolling languidly to his seat? The extravagant dinner
+once a week! We banquet _a la Francais_, in Soho, for one-and-six,
+including wine. Does Tortoni ever give his customers a repast they enjoy
+more? I trow not.
+
+My first lodging was an attic in a square the other side of Blackfriars
+Bridge. The rent of the room, if I remember rightly, was three shillings
+a week with cooking, half-a-crown without. I purchased a methylated
+spirit stove with kettle and frying-pan, and took it without.
+
+Old Hasluck would have helped me willingly, and there were others to
+whom I might have appealed, but a boy's pride held me back. I would make
+my way alone, win my place in the world by myself. To Hal, knowing he
+would sympathise with me, I confided the truth.
+
+"Had your mother lived," he told me, "I should have had something to say
+on the subject. Of course, I knew what had happened, but as it is--well,
+you need not be afraid, I shall not offer you help; indeed, I should
+refuse it were you to ask. Put your Carlyle in your pocket: he is not
+all voices, but he is the best maker of men I know. The great thing to
+learn of life is not to be afraid of it."
+
+"Look me up now and then," he added, "and we'll talk about the stars,
+the future of Socialism, and the Woman Question--anything you like
+except about yourself and your twopenny-half-penny affairs."
+
+From another it would have sounded brutal, but I understood him. And
+so we shook hands and parted for longer than either of us at the time
+expected. The Franco-German War broke out a few weeks later on, and
+Hal, the love of adventure always strong within him, volunteered his
+services, which were accepted. It was some years before we met again.
+
+On the door-post of a house in Farringdon Street, not far from the
+Circus, stood in those days a small brass plate, announcing that the
+"Ludgate News Rooms" occupied the third and fourth floors, and that the
+admission to the same was one penny. We were a seedy company that every
+morning crowded into these rooms: clerks, shopmen, superior artisans,
+travellers, warehousemen--all of us out of work. Most of us were young,
+but with us was mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and these latter were
+always the saddest and most silent of this little whispering army of
+the down-at-heel. Roughly speaking, we were divided into two groups:
+the newcomers, cheery, confident. These would flit from newspaper to
+newspaper with buzz of pleasant anticipation, select their advertisement
+as one choosing some dainty out of a rich and varied menu card, and
+replying to it as one conferring favour.
+
+"Dear Sir,--in reply to your advertisement in to-day's _Standard_, I
+shall be pleased to accept the post vacant in your office. I am of good
+appearance and address. I am an excellent--" It was really marvellous
+the quality and number of our attainments. French! we wrote and spoke it
+fluently, _a la Ahn_. German! of this we possessed a slighter knowledge,
+it was true, but sufficient for mere purposes of commerce. Bookkeeping!
+arithmetic! geometry! we played with them. The love of work! it was a
+passion with us. Our moral character! it would have adorned a Free Kirk
+Elder. "I could call on you to-morrow or Friday between eleven and one,
+or on Saturday any time up till two. Salary required, two guineas a
+week. An early answer will oblige. Yours truly."
+
+The old stagers did not buzz. Hour after hour they sat writing,
+steadily, methodically, with day by day less hope and heavier fears:
+
+"Sir,--Your advt. in to-day's _D. T._ I am--" of such and such an age.
+List of qualifications less lengthy, set forth with more modesty; object
+desired being air of verisimilitude.--"If you decide to engage me I will
+endeavour to give you every satisfaction. Any time you like to appoint
+I will call on you. I should not ask a high salary to start with. Yours
+obediently."
+
+Dozens of the first letter, hundreds of the second, I wrote with painful
+care, pen carefully chosen, the one-inch margin down the left hand side
+of the paper first portioned off with dots. To three or four I received
+a curt reply, instructing me to call. But the shyness that had stood so
+in my way during the earlier half of my school days had now, I know not
+why, returned upon me, hampering me at every turn. A shy child grown-up
+folks at all events can understand and forgive; but a shy young man
+is not unnaturally regarded as a fool. I gave the impression of being
+awkward, stupid, sulky. The more I strove against my temperament
+the worse I became. My attempts to be at my ease, to assert myself,
+resulted--I could see it myself--only in rudeness.
+
+"Well, I have got to see one or two others. We will write and let you
+know," was the conclusion of each interview, and the end, as far as I
+was concerned, of the enterprise.
+
+My few pounds, guard them how I would, were dwindling rapidly. Looking
+back, it is easy enough to regard one's early struggles from a humorous
+point of view. One knows the story, it all ended happily. But at the
+time there is no means of telling whether one's biography is going to be
+comedy or tragedy. There were moments when I felt confident it was going
+to be the latter. Occasionally, when one is feeling well, it is not
+unpleasant to contemplate with pathetic sympathy one's own death-bed.
+One thinks of the friends and relations who at last will understand and
+regret one, be sorry they had not behaved themselves better. But myself,
+there was no one to regret. I felt very small, very helpless. The world
+was big. I feared it might walk over me, trample me down, never seeing
+me. I seemed unable to attract its attention.
+
+One morning I found waiting for me at the Reading Room another of the
+usual missives. It ran: "Will Mr. P. Kelver call at the above address
+to-morrow morning between ten-thirty and eleven." The paper was headed:
+"Lott and Co., Indian Commission Agents, Aldersgate Street." Without
+much hope I returned to my lodgings, changed my clothes, donned my
+silk hat, took my one pair of gloves, drew its silk case over my holey
+umbrella; and so equipped for fight with Fate made my way to Aldersgate
+Street. For a quarter of an hour or so, being too soon, I walked up and
+down the pavement outside the house, gazing at the second-floor windows,
+behind which, so the door-plate had informed me, were the offices of
+Lott & Co. I could not recall their advertisement, nor my reply to it.
+The firm was evidently not in a very flourishing condition. I wondered
+idly what salary they would offer. For a moment I dreamt of a Cheeryble
+Brother asking me kindly if I thought I could do with thirty shillings
+a week as a beginning; but the next I recalled my usual fate, and
+considered whether it was even worth while to climb the stairs, go
+through what to me was a painful ordeal, merely to be impressed again
+with the sense of my own worthlessness.
+
+A fine rain began to fall. I did not wish to unroll my umbrella,
+yet felt nervous for my hat. It was five minutes to the half hour.
+Listlessly I crossed the road and mounted the bare stairs to the second
+floor. Two doors faced me, one marked "Private." I tapped lightly at the
+second. Not hearing any response, after a second or two I tapped again.
+A sound reached me, but it was unintelligible. I knocked yet again,
+still louder. This time I heard a reply in a shrill, plaintive tone:
+
+"Oh, do come in."
+
+The tone was one of pathetic entreaty. I turned the handle and entered.
+It was a small room, dimly lighted by a dirty window, the bottom half of
+which was rendered opaque by tissue paper pasted to its panes. The place
+suggested a village shop rather than an office. Pots of jam, jars of
+pickles, bottles of wine, biscuit tins, parcels of drapery, boxes of
+candles, bars of soap, boots, packets of stationery, boxes of cigars,
+tinned provisions, guns, cartridges--things sufficient to furnish a
+desert island littered every available corner. At a small desk under the
+window sat a youth with a remarkably small body and a remarkably
+large head; so disproportionate were the two I should hardly have been
+surprised had he put up his hands and taken it off. Half in the room and
+half out, I paused.
+
+"Is this Lott & Co.?" I enquired.
+
+"No," he answered; "it's a room." One eye was fixed upon me, dull and
+glassy; it never blinked, it never wavered. With the help of the other
+he continued his writing.
+
+"I mean," I explained, coming entirely into the room, "are these the
+offices of Lott & Co.?"
+
+"It's one of them," he replied; "the back one. If you're really anxious
+for a job, you can shut the door."
+
+I complied with his suggestion, and then announced that I was Mr.
+Kelver--Mr. Paul Kelver.
+
+"Minikin's my name," he returned, "Sylvanus Minikin. You don't happen by
+any chance to know what you've come for, I suppose?"
+
+Looking at his body, my inclination was to pick my way among the goods
+that covered the floor and pull his ears for him. From his grave and
+massive face, he might, for all I knew, be the head clerk.
+
+"I have called to see Mr. Lott," I replied, with dignity; "I have an
+appointment." I produced the letter from my pocket, and leaning across
+a sewing-machine, I handed it to him for his inspection. Having read it,
+he suddenly took from its socket the eye with which he had been hitherto
+regarding me, and proceeding to polish it upon his pocket handkerchief,
+turned upon me his other. Having satisfied himself, he handed me back my
+letter.
+
+"Want my advice?" he asked.
+
+I thought it might be useful to me, so replied in the affirmative.
+
+"Hook it," was his curt counsel.
+
+"Why?" I asked. "Isn't he a good employer?"
+
+Replacing his glass eye, he turned again to his work. "If employment is
+what you want," answered Mr. Minikin, "you'll get it. Best employer in
+London. He'll keep you going for twenty-four hours a day, and then offer
+you overtime at half salary."
+
+"I must get something to do," I confessed.
+
+"Sit down then," suggested Mr. Minikin. "Rest while you can."
+
+I took the chair; it was the only chair in the room, with the exception
+of the one Minikin was sitting on.
+
+"Apart from his being a bit of a driver," I asked, "what sort of a man
+is he? Is he pleasant?"
+
+"Never saw him put out but once," answered Minikin.
+
+It sounded well. "When was that?" I asked.
+
+"All the time I've known him."
+
+My spirits continued to sink. Had I been left alone with Minikin much
+longer, I might have ended by following his advice, "hooking it" before
+Mr. Lott arrived. But the next moment I heard the other door open, and
+some one entered the private office. Then the bell rang, and Minikin
+disappeared, leaving the communicating door ajar behind him. The
+conversation that I overheard was as follows:
+
+"Why isn't Mr. Skeat here?"
+
+"Because he hasn't come."
+
+"Where are the letters?"
+
+"Under your nose."
+
+"How dare you answer me like that?"
+
+"Well, it's the truth. They are under your nose."
+
+"Did you give Thorneycroft's man my message?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did he answer?"
+
+"Said you were a liar."
+
+"Oh, he did, did he! What did you reply?"
+
+"Asked him to tell me something I didn't know."
+
+"Thought that clever, didn't you?"
+
+"Not bad."
+
+Whatever faults might be laid to Mr. Lott's door, he at least, I
+concluded, possesssed the virtue of self-control.
+
+"Anybody been here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Kelver--Mr. Paul Kelver."
+
+"Kelver, Kelver. Who's Kelver?"
+
+"Know what he is--a fool."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He's come after the place."
+
+"Is he there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What's he like?"
+
+"Not bad looking; fair--"
+
+"Idiot! I mean is he smart?"
+
+"Just at present--got all his Sunday clothes on."
+
+"Send him in to me. Don't go, don't go."
+
+"How can I send him in to you if I don't go?"
+
+"Take these. Have you finished those bills of lading?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Good God! when will you have finished them?"
+
+"Half an hour after I have begun them."
+
+"Get out, get out! Has that door been open all the time?"
+
+"Well, I don't suppose it's opened itself."
+
+Minikin re-entered with papers in his hand. "In you go," he said.
+"Heaven help you!" And I passed in and closed the door behind me.
+
+The room was a replica of the one I had just left. If possible, it was
+more crowded, more packed with miscellaneous articles. I picked my
+way through these and approached the desk. Mr. Lott was a small,
+dingy-looking man, with very dirty hands, and small, restless eyes. I
+was glad that he was not imposing, or my shyness might have descended
+upon me; as it was, I felt better able to do myself justice. At once he
+plunged into the business by seizing and waving in front of my eyes a
+bulky bundle of letters tied together with red tape.
+
+"One hundred and seventeen answers to an advertisement," he cried with
+evident satisfaction, "in one day! That shows you the state of the
+labour market!"
+
+I agreed it was appalling.
+
+"Poor devils, poor devils!" murmured Mr. Lott "what will become of them?
+Some of them will starve. Terrible death, starvation, Kelver; takes such
+a long time--especially when you're young."
+
+Here also I found myself in accord with him.
+
+"Living with your parents?"
+
+I explained to him my situation.
+
+"Any friends?"
+
+I informed him I was entirely dependent upon my own efforts.
+
+"Any money? Anything coming in?"
+
+I told him I had a few pounds still remaining to me, but that after that
+was gone I should be penniless.
+
+"And to think, Kelver, that there are hundreds, thousands of young
+fellows precisely in your position! How sad, how very sad! How long have
+you been looking for a berth?"
+
+"A month," I answered him.
+
+"I thought as much. Do you know why I selected your letter out of the
+whole batch?"
+
+I replied I hoped it was because he judged from it I should prove
+satisfactory.
+
+"Because it's the worst written of them all." He pushed it across to me.
+"Look at it. Awful, isn't it?"
+
+I admitted that handwriting was not my strong point.
+
+"Nor spelling either," he added, and with truth. "Who do you think will
+engage you if I don't?"
+
+"Nobody," he continued, without waiting for me to reply. "A month hence
+you will still be looking for a berth, and a month after that. Now, I'm
+going to do you a good turn; save you from destitution; give you a start
+in life."
+
+I expressed my gratitude.
+
+He waived it aside. "That is my notion of philanthropy: help those that
+nobody else will help. That young fellow in the other room--he isn't a
+bad worker, he's smart, but he's impertinent."
+
+I murmured that I had gathered so much.
+
+"Doesn't mean to be, can't help it. Noticed his trick of looking at you
+with his glass eye, keeping the other turned away from you?"
+
+I replied that I had.
+
+"Always does it. Used to irritate his last employer to madness. Said to
+him one day: 'Do turn that signal lamp of yours off, Minikin, and look
+at me with your real eye.' What do you think he answered? That it was
+the only one he'd got, and that he didn't want to expose it to shocks.
+Wouldn't have mattered so much if it hadn't been one of the ugliest men
+in London."
+
+I murmured my indignation.
+
+"I put up with him. Nobody else would. The poor fellow must live."
+
+I expressed admiration at Mr. Lott's humanity.
+
+"You don't mind work? You're not one of those good-for-nothings who
+sleep all day and wake up when it's time to go home?"
+
+I assured him that in whatever else I might fail I could promise him
+industry.
+
+"With some of them," complained Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness, "it's
+nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets. Work, business--oh,
+no. I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into the workhouse.
+No thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds them, clothes them.
+How much salary do you want?"
+
+I hesitated. I gathered this was not a Cheeryble Brother; it would be
+necessary to be moderate in one's demands. "Five-and-twenty shillings a
+week," I suggested.
+
+He repeated the figure in a scream. "Five-and-twenty shillings for
+writing like that! And can't spell commission! Don't know anything about
+the business. Five-and-twenty!--Tell you what I'll do: I'll give you
+twelve."
+
+"But I can't live on twelve," I explained.
+
+"Can't live on twelve! Do you know why? Because you don't know how to
+live. I know you all. One veal and ham pie, one roley-poley, one Dutch
+cheese and a pint of bitter."
+
+His recital made my mouth water.
+
+"You overload your stomachs, then you can't work. Half the diseases you
+young fellows suffer from are brought about by overeating."
+
+"Now, you take my advice," continued Mr. Lott; "try vegetarianism. In
+the morning, a little oatmeal. Wonderfully strengthening stuff, oatmeal:
+look at the Scotch. For dinner, beans. Why, do you know there's
+more nourishment in half a pint of lentil beans than in a pound of
+beefsteak--more gluten. That's what you want, more gluten; no corpses,
+no dead bodies. Why, I've known young fellows, vegetarians, who have
+lived like fighting cocks on sevenpence a day. Seven times seven are
+forty-nine. How much do you pay for your room?"
+
+I told him.
+
+"Four-and-a-penny and two-and-six makes six-and-seven. That leaves you
+five and fivepence for mere foolery. Good God! what more do you want?"
+
+"I'll take eighteen, sir," I answered. "I can't really manage on less."
+
+"Very well, I won't beat you down," he answered. "Fifteen shillings a
+week."
+
+"I said eighteen," I persisted.
+
+"Well, and I said fifteen," he retorted, somewhat indignant at the
+quibbling. "That's splitting the difference, isn't it? I can't be fairer
+than that."
+
+I dared not throw away the one opportunity that had occurred. Anything
+was better than return to the Reading Rooms, and the empty days full of
+despair. I accepted, and it was agreed that I should come the following
+Monday morning.
+
+"Nabbed?" was Minikin's enquiry on my return to the back office for my
+hat.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"What's he wasting on you?"
+
+"Fifteen shillings a week," I whispered.
+
+"Felt sure somehow that he'd take a liking to you," answered Minikin.
+"Don't be ungrateful and look thin on it."
+
+Outside the door I heard Mr. Lott's shrill voice demanding to know where
+postage stamps were to be found.
+
+"At the Post-office," was Minikin's reply.
+
+The hours were long--in fact, we had no office hours; we got away
+when we could, which was rarely before seven or eight--but my work was
+interesting. It consisted of buying for unfortunate clients in India or
+the Colonies anything they might happen to want, from a stage coach to
+a pot of marmalade; packing it and shipping it across to them. Our
+"commission" was anything they could be persuaded to pay over and above
+the value of the article. I was not much interfered with. There was that
+to be said for Lott & Co., so long as the work was done he was quite
+content to leave one to one's own way of doing it. And hastening through
+the busy streets, bargaining in shop or warehouse, bustling important in
+and out the swarming docks, I often thanked my stars that I was not as
+some poor two-pound-a-week clerk chained to a dreary desk.
+
+The fifteen shillings a week was a tight fit; but that was not my
+trouble. Reduce your denominator--you know the quotation. I found it no
+philosophical cant, but a practical solution of life. My food cost me
+on the average a shilling a day. If more of us limited our commissariat
+bill to the same figure, there would be less dyspepsia abroad. Generally
+I cooked my own meals in my own frying-pan; but occasionally I would
+indulge myself with a more orthodox dinner at a cook shop, or tea with
+hot buttered toast at a coffee-shop; and but for the greasy table-cloth
+and the dirty-handed waiter, such would have been even greater
+delights. The shilling a week for amusements afforded me at least one,
+occasionally two, visits to the theatre, for in those days there were
+Paradises where for sixpence one could be a god. Fourpence a week on
+tobacco gave me half-a-dozen cigarettes a day; I have spent more on
+smoke and derived less satisfaction. Dress was my greatest difficulty.
+One anxiety in life the poor man is saved: he knows not the haunting
+sense of debt. My tailor never dunned me. His principle was half-a-crown
+down on receipt of order, the balance on the handing over of the goods.
+No system is perfect; the method avoided friction, it is true; yet
+on the other hand it was annoying to be compelled to promenade, come
+Sundays, in shiny elbows and frayed trousers, knowing all the while
+that finished, waiting, was a suit in which one might have made one's
+mark--had only one shut one's eyes passing that pastry-cook's window on
+pay-day. Surely there should be a sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks
+to deal in cellars or behind drawn blinds.
+
+Were it because of its mere material hardships that to this day I think
+of that period of my life with a shudder, I should not here confess to
+it. I was alone. I knew not a living soul to whom I dared to speak, who
+cared to speak to me. For those first twelve months after my mother's
+death I lived alone, thought alone, felt alone. In the morning, during
+the busy day, it was possible to bear; but in the evenings the sense
+of desolation gripped me like a physical pain. The summer evenings
+came again, bringing with them the long, lingering light so laden with
+melancholy. I would walk into the Parks and, sitting there, watch with
+hungry eyes the men and women, boys and girls, moving all around me,
+talking, laughing, interested in one another; feeling myself some
+speechless ghost, seeing but not seen, crying to the living with a voice
+they heard not. Sometimes a solitary figure would pass by and glance
+back at me; some lonely creature like myself longing for human sympathy.
+In the teeming city must have been thousands such--young men and women
+to whom a friendly ear, a kindly voice, would have been as the water of
+life. Each imprisoned in his solitary cell of shyness, we looked at one
+another through the grating with condoling eyes; further than that
+was forbidden to us. Once, in Kensington Gardens, a woman turned, then
+slowly retracing her steps, sat down beside me on the bench. Neither of
+us spoke; had I done so she would have risen and moved away; yet there
+was understanding between us. To each of us it was some comfort to sit
+thus for a little while beside the other. Had she poured out her heart
+to me, she could have told me nothing more than I knew: "I, too, am
+lonely, friendless; I, too, long for the sound of a voice, the touch of
+a hand. It is hard for you, it is harder still for me, a girl; shut out
+from the bright world that laughs around me; denied the right of
+youth to joy and pleasure; denied the right of womanhood to love and
+tenderness."
+
+The footsteps to and fro grew fewer. She moved to rise. Stirred by an
+impulse, I stretched out my hand, then seeing the flush upon her face,
+drew it back hastily. But the next moment, changing her mind, she held
+hers out to me, and I took it. It was the first clasp of a hand I had
+felt since six months before I had said good-bye to Hal. She turned and
+walked quickly away. I stood watching her; she never looked round, and I
+never saw her again.
+
+I take no credit to myself for keeping straight, as it is termed, during
+these days. For good or evil, my shyness prevented my taking part in the
+flirtations of the streets. Whether inviting eyes were ever thrown to me
+as to others, I cannot say. Sometimes, fancying so--hoping so, I would
+follow. Yet never could I summon up sufficient resolution to face the
+possible rebuff before some less timid swain would swoop down upon the
+quarry. Then I would hurry on, cursing myself for the poorness of my
+spirit, fancying mocking contempt in the laughter that followed me.
+
+On a Sunday I would rise early and take long solitary walks into the
+country. One winter's day--I remember it was on the road between Edgware
+and Stanmore--there issued from a by-road a little ahead of me a party
+of boys and girls, young people about my own age, bound evidently on
+a skating expedition. I could hear the musical ring of their blades,
+clattering as they walked, and the sound of their merry laughter so
+clear and bell-like through the frosty air. And an aching anguish fell
+upon me. I felt a mad desire to run after them, to plead with them to
+let me walk with them a little way, to let me laugh and talk with them.
+Every now and then they would pirouette to cry some jest to one another.
+I could see their faces: the girls' so sweetly alluring, framed by their
+dainty hats and furs, the bright colour in their cheeks, the light
+in their teasing eyes. A little further on they turned aside into a
+by-lane, and I stood at the corner listening till the last echo of their
+joyous voices died away, and on a stone that still remains standing
+there I sat down and sobbed.
+
+I would walk about the streets always till very late. I dreaded the
+echoing clang of the little front door when I closed it behind me, the
+climbing of the silent stairs, the solitude that waited for me in my
+empty room. It would rise and come towards me like some living thing,
+kissing me with cold lips. Often, unable to bear the closeness of its
+presence, I would creep out into the streets. There, even though it
+followed me, I was not alone with it. Sometimes I would pace them the
+whole night, sharing them with the other outcasts while the city slept.
+
+Occasionally, during these nightly wanderings would come to me moments
+of exaltation when fear fell from me and my blood would leap with joy at
+prospect of the fierce struggle opening out before me. Then it was the
+ghostly city sighing round me that seemed dead, I the only living thing
+real among a world of shadows. In long, echoing streets I would laugh
+and shout. Misunderstanding policemen would turn their bull's-eyes on
+me, gruffly give me practical advice: they knew not who I was! I stood
+the centre of a vast galanty-show: the phantom houses came and went;
+from some there shone bright lights; the doors were open, and little
+figures flitted in and out, the tiny coaches glided to and fro, manikins
+grotesque but pitiful crept across the star-lit curtain.
+
+Then the mood would change. The city, grim and vast, stretched round
+me endless. I crawled, a mere atom, within its folds, helpless,
+insignificant, absurd. The houseless forms that shared my vigil were
+my fellows. What were we? Animalcule upon its bosom, that it saw not,
+heeded not. For company I would mingle with them: ragged men, frowsy
+women, ageless youths, gathered round the red glow of some coffee stall.
+
+Rarely would we speak to one another. More like animals we browsed
+there, sipping the halfpenny cup of hot water coloured with coffee
+grounds (at least it was warm), munching the moist slab of coarse cake;
+looking with dull, indifferent eyes each upon the wretchedness of
+the others. Perhaps some two would whisper to each other in listless,
+monotonous tone, broken here and there by a short, mirthless laugh; some
+shivering creature, not yet case-hardened to despair, seek, perhaps,
+the relief of curses that none heeded. Later, a faint chill breeze would
+shake the shadows loose, a thin, wan light streak the dark air with
+shade, and silently, stealthily, we would fade away and disappear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY. AND
+BECOMES CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN.
+
+All things pass, even the self-inflicted sufferings of shy young men,
+condemned by temperament to solitude. Came the winter evenings, I took
+to work: in it one may drown much sorrow for oneself. With its handful
+of fire, its two candles lighted, my "apartment" was more inviting.
+I bought myself paper, pens and ink. Great or small, what more can a
+writer do? He is but the would-be medium: will the spirit voices employ
+him or reject him?
+
+London, with its million characters, grave and gay; its ten thousand
+romances, its mysteries, its pathos, and its humour, lay to my hand. It
+stretched before me, asking only intelligent observation, more or less
+truthful report. But that I could make a story out of the things I
+really knew never occurred to me. My tales were of cottage maidens, of
+bucolic yeomen. My scenes were laid in windmills, among mountains, or in
+moated granges. I fancy this phase of folly is common to most youthful
+fictionists.
+
+A trail of gentle melancholy lay over them. Sentiment was more popular
+then than it is now, and, as do all beginners, I scrupulously followed
+fashion. Generally speaking, to be a heroine of mine was fatal. However
+naturally her hair might curl--and curly hair, I believe, is the
+hall-mark of vitality; whatever other indications of vigorous health she
+might exhibit in the first chapter, such as "dancing eyes," "colour
+that came and went," "ringing laughter," "fawn-like agility," she was
+tolerably certain, poor girl, to end in an untimely grave. Snowdrops and
+early primroses (my botany I worked up from a useful little volume, "Our
+Garden Favourites, Illustrated") grew there as in a forcing house; and
+if in the neighbourhood of the coast, the sea-breezes would choose
+that particular churchyard, somewhat irreverently, for their favourite
+playground. Years later a white-haired man would come there leading
+little children by the hand, and to them he would tell the tale anew,
+which must have been a dismal entertainment for them.
+
+Now and then, by way of change, it would be the gentleman who would
+fall a victim of the deadly atmosphere of my literature. It was of
+no particular consequence, so he himself would conclude in his last
+soliloquy; "it was better so." Snowdrops and primroses, for whatever
+consolation they might have been to him, it was hopeless for him to
+expect; his grave, marked by a rude cross, being as a rule situate in an
+exceptionally unfrequented portion of the African veldt or amid burning
+sands. For description of final scenery on these occasions a visit to
+the British Museum reading-room would be necessary.
+
+Dismal little fledgelings! And again and again would I drive them from
+the nest; again and again they fluttered back to me, soiled, crumpled,
+physically damaged. Yet one person had admired them, cried over
+them--myself.
+
+All methods I tried. Sometimes I would send them forth accompanied by
+a curt business note of the take-it-or-leave-it order. At other times I
+would attach to it pathetic appeals for its consideration. Sometimes
+I would give value to it, stating that the price was five guineas and
+requesting that the cheque should be crossed; at other times seek to
+tickle editorial cupidity by offering this, my first contribution to
+their pages, for nothing--my sample packet, so to speak, sent gratis,
+one trial surely sufficient. Now I would write sarcastically, enclosing
+together with the stamped envelope for return a brutally penned note of
+rejection. Or I would write frankly, explaining elaborately that I was a
+beginner, and asking to be told my faults--if any.
+
+Not one found a resting place for its feet. A month, a week, a couple of
+days, they would remain away from me, then return. I never lost a single
+one. I wished I had. It would have varied the monotony.
+
+I hated the poor little slavey who, bursting joyously into the room,
+would hold them out to me from between her apron-hidden thumb and
+finger; her chronic sniff I translated into contempt. If flying down the
+stairs at the sound of the postman's knock I secured it from his hands,
+it seemed to me he smiled. Tearing them from their envelopes, I would
+curse them, abuse them, fling them into the fire sometimes; but before
+they were more than scorched I would snatch them out, smooth them,
+reread them. The editor himself could never have seen them; it was
+impossible; some jealous underling had done this thing. I had sent them
+to the wrong paper. They had arrived at the inopportune moment. Their
+triumph would come. Rewriting the first and last sheets, I would send
+them forth again with fresh hope.
+
+Meanwhile, understanding that the would-be happy warrior must shine in
+camp as well as field, I sought to fit myself also for the social side
+of life. Smoking and drinking were the twin sins I found most difficulty
+in acquiring. I am not claiming a mental excellence so much as
+confessing a bodily infirmity. The spirit had always been willing, but
+my flesh was weak. Fired by emulation, I had at school occasionally
+essayed a cigarette. The result had been distinctly unsatisfactory, and
+after some two or three attempts, I had abandoned, for the time being,
+all further endeavour; excusing my faint-heartedness by telling myself
+with sanctimonious air that smoking was bad for growing boys; attempting
+to delude myself by assuming, in presence of contemporaries of stronger
+stomach, fine pose of disapproval; yet in my heart knowing myself a
+young hypocrite, disguising physical cowardice in the robes of moral
+courage: a self-deception to which human nature is prone.
+
+So likewise now and again I had tasted the wine that was red, and that
+stood year in, year out, decanted on our sideboard. The true
+inwardness of St. Paul's prescription had been revealed to me; the
+attitude--sometimes sneered at--of those who drink it under doctor's
+orders, regarding it purely as a medicine, appeared to me reasonable.
+I had noticed also that others, some of them grown men even, making wry
+faces, when drinking my mother's claret, and had concluded therefrom
+that taste for strong liquor was an accomplishment less easily acquired
+than is generally supposed. The lack of it in a young man could be no
+disgrace, and accordingly effort in that direction also had I weakly
+postponed.
+
+But now, a gentleman at large, my education could no longer be delayed.
+To the artist in particular was training--and severe training--an
+absolute necessity. Recently fashion has changed somewhat, but a quarter
+of a century ago a genius who did not smoke and drink--and that more
+than was good for him--would have been dismissed without further
+evidence as an impostor. About the genius I was hopeful, but at no time
+positively certain. As regarded the smoking and drinking, so much at
+least I could make sure of. I set to work methodically, conscientiously.
+Smoking, experience taught me, was better practised on Saturday nights,
+Sunday affording me the opportunity of walking off the effects. Patience
+and determination were eventually crowned with success: I learned to
+smoke a cigarette to all appearance as though I were enjoying it. Young
+men of less character might here have rested content, but attainment
+of the highest has always been with me a motive force. The cigarette
+conquered, I next proceeded to attack the cigar. My first one I remember
+well: most men do. It was at a smoking concert held in the Islington
+Drill Hall, to which Minikin had invited me. Not feeling sure whether my
+growing dizziness were due solely to the cigar, or in part to the hot,
+over-crowded room, I made my excuses and slipped out. I found myself in
+a small courtyard, divided from a neighbouring garden by a low wall. The
+cause of my trouble was clearly the cigar. My inclination was to take it
+from my mouth and see how far I could throw it. Conscience, on the other
+hand, urged me to persevere. It occurred to me that if climbing on to
+the wall I could walk along it from end to end, there would be no excuse
+for my not heeding the counsels of perfection. If, on the contrary, try
+as I might, the wall proved not wide enough for my footsteps, then I
+should be entitled to lose the beastly thing, and, as best I could,
+make my way home to bed. I attained the wall with some difficulty and
+commenced my self-inflicted ordeal. Two yards further I found
+myself lying across the wall, my legs hanging down one side, my head
+overhanging the other. The position proving suitable to my requirements,
+I maintained it. Inclination, again seizing its opportunity, urged me
+then and there to take a solemn vow never to smoke again. I am proud
+to write that through that hour of temptation I remained firm;
+strengthening myself by whispering to myself: "Never despair. What
+others can do, so can you. Is not all victory won through suffering?"
+
+A liking for drink I had found, if possible, even yet more difficult of
+achievement. Spirits I almost despaired of. Once, confusing bottles, I
+drank some hair oil in mistake for whiskey, and found it decidedly less
+nauseous. But twice a week I would force myself to swallow a glass of
+beer, standing over myself insisting on my draining it to the bitter
+dregs. As reward afterwards, to take the taste out of my mouth, I
+would treat myself to chocolates; at the same time comforting myself
+by assuring myself that it was for my good, that there would come a day
+when I should really like it, and be grateful to myself for having been
+severe with myself.
+
+In other and more sensible directions I sought also to progress.
+Gradually I was overcoming my shyness. It was a slow process. I found
+the best plan was not to mind being shy, to accept it as part of my
+temperament, and with others laugh at it. The coldness of an indifferent
+world is of service in hardening a too sensitive skin. The gradual
+rubbings of existence were rounding off my many corners. I became
+possible to my fellow creatures, and they to me. I began to take
+pleasure in their company.
+
+By directing me to this particular house in Nelson Square, Fate had
+done to me a kindness. I flatter myself we were an interesting menagerie
+gathered together under its leaky roof. Mrs. Peedles, our landlady, who
+slept in the basement with the slavey, had been an actress in Charles
+Keane's company at the old Princess's. There, it is true, she had played
+only insignificant parts. London, as she would explain to us was even
+then but a poor judge of art, with prejudices. Besides an actor-manager,
+hampered by a wife--we understood. But previously in the Provinces there
+had been a career of glory: Juliet, Amy Robsart, Mrs. Haller in "The
+Stranger"--almost the entire roll of the "Legitimates". Showed we any
+signs of disbelief, proof was forthcoming: handbills a yard long, rich
+in notes of exclamation: "On Tuesday Evening! By Special Desire!!!
+Blessington's Theatre! In the Meadow, adjoining the Falcon Arms!"--"On
+Saturday! Under the Patronage of Col. Sir William and the Officers of
+the 74th!!!! In the Corn Exchange!" Maybe it would convince us further
+were she to run through a passage here and there, say Lady Macbeth's
+sleep-walking scene, or from Ophelia's entrance in the fourth act? It
+would be no trouble; her memory was excellent. We would hasten to assure
+her of our perfect faith.
+
+Listening to her, it was difficult, as she herself would frankly admit,
+to imagine her the once "arch Miss Lucretia Barry;" looking at her, to
+remember there had been an evening when she had been "the cynosure of
+every eye." One found it necessary to fortify oneself with perusal of
+underlined extracts from ancient journals, much thumbed and creased,
+thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose. Since those days Fate had
+woven round her a mantle of depression. She was now a faded, watery-eyed
+little woman, prone on the slightest provocation to sit down suddenly on
+the nearest chair and at once commence a history of her troubles. Quite
+unconscious of this failing, it was an idea of hers that she was an
+exceptionally cheerful person.
+
+"But there, fretting's no good. We must grin and bear things in this
+world," she would conclude, wiping her eyes upon her apron. "It's better
+to laugh than to cry, I always say." And to prove that this was no mere
+idle sentiment, she would laugh then and there upon the spot.
+
+Much stair-climbing had bestowed upon her a shortness of breath, which
+no amount of panting in her resting moments was able to make good.
+
+"You don't know 'ow to breathe," explained our second floor front to
+her on one occasion, a kindly young man; "you don't swallow it, you
+only gargle with it. Take a good draught and shut your mouth; don't
+be frightened of it; don't let it out again till it's done something:
+that's what it's 'ere for."
+
+He stood over her with his handkerchief pressed against her mouth to
+assist her; but it was of no use.
+
+"There don't seem any room for it inside me," she explained.
+
+Bells had become to her the business of life; she lived listening
+for them. Converse to her was a filling in of time while waiting for
+interruptions.
+
+A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present
+from a commercial traveller in the way of business. Not liking whiskey
+myself, it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the occasional
+comfort of Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands to her side,
+she would sink upon the chair nearest to my door. Her poor, washed-out
+face would lighten at the suggestion.
+
+"Ah, well," she would reply, "I don't mind if I do. It's a poor heart
+that never rejoices."
+
+And then, her tongue unloosened, she would sit there and tell me stories
+of my predecessors, young men lodgers who like myself had taken her
+bed-sitting-rooms, and of the woes and misfortunes that had overtaken
+them. I gathered that a more unlucky house I could not have selected.
+A former tenant of my own room, of whom I strangely reminded her, had
+written poetry on my very table. He was now in Portland doing five years
+for forgery. Mrs. Peedles appeared to regard the two accomplishments as
+merely different expressions of the same art. Another of her young men,
+as she affectionately called us, had been of studious ambition. His
+career up to a point appeared to have been brilliant. "What he mightn't
+have been," according to Mrs. Peedles, there was practically no saying;
+what he happened to be at the moment of conversation was an unpromising
+inmate of the Hanwell lunatic asylum.
+
+"I've always noticed it," Mrs. Peedles would explain; "it's always the
+most deserving, those that try hardest, to whom trouble comes. I'm sure
+I don't know why."
+
+I was glad on the whole when that bottle of whiskey was finished. A
+second might have driven me to suicide.
+
+There was no Mr. Peedles--at least, not for Mrs. Peedles, though as an
+individual he continued to exist. He had been "general utility" at
+the Princess's--the old terms were still in vogue at that time--a fine
+figure of a man in his day, so I was given to understand, but one easily
+led away, especially by minxes. Mrs. Peedles spoke bitterly of general
+utilities as people of not much use.
+
+For working days Mrs. Peedles had one dress and one cap, both black
+and void of ostentation; but on Sundays and holidays she would appear
+metamorphosed. She had carefully preserved the bulk of her stage
+wardrobe, even to the paste-decked shoes and tinsel jewelry. Shapeless
+in classic garb as Hermia, or bulgy in brocade and velvet as Lady
+Teazle, she would receive her few visitors on Sunday evenings, discarded
+puppets like herself, with whom the conversation was of gayer nights
+before their wires had been cut; or, her glory hid from the ribald
+street beneath a mackintosh, pay her few calls. Maybe it was the unusual
+excitement that then brought colour into her furrowed cheeks, that
+straightened and darkened her eyebrows, at other times so singularly
+unobtrusive. Be this how it may, the change was remarkable, only
+the thin grey hair and the work-worn hands remaining for purposes of
+identification. Nor was the transformation merely one of surface.
+Mrs. Peedles hung on her hook behind the kitchen door, dingy, limp,
+discarded; out of the wardrobe with the silks and satins was lifted down
+to be put on as an undergarment Miss Lucretia Barry, like her costumes
+somewhat aged, somewhat withered, but still distinctly "arch."
+
+In the room next to me lived a law-writer and his wife. They were very
+old and miserably poor. The fault was none of theirs. Despite copy-books
+maxims, there is in this world such a thing as ill-luck-persistent,
+monotonous, that gradually wears away all power of resistance. I
+learned from them their history: it was hopelessly simple, hopelessly
+uninstructive. He had been a schoolmaster, she a pupil teacher; they had
+married young, and for a while the world had smiled upon them. Then came
+illness, attacking them both: nothing out of which any moral could be
+deduced, a mere case of bad drains resulting in typhoid fever. They had
+started again, saddled by debt, and after years of effort had succeeded
+in clearing themselves, only to fall again, this time in helping a
+friend. Nor was it even a case of folly: a poor man who had helped them
+in their trouble, hardly could they have done otherwise without proving
+themselves ungrateful. And so on, a tedious tale, commonplace, trivial.
+Now listless, patient, hard working, they had arrived at an animal-like
+indifference to their fate, content so long as they could obtain the
+bare necessities of existence, passive when these were not forthcoming,
+their interest in life limited to the one luxury of the poor--an
+occasional glass of beer or spirits. Often days would go by without
+his obtaining any work, and then they would more or less starve. Law
+documents are generally given out to such men in the evening, to be
+returned finished the next morning. Waking in the night, I would hear
+through the thin wooden partition that divided our rooms the even
+scratching of his pen.
+
+Thus cheek by jowl we worked, I my side of the screen, he his: youth and
+age, hope and realisation.
+
+Out of him my fears fashioned a vision of the future. Past his door I
+would slink on tiptoe, dread meeting him upon the stairs. Once had not
+he said to himself: "The world's mine oyster?" May not the voices of the
+night have proclaimed him also king? Might I not be but an idle dreamer,
+mistaking desire for power? Would not the world prove stronger than I?
+At such times I would see my life before me: the clerkship at thirty
+shillings a week rising by slow instalments, it may be, to one hundred
+and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife,
+pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the
+squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from
+the ruck? Was not this the more likely picture?
+
+Our second floor front was a young fellow in the commercial line. Jarman
+was Young London personified--blatant yet kind-hearted; aggressively
+self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the same time
+frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck. "Never say die" was his motto,
+and anything less dead it would be difficult to imagine. All day long
+he was noisy, and all night long he snored. He woke with a start, bathed
+like a porpoise, sang while dressing, roared for his boots, and
+whistled during his breakfast. His entrance and exit were always to an
+orchestration of banging doors, directions concerning his meals shouted
+at the top of his voice as he plunged up or down the stairs, the
+clattering and rattling of brooms and pails flying before his feet. His
+departure always left behind it the suggestion that the house was now to
+let; it came almost as a shock to meet a human being on the landing. He
+would have conveyed an atmosphere of bustle to the Egyptian pyramids.
+
+Sometimes carrying his own supper-tray, arranged for two, he would march
+into my room. At first, resenting his familiarity, I would hint at my
+desire to be alone, would explain that I was busy.
+
+"You fire away, Shakespeare Redivivus," he would reply. "Don't delay the
+tragedy. Why should London wait? I'll keep quiet."
+
+But his notion of keeping quiet was to retire into a corner and there
+amuse himself by enacting a tragedy of his own in a hoarse whisper,
+accompanied by appropriate gesture.
+
+"Ah, ah!" I would hear him muttering to himself, "I 'ave killed 'er good
+old father; I 'ave falsely accused 'er young man of all the crimes that
+I 'ave myself committed; I 'ave robbed 'er of 'er ancestral estates. Yet
+she loves me not! It is streeange!" Then changing his bass to a shrill
+falsetto: "It is a cold and dismal night: the snow falls fast. I will
+leave me 'at and umbrella be'ind the door and go out for a walk with the
+chee-ild. Aha! who is this? 'E also 'as forgotten 'is umbrella. Ah, now
+I know 'im in the pitch dark by 'is cigarette! Villain, murderer, silly
+josser! it is you!" Then with lightning change of voice and gesture:
+"Mary, I love yer!" "Sir Jasper Murgatroyd, let me avail myself of this
+opportunity to tell you what I think of you--" "No, no; the 'ouses close
+in 'alf an hour; there is not tee-ime. Fly with me instead!" "Never!
+Un'and me!" "'Ear me! Ah, what 'ave I done? I 'ave slipped upon a piece
+of orange peel and broke me 'ead! If you will kindly ask them to turn
+off the snow and give me a little moonlight, I will confess all."
+
+Finding it (much to Jarman's surprise) impossible to renew the thread of
+my work, I would abandon my attempts at literature, and instead listen
+to his talk, which was always interesting. His conversation was, it is
+true, generally about himself, but it was none the less attractive on
+that account. His love affairs, which appeared to be numerous, formed
+his chief topic. There was no reserve about Jarman: his life contained
+no secret chambers. What he "told her straight," what she "up and said
+to him" in reply was for all the world that cared to hear. So far his
+search after the ideal had met with but ill success.
+
+"Girls," he would say, "they're all alike, till you know 'em. So long as
+they're trying to palm themselves off on yer, they'll persuade you
+there isn't such another article in all the market. When they've got yer
+order--ah, then yer find out what they're really made of. And you take
+it from me, 'Omer Junior, most of 'em are put together cheap. Bah!
+it sickens me sometimes to read the way you paper-stainers talk about 'em
+--angels, goddesses, fairies! They've just been getting at yer. You're
+giving 'em just the price they're asking without examining the article.
+Girls ain't a special make, like what you seem to think 'em. We're all
+turned out of the same old slop shop."
+
+"Not that I say, mind yer," he would continue, "that there are none of
+the right sort. They're to be 'ad--real good 'uns. All I say is, taking
+'em at their own valuation ain't the way to do business with 'em."
+
+What he was on the look out for--to quote his own description--was a
+really first class article, not something from which the paint would
+come off almost before you got it home.
+
+"They're to be found," he would cheerfully affirm, "but you've got to
+look for 'em. They're not the sort that advertises."
+
+Behind Jarman in the second floor back resided one whom Jarman had
+nicknamed "The Lady 'Ortensia." I believe before my arrival there had
+been love passages between the two; but neither of them, so I gathered,
+had upon closer inspection satisfied the other's standard. Their present
+attitude towards each other was that of insult thinly veiled under
+exaggerated politeness. Miss Rosina Sellars was, in her own language,
+a "lady assistant," in common parlance, a barmaid at the Ludgate Hill
+Station refreshment room. She was a large, flabby young woman. With less
+powder, her complexion might by admirers have been termed creamy; as it
+was, it presented the appearance rather of underdone pastry. To be on
+all occasions "quite the lady" was her pride. There were those who held
+the angle of her dignity to be exaggerated. Jarman would beg her for her
+own sake to be more careful lest one day she should fall down backwards
+and hurt herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly
+calculated to check familiarity. Even stockbrokers' clerks--young men
+as a class with the bump of reverence but poorly developed--would in her
+presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of
+not noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the
+noisiest customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange
+it for three of whiskey, which he had; take his money and return him his
+change without ever seeing him, hearing him, or knowing he was there. It
+shattered the self-assertion of the youngest of commercial travellers.
+Her tone and manner, outside rare moments of excitement, were suggestive
+of an offended but forgiving iceberg. Jarman invariably passed her with
+his coat collar turned up to his ears, and even thus protected might
+have been observed to shiver. Her stare, in conjunction with her "I beg
+your pardon!" was a moral douche that would have rendered apologetic and
+explanatory Don Juan himself.
+
+To me she was always gracious, which by contrast to her general attitude
+towards my sex of studied disdain, I confess flattered me. She was good
+enough to observe to Mrs. Peedles, who repeated it to me, that I was the
+only gentleman in the house who knew how to behave himself.
+
+The entire first floor was occupied by an Irishman and--they never
+minced the matter themselves, so hardly is there need for me to do so.
+She was a charming little dark-eyed woman, an ex-tight-rope dancer, and
+always greatly offended Mrs. Peedles by claiming Miss Lucretia Barry as
+a sister artiste.
+
+"Of course I don't know how it may be now," would reply Mrs. Peedles,
+with some slight asperity; "but in my time we ladies of the legitimate
+stage used to look down upon dancers and such sort. Of course, no
+offence to you, Mrs. O'Kelly."
+
+Neither of them was in the least offended.
+
+"Sure, Mrs. Peedles, ye could never have looked down upon the Signora,"
+the O'Kelly would answer laughing. "Ye had to lie back and look up to
+her. Why, I've got the crick in me neck to this day!"
+
+"Ah! my dear, and you don't know how nervous I was when glancing down
+I'd see his handsome face just underneath me, thinking that with one
+false step I might spoil it for ever," would reply the Signora.
+
+"Me darling! I'd have died happy, just smothered in loveliness!" would
+return the O'Kelly; and he and the Signora would rush into each other's
+arms, and the sound of their kisses would quite excite the little slavey
+sweeping down the stairs outside.
+
+He was a barrister attached in theory to the Western Circuit; in
+practice, somewhat indifferent to it, much more attached to the lower
+strata of Bohemia and the Signora. At the present he was earning all
+sufficient for the simple needs of himself and the Signora as a teacher
+of music and singing. His method was simple and suited admirably the
+locality. Unless specially requested, he never troubled his pupils with
+such tiresome things as scales and exercises. His plan was to discover
+the song the young man fancied himself singing, the particular jingle
+the young lady yearned to knock out of the piano, and to teach it to
+them. Was it "Tom Bowling?" Well and good. Come on; follow your leader.
+The O'Kelly would sing the first line.
+
+"Now then, try that. Don't be afraid. Just open yer mouth and gave it
+tongue. That's all right. Everything has a beginning. Sure, later on,
+we'll get the time and tune, maybe a little expression."
+
+Whether the system had any merit in it, I cannot answer. Certain it was
+that as often as not it achieved success. Gradually--say, by the end
+of twelve eighteen-penny lessons--out of storm and chaos "Tom Bowling"
+would emerge, recognisable for all men to hear. Had the pupil any voice
+to start with, the O'Kelly improved it; had he none, the O'Kelly would
+help him to disguise the fact.
+
+"Take it easy, now; take it easy," the O'Kelly would counsel. "Sure,
+it's a delicate organ, yer voice. Don't ye strain it now. Ye're at yer
+best when ye're just low and sweet."
+
+So also with the blushing pianiste. At the end of a month a tune was
+distinctly discernible; she could hear it herself, and was happy. His
+repute spread.
+
+Twice already had he eloped with the Signora (and twice again was he
+to repeat the operation, before I finally lost sight of him: to break
+oneself of habit is always difficult) and once by well-meaning friends
+had he been induced to return to home, if not to beauty. His wife, who
+was considerably older than himself, possessed, so he would inform
+me with tears in his eyes, every moral excellence that should attract
+mankind. Upon her goodness and virtue, her piety and conscientiousness
+he would descant to me by the half hour. His sincerity it was impossible
+to question. It was beyond doubt that he respected her, admired her,
+honoured her. She was a saint, an angel--a wretch, a villain such as he,
+was not fit to breathe the same pure air. To do him justice, it must
+be admitted he showed no particular desire to do so. As an aunt or
+grandmother, I believe he would have suffered her gladly. He had nothing
+to say against her, except that he found himself unable to live with
+her.
+
+That she must have been a lady of exceptional merit one felt convinced.
+The Signora, who had met her only once, and then under somewhat trying
+conditions, spoke her praises with equal enthusiasm. Had she, the
+Signora, enjoyed the advantage of meeting such a model earlier, she,
+the Signora, might have been a better woman. It seemed a pity the
+introduction could not have taken place sooner and under different
+circumstances. Could they both have adopted her as a sort of mutual
+mother-in-law, it would have given them, I am positive, the greatest
+satisfaction. On her occasional visits they would have vied with each
+other in showing her affectionate attention. For the deserted lady I
+tried to feel sorry, but could not avoid the reflection that it
+would have been better for all parties had she been less patient and
+forgiving. Her husband was evidently much more suited to the Signora.
+
+Indeed, the relationship between these two was more a true marriage than
+one generally meets with. No pair of love-birds could have been more
+snug together. In their virtues and failings alike they fitted each
+other. When sober the immorality of their behaviour never troubled them;
+in fact, when sober nothing ever troubled them. They laughed, joked,
+played through life, two happy children. To be shocked at them was
+impossible. I tried it and failed.
+
+But now and again there came an evening when they were not sober. It
+happened when funds were high. On such occasion the O'Kelly would return
+laden with bottles of a certain sweet champagne, of which they were both
+extremely fond; and a friend or two would be invited to share in the
+festivity. Whether any exceptional quality resided in this particular
+brand of champagne I am not prepared to argue; my own personal
+experience of it has prompted me to avoid it for the rest of my life.
+Its effect upon them was certainly unique. Instead of intoxicating them,
+it sobered them: there is no other way of explaining it. With the third
+or fourth glass they began to take serious views of life. Before the end
+of the second bottle they would be staring at each other, appalled
+at contemplation of their own transgression. The Signora, the tears
+streaming down her pretty face, would declare herself a wicked, wicked
+woman; she had dragged down into shame the most blameless, the most
+virtuous of men. Emptying her glass, she would bury her face in her
+hands, and with her elbows on her knees, in an agony of remorse, sit
+rocking to and fro. The O'Kelly, throwing himself at her feet, would
+passionately abjure her to "look up." She had, it appeared, got hold of
+the thing at the wrong end; it was he who had dragged her down.
+
+At this point metaphor would become confused. Each had been dragged
+down by the other one and ruined; also each one was the other one's good
+angel. All that was commendable in the Signora, she owed to the O'Kelly.
+Whatever was not discreditable about the O'Kelly was in the nature of a
+loan from the Signora. With the help of more champagne the right course
+would grow plain to them. She would go back broken-hearted but repentant
+to the tight-rope; he would return a better but a blighted man to
+Mrs. O'Kelly and the Western Circuit. This would be their last evening
+together on earth. A fresh bottle would be broached, and the guest or
+guests called upon to assist in the ceremony of renunciation; glasses
+full to the brim this time.
+
+So much tragedy did they continue to instil into the scene that on the
+first occasion of my witnessing it I was unable to refrain from mingling
+my tears with theirs. As, however, the next morning they had forgotten
+all about it, and as nothing came of it, nor of several subsequent
+repetitions, I should have believed a separation between them impossible
+but that even while I was an inmate of the house the thing actually
+happened.
+
+It came about in this wise. His friends, having discovered him, had
+pointed out to him again his duty. The Signora--a really excellent
+little woman so far as intention was concerned--had seconded their
+endeavours, with the result that on a certain evening in autumn we of
+the house assembled all of us on the first floor to support them on the
+occasion of their final--so we all deemed it then--leave-taking. For
+eleven o'clock two four-wheeled cabs had been ordered, one to transport
+the O'Kelly with his belongings to Hampstead and respectability; in the
+other the Signora would journey sorrowfully to the Tower Basin, there to
+join a circus company sailing for the Continent.
+
+I knocked at the door some quarter of an hour before the appointed hour
+of the party. I fancy the idea had originated with the Signora.
+
+"Dear Willie has something to say to you," she had informed me that
+morning on the stairs. "He has taken a sincere liking to you, and it is
+something very important."
+
+They were sitting one each side the fireplace, looking very serious; a
+bottle of the sobering champagne stood upon the table. The Signora rose
+and kissed me gravely on the brow; the O'Kelly laid both hands upon my
+shoulders, and sat me down on a chair between them.
+
+"Mr. Kelver," said the Signora, "you are very young."
+
+I hinted--it was one of those rare occasions upon which gallantry can be
+combined with truth--that I found myself in company.
+
+The Signora smiled sadly, and shook her head.
+
+"Age," said the O'Kelly, "is a matter of feeling. Kelver, may ye never
+be as old as I am feeling now."
+
+"As _we_ are feeling," corrected the Signora. "Kelver," said the
+O'Kelly, pouring out a third glass of champagne, "we want ye to promise
+us something."
+
+"It will make us both happier," added the Signora.
+
+"That ye will take warning," continued the O'Kelly, "by our wretched
+example. Paul, in this world there is only one path to possible
+happiness. The path of strict--" he paused.
+
+"Propriety," suggested the Signora.
+
+"Of strict propriety," agreed the O'Kelly. "Deviate from it," continued
+the O'Kelly, impressively, "and what is the result?"
+
+"Unutterable misery," supplied the Signora.
+
+"Ye think we two have been happy here together," said the O'Kelly.
+
+I replied that such was the conclusion to which observation had directed
+me.
+
+"We tried to appear so," explained the Signora; "it was merely on the
+outside. In reality all the time we hated each other. Tell him, Willie,
+dear, how we have hated each other."
+
+"It is impossible," said the O'Kelly, finishing and putting down his
+glass, "to give ye any idea, Kelver, how we have hated each other."
+
+"How we have quarrelled!" said the Signora. "Tell him, dear, how we have
+quarrelled."
+
+"All day long and half the night," concluded the O'Kelly.
+
+"Fought," added the Signora. "You see, Mr. Kelver, people in--in our
+position always do. If it had been otherwise, if--if everything had been
+proper, then of course we should have loved each other. As it is, it has
+been a cat and dog existence. Hasn't it been a cat and dog existence,
+Willie?"
+
+"It's been just hell upon earth," murmured the O'Kelly, with his eyes
+fixed gloomily upon the fire-stove ornament. Deadly in earnest though
+they both were, I could not repress a laugh, their excellent intention
+was so obvious. The Signora burst into tears.
+
+"He doesn't believe us," she wailed.
+
+"Me dear," replied the O'Kelly, throwing up his part with promptness and
+satisfaction, "how could ye expect it? How could he believe that any man
+could look at ye and hate ye?"
+
+"It's all my fault," cried the little woman; "I am such a wicked
+creature. I cannot even be miserable when I am doing wrong. A decent
+woman in my place would have been wretched and unhappy, and made
+everybody about her wretched and unhappy, and so have set a good example
+and have been a warning. I don't seem to have any conscience, and I do
+try." The poor little lady was sobbing her heart out.
+
+When not shy I could be sensible, and of the O'Kelly and the Signora one
+could be no more shy than of a pair of robin redbreasts. Besides, I was
+really fond of them; they had been very good to me.
+
+"Dear Miss Beltoni," I answered, "I am going to take warning by you
+both."
+
+She pressed my hand. "Oh, do, please do," she murmured. "We really have
+been miserable--now and then."
+
+"I am never going to be content," I assured her, "until I find a lady
+as charming and as amiable as you, and if ever I get her I'll take good
+care never to run any risk of losing her."
+
+It sounded well and pleased us all. The O'Kelly shook me warmly by the
+hand, and this time spoke his real feelings.
+
+"Me boy," he said, "all women are good--for somebody. But the woman that
+is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who's the best
+for somebody else. Ye understand?"
+
+I said I did.
+
+At eight o'clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived--as Flora MacDonald, in
+green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking. As
+a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles and the
+subject of deserted wives in general.
+
+"A fine-looking man," allowed Mrs. Peedles, "but weak--weak as water."
+
+The Signora agreed that unfortunately there did exist such men: 'twas
+pitiful but true.
+
+"My dear," continued Mrs. Peedles, "she wasn't even a lady."
+
+The Signora expressed astonishment at the deterioration in Mr. Peedles'
+taste thus implied.
+
+"I won't go so far as to say we never had a difference," continued Mrs.
+Peedles, whose object appeared to be an impartial statement of the whole
+case. "There may have been incompatability of temperament, as they say.
+Myself, I have always been of a playful disposition--frivolous, some
+might call me."
+
+The Signora protested; the O'Kelly declined to listen to such aspersion
+on her character even from Mrs. Peedles herself.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, thus corrected, allowed that maybe frivolous was too
+sweeping an accusation: say sportive.
+
+"But a good wife to him I always was," asserted Mrs. Peedles, with a
+fine sense of justice; "never flighty, like some of them. I challenge
+any one to accuse me of having been flighty."
+
+We felt we should not believe any one who did, and told her so.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a
+confidential attitude. "If they want to go, let 'em go, I always say,"
+she whispered loudly into the Signora's ear. "Ten to one they'll find
+they've only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. One can always
+comfort oneself with that."
+
+There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles. Her virtuous
+sympathies, I gathered, were with the Signora. Mr. O'Kelly's return
+to Mrs. O'Kelly evidently manifested itself in the light of a shameful
+desertion. Having regard to the fact, patent to all who knew him, that
+the poor fellow was sacrificing every inclination to stern sense of
+duty, such view of the matter was rough on him. But philosophers from
+all ages have agreed that our good deeds are the whips with which Fate
+punishes us for our bad.
+
+"My dear," continued Mrs. Peedles, "when Mr. Peedles left me I thought
+that I should never smile again. Yet here you see me laughing away
+through life, just as ever. You'll get over it all right." And Mrs.
+Peedles wiped away her tears and smiled upon the Signora; upon which the
+Signora commenced to cry again.
+
+Happily, timely diversion was made at this point by the bursting into
+the room of Jarman, who upon perceiving Mrs. Peedles, at once gave vent
+to a hoot, supposed to be expressive of Scottish joy, and without a
+moment's hesitation commenced to dance a reel.
+
+My neighbours of the first floor knocked at the door a little while
+afterwards; and genteelly late arrived Miss Rosina Sellars, coldly
+gleaming in a decollete but awe-inspiring costume of mingled black
+and scarlet, out of which her fair, if fleshy, neck and arms shone
+luxuriant.
+
+We did not go into supper; instead, supper came into us from the
+restaurant at the corner of the Blackfriars Road. I cannot say that at
+first it was a festive meal. The O'Kelly and the Signora made effort,
+as in duty bound, to be cheerful, but for awhile were somewhat
+unsuccessful. The third floor front wasted no time in speech, but ate
+and drank copiously. Miss Sellars, retaining her gloves--which was
+perhaps wise, her hands being her weak point--signalled me out, much to
+my embarrassment, as the recipient of her most polite conversation. Mrs.
+Peedles became reminiscent of parties generally. Seeing that most of
+Mrs. Peedles' former friends and acquaintances were either dead or in
+more or less trouble, her efforts did not tend to enliven the table. One
+gathering, of which the present strangely reminded her, was a funeral,
+chiefly remarkable from discovery of the romantic fact, late in the
+proceedings, that the gentleman in whose honour the whole affair had
+been organised was not dead at all; but instead, having taken advantage
+of an error arising out of a railway accident, was at the moment eloping
+with the wife of his own chief mourner. As Mrs. Peedles explained,
+and as one could well credit, it had been an awkward position for all
+present. Nobody had quite known whether to feel glad or sorry--with the
+exception of the chief mourner, upon whose personal undertaking that the
+company might regard the ceremony as merely postponed, festivities came
+to an end.
+
+Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman. As
+a delicate attention to Mrs. Peedles and her costume he sunk
+his nationality and became for the evening, according to his own
+declaration, "a braw laddie." With her--his "sonsie lassie," so he
+termed her--he flirted in the broadest, if not purest, Scotch. The
+O'Kelly for him became "the Laird;" the third floor "Jamie o' the Ilk;"
+Miss Sellars, "the bonnie wee rose;" myself, "the chiel." Periods of
+silence were dispersed by suggestions that we should "hoot awa'," Jarman
+himself setting us the example.
+
+With the clearance away of the eatables, making room for the production
+of a more varied supply of bottles, matters began to mend. Mrs. Peedles
+became more arch, Jarman's Scotch more striking and extensive, the
+Lady 'Ortensia's remarks less depressingly genteel, her aitches less
+accentuated.
+
+Jarman rose to propose the health of the O'Kelly, coupled with that of
+the Signora. To the O'Kelly, in a burst of generosity, Jarman promised
+our united patronage. To Jarman it appeared that by employing the
+O'Kelly to defend us whenever we got into trouble with the police, and
+by recommending him to our friends, a steady income should be assured to
+him.
+
+The O'Kelly replied feelingly to the effect that Nelson Square,
+Blackfriars, would ever remain engraved upon his memory as the fairest
+and brightest spot on earth. Personally, nothing would have given him
+greater pleasure than to die among the dear friends who now surrounded
+him. But there was such a thing as duty, and he and the Signora had come
+to the conclusion that true happiness could only be obtained by acting
+according to one's conscience, even if it made one miserable.
+
+Jarman, warming to his work, then proposed the health of Mrs. Peedles,
+as true-hearted and hard-breathing a lady as ever it had been his
+privilege to know. Her talent for cheery conversation was familiar to us
+all, upon it he need not enlarge; all he would say was that personally
+never did she go out of his room without leaving him more cheerful than
+when she entered it.
+
+After that--I forget in what--we drank the health of the Lady 'Ortensia.
+Persons there were--Jarman would not attempt to disguise the fact--who
+complained that the Lady 'Ortensia was too distant, "too stand-offish."
+With such complaint he himself had no sympathy; but tastes differed. If
+the Lady 'Ortensia were inclined to be exclusive, who should blame her?
+Everybody knew their own business best. For use in a second floor front
+he could not honestly recommend the Lady 'Ortensia; it would not be
+giving her a fair chance, and it would not be giving the second floor a
+fair chance. But for any gentleman fitting up marble halls, for any one
+on the lookout for a really "toney article," Jarman would say: Inquire
+for Miss Rosina Sellars, and see that you get her.
+
+There followed my turn. There had been literary chaps in the past,
+Jarman admitted so much. Against them he had nothing to say. They had no
+doubt done their best. But the gentleman whose health Jarman wished the
+company now to drink had this advantage over them: that they were
+dead, and he wasn't. Some of this gentleman's work Jarman had read--in
+manuscript; but that was a distinction purely temporary. He, Jarman,
+claimed to be no judge of literature, but this he could and would say,
+it took a good deal to make him miserable, yet this the literary efforts
+of Mr. Kelver invariably accomplished.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, speaking without rising, from personal observation in the
+daytime--which she hoped would not be deemed a liberty; literature, even
+in manuscript, being, so to speak, public property--found herself in a
+position to confirm all that Mr. Jarman had remarked. Speaking as one
+not entirely without authority on the subject of literature and the
+drama, Mrs. Peedles could say that passages she had read had struck her
+as distinctly not half bad. Some of the love-scenes, in particular, had
+made her to feel quite a girl again. How he had acquired such knowledge
+was not for her to say. Cries of "Naughty!" from Jarman, and "Oh, Mr.
+Kelver, I shall be quite afraid of you," roguishly from Miss Sellars.
+
+The O'Kelly, who, having abandoned his favourite champagne for less
+sobering liquor, had since supper-time become rapidly more cheerful,
+felt sure there was a future before me. That he had not seen any of my
+work, so he assured me, in no way lessened his opinion of it. One thing
+only would he impress upon me: that the best work was the result of
+strict attention to virtue. His advice to me was to marry young and be
+happy.
+
+My persevering efforts of the last few months towards the acquisition of
+convivial habits appeared this evening to be receiving their reward. The
+O'Kelly's sweet champagne I had drunk with less dislike than hitherto; a
+white, syrupy sort of stuff, out of a fat and artistic-looking bottle,
+I had found distinctly grateful to the palate. Dimly the quotation about
+taking things at the flood, and so getting on quickly, floated through
+my brain, coupled with another one about fortune favouring the bold. It
+had seemed to me a good occasion to try for the second time in my life
+a full flavoured cigar. I had selected with the caution of a connoisseur
+one of mottled green complexion from the O'Kelly's largest box. And so
+far all had gone well. An easy self-confidence, delightful by reason of
+its novelty, had replaced my customary shyness; a sense of lightness--of
+positive airiness, emanating from myself, pervaded all things. Tossing
+off another glass of the champagne, I rose to reply.
+
+Modesty in my present mood would have been affectation. To such dear and
+well-beloved friends I had no hesitation in admitting the truth, that I
+was a clever fellow--a damned clever fellow. I knew it, they knew it, in
+a short time everybody would know it. But they need not fear that in
+the hour of my pride, when it arrived, I should prove ungrateful. Never
+should I forget their kindness to me, a lonely young man, alone in a
+lonely--Here the pathos of my own situation overcame me; words seemed
+weak. "Jarman--" I meant, putting my hand upon his head, to have blessed
+him for his goodness to me; but he being not exactly where he looked to
+be, I just missed him, and sat down on the edge of my chair, which was a
+hard one. I had not intended this to be the end of my speech, by a long
+one; but Jarman, whispering to me: "Ended at exactly the right moment;
+shows the born orator," strong inclination to remain seated, now that I
+was down seconding his counsel, and the company being clearly satisfied,
+I decided to leave things where they were.
+
+A delightful dreaminess was stealing over me. Everything and everybody
+appeared to be a long way off, but, whether because of this or in
+spite of it, exceedingly attractive. Never had I noticed the Signora
+so bewitching; in a motherly sort of way even the third floor front was
+good to look upon; Mrs. Peedles I could almost have believed to be the
+real Flora MacDonald sitting in front of me. But the vision of Miss
+Rosina Sellars made literally my head to swim. Never before had I dared
+to cast upon female loveliness the satisfying gaze with which I now
+boldly regarded her every movement. Evidently she noticed it, for she
+turned away her eyes. I had heard that exceptionally strong-minded
+people merely by concentrating their will could make other, ordinary
+people, do just whatever they, the exceptionally strong-minded people,
+wished. I willed that Miss Rosina Sellars should turn her eyes again
+towards me. Victory crowned my efforts. Evidently I was one of these
+exceptionally strong-minded persons. Slowly her eyes came round and met
+mine with a smile--a helpless, pathetic smile that said, so I read it:
+"You know no woman can resist you: be merciful!"
+
+Inflamed by the brutal lust of conquest, I suppose I must have willed
+still further, for the next thing I remember is sitting with Miss
+Sellars on the sofa, holding her hand, the while the O'Kelly sang a
+sentimental ballad, only one line of which comes back to me: "For the
+angels must have told him, and he knows I love him now," much stress
+upon the "now." The others had their backs towards us. Miss Sellars,
+with a look that pierced my heart, dropped her somewhat large head upon
+my shoulder, leaving, as I observed the next day, a patch of powder on
+my coat.
+
+Miss Sellars observed that one of the saddest things in the world was
+unrequited love.
+
+I replied gallantly, "Whateryou know about it?"
+
+"Ah, you men, you men," murmured Miss Sellars; "you're all alike."
+
+This suggested a personal aspersion on my character. "Not allus," I
+murmured.
+
+"You don't know what love is," said Miss Sellars. "You're not old
+enough."
+
+The O'Kelly had passed on to Sullivan's "Sweethearts," then in its first
+popularity.
+
+     "Oh, love for a year--a week--a day!
+     But oh for the love that loves al-wa-ays!"
+
+Miss Sellars' languishing eyes were fixed upon me; Miss Sellars' red
+lips pouted and twitched; Miss Sellars' white bosom rose and fell.
+Never, so it seemed to me, had so large an amount of beauty been
+concentrated in one being.
+
+"Yeserdo," I said. "I love you."
+
+I stooped to kiss the red lips, but something was in my way. It turned
+out to be a cold cigar. Miss Sellars thoughtfully removed it, and threw
+it away. Our lips met. Her large arms closed about my neck and held me
+tight.
+
+"Well, I'm sure!" came the voice of Mrs. Peedles, as from afar. "Nice
+goings on!"
+
+I have vague remembrance of a somewhat heated discussion, in which
+everybody but myself appeared to be taking extreme interest--of Miss
+Sellars in her most ladylike and chilling tones defending me against the
+charge of "being no gentleman," which Mrs. Peedles was explaining nobody
+had said I wasn't. The argument seemed to be of the circular order. No
+gentleman had ever kissed Miss Sellars who had not every right to do so,
+nor ever would. To kiss Miss Sellars without such right was to declare
+oneself no gentleman. Miss Sellars appealed to me to clear my character
+from the aspersion of being no gentleman. I was trying to understand
+the situation, when Jarman, seizing me somewhat roughly by the arm,
+suggested my going to bed. Miss Sellars, seizing my other arm, suggested
+my refusing to go to bed. So far I was with Miss Sellars. I didn't want
+to go to bed, and said so. My desire to sit up longer was proof positive
+to Miss Sellars that I was a gentleman, but to no one else. The argument
+shifted, the question being now as to whether Miss Sellars were a lady.
+To prove the point it was, according to Miss Sellars, necessary that
+I should repeat I loved her. I did repeat it, adding, with faint
+remembrance of my own fiction, that if a life's devotion was likely to
+be of the slightest further proof, my heart's blood was at her
+service. This cleared the air, Mrs. Peedles observing that under such
+circumstances it only remained for her to withdraw everything she had
+said; to which Miss Sellars replied graciously that she had always known
+Mrs. Peedles to be a good sort at the bottom.
+
+Nevertheless, gaiety was gone from among us, and for this, in some way
+I could not understand, I appeared to be responsible. Jarman was
+distinctly sulky. The O'Kelly, suddenly thinking of the time, went to
+the door and discovered that the two cabs were waiting. The third floor
+recollected that work had to be finished. I myself felt sleepy.
+
+Our host and hostess departed; Jarman again suggested bed, and this
+time I agreed with him. After a slight misunderstanding with the door, I
+found myself upon the stairs. I had never noticed before that they
+were quite perpendicular. Adapting myself to the changed conditions, I
+climbed them with the help of my hands. I accomplished the last flight
+somewhat quickly, and feeling tired, sat down the moment I was within
+my own room. Jarman knocked at the door. I told him to come in; but he
+didn't. It occurred to me that the reason was I was sitting on the floor
+with my back against the door. The discovery amused me exceedingly and
+I laughed; and Jarman, baffled, descended to his own floor. I found
+getting into bed a difficulty, owing to the strange behaviour of the
+room. It spun round and round. Now the bed was just in front of me, now
+it was behind me. I managed at last to catch it before it could get past
+me, and holding on by the ironwork, frustrated its efforts to throw me
+out again on to the floor.
+
+But it was some time before I went to sleep, and over my intervening
+experiences I draw a veil.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM. BUT BEFORE SETTING OUT, HE
+WILL GO A-VISITING.
+
+The sun was streaming into my window when I woke in the morning. I sat
+up and listened. The roar of the streets told me plainly that the day
+had begun without me. I reached out my hand for my watch; it was not in
+its usual place upon the rickety dressing-table. I raised myself still
+higher and looked about me. My clothes lay scattered on the floor. One
+boot, in solitary state, occupied the chair by the fireplace; the other
+I could not see anywhere.
+
+During the night my head appeared to have grown considerably. I
+wondered idly for the moment whether I had not made a mistake and put
+on Minikin's; if so, I should be glad to exchange back for my own.
+This thing I had got was a top-heavy affair, and was aching most
+confoundedly.
+
+Suddenly the recollection of the previous night rushed at me and shook
+me awake. From a neighbouring steeple rang chimes: I counted with care.
+Eleven o'clock. I sprang out of bed, and at once sat down upon the
+floor.
+
+I remembered how, holding on to the bed, I had felt the room waltzing
+wildly round and round. It had not quite steadied itself even yet. It
+was still rotating, not whirling now, but staggering feebly, as
+though worn out by its all-night orgie. Creeping to the wash-stand, I
+succeeded, after one or two false plunges, in getting my head inside
+the basin. Then, drawing on my trousers with difficulty and reaching
+the easy-chair, I sat down and reviewed matters so far as I was able,
+commencing from the present and working back towards the past.
+
+I was feeling very ill. That was quite clear. Something had disagreed
+with me.
+
+"That strong cigar," I whispered feebly to myself; "I ought never to
+have ventured upon it. And then the little room with all those people
+in it. Besides, I have been working very hard. I must really take more
+exercise."
+
+It gave me some satisfaction to observe that, shuffling and cowardly
+though I might be, I was not a person easily bamboozled.
+
+"Nonsense," I told myself brutally; "don't try to deceive me. You were
+drunk."
+
+"Not drunk," I pleaded; "don't say drunk; it is such a coarse
+expression. Some people cannot stand sweet champagne, so I have heard.
+It affected my liver. Do please make it a question of liver."
+
+"Drunk," I persisted unrelentingly, "hopelessly, vulgarly drunk--drunk
+as any 'Arry after a Bank Holiday."
+
+"It is the first time," I murmured.
+
+"It was your first opportunity," I replied.
+
+"Never again," I promised.
+
+"The stock phrase," I returned.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Nineteen."
+
+"So you have not even the excuse of youth. How do you know that it will
+not grow upon you; that, having thus commenced a downward career, you
+will not sink lower and lower, and so end by becoming a confirmed sot?"
+
+My heavy head dropped into my hands, and I groaned. Many a temperance
+tale perused on Sunday afternoons came back to me. Imaginative in all
+directions, I watched myself hastening toward a drunkard's grave, now
+heroically struggling against temptation, now weakly yielding, the
+craving growing upon me. In the misty air about me I saw my father's
+white face, my mother's sad eyes. I thought of Barbara, of the scorn
+that could quiver round that bewitching mouth; of Hal, with his
+tremendous contempt for all forms of weakness. Shame of the present and
+terror of the future between them racked my mind.
+
+"It shall be never again!" I cried aloud. "By God, it shall!" (At
+nineteen one is apt to be vehement.) "I will leave this house at once,"
+I continued to myself aloud; "I will get away from its unwholesome
+atmosphere. I will wipe it out of my mind, and all connected with it. I
+will make a fresh start. I will--"
+
+Something I had been dimly conscious of at the back of my brain came
+forward and stood before me: the flabby figure of Miss Rosina Sellars.
+What was she doing here? What right had she to step between me and my
+regeneration?
+
+"The right of your affianced bride," my other half explained, with a
+grim smile to myself.
+
+"Did I really go so far as that?"
+
+"We will not go into details," I replied; "I do not wish to dwell upon
+them. That was the result."
+
+"I was--I was not quite myself at the time. I did not know what I was
+doing."
+
+"As a rule, we don't when we do foolish things; but we have to abide by
+the consequences, all the same. Unfortunately, it happened to be in the
+presence of witnesses, and she is not the sort of lady to be easily got
+rid of. You will marry her and settle down with her in two small rooms.
+Her people will be your people. You will come to know them better before
+many days are passed. Among them she is regarded as 'the lady,' from
+which you can judge of them. A nice commencement of your career, is it
+not, my ambitious young friend? A nice mess you have made of it!"
+
+"What am I to do?" I asked.
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know," I answered.
+
+I passed a wretched day. Ashamed to face Mrs. Peedles or even the
+slavey, I kept to my room, with the door locked. At dusk, feeling a
+little better--or, rather, less bad, I stole out and indulged in a
+simple meal, consisting of tea without sugar and a kippered herring, at
+a neighbouring coffee-house. Another gentleman, taking his seat opposite
+to me and ordering hot buttered toast, I left hastily.
+
+At eight o'clock in the evening Minikin called round from the office to
+know what had happened. Seeking help from shame, I confessed to him the
+truth.
+
+"Thought as much," he answered. "Seems to have been an A1 from the look
+of you."
+
+"I am glad it has happened, now it is over," I said to him. "It will be
+a lesson I shall never forget."
+
+"I know," said Minikin. "Nothing like a fair and square drunk for making
+you feel real good; better than a sermon."
+
+In my trouble I felt the need of advice; and Minikin, though my junior,
+was, I knew, far more experienced in worldly affairs than I was.
+
+"That's not the worst," I confided to him. "What do you think I've
+done?"
+
+"Killed a policeman?" suggested Minikin.
+
+"Got myself engaged."
+
+"No one like you quiet fellows for going it when you do begin,"
+commented Minikin. "Nice girl?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered. "I only know I don't want her. How can I get
+out of it?"
+
+Minikin removed his left eye and commenced to polish it upon his
+handkerchief, a habit he had when in doubt. From looking into it he
+appeared to derive inspiration.
+
+"Take-her-own-part sort of a girl?"
+
+I intimated that he had diagnosed Miss Rosina Sellars correctly.
+
+"Know how much you're earning?"
+
+"She knows I live up here in this attic and do my own cooking," I
+answered.
+
+Minikin glanced round the room. "Must be fond of you."
+
+"She thinks I'm clever," I explained, "and that I shall make my way.
+
+"And she's willing to wait?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Well, I should let her wait," replied Minikin, replacing his eye.
+"There's plenty of time before you."
+
+"But she's a barmaid, and she'll expect me to walk with her, to take her
+out on Sundays, to go and see her friends. I can't do it. Besides, she's
+right: I mean to get on. Then she'll stick to me. It's awful!"
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Minikin.
+
+"I don't know," I replied. "I didn't know I had done it till it was
+over."
+
+"Anybody present?"
+
+"Half-a-dozen of them," I groaned.
+
+The door opened, and Jarman entered; he never troubled to knock
+anywhere. In place of his usual noisy greeting, he crossed in silence
+and shook me gravely by the hand.
+
+"Friend of yours?" he asked, indicating Minikin.
+
+I introduced them to each other.
+
+"Proud to meet you," said Jarman.
+
+"Glad to hear it," said Minikin. "Don't look as if you'd got much else
+to be stuck up about."
+
+"Don't mind him," I explained to Jarman. "He was born like it."
+
+"Wonderful gift" replied Jarman. "D'ye know what I should do if I 'ad
+it?" He did not wait for Minikin's reply. "'Ire myself out to break up
+evening parties. Ever thought of it seriously?"
+
+Minikin replied that he would give the idea consideration.
+
+"Make your fortune going round the suburbs," assured him Jarman. "Pity
+you weren't 'ere last night," he continued; "might 'ave saved our young
+friend 'ere a deal of trouble. Has 'e told you the news?"
+
+I explained that I had already put Minikin in possession of all the
+facts.
+
+"Now you've got a good, steady eye," said Jarman, upon whom Minikin,
+according to his manner, had fixed his glass orb; "'ow d'ye think 'e is
+looking?"
+
+"As well as can be expected under the circumstances, don't you think?"
+answered Minikin.
+
+"Does 'e know the circumstances? Has 'e seen the girl?" asked Jarman.
+
+I replied he had not as yet enjoyed that privilege. "Then 'e don't know
+the worst," said Jarman. "A hundred and sixty pounds of 'er, and still
+growing! Bit of a load for 'im, ain't it?"
+
+"Some of 'em do have luck," was Minikin's rejoinder. Jarman
+leant forward and took further stock for a few seconds of his new
+acquaintance.
+
+"That's a fine 'ead of yours," he remarked; "all your own? No offence,"
+continued Jarman, without giving Minikin time for repartee. "I was
+merely thinking there must be room for a lot of sense in it. Now, what
+do you, as a practical man, advise 'im: dose of poison, or Waterloo
+Bridge and a brick?"
+
+"I suppose there's no doubt," I interjected, "that we are actually
+engaged?"
+
+"Not a blooming shadow," assured me Jarman, cheerfully, "so far as she's
+concerned."
+
+"I shall tell her plainly," I explained, "that I was drunk at the time."
+
+"And 'ow are you going to convince 'er of it?" asked Jarman. "You think
+your telling 'er you loved 'er proves it. So it would to anybody else,
+but not to 'er. You can't expect it. Besides, if every girl is going to
+give up 'er catch just because the fellow 'adn't all 'is wits about 'im
+at the time--well, what do you think?" He appealed to Minikin.
+
+To Minikin it appeared that if such contention were allowed girls might
+as well shut up shop.
+
+Jarman, who now that he had "got even" with Minikin, was more friendly
+disposed towards that young man, drew his chair closer to him and
+entered upon a private and confidential argument, from which I appeared
+to be entirely excluded.
+
+"You see," explained Jarman, "this ain't an ordinary case. This chap's
+going to be the future Poet Laureate. Now, when the Prince of Wales
+invites him to dine at Marlborough 'ouse, 'e don't want to go there
+tacked on to a girl that carries aitches with her in a bag, and don't
+know which end of the spoon out of which to drink 'er soup."
+
+"It makes a difference, of course," agreed Minikin.
+
+"What we've got to do," said Jarman, "is to get 'im out of it. And upon
+my sivvy, blessed if I see 'ow to do it!"
+
+"She fancies him?" asked Minikin.
+
+"What she fancies," explained Jarman, "is that nature intended 'er to be
+a lady. And it's no good pointing out to 'er the mistake she's making,
+because she ain't got sense enough to see it."
+
+"No good talking straight to her," suggested Minikin, "telling her that
+it can never be?"
+
+"That's our difficulty," replied Jarman; "it can be. This chap"--I
+listened as might a prisoner in the dock to the argument of counsel,
+interested but impotent--"don't know enough to come in out of the rain,
+as the saying is. 'E's just the sort of chap this sort of thing does
+'appen to."
+
+"But he don't want her," urged Minikin. "He says he don't want her."
+
+"Yes, to you and me," answered Jarman; "and of course 'e don't. I'm
+not saying 'e's a natural born idiot. But let 'er come along and do
+a snivel--tell 'im that 'e's breaking 'er 'eart, and appeal to 'im to
+be'ave as a gentleman, and all that sort of thing, and what do you think
+will be the result?"
+
+Minikin agreed that the problem presented difficulties.
+
+"Of course, if 'twas you or me, we should just tell 'er to put 'erself
+away somewhere where the moth couldn't get at 'er and wait till we sent
+round for 'er; and there'd be an end of the matter. But with 'im it's
+different."
+
+"He is a bit of a soft," agreed Minikin.
+
+"'Tain't 'is fault," explained Jarman; "'twas the way 'e was brought up.
+'E fancies girls are the sort of things one sees in plays, going about
+saying 'Un'and me!' 'Let me pass!' Maybe some of 'em are, but this ain't
+one of 'em."
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Minikin.
+
+"'Ow does it 'appen nine times out of ten?" returned Jarman. "'E was a
+bit misty, and she was wide awake. 'E gets a bit spoony, and--well, you
+know."
+
+"Artful things, girls," commented Minikin.
+
+"Can't blame 'em," returned Jarman, with generosity; "it's their
+business. Got to dispose of themselves somehow. Oughtn't to be binding
+without a written order dated the next morning; that'd make it all
+right."
+
+"Couldn't prove a prior engagement?" suggested Minikin.
+
+"She'd want to see the girl first before she'd believe it--only
+natural," returned Jarman.
+
+"Couldn't get a girl?" urged Minikin.
+
+"Who could you trust?" asked the cautious Jarman. "Besides, there ain't
+time. She's letting 'im rest to-day; to-morrow evening she'll be down on
+'im."
+
+"Don't see anything for it," said Minikin, "but for him to do a bunk."
+
+"Not a bad idea that," mused Jarman; "only where's 'e to bunk to?"
+
+"Needn't go far," said Minikin.
+
+"She'd find 'im out and follow 'im," said Jarman. "She can look after
+herself, mind you. Don't you go doing 'er any injustice."
+
+"He could change his name," suggested Minikin.
+
+"'Ow could 'e get a crib?" asked Jarman; "no character, no references."
+
+"I've got it," cried Jarman, starting up; "the stage!"
+
+"Can he act?" asked Minikin.
+
+"Can do anything," retorted my supporter, "that don't want too much
+sense. That's 'is sanctuary, the stage. No questions asked, no character
+wanted. Lord! why didn't I think of it before?"
+
+"Wants a bit of getting on to, doesn't it?" suggested Minikin.
+
+"Depends upon where you want to get," replied Jarman. For the first
+time since the commencement of the discussion he turned to me. "Can you
+sing?" he asked me.
+
+I replied that I could a little, though I had never done so in public.
+
+"Sing something now," demanded Jarman; "let's 'ear you. Wait a minute!"
+he cried.
+
+He slipped out of the room. I heard him pause upon the landing below
+and knock at the door of the fair Rosina's room. The next minute he
+returned.
+
+"It's all right," he explained; "she's not in yet. Now, sing for all
+you're worth. Remember, it's for life and freedom."
+
+I sang "Sally in Our Alley," not with much spirit, I am inclined to
+think. With every mention of the lady's name there rose before me the
+abundant form and features of my _fiancee_, which checked the feeling
+that should have trembled through my voice. But Jarman, though not
+enthusiastic, was content.
+
+"It isn't what I call a grand opera voice," he commented, "but it ought
+to do all right for a chorus where economy is the chief point to be
+considered. Now, I'll tell you what to do. You go to-morrow straight to
+the O'Kelly, and put the whole thing before 'im. 'E's a good sort; 'e'll
+touch you up a bit, and maybe give you a few introductions. Lucky for
+you, this is just the right time. There's one or two things comin'
+on, and if Fate ain't dead against you, you'll lose your amorita, or
+whatever it's called, and not find 'er again till it's too late."
+
+I was not in the mood that evening to feel hopeful about anything; but I
+thanked both of them for their kind intentions and promised to think
+the suggestion over on the morrow, when, as it was generally agreed, I
+should be in a more fitting state to bring cool judgment to bear upon
+the subject; and they rose to take their departure.
+
+Leaving Minikin to descend alone, Jarman returned the next minute.
+"Consols are down a bit this week," he whispered, with the door in his
+hand. "If you want a little of the ready to carry you through, don't
+go sellin' out. I can manage a few pounds. Suck a couple of lemons and
+you'll be all right in the morning. So long."
+
+I followed his advice regarding the lemons, and finding it correct, went
+to the office next morning as usual. Lott & Co., in consideration of my
+agreeing to a deduction of two shillings on the week's salary, allowed
+himself to overlook the matter. I had intended acting on Jarman's
+advice, to call upon the O'Kelly at his address of respectability in
+Hampstead that evening, and had posted him a note saying I was coming.
+Before leaving the office, however, I received a reply to the effect
+that he would be out that evening, and asking me to make it the
+following Friday instead. Disappointed, I returned to my lodgings in a
+depressed state of mind. Jarman 's scheme, which had appeared hopeful
+and even attractive during the daytime, now loomed shadowy and
+impossible before me. The emptiness of the first floor parlour as
+I passed its open door struck a chill upon me, reminding me of the
+disappearance of a friend to whom, in spite of moral disapproval, I had
+during these last few months become attached. Unable to work, the old
+pain of loneliness returned upon me. I sat for awhile in the darkness,
+listening to the scratching of the pen of my neighbour, the old
+law-writer, and the sense of despair that its sound always communicated
+to me encompassed me about this evening with heavier weight than usual.
+
+After all, was not the sympathy of the Lady 'Ortensia, stimulated for
+personal purposes though it might be, better than nothing? At least,
+here was some living creature to whom I belonged, to whom my existence
+or nonexistence was of interest, who, if only for her own sake, was
+bound to share my hopes, my fears.
+
+It was in this mood that I heard a slight tap at the door. In the dim
+passage stood the small slavey, holding out a note. I took it, and
+returning, lighted my candle. The envelope was pink and scented. It was
+addressed, in handwriting not so bad as I had expected, to "Paul Kelver,
+Esquire." I opened it and read:
+
+"Dr mr. Paul--I herd as how you was took hill hafter the party. I feer
+you are not strong. You must not work so hard or you will be hill and
+then I shall be very cros with you. I hop you are well now. If so I am
+going for a wark and you may come with me if you are good. With much
+love. From your affechonat ROSIE."
+
+In spite of the spelling, a curious, tingling sensation stole over me
+as I read this my first love-letter. A faint mist swam before my eyes.
+Through it, glorified and softened, I saw the face of my betrothed,
+pasty yet alluring, her large white fleshy arms stretched out invitingly
+toward me. Moved by a sudden hot haste that seized me, I dressed myself
+with trembling hands; I appeared to be anxious to act without giving
+myself time for thought. Complete, with a colour in my cheeks unusual to
+them, and a burning in my eyes, I descended and knocked with a nervous
+hand at the door of the second floor back.
+
+"Who's that?" came in answer Miss Sellars' sharp tones.
+
+"It is I--Paul."
+
+"Oh, wait a minute, dear." The tone was sweeter. There followed the
+sound of scurried footsteps, a rustling of clothes, a banging of
+drawers, a few moments' dead silence, and then:
+
+"You can come in now, dear."
+
+I entered. It was a small, untidy room, smelling of smoky lamp; but all
+I saw distinctly at the moment was Miss Sellars with her arms above her
+head, pinning her hat upon her straw-coloured hair.
+
+With the sight of her before me in the flesh, my feelings underwent a
+sudden revulsion. During the few minutes she had kept me waiting outside
+the door I had suffered from an almost uncontrollable desire to turn the
+handle and rush in. Now, had I acted on impulse, I should have run out.
+Not that she was an unpleasant-looking girl by any means; it was the
+atmosphere of coarseness, of commonness, around her that repelled me.
+The fastidiousness--finikinness; if you will--that would so often spoil
+my rare chop, put before me by a waitress with dirty finger-nails,
+forced me to disregard the ample charms she no doubt did possess, to
+fasten my eyes exclusively upon her red, rough hands and the one or two
+warts that grew thereon.
+
+"You're a very naughty boy," told me Miss Sellars, finishing the
+fastening of her hat. "Why didn't you come in and see me in the
+dinner-_h_our? I've a great mind not to kiss you."
+
+The powder she had evidently dabbed on hastily was plainly visible upon
+her face; the round, soft arms were hidden beneath ill-fitting sleeves
+of some crapey material, the thought of which put my teeth on edge. I
+wished her intention had been stronger. Instead, relenting, she
+offered me her flowery cheek, which I saluted gingerly, the taste of it
+reminding me of certain pale, thin dough-cakes manufactured by the wife
+of our school porter and sold to us in playtime at four a penny, and
+which, having regard to their satisfying quality, had been popular with
+me in those days.
+
+At the top of the kitchen stairs Miss Sellars paused and called down
+shrilly to Mrs. Peedles, who in course of time appeared, panting.
+
+"Oh, me and Mr. Kelver are going out for a short walk, Mrs. Peedles. I
+shan't want any supper. Good night."
+
+"Oh, good night, my dear," replied Mrs. Peedles. "Hope you'll enjoy
+yourselves. Is Mr. Kelver there?"
+
+"He's round the corner," I heard Miss Sellars explain in a lower voice;
+and there followed a snigger.
+
+"He's a bit shy, ain't he?" suggested Mrs. Peedles in a whisper.
+
+"I've had enough of the other sort," was Miss Sellars' answer in low
+tones.
+
+"Ah, well; it's the shy ones that come out the strongest after a
+bit--leastways, that's been my experience."
+
+"He'll do all right. So long."
+
+Miss Sellars, buttoning a burst glove, rejoined me.
+
+"I suppose you've never had a sweetheart before?" asked Miss Sellars, as
+we turned into the Blackfriars Road.
+
+I admitted that this was my first experience.
+
+"I can't a-bear a flirty man," explained Miss Sellars. "That's why I
+took to you from the beginning. You was so quiet."
+
+I began to wish that nature had bestowed upon me a noisier temperament.
+
+"Anybody could see you was a gentleman," continued Miss Sellars. "Heaps
+and heaps of hoffers I've had--_h_undreds you might almost say. But what
+I've always told 'em is, 'I like you very much indeed as a friend, but
+I'm not going to marry any one but a gentleman.' Don't you think I was
+right?"
+
+I murmured it was only what I should have expected of her.
+
+"You may take my harm, if you like," suggested Miss Sellars, as we
+crossed St. George's Circus; and linked, we pursued our way along the
+Kennington Park Road.
+
+Fortunately, there was not much need for me to talk. Miss Sellars was
+content to supply most of the conversation herself, and all of it was
+about herself.
+
+I learned that her instincts since childhood had been toward gentility.
+Nor was this to be wondered at, seeing that her family--on her mother's
+side, at all events,--were connected distinctly with "the _h_ighest in
+the land." _Mesalliances_, however, are common in all communities, and
+one of them, a particularly flagrant specimen--her "Mar" had, alas!
+contracted, having married--what did I think? I should never guess--a
+waiter! Miss Sellars, stopping in the act of crossing Newington Butts to
+shudder at the recollection of her female parent's shame, was nearly run
+down by a tramcar.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Sellars did not appear to have "hit it off" together. Could
+one wonder: Mrs. Sellars with an uncle on the Stock Exchange, and Mr.
+Sellars with one on Peckham Rye? I gathered his calling to have been,
+chiefly, "three shies a penny." Mrs. Sellars was now, however, happily
+dead; and if no other good thing had come out of the catastrophe, it had
+determined Miss Sellars to take warning by her mother's error and avoid
+connection with the lowly born. She it was who, with my help, would lift
+the family back again to its proper position in society.
+
+"It used to be a joke against me," explained Miss Sellars, "heven when
+I was quite a child. I never could tolerate anything low. Why, one day
+when I was only seven years old, what do you think happened?"
+
+I confessed my inability to guess.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you," said Miss Sellars; "it'll just show you. Uncle
+Joseph--that was father's uncle, you understand?"
+
+I assured Miss Sellars that the point was fixed in my mind.
+
+"Well, one day when he came to see us he takes a cocoanut out of his
+pocket and offers it to me. 'Thank you,' I says; 'I don't heat cocoanuts
+that have been shied at by just anybody and missed!' It made him so
+wild. After that," explained Miss Sellars, "they used to call me at home
+the Princess of Wales."
+
+I murmured it was a pretty fancy.
+
+"Some people," replied Miss Sellars, with a giggle, "says it fits me;
+but, of course, that's only their nonsense."
+
+Not knowing what to reply, I remained silent, which appeared to somewhat
+disappoint Miss Sellars.
+
+Out of the Clapham Road we turned into a by-street of two-storeyed
+houses.
+
+"You'll come in and have a bit of supper?" suggested Miss Sellars.
+"Mar's quite hanxious to see you."
+
+I found sufficient courage to say I was not feeling well, and would much
+rather return home.
+
+"Oh, but you must just come in for five minutes, dear. It'll look so
+funny if you don't. I told 'em we was coming."
+
+"I would really rather not," I urged; "some other evening." I felt
+a presentiment, I confided to her, that on this particular evening I
+should not shine to advantage.
+
+"Oh, you mustn't be so shy," said Miss Sellars. "I don't like shy
+fellows--not too shy. That's silly." And Miss Sellars took my arm with
+a decided grip, making it clear to me that escape could be obtained only
+by an unseemly struggle in the street; not being prepared for which, I
+meekly yielded.
+
+We knocked at the door of one of the small houses, Miss Sellars
+retaining her hold upon me until it had been opened to us by a lank
+young man in his shirt-sleeves and closed behind us.
+
+"Don't gentlemen wear coats of a hevening nowadays?" asked Miss Sellars,
+tartly, of the lank young man. "New fashion just come in?"
+
+"I don't know what gentlemen wear in the evening or what they don't,"
+retorted the lank young man, who appeared to be in an aggressive mood.
+"If I can find one in this street, I'll ast him and let you know."
+
+"Mother in the droaring-room?" enquired Miss Sellars, ignoring the
+retort.
+
+"They're all of 'em in the parlour, if that's what you mean," returned
+the lank young man, "the whole blooming shoot. If you stand up against
+the wall and don't breathe, there'll just be room for you."
+
+Sweeping by the lank young man, Miss Sellars opened the parlour door,
+and towing me in behind her, shut it.
+
+"Well, Mar, here we are," announced Miss Sellars. An enormously stout
+lady, ornamented with a cap that appeared to have been made out of a
+bandanna handkerchief, rose to greet us, thus revealing the fact
+that she had been sitting upon an extremely small horsehair-covered
+easy-chair, the disproportion between the lady and her support being
+quite pathetic.
+
+"I am charmed, Mr.--"
+
+"Kelver," supplied Miss Sellars.
+
+"Kelver, to make your ac-quain-tance," recited Mrs. Sellars in the tone
+of one repeating a lesson.
+
+I bowed, and murmured that the honour was entirely mine.
+
+"Don't mention it," replied Mrs. Sellars. "Pray be seated."
+
+Mrs. Sellars herself set the example by suddenly giving way and dropping
+down into her chair, which thus again became invisible. It received her
+with an agonised groan.
+
+Indeed, the insistence with which this article of furniture throughout
+the evening called attention to its sufferings was really quite
+distracting. With every breath that Mrs. Sellars took it moaned wearily.
+There were moments when it literally shrieked. I could not have accepted
+Mrs. Sellars' offer had I wished, there being no chair vacant and no
+room for another. A young man with watery eyes, sitting just behind me
+between a fat young lady and a lean one, rose and suggested my taking
+his place. Miss Sellars introduced me to him as her cousin Joseph
+something or other, and we shook hands.
+
+The watery-eyed Joseph remarked that it had been a fine day between
+the showers, and hoped that the morrow would be either wet or dry; upon
+which the lean young lady, having slapped him, asked admiringly of the
+fat young lady if he wasn't a "silly fool;" to which the fat young lady
+replied, with somewhat unnecessary severity, I thought, that no one
+could help being what they were born. To this the lean young lady
+retorted that it was with precisely similar reflection that she herself
+controlled her own feelings when tempted to resent the fat young lady's
+"nasty jealous temper."
+
+The threatened quarrel was nipped in the bud by the discretion of Miss
+Sellars, who took the opportunity of the fat young lady's momentary
+speechlessness to introduce me promptly to both of them. They also,
+I learned, were cousins. The lean girl said she had "erd on me," and
+immediately fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggles; of which the
+watery-eyed Joseph requested me to take no notice, explaining that she
+always went off like that at exactly three-quarters to the half-hour
+every evening, Sundays and holidays excepted; that she had taken
+everything possible for it without effect, and that what he himself
+advised was that she should have it off.
+
+The fat girl, seizing the chance afforded her, remarked genteelly that
+she too had "heard hof me," with emphasis upon the "hof." She also
+remarked it was a long walk from Blackfriars Bridge.
+
+"All depends upon the company, eh? Bet they didn't find it too long."
+
+This came from a loud-voiced, red-faced man sitting on the sofa beside a
+somewhat melancholy-looking female dressed in bright green. These twain
+I discovered to be Uncle and Aunt Gutton. From an observation dropped
+later in the evening concerning government restrictions on the sale of
+methylated spirit, and hastily smothered, I gathered that their line was
+oil and colour.
+
+Mr. Gutton's forte appeared to be badinage. He it was who, on my
+explaining my heightened colour as due to the closeness of the evening,
+congratulated his niece on having secured so warm a partner.
+
+"Will be jolly handy," shouted Uncle Gutton, "for Rosina, seeing she's
+always complaining of her cold feet."
+
+Here the lank young man attempted to squeeze himself into the room, but
+found his entrance barred by the square, squat figure of the watery-eyed
+young man.
+
+"Don't push," advised the watery-eyed young man. "Walk over me quietly."
+
+"Well, why don't yer get out of the way," growled the lank young man,
+now coated, but still aggressive.
+
+"Where am I to get to?" asked the watery-eyed young man, with some
+reason. "Say the word and I'll 'ang myself up to the gas bracket."
+
+"In my courting days," roared Uncle Gutton, "the girls used to be able
+to find seats, even if there wasn't enough chairs to go all round."
+
+The sentiment was received with varying degrees of approbation. The
+watery-eyed young man, sitting down, put the lean young lady on his
+knee, and in spite of her struggles and sounding slaps, heroically
+retained her there.
+
+"Now, then, Rosie," shouted Uncle Gutton, who appeared to have
+constituted himself master of the ceremonies, "don't stand about, my
+girl; you'll get tired."
+
+Left to herself, I am inclined to think my _fiancee_ would have spared
+me; but Uncle Gutton, having been invited to a love comedy, was not
+to be cheated of any part of the performance, and the audience clearly
+being with him, there was nothing for it but compliance. I seated
+myself, and amid plaudits accommodated the ample and heavy Rosina upon
+my knee.
+
+"Good-bye," called out to me the watery-eyed young man, as behind the
+fair Rosina I disappeared from his view. "See you again later on."
+
+"I used to be a plump girl myself before I married," observed Aunt
+Gutton. "Plump as butter I was at one time."
+
+"It isn't what one eats," said the maternal Sellars. "I myself don't eat
+enough to keep a fly, and my legs--"
+
+"That'll do, Mar," interrupted the filial Sellars, tartly.
+
+"I was only going to say, my dear--"
+
+"We all know what you was going to say, Mar," retorted Miss Sellars.
+"We've heard it before, and it isn't interesting."
+
+Mrs. Sellars relapsed into silence.
+
+"'Ard work and plenty of it keeps you thin enough, I notice," remarked
+the lank young man, with bitterness. To him I was now introduced, he
+being Mr. George Sellars. "Seen 'im before," was his curt greeting.
+
+At supper--referred to by Mrs. Sellars again in the tone of one
+remembering a lesson, as a cold col-la-tion, with the accent on the
+"tion"--I sat between Miss Sellars and the lean young lady, with Aunt
+and Uncle Gutton opposite to us. It was remarked with approval that I
+did not appear to be hungry.
+
+"Had too many kisses afore he started," suggested Uncle Gutton, with
+his mouth full of cold roast pork and pickles. "Wonderfully nourishing
+thing, kisses, eh? Look at mother and me. That's all we live on."
+
+Aunt Gutton sighed, and observed that she had always been a poor feeder.
+
+The watery-eyed young man, observing he had never tasted them
+himself--at which sally there was much laughter--said he would not mind
+trying a sample if the lean young lady would kindly pass him one.
+
+The lean young lady opined that, not being used to high living, it might
+disagree with him.
+
+"Just one," pleaded the watery-eyed young man, "to go with this bit of
+cracklin'."
+
+The lean young lady, amid renewed applause, first thoughtfully wiping
+her mouth, acceded to his request.
+
+The watery-eyed young man turned it over with the air of a gourmet.
+
+"Not bad," was his verdict. "Reminds me of onions." At this there was
+another burst of laughter.
+
+"Now then, ain't Paul goin' to have one?" shouted Uncle Gutton, when the
+laughter had subsided.
+
+Amid silence, feeling as wretched as perhaps I have ever felt in my life
+before or since, I received one from the gracious Miss Sellars, wet and
+sounding.
+
+"Looks better for it already," commented the delighted Uncle Gutton.
+"He'll soon get fat on 'em."
+
+"Not too many at first," advised the watery-eyed young man. "Looks to me
+as if he's got a weak stomach."
+
+I think, had the meal lasted much longer, I should have made a dash for
+the street; the contemplation of such step was forming in my mind. But
+Miss Sellars, looking at her watch, declared we must be getting home at
+once, for the which I could have kissed her voluntarily; and, being a
+young lady of decision, at once rose and commenced leave-taking. Polite
+protests were attempted, but these, with enthusiastic assistance from
+myself, she swept aside.
+
+"Don't want any one to walk home with you?" suggested Uncle Gutton.
+"Sure you won't feel lonely by yourselves, eh?"
+
+"We shan't come to no harm," assured him Miss Sellars.
+
+"P'raps you're right," agreed Uncle Gutton. "There don't seem to be much
+of the fiery and untamed about him, so far as I can see."
+
+"'Slow waters run deep,'" reminded us Aunt Gutton, with a waggish shake
+of her head.
+
+"No question about the slow," assented Uncle Gutton. "If you don't like
+him--" observed Miss Sellars, speaking with dignity.
+
+"To be quite candid with you, my girl, I don't," answered Uncle Gutton,
+whose temper, maybe as the result of too much cold pork and whiskey,
+seemed to have suddenly changed.
+
+"Well, he happens to be good enough for me," recommenced Miss Sellars.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear a niece of mine say so," interrupted Uncle Gutton.
+"If you want my opinion of him--"
+
+"If ever I do I'll call round some time when you're sober and ast you
+for it," returned Miss Sellars. "And as for being your niece, you was
+here when I came, and I don't see very well as how I could have got out
+of it. You needn't throw that in my teeth."
+
+The gust was dispersed by the practical remark of brother George to the
+effect that the last tram for Walworth left the Oval at eleven-thirty;
+to which he further added the suggestion that the Clapham Road was wide
+and well adapted to a row.
+
+"There ain't going to be no rows," replied Uncle Gutton, returning to
+amiability as suddenly as he had departed from it. "We understand each
+other, don't we, my girl?"
+
+"That's all right, uncle. I know what you mean," returned Miss Sellars,
+with equal handsomeness.
+
+"Bring him round again when he's feeling better," added Uncle Gutton,
+"and we'll have another look at him."
+
+"What you want," advised the watery-eyed young man on shaking hands with
+me, "is complete rest and a tombstone."
+
+I wished at the time I could have followed his prescription.
+
+The maternal Sellars waddled after us into the passage, which she
+completely blocked. She told me she was delight-ted to have met me, and
+that she was always at home on Sundays.
+
+I said I would remember it, and thanked her warmly for a pleasant
+evening, at Miss Sellars' request calling her Ma.
+
+Outside, Miss Sellars agreed that my presentiment had proved
+correct--that I had not shone to advantage. Our journey home on a
+tramcar was a somewhat silent proceeding. At the door of her room she
+forgave me, and kissed me good night. Had I been frank with her, I
+should have thanked her for that evening's experience. It had made my
+course plain to me.
+
+The next day, which was Thursday, I wandered about the streets till two
+o'clock in the morning, when I slipped in quietly, passing Miss Sellars'
+door with my boots in my hand.
+
+After Mr. Lott's departure on Friday, which, fortunately, was pay-day,
+I set my desk in order and confided to Minikin written instructions
+concerning all matters unfinished.
+
+"I shall not be here to-morrow," I told him. "Going to follow your
+advice."
+
+"Found anything to do?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," I answered.
+
+"Suppose you can't get anything?"
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst," I replied, "I can hang myself."
+
+"Well, you know the girl. Maybe you are right," he agreed.
+
+"Hope it won't throw much extra work on you," I said.
+
+"Well, I shan't be catching it if it does," was his answer. "That's all
+right."
+
+He walked with me to the "Angel," and there we parted.
+
+"If you do get on to the stage," he said, "and it's anything worth
+seeing, and you send me an order, and I can find the time, maybe I'll
+come and see you."
+
+I thanked him for his promised support and jumped upon the tram.
+
+The O'Kelly's address was in Belsize Square. I was about to ring and
+knock, as requested by a highly-polished brass plate, when I became
+aware of pieces of small coal falling about me on the doorstep. Looking
+up, I perceived the O'Kelly leaning out of an attic window. From signs
+I gathered I was to retire from the doorstep and wait. In a few minutes
+the door opened and his hand beckoned me to enter.
+
+"Walk quietly," he whispered; and on tip-toe we climbed up to the attic
+from where had fallen the coal. "I've been waiting for ye," explained
+the O'Kelly, speaking low. "Me wife--a good woman, Paul; sure, a better
+woman never lived; ye'll like her when ye know her, later on--she might
+not care about ye're calling. She'd want to know where I met ye, and--ye
+understand? Besides," added the O'Kelly, "we can smoke up here;" and
+seating himself where he could keep an eye upon the door, near to a
+small cupboard out of which he produced a pipe still alight, the O'Kelly
+prepared himself to listen.
+
+I told him briefly the reason of my visit.
+
+"It was my fault, Paul," he was good enough to say; "my fault entirely.
+Between ourselves, it was a damned silly idea, that party, the whole
+thing altogether. Don't ye think so?"
+
+I replied that I was naturally prejudiced against it myself.
+
+"Most unfortunate for me," continued the O'Kelly; "I know that. Me
+cabman took me to Hammersmith instead of Hampstead; said I told him
+Hammersmith. Didn't get home here till three o'clock in the morning.
+Most unfortunate--under the circumstances."
+
+I could quite imagine it.
+
+"But I'm glad ye've come," said the O'Kelly. "I had a notion ye did
+something foolish that evening, but I couldn't remember precisely what.
+It's been worrying me."
+
+"It's been worrying me also, I can assure you," I told him; and I gave
+him an account of my Wednesday evening's experience.
+
+"I'll go round to-morrow morning," he said, "and see one or two people.
+It's not a bad idea, that of Jarman's. I think I may be able to arrange
+something for ye."
+
+He fixed a time for me to call again upon him the next day, when Mrs.
+O'Kelly would be away from home. He instructed me to walk quietly up and
+down on the opposite side of the road with my eye on the attic window,
+and not to come across unless he waved a handkerchief.
+
+Rising to go, I thanked him for his kindness. "Don't put it that way, me
+dear Paul," he answered. "If I don't get ye out of this scrape I shall
+never forgive meself. If we damned silly fools don't help one another,"
+he added, with his pleasant laugh, "who is to help us?"
+
+We crept downstairs as we had crept up. As we reached the first floor,
+the drawing-room door suddenly opened.
+
+"William!" cried a sharp voice.
+
+"Me dear," answered the O'Kelly, snatching his pipe from his mouth and
+thrusting it, still alight, into his trousers pocket. I made the rest
+of the descent by myself, and slipping out, closed the door behind me as
+noiselessly as possible.
+
+Again I did not return to Nelson Square until the early hours, and the
+next morning did not venture out until I had heard Miss Sellars, who
+appeared to be in a bad temper, leave the house. Then running to the top
+of the kitchen stairs, I called for Mrs. Peedles. I told her I was going
+to leave her, and, judging the truth to be the simplest explanation, I
+told her the reason why.
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Peedles, "I am only too glad to hear it. It wasn't
+for me to interfere, but I couldn't help seeing you were making a fool
+of yourself. I only hope you'll get clear off, and you may depend upon
+me to do all I can to help you."
+
+"You don't think I'm acting dishonourably, do you, Mrs. Peedles?" I
+asked.
+
+"My dear," replied Mrs. Peedles, "it's a difficult world to live
+in--leastways, that's been my experience of it."
+
+I had just completed my packing--it had not taken me long--when I
+heard upon the stairs the heavy panting that always announced to me the
+up-coming of Mrs. Peedles. She entered with a bundle of old manuscripts
+under her arm, torn and tumbled booklets of various shapes and sizes.
+These she plumped down upon the rickety table, and herself upon the
+nearest chair.
+
+"Put them in your box, my dear," said Mrs. Peedles. "They'll come in
+useful to you later on."
+
+I glanced at the bundle. I saw it was a collection of old plays in
+manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined. The top one I
+noticed was "The Bloodspot: Or the Maiden, the Miser and the Murderer;"
+the second, "The Female Highwayman."
+
+"Everybody's forgotten 'em," explained Mrs. Peedles, "but there's some
+good stuff in all of them."
+
+"But what am I to do with them?" I enquired.
+
+"Just whatever you like, my dear," explained Mrs. Peedles. "It's quite
+safe. They're all of 'em dead, the authors of 'em. I've picked 'em out
+most carefully. You just take a scene from one and a scene from the
+other. With judgment and your talent you'll make a dozen good plays out
+of that little lot when your time comes."
+
+"But they wouldn't be my plays, Mrs. Peedles," I suggested.
+
+"They will if I give them to you," answered Mrs. Peedles. "You put 'em
+in your box. And never mind the bit of rent," added Mrs. Peedles; "you
+can pay me that later on."
+
+I kissed the kind old soul good-bye and took her gift with me to my new
+lodgings in Camden Town. Many a time have I been hard put to it for
+plot or scene, and more than once in weak mood have I turned with guilty
+intent the torn and crumpled pages of Mrs. Peedles's donation to my
+literary equipment. It is pleasant to be able to put my hand upon my
+heart and reflect that never yet have I yielded to the temptation.
+Always have I laid them back within their drawer, saying to myself, with
+stern reproof:
+
+"No, no, Paul. Stand or fall by your own merits. Never plagiarise--in
+any case, not from this 'little lot.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+LEADS TO A MEETING.
+
+"Don't be nervous," said the O'Kelly, "and don't try to do too much. You
+have a very fair voice, but it's not powerful. Keep cool and open your
+mouth."
+
+It was eleven o'clock in the morning. We were standing at the entrance
+of the narrow court leading to the stage door. For a fortnight past the
+O'Kelly had been coaching me. It had been nervous work for both of us,
+but especially for the O'Kelly. Mrs. O'Kelly, a thin, acid-looking lady,
+of whom I once or twice had caught a glimpse while promenading Belsize
+Square awaiting the O'Kelly's signal, was a serious-minded lady, with a
+conscientious objection to all music not of a sacred character. With the
+hope of winning the O'Kelly from one at least of his sinful tendencies,
+the piano had been got rid of, and its place in the drawing-room filled
+by an American organ of exceptionally lugubrious tone. With this we
+had had to make shift, and though the O'Kelly--a veritable musical
+genius--had succeeded in evolving from it an accompaniment to "Sally in
+Our Alley" less misleading and confusing than might otherwise have been
+the case, the result had not been to lighten our labours. My rendering
+of the famous ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not
+intended by the composer. Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ
+a definition since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad.
+Involuntarily one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as
+satisfactorily as the young man appeared to anticipate. Was there not,
+when one came to think of it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained within
+the temperament of the complainful hero that would ill assort with
+those instincts toward frivolity the careful observer could not avoid
+discerning in the charming yet nevertheless somewhat shallow character
+of Sally.
+
+"Lighter, lighter. Not so soulful," would demand the O'Kelly, as the
+solemn notes rolled jerkily from the groaning instrument beneath his
+hands.
+
+Once we were nearly caught, Mrs. O'Kelly returning from a district
+visitors' committee meeting earlier than was expected. Hastily I was
+hidden in a small conservatory adjutting from the first floor landing,
+where, crouching behind flower-pots, I listened in fear and trembling to
+the severe cross-examination of the O'Kelly.
+
+"William, do not prevaricate. It was not a hymn."
+
+"Me dear, so much depends upon the time. Let me give ye an example of
+what I mean."
+
+"William, pray in my presence not to play tricks with sacred melodies.
+If you have no respect for religion, please remember that I have.
+Besides, why should you be playing hymns in any time at ten o'clock
+in the morning? It is not like you, William, and I do not credit your
+explanation. And you were singing. I distinctly heard the word 'Sally'
+as I opened the door."
+
+"Salvation, me dear," corrected the O'Kelly.
+
+"Your enunciation, William, is not usually so much at fault."
+
+"A little hoarseness, me dear," explained the O'Kelly.
+
+"Your voice did not sound hoarse. Perhaps it will be better if we do not
+pursue the subject further."
+
+With this the O'Kelly appeared to agree.
+
+"A lady a little difficult to get on with when ye're feeling well and
+strong," so the O'Kelly would explain her; "but if ye happen to be ill,
+one of the kindest, most devoted of women. When I was down with typhoid
+three years ago, a tenderer nurse no man could have had. I shall never
+forget it. And so she would be again to-morrow, if there was anything
+serious the matter with me."
+
+I murmured the well-known quotation.
+
+"Mrs. O'Kelly to a T," concurred the O'Kelly. "I sometimes wonder if
+Lady Scott may not have been the same sort of woman."
+
+"The unfortunate part of it is," continued the O'Kelly, "that I'm such
+a healthy beggar; it don't give her a chance. If I were only a chronic
+invalid, now, there's nothing that woman would not do to make me happy.
+As it is--" The O'Kelly struck a chord. We resumed our studies.
+
+But to return to our conversation at the stage door.
+
+"Meet me at the Cheshire Cheese at one o'clock," said the O'Kelly,
+shaking hands. "If ye don't get on here, we'll try something else; but
+I've spoken to Hodgson, and I think ye will. Good luck to ye!"
+
+He went his way and I mine. In a glass box just behind the door a
+curved-nose, round-eyed little man, looking like an angry bird in a
+cage, demanded of me my business. I showed him my letter of appointment.
+
+"Up the passage, across the stage, along the corridor, first floor,
+second door on the right," he instructed me in one breath, and shut the
+window with a snap.
+
+I proceeded up the passage. It somewhat surprised me to discover that
+I was not in the least excited at the thought of this, my first
+introduction to "behind the scenes."
+
+I recall my father's asking a young soldier on his return from the
+Crimea what had been his sensations at the commencement of his first
+charge.
+
+"Well," replied the young fellow, "I was worrying all the time,
+remembering I had rushed out leaving the beer tap running in the
+canteen, and I could not forget it."
+
+So far as the stage I found my way in safety. Pausing for a moment and
+glancing round, my impression was not so much disillusionment concerning
+all things theatrical as realisation of my worst forebodings. In that
+one moment all glamour connected with the stage fell from me, nor has it
+since ever returned to me. From the tawdry decorations of the auditorium
+to the childish make-belief littered around on the stage, I saw the
+Theatre a painted thing of shreds and patches--the grown child's
+doll's-house. The Drama may improve us, elevate us, interest and teach
+us. I am sure it does; long may it flourish! But so likewise does the
+dressing and undressing of dolls, the opening of the front of the house,
+and the tenderly putting of them away to bed in rooms they completely
+fill, train our little dears to the duties and the joys of motherhood.
+Toys! what wise child despises them? Art, fiction, the musical glasses:
+are they not preparing us for the time, however distant, when we shall
+at last be grown up?
+
+In a maze of ways beyond the stage I lost myself, but eventually, guided
+by voices, came to a large room furnished barely with many chairs
+and worn settees, and here I found some twenty to thirty ladies
+and gentlemen already seated. They were of varying ages, sizes
+and appearance, but all of them alike in having about them that
+impossible-to-define but impossible-to-mistake suggestion of
+theatricality. The men were chiefly remarkable for having no hair on
+their faces, but a good deal upon their heads; the ladies, one and
+all, were blessed with remarkably pink and white complexions and
+exceptionally bright eyes. The conversation, carried on in subdued but
+penetrating voices, was chiefly of "him" and "her." Everybody appeared
+to be on an affectionate footing with everybody else, the terms of
+address being "My dear," "My love," "Old girl," "Old chappie," Christian
+names--when name of any sort was needful--alone being employed. I
+hesitated for a minute with the door in my hand, fearing I had stumbled
+upon a family gathering. As, however, nobody seemed disconcerted at my
+entry, I ventured to take a vacant seat next to an extremely small and
+boyish-looking gentleman and to ask him if this was the room in which I,
+an applicant for a place in the chorus of the forthcoming comic opera,
+ought to be waiting.
+
+He had large, fishy eyes, with which he looked me up and down. For such
+a length of time he remained thus regarding me in silence that a massive
+gentleman sitting near, who had overheard, took it upon himself to reply
+in the affirmative, adding that from what he knew of Butterworth we
+would all of us be waiting here a damned sight longer than any gentleman
+should keep other ladies and gentlemen waiting for no reason at all.
+
+"I think it exceedingly bad form," observed the fishy-eyed gentleman,
+in deep contralto tones, "for any gentleman to take it upon himself to
+reply to a remark addressed to quite another gentleman."
+
+"I beg your pardon," retorted the large gentleman. "I thought you were
+asleep."
+
+"I think it very ill manners," remarked the small gentlemen in the same
+slow and impressive tones, "for any gentleman to tell another gentleman,
+who happens to be wide awake, that he thought he was asleep."
+
+"Sir," returned the massive gentleman, assuming with the help of a large
+umbrella a quite Johnsonian attitude, "I decline to alter my manners to
+suit your taste."
+
+"If you are satisfied with them," replied the small gentleman, "I cannot
+help it. But I think you are making a mistake."
+
+"Does anybody know what the opera is about?" asked a bright little woman
+at the other end of the room.
+
+"Does anybody ever know what a comic opera is about?" asked another
+lady, whose appearance suggested experience.
+
+"I once asked the author," observed a weary-looking gentleman, speaking
+from a corner. "His reply was: 'Well, if you had asked me at the
+beginning of the rehearsals I might have been able to tell you, but
+damned if I could now!'"
+
+"It wouldn't surprise me," observed a good-looking gentleman in a velvet
+coat, "if there occurred somewhere in the proceedings a drinking chorus
+for male voices."
+
+"Possibly, if we are good," added a thin lady with golden hair, "the
+heroine will confide to us her love troubles, which will interest us and
+excite us."
+
+The door at the further end of the room opened and a name was called.
+An elderly lady rose and went out.
+
+"Poor old Gertie!" remarked sympathetically the thin lady with the
+golden hair. "I'm told that she really had a voice once."
+
+"When poor young Bond first came to London," said the massive gentleman
+who was sitting on my left, "I remember his telling me he applied to
+Lord Barrymore's 'tiger,' Alexander Lee, I mean, of course, who was then
+running the Strand Theatre, for a place in the chorus. Lee heard him
+sing two lines, and then jumped up. 'Thanks, that'll do; good morning,'
+says Lee. Bond knew he had got a good voice, so he asked Lee what was
+wrong. 'What's wrong?' shouts Lee. 'Do you think I hire a chorus to show
+up my principals?'"
+
+"Having regard to the company present," commented the fishy-eyed
+gentleman, "I consider that anecdote as distinctly lacking in tact."
+
+The feeling of the company appeared to be with the fish-eyed young man.
+
+For the next half hour the door at the further end of the room continued
+to open and close, devouring, ogre-fashion, each time some dainty human
+morsel, now chorus gentleman, now chorus lady. Conversation among our
+thinning ranks became more fitful, a growing anxiety making for silence.
+
+At length, "Mr. Horace Moncrieff" called the voice of the unseen Charon.
+In common with the rest, I glanced round languidly to see what sort of
+man "Mr. Horace Moncrieff" might be. The door was pushed open further.
+Charon, now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a drooping
+moustache, put his head into the room and repeated impatiently his
+invitation to the apparently coy Moncrieff. It suddenly occurred to me
+that I was Mr. Horace Moncrieff.
+
+"So glad you've found yourself," said the pale-faced young man, as I
+joined him at the door. "Please don't lose yourself again; we're rather
+pressed for time."
+
+I crossed with him through a deserted refreshment bar--one of the
+saddest of sights--into a room beyond. A melancholy-looking gentleman
+was seated at the piano. Beside him stood a tall, handsome man, who
+was opening and reading rapidly from a bundle of letters he held in his
+hand. A big, burly, bored-looking gentleman was making desperate
+efforts to be amused at the staccato conversation of a sharp-faced,
+restless-eyed gentleman, whose peculiarity was that he never by any
+chance looked at the person to whom he was talking, but always at
+something or somebody else.
+
+"Moncrieff?" enquired the tall, handsome man--whom I later discovered to
+be Mr. Hodgson, the manager--without raising his eyes from his letters.
+
+The pale-faced gentleman responded for me.
+
+"Fire away," said Mr. Hodgson.
+
+"What is it?" asked of me wearily the melancholy gentleman at the piano.
+
+"'Sally in Our Alley,'" I replied.
+
+"What are you?" interrupted Mr. Hodgson. He had never once looked at me,
+and did not now.
+
+"A tenor," I replied. "Not a full tenor," I added, remembering the
+O'Kelly's instructions.
+
+"Utterly impossible to fill a tenor," remarked the restless-eyed
+gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking gentleman.
+"Ever tried?"
+
+Everybody laughed, with the exception of the melancholy gentleman at the
+piano, Mr. Hodgson throwing in his contribution without raising his eyes
+from his letters. Throughout the proceedings the restless-eyed gentleman
+continued to make humorous observations of this nature, at which
+everybody laughed, excepting always the melancholy pianist--a short,
+sharp, mechanical laugh, devoid of the least suggestion of amusement.
+The restless-eyed gentleman, it appeared, was the leading low comedian
+of the theatre.
+
+"Go on," said the melancholy gentleman, and commenced the accompaniment.
+
+"Tell me when he's going to begin," remarked Mr. Hodgson at the
+conclusion of the first verse.
+
+"He has a fair voice," said my accompanist. "He's evidently nervous."
+
+"There is a prejudice throughout theatrical audiences," observed Mr.
+Hodgson, "in favour of a voice they can hear. That is all I am trying to
+impress upon him."
+
+The second verse, so I imagined, I sang in the voice of a trumpet. The
+burly gentleman--the translator of the French libretto, as he turned
+out to be; the author of the English version, as he preferred to
+be called--acknowledged to having distinctly detected a sound. The
+restless-eyed comedian suggested an announcement from the stage
+requesting strict silence during my part of the performance.
+
+The sickness of fear was stealing over me. My voice, so it seemed to me,
+disappointed at the effect it had produced, had retired, sulky, into my
+boots, whence it refused to emerge.
+
+"Your voice is all right--very good," whispered the musical conductor.
+"They want to hear the best you can do, that's all."
+
+At this my voice ran up my legs and out of my mouth. "Thirty shillings
+a week, half salary for rehearsals. If that's all right, Mr. Catchpole
+will give you your agreement. If not, very much obliged. Good morning,"
+said Mr. Hodgson, still absorbed in his correspondence.
+
+With the pale-faced young man I retired to a desk in the corner, where
+a few seconds sufficed for the completion of the business. Leaving, I
+sought to catch the eye of my melancholy friend, but he appeared too
+sunk in dejection to notice anything. The restless-eyed comedian,
+looking at the author of the English version and addressing me as
+Boanerges, wished me good morning, at which the everybody laughed; and,
+informed as to the way out by the pale-faced Mr. Catchpole, I left.
+
+The first "call" was for the following Monday at two o'clock. I found
+the theatre full of life and bustle. The principals, who had just
+finished their own rehearsal, were talking together in a group. We
+ladies and gentlemen of the chorus filled the centre of the stage. I
+noticed the lady I had heard referred to as Gertie; as also the thin
+lady with the golden hair. The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed
+young man were again in close proximity; so long as I knew them they
+always were together, possessed, apparently, of a sympathetic antipathy
+for each other. The fishy-eyed young gentleman was explaining the age at
+which he thought decayed chorus singers ought, in justice to themselves
+and the public, to retire from the profession; the massive gentleman,
+the age and size at which he thought parcels of boys ought to be
+learning manners across their mother's knee.
+
+Mr. Hodgson, still reading letters exactly as I had left him four days
+ago, stood close to the footlights. My friend, the musical director,
+armed with a violin and supported by about a dozen other musicians,
+occupied the orchestra. The adapter and the stage manager--a Frenchman
+whom I found it good policy to mistake for a born Englishman--sat
+deep in confabulation at a small table underneath a temporary gas jet.
+Quarter of an hour or so passed by, and then the stage manager, becoming
+suddenly in a hurry, rang a small bell furiously.
+
+"Clear, please; all clear," shouted a small boy, with important air
+suggestive of a fox terrier; and, following the others, I retreated to
+the wings.
+
+The comedian and the leading lady--whom I knew well from the front,
+but whom I should never have recognised--severed themselves from their
+companions and joined Mr. Hodgson by the footlights. As a preliminary we
+were sorted out, according to our sizes, into loving couples.
+
+"Ah," said the stage manager, casting an admiring gaze upon the
+fishy-eyed young man, whose height might have been a little over five
+feet two, "I have the very girl for you--a beauty!" Darting into the
+group of ladies, he returned with quite the biggest specimen, a lady
+of magnificent proportions, whom, with the air of the virtuous uncle
+of melodrama, he bestowed upon the fishy-eyed young man. To the massive
+gentleman was given a sharp-faced little lady, who at a distance
+appeared quite girlish. Myself I found mated to the thin lady with the
+golden hair.
+
+At last complete, we took our places in the then approved semi-circle,
+and the attenuated orchestra struck up the opening chorus. My music,
+which had been sent me by post, I had gone over with the O'Kelly, and
+about that I felt confident; but for the rest, ill at ease.
+
+"I am afraid," said the thin lady, "I must ask you to put your arm round
+my waist. It's very shocking, I know, but, you see, our salary depends
+upon it. Do you think you could manage it?"
+
+I glanced into her face. A whimsical expression of fun replied to me and
+drove away my shyness. I carried out her instructions to the best of my
+ability.
+
+The indefatigable stage manager ran in and out among us while we sang,
+driving this couple back a foot or so, this other forward, herding this
+group closer together, throughout another making space, suggesting the
+idea of a sheep-dog at work.
+
+"Very good, very good indeed," commented Mr. Hodgson at the conclusion.
+"We will go over it once more, and this time in tune."
+
+"And we will make love," added the stage manager; "not like marionettes,
+but like ladies and gentlemen all alive." Seizing the lady nearest to
+him, he explained to us by object lesson how the real peasant invariably
+behaves when under influence of the grand passion, standing gracefully
+with hands clasped upon heart, head inclined at an angle of forty-five,
+his whole countenance eloquent with tender adoration.
+
+"If he expects" remarked the massive gentleman _sotto voce_ to an
+experienced-looking young lady, "a performance of Romeo thrown in, I,
+for one, shall want an extra ten shillings a week."
+
+Casting the lady aside and seizing upon a gentleman, our stage manager
+then proceeded to show the ladies how a village maiden should receive
+affectionate advances: one shoulder a trifle higher than the other, body
+from the waist upward gently waggling, roguish expression in left eye.
+
+"Ah, he's a bit new to it," replied the experienced young lady. "He'll
+get over all that."
+
+Again we started. Whether others attempted to follow the stage manager's
+directions I cannot say, my whole attention being centred upon the
+fishy-eyed young man, who did, implicitly. Soon it became apparent that
+the whole of us were watching the fishy-eyed young man to the utter
+neglect of our own business. Mr. Hodgson even looked up from his
+letters; the orchestra was playing out of time; the author of the
+English version and the leading lady exchanged glances. Three people
+only appeared not to be enjoying themselves: the chief comedian, the
+stage manager and the fishy-eyed young gentleman himself, who pursued
+his labours methodically and conscientiously. There was a whispered
+confabulation between the leading low comedian, Mr. Hodgson and the
+stage manager. As a result, the music ceased and the fishy-eyed young
+gentleman was requested to explain what he was doing.
+
+"Only making love," replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
+
+"You were playing the fool, sir," retorted the leading low comedian,
+severely.
+
+"That is a very unkind remark," replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman,
+evidently hurt, "to make to a gentleman who is doing his best."
+
+Mr. Hodgson behind his letters was laughing. "Poor fellow," he murmured;
+"I suppose he can't help it. Go on."
+
+"We are not producing a pantomime, you know," urged our comedian.
+
+"I want to give him a chance, poor devil," explained Mr. Hodgson in a
+lower voice. "Only support of a widowed mother."
+
+Our comedian appeared inclined to argue; but at this point Mr. Hodgson's
+correspondence became absorbing.
+
+For the chorus the second act was a busy one. We opened as soldiers
+and vivandieres, every warrior in this way possessing his own private
+travelling bar. Our stage manager again explained to us by example how
+a soldier behaves, first under stress of patriotic emotion, and secondly
+under stress of cheap cognac, the difference being somewhat subtle:
+patriotism displaying itself by slaps upon the chest, and cheap cognac
+by slaps upon the forehead. A little later we were conspirators; our
+stage manager, with the help of a tablecloth, showed us how to conspire.
+Next we were a mob, led by the sentimental baritone; our stage manager,
+ruffling his hair, expounded to us how a mob led by a sentimental
+baritone would naturally behave itself. The act wound up with a fight.
+Our stage manager, minus his coat, demonstrated to us how to fight and
+die, the dying being a painful and dusty performance, necessitating, as
+it did, much rolling about on the stage. The fishy-eyed young gentleman
+throughout the whole of it was again the centre of attraction. Whether
+he were solemnly slapping his chest and singing about glory, or solemnly
+patting his head and singing about grapes, was immaterial: he was the
+soldier for us. What the plot was about did not matter, so long as he
+was in it. Who led the mob one did not care; one's desire was to see
+him lead. How others fought and died was matter of no moment; to see him
+slaughtered was sufficient. Whether his unconsciousness was assumed or
+natural I cannot say; in either case it was admirable. An earnest young
+man, over-anxious, if anything, to do his duty by his employers, was
+the extent of the charge that could be brought against him. Our chief
+comedian frowned and fumed; our stage manager was in despair. Mr.
+Hodgson and the author of the English version, on the contrary, appeared
+kindly disposed towards the gentleman. In addition to the widowed
+mother, Mr. Hodgson had invented for him five younger brothers and
+sisters utterly destitute but for his earnings. To deprive so exemplary
+a son and brother of the means of earning a livelihood for dear ones
+dependent upon him was not in Mr. Hodgson's heart. Our chief comedian
+dissociated himself from all uncharitable feelings--would subscribe
+towards the subsistence of the young man out of his own pocket, his
+only concern being the success of the opera. The author of the English
+version was convinced the young man would not accept a charity; had
+known him for years--was a most sensitive creature.
+
+The rehearsal proceeded. In the last act it became necessary for me to
+kiss the thin lady.
+
+"I am very sorry," said the thin lady, "but duty is duty. It has to be
+done."
+
+Again I followed directions. The thin lady was good enough to
+congratulate me on my performance.
+
+The last three or four rehearsals we performed in company with the
+principals. Divided counsels rendered them decidedly harassing. Our
+chief comedian had his views, and they were decided; the leading lady
+had hers, and was generous with them. The author of the English version
+possessed his also, but of these nobody took much notice. Once every
+twenty minutes the stage manager washed his hands of the whole affair
+and left the theatre in despair, and anybody's hat that happened to
+be handy, to return a few minutes later full of renewed hope. The
+sentimental baritone was sarcastic, the tenor distinctly rude to
+everybody. Mr. Hodgson's method was to agree with all and listen to
+none. The smaller fry of the company, together with the more pushing of
+the chorus, supported each in turn, when the others were not looking. Up
+to the dress rehearsal it was anybody's opera.
+
+About one thing, and about one thing, only, had the principals fallen
+into perfect agreement, and that was that the fishy-eyed young gentleman
+was out of place in a romantic opera. The tenor would be making
+impassioned love to the leading lady. Perception would come to both of
+them that, though they might be occupying geographically the centre of
+the stage, dramatically they were not. Without a shred of evidence,
+yet with perfect justice, they would unhesitatingly blame for this the
+fishy-eyed young man.
+
+"I wasn't doing anything," he would explain meekly. "I was only
+looking." It was perfectly true; that was all he was doing.
+
+"Then don't look," would comment the tenor.
+
+The fishy-eyed young gentleman obediently would turn his face away from
+them; and in some mysterious manner the situation would thereupon become
+even yet more hopelessly ridiculous.
+
+"My scene, I think, sir!" would thunder our chief comedian, a little
+later on.
+
+"I am only doing what I was told to do," answered the fishy-eyed young
+gentleman; and nobody could say that he was not.
+
+"Take a circus, and run him as a side-show," counselled our comedian.
+
+"I am afraid he would never be any good as a side-show," replied Mr.
+Hodgson, who was reading letters.
+
+On the first night, passing the gallery entrance on my way to the stage
+door, the sight of the huge crowd assembled there waiting gave me my
+first taste of artistic joy. I was a part of what they had come to see,
+to praise or to condemn, to listen to, to watch. Within the theatre
+there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement, amounting almost to
+hysteria. The bird-like gentleman in his glass cage was fluttering,
+agitated. The hands of the stage carpenters putting the finishing
+touches to the scenery were trembling, their voices passionate
+with anxiety; the fox-terrier-like call-boy was pale with sense of
+responsibility.
+
+I made my way to the dressing-room--a long, low, wooden corridor,
+furnished from end to end with a wide shelf that served as common
+dressing-table, lighted by a dozen flaring gas-jets, wire-shielded. Here
+awaited us gentlemen of the chorus the wigmaker's assistant, whose duty
+it was to make us up. From one to another he ran, armed with his hare's
+foot, his box of paints and his bundle of crepe hair. My turn arriving,
+he seized me by the head, jabbed a wig upon me, and in less than a
+couple of minutes I left his hands the orthodox peasant of the stage,
+white of forehead and pink of cheek, with curly moustache and lips of
+coral. Glancing into the glass, I could not help feeling pleased with
+myself; a moustache, without doubt, suited me.
+
+The chorus ladies, when I met them on the stage, were a revelation
+to me. Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist
+of chiefly, yet in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that
+artificial glare, it seemed fit and fascinating. The close approximation
+to so much bare flesh, its curious, subtle odour was almost
+intoxicating. Dr. Johnson's excuse to Garrick for the rarity of his
+visits to the theatre recurred to me with understanding.
+
+"How do you like my costume?" asked the thin lady with the golden hair.
+
+"I think you--" We were standing apart behind a piece of projecting
+scenery. She laid her hand upon my mouth, laughing.
+
+"How old are you?" she asked me.
+
+"Isn't that a rude question?" I answered. "I don't ask your age.
+
+"Mine," she replied, "entitles me to talk to you as I should to a boy of
+my own--I had one once. Get out of this life if you can. It's bad for
+a woman; it's worse still for a man. To you especially it will be
+harmful."
+
+"Why to me in particular?"
+
+"Because you are an exceedingly foolish little boy," she answered, with
+another laugh, "and are rather nice."
+
+She slipped away and joined the others. The chorus was now entirely
+assembled on the stage. The sound of the rapidly-filling house reached
+us, softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull, continuous
+droning, as of water pouring into some huge cistern. Suddenly there fell
+upon our ears a startling crash; the overture had commenced. The stage
+manager--more suggestive of a sheep-dog than ever, but lacking the calm
+dignity, the self-possession born of conscious capability distinctive of
+his prototype; a fussy, argumentative sheep-dog--rushed into the midst
+of us and worried us into our positions, where the more experienced
+continued to converse in whispers, the rest of us waiting nervously,
+trying to remember our words. The chorus master, taking his stand with
+his back to the proscenium, held his white-gloved hand in readiness. The
+curtain rushed up, the house, a nightmare of white faces, appearing to
+run towards us. The chorus-master's white-gloved hand flung upward. A
+roar of voices struck upon my ear, but whether my own were of them
+I could not say; if I were singing at all it was unconsciously,
+mechanically. Later, I found myself standing in the wings beside the
+thin lady; the stage was in the occupation of the principals. On my next
+entrance my senses were more with me; I was able to look about me. Here
+and there a strongly-marked face among the audience stood out, but the
+majority were as indistinguishable as so many blades of grass. Looked at
+from the stage, the house seemed no more real than from the front do the
+painted faces upon a black cloth.
+
+The curtain fell amid the usual applause, sounding to us behind it like
+the rattle of tiny stones against a window-pane. Three times it rose
+and fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then followed a
+scamper for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being filled with the
+rustling of skirts and the scurrying of feet.
+
+It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into
+his own. The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the
+tenor and the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with the
+exquisite delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that its
+further presence might be embarrassing, it turned to go, half to the
+east, the other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man, starting
+from the centre, was the last to leave the stage. In another moment he
+would have disappeared from view. There came a voice from the gallery,
+clear, distinct, pathetic with entreaty:
+
+"Don't go. Get behind a tree."
+
+The request was instantly seconded by a roar of applause from every part
+of the house, followed by laughter. From that point onward the house was
+chiefly concerned with the fortunes of the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
+At his next entrance, disguised as a conspirator, he was welcomed
+with enthusiasm, his passing away regretted loudly. At the fall of the
+curtain, the tenor, furious, rushed up to him, and, shaking a fist in
+his face, demanded what he meant by it.
+
+"I wasn't doing anything," explained the fishy-eyed young man.
+
+"You went off sideways!" roared the tenor.
+
+"Well, you told me not to look at you," explained meekly the fishy-eyed
+young gentleman. "I must go off somehow. I regard you as a very
+difficult man to please."
+
+At the final fall of the curtain the house appeared divided as regarded
+the merits of the opera; but for "Goggles" there was a unanimous and
+enthusiastic call, and the while we were dressing a message came for
+"Goggles" that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his private room.
+
+"He can make a funny face, no doubt about it," commented one gentleman,
+as "Goggles" left the room.
+
+"I defy him to make a funnier one than God Almighty's made for him,"
+responded the massive gentleman.
+
+"There's a deal in luck," observed, with a sigh, another, a tall,
+handsome young gentleman possessed of a rich bass voice.
+
+Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting upon
+the pavement outside. Not interested in them myself, I was hurrying
+past, when one laid a hand upon my shoulder. I turned. He was a big,
+broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vandyke beard and soft, dreamy
+eyes.
+
+"Dan!" I cried.
+
+"I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act," he answered. "In
+the second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it. Are you in
+a hurry?"
+
+"Not at all," I answered. "Are you?"
+
+"No," he replied; "we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write my
+notice to-morrow. Come and have supper with me at the Albion and we will
+talk. You look tired, young 'un."
+
+"No," I assured him, "only excited--partly at meeting you."
+
+He laughed, and drew my arm through his.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL.
+
+Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories. They revealed points of
+similarity. Leaving school some considerable time earlier than myself,
+Dan had gone to Cambridge; but two years later, in consequence of the
+death of his father, of a wound contracted in the Indian Mutiny and
+never cured, had been compelled to bring his college career to an
+untimely termination.
+
+"You might not have expected that to grieve me," said Dan, with a smile,
+"but, as a matter of fact, it was a severe blow to me. At Cambridge I
+discovered that I was by temperament a scholar. The reason why at school
+I took no interest in learning was because learning was, of set purpose,
+made as uninteresting as possible. Like a Cook's tourist party through a
+picture gallery, we were rushed through education; the object being not
+that we should see and understand, but that we should be able to say
+that we had done it. At college I chose my own subjects, studied them
+in my own way. I fed on knowledge, was not stuffed with it like a
+Strassburg goose."
+
+Returning to London, he had taken a situation in a bank, the chairman of
+which had been an old friend of his father. The advantage was that while
+earning a small income he had time to continue his studies; but the
+deadly monotony of the work had appalled him, and upon the death of his
+mother he had shaken the cloying dust of the City from his brain and
+joined a small "fit-up" theatrical company. On the stage he had remained
+for another eighteen months; had played all roles, from "Romeo" to "Paul
+Pry," had helped to paint the scenery, had assisted in the bill-posting.
+The latter, so he told me, he had found one of the most difficult of
+accomplishments, the paste-laden poster having an innate tendency to
+recoil upon the amateur's own head, and to stick there. Wearying of the
+stage proper, he had joined a circus company, had been "Signor Ricardo,
+the daring bare-back rider," also one of the "Brothers Roscius in their
+marvellous trapeze act;" inclining again towards respectability, had
+been a waiter for three months at Ostend; from that, a footman.
+
+"One never knows," remarked Dan. "I may come to be a society novelist;
+if so, inside knowledge of the aristocracy will give me decided
+advantage over the majority of my competitors."
+
+Other callings he had sampled: had tramped through Ireland with a
+fiddle; through Scotland with a lecture on Palestine, assisted by
+dissolving views; had been a billiard-marker; next a schoolmaster. For
+the last three months he had been a journalist, dramatic and musical
+critic to a Sunday newspaper. Often had I dreamt of such a position for
+myself.
+
+"How did you obtain it?" I asked.
+
+"The idea occurred to me," replied Dan, "late one afternoon, sauntering
+down the Strand, wondering what I should do next. I was on my beam ends,
+with only a few shillings in my pocket; but luck has always been with
+me. I entered the first newspaper office I came to, walked upstairs to
+the first floor, and opening the first door without knocking, passed
+through a small, empty room into a larger one, littered with books and
+papers. It was growing dark. A gentleman of extremely youthful figure
+was running round and round, cursing to himself because of three things:
+he had upset the ink, could not find the matches, and had broken the
+bell-pull. In the gloom, assuming him to be the office boy, I thought
+it would be fun to mistake him for the editor. As a matter of fact,
+he turned out to be the editor. I lit the gas for him, and found him
+another ink-pot. He was a slim young man with the voice and manner of a
+schoolboy. I don't suppose he is any more than five or six-and-twenty.
+He owes his position to the fact of his aunt's being the proprietress.
+He asked me if he knew me. Before I could tell him that he didn't, he
+went on talking. He appeared to be labouring under a general sense of
+injury.
+
+"'People come into this office,' he said; 'they seem to look upon it as
+a shelter from the rain--people I don't know from Adam. And that damned
+fool downstairs lets them march straight up--anybody, men with articles
+on safety valves, people who have merely come to kick up a row about
+something or another. Half my work I have to do on the stairs.
+
+"I recommended to him that he should insist upon strangers writing their
+business upon a slip of paper. He thought it a good idea.
+
+"'For the last three-quarters of an hour,' he said, 'have I been trying
+to finish this one column, and four times have I been interrupted.'
+
+"At that precise moment there came another knock at the door.
+
+"'I won't see him!' he cried. 'I don't care who he is; I won't see him.
+Send him away! Send everybody away!'
+
+"I went to the door. He was an elderly gentleman. He made to sweep by
+me; but I barred his way, and closed the editorial door behind me. He
+seemed surprised; but I told him it was impossible for him to see the
+editor that afternoon, and suggested his writing his business on a sheet
+of paper, which I handed to him for the purpose. I remained in that
+ante-room for half an hour, and during that time I suppose I must have
+sent away about ten or a dozen people. I don't think their business
+could have been important, or I should have heard about it afterwards.
+The last to come was a tired-looking gentleman, smoking a cigarette. I
+asked him his name.
+
+"He looked at me in surprise, and then answered, 'Idiot!'
+
+"I remained firm, however, and refused to let him pass.
+
+"'It's a bit awkward,' he retorted. 'Don't you think you could make an
+exception in favour of the sub-editor on press night?'
+
+"I replied that such would be contrary to my instructions.
+
+"'Oh, all right,' he answered. 'I'd like to know who's going to the
+Royalty to-night, that's all. It's seven o'clock already.'
+
+"An idea occurred to me. If the sub-editor of a paper doesn't know whom
+to send to a theatre, it must mean that the post of dramatic critic on
+that paper is for some reason or another vacant.
+
+"'Oh, that's all right,' I told him. 'I shall be in time enough.'
+
+"He appeared neither pleased nor displeased. 'Have you arranged with the
+Guv'nor?' he asked me.
+
+"'I'm just waiting to see him again for a few minutes,' I returned.
+'It'll be all right. Have you got the ticket?'
+
+"'Haven't seen it,' he replied.
+
+"'About a column?' I suggested.
+
+"'Three-quarters,' he preferred, and went.
+
+"The moment he was gone, I slipped downstairs and met a printer's boy
+coming up.
+
+"'What's the name of your sub?' I asked him. 'Tall man with a black
+moustache, looks tired.'
+
+"'Oh, you mean Penton,' explained the boy.
+
+"'That's the name,' I answered; 'couldn't think of it.'
+
+"I walked straight into the editor; he was still irritable. 'What is it?
+What is it now?' he snapped out.
+
+"'I only want the ticket for the Royalty Theatre,' I answered. 'Penton
+says you've got it.'
+
+"'I don't know where it is,' he growled.
+
+"I found it after some little search upon his desk.
+
+"'Who's going?' he asked.
+
+"'I am,' I said. And I went.
+
+"They have never discovered to this day that I appointed myself. Penton
+thinks I am some relation of the proprietress, and in consequence
+everybody treats me with marked respect. Mrs. Wallace herself, the
+proprietress, thinks I am the discovery of Penton, in whose judgment
+she has great faith; and with her I get on admirably. The paper I
+don't think is doing too well, and the salary is small, but sufficient.
+Journalism suits my temperament, and I dare say I shall keep to it."
+
+"You've been somewhat of a rolling stone hitherto," I commented.
+
+He laughed. "From the stone's point of view," he answered, "I never
+could see the advantage of being smothered in moss. I should always
+prefer remaining the stone, unhidden, able to move and see about me. But
+now, to speak of other matters, what are your plans for the immediate
+future? Your opera, thanks to the gentlemen, the gods have dubbed
+'Goggles,' will, I fancy, run through the winter. Are you getting any
+salary?"
+
+"Thirty shillings a week," I explained to him, "with full salary for
+matinees."
+
+"Say two pounds," he replied. "With my three we could set up an
+establishment of our own. I have an idea that is original. Shall we work
+it out together?"
+
+I assured him with fervour that nothing would please me better.
+
+"There are four delightful rooms in Queen's Square," he continued. "They
+are charmingly furnished: a fine sitting-room in the front, with
+two bedrooms and a kitchen behind. Their last tenant was a Polish
+Revolutionary, who, three months ago, poor fellow, was foolish enough to
+venture back to Russia, and who is now living rent free. The landlord of
+the house is an original old fellow, Deleglise the engraver. He occupies
+the rest of the house himself. He has told me I can have the rooms for
+anything I like to offer, and I should suggest thirty shillings a week,
+though under ordinary circumstances they would be worth three or four
+pounds. But he will only let us have them on the understanding that
+we 'do for' ourselves. He is quite an oddity. He hates petticoats,
+especially elderly petticoats. He has one servant, an old Frenchwoman,
+who, I believe, was housekeeper to his mother, and he and she do the
+housework together, most of their time quarrelling over it. Nothing else
+of the genus domestic female will he allow inside the door; not even an
+occasional charwoman would be permitted to us. On the other hand, it
+is a beautiful old Georgian house, with Adams mantelpieces, a stone
+staircase, and oak-panelled rooms; and our portion would be the entire
+second floor: no pianos and no landlady. He is a widower with one child,
+a girl of about fourteen or maybe a little older. Now, what do you say?
+I am a very fair cook; will you be house-and-parlour-maid?"
+
+I needed no pressing. A week later we were installed there, and for
+nearly two years we lived there. At the risk of offending an adorable
+but somewhat touchy sex, convinced that man, left to himself, is
+capable of little more than putting himself to bed, and that only in
+a rough-and-ready fashion, truth compels me to record the fact that
+without female assistance or supervision of any kind we passed through
+those two years, and yet exist to tell the tale. Dan had not idly
+boasted. Better plain cooking I never want to taste; so good a cup of
+coffee, omelette, or devilled kidney I rarely have tasted. Had he always
+confined his efforts within the boundaries of his abilities, there
+would be little to record beyond continuous and monotonous success.
+But stirred into dangerous ambition at the call of an occasional tea or
+supper party, lured out of his depths by the example of old Deleglise,
+our landlord--a man who for twenty years had made cooking his hobby--Dan
+would at intervals venture upon experiment. Pastry, it became evident,
+was a thing he should never have touched: his hand was heavy and
+his temperament too serious. There was a thing called lemon sponge,
+necessitating much beating of eggs. In the cookery-book--a remarkably
+fat volume, luscious with illustrations of highly-coloured food--it
+appeared an airy and graceful structure of dazzling whiteness. Served as
+Dan sent it to table, it suggested rather in form and colour a miniature
+earthquake. Spongy it undoubtedly was. One forced it apart with the
+assistance of one's spoon and fork; it yielded with a gentle tearing
+sound. Another favourite dainty of his was manna-cake. Concerning it
+I would merely remark that if it in any way resembled anything the
+Children of Israel were compelled to eat, then there is explanation
+for that fretfulness and discontent for which they have been, perhaps,
+unjustly blamed--some excuse even for their backward-flung desires in
+the direction of the Egyptian fleshpots. Moses himself may have been
+blessed with exceptional digestion. It was substantial, one must say
+that for it. One slice of it--solid, firm, crusty on the outside,
+towards the centre marshy--satisfied most people to a sense of
+repletion. For supper parties Dan would essay trifles--by no means open
+to the criticism of being light as air--souffle's that guests, in spite
+of my admonishing kicks, would persist in alluding to as pudding; and in
+winter-time, pancakes. Later, as regards these latter, he acquired some
+skill; but at first the difficulty was the tossing. I think myself a
+safer plan would have been to turn them by the aid of a knife and fork;
+it is less showy, but more sure. At least, you avoid all danger of
+catching the half-baked thing upon your head instead of in the pan,
+of dropping it into the fire, or among the cinders. But "Thorough" was
+always Dan's motto; and after all, small particles of coal or a few
+hairs can always be detected by the careful feeder, and removed.
+
+A more even-tempered man than Dan for twenty-three hours out of every
+twenty-four surely never breathed. It was a revelation to me to discover
+that for the other he could be uncertain, irritable, even ungrateful.
+At first, in a spirit of pure good nature, I would offer him counsel and
+advice; explain to him why, as it seemed to me, the custard was pimply,
+the mayonnaise sauce suggestive of hair oil. What was my return? Sneers,
+insult and abuse, followed, if I did not clear out quickly, by spoilt
+tomatoes, cold coffee grounds--anything that happened to be handy.
+Pained, saddened, I would withdraw, he would kick the door to after me.
+His greatest enemy appeared to be the oven. The oven it was that set
+itself to thwart his best wrought schemes. Always it was the oven's
+fault that the snowy bun appeared to have been made of red sandstone,
+the macaroni cheese of Cambrian clay. One might have sympathised with
+him more had his language been more restrained. As it was, the virulence
+of his reproaches almost inclined one to take the part of the oven.
+
+Concerning our house-maid, I can speak in terms of unqualified praise.
+There are, alas, fussy house-maids--who has not known and suffered
+them?--who overdo the thing, have no repose, no instinct telling
+them when to ease up and let the place alone. I have always held the
+perpetual stirring up of dust a scientific error; left to itself, it is
+harmless, may even be regarded as a delicate domestic bloom, bestowing
+a touch of homeliness upon objects that without it gleam cold and
+unsympathetic. Let sleeping dogs lie. Why be continually waking up the
+stuff, filling the air with all manner of unhealthy germs? Nature in her
+infinite wisdom has ordained that upon table, floor, or picture frame it
+shall sink and settle. There it remains, quiet and inoffensive; there it
+will continue to remain so long as nobody interferes with it: why worry
+it? So also with crumbs, odd bits of string, particles of egg-shell,
+stumps of matches, ends of cigarettes: what fitter place for such than
+under the nearest mat? To sweep them up is tiresome work. They cling to
+the carpet, you get cross with them, curse them for their obstinacy,
+and feel ashamed of yourself for your childishness. For every one you
+do persuade into the dust-pan, two jump out again. You lose your temper,
+feel bitter towards the man that dropped them. Your whole character
+becomes deteriorated. Under the mat they are always willing to go.
+Compromise is true statesmanship. There will come a day when you will
+be glad of an excuse for not doing something else that you ought to
+be doing. Then you can take up the mats and feel quite industrious,
+contemplating the amount of work that really must be done--some time or
+another.
+
+To differentiate between the essential and the non-essential, that
+is where woman fails. In the name of common sense, what is the use of
+washing a cup that half an hour later is going to be made dirty again?
+If the cat be willing and able to so clean a plate that not one speck of
+grease remain upon it, why deprive her of pleasure to inflict toil upon
+yourself? If a bed looks made and feels made, then for all practical
+purposes it is made; why upset it merely to put it straight again? It
+would surprise most women the amount of labour that can be avoided in a
+house.
+
+For needlework, I confess, I never acquired skill. Dan had learnt to
+handle a thimble, but my own second finger was ever reluctant to come
+forward when wanted. It had to be found, all other fingers removed out
+of its way. Then, feebly, nervously, it would push, slip, get itself
+pricked badly with the head of the needle, and, thoroughly frightened,
+remain incapable of further action. More practical I found it to push
+the needle through by help of the door or table.
+
+The opera, as Dan had predicted, ran far into the following year. When
+it was done with, another--in which "Goggles" appeared as one of the
+principals--took its place, and was even more successful. After the
+experience of Nelson Square, my present salary of thirty-five shillings,
+occasionally forty shillings, a week seemed to me princely. There
+floated before my eyes the possibility of my becoming a great opera
+singer. On six hundred pounds a week, I felt I could be content. But the
+O'Kelly set himself to dispel this dream.
+
+"Ye'd be making a mistake, me boy," explained the O'Kelly. "Ye'd be just
+wasting ye're time. I wouldn't tell ye so if I weren't convinced of it."
+
+"I know it is not powerful," I admitted.
+
+"Ye might almost call it thin," added the O'Kelly.
+
+"It might be good enough for comic opera," I argued. "People appear to
+succeed in comic opera without much voice.
+
+"Sure, there ye're right," agreed the O'Kelly, with a sigh. "An' of
+course if ye had an exceptionally fine presence and were strikingly
+handsome--"
+
+"One can do a good deal with make-up," I suggested.
+
+The O'Kelly shook his head. "It's never quite the same thing. It would
+depend upon your acting."
+
+I dreamt of becoming a second Kean, of taking Macready's place. It need
+not interfere with my literary ambition. I could combine the two: fill
+Drury Lane in the evening, turn out epoch-making novels in the morning,
+write my own plays.
+
+Every day I studied in the reading-room of the British Museum. Wearying
+of success in Art, I might eventually go into Parliament: a Prime
+Minister with a thorough knowledge of history: why not? With Ollendorf
+for guide, I continued French and German. It might be the diplomatic
+service that would appeal to me in my old age. An ambassadorship! It
+would be a pleasant termination to a brilliant career.
+
+There was excuse for my optimistic mood about this period. All things
+were going well with me. A story of mine had been accepted. I forget for
+the moment the name of the journal: it is dead now. Most of the papers
+in which my early efforts appeared are dead. My contributions might
+be likened to their swan songs. Proofs had been sent me, which I had
+corrected and returned. But proofs are not facts. This had happened to
+me once before, and I had been lifted to the skies only to fall the more
+heavily. The paper had collapsed before my story had appeared. (Ah, why
+had they delayed? It might have saved them!) This time I remembered the
+proverb, and kept my own counsel, slipping out early each morning on the
+day of publication to buy the paper, to scan eagerly its columns. For
+weeks I suffered hope deferred. But at last, one bright winter's day in
+January, walking down the Harrow Road, I found myself standing still,
+suddenly stunned, before a bill outside a small news-vendor's shop. It
+was the first time I had seen my real name in print: "The Witch of Moel
+Sarbod: a legend of Mona, by Paul Kelver." (For this I had even risked
+discovery by the Lady 'Ortensia.) My legs trembling under me, I entered
+the shop. A ruffianly-looking man in dirty shirt-sleeves, who appeared
+astonished that any one should want a copy, found one at length on
+the floor underneath the counter. With it in my pocket, I retraced my
+footsteps as in a dream. On a seat in Paddington Green I sat down and
+read it. The hundred best books! I have waded through them all; they
+have never charmed me as charmed me that one short story in that now
+forgotten journal. Need I add it was a sad and sentimental composition.
+Once upon a time there lived a mighty King; one--but with the names I
+will not bore you; they are somewhat unpronounceable. Their selection
+had cost me many hours of study in the British Museum reading-rooms,
+surrounded by lexicons of the Welsh language, gazetteers, translations
+from the early Celtic poets--with footnotes. He loved and was beloved by
+a beautiful Princess, whose name, being translated, was Purity. One
+day the King, hunting, lost his way, and being weary, lay down and fell
+asleep. And by chance the spot whereon he lay was near to a place which
+by infinite pains, with the aid of a magnifying glass, I had discovered
+upon the map, and which means in English the Cave of the Waters, where
+dwelt a wicked Sorceress, who, while he slept, cast her spells upon him,
+so that he awoke to forget his kingly honour and the good of all his
+people, his only desire being towards the Witch of Moel Sarbod.
+
+Now, there lived in this Kingdom by the sea a great Magician; and
+Purity, who loved the King far better than herself, bethought her of
+him, and of all she had heard concerning his power and wisdom; and went
+to him and besought his aid that she might save the King. There was but
+one way to accomplish this: with bare feet Purity must climb the rocky
+path leading to the Witch's dwelling, go boldly up to her, not fearing
+her sharp claws nor her strong teeth, and kiss her upon the mouth. In
+this way the spirit of Purity would pass into the Witch's soul, and she
+would become a woman. But the form and spirit of the Witch would pass
+into Purity, transforming her, and in the Cave of the Waters she must
+forever abide. Thus Purity gave herself that the King might live. With
+bleeding feet she climbed the rocky path, clasped the Witch's form
+within her arms, kissed her on the mouth. And the Witch became a woman
+and reigned with the King over his people, wisely and helpfully. But
+Purity became a hideous witch, and to this day abides on Moel Sarbod,
+where is the Cave of the Waters. And they who climb the mountain's side
+still hear above the roaring of the cataract the sobbing of Purity,
+the King's betrothed. But many liken it rather to a joyous song of love
+triumphant.
+
+No writer worth his salt was ever satisfied with anything he ever wrote,
+so I have been told, and so I try to believe. Evidently I am not worth
+my salt. Candid friends, and others, to whom in my salad days I used
+to show my work, asking for a frank opinion, meaning, of course, though
+never would they understand me, their unadulterated praise, would assure
+me for my good, that this, my first to whom the gods gave life, was but
+a feeble, ill-shaped child: its attempted early English a cross between
+"The Pilgrim's Progress" and "Old Moore's Almanac;" its scenery--which
+had cost me weeks of research--an apparent attempt to sum up in the
+language of a local guide book the leading characteristics of the Garden
+of Eden combined with Dante's Inferno; its pathos of the penny-plain
+and two-penny-coloured order. Maybe they were right. Much have I written
+since that at the time appeared to me good, that I have read later
+with regret, with burning cheek, with frowning brow. But of this, my
+first-born, the harbinger of all my hopes, I am no judge. Touching the
+yellowing, badly-printed pages, I feel again the deep thrill of joy with
+which I first unfolded them and read. Again I am a youngster, and life
+opens out before me--inmeasurable, no goal too high. This child of my
+brain, my work: it shall spread my name throughout the world. It shall
+be a household world in lands that I shall never see. Friends whose
+voices I shall never hear will speak of me. I shall die, but it shall
+live, yield fresh seed, bear fruit I know not of. Generations yet unborn
+shall read it and remember me. My thoughts, my words, my spirit: in it I
+shall live again; it shall keep my memory green.
+
+The long, long thoughts of boyhood! We elders smile at them. The
+little world spins round; the little voices of an hour sink hushed. The
+crawling generations come and go. The solar system drops from space. The
+eternal mechanism reforms and shapes itself anew. Time, turning, ploughs
+another furrow. So, growing sleepy, we murmur with a yawn. Is it that
+we see clearer, or that our eyes are growing dim? Let the young men
+see their visions, dream their dreams, hug to themselves their hopes of
+enduring fame; so shall they serve the world better.
+
+I brushed the tears from my eyes and looked up. Half-a-dozen urchins,
+male and female, were gaping at me open-mouthed. They scattered
+shouting, whether compliment or insult I know not: probably the latter.
+I flung them a handful of coppers, which for the moment silenced them;
+and went upon my way. How bright, how fair the bustling streets, golden
+in the winter sunshine, thronged with life, with effort! Laughter rang
+around me. Sweet music rolled from barrel-organs. The strenuous voices
+of the costermongers called invitation to the fruitful earth. Errand
+boys passed me whistling shrilly joyous melodies. Perspiring tradesmen
+shouted generous offers to the needy. Men and women hurried by with
+smiling faces. Sleek cats purred in sheltered nooks, till merry dogs
+invited them to sport. The sparrows, feasting in the roadway, chirped
+their hymn of praise.
+
+At the Marble Arch I jumped upon a 'bus. I mentioned to the conductor
+in mounting that it was a fine day. He replied that he had noticed it
+himself. The retort struck me as a brilliant repartee. Our coachman, all
+but run into by a hansom cab driven by a surly old fellow of patriarchal
+appearance, remarked upon the danger of allowing horses out in charge of
+bits of boys. How full the world of wit and humour!
+
+Almost without knowing it, I found myself in earnest conversation with
+a young man sitting next to me. We conversed of life, of love. Not until
+afterwards, reflecting upon the matter, did it surprise me that to a
+mere chance acquaintance of the moment he had spoken of the one thing
+dearest to his heart: a sweet but clearly wayward maiden, the Hebe of
+a small, old-fashioned coffee-shop the 'bus was at that moment passing.
+Hitherto I had not been the recipient of confidences. It occurred to me
+that as a rule not even my friends spoke much to me concerning their
+own affairs; generally it was I who spoke to them of mine. I sympathised
+with him, advised him--how, I do not recollect. He said, however, he
+thought that I was right; and at Regent Street he left me, expressing
+his determination to follow my counsel, whatever it may have been.
+
+Between Berners Street and the Circus I lent a shilling to a couple of
+young ladies who had just discovered with amusement, quickly swallowed
+by despair, that they neither of them had any money with them. (They
+returned it next day in postage stamps, with a charming note.) The
+assurance with which I tendered the slight service astonished me myself.
+At any other time I should have hesitated, argued with my fears, offered
+it with an appearance of sulky constraint, and been declined. For
+a moment they were doubtful, then, looking at me, accepted with a
+delightful smile. They consulted me as to the way to Paternoster Row.
+I instructed them, adding a literary anecdote, which seemed to interest
+them. I even ventured on a compliment, neatly phrased, I am inclined to
+think. Evidently it pleased--a result hitherto unusual in the case of
+my compliments. At the corner of Southampton Row I parted from them with
+regret. Why had I never noticed before how full of pleasant people this
+sweet and smiling London?
+
+At the corner of Queen's Square a decent-looking woman stopped me to ask
+the way to the Children's Hospital at Chelsea, explaining she had made a
+mistake, thinking it was the one in Great Ormond Street where her child
+lay. I directed her, then glancing into her face, noticed how tired
+she looked, and a vista of the weary pavements she would have to tramp
+flashed before me. I slipped some money into her hand and told her to
+take a 'bus. She flushed, then thanked me. I turned a few yards further
+on; she was starting after me, amazement on her face. I laughed and
+waved my hand to her. She smiled back in return, and went her way.
+
+A rain began to fall. I paused upon the doorstep for a minute, enjoying
+the cool drops upon by upturned face, the tonic sharpness of the keen
+east wind; then slipped my key into the lock and entered.
+
+The door of old Deleglise's studio on the first floor happened to be
+open. Hitherto, beyond the usual formal salutations, when by chance we
+met upon the stairs, I had exchanged but few words with my eccentric
+landlord; but remembering his kindly face, the desire came upon me
+to tell him my good fortune. I felt sure his eyes would lighten with
+delight. By instinct I knew him for a young man's man.
+
+I tapped lightly; no answer came. Someone was talking; it sounded like a
+girl's voice. I pushed the door further open and walked in; such was the
+custom of the house. It was a large room, built over the yard, lighted
+by one high window, before which was the engraving desk, shaded under
+a screen of tissue paper. At the further end of the room stood a large
+cheval-glass, and in front of this, its back towards me, was a figure
+that excited my curiosity; so that remaining where I was, partly hidden
+behind a large easel, I watched it for awhile in silence. Above a
+heavily flounced blue skirt, which fell in creases on the floor
+and trailed a couple of yards or so behind, it wore a black low-cut
+sleeveless bodice--much too big for it--of the fashion early Victorian.
+A good deal of dark-brown hair, fastened up by hair-pins that stuck out
+in all directions like quills upon a porcupine, suggesting collapse with
+every movement, was ornamented by three enormous green feathers, one
+of which hung limply over the lady's left ear. Three times, while I
+watched, unnoticed, the lady propped it into a more befitting attitude,
+and three times, limp and intoxicated-looking, it fell back into its
+former foolish position. Her long, thin arms, displaying a pair of
+brilliantly red elbows, pointed to quite a dangerous degree, terminated
+in hands so very sunburnt as to convey the impression of a pair of
+remarkably well-fitting gloves. Her right hand grasped and waved with
+determination a large lace fan, her left clutched fiercely the front of
+her skirt. With a sweeping curtsey to herself in the glass, which would
+have been more effective could she have avoided tying her legs together
+with her skirt--a _contretemps_ necessitating the use of both hands and
+a succession of jumps before she could disentangle herself--she remarked
+so soon as she had recovered her balance:
+
+"So sorry I am late. My carriage was unfortunately delayed."
+
+The excuse, I gathered, was accepted, for with a gracious smile and
+a vigorous bow, by help of which every hairpin made distinct further
+advance towards freedom, she turned, and with much dignity and head
+over the right shoulder took a short walk to the left. At the end of six
+short steps she stopped and began kicking. For what reason, I, at first,
+could not comprehend. It dawned upon me after awhile that her object
+was the adjustment of her train. Finding the manoeuvre too difficult of
+accomplishment by feet alone, she stooped, and, taking the stuff up in
+her hands, threw it behind her. Then, facing north, she retraced
+her steps to the glass, talking to herself, as she walked, in the
+high-pitched drawl, distinctive, as my stage knowledge told me, of
+aristocratic society.
+
+"Oh, do you think so--really? Ah, yes; you say that. Certainly not! I
+shouldn't think of it." There followed what I am inclined to believe was
+intended for a laugh, musical but tantalising. If so, want of practice
+marred the effort. The performance failed to satisfy even herself. She
+tried again; it was still only a giggle.
+
+Before the glass she paused, and with a haughty inclination of her head
+succeeded for the third time in displacing the intoxicated feather.
+
+"Oh, bother the silly thing!" she said in a voice so natural as to be,
+by contrast with her previous tone, quite startling.
+
+She fixed it again with difficulty, muttering something inarticulate.
+Then, her left hand resting on an imaginary coat-sleeve, her right
+holding her skirt sufficiently high to enable her to move, she commenced
+to majestically gyrate.
+
+Whether, hampered as she was by excess of skirt, handicapped by the
+natural clumsiness of her age, catastrophe in any case would not sooner
+or later have overtaken her, I have my doubts. I have since learnt her
+own view to be that but for catching sight, in turning, of my face,
+staring at her through the bars of the easel, all would have gone well
+and gracefully. Avoiding controversy on this point, the facts to be
+recorded are, that, seeing me, she uttered a sudden exclamation of
+surprise, dropped her skirt, trod on her train, felt her hair coming
+down, tried to do two things at once, and sat upon the floor. I ran to
+her assistance. With flaming face and flashing eyes she sprang to her
+feet. There was a sound as of the rushing down of avalanches. The blue
+flounced skirt lay round her on the floor. She stood above its billowy
+folds, reminiscent of Venus rising from the waves--a gawky, angular
+Venus in a short serge frock, reaching a little below her knees, black
+stockings and a pair of prunella boots of a size suggesting she had yet
+some inches to grow before reaching her full height.
+
+"I hope you haven't hurt yourself," I said.
+
+The next moment I didn't care whether she had or whether she hadn't.
+She did not reply to my kindly meant enquiry. Instead, her hand swept
+through the air in the form of an ample semi-circle. It terminated on
+my ear. It was not a small hand; it was not a soft hand; it was not
+that sort of hand. The sound of the contact rang through the room like a
+pistol shot; I heard it with my other ear. I sprang at her, and catching
+her before she had recovered her equilibrium, kissed her. I did not kiss
+her because I wanted to. I kissed her because I could not box her ears
+back in return, which I should have preferred doing. I kissed her,
+hoping it would make her mad. It did. If a look could have killed me,
+such would have been the tragic ending of this story. It did not kill
+me; it did me good.
+
+"You horrid boy!" she cried. "You horrid, horrid boy!"
+
+There, I admit, she scored. I did not in the least object to her
+thinking me horrid, but at nineteen one does object to being mistaken
+for a boy.
+
+"I am not a boy," I explained.
+
+"Yes, you are," she retorted; "a beast of a boy!"
+
+"If you do it again," I warned her--a sudden movement on her part
+hinting to me the possibility--"I'll kiss you again! I mean it."
+
+"Leave the room!" she commanded, pointing with her angular arm towards
+the door.
+
+I did not wish to remain. I was about to retire with as much dignity as
+circumstances permitted.
+
+"Boy!" she added.
+
+At that I turned. "Now I won't go!" I replied. "See if I do."
+
+We stood glaring at each other.
+
+"What right have you in here?" she demanded.
+
+"I came to see Mr. Deleglise," I answered. "I suppose you are Miss
+Deleglise. It doesn't seem to me that you know how to treat a visitor."
+
+"Who are you?" she asked.
+
+"Mr. Horace Moncrieff," I replied. I was using at the period both my
+names indiscriminately, but for this occasion Horace Moncrieff I judged
+the more awe-inspiring.
+
+She snorted. "I know. You're the house-maid. You sweep all the crumbs
+under the mats."
+
+Now this was a subject about which at the time I was feeling somewhat
+sore. "Needs must when the Devil drives;" but as matters were, Dan and I
+could well have afforded domestic assistance. It rankled in my mind that
+to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the future Dickens,
+Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps rolled into one,
+should be compelled to the performance of menial duties. On this morning
+of all others, my brilliant literary career just commenced, the anomaly
+of the thing appeared naturally more glaring.
+
+Besides, how came she to know I swept the crumbs under the mat--that it
+was my method? Had she and Dan been discussing me, ridiculing me behind
+my back? What right had Dan to reveal the secrets of our menage to this
+chit of a school-girl? Had he done so? or had she been prying, poking
+her tilted nose into matters that did not concern her? Pity it was she
+had no mother to occasionally spank her, teach her proper behaviour.
+
+"Where I sweep our crumbs is nothing to do with you," I replied with
+some spirit. "That I have to sweep them at all is the fault of your
+father. A sensible girl--"
+
+"How dare you speak against my father!" she interrupted me with blazing
+eyes.
+
+"We will not discuss the question further," I answered, with sense and
+dignity.
+
+"I think you had better not!" she retorted.
+
+Turning her back on me, she commenced to gather up her hairpins--there
+must have been about a hundred of them. I assisted her to the extent of
+picking up about twenty, which I handed to her with a bow: it may have
+been a little stiff, but that was only to be expected. I wished to show
+her that her bad example had not affected my own manners.
+
+"I am sorry my presence should have annoyed you," I said. "It was quite
+an accident. I entered the room thinking your father was here."
+
+"When you saw he wasn't, you might have gone out again," she replied,
+"instead of hiding yourself behind a picture."
+
+"I didn't hide myself," I explained. "The easel happened to be in the
+way."
+
+"And you stopped there and watched me."
+
+"I couldn't help it."
+
+She looked round and our eyes met. They were frank, grey eyes. An
+expression of merriment shot into them. I laughed.
+
+Then she laughed: it was a delightful laugh, the laugh one would have
+expected from her.
+
+"You might at least have coughed," she suggested.
+
+"It was so amusing," I pleaded.
+
+"I suppose it was," she agreed, and held out her hand. "Did I hurt you?"
+she asked.
+
+"Yes, you did," I answered, taking it.
+
+"Well, it was enough to annoy me, wasn't it?" she suggested.
+
+"Evidently," I agreed.
+
+"I am going to a ball next week," she explained, "a grown-up ball, and
+I've got to wear a skirt. I wanted to see if I could manage a train."
+
+"Well, to be candid, you can't," I assured her.
+
+"It does seem difficult."
+
+"Shall I show you?" I asked.
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"Well, I see it done every night."
+
+"Oh, yes; of course, you're on the stage. Yes, do."
+
+We readjusted the torn skirt, accommodating it better to her figure by
+the help of hairpins. I showed her how to hold the train, and, I humming
+a tune, we commenced to waltz.
+
+"I shouldn't count my steps," I suggested to her. "It takes your mind
+away from the music."
+
+"I don't waltz well," she admitted meekly. "I know I don't do anything
+well--except play hockey."
+
+"And try not to tread on your partner's feet. That's a very bad fault."
+
+"I do try not to," she explained.
+
+"It comes with practice," I assured her.
+
+"I'll get Tom to give me half an hour every evening," she said. "He
+dances beautifully."
+
+"Who's Tom?"
+
+"Oh, father."
+
+"Why do you call your father Tom? It doesn't sound respectful."
+
+"Oh, he likes it; and it suits him so much better than father. Besides,
+he isn't like a real father. He does everything I want him to."
+
+"Is that good for you?"
+
+"No; it's very bad for me--everybody says so. When you come to think of
+it, of course it isn't the way to bring up a girl. I tell him, but he
+merely laughs--says it's the only way he knows. I do hope I turn out all
+right. Am I doing it better now?"
+
+"A little. Don't be too anxious about it. Don't look at your feet."
+
+"But if I don't they go all wrong. It was you who trod on mine that
+time."
+
+"I know. I'm sorry. It's a little difficult not to."
+
+"Am I holding my train all right?"
+
+"Well, there's no need to grip it as if you were afraid it would run
+away. It will follow all right. Hold it gracefully."
+
+"I wish I wasn't a girl."
+
+"Oh, you'll get used to it." We concluded our dance.
+
+"What do I do--say 'Thank you'?"
+
+"Yes, prettily."
+
+"What does he do?"
+
+"Oh, he takes you back to your chaperon, or suggests refreshment, or you
+sit and talk."
+
+"I hate talking. I never know what to say."
+
+"Oh, that's his duty. He'll try and amuse you, then you must laugh. You
+have a nice laugh."
+
+"But I never know when to laugh. If I laugh when I want to it always
+offends people. What do you do if somebody asks you to dance and you
+don't want to dance with them?"
+
+"Oh, you say your programme is full."
+
+"But if it isn't?"
+
+"Well, you tell a lie."
+
+"Couldn't I say I don't dance well, and that I'm sure they'd get on
+better with somebody else?"
+
+"It would be the truth, but they might not believe it."
+
+"I hope nobody asks me that I don't want."
+
+"Well, he won't a second time, anyhow."
+
+"You are rude."
+
+"You are only a school-girl."
+
+"I look a woman in my new frock, I really do."
+
+"I should doubt it."
+
+"You shall see me, then you'll be polite. It is because you are a boy
+you are rude. Men are much nicer."
+
+"Oh, are they?"
+
+"Yes. You will be, when you are a man."
+
+The sound of voices rose suddenly in the hall.
+
+"Tom!" cried Miss Deleglise; and collecting her skirt in both hands,
+bolted down the corkscrew staircase leading to the kitchen, leaving me
+standing in the centre of the studio.
+
+The door opened and old Deleglise entered, accompanied by a small,
+slight man with red hair and beard and somewhat watery eyes.
+
+Deleglise himself was a handsome old fellow, then a man of about
+fifty-five. His massive, mobile face, illuminated by bright, restless
+eyes, was crowned with a lion-like mane of iron-grey hair. Till a few
+years ago he had been a painter of considerable note. But in questions
+of art his temper was short. Pre-Raphaelism had gone out of fashion for
+the time being; the tendency of the new age was towards impressionism,
+and in disgust old Deleglise had broken his palette across his knee, and
+swore never to paint again. Artistic work of some sort being necessary
+to his temperament, he contented himself now with engraving. At the
+moment he was engaged upon the reproduction of Memlinc's Shrine of St.
+Ursula, with photographs of which he had just returned from Bruges.
+
+At sight of me his face lighted with a smile, and he advanced with
+outstretched hand.
+
+"Ah; my lad, so you have got over your shyness and come to visit the old
+bear in his den. Good boy. I like young faces."
+
+He had a clear, musical voice, ever with the suggestion of a laugh
+behind it. He laid his hand upon my shoulder.
+
+"Why, you are looking as if you had come into a fortune," he added, "and
+didn't know what a piece of bad luck that can be to a young fellow like
+yourself."
+
+"How could it be bad luck?" I asked, laughing.
+
+"Takes all the sauce out of life, young man," answered Deleglise. "What
+interest is there in running a race with the prize already in your
+possession, tell me that?"
+
+"It is not that kind of fortune," I answered, "it is another. I have had
+my first story accepted. It is in print. Look."
+
+I handed him the paper. He spread it out upon the engraving board before
+him.
+
+"Ah, that's better," he said, "that's better. Charlie," he turned to the
+red-headed man, who had seated himself listlessly in the one easy-chair
+the room contained, "come here."
+
+The red-headed man rose and wandered towards us. "Let me introduce you
+to Mr. Paul Kelver, our new fellow servant. Our lady has accepted him.
+He has just been elected; his first story is in print."
+
+The red-haired man stretched out his long thin hand. "I have thirty
+years of fame," said the red-haired man--"could I say world-wide?"
+
+He turned for confirmation to old Deleglise, who laughed. "I think you
+can."
+
+"If I could give it you would you exchange with me--at this moment?"
+
+"You would be a fool if you did," he went on. "One's first success,
+one's first victory! It is the lover's first kiss. Fortune grows old and
+wrinkled, frowns more often than she smiles. We become indifferent to
+her, quarrel with her, make it up again. But the joy of her first kiss
+after the long wooing! Burn it into your memory, my young friend, that
+it may live with you always!"
+
+He strolled away. Old Deleglise took up the parable.
+
+"Ah, yes; one's first success, Paul! Laugh, my boy, cry! Shut yourself
+up in your room, shout, dance! Throw your hat into the air and cry
+hurrah! Make the most of it, Paul. Hug it to your heart, think of it,
+dream of it. This is the finest hour of your life, my boy. There will
+never come another like it--never!"
+
+He crossed the studio, and taking from its nail a small oil painting,
+brought it over and laid it on the board beside my paper. It was a
+fascinating little picture, painted with that exquisite minutiae and
+development of detail that a newer school was then ridiculing: as though
+Art had but one note to her voice. The dead figure of an old man lay
+upon a bed. A child had crept into the darkened room, and supporting
+itself by clutching tightly at the sheet, was gazing with solemn
+curiosity upon the white, still face.
+
+"That was mine," said old Deleglise. "It was hung in the Academy
+thirty-six years ago, and bought for ten guineas by a dentist at Bury
+St. Edmunds. He went mad a few years later and died in a lunatic asylum.
+I had never lost sight of it, and the executors were quite agreeable
+to my having it back again for the same ten guineas. I used to go every
+morning to the Academy to look at it. I thought it the cleverest bit of
+work in the whole gallery, and I'm not at all sure that it wasn't. I
+saw myself a second Teniers, another Millet. Look how that light coming
+through the open door is treated; isn't it good? Somebody will pay a
+thousand guineas for it before I have been dead a dozen years, and it
+is worth it. But I wouldn't sell it myself now for five thousand. One's
+first success; it is worth all the rest of life!"
+
+"All?" queried the red-haired man from his easy-chair. We looked round.
+The lady of the skirt had entered, now her own proper self: a young girl
+of about fifteen, angular, awkward-looking, but bringing into the room
+with her that atmosphere of life, of hope, that is the eternal message
+of youth. She was not beautiful, not then--plain one might almost have
+called her but for her frank, grey eyes, her mass of dark-brown hair
+now gathered into a long thick plait. A light came into old Deleglise's
+eyes.
+
+"You are right, not all," he murmured to the red-haired man.
+
+She came forward shyly. I found it difficult to recognise in her the
+flaming Fury that a few minutes before had sprung at me from the billows
+of her torn blue skirt. She shook hands with the red-haired man and
+kissed her father.
+
+"My daughter," said old Deleglise, introducing me to her. "Mr. Paul
+Kelver, a literary gent."
+
+"Mr. Kelver and I have met already," she explained. "He has been waiting
+for you here in the studio."
+
+"And have you been entertaining him?" asked Deleglise. "Oh, yes,
+I entertained him," she replied. Her voice was singularly like her
+father's, with just the same suggestion of ever a laugh behind it.
+
+"We entertained each other," I said.
+
+"That's all right," said old Deleglise. "Stop and lunch with us. We will
+make ourselves a curry."
+
+
+
+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 he 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 be 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?" he 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?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST.
+
+Of old Deleglise's Sunday suppers, which, costumed from head to foot
+in spotless linen, he cooked himself in his great kitchen, moving with
+flushed, earnest face about the gleaming stove, while behind him his
+guests waited, ranged round the massive oaken table glittering with cut
+glass and silver, among which fluttered the deft hands of Madeline, his
+ancient whitecapped Bonne, much has been already recorded, and by those
+possessed of greater knowledge. They who sat there talking in whispers
+until such time as old Deleglise turned towards them again, radiant
+with consciousness of success, the savoury triumph steaming between his
+hands, when, like the sudden swell of the Moonlight Sonata, the talk
+would rush once more into a roar, were men whose names were
+then--and some are still--more or less household words throughout the
+English-speaking world. Artists, musicians, actors, writers, scholars,
+droles, their wit and wisdom, their sayings and their doings must be
+tolerably familiar to readers of memoir and biography; and if to such
+their epigrams appear less brilliant, their jests less laughable than to
+us who heard them spoken, that is merely because fashion in humour and
+in understanding changes as in all else.
+
+You, gentle reader of my book, I shall not trouble with second-hand
+record of that which you can read elsewhere. For me it will be but
+to write briefly of my own brief glimpse into that charmed circle.
+Concerning this story more are the afternoon At Homes held by Dan and
+myself upon the second floor of the old Georgian house in pleasant,
+quiet Queen Square. For cook and house-maid on these days it would be a
+busy morning. Failing other supervision, Dan and I agreed that to secure
+success on these important occasions each of us should criticise the
+work of the other. I passed judgment on Dan's cooking, he upon my
+house-work.
+
+"Too much soda," I would declare, sampling the cake.
+
+"You silly Juggins! It's meant to taste of soda--it's a soda cake."
+
+"I know that. It isn't meant to taste of nothing but soda. There
+wants to be some cake about it also. This thing, so far as flavour
+is concerned, is nothing but a Seidlitz powder. You can't give people
+solidified Seidlitz powders for tea!"
+
+Dan would fume, but I would remain firm. The soda cake would be laid
+aside, and something else attempted. His cookery was the one thing Dan
+was obstinate about. He would never admit that anything could possibly
+be wrong with it. His most ghastly failures he would devour himself
+later on with pretended enjoyment. I have known him finish a sponge
+cake, the centre of which had to be eaten with a teaspoon, declaring it
+was delicious; that eating a dry sponge cake was like eating dust; that
+a sponge cake ought to be a trifle syrupy towards the centre. Afterwards
+he would be strangely silent and drink brandy out of a wine-glass.
+
+"Call these knives clean?" It would be Dan's turn.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+Dan would draw his finger across one, producing chiaro-oscuro.
+
+"Not if you go fingering them. Why don't you leave them alone and go on
+with your own work?"
+
+"You've just wiped them, that's all."
+
+"Well, there isn't any knife-powder."
+
+"Yes, there is."
+
+"Besides, it ruins knives, over-cleaning them--takes all the edge off.
+We shall want them pretty sharp to cut those lemon buns of yours."
+
+"Over-cleaning them! You don't take any pride in the place."
+
+"Good Lord! Don't I work from morning to night?"
+
+"You lazy young devil!"
+
+"Makes one lazy, your cooking. How can a man work when he is suffering
+all day long from indigestion?"
+
+But Dan would not be content until I had found the board and cleaned the
+knives to his complete satisfaction. Perhaps it was as well that in this
+way all things once a week were set in order. After lunch house-maid and
+cook would vanish, two carefully dressed gentlemen being left alone to
+receive their guests.
+
+These would be gathered generally from among Dan's journalistic
+acquaintances and my companions of the theatre. Occasionally, Minikin
+and Jarman would be of the number, Mrs. Peedles even once or twice
+arriving breathless on our landing. Left to myself, I perhaps should not
+have invited them, deeming them hardly fitting company to mingle with
+our other visitors; but Dan, having once been introduced to them,
+overrode such objection.
+
+"My dear Lord Chamberlain," Dan would reply, "an ounce of originality is
+worth a ton of convention. Little tin ladies and gentlemen all made
+to pattern! One can find them everywhere. Your friends would be an
+acquisition to any society."
+
+"But are they quite good form?" I hinted.
+
+"I'll tell you what we will do," replied Dan. "We'll forget that Mrs.
+Peedles keeps a lodging-house in Blackfriars. We will speak of her as
+our friend, 'that dear, quaint old creature, Lady P.' A title that is
+an oddity, whose costume always suggests the wardrobe of a provincial
+actress! My dear Paul, your society novelist would make a fortune out
+of such a character. The personages of her amusing anecdotes, instead of
+being third-rate theatrical folk, shall be Earl Blank and the Baroness
+de Dash. The editors of society journals shall pay me a shilling a
+line for them. Jarman--yes, Jarman shall be the son of a South American
+millionaire. Vulgar? Nonsense! you mean racy. Minikin--he looks much
+more like forty than twenty--he shall be an eminent scientist. His
+head will then appear the natural size; his glass eye, the result of
+a chemical experiment, a touch of distinction; his uncompromising
+rudeness, a lovable characteristic. We will make him buy a yard of
+red ribbon and wear it across his shirt-front, and address him as Herr
+Professor. It will explain slight errors of English grammar and all
+peculiarities of accent. They shall be our lions. You leave it to me. We
+will invite commonplace, middle-class folk to meet them."
+
+And this, to my terror and alarm, Dan persisted in doing. Jarman entered
+into the spirit of the joke with gusto. So far as he was concerned, our
+guests, from the beginning to the end, were one and all, I am confident,
+deceived. The more he swaggered, the more he boasted, the more he talked
+about himself--and it was a failing he was prone to--the greater was
+his success. At the persistent endeavours of Dan's journalistic
+acquaintances to excite his cupidity by visions of new journals, to be
+started with a mere couple of thousand pounds and by the inherent
+merit of their ideas to command at once a circulation of hundreds of
+thousands, I could afford to laugh. But watching the tremendous efforts
+of my actress friends to fascinate him--luring him into corners, gazing
+at him with languishing eyes, trotting out all their little tricks
+for his exclusive benefit, quarrelling about him among themselves--my
+conscience would prick me, lest our jest should end in a contretemps.
+Fortunately, Jarman himself, was a gentleman of uncommon sense, or my
+fears might have been realised. I should have been sorry myself to have
+been asked to remain stone under the blandishments of girls young and
+old, of women handsome and once, no doubt, good looking, showered upon
+him during that winter. But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no
+slave to female charms. He enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and
+eventually married the eldest daughter of a small blacking factory. She
+was a plain girl, but pleasant, and later brought to Jarman possession
+of the factory. When I meet him--he is now stout and rubicund--he gives
+me the idea of a man who has attained to his ideals.
+
+With Minikin we had more trouble. People turned up possessed of
+scientific smattering. We had to explain that the Professor never talked
+shop. Others were owners of unexpected knowledge of German, which they
+insisted upon airing. We had to explain that the Herr Professor was
+in London to learn English, and had taken a vow during his residence
+neither to speak nor listen to his native tongue. It was remarked that
+his acquaintance with colloquial English slang, for a foreigner, was
+quite unusual. Occasionally he was too rude, even for a scientist,
+informing ladies, clamouring to know how he liked English women, that he
+didn't like them silly; telling one gentleman, a friend of Dan, a rather
+important man who once asked him, referring to his yard of ribbon, what
+he got it for, that he got it for fourpence. We had to explain him as
+a gentleman who had been soured by a love disappointment. The ladies
+forgave him; the gentlemen said it was a damned lucky thing for the
+girl. Altogether, Minikin took a good deal of explaining.
+
+Lady Peedles, our guests decided among themselves, must be the widow of
+some one in the City who had been knighted in a crowd. They made fun of
+her behind her back, but to her face were most effusive. "My dear Lady
+Peedles" was the phrase most often heard in our rooms whenever she was
+present. At the theatre "my friend Lady Peedles" became a person much
+spoken of--generally in loud tones. My own social position I found
+decidedly improved by reason of her ladyship's evident liking for
+myself. It went abroad that I was her presumptive heir. I was courted as
+a gentleman of expectations.
+
+The fishy-eyed young man became one of our regular guests. Dan won his
+heart by never laughing at him.
+
+"I like talking to you," said the fishy-eyed young man one afternoon to
+Dan. "You don't go into fits of laughter when I remark that it has been
+a fine day; most people do. Of course, on the stage I don't mind. I
+know I am a funny little devil. I get my living by being a funny little
+devil. There is a photograph of me hanging in the theatre lobby. I saw
+a workman stop and look at it the other day as he passed; I was just
+behind him. He burst into a roar of laughter. 'Little--! He makes me
+laugh to look at him!' he cluttered to himself. Well, that's all right;
+I want the man in the gallery to think me funny, but it annoys me when
+people laugh at me off the stage. If I am out to dinner anywhere and ask
+somebody to pass the mustard, I never get it; instead, they burst out
+laughing. I don't want people to laugh at me when I am having my dinner.
+I want my dinner. It makes me very angry sometimes."
+
+"I know," agreed Dan, sympathetically. "The world never grasps the fact
+that man is a collection, not a single exhibit. I remember being at a
+house once where the chief guest happened to be a great Hebrew scholar.
+One tea time, a Miss Henman, passing the butter to some one in a hurry,
+let it slip out of her hand. 'Why is Miss Henman like a caterpillar?'
+asked our learned guest in a sepulchral voice. Nobody appeared to know.
+'Because she makes the butter fly.' It never occurred to any one of us
+that the Doctor could possibly joke. There was dead silence for about
+a minute. Then our hostess, looking grave, remarked: 'Oh, do you really
+think so?'"
+
+"If I were to enter a room full of people," said the fishy-eyed young
+man, "and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus, they
+would think it the funniest story they had heard in years."
+
+He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he
+undoubtedly who was drawing the house. But he was not happy.
+
+"I am not a comic actor, really," he explained. "I could play Romeo, so
+far as feeling is concerned, and play it damned well. There is a fine
+vein of poetry in me. But of course it's no good to me with this face of
+mine."
+
+"But are you not sinning your mercies, you fellows?" Dan replied. "There
+is young Kelver here. At school it was always his trouble that he could
+give us a good time and make us laugh, which nobody else in the whole
+school could do. His ambition was to kick a ball as well as a hundred
+other fellows could kick it. He could tell us a good story now if he
+would only write what the Almighty intended him to write, instead of
+gloomy rigmaroles about suffering Princesses in Welsh caves. I don't
+say it's bad, but a hundred others could write the same sort of thing
+better."
+
+"Can't you understand," answered the little man; "the poorest tragedian
+that ever lived never wished himself the best of low comedians. The
+court fool had an excellent salary, no doubt; and, likely enough, had
+got two-thirds of all the brain there was in the palace. But not a
+wooden-headed man-at-arms but looked down upon him. Every gallery boy
+who pays a shilling to laugh at me regards himself as my intellectual
+superior; while to a fourth-rate spouter of blank verse he looks up in
+admiration."
+
+"Does it so very much matter," suggested Dan, "how the wooden-headed
+man-at-arms or the shilling gallery boy happens to regard you?"
+
+"Yes, it does," retorted Goggles, "because we happen to agree with them.
+If I could earn five pounds a week as juvenile lead, I would never play
+a comic part again."
+
+"There I cannot follow you," returned Dan. "I can understand the artist
+who would rather be the man of action, the poet who would rather be the
+statesman or the warrior; though personally my sympathies are precisely
+the other way--with Wolfe who thought it a more glorious work, the
+writing of a great poem, than the burning of so many cities and the
+killing of so many men. We all serve the community. It is difficult,
+looking at the matter from the inside, to say who serves it best. Some
+feed it, some clothe it. The churchman and the policeman between them
+look after its morals, keep it in order. The doctor mends it when it
+injures itself; the lawyer helps it to quarrel, the soldier teaches it
+to fight. We Bohemians amuse it, instruct it. We can argue that we are
+the most important. The others cater for its body, we for its mind. But
+their work is more showy than ours and attracts more attention; and to
+attract attention is the aim and object of most of us. But for Bohemians
+to worry among themselves which is the greatest, is utterly without
+reason. The story-teller, the musician, the artist, the clown, we are
+members of a sharing troupe; one, with the ambition of the fat boy in
+Pickwick, makes the people's flesh creep; another makes them hold their
+sides with laughter. The tragedian, soliloquising on his crimes, shows
+us how wicked we are; you, looking at a pair of lovers from under a
+scratch wig, show us how ridiculous we are. Both lessons are necessary:
+who shall say which is the superior teacher?"
+
+"Ah, I am not a philosopher," replied the little man, with a sigh.
+
+"Ah," returned Dan, with another, "and I am not a comic actor on my
+way to a salary of a hundred a week. We all of us want the other boy's
+cake."
+
+The O'Kelly was another frequent visitor of ours. The attic in Belsize
+Square had been closed. In vain had the O'Kelly wafted incense, burned
+pastilles and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne. In vain had he talked of rats,
+hinted at drains.
+
+"A wonderful woman," groaned the O'Kelly in tones of sorrowful
+admiration. "There's no deceiving her."
+
+"But why submit?" was our natural argument. "Why not say you are going
+to smoke, and do it?"
+
+"It's her theory, me boy," explained the O'Kelly, "that the home should
+be kept pure--a sort of a temple, ye know. She's convinced that in time
+it is bound to exercise an influence upon me. It's a beautiful idea,
+when ye come to think of it."
+
+Meanwhile, in the rooms of half-a-dozen sinful men the O'Kelly kept his
+own particular pipe, together with his own particular smoking mixture;
+and one such pipe and one such tobacco jar stood always on our
+mantelpiece.
+
+In the spring the forces of temptation raged round that feeble but most
+excellently intentioned citadel, the O'Kelly's conscience. The Signora
+had returned to England, was performing then at Ashley's Theatre. The
+O'Kelly would remain under long spells of silence, puffing vigorously
+at his pipe. Or would fortify himself with paeans in praise of Mrs.
+O'Kelly.
+
+"If anything could ever make a model man of me"--he spoke in the tones
+of one whose doubts are stronger than his hopes--"it would be the
+example of that woman."
+
+It was one Saturday afternoon. I had just returned from the matinee.
+
+"I don't believe," continued the O'Kelly, "I don't really believe she
+has ever done one single thing she oughtn't to, or left undone one
+single thing she ought, in the whole course of her life."
+
+"Maybe she has, and you don't know of it," I suggested, perceiving the
+idea might comfort him.
+
+"I wish I could think so," returned the O'Kelly. "I don't mean anything
+really wrong," he corrected himself quickly, "but something just a
+little wrong. I feel--I really feel I should like her better if she
+had."
+
+"Not that I mean I don't like her as it is, ye understand," corrected
+himself the O'Kelly a second time. "I respect that woman--I cannot tell
+ye, me boy, how much I respect her. Ye don't know her. There was one
+morning, about a month ago. That woman--she's down at six every morning,
+summer and winter; we have prayers at half-past. I was a trifle late
+meself: it was never me strong point, as ye know, early rising. Seven
+o'clock struck; she didn't appear, and I thought she had overslept
+herself. I won't say I didn't feel pleased for the moment; it was an
+unworthy sentiment, but I almost wished she had. I ran up to her room.
+The door was open, the bedclothes folded down as she always leaves them.
+She came in five minutes later. She had got up at four that morning
+to welcome a troupe of native missionaries from East Africa on their
+arrival at Waterloo Station. She's a saint, that woman; I am not worthy
+of her."
+
+"I shouldn't dwell too much on that phase of the subject," I suggested.
+
+"I can't help it, me boy," replied the O'Kelly. "I feel I am not."
+
+"I don't for a moment say you are," I returned; "but I shouldn't harp
+upon the idea. I don't think it good for you."
+
+"I never will be," he persisted gloomily, "never!"
+
+Evidently he was started on a dangerous train of reflection. With the
+idea of luring him away from it, I led the conversation to the subject
+of champagne.
+
+"Most people like it dry," admitted the O'Kelly. "Meself, I have always
+preferred it with just a suggestion of fruitiness."
+
+"There was a champagne," I said, "you used to be rather fond of when
+we--years ago."
+
+"I think I know the one ye mean," said the O'Kelly. "It wasn't at all
+bad, considering the price."
+
+"You don't happen to remember where you got it?" I asked.
+
+"It was in Bridge Street," remembered the O'Kelly, "not so very far from
+the Circus."
+
+"It is a pleasant evening," I remarked; "let us take a walk."
+
+We found the place, half wine-shop, half office.
+
+"Just the same," commented the O'Kelly as we pushed open the door and
+entered. "Not altered a bit."
+
+As in all probability barely twelve months had elapsed since his last
+visit, the fact in itself was not surprising. Clearly the O'Kelly had
+been calculating time rather by sensation. I ordered a bottle; and we
+sat down. Myself, being prejudiced against the brand, I called for a
+glass of claret. The O'Kelly finished the bottle. I was glad to notice
+my ruse had been successful. The virtue of that wine had not departed
+from it. With every glass the O'Kelly became morally more elevated.
+He left the place, determined that he would be worthy of Mrs. O'Kelly.
+Walking down the Embankment, he asserted his determination of buying an
+alarm-clock that very evening. At the corner of Westminster Bridge he
+became suddenly absorbed in his own thoughts. Looking to discover the
+cause of his silence, I saw that his eyes were resting on a poster
+representing a charming lady standing on one leg upon a wire; below
+her--at some distance--appeared the peaks of mountains; the artist
+had even caught the likeness. I cursed the luck that had directed our
+footsteps, but the next moment, lacking experience, was inclined to be
+reassured.
+
+"Me dear Paul," said the O'Kelly--he laid a fatherly hand upon my
+shoulder--"there are fair-faced, laughing women--sweet creatures,
+that ye want to put yer arm around and dance with." He shook his head
+disapprovingly. "There are the sainted women, who lead us up, Paul--up,
+always up."
+
+A look, such as the young man with the banner might have borne with him
+to the fields of snow and ice, suffused the O'Kelly's handsome face.
+Without another word he crossed the road and entered an American store,
+where for six-and-elevenpence he purchased an alarm-clock the man
+assured us would awake an Egyptian mummy. With this in his hand he waved
+me a good-bye, and jumped upon a Hampstead 'bus, and alone I strolled on
+to the theatre.
+
+Hal returned a little after Christmas and started himself in chambers
+in the City. It was the nearest he dared venture, so he said, to
+civilisation.
+
+"I'd be no good in the West End," he explained. "For a season I might
+attract as an eccentricity, but your swells would never stand me for
+longer--no more would any respectable folk, anywhere: we don't get on
+together. I commenced at Richmond. It was a fashionable suburb then,
+and I thought I was going to do wonders. I had everything in my favour,
+except myself. I do know my work, nobody can deny that of me. My
+father spent every penny he had, poor gentleman, in buying me an
+old-established practice: fine house, carriage and pair, white-haired
+butler--everything correct, except myself. It was of no use. I can hold
+myself in for a month or two; then I break out, the old original savage
+that I am under my frock coat. I feel I must run amuck, stabbing,
+hacking at the prim, smiling Lies mincing round about me. I can fool a
+silly woman for half-a-dozen visits; bow and rub my hands, purr round
+her sympathetically. All the while I am longing to tell her the truth:
+
+"'Go home. Wash your face; don't block up the pores of your skin with
+paint. Let out your corsets. You are thirty-three round the abdomen if
+you are an inch: how can you expect your digestion to do its work when
+you're squeezing it into twenty-one? Give up gadding about half your day
+and most of your night; you are old enough to have done with that sort
+of thing. Let the children come, and suckle them yourself. You'll be all
+the better for them. Don't loll in bed all the morning. Get up like a
+decent animal and do something for your living. Use your brain, what
+there is of it, and your body. At that price you can have health
+to-morrow, and at no other. I can do nothing for you.'
+
+"And sooner or later I blurt it out." He laughed his great roar. "Lord!
+you should see the real face coming out of the simpering mask.
+
+"Pompous old fools, strutting into me like turkey-cocks! By Jove, it was
+worth it! They would dribble out, looking half their proper size after I
+had done telling them what was the matter with them.
+
+"'Do you want to know what you are really suffering from?' I would shout
+at them, when I could contain myself no longer. 'Gluttony, my dear sir;
+gluttony and drunkenness, and over-indulgence in other vices that shall
+be nameless. Live like a man; get a little self-respect from somewhere;
+give up being an ape. Treat your body properly and it will treat you
+properly. That's the only prescription that will do you any good.'"
+
+He laughed again. "'Tell the truth, you shame the Devil.' But the Devil
+replies by starving you. It's a fairly effective retort. I am not the
+stuff successful family physicians are made of. In the City I may manage
+to rub along. One doesn't see so much of one's patients; they come and
+go. Clerks and warehousemen my practice will be among chiefly. The poor
+man does not so much mind being told the truth about himself; it is a
+blessing to which he is accustomed."
+
+We spoke but once of Barbara. A photograph of her in her bride's
+dress stood upon my desk. Occasionally, first fitting the room for
+the ceremony, sweeping away all impurity even from under the mats, and
+dressing myself with care, I would centre it amid flowers, and kneeling,
+kiss her hand where it rested on the back of the top-heavy looking chair
+without which no photographic studio is complete.
+
+One day he took it up, and looked at it long and hard.
+
+"The forehead denotes intellectuality; the eyes tenderness and courage.
+The lower part of the face, on the other hand, suggests a good deal
+of animalism: the finely cut nostrils show egotism--another word for
+selfishness; the nose itself, vanity; the lips, sensuousness and love
+of luxury. I wonder what sort of woman she really is." He laid the
+photograph back upon the desk.
+
+"I did not know you were so firm a believer in Lavater," I said.
+
+"Only when he agrees with what I know," he answered. "Have I not
+described her rightly?"
+
+"I do not care to discuss her in that vein," I replied, feeling the
+blood mounting to my cheeks.
+
+"Too sacred a subject?" he laughed. "It is the one ingredient of manhood
+I lack, ideality--an unfortunate deficiency for me. I must probe,
+analyse, dissect, see the thing as it really is, know it for what it
+is."
+
+"Well, she is the Countess Huescar now," I said. "For God's sake, leave
+her alone."
+
+He turned to me with the snarl of a beast. "How do you know she is the
+Countess Huescar? Is it a special breed of woman made on purpose? How do
+you know she isn't my wife--brain and heart, flesh and blood, mine? If
+she was, do you think I should give her up because some fool has stuck
+his label on her?"
+
+I felt the anger burning in my eyes. "Yours, his! She is no man's
+property. She is herself," I cried.
+
+The wrinkles round his nose and mouth smoothed themselves out. "You need
+not be afraid," he sneered. "As you say, she is the Countess Huescar.
+Can you imagine her as Mrs. Doctor Washburn? I can't." He took her
+photograph in his hand again. "The lower part of the face is the true
+index to the character. It shows the animal, and it is the animal that
+rules. The soul, the intellect, it comes and goes; the animal remains
+always. Sensuousness, love of luxury, vanity, those are the strings to
+which she dances. To be a Countess is of more importance to her than to
+be a woman. She is his, not mine. Let him keep her."
+
+"You do not know her," I answered; "you never have. You listen to what
+she says. She does not know herself."
+
+He looked at me queerly. "What do you think her to be?" he asked me. "A
+true woman, not the shallow thing she seems?"
+
+"A true woman," I persisted stoutly, "that you have not eyes enough to
+see."
+
+"You little fool!" he muttered, with the same queer look--"you little
+fool. But let us hope you are wrong, Paul. Let us hope, for her sake,
+you are wrong."
+
+It was at one of Deleglise's Sunday suppers that I first met Urban Vane.
+The position, nor even the character, I fear it must be confessed, of
+his guests was never enquired into by old Deleglise. A simple-minded,
+kindly old fellow himself, it was his fate to be occasionally surprised
+and grieved at the discovery that even the most entertaining of supper
+companions could fall short of the highest standard of conventional
+morality.
+
+"Dear, dear me!" he would complain, pacing up and down his studio
+with puzzled visage. "The last man in the world of whom I should have
+expected to hear it. So original in all his ideas. Are you quite sure?"
+
+"I am afraid there can be no doubt about it."
+
+"I can't believe it! I really can't believe it! One of the most amusing
+men I ever met!"
+
+I remember a well-known artist one evening telling us with much sense of
+humour how he had just completed the sale of an old Spanish cabinet to
+two distinct and separate purchasers.
+
+"I sold it first," recounted the little gentleman with glee, "to old
+Jong, the dealer. He has been worrying me about it for the last three
+months, and on Saturday afternoon, hearing that I was clearing out
+and going abroad, he came round again. 'Well, I am not sure I am in a
+position to sell it,' I told him. 'Who'll know?' he asked. 'They are not
+in, are they?' 'Not yet,' I answered, 'but I expect they will be some
+time on Monday.' 'Tell your man to open the door to me at eight o'clock
+on Monday morning,' he replied, 'we'll have it away without any fuss.
+There needn't be any receipt. I'm lending you a hundred pounds, in
+cash.' I worked him up to a hundred and twenty, and he paid me. Upon my
+word, I should never have thought of it, if he hadn't put the idea into
+my head. But turning round at the door: 'You won't go and sell it to
+some one else,' he suggested, 'between now and Monday?' It serves him
+right for his damned impertinence. 'Send and take it away to-day if you
+are at all nervous,' I told him. He looked at the thing, it is about
+twelve feet high altogether. 'I would if I could get a cart,' he
+muttered. Then an idea struck him. 'Does the top come off?' 'See for
+yourself,' I answered; 'it's your cabinet, not mine.' I was feeling
+rather annoyed with him. He examined it. 'That's all right,' he said;
+'merely a couple of screws. I'll take the top with me now on my cab.'
+He got a man in, and they took the upper cupboard away, leaving me the
+bottom. Two hours later old Sir George called to see me about his wife's
+portrait. The first thing he set eyes on was the remains of the cabinet:
+he had always admired it. 'Hallo,' he asked, 'are you breaking up the
+studio literally? What have you done with the other half?' 'I've sent
+it round to Jong's--' He didn't give me time to finish. 'Save Jong's
+commission and sell it to me direct,' he said. 'We won't argue about the
+price and I'll pay you in cash.'
+
+"Well, if Providence comes forward and insists on taking charge of
+a man, it is hardly good manners to flout her. Besides, his wife's
+portrait is worth twice as much as he is paying for it. He handed me
+over the money in notes. 'Things not going quite smoothly with you just
+at the moment?' he asked me. 'Oh, about the same as usual,' I told him.
+'You won't be offended at my taking it away with me this evening?' he
+asked. 'Not in the least,' I answered; 'you'll get it on the top of a
+four-wheeled cab.' We called in a couple of men, and I helped them down
+with it, and confoundedly heavy it was. 'I shall send round to Jong's
+for the other half on Monday morning,' he said, speaking with his head
+through the cab window, 'and explain it to him.' 'Do,' I answered;
+'he'll understand.'
+
+"I'm sorry I'm going away so early in the morning," concluded the little
+gentleman. "I'd give back Jong ten per cent. of his money to see his
+face when he enters the studio."
+
+Everybody laughed; but after the little gentleman was gone, the subject
+cropped up again.
+
+"If I wake sufficiently early," remarked one, "I shall find an excuse
+to look in myself at eight o'clock. Jong's face will certainly be worth
+seeing."
+
+"Rather rough both on him and Sir George," observed another.
+
+"Oh, he hasn't really done anything of the kind," chimed in old
+Deleglise in his rich, sweet voice. "He made that all up. It's just his
+fun; he's full of humour."
+
+"I am inclined to think that would be his idea of a joke," asserted the
+first speaker.
+
+Old Deleglise would not hear of it; but a week or two later I noticed an
+addition to old Deleglise's studio furniture in the shape of a handsome
+old carved cabinet twelve feet high.
+
+"He really had done it," explained old Deleglise, speaking in a whisper,
+though only he and I were present. "Of course, it was only his fun; but
+it might have been misunderstood. I thought it better to put the thing
+straight. I shall get the money back from him when he returns. A most
+amusing little man!"
+
+Old Deleglise possessed a house in Gower Street which fell vacant. One
+of his guests, a writer of poetical drama, was a man who three months
+after he had earned a thousand pounds never had a penny with which
+to bless himself. They are dying out, these careless, good-natured,
+conscienceless Bohemians; but quarter of a century ago they still
+lingered in Alsatian London. Turned out of his lodgings by a Philistine
+landlord, his sole possession in the wide world, two acts of a drama,
+for which he had already been paid, the problem of his future, though
+it troubled him but little, became acute to his friends. Old Deleglise,
+treating the matter as a joke, pretending not to know who was the
+landlord, suggested he should apply to the agents for position as
+caretaker. Some furniture was found for him, and the empty house in
+Gower Street became his shelter. The immediate present thus provided
+for, kindly old Deleglise worried himself a good deal concerning what
+would become of his friend when the house was let. There appeared to be
+no need for worry. Weeks, months went by. Applications were received
+by the agents in fair number, view cards signed by the dozen; but
+prospective tenants were never seen again. One Sunday evening our poet,
+warmed by old Deleglise's Burgundy, forgetful whose recommendation
+had secured him the lowly but timely appointment, himself revealed the
+secret.
+
+"Most convenient place I've got," so he told old Deleglise. "Whole house
+to myself. I wander about; it just suits me."
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," murmured old Deleglise.
+
+"Come and see me, and I'll cook you a chop," continued the other. "I've
+had the kitchen range brought up into the back drawing-room; saves going
+up and down stairs."
+
+"The devil you have!" growled old Deleglise. "What do you think the
+owner of the house will say?"
+
+"Haven't the least idea who the poor old duffer is myself. They've put
+me in as caretaker--an excellent arrangement: avoids all argument about
+rent."
+
+"Afraid it will soon come to an end, that excellent arrangement;"
+remarked old Deleglise, drily.
+
+"Why? Why should it?"
+
+"A house in Gower Street oughtn't to remain vacant long."
+
+"This one will."
+
+"You might tell me," asked old Deleglise, with a grim smile; "how do you
+manage it? What happens when people come to look over the house--don't
+you let them in?"
+
+"I tried that at first," explained the poet, "but they would go on
+knocking, and boys and policemen passing would stop and help them. It
+got to be a nuisance; so now I have them in, and get the thing over.
+I show them the room where the murder was committed. If it's a
+nervous-looking party, I let them off with a brief summary. If that
+doesn't do, I go into details and show them the blood-spots on the
+floor. It's an interesting story of the gruesome order. Come round one
+morning and I'll tell it to you. I'm rather proud of it. With the blinds
+down and a clock in the next room that ticks loudly, it goes well."
+
+Yet this was a man who, were the merest acquaintance to call upon him
+and ask for his assistance, would at once take him by the arm and lead
+him upstairs. All notes and cheques that came into his hands he changed
+at once into gold. Into some attic half filled with lumber he would
+fling it by the handful; then, locking the door, leave it there. On
+their hands and knees he and his friends, when they wanted any, would
+grovel for it, poking into corners, hunting under boxes, groping among
+broken furniture, feeling between cracks and crevices. Nothing gave him
+greater delight than an expedition of this nature to what he termed his
+gold-field; it had for him, as he would explain, all the excitements
+of mining without the inconvenience and the distance. He never knew how
+much was there. For a certain period a pocketful could be picked up in
+five minutes. Then he would entertain a dozen men at one of the best
+restaurants in London, tip cabmen and waiters with half-sovereigns,
+shower half-crowns as he walked through the streets, lend or give to
+anybody for the asking. Later, half-an-hour's dusty search would be
+rewarded with a single coin. It made no difference to him; he would dine
+in Soho for eighteenpence, smoke shag, and run into debt.
+
+The red-haired man, to whom Deleglise had introduced me on the day of
+my first meeting with the Lady of the train, was another of his most
+constant visitors. It flattered my vanity that the red-haired man, whose
+name was famous throughout Europe and America, should condescend to
+confide to me--as he did and at some length--the deepest secrets of his
+bosom. Awed--at all events at first--I would sit and listen while by
+the hour he would talk to me in corners, telling me of the women he had
+loved. They formed a somewhat large collection. Julias, Marias, Janets,
+even Janes--he had madly worshipped, deliriously adored so many it grew
+bewildering. With a far-away look in his eyes, pain trembling through
+each note of his musical, soft voice, he would with bitter jest, with
+passionate outburst, recount how he had sobbed beneath the stars for
+love of Isabel, bitten his own flesh in frenzied yearning for Lenore. He
+appeared from his own account--if in connection with a theme so poetical
+I may be allowed a commonplace expression--to have had no luck with
+any of them. Of the remainder, an appreciable percentage had been mere
+passing visions, seen at a distance in the dawn, at twilight--generally
+speaking, when the light must have been uncertain. Never again, though
+he had wandered in the neighbourhood for months, had he succeeded in
+meeting them. It would occur to me that enquiries among the neighbours,
+applications to the local police, might possibly have been efficacious;
+but to have broken in upon his exalted mood with such suggestions would
+have demanded more nerve than at the time I possessed. In consequence,
+my thoughts I kept to myself.
+
+"My God, boy!" he would conclude, "may you never love as I loved that
+woman Miriam"--or Henrietta, or Irene, as the case might be.
+
+For my sympathetic attitude towards the red-haired man I received one
+evening commendation from old Deleglise.
+
+"Good boy," said old Deleglise, laying his hand on my shoulder. We were
+standing in the passage. We had just shaken hands with the red-haired
+man, who, as usual, had been the last to leave. "None of the others will
+listen to him. He used to stop and confide it all to me after everybody
+else had gone. Sometimes I have dropped asleep, to wake an hour later
+and find him still talking. He gets it over early now. Good boy!"
+
+Soon I learnt it was characteristic of the artist to be willing--nay,
+anxious, to confide his private affairs to any one and every one who
+would only listen. Another characteristic appeared to be determination
+not to listen to anybody else's. As attentive recipient of other
+people's troubles and emotions I was subjected to practically no
+competition whatever. One gentleman, a leading actor of that day, I
+remember, immediately took me aside on my being introduced to him, and
+consulted me as to his best course of procedure under the extremely
+painful conditions that had lately arisen between himself and his wife.
+We discussed the unfortunate position at some length, and I did my best
+to counsel fairly and impartially.
+
+"I wish you would lunch with me at White's to-morrow," he said. "We can
+talk it over quietly. Say half-past one. By the bye, I didn't catch your
+name."
+
+I spelt it to him: he wrote the appointment down on his shirt-cuff. I
+went to White's the next day and waited an hour, but he did not turn
+up. I met him three weeks later at a garden-party with his wife. But he
+appeared to have forgotten me.
+
+Observing old Deleglise's guests, comparing them with their names, it
+surprised me the disconnection between the worker and the work. Writers
+of noble sentiment, of elevated ideality, I found contained in men of
+commonplace appearance, of gross appetites, of conventional ideas.
+It seemed doubtful whether they fully comprehended their own work;
+certainly it had no effect upon their own lives. On the other hand, an
+innocent, boyish young man, who lived the most correct of lives with
+a girlish-looking wife in an ivy-covered cottage near Barnes Common,
+I discovered to be the writer of decadent stories at which the Empress
+Theodora might have blushed. The men whose names were widest known were
+not the men who shone the brightest in Deleglise's kitchen; more
+often they appeared the dull dogs, listening enviously, or failing
+pathetically when they tried to compete with others who to the public
+were comparatively unknown. After a time I ceased to confound the artist
+with the man, thought no more of judging the one by the other than of
+evolving a tenant from the house to which circumstances or carelessness
+might have directed him. Clearly they were two creations originally
+independent of each other, settling down into a working partnership
+for purposes merely of mutual accommodation; the spirit evidently
+indifferent as to the particular body into which he crept, anxious only
+for a place to work in, easily contented.
+
+Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak.
+Cabinet Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped
+from Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries disguised
+in grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that with six
+strokes of the pen they could set half London laughing at whom they
+would; raw laddies with the burr yet clinging to their tongues, but
+who we knew would one day have the people dancing to the music of their
+words. Neither wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor position counted. Was a
+man interesting, amusing; had he ideas and thoughts of his own? Then he
+was welcome. Men who had come, men who were coming, met there on equal
+footing. Among them, as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my
+place--somewhat to my dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I
+have shocked them by the originality of my views, impressed them with
+the depth of my judgments. They declined to be startled, refused to
+be impressed; instead, they laughed. Nor from these men could I obtain
+sympathy in my disappointment.
+
+"What do you mean, you villain!" roared Deleglise's caretaker at me one
+evening on entering the kitchen. "How dare you waste your time writing
+this sort of stuff?"
+
+He had a copy of the paper containing my "Witch of Moel Sarbod" in his
+hand--then some months old. He screwed it up into a ball and flung it in
+my face. "I've only just read it. What did you get for it?"
+
+"Nothing," I answered.
+
+"Nothing!" he screamed. "You got off for nothing? You ought to have been
+whipped at the cart's tail!"
+
+"Oh, come, it's not as bad as that," suggested old Deleglise.
+
+"Not bad! There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end."
+
+"There wasn't intended to be," I interrupted.
+
+"Why not, you swindler? What were you sent into the world to do? To make
+it laugh."
+
+"I want to make it think," I told him.
+
+"Make it think! Hasn't it got enough to think about? Aren't there ten
+thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers, long-eared
+philosophers, boring it to death? Who are you to turn up your nose at
+your work and tell the Almighty His own business? You are here to make
+us laugh. Get on with your work, you confounded young idiot!"
+
+Urban Vane was the only one among them who understood me, who agreed
+with me that I was fitted for higher things than merely to minister
+to the world's need of laughter. He alone it was who would listen
+with approval to my dreams of becoming a famous tragedian, a writer of
+soul-searching books, of passion-analysing plays. I never saw him laugh
+himself, certainly not at anything funny. "Humour!" he would explain
+in his languid drawl, "personally it doesn't amuse me." One felt its
+introduction into the scheme of life had been an error. He was a large,
+fleshy man, with a dreamy, caressing voice and strangely impassive face.
+Where he came from, who he was, nobody knew. Without ever passing a
+remark himself that was worth listening to, he, nevertheless, by some
+mysterious trick of manner I am unable to explain, soon established
+himself, even throughout that company, where as a rule men found their
+proper level, as a silent authority in all contests of wit or argument.
+Stories at which he listened, bored, fell flat. The _bon mot_ at which
+some faint suggestion of a smile quivered round his clean-shaven lips
+was felt to be the crown of the discussion. I can only conclude his
+secret to have been his magnificent assumption of superiority, added to
+a sphinx-like impenetrability behind which he could always retire from
+any danger of exposure. Subjects about which he knew nothing--and I
+have come to the conclusion they were more numerous than was
+suspected--became in his presence topics outside the radius of
+cultivated consideration: one felt ashamed of having introduced them.
+His own subjects--they were few but exclusive--he had the knack of
+elevating into intellectual tests: one felt ashamed, reflecting how
+little one knew about them. Whether he really did possess a charm of
+manner, or whether the sense of his superiority with which he had imbued
+me it was that made any condescension he paid me a thing to grasp at, I
+am unable to say. Certain it is that when he suggested I should throw
+up chorus singing and accompany him into the provinces as manager of a
+theatrical company he was then engaging to run a wonderful drama that
+was going to revolutionise the English stage and educate the English
+public, I allowed myself not a moment for consideration, but accepted
+his proposal with grateful delight.
+
+"Who is he?" asked Dan. Somehow he had never impressed Dan; but then Dan
+was a fellow to impress whom was slow work. As he himself confessed, he
+had no instinct for character. "I judge," he would explain, "purely by
+observation."
+
+"What does that matter?" was my reply.
+
+"What does he know about the business?"
+
+"That's why he wants me."
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"There's not much to know. I can find out."
+
+"Take care you don't find out that there's more to know than you think.
+What is this wonderful play of his?"
+
+"I haven't seen it yet; I don't think it's finished. It's something from
+the Spanish or the Russian, I'm not sure. I'm to put it into shape
+when he's done the translation. He wants me to put my name to it as the
+adaptor."
+
+"Wonder he hasn't asked you to wear his clothes. Has he got any money?"
+
+"Of course he has money. How can you run a theatrical company without
+money?"
+
+"Have you seen the money?"
+
+"He doesn't carry it about with him in a bag."
+
+"I should have thought your ambition to be to act, not to manage.
+Managers are to be had cheap enough. Why should he want some one who
+knows nothing about it?"
+
+"I'm going to act. I'm going to play a leading part."
+
+"Great Scott!"
+
+"He'll do the management really himself; I shall simply advise him. But
+he doesn't want his own name to appear.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"His people might object."
+
+"Who are his people?"
+
+"How do I know? What a suspicious chap you are."
+
+Dan shrugged his shoulders. "You are not an actor, you never will be;
+you are not a business man. You've made a start at writing, that's your
+proper work. Why not go on with it?"
+
+"I can't get on with it. That one thing was accepted, and never paid
+for; everything else comes back regularly, just as before. Besides, I
+can go on writing wherever I am."
+
+"You've got friends here to help you."
+
+"They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense."
+
+"Well, clever nonsense is worth writing. It's better than stodgy sense:
+literature is blocked up with that. Why not follow their advice?"
+
+"Because I don't believe they are right. I'm not a clown; I don't mean
+to be. Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he has
+nothing else. That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the highest.
+I have knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct. I mean to
+prove it to you all. Vane's the only man that understands me."
+
+Dan lit his pipe. "Have you made up your mind to go?"
+
+"Of course I have. It's an opportunity that doesn't occur twice.
+'There's a tide in the affairs--"
+
+"Thanks," interrupted Dan; "I've heard it before. Well, if you've made
+up your mind, there's an end of the matter. Good luck to you! You are
+young, and it's easier to learn things then than later."
+
+"You talk," I answered, "as if you were old enough to be my
+grandfather."
+
+He smiled and laid both hands upon my shoulders. "So I am," he said,
+"quite old enough, little boy Paul. Don't be angry; you'll always be
+little Paul to me." He put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the
+window.
+
+"What'll you do?" I enquired. "Will you keep on these rooms?"
+
+"No," he replied. "I shall accept an offer that has been made to me to
+take the sub-editorship of a big Yorkshire paper. It is an important
+position and will give me experience."
+
+"You'll never be happy mewed up in a provincial town," I told him. "I
+shall want a London address, and I can easily afford it. Let's keep them
+on together."
+
+He shook his head. "It wouldn't be the same thing," he said.
+
+So there came a morning when we said good-bye. Before Dan returned from
+the office I should be gone. They had been pleasant months that we had
+spent together in these pretty rooms. Though my life was calling to
+me full of hope, I felt the pain of leaving them. Two years is a long
+period in a young man's life, when the sap is running swiftly. My
+affections had already taken root there. The green leaves in summer, in
+winter the bare branches of the square, the sparrows that chirped about
+the window-sills, the quiet peace of the great house, Dan, kindly old
+Deleglise: around them my fibres clung, closer than I had known. The
+Lady of the train: she managed it now less clumsily. Her hands and
+feet had grown smaller, her elbows rounder. I found myself smiling as
+I thought of her--one always did smile when one thought of Norah,
+everybody did;--of her tomboy ways, her ringing laugh--there were those
+who termed it noisy; her irrepressible frankness--there were times when
+it was inconvenient. Would she ever become lady-like, sedate, proper?
+One doubted it. I tried to picture her a wife, the mistress of a house.
+I found the smile deepening round my mouth. What a jolly wife she would
+make! I could see her bustling, full of importance; flying into tempers,
+lasting possibly for thirty seconds; then calling herself names, saving
+all argument by undertaking her own scolding, and doing it well. I
+followed her to motherhood. What a joke it would be! What would she do
+with them? She would just let them do what they liked with her. She and
+they would be a parcel of children together, she the most excited of
+them all. No; on second thoughts I could detect in her a strong vein of
+common sense. They would have to mind their p's and q's. I could see her
+romping with them, helping them to tear their clothes; but likewise I
+could see her flying after them, bringing back an armful struggling,
+bathing it, physicking it. Perhaps she would grow stout, grow grey; but
+she would still laugh more often than sigh, speak her mind, be quick,
+good-tempered Norah to the end. Her character precluded all hope of
+surprise. That, as I told myself, was its defect. About her were none of
+those glorious possibilities that make of some girls charming mysteries.
+A woman, said I to myself, should be a wondrous jewel, hiding unknown
+lights and shadows. You, my dear Norah--I spoke my thoughts aloud, as
+had become a habit with me: those who live much alone fall into this
+way--you are merely a crystal, not shallow--no, I should not call you
+shallow by any mans, but transparent.
+
+What would he be, her lover? Some plain, matter-of-fact, business-like
+young fellow, a good player of cricket and football, fond of his dinner.
+What a very uninteresting affair the love-making would be! If she liked
+him--well, she would probably tell him so; if she didn't, he would know
+it in five minutes.
+
+As for inducing her to change her mind, wooing her, cajoling her--I
+heard myself laughing at the idea.
+
+There came a quick rap at the door. "Come in," I cried; and she entered.
+
+"I came to say good-bye to you," she explained. "I'm just going out.
+What were you laughing at?"
+
+"Oh, at an idea that occurred to me."
+
+"A funny one?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell it me."
+
+"Well, it was something in connection with yourself. It might offend
+you."
+
+"It wouldn't trouble you much if it did, would it?"
+
+"No, I don't suppose it would."
+
+"Then why not tell me?"
+
+"I was thinking of your lover."
+
+It did offend her; I thought it would. But she looked really interesting
+when she was cross. Her grey eyes would flash, and her whole body
+quiver. There was a charming spice of danger always about making her
+cross.
+
+"I suppose you think I shall never have one."
+
+"On the contrary, I think you will have a good many." I had not thought
+so before then. I formed the idea for the first time in that moment,
+while looking straight into her angry face. It was still a childish
+face.
+
+The anger died out of it as it always did within the minute, and she
+laughed. "It would be fun, wouldn't it. I wonder what I should do with
+him? It makes you feel very serious being in love, doesn't it?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Have you ever been in love?"
+
+I hesitated for a moment. Then the delight of talking about it overcame
+my fear of being chaffed. Besides, when she felt it, nobody could be
+more delightfully sympathetic. I determined to adventure it.
+
+"Yes," I answered, "ever since I was a boy. If you are going to be
+foolish," I added, for I saw the laugh before it came, "I shan't talk to
+you about it."
+
+"I'm not--I won't, really," she pleaded, making her face serious again.
+"What is she like?"
+
+I took from my breast pocket Barbara's photograph, and handed it to her
+in silence.
+
+"Is she really as beautiful as that?" she asked, gazing at it evidently
+fascinated.
+
+"More so," I assured her. "Her expression is the most beautiful part of
+her. Those are only her features."
+
+She sighed. "I wish I was beautiful."
+
+"You are at an awkward age," I told her. "It is impossible to say what
+you are going to be like."
+
+"Mamma was a lovely woman, everybody says so; and Tom I call awfully
+handsome. Perhaps I'll be better when I'm filled out a bit more." A
+small Venetian mirror hung between the two windows; she glanced up into
+it. "It's my nose that irritates me," she said. She rubbed it viciously,
+as if she would rub it out.
+
+"Some people admire snub noses," I explained to her.
+
+"No, really?"
+
+"Tennyson speaks of them as 'tip-tilted like the petals of a rose.'"
+
+"How nice of him! Do you think he meant my sort?" She rubbed it again,
+but in a kinder fashion; then looked again at Barbara's photograph. "Who
+is she?"
+
+"She was Miss Hasluck," I answered; "she is the Countess Huescar now.
+She was married last summer."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember; you told us about her. You were children together.
+But what's the good of your being in love with her if she's married?"
+
+"It makes my whole life beautiful."
+
+"Wanting somebody you can't have?"
+
+"I don't want her."
+
+"You said you were in love with her."
+
+"So I am."
+
+She handed me back the photograph, and I replaced it in my pocket.
+
+"I don't understand that sort of love," she said. "If I loved anybody I
+should want to have them with me always.
+
+"She is with me always," I answered, "in my thoughts." She looked at me
+with her clear grey eyes. I found myself blinking. Something seemed
+to be slipping from me, something I did not want to lose. I remember a
+similar sensation once at the moment of waking from a strange, delicious
+dream to find the sunlight pouring in upon me through an open window.
+
+"That isn't being in love," she said. "That's being in love with the
+idea of being in love. That's the way I used to go to balls"--she
+laughed--"in front of the glass. You caught me once, do you remember?"
+
+"And was it not sweeter," I argued, "the imagination? You were the belle
+of the evening; you danced divinely every dance, were taken in to supper
+by the Lion. In reality you trod upon your partner's toes, bumped and
+were bumped, were left a wallflower more than half the time, had a
+headache the next day. Were not the dream balls the more delightful?"
+
+"No, they weren't," she answered without the slightest hesitation. "One
+real dance, when at last it came, was worth the whole of them. Oh, I
+know, I've heard you talking, all of you--of the faces that you see in
+dreams and that are ever so much more beautiful than the faces that you
+see when you're awake; of the wonderful songs that nobody ever sings,
+the wonderful pictures that nobody ever paints, and all the rest of it.
+I don't believe a word of it. It's tommyrot!"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't use slang."
+
+"Well, you know what I mean. What is the proper word? Give it me."
+
+"I suppose you mean cant," I suggested.
+
+"No, I don't. Cant is something that you don't believe in yourself. It's
+tommyrot: there isn't any other word. When I'm in love it will be with
+something that is real."
+
+I was feeling angry with her. "I know just what he will be like. He will
+be a good-natured, commonplace--"
+
+"Whatever he is," she interrupted, "he'll be alive, and he'll want me
+and I shall want him. Dreams are silly. I prefer being up." She
+clapped her hands. "That's it." Then, silent, she looked at me with an
+expression of new interest. "I've been wondering and wondering what it
+was: you are not really awake yet. You've never got up."
+
+I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my
+brain was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the
+truth. And if so, what would "waking up," as she termed it, be like? A
+flash of memory recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking Bridge,
+when, as it had seemed to me, the little childish Paul had slipped away
+from me, leaving me lonely and bewildered to find another Self. Was my
+boyhood in like manner now falling from me? I found myself clinging to
+it with vague terror. Its thoughts, its feelings--dreams: they had grown
+sweet to me; must I lose them? This cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to
+receive me: I shrank away from it with fear.
+
+"Do you know, I think you will be rather nice when you wake up."
+
+Her words recalled me to myself. "Perhaps I never shall wake up," I
+said. "I don't want to wake up."
+
+"Oh, but one can't go on dreaming all one's life," she laughed. "You'll
+wake up, and fall in love with somebody real." She came across to me,
+and taking the lapels of my coat in both her hands, gave me a vigorous
+shake. "I hope she'll be somebody nice. I am rather afraid."
+
+"You seem to think me a fool!" I was still angry with her, without quite
+knowing why.
+
+She shook me again. "You know I don't. But it isn't the nice people that
+take best care of themselves. Tom can't. I have to take care of him."
+
+I laughed.
+
+"I do, really. You should hear me scold him. I like taking care of
+people. Good-bye."
+
+She held out her hand. It was white now and shapely, but one could not
+have called it small. Strong it felt and firm as it gripped mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN.
+
+I left London, the drums beating in my heart, the flags waving in my
+brain. Somewhat more than a year later, one foggy wet December evening,
+I sneaked back to it defeated--ah, that is a small thing, capable of
+redress--disgraced. I returned to it as to a hiding-place where, lost
+in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such time as I could
+summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my dead life. I had
+been ambitious--dwelling again amid the bitterness of the months that
+followed my return, I write in the past tense. I had been eager to make
+a name, a position for myself. But were I to claim no higher aim, I
+should be doing injustice to my blood--to the great-souled gentleman
+whose whole life had been an ode to honour, to her of simple faith who
+had known no other prayer to teach me than the childish cry, "God help
+me to be good!" I had wished to be a great man, but it was to have
+been a great good man. The world was to have admired me, but to have
+respected me also. I was to have been the knight without fear, but,
+rarer yet, without reproach--Galahad, not Launcelot. I had learnt myself
+to be a feeble, backboneless fighter, conquered by the first serious
+assault of evil, a creature of mean fears, slave to every crack of the
+devil's whip, a feeder with swine.
+
+Urban Vane I had discovered to be a common swindler. His play he had
+stolen from the desk of a well-known dramatist whose acquaintance he had
+made in Deleglise's kitchen. The man had fallen ill, and Vane had been
+constant in his visits. Partly recovering, the man had gone abroad to
+Italy. Had he died there, as at the time was expected, the robbery might
+never have come to light. News reached us in a small northern town that
+he had taken a fresh lease of life and was on his way back to England.
+Then it was that Vane with calm indifference, smoking his cigar over
+a bottle of wine to which he had invited me, told me the bald truth,
+adorning it with some touches of wit. Had the recital come upon me
+sooner, I might have acted differently; but six months' companionship
+with Urban Vane, if it had not, by grace of the Lord, destroyed the
+roots of whatever flower of manhood might have been implanted in me, had
+most certainly withered its leaves.
+
+The man was clever. That he was not clever enough to perceive from the
+beginning what he has learnt since: that honesty is the best policy--at
+least, for men with brains--remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Where
+once he made his hundreds among shady ways, he now, I suppose, makes his
+thousands in the broad daylight of legitimate enterprise. Chicanery in
+the blood, one might imagine, has to be worked out. Urban Vanes are to
+be found in all callings. They commence as scamps; years later, to one's
+astonishment, one finds them ornaments to their profession. Wild oats
+are of various quality, according to the soil from which they are
+preserved. We sow them in our various ways.
+
+At first I stormed. Vane sat with an amused smile upon his lips and
+listened.
+
+"Your language, my dear Kelver," he replied, my vocabulary exhausted,
+"might wound me were I able to accept you as an authority upon this
+vexed question of morals. With the rest of the world you preach one
+thing and practise another. I have noticed it so often. It is perhaps
+sad, but the preaching has ceased to interest me. You profess to be
+very indignant with me for making use of another man's ideas. It is done
+every day. You yourself were quite ready to take credit not due to you.
+For months we have been travelling with this play: 'Drama, in five acts,
+by Mr. Horace Moncrieff.' Not more than two hundred lines of it are your
+own--excellent lines, I admit, but they do not constitute the play."
+
+This aspect of the affair had not occurred to me. "But you asked me to
+put my name to it," I stammered. "You said you did not want your own to
+appear--for private reasons. You made a point of it."
+
+He waved away the smoke from his cigar. "The man you are posing as would
+never have put his name to work not his own. You never hesitated; on the
+contrary, you jumped at the chance of so easy an opening to your career
+as playwright. My need, as you imagined it, was your opportunity."
+
+"But you said it was from the French," I argued; "you had merely
+translated it, I adapted it. I don't defend the custom, but it is the
+custom: the man who adapts a play calls himself the author. They all do
+it."
+
+"I know," he answered. "It has always amused me. Our sick friend
+himself, whom I am sure we are both delighted to welcome back to
+life, has done it more than once, and made a very fair profit on the
+transaction. Indeed, from internal evidence, I am strongly of opinion
+that this present play is a case in point. Well, chickens come home to
+roost: I adapt from him. What is the difference?"
+
+"Simply this," he continued, pouring himself out another glass of wine,
+"that whereas, owing to the anomalous state of the copyright laws,
+stealing from the foreign author is legal and commendable, against
+stealing from the living English author there is a certain prejudice."
+
+"And the consequences, I am afraid, you will find somewhat unpleasant,"
+I suggested.
+
+He laughed: it was not a frivolity to which he was prone. "You mean, my
+dear Kelver that you will."
+
+"Don't look so dumbfounded," he went on. "You cannot be so stupid as you
+are pretending to be. The original manuscript at the Lord Chamberlain's
+office is in your handwriting. You knew our friend as well as I did,
+and visited him. Why, the whole tour has been under your management.
+You have arranged everything--most excellently; I have been quite
+surprised."
+
+My anger came later. For the moment, the sudden light blinded me to
+everything but fear.
+
+"But you told me," I cried, "it was only a matter of form, that you
+wanted to keep your name out of it because--"
+
+He was looking at me with an expression of genuine astonishment. My
+words began to appear humorous even to myself. I found it difficult to
+believe I had been the fool I was now seeing myself to have been.
+
+"I am sorry," he said, "I am really sorry. I took you for a man of the
+world. I thought you merely did not wish to know anything."
+
+Still, to my shame, fear was the thing uppermost in my heart. "You are
+not going to put it all on to me?" I pleaded.
+
+He had risen. He laid his hand upon my shoulder. Instead of flinging it
+off, I was glad of its kindly pressure. He was the only man to whom I
+could look for help.
+
+"Don't take it so seriously," he said. "He will merely think the
+manuscript has been lost. As likely as not, he will be unable to
+remember whether he wrote it or merely thought of writing it. No one in
+the company will say anything: it isn't their business. We must set to
+work. I had altered it a good deal before you saw it, and changed all
+the names of the characters. We will retain the third act: it is the
+only thing of real value in the play. The situation is not original; you
+have as much right to dish it up as he had. In a fortnight we will have
+the whole thing so different that if he saw it himself he would only
+imagine we had got hold of the idea and had forestalled him."
+
+There were moments during the next few weeks when I listened to the
+voice of my good angel, when I saw clearly that even from the lowest
+point of view he was giving me sound advice. I would go to the man, tell
+him frankly the whole truth.
+
+But Vane never left my elbow. Suspecting, I suppose, he gave me clearly
+to understand that if I did so, I must expect no mercy from him. My
+story, denounced by him as an outrageous lie, would be regarded as the
+funk-inspired subterfuge of a young rogue. At the best I should handicap
+myself with suspicion that would last me throughout my career. On the
+other hand, what harm had we done? Presented in some twenty or so small
+towns, where it would soon be forgotten, a play something like. Most
+plays were something like. Our friend would produce his version and
+reap a rich harvest; ours would disappear. If by any unlikely chance
+discussion should arise, the advertisement would be to his advantage. So
+soon as possible we would replace it by a new piece altogether. A young
+man of my genius could surely write something better than hotch-potch
+such as this; experience was all that I had lacked. As regarded
+one's own conscience, was not the world's honesty a mere question of
+convention? Had he been a young man, and had we diddled him out of his
+play for a ten-pound note, we should have been applauded as sharp men of
+business. The one commandment of the world was: Don't get found out. The
+whole trouble, left alone, would sink and fade. Later, we should tell it
+as a good joke--and be laughed with.
+
+So I fell from mine own esteem. Vane helping me--and he had brains--I
+set feverishly to work. I am glad to remember that every line I wrote
+was born in misery. I tried to persuade Vane to let me make a new
+play altogether, which I offered to give him for nothing. He expressed
+himself as grateful, but his frequently declared belief in my dramatic
+talent failed to induce his acceptance.
+
+"Later on, my dear Kelver," was his reply. "For the present this is
+doing very well. Going on as we are, we shall soon improve it out of all
+recognition, while at the same time losing nothing that is essential.
+All your ideas are excellent."
+
+By the end of about three weeks we had got together a concoction that,
+so far as dialogue and characters were concerned, might be said to
+be our own. There was good work in it, here and there. Under other
+conditions I might have been proud of much that I had written. As it
+was, I experienced only the terror of the thief dodging the constable:
+my cleverness might save me; it afforded me no further satisfaction.
+My humour, when I heard the people laughing at it, I remembered I had
+forged listening in vague fear to every creak upon the stairs, wondering
+in what form discovery might come upon me. There was one speech,
+addressed by the hero to the villain: "Yes, I admit it; I do love her.
+But there is that which I love better--my self-respect!" Stepping down
+to the footlights and slapping his chest (which according to stage
+convention would appear to be a sort of moral jewel-box bursting with
+assorted virtues), our juvenile lead--a gentleman who led a somewhat
+rabbit-like existence, perpetually diving down openings to avoid service
+of writs, at the instance of his wife, for alimony--would invariably
+bring down the house upon this sentiment. Every night, listening to the
+applause, I would shudder, recalling how I had written it with burning
+cheeks.
+
+There was a character in the piece, a vicious old man, that from the
+beginning Vane had wanted me to play. I had disliked the part and
+had refused, choosing instead to act a high-souled countryman, in the
+portrayal of whose irreproachable emotions I had taken pleasure. Vane
+now renewed his arguments, and my power of resistance seeming to have
+departed from me, I accepted the exchange. Certainly the old gentleman's
+scenes went with more snap, but at a cost of further degradation to
+myself. Upon an older actor the effect might have been harmless, but the
+growing tree springs back less surely; I found myself taking pleasure
+in the coarse laughter that rewarded my suggestive leers, calling up all
+the evil in my nature to help me in the development of fresh "business."
+Vane was enthusiastic in his praises, generous with his assistance.
+Under his tuition I succeeded in making the part as unpleasant as we
+dared. I had genius, so Vane told me; I understood so much of human
+nature. One proof of the moral deterioration creeping over me was that I
+was beginning to like Vane.
+
+Looking back at the man as I see him plainly now, a very ordinary scamp,
+his pretension not even amusing, I find it difficult to present him as
+he appeared to my boyish eyes. He was well educated and well read. He
+gave himself the airs of a superior being by freak of fate compelled to
+abide in a world of inferior creatures. To live among them in comfort it
+was necessary for him to outwardly conform to their conventions but to
+respect their reasoning would have been beneath him. To accept
+their laws as binding on one's own conscience was, using the common
+expression, to give oneself away, to confess oneself commonplace. Every
+decent instinct a man might own to was proof in Vane's eyes of his being
+"suburban," "bourgeois"--everything that was unintellectual. It was the
+first time I had heard this sort of talk. Vane was one of the pioneers
+of the movement, which has since become somewhat tiresome. To laugh at
+it is easy to a man of the world; boys are impressed by it. From him
+I first heard the now familiar advocacy of pure Hedonism. Pan, enticed
+from his dark groves, was to sit upon Olympus.
+
+My lower nature rose within me to proclaim the foolish chatterer as
+a prophet. So life was not as I had been taught--a painful struggle
+between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless
+epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but
+rather through joyous expression of the animal lay advancement.
+
+Villains--workers in wrong for aesthetic pleasure of the art--are useful
+characters in fiction; in real life they do not exist. I am convinced
+the man believed most of the rubbish he talked. Since the time of which
+I write he has done some service to the world. I understand he is an
+excellent husband and father, a considerate master, a delightful
+host. He intended, I have no doubt, to improve me, to enlarge my
+understanding, to free me from soul-stifling bondage of convention. Not
+to credit him with this well-meaning intention would be to assume
+him something quite inhuman, to bestow upon him a dignity beyond his
+deserts. I find it easier to regard him merely as a fool.
+
+Our leading lady was a handsome but coarse woman, somewhat
+over-developed. Starting life as a music-hall singer, she had married
+a small tradesman in the south of London. Some three or four years
+previous, her Juno-like charms had turned the head of a youthful
+novelist--a refined, sensitive man, of whom great things in literature
+had been expected, and, judging from his earlier work, not unreasonably.
+He had run away with her, and eventually married her; the scandal was
+still fresh. Already she had repented of her bargain. These women regard
+their infatuated lovers merely as steps in the social ladder, and he
+had failed to appreciably advance her. Under her demoralising spell his
+ambition had died in him. He no longer wrote, no longer took interest
+in anything beyond his own debasement. He was with us in the company,
+playing small parts, and playing them badly; he would have remained with
+us as bill-poster rather than have been sent away.
+
+Vane planned to bring this woman and myself together. To her he pictured
+me a young gentleman of means, a coming author, who would soon be
+earning an income sufficient to keep her in every luxury. To me he
+hinted that she had fallen in love with me. I was never attracted to
+her by any feeling stronger than the admiration with which one views a
+handsome animal. It was my vanity upon which he worked. He envied me;
+any man would envy me; experience of life was what I needed to complete
+my genius. The great intellects of this earth must learn all lessons,
+even at the cost of suffering to themselves and others.
+
+As years before I had laboured to acquire a liking for cigars and
+whiskey, deeming it an accomplishment necessary to a literary career, so
+painstakingly I now applied myself to the cultivation of a pretty taste
+in passion. According to the literature, fictional and historical, Vane
+was kind enough to supply me with, men of note were invariably sad dogs.
+That my temperament was not that of the sad dog, that I lacked instinct
+and inclination for the part, appeared to this young idiot of whom I am
+writing in the light of a defect. That her languishing glances irritated
+rather than maddened me, that the occasional covert pressure of her hot,
+thick hand left me cold, I felt a reproach to my manhood. I would fall
+in love with her. Surely my blood was red like other men's. Besides, was
+I not an artist, and was not profligacy the hall-mark of the artist?
+
+But one grows tired of the confessional. Fate saved me from playing
+the part Vane had assigned me in this vulgar comedy, dragged me from my
+entanglement, flung me on my feet again. She was a little brusque in the
+process; but I do not feel inclined to blame the kind lady for that. The
+mud was creeping upward fast, and a quick hand must needs be rough.
+
+Our dramatic friend produced his play sooner than we had expected. It
+crept out that something very like it had been seen in the Provinces.
+Argument followed, enquiries were set on foot. "It will blow over," said
+Vane. But it seemed to be blowing our way.
+
+The salaries, as a rule, were paid by me on Friday night. Vane, in the
+course of the evening, would bring me the money for me to distribute
+after the performance. We were playing in the north of Ireland. I had
+not seen Vane all that day. So soon as I had changed my clothes I left
+my dressing-room to seek him. The box-office keeper, meeting me, put a
+note into my hand. It was short and to the point. Vane had pocketed the
+evening's takings, and had left by the seven-fifty train! He regretted
+causing inconvenience, but life was replete with small comedies; the
+wise man attached no seriousness to them. We should probably meet again
+and enjoy a laugh over our experiences.
+
+Some rumour had got about. I looked up from the letter to find myself
+surrounded by suspicious faces. With dry lips I told them the truth.
+Only they happened not to regard it as the truth. Vane throughout
+had contrived cleverly to them I was the manager, the sole
+person responsible. My wearily spoken explanations were to them
+incomprehensible lies. The quarter of an hour might have been worse for
+me had I been sufficiently alive to understand or care what they were
+saying. A dull, listless apathy had come over me. I felt the scene only
+stupid, ridiculous, tiresome. There was some talk of giving me "a damned
+good hiding." I doubt whether I should have known till the next morning
+whether the suggestion had been carried out or not. I gathered that the
+true history of the play, the reason for the sudden alterations, had
+been known to them all along. They appeared to have reserved their
+virtuous indignation till this evening. As explanation of my apparent
+sleepiness, somebody, whether in kindness to me or not I cannot say,
+suggested I was drunk. Fortunately, it carried conviction. No further
+trains left the town that night; I was allowed to depart. A deputation
+promised to be round at my lodgings early in the morning.
+
+Our leading lady had left the theatre immediately on the fall of the
+curtain; it was not necessary for her to wait, her husband acting as her
+business man. On reaching my rooms, I found her sitting by the fire.
+It reminded me that our agent in advance having fallen ill, her husband
+had, at her suggestion, been appointed in his place, and had left us on
+the Wednesday to make the necessary preparations in the next town on our
+list. I thought that perhaps she had come round for her money, and the
+idea amused me.
+
+"Well?" she said, with her one smile. I had been doing my best for some
+months to regard it as soul-consuming, but without any real success.
+
+"Well," I answered. It bored me, her being there. I wanted to be alone.
+
+"You don't seem overjoyed to see me. What's the matter with you? What's
+happened?"
+
+I laughed. "Vane's bolted and taken the week's money with him."
+
+"The beast!" she said. "I knew he was that sort. What ever made you take
+up with him? Will it make much difference to you?"
+
+"It makes a difference all round," I replied. "There's no money to pay
+any of you. There's nothing to pay your fares back to London."
+
+She had risen. "Here, let me understand this," she said. "Are you the
+rich mug Vane's been representing you to be, or only his accomplice?"
+
+"The mug and the accomplice both," I answered, "without the rich.
+It's his tour. He put my name to it because he didn't want his own to
+appear--for family reasons. It's his play; he stole it--"
+
+She interrupted me with a whistle. "I thought it looked a bit fishy, all
+those alterations. But such funny things do happen in this profession!
+Stole it, did he?"
+
+"The whole thing in manuscript. I put my name to it for the same
+reason--he didn't want his own to appear."
+
+She dropped into her chair and laughed--a good-tempered laugh, loud and
+long. "Well, I'm damned!" she said. "The first man who has ever taken me
+in. I should never have signed if I had thought it was his show. I could
+see the sort he was with half an eye." She jumped up from the chair.
+"Here, let me get out of this," she said. "I just looked in to know what
+time to-morrow; I'd forgotten. You needn't say I came."
+
+Her hand upon the door, laughter seized her again, so that for support
+she had to lean against the wall.
+
+"Do you know why I really did come?" she said. "You'll guess when you
+come to think it over, so I may as well tell you. It's a bit of a
+joke. I came to say 'yes' to what you asked me last night. Have you
+forgotten?"
+
+I stared at her. Last night! It seemed a long while ago--so very
+unimportant what I might have said.
+
+She laughed again. "So help me! if you haven't. Well, you asked me to
+run away with you--that's all, to let our two souls unite. Damned lucky
+I took a day to think it over! Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," I answered, without moving. I was gripping a chair to
+prevent myself from rushing at her, pushing her out of the room, and
+locking the door. I wanted to be alone.
+
+I heard her turn the handle. "Got a pound or two to carry you over?" It
+was a woman's voice.
+
+I put my hand into my pocket. "One pound seventeen," I answered,
+counting it. "It will pay my fare to London--or buy me a dinner and a
+second-hand revolver. I haven't quite decided yet."
+
+"Oh, you get back and pull yourself together," she said. "You're only a
+kid. Good-night."
+
+I put a few things into a small bag and walked thirty miles that night
+into Belfast. Arrived in London, I took a lodging in Deptford, where
+I was least likely to come in contact with any face I had ever seen
+before. I maintained myself by giving singing lessons at sixpence the
+half-hour, evening lessons in French and German (the Lord forgive me!)
+to ambitious shop-boys at eighteen pence a week, making up tradesmen's
+books. A few articles of jewellery I had retained enabled me to tide
+over bad periods. For some four months I existed there, never going
+outside the neighbourhood. Occasionally, wandering listlessly about
+the streets, some object, some vista, would strike me by reason of its
+familiarity. Then I would turn and hasten back into my grave of dim,
+weltering streets.
+
+Of thoughts, emotions, during these dead days I was unconscious.
+Somewhere in my brain they may have been stirring, contending; but
+myself I lived as in a long, dull dream. I ate, and drank, and woke,
+and slept, and walked and walked, and lounged by corners; staring by the
+hour together, seeing nothing.
+
+It has surprised me since to find the scenes I must then have witnessed
+photographed so clearly on my mind. Tragedies, dramas, farces, played
+before me in that teeming underworld--the scenes present themselves to
+me distinct, complete; yet I have no recollection of ever having seen
+them.
+
+I fell ill. It must have been some time in April, but I kept no count of
+days. Nobody came near me, nobody knew of me. I occupied a room at
+the top of a huge block of workmen's dwellings. A woman who kept a
+second-hand store had lent me for a shilling a week a few articles of
+furniture. Lying upon my chair-bedstead, I listened to the shrill sounds
+around me, that through the light and darkness never ceased. A pint of
+milk, left each morning on the stone landing, kept me alive. I would
+wait for the man's descending footsteps, then crawl to the door. I hoped
+I was going to die, regretting my returning strength, the desire for
+food that drove me out into the streets again.
+
+One night, a week or two after my partial recovery, I had wandered on
+and on for hour after hour. The breaking dawn recalled me to myself. I
+was outside the palings of a park. In the faint shadowy light it looked
+strange and unfamiliar. I was too tired to walk further. I scrambled
+over the low wooden fencing, and reaching a seat, dropped down and fell
+asleep.
+
+I was sitting in a sunny avenue; birds were singing joyously, bright
+flowers were all around me. Norah was beside me, her frank, sweet eyes
+were looking into mine; they were full of tenderness, mingled with
+wonder. It was a delightful dream: I felt myself smiling.
+
+Suddenly I started to my feet. Norah's strong hand drew me down again.
+
+I was in the broad walk, Regent's Park, where, I remembered, Norah often
+walked before breakfast. A park-keeper, the only other human creature
+within sight, was eyeing me suspiciously. I saw myself--without a
+looking-glass--unkempt, ragged. My intention was to run, but Norah was
+holding me by the arm. Savagely I tried to shake her off. I was weak
+from my recent illness, and, I suppose, half starved; it angered me
+to learn she was the stronger of the two. In spite of my efforts, she
+dragged me back.
+
+Ashamed of my weakness, ashamed of everything about me, I burst into
+tears; and that of course made me still more ashamed. To add to my
+discomfort, I had no handkerchief. Holding me with one hand--it was
+quite sufficient--Norah produced her own, and wiped my eyes. The
+park-keeper, satisfied, I suppose, that at all events I was not
+dangerous, with a grin passed on.
+
+"Where have you been, and what have you been doing?" asked Norah.
+She still retained her grip upon me, and in her grey eyes was quiet
+determination.
+
+So, with my face turned away from her, I told her the whole miserable
+story, taking strange satisfaction in exaggerating, if anything, my own
+share of the disgrace. My recital ended, I sat staring down the long,
+shadow-freckled way, and for awhile there was no sound but the chirping
+of the sparrows.
+
+Then behind me I heard a smothered laugh. It was impossible to imagine
+it could come from Norah. I turned quickly to see who had stolen upon
+us. It was Norah who was laughing; though to do her justice she was
+trying to suppress it, holding her handkerchief to her face. It was of
+no use, it would out; she abandoned the struggle, and gave way to it. It
+astonished the sparrows into silence; they stood in a row upon the low
+iron border and looked at one another.
+
+"I am glad you think it funny," I said.
+
+"But it is funny," she persisted. "Don't say you have lost your sense
+of humour, Paul; it was the one real thing you possessed. You were so
+cocky--you don't know how cocky you were! Everybody was a fool but
+Vane; nobody else but he appreciated you at your true worth. You and he
+between you were going to reform the stage, to educate the public,
+to put everything and everybody to rights. I am awfully sorry for all
+you've gone through; but now that it is over, can't you see yourself
+that it is funny?"
+
+Faintly, dimly, this aspect of the case, for the very first time, began
+to present itself to me; but I should have preferred Norah to have been
+impressed by its tragedy.
+
+"That is not all," I said. "I nearly ran away with another man's wife."
+
+I was glad to notice that sobered her somewhat. "Nearly? Why not quite?"
+she asked more seriously.
+
+"She thought I was some young idiot with money," I replied bitterly,
+pleased with the effect I had produced. "Vane had told her a pack of
+lies. When she found out I was only a poor devil, ruined, disgraced,
+without a sixpence---" I made a gesture expressive of eloquent contempt
+for female nature generally.
+
+"I am sorry," said Norah; "I told you you would fall in love with
+something real."
+
+Her words irritated me, unreasonably, I confess. "In love!" I replied;
+"good God, I was never in love with her!"
+
+"Then why did you nearly run away with her?"
+
+I was wishing now I had not mentioned the matter; it promised to be
+difficult of explanation. "I don't know," I replied irritably. "I
+thought she was in love with me. She was very beautiful--at least, other
+people seemed to think she was. Artists are not like ordinary men. You
+must live--understand life, before you can teach it to others. When a
+beautiful woman is in love with you--or pretends to be, you--you must
+say something. You can't stand like a fool and--"
+
+Again her laughter interrupted me; this time she made no attempt to
+hide it. The sparrows chirped angrily, and flew off to continue their
+conversation somewhere where there would be less noise.
+
+"You are the biggest baby, Paul," she said, so soon as she could speak,
+"I ever heard of." She seized me by the shoulders, and turned me round.
+"If you weren't looking so ill and miserable, I would shake you, Paul,
+till there wasn't a bit of breath left in your body."
+
+"How much money do you owe?" she asked--"to the people in the company
+and anybody else, I mean--roughly?"
+
+"About a hundred and fifty pounds," I answered.
+
+"Then if you rest day or night, Paul, till you have paid that hundred
+and fifty--every penny of it--I'll think you the meanest cad in London!"
+
+Her grey eyes were flashing quite alarmingly. I felt almost afraid of
+her. She could be so vehement at times.
+
+"But how can I?" I asked.
+
+"Go straight home," she commanded, "and write something funny: an
+article, story--anything you like; only mind that it is funny. Post it
+to me to-morrow, at the latest. Dan is in London, editing a new weekly.
+I'll have it copied out and sent to him. I shan't say who it is from. I
+shall merely ask him to read it and reply, at once. If you've a grain
+of grit left in you, you'll write something that he will be glad to have
+and to pay for. Pawn that ring on your finger and get yourself a
+good breakfast"--it was my mother's wedding-ring, the only piece of
+dispensable property I had not parted with--"_she_ won't mind helping
+you. But nobody else is going to--except yourself."
+
+She looked at her watch. "I must be off." She turned again. "There
+is something I was forgetting. B--"--she mentioned the name of the
+dramatist whose play Vane had stolen--"has been looking for you for
+the last three months. If you hadn't been an idiot you might have saved
+yourself a good deal of trouble. He is quite certain it was Vane stole
+the manuscript. He asked the nurse to bring it to him an hour after
+Vane had left the house, and it couldn't be found. Besides, the man's
+character is well known. And so is yours. I won't tell it you," she
+laughed; "anyhow, it isn't that of a knave."
+
+She made a step towards me, then changed her mind. "No," she said, "I
+shan't shake hands with you till you have paid the last penny that you
+owe. Then I shall know that you are a man."
+
+She did not look back. I watched her, till the sunlight, streaming in my
+eyes, raised a golden mist between us.
+
+Then I went to my work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING.
+
+It took me three years to win that handshake. For the first six months I
+remained in Deptford. There was excellent material to be found there
+for humorous articles, essays, stories; likewise for stories tragic
+and pathetic. But I owed a hundred and fifty pounds--a little over
+two hundred it reached to, I found, when I came to add up the actual
+figures. So I paid strict attention to business, left the tears to be
+garnered by others--better fitted maybe for the task; kept to my own
+patch, reaped and took to market only the laughter.
+
+At the beginning I sent each manuscript to Norah; she had it copied out,
+debited me with the cost received payment, and sent me the balance. At
+first my earnings were small; but Norah was an excellent agent; rapidly
+they increased. Dan grew quite cross with her, wrote in pained surprise
+at her greed. The "matter" was fair, but in no way remarkable. Any
+friend of hers, of course, he was anxious to assist; but business was
+business. In justice to his proprietors, he could not and would not pay
+more than the market value. Miss Deleglise, replying curtly in the third
+person, found herself in perfect accord with Mr. Brian as to business
+being business. If Mr. Brian could not afford to pay her price for
+material so excellent, other editors with whom Miss Deleglise was
+equally well acquainted could and would. Answer by return would greatly
+oblige, pending which the manuscript then in her hands she retained. Mr.
+Brian, understanding he had found his match, grumbled but paid. Whether
+he had any suspicion who "Jack Homer" might be, he never confessed; but
+he would have played the game, pulled his end of the rope, in either
+case. Nor was he allowed to decide the question for himself. Competition
+was introduced into the argument. Of purpose a certain proportion of
+my work my agent sent elsewhere. "Jack Homer" grew to be a commodity
+in demand. For, seated at my rickety table, I laughed as I wrote, the
+fourth wall of the dismal room fading before my eyes revealing vistas
+beyond.
+
+Still, it was slow work. Humour is not an industrious maid; declines to
+be bustled, will work only when she feels inclined--does not often feel
+inclined; gives herself a good many unnecessary airs; if worried, packs
+up and goes off, Heaven knows where! comes back when she thinks she
+will: a somewhat unreliable young person. To my literary labours I found
+it necessary to add journalism. I lacked Dan's magnificent assurance.
+Fate never befriends the nervous. Had I burst into the editorial
+sanctum, the editor most surely would have been out; if in, would have
+been a man of short ways, would have seen to it that I went out quickly.
+But the idea was not to be thought of; Robert Macaire himself in my one
+coat would have been diffident, apologetic. I joined the ranks of the
+penny-a-liners--to be literally exact, three halfpence a liners. In
+company with half a dozen other shabby outsiders--some of them young men
+like myself seeking to climb; others, older men who had sunk--I attended
+inquests, police courts; flew after fire engines; rejoiced in street
+accidents; yearned for murders. Somewhat vulture-like we lived
+precariously upon the misfortunes of others. We made occasional half
+crowns by providing the public with scandal, occasional crowns by
+keeping our information to ourselves.
+
+"I think, gentlemen," would explain our spokesman in a hoarse whisper,
+on returning to the table, "I think the corpse's brother-in-law is
+anxious that the affair, if possible, should be kept out of the papers."
+
+The closeness and attention with which we would follow that particular
+case, the fulness and completeness of our notes, would be quite
+remarkable. Our spokesman would rise, drift carelessly away, to return
+five minutes later, wiping his mouth.
+
+"Not a very interesting case, gentlemen, I don't think. Shall we say
+five shillings apiece?" Sometimes a sense of the dignity of our calling
+would induce us to stand out for ten.
+
+And here also my sense of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an
+undue advantage over my competitors. Twelve good men and true had been
+asked to say how a Lascar sailor had met his death. It was perfectly
+clear how he had met his death. A plumber, working on the roof of a
+small two-storeyed house, had slipped and fallen on him. The plumber had
+escaped with a few bruises; the unfortunate sailor had been picked
+up dead. Some blame attached to the plumber. His mate, an excellent
+witness, told us the whole story.
+
+"I was fixing a gas-pipe on the first floor," said the man. "The
+prisoner was on the roof."
+
+"We won't call him 'the prisoner,'" interrupted the coroner, "at least,
+not yet. Refer to him, if you please, as the 'last witness.'"
+
+"The last witness," corrected himself the man. "He shouts down the
+chimney to know if I was ready for him."
+
+"'Ready and waiting,' I says.
+
+"'Right,' he says; 'I'm coming in through the window.'
+
+"'Wait a bit,' I says; 'I'll go down and move the ladder for you.
+
+"'It's all right,' he says; 'I can reach it.'
+
+"'No, you can't,' I says. 'It's the other side of the chimney.'
+
+"'I can get round,' he says.
+
+"Well, before I knew what had happened, I hears him go, smack! I rushes
+to the window and looks out: I see him on the pavement, sitting up like.
+
+"'Hullo, Jim,' I says. 'Have you hurt yourself?'
+
+"'I think I'm all right,' he says, 'as far as I can tell. But I wish
+you'd come down. This bloke I've fallen on looks a bit sick.'"
+
+The others headed their flimsy "Sad Accident," a title truthful but not
+alluring. I altered mine to "Plumber in a Hurry--Fatal Result." Saying
+as little as possible about the unfortunate sailor, I called the
+attention of plumbers generally to the coroner's very just remarks upon
+the folly of undue haste; pointed out to them, as a body, the trouble
+that would arise if somehow they could not cure themselves of this
+tendency to rush through their work without a moment's loss of time.
+
+It established for me a useful reputation. The sub-editor of one evening
+paper condescended so far as to come out in his shirt-sleeves and shake
+hands with me.
+
+"That's the sort of thing we want," he told me; "a light touch, a bit of
+humour."
+
+I snatched fun from fires (I sincerely trust the insurance premiums were
+not overdue); culled quaintness from street rows; extracted merriment
+from catastrophes the most painful, and prospered.
+
+Though often within a stone's throw of the street, I unremittingly
+avoided the old house at Poplar. I was suffering inconvenience at this
+period by reason of finding myself two distinct individuals, contending
+with each other. My object was to encourage the new Paul--the sensible,
+practical, pushful Paul, whose career began to look promising; to
+drive away from interfering with me his strangely unlike twin--the old
+childish Paul of the sad, far-seeing eyes. Sometimes out of the cracked
+looking-glass his wistful, yearning face would plead to me; but I would
+sternly shake my head. I knew well his cunning. Had I let him have his
+way, he would have led me through the maze of streets he knew so well,
+past the broken railings (outside which he would have left my body
+standing), along the weedy pathway, through the cracked and dented door,
+up the creaking staircase to the dismal little chamber where we once--he
+and I together--had sat dreaming foolish dreams.
+
+"Come," he would whisper; "it is so near. Let us push aside the chest
+of drawers very quietly, softly raise the broken sash, prop it open with
+the Latin dictionary, lean our elbows on the sill, listen to the voices
+of the weary city, voices calling to us from the darkness."
+
+But I was too wary to be caught. "Later on," I would reply to him; "when
+I have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your wheedling. Then
+I will go with you, if you are still in existence, my sentimental little
+friend. We will dream again the old impractical, foolish dreams--and
+laugh at them."
+
+So he would fade away, and in his place would nod to me approvingly a
+businesslike-looking, wide-awake young fellow.
+
+But to one sentimental temptation I succumbed. My position was by
+now assured; there was no longer any reason for my hiding myself. I
+determined to move westward. I had not intended to soar so high, but
+passing through Guildford Street one day, the creeper-covered corner
+house that my father had once thought of taking recalled itself to me.
+A card was in the fanlight. I knocked and made enquiries. A
+bed-sitting-room upon the third floor was vacant. I remembered it well
+the moment the loquacious landlady opened its door.
+
+"This shall be your room, Paul," said my father. So clearly his voice
+sounded behind me that I turned, forgetting for the moment it was but
+a memory. "You will be quiet here, and we can shut out the bed and
+washstand with a screen."
+
+So my father had his way. It was a pleasant, sunny little room,
+overlooking the gardens of the hospital. I followed my father's
+suggestion, shut out the bed and washstand with a screen. And sometimes
+of an evening it would amuse me to hear my father turn the handle of the
+door.
+
+"How are you getting on--all right?"
+
+"Famously."
+
+Often there came back to me the words he had once used. "You must be the
+practical man, Paul, and get on. Myself, I have always been somewhat of
+a dreamer. I meant to do such great things in the world, and somehow I
+suppose I aimed too high. I wasn't--practical."
+
+"But ought not one to aim high?" I had asked.
+
+My father had fidgeted in his chair. "It is very difficult to say. It
+is all so--so very ununderstandable. You aim high and you don't hit
+anything--at least, it seems as if you didn't. Perhaps, after all, it
+is better to aim at something low, and--and hit it. Yet it seems a
+pity--one's ideals, all the best part of one--I don't know why it is.
+Perhaps we do not understand."
+
+For some months I had been writing over my own name. One day a letter
+was forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed. It
+was a short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to
+the wedding of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had
+almost forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not
+unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I
+judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished
+me to be witness of the fact that my desertion had not left her
+disconsolate. So much gratification I felt I owed her, and accordingly,
+purchasing a present as expensive as my means would permit, I made
+my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock coat and light grey
+trousers, to Kennington Church.
+
+The ceremony was already in progress. Creeping on tiptoe up the aisle,
+I was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was laid upon my
+sleeve.
+
+"We're all here," whispered the O'Kelly; "just room for ye."
+
+Squeezing his hand as I passed, I sat down between the Signora and Mrs.
+Peedles. Both ladies were weeping; the Signora silently, one tear at a
+time clinging fondly to her pretty face as though loath to fall from
+it; Mrs. Peedles copiously, with explosive gurgles, as of water from a
+bottle.
+
+"It is such a beautiful service," murmured the Signora, pressing my hand
+as I settled myself down. "I should so--so love to be married."
+
+"Me darling," whispered the O'Kelly, seizing her other hand and kissing
+it covertly behind his open Prayer Book, "perhaps ye will be--one day."
+
+The Signora through her tears smiled at him, but with a sigh shook her
+head.
+
+Mrs. Peedles, clad, so far as the dim November light enabled me to
+judge, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth--nothing regal; the sort of
+thing one might assume to have been Her Majesty's second best, say third
+best, frock--explained that weddings always reminded her how fleeting a
+thing was love.
+
+"The poor dears!" she sobbed. "But there, there's no telling. Perhaps
+they'll be happy. I'm sure I hope they may be. He looks harmless."
+
+Jarman, stretching out a hand to me from the other side of Mrs. Peedles,
+urged me to cheer up. "Don't wear your 'eart upon your sleeve," he
+advised. "Try and smile."
+
+In the vestry I met old friends. The maternal Sellars, stouter than
+ever, had been accommodated with a chair--at least, I assumed so, she
+being in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence. She
+greeted me with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after
+my health with pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that,
+until the explanation broke upon me, somewhat puzzled me.
+
+Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much
+impressed, I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good
+fortune. He expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me,
+shook me heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.
+
+"Won't be my fault if we're not," he added. "Come and see us whenever
+you like." He repeated this three times. I gathered the general
+sentiment to be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of
+generosity.
+
+Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received
+my salute to a subdued murmur of applause. She looked to my eyes
+handsomer than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing
+less exacting. She also trusted she might always regard me as a friend.
+I replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour; whereupon she
+kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother, shed some tears,
+explaining the reason to be that everybody was so good to her.
+
+Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of enormous
+white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register, whispering
+to me sympathetically: "Better luck next time, old cock."
+
+The fat young lady--or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter,
+I cannot say for certain--who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I
+assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her
+opinion, I was worth all the others put together.
+
+"And so I told her," added the fat young lady--or the lean one grown
+stouter, "a dozen times if I told her once. But there!"
+
+I murmured my obligations.
+
+Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of
+his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.
+
+"You take my tip," advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, "and keep
+out of it."
+
+"You speak from experience?" I suggested.
+
+"I'm as fond of a joke," said the watery-eyed Joseph, "as any man. But
+when it comes to buckets of water--"
+
+A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered
+for eleven o'clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph's
+revelations.
+
+"See you again, perhaps," he murmured, and pushed past me.
+
+What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold
+col-la-shon had been arranged for at a restaurant near by. I walked
+there in company with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I particularly
+desired their companionship, but because Uncle Gutton, seizing me by the
+arm, left me no alternative.
+
+"Now then, young man," commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously
+so soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the
+others, "if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away. I shan't mind,
+and maybe it'll do you good."
+
+I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.
+
+"Oh, all right," returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed. "If
+you're willing to forgive and forget, so am I. I never liked you, as
+I daresay you saw, and so I told Rosie. 'He may be cleverer than he
+looks,' I says, 'or he may be a bigger fool than I think him, though
+that's hardly likely. You take my advice and get a full-grown article,
+then you'll know what you're doing.'"
+
+I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.
+
+"I'm glad you think so," he returned, somewhat puzzled; "though if you
+wanted to call me names I shouldn't have blamed you. Anyhow, you've took
+it like a sensible chap. You've got over it, as I always told her you
+would. Young men out of story-books don't die of broken hearts, even
+if for a month or two they do feel like standing on their head in the
+water-butt."
+
+"Why, I was in love myself three times," explained Uncle Gutton, "before
+I married the old woman."
+
+Aunt Gutton sighed and said she was afraid gentlemen didn't feel these
+things as much as they ought to.
+
+"They've got their living to earn," retorted Uncle Gutton.
+
+I agreed with Uncle Gutton that life could not be wasted in vain regret.
+
+"As for the rest," admitted Uncle Gutton, handsomely, "I was wrong.
+You've turned out better than I expected you would."
+
+I thanked him for his improved opinion, and as we entered the restaurant
+we shook hands.
+
+Minikin we found there waiting for us. He explained that having been
+able to obtain only limited leave of absence from business, he had
+concluded the time would be better employed at the restaurant than at
+the church. Others were there also with whom I was unacquainted, young
+sparks, admirers, I presume, of the Lady 'Ortensia in her professional
+capacity, fellow-clerks of Mr. Clapper, who was something in the City.
+Altogether we must have numbered a score.
+
+Breakfast was laid in a large room on the first floor. The wedding
+presents stood displayed upon a side-table. My own, with my card
+attached, had not been seen by Mrs. Clapper till that moment. She and
+her mother lingered, examining it.
+
+"Real silver!" I heard the maternal Sellars whisper, "Must have paid a
+ten pound note for it."
+
+"I hope you'll find it useful," I said.
+
+The maternal Sellars, drifting away, joined the others gathered together
+at the opposite end of the room.
+
+"I suppose you think I set my cap at you merely because you were a
+gentleman," said the Lady 'Ortensia.
+
+"Don't let's talk about it," I answered. "We were both foolish."
+
+"I don't want you to think it was merely that," continued the Lady
+'Ortensia. "I did like you. And I wouldn't have disgraced you--at least,
+I'd have tried not to. We women are quick to learn. You never gave me
+time."
+
+"Believe me, things are much better as they are," I said.
+
+"I suppose so," she answered. "I was a fool." She glanced round; we
+still had the corner to ourselves. "I told a rare pack of lies," she
+said; "I didn't seem able to help it; I was feeling sore all over. But
+I have always been ashamed of myself. I'll tell them the truth, if you
+like."
+
+I thought I saw a way of making her mind easy. "My dear girl," I said,
+"you have taken the blame upon yourself, and let me go scot-free. It was
+generous of you."
+
+"You mean that?" she asked.
+
+"The truth," I answered, "would shift all the shame on to me. It was I
+who broke my word, acted shabbily from beginning to end."
+
+"I hadn't looked at it in that light," she replied. "Very well, I'll
+hold my tongue."
+
+My place at breakfast was to the left of the maternal Sellars, the
+Signora next to me, and the O'Kelly opposite. Uncle Gutton faced the
+bride and bridegroom. The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by
+flowers, so that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my ears,
+embellished with the mysterious significance of the unseen oracle.
+
+For the first quarter of an hour or so the meal proceeded almost in
+silence. The maternal Sellars when not engaged in whispered argument
+with the perspiring waiter, was furtively occupied in working sums upon
+the table-cloth by aid of a blunt pencil. The Signora, strangely unlike
+her usual self, was not in talkative mood.
+
+"It was so kind of them to invite me," said the Signora, speaking low.
+"But I feel I ought not to have come.
+
+"Why not?" I asked
+
+"I'm not fit to be here," murmured the Signora in a broken voice. "What
+right have I at wedding breakfasts? Of course, for dear Willie it is
+different. He has been married."
+
+The O'Kelly, who never when the Signora was present seemed to care much
+for conversation in which she was unable to participate, took advantage
+of his neighbour's being somewhat deaf to lapse into abstraction. Jarman
+essayed a few witticisms of a general character, of which nobody took
+any notice. The professional admirers of the Lady 'Ortensia, seated
+together at a corner of the table, appeared to be enjoying a small
+joke among themselves. Occasionally, one or another of them would laugh
+nervously. But for the most part the only sounds to be heard were the
+clatter of the knives and forks, the energetic shuffling of the waiter,
+and a curious hissing noise as of escaping gas, caused by Uncle Gutton
+drinking champagne.
+
+With the cutting, or, rather, the smashing into a hundred fragments,
+of the wedding cake--a work that taxed the united strength of bride
+and bridegroom to the utmost--the atmosphere lost something of its
+sombreness. The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of being
+nearly done, commenced to simmer. The maternal Sellars, putting away
+with her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced the
+table with a smile.
+
+"But it is a sad thing," sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment,
+with a shake of her huge head, "when your daughter marries, and goes
+away and leaves you."
+
+"Damned sight sadder," commented Uncle Gutton, "when she don't go off,
+but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her."
+
+I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive
+benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre
+that lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly
+girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be
+Miss Gutton.
+
+"It doesn't seem to me," said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the
+table, "that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to
+be."
+
+"Got to know a bit about it, I expect," sounded the small, shrill voice
+of the unseen Joseph.
+
+"To my thinking," exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, "one of the evils
+crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly
+needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings." He spoke rapidly
+and with warmth. "Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man's
+luxury."
+
+Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the
+occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.
+
+"The plain fact of the matter is," said Jarman, "girls have gone up in
+value. Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with
+a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays--well,
+it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a
+really first-class article."
+
+Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional
+brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have
+envied him: the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a
+laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.
+
+"Give and take," observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper's
+roar had died away; "that's what you've got to do when you're married."
+
+"Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't
+want--that sums it up," came the bitter voice of the unseen.
+
+"Oh, do be quiet, Joe," advised the stout young lady, from which I
+concluded she had once been the lean young lady. "You talk enough for a
+man."
+
+"Can't I open my mouth?" demanded the indignant oracle.
+
+"You look less foolish when you keep it shut," returned the stout young
+lady.
+
+"We'll show them how to get on," observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her
+bridegroom, with a smile.
+
+Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.
+
+"When me and the old girl there fixed things up," said Uncle Gutton, "we
+didn't talk no nonsense, and we didn't start with no misunderstandings.
+'I'm not a duke,' I says--"
+
+"Had she been mistaking you for one?" enquired Minikin.
+
+Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh. I
+feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton's little eyes should leave his
+head.
+
+"Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool," replied Uncle Gutton, glaring
+at the unabashed Minikin, "she did not. 'I'm not a duke,' I says, and
+_she_ had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic like. 'I'm not
+offering you a life of luxury and ease. I'm offering you myself, just
+what you see, and nothing more.'
+
+"She took it?" asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his
+bread.
+
+"She accepted me, sir," returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would
+have awed any one but Minikin. "Can you give me any good reason for her
+not doing so?"
+
+"No need to get mad with me," explained Minikin. "I'm not blaming the
+poor woman. We all have our moments of despair."
+
+The unfortunate Clapper again exploded. Uncle Gutton rose to his feet.
+The ready Jarman saved the situation.
+
+"'Ear! 'ear!" cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two
+knives. "Silence for Uncle Gutton! 'E's going to propose a toast. 'Ear,
+'ear!"
+
+Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into
+applause.
+
+"What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say--" began Uncle Gutton.
+
+"Good old Uncle Gutton!" persisted the determined Jarman. "Bride and
+bridegroom--long life to 'em!"
+
+Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against Minikin
+to evaporate.
+
+"Well," said Uncle Gutton, "if you think I'm the one to do it--"
+
+The response was unmistakable. In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses
+and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her
+chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task.
+Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to
+assign to him the duty.
+
+Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he
+suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce
+censure of the Adulteration Act. Reminded of the time by the maternal
+Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with
+such questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly
+interested, and directed himself to the main argument. To his, Uncle
+Gutton's, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity,
+Mr. Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness. Uncle Gutton it
+was who had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair
+Rosina would come eventually to desire--a plain, simple, hard-working,
+level-headed sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him: such
+an one, in short, as Mr. Clapper himself--(at this Mr. Clapper expressed
+approval by a lengthy laugh)--a gentleman who, so far as Uncle Gutton's
+knowledge went, had but one fault: a silly habit of laughing when there
+was nothing whatever to laugh at; of which, it was to be hoped, the
+cares and responsibilities of married life would cure him. (To the
+rest of the discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a gravity painfully
+maintained.) There had been moments, Uncle Gutton was compelled to
+admit, when the fair Rosina had shown inclination to make a fool of
+herself--to desire in place of honest worth mere painted baubles. He
+used the term in no offensive sense. Speaking for himself, what a man
+wanted beyond his weekly newspaper, he, Uncle Gutton, was unable to
+understand; but if there were fools in the world who wanted to read
+rubbish written by other fools, then the other fools would of course
+write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them. He mentioned no names, but
+what he would say was: a plain man for a sensible girl, and no painted
+baubles.
+
+The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect
+that if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it
+was about full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring his
+speech to a premature conclusion. The bride and bridegroom were hustled
+into their clothes. There followed much female embracing and male
+hand-shaking. The rice having been forgotten, the waiter was almost
+thrown downstairs, with directions to at once procure some. There
+appearing danger of his not returning in time, the resourceful Jarman
+suggested cold semolina pudding as a substitute. But the idea was
+discouraged by the bride. A slipper of remarkable antiquity, discovered
+on the floor and regarded as a gift from Providence, was flung from the
+window by brother George, with admirable aim, and alighted on the roof
+of the cab. The waiter, on his return, not being able to find it, seemed
+surprised.
+
+
+
+I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora,
+who were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had
+not seen the O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years
+before, so that we had much to tell each other. For the third time now
+had the O'Kelly proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of the
+lady to whom he still referred as his "dear good wife."
+
+"But, under the circumstances, would it not be better," I suggested,
+"for her to obtain a divorce? Then you and the Signora could marry and
+there would be an end to the whole trouble."
+
+"From a strictly worldly point of view," replied the O'Kelly, "it
+certainly would be; but Mrs. O'Kelly"--his voice took to itself
+unconsciously a tone of reverence--"is not an ordinary woman. You can
+have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness. I had a letter from
+her only two months ago, a few weeks after the--the last occurrence. Not
+one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed against her even unto
+seven times seven she would still consider it her duty to forgive me;
+that the 'home' would always be there for me to return to and repent."
+
+A tear stood in the O'Kelly's eye. "A beautiful nature," he commented.
+"There are not many women like her."
+
+"Not one in a million!" added the Signora, with enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy," I said.
+
+The O'Kelly spoke quite angrily. "Don't ye say a word against her! I
+won't listen to it. Ye don't understand her. She never will despair of
+reforming me."
+
+"You see, Mr. Kelver," explained the Signora, "the whole difficulty
+arises from my unfortunate profession. It is impossible for me to keep
+out of dear Willie's way. If I could earn my living by any other means,
+I would; but I can't. And when he sees my name upon the posters, it's
+all over with him."
+
+"I do wish, Willie, dear," added the Signora in tones of gentle reproof,
+"that you were not quite so weak."
+
+"Me dear," replied the O'Kelly, "ye don't know how attractive ye are or
+ye wouldn't blame me."
+
+I laughed. "Why don't you be firm," I suggested to the Signora, "send
+him packing about his business?"
+
+"I ought to," admitted the Signora. "I always mean to, until I see him.
+Then I don't seem able to say anything--not anything I ought to."
+
+"Ye do say it," contradicted the O'Kelly. "Ye're an angel, only I won't
+listen to ye."
+
+"I don't say it as if I meant it," persisted the Signora. "It's evident
+I don't."
+
+"I still think it a pity," I said, "someone does not explain to Mrs.
+O'Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness."
+
+"It is difficult to decide," argued the Signora. "If ever you should
+want to leave me--"
+
+"Me darling!" exclaimed the O'Kelly.
+
+"But you may," insisted the Signora. "Something may happen to help you,
+to show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you
+will go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she
+is."
+
+"She's a saint," agreed Willie.
+
+At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards
+Fleet Street.
+
+The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied
+chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the
+'Ortensia marriage, I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting
+me suggested the necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything
+of his friends beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he
+pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the
+fire, filled and lighted his pipe.
+
+"I left you alone," he said. "You had to go through it, your slough of
+despond. It lies across every path--that leads to anywhere. Clear of
+it?"
+
+"I think so," I replied, smiling.
+
+"You are on the high road," he continued. "You have only to walk
+steadily. Sure you have left nothing behind you--in the slough?"
+
+"Nothing worth bringing out of it," I said. "Why do you ask so
+seriously?"
+
+He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.
+
+"Don't leave him behind you," he said; "the little boy Paul--Paul the
+dreamer."
+
+I laughed. "Oh, he! He was only in my way."
+
+"Yes, here," answered Dan. "This is not his world. He is of no use to
+you here; won't help you to bread and cheese--no, nor kisses either. But
+keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has
+been the real Paul--the living, growing Paul; the other--the active,
+worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his
+fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep."
+
+"I have been driving him away," I said. "He is so--so impracticable."
+
+Dan shook his head gravely. "It is not his world," he repeated. "We must
+eat, drink--be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is the
+child. Take care of him."
+
+We sat in silence for a little while--for longer, perhaps, than it
+seemed to us--Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied with
+his own thoughts.
+
+"You have an excellent agent," said Dan; "retain her services as long as
+you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as
+regards your affairs. Women never have where they--"
+
+He broke off to stir the fire.
+
+"You like her?" I asked. The words sounded feeble. It is only the writer
+who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often selects
+by contrast.
+
+"She is my ideal woman," returned Dan; "true and strong and tender;
+clear as crystal, pure as dawn. Like her!"
+
+He knocked the ashes from his pipe. "We do not marry our ideals," he
+went on. "We love with our hearts, not with our souls. The woman I shall
+marry"--he sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face--"she will be
+some sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield's Dora. Only
+I am not Doady, who always seems to me to have been somewhat of a--He
+reminds me of you, Paul, a little. Dickens was right; her helplessness,
+as time went on, would have bored him more and more instead of appealing
+to him."
+
+"And the women," I suggested, "do they marry their ideals?"
+
+He laughed. "Ask them."
+
+"The difference between men and women," he continued, "is very slight;
+we exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he
+is, Norah's ideal? Can't you imagine him?--But I can tell you the type
+of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart."
+
+He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his
+eye.
+
+"A nice enough fellow--clever, perhaps, but someone--well, someone who
+will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will
+appeal to the mother side of her--not her ideal man, but the man for
+whom nature intended her."
+
+"Perhaps with her help," I said, "he may in time become her ideal."
+
+"There's a long road before him," growled Dan.
+
+It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopement with
+Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old Hasluck
+a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had
+insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed.
+His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a fretful
+eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked
+boastingly: Had I seen the _Post_ for last Monday, the _Court Circular_
+for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown
+Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a
+Grand Duke? What did I think of that! and such
+like. Was not money master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made
+to acknowledge it!
+
+But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.
+
+"No children," he had whispered to me across the table; "that's what I
+can't understand. Nearly four years and no children! What'll be the
+good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten
+popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?"
+
+It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was
+the talk of the town for the next day--and the following eight. She had
+heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and
+see her.
+
+"I thought you would rather hear it quietly," said Norah, "than learn it
+from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did
+wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has
+done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she
+derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her."
+
+Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought
+it. I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My
+goddess had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself.
+From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world. So
+some youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the Great
+Queen was but a woman.
+
+I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years
+later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a
+theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had
+commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the
+extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon
+the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me
+that Madame G---- would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain I
+went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table
+were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her glass, a
+loose shawl about her shoulders.
+
+"Excuse my shaking hands," she said. "This damned hole is like a
+furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act."
+
+She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with
+grease.
+
+"D'you know my husband?" she continued. "Baron G--; Mr. Paul Kelver."
+
+The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man. "Delighted
+to meet Mr. Kelver," he said, speaking in excellent English. "Any friend
+of my wife's is always a friend of mine."
+
+He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach
+much importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether
+he was offended or not.
+
+"I am glad I saw you," she continued. "Do you remember a girl called
+Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.
+
+"Yes," I answered, "I remember her."
+
+"Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago." She was rubbing paint into
+her cheeks as she spoke. "She asked me if ever I saw you to give you
+this. I have been carrying it about with me ever since."
+
+She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn
+as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed
+it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's
+office framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my
+outstretched palm.
+
+"Quite a pretty little romance," laughed the Baron.
+
+"That's all," added the woman at the glass. "She said you would
+understand."
+
+From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never
+to see again that look upon a woman's face.
+
+"Thank you," I said. "Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I
+shall always wear it."
+
+Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+PAUL FINDS HIS WAY.
+
+Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying
+strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of
+the sad eyes, would seek to lure me from my work. But for my vehement
+determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my
+honesty, my desire--growing day by day, till it became almost a physical
+hunger--to feel again the pressure of Norah's strong white hand in mine,
+he might possibly have succeeded. Heaven only knows what then he might
+have made of me: politician, minor poet, more or less able editor,
+hampered by convictions--something most surely of but little service to
+myself. Now and again, with a week to spare--my humour making holiday,
+nothing to be done but await patiently its return--I would write stories
+for my own pleasure. They made no mark; but success in purposeful work
+is of slower growth. Had I persisted--but there was money to be earned.
+And by the time my debts were paid, I had established a reputation.
+
+"Madness!" argued practical friends. "You would be throwing away a
+certain fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence. The one you
+know you can do, the other--it would be beginning your career all over
+again."
+
+"You would find it almost impossible now," explained those who spoke, I
+knew, words of wisdom, of experience. "The world would never listen to
+you. Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic actor
+insist upon playing Hamlet. It might be the best Hamlet ever seen upon
+the stage; the audience would only laugh--or stop away."
+
+Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, "Goggles" and I, seeking some
+quiet corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other.
+He would lay before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo--an
+excellent conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to
+interest me. Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo. But I
+listened with every sign of encouragement. It was the price I paid
+him for, in turn, listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how
+monumental literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and built
+up.
+
+"Perhaps in a future existence," laughed Goggles, one evening, rising as
+the clock struck seven, "I shall be a great tragedian, and you a famous
+poet. Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we are both
+sinning our mercies. After all, to live is the most important thing in
+life."
+
+I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him to
+get into his coat.
+
+"Take my advice"--tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy
+eyes upon me. Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should have
+laughed, his expression was so comical. "Marry some dear little woman"
+(he was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own weight);
+"one never understands life properly till the babies come to explain it
+to one."
+
+I returned to my easy-chair before the fire. Wife, children, home!
+After all, was not that the true work of man--of the live man, not the
+dreamer? I saw them round me, giving to my life dignity, responsibility.
+The fair, sweet woman, helper, comrade, comforter, the little faces
+fashioned in our image, their questioning voices teaching us the answers
+to life's riddles. All other hopes, ambitions, dreams, what were they?
+Phantoms of the morning mist fading in the sunlight.
+
+Hodgson came to me one evening. "I want you to write me a comic opera,"
+he said. He had an open letter in his hand which he was reading. "The
+public seem to be getting tired of these eternal translations from the
+French. I want something English, something new and original."
+
+"The English is easy enough," I replied; "but I shouldn't clamour for
+anything new and original if I were you."
+
+"Why not?" he asked, looking up from his letter.
+
+"You might get it," I answered. "Then you would be disappointed."
+
+He laughed. "Well, you know what I mean--something we could refer to as
+'new and original' on the programme. What do you say? It will be a big
+chance for you, and I'm willing to risk it. I'm sure you can do it.
+People are beginning to talk about you."
+
+I had written a few farces, comediettas, and they had been successful.
+But the chief piece of the evening is a serious responsibility. A young
+man may be excused for hesitating. It can make, but also it can mar him.
+A comic opera above all other forms of art--if I may be forgiven
+for using the sacred word in connection with such a subject--demands
+experience.
+
+I explained my fears. I did not explain that in my desk lay a four-act
+drama throbbing with humanity, with life, with which it had been my
+hope--growing each day fainter--to take the theatrical public by storm,
+to establish myself as a serious playwright.
+
+"It's very simple," urged Hodgson. "Provide Atherton plenty of comic
+business; you ought to be able to do that all right. Give Gleeson
+something pretty in waltz time, and Duncan a part in which she can
+change her frock every quarter of an hour or so, and the thing is done."
+
+"I'll tell you what," continued Hodgson, "I'll take the whole crowd
+down to Richmond on Sunday. We'll have a coach, and leave the theatre at
+half-past ten. It will be an opportunity for you to study them. You'll
+be able to have a talk with them and get to know just what they can do.
+Atherton has ideas in his head; he'll explain them to you. Then, next
+week, we'll draw up a contract and set to work."
+
+It was too good an opportunity to let slip, though I knew that if
+successful I should find myself pinned down firmer than ever to my role
+of jester. But it is remunerative, the writing of comic opera.
+
+A small crowd had gathered in the Strand to see us start.
+
+"Nothing wrong, is there?" enquired the leading lady, in a tone of some
+anxiety, alighting a quarter of an hour late from her cab. "It isn't a
+fire, is it?"
+
+"Merely assembled to see you," explained Mr. Hodgson, without raising
+his eyes from his letters.
+
+"Oh, good gracious!" cried the leading lady, "do let us get away
+quickly."
+
+"Box seat, my dear," returned Mr. Hodgson.
+
+The leading lady, accepting the proffered assistance of myself and three
+other gentlemen, mounted the ladder with charming hesitation. Some delay
+in getting off was caused by our low comedian, who twice, making
+believe to miss his footing, slid down again into the arms of the
+stolid door-keeper. The crowd, composed for the most part of small boys
+approving the endeavour to amuse them, laughed and applauded. Our low
+comedian thus encouraged, made a third attempt upon his hands and knees,
+and, gaining the roof, sat down upon the tenor, who smiled somewhat
+mechanically.
+
+The first dozen or so 'busses we passed our low comedian greeted by
+rising to his feet and bowing profoundly, afterwards falling back
+upon either the tenor or myself. Except by the tenor and myself his
+performance appeared to be much appreciated. Charing Cross passed, and
+nobody seeming to be interested in our progress, to the relief of the
+tenor and myself, he settled down.
+
+"People sometimes ask me," said the low comedian, brushing the dust off
+his knees, "why I do this sort of thing off the stage. It amuses me."
+
+"I was coming up to London the other day from Birmingham," he continued.
+"At Willesden, when the ticket collector opened the door, I sprang out
+of the carriage and ran off down the platform. Of course, he ran after
+me, shouting to all the others to stop me. I dodged them for about
+a minute. You wouldn't believe the excitement there was. Quite fifty
+people left their seats to see what it was all about. I explained
+to them when they caught me that I had been travelling second with a
+first-class ticket, which was the fact. People think I do it to attract
+attention. I do it for my own pleasure."
+
+"It must be a troublesome way of amusing oneself," I suggested.
+
+"Exactly what my wife says," he replied; "she can never understand the
+desire that comes over us all, I suppose, at times, to play the fool. As
+a rule, when she is with me I don't do it."
+
+"She's not here today?" I asked, glancing round.
+
+"She suffers so from headaches," he answered, "she hardly ever goes
+anywhere."
+
+"I'm sorry." I spoke not out of mere politeness; I really did feel
+sorry.
+
+During the drive to Richmond this irrepressible desire to amuse himself
+got the better of him more than once or twice. Through Kensington he
+attracted a certain amount of attention by balancing the horn upon his
+nose. At Kew he stopped the coach to request of a young ladies' boarding
+school change for sixpence. At the foot of Richmond Hill he caused a
+crowd to assemble while trying to persuade a deaf old gentleman in a
+Bath-chair to allow his man to race us up the hill for a shilling.
+
+At these antics and such like our party laughed uproariously, with the
+exception of Hodgson, who had his correspondence to attend to, and an
+elegant young lady of some social standing who had lately emerged from
+the Divorce Court with a reputation worth to her in cash a hundred
+pounds a week.
+
+Arriving at the hotel quarter of an hour or so before lunch time,
+we strolled into the garden. Our low comedian, observing an elderly
+gentleman of dignified appearance sipping a glass of Vermouth at a small
+table, stood for a moment rooted to the earth with astonishment, then,
+making a bee-line for the stranger, seized and shook him warmly by the
+hand. We exchanged admiring glances with one another.
+
+"Charlie is in good form to-day," we told one another, and followed at
+his heels.
+
+The elderly gentleman had risen; he looked puzzled. "And how's Aunt
+Martha?" asked him our low comedian. "Dear old Aunt Martha! Well, I am
+glad! You do look bonny! How is she?"
+
+"I'm afraid--" commenced the elderly gentleman. Our low comedian started
+back. Other visitors had gathered round.
+
+"Don't tell me anything has happened to her! Not dead? Don't tell me
+that!"
+
+He seized the bewildered gentleman by the shoulders and presented to him
+a face distorted by terror.
+
+"I really have not the faintest notion what you are talking about,"
+returned the gentleman, who seemed annoyed. "I don't know you."
+
+"Not know me? Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten--? Isn't your name
+Steggles?"
+
+"No, it isn't," returned the stranger, somewhat shortly.
+
+"My mistake," replied our low comedian. He tossed off at one gulp what
+remained of the stranger's Vermouth and walked away rapidly.
+
+The elderly gentleman, not seeing the humour of the joke, one of
+our party to soothe him explained to him that it was Atherton, _the_
+Atherton--Charlie Atherton.
+
+"Oh, is it," growled the elderly gentleman. "Then will you tell him from
+me that when I want his damned tomfoolery I'll come to the theatre and
+pay for it."
+
+"What a disagreeable man," we said, as, following our low comedian, we
+made our way into the hotel.
+
+During lunch he continued in excellent spirits; kissed the bald back of
+the waiter's head, pretending to mistake it for a face, called for
+hot mustard and water, made believe to steal the silver, and when the
+finger-bowls arrived, took off his coat and requested the ladies to look
+the other way.
+
+After lunch he became suddenly serious, and slipping his arm through
+mine, led me by unfrequented paths.
+
+"Now, about this new opera," he said; "we don't want any of the old
+stale business. Give us something new."
+
+I suggested that to do so might be difficult.
+
+"Not at all," he answered. "Now, my idea is this. I am a young fellow,
+and I'm in love with a girl."
+
+I promised to make a note of it.
+
+"Her father, apoplectic old idiot--make him comic: 'Damme, sir! By gad!'
+all that sort of thing."
+
+By persuading him that I understood what he meant, I rose in his
+estimation.
+
+"He won't have anything to say to me--thinks I'm an ass. I'm a simple
+sort of fellow--on the outside. But I'm not such a fool as I look."
+
+"You don't think we are getting too much out of the groove?" I enquired.
+
+His opinion was that the more so the better.
+
+"Very well. Then, in the second act I disguise myself. I'll come on as
+an organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a policeman,
+or a young swell about town. Give me plenty of opportunity, that's the
+great thing--opportunity to be really funny, I mean. We don't want any
+of the old stale tricks."
+
+I promised him my support.
+
+"Put a little pathos in it," he added, "give me a scene where I can show
+them I've something else in me besides merely humour. We don't want to
+make them howl, but just to feel a little. Let's send them out of the
+theatre saying: 'Well, Charlie's often made me laugh, but I'm damned if
+I knew he could make me cry before!' See what I mean?"
+
+I told him I thought I did.
+
+The leading lady, meeting us on our return, requested, with pretty tone
+of authority, everybody else to go away and leave us. There were cries
+of "Naughty!" The leading lady, laughing girlishly, took me by the hand
+and ran away with me.
+
+"I want to talk to you," said the leading lady, as soon as we had
+reached a secluded seat overlooking the river, "about my part in the new
+opera. Now, can't you give me something original? Do."
+
+Her pleading was so pretty, there was nothing for it but to pledge
+compliance.
+
+"I am so tired of being the simple village maiden," said the leading
+lady; "what I want is a part with some opportunity in it--a coquettish
+part. I can flirt," assured me the leading lady, archly. "Try me."
+
+I satisfied her of my perfect faith.
+
+"You might," said the leading lady, "see your way to making the plot
+depend upon me. It always seems to me that the woman's part is never
+made enough of in comic opera. I am sure a comic opera built round a
+woman would be a really great success. Don't you agree with me, Mr.
+Kelver," pouted the leading lady, laying her pretty hand on mine. "We
+are much more interesting than the men--now, aren't we?"
+
+Personally, as I told her, I agreed with her.
+
+The tenor, sipping tea with me on the balcony, beckoned me aside.
+
+"About this new opera," said the tenor; "doesn't it seem to you the
+time has come to make more of the story--that the public might prefer a
+little more human interest and a little less clowning?"
+
+I admitted that a good plot was essential.
+
+"It seems to me," said the tenor, "that if you could write an opera
+round an interesting love story, you would score a success. Of course,
+let there be plenty of humour, but reduce it to its proper place. As a
+support, it is excellent; when it is made the entire structure, it is
+apt to be tiresome--at least, that is my view."
+
+I replied with sincerity that there seemed to me much truth in what he
+said.
+
+"Of course, so far as I am personally concerned," went on the tenor,
+"it is immaterial. I draw the same salary whether I'm on the stage five
+minutes or an hour. But when you have a man of my position in the cast,
+and give him next to nothing to do--well, the public are disappointed."
+
+"Most naturally," I commented.
+
+"The lover," whispered the tenor, noticing the careless approach towards
+us of the low comedian, "that's the character they are thinking about
+all the time--men and women both. It's human nature. Make your lover
+interesting--that's the secret."
+
+Waiting for the horses to be put to, I became aware of the fact that I
+was standing some distance from the others in company with a tall, thin,
+somewhat oldish-looking man. He spoke in low, hurried tones, fearful
+evidently of being overheard and interrupted.
+
+"You'll forgive me, Mr. Kelver," he said--"Trevor, Marmaduke Trevor. I
+play the Duke of Bayswater in the second act."
+
+I was unable to recall him for the moment; there were quite a number of
+small parts in the second act. But glancing into his sensitive face, I
+shrank from wounding him.
+
+"A capital performance," I lied. "It has always amused me."
+
+He flushed with pleasure. "I made a great success some years ago," he
+said, "in America with a soda-water syphon, and it occurred to me that
+if you could, Mr. Kelver, in a natural sort of way, drop in a small part
+leading up to a little business with a soda-water syphon, it might help
+the piece."
+
+I wrote him his soda-water scene, I am glad to remember, and insisted
+upon it, in spite of a good deal of opposition. Some of the critics
+found fault with the incident, as lacking in originality. But Marmaduke
+Trevor was quite right, it did help a little.
+
+Our return journey was an exaggerated repetition of our morning drive.
+Our low comedian produced hideous noises from the horn, and entered into
+contests of running wit with 'bus drivers--a decided mistake from his
+point of view, the score generally remaining with the 'bus driver.
+At Hammersmith, seizing the opportunity of a block in the traffic,
+he assumed the role of Cheap Jack, and, standing up on the back seat,
+offered all our hats for sale at temptingly low prices.
+
+"Got any ideas out of them?" asked Hodgson, when the time came for us to
+say good-night.
+
+"I'm thinking, if you don't mind," I answered, "of going down into the
+country and writing the piece quietly, away from everybody."
+
+"Perhaps you are right," agreed Hodgson. "Too many cooks--Be sure and
+have it ready for the autumn."
+
+I wrote it with some pleasure to myself amid the Yorkshire Wolds, and
+was able to read it to the whole company assembled before the close of
+the season. My turning of the last page was followed by a dead silence.
+The leading lady was the first to speak. She asked if the clock upon the
+mantelpiece could be relied upon; because, if so, by leaving at once,
+she could just catch her train. Hodgson, consulting his watch, thought,
+if anything, it was a little fast. The leading lady said she hoped it
+was, and went. The only comforting words were spoken by the tenor. He
+recalled to our mind a successful comic opera produced some years before
+at the Philharmonic. He distinctly remembered that up to five minutes
+before the raising of the curtain everybody had regarded it as rubbish.
+He also had a train to catch. Marmaduke Trevor, with a covert shake of
+the hand, urged me not to despair. The low comedian, the last to go,
+told Hodgson he thought he might be able to do something with parts
+of it, if given a free hand. Hodgson and I left alone, looked at each
+other.
+
+"It's no good," said Hodgson, "from a box-office point of view. Very
+clever."
+
+"How do you know it is no good from a box-office point of view?" I
+ventured to enquire.
+
+"I never made a mistake in my life," replied Hodgson.
+
+"You have produced one or two failures," I reminded him.
+
+"And shall again," he laughed. "The right thing isn't easy to get."
+
+"Cheer up," he added kindly, "this is only your first attempt. We must
+try and knock it into shape at rehearsal."
+
+Their notion of "knocking it into shape" was knocking it to pieces.
+
+"I'll tell you what we'll do," would say the low comedian; "we'll cut
+that scene out altogether." Joyously he would draw his pencil through
+some four or five pages of my manuscript.
+
+"But it is essential to the story," I would argue.
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"But it is. It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and
+falls in love with the gipsy."
+
+"My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that. I meet Roderick at
+the ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?' 'Oh, I have escaped from
+prison.' 'Good business. And how's Miriam?' 'Well and happy--she is
+going to be my wife!' What more do you want?"
+
+"I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson," would observe the leading lady,
+"and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter, I
+fell in love with John--"
+
+"But John is in love with Arabella."
+
+"Oh, we've cut out Arabella. I can sing all her songs."
+
+The tenor would lead me into a corner. "I want you to write in a little
+scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first act. I'll
+talk to her about it. I think it will be rather pretty. I want her--the
+second time I see her--to have come out of her room on to a balcony, and
+to be standing there bathed in moonlight."
+
+"But the first act takes place in the early morning."
+
+"I've thought of that. We must alter it to the evening."
+
+"But the opera opens with a hunting scene. People don't go hunting by
+moonlight."
+
+"It will be a novelty. That's what's wanted for comic opera. The
+ordinary hunting scene! My dear boy, it has been done to death."
+
+I stood this sort of thing for a week. "They are people of experience,"
+I argued to myself; "they must know more about it than I do." By the
+end of the week I had arrived at the conclusion that anyhow they didn't.
+Added to which I lost my temper. It is a thing I should advise any lady
+or gentleman thinking of entering the ranks or dramatic authorship to
+lose as soon as possible. I took both manuscripts with me, and, entering
+Mr. Hodgson's private room, closed the door behind me. One parcel
+was the opera as I had originally written it, a neat, intelligible
+manuscript, whatever its other merits. The second, scored, interlined,
+altered, cut, interleaved, rewritten, reversed, turned inside out and
+topsy-turvy--one long, hopeless confusion from beginning to end--was the
+opera, as, everybody helping, we had "knocked it into shape."
+
+"That's your opera," I said, pushing across to him the bulkier bundle.
+"If you can understand it, if you can make head or tail of it, if you
+care to produce it, it is yours, and you are welcome to it. This is
+mine!" I laid it on the table beside the other. "It may be good, it may
+be bad. If it is played at all it is played as it is written. Regard the
+contract as cancelled, and make up your mind."
+
+He argued with force, and he argued with eloquence. He appealed to my
+self-interest, he appealed to my better nature. It occupied him forty
+minutes by the clock. Then he called me an obstinate young fool, flung
+the opera as "knocked into shape" into the waste-paper basket--which
+was the only proper place for it, and, striding into the middle of the
+company, gave curt directions that the damned opera was to be played as
+it was written, and be damned to it!
+
+The company shrugged its shoulders, and for the next month kept them
+shrugged. For awhile Hodgson remained away from the rehearsals, then
+returning, developed by degrees a melancholy interest in the somewhat
+gloomy proceedings.
+
+So far I had won, but my difficulty was to maintain the position. The
+low comedian, reciting his lines with meaningless monotony, would pause
+occasionally to ask of me politely, whether this or that passage was
+intended to be serious or funny.
+
+"You think," the leading lady would enquire, more in sorrow than in
+anger, "that any girl would behave in this way--any real girl, I mean?"
+
+"Perhaps the audience will understand it," would console himself
+hopefully the tenor. "Myself, I confess I don't."
+
+With a sinking heart concealed beneath an aggressively disagreeable
+manner, I remained firm in my "pigheaded conceit," as it was regarded,
+Hodgson generously supporting me against his own judgment.
+
+"It's bound to be a failure," he told me. "I am spending some twelve to
+fifteen hundred pounds to teach you a lesson. When you have learnt it
+we'll square accounts by your writing me an opera that will pay."
+
+"And if it does succeed?" I suggested.
+
+"My dear boy," replied Hodgson, "I never make mistakes."
+
+From all which a dramatic author of more experience would have gathered
+cheerfulness and hope, knowing that the time to be depressed is when the
+manager and company unanimously and unhesitatingly predict a six months'
+run. But new to the business, I regarded my literary career as already
+at an end. Belief in oneself is merely the match with which one lights
+oneself. The oil is supplied by the belief in one of others; if that
+be not forthcoming, one goes out. Later on I might try to light myself
+again, but for the present I felt myself dark and dismal. My desire was
+to get away from my own smoke and smell. The final dress rehearsal
+over, I took my leave of all concerned. The next morning I would pack
+a knapsack and start upon a walking tour through Holland. The English
+papers would not reach me. No human being should know my address. In a
+month or so I would return, the piece would have disappeared--would be
+forgotten. With courage, I might be able to forget it myself.
+
+"I shall run it for three weeks," said Hodgson, "then we'll withdraw it
+quietly, 'owing to previous arrangements'; or Duncan can suddenly fall
+ill--she's done it often enough to suit herself; she can do it this
+once to suit me. Don't be upset. There's nothing to be ashamed of in the
+piece; indeed, there is a good deal that will be praised. The idea is
+distinctly original. As a matter of fact, that's the fault with it,"
+added Hodgson, "it's too original."
+
+"You said you wanted it original," I reminded him.
+
+He laughed. "Yes, but original for the stage, I meant--the old dolls in
+new frocks."
+
+I thanked him for all his kindness, and went home and packed my
+knapsack.
+
+For two months I wandered, avoiding beaten tracks, my only comrades a
+few books, belonging to no age, no country. My worries fell from me, the
+personal affairs of Paul Kelver ceasing to appear the be all and the
+end all of the universe. But for a chance meeting with Wellbourne,
+Deleglise's amateur caretaker of Gower Street fame, I should have
+delayed yet longer my return. It was in one of the dead cities of the
+Zuyder Zee. I was sitting under the lindens on the grass-grown quay,
+awaiting a slow, crawling boat that, four miles off, I watched a moving
+speck across the level pastures. I heard his footsteps in the empty
+market-place behind me, and turned my head. I did not rise, felt even no
+astonishment; anything might come to pass in that still land of dreams.
+He seated himself beside me with a nod, and for awhile we smoked in
+silence.
+
+"All well with you?" I asked.
+
+"I am afraid not," he answered; "the poor fellow is in great trouble."
+
+"I'm not Wellbourne himself," he went on, in answer to my look; "I am
+only his spirit. Have you ever tested that belief the Hindoos hold:
+that a man may leave his body, wander at will for a certain period,
+remembering only to return ere the thread connecting him with flesh and
+blood be stretched to breaking point? It is quite correct. I often lock
+the door of my lodging, leave myself behind, wander a free Spirit."
+
+He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coins and looked at them.
+"The thread that connects us, I am sorrow to say, is wearing somewhat
+thin," he sighed; "I shall have to be getting back to him before
+long--concern myself again with his troubles, follies. It is somewhat
+vexing. Life is really beautiful, when one is dead."
+
+"What was the trouble?" I enquired.
+
+"Haven't you heard?" he replied. "Tom died five weeks ago, quite
+suddenly, of syncope. We had none of us any idea."
+
+So Norah was alone in the world. I rose to my feet. The slowly moving
+speck had grown into a thin, dark streak; minute by minute it took shape
+and form.
+
+"By the way, I have to congratulate you," said Wellbourne. "Your opera
+looked like being a big thing when I left London. You didn't sell
+outright, I hope?"
+
+"No," I answered. "Hodgson never expressed any desire to buy."
+
+"Lucky for you," said Wellbourne.
+
+I reached London the next evening. Passing the theatre on my way to
+Queen's Square, it occurred to me to stop my cab for a few minutes and
+look in.
+
+I met the low comedian on his way to his dressing-room. He shook me
+warmly by the hand.
+
+"Well," he said, "we're pulling them in. I was right, you see, 'Give me
+plenty of opportunity.' That's what I told you, didn't I? Come and see
+the piece. I think you will agree with me that I have done you justice."
+
+I thanked him.
+
+"Not at all," he returned; "it's a pleasure to work, when you've got
+something good to work on."
+
+I paid my respects to the leading lady.
+
+"I am so grateful to you," said the leading lady. "It is so delightful
+to play a real live woman, for a change."
+
+The tenor was quite fatherly.
+
+"It is what I have been telling Hodgson for years," he said, "give them
+a simple human story."
+
+Crossing the stage, I ran against Marmaduke Trevor.
+
+"You will stay for my scene," he urged.
+
+"Another night," I answered. "I have only just returned."
+
+He sank his voice to a whisper. "I want to talk to you on business, when
+you have the time. I am thinking of taking a theatre myself--not just
+now, but later on. Of course, I don't want it to get about."
+
+I assured him of my secrecy.
+
+"If it comes off, I want you to write for me. You understand the public.
+We will talk it over."
+
+He passed onward with stealthy tread.
+
+I found Hodgson in the front of the house.
+
+"Two stalls not sold and six seats in the upper circle," he informed me;
+"not bad for a Thursday night."
+
+I expressed my gratification.
+
+"I knew you could do it," said Hodgson, "I felt sure of it merely from
+seeing that comedietta of yours at the Queen's. I never make a mistake."
+
+Correction under the circumstances would have been unkind. Promising to
+see him again in the morning, I left him with his customary good conceit
+of himself unimpaired, and went on to the Square. I rang twice, but
+there was no response. I was about to sound a third and final summons,
+when Norah joined me on the step. She had been out shopping and was
+laden with parcels.
+
+"We must wait to shake hands," she laughed, as she opened the door. "I
+hope you have not been kept long. Poor Annette grows deafer every day."
+
+"Have you nobody in the house with you but Annette?" I asked.
+
+"No one. You know it was a whim of his. I used to get quite cross with
+him at times. But I should not like to go against his wishes--now."
+
+"Was there any reason for it?" I asked.
+
+"No," she answered; "if there had been I could have argued him out of
+it." She paused at the door of the studio. "I'll just get rid of these,"
+she said, "and then I will be with you."
+
+A wood fire was burning on the open hearth, flashing alternate beams of
+light and shadow down the long bare room. The high oak stool stood
+in its usual place beside the engraving desk, upon which lay old
+Deleglise's last unfinished plate, emitting a dull red glow. I paced the
+creaking boards with halting steps, as through some ghostly gallery
+hung with dim portraits of the dead and living. In a little while Norah
+entered and came to me with outstretched hand.
+
+"We will not light the lamp," she said, "the firelight is so pleasant."
+
+"But I want to see you," I replied.
+
+She had seated herself upon the broad stone kerb. With her hand she
+stirred the logs; they shot into a clear white flame. Thus, the light
+upon her face, she raised it gravely towards mine. It spoke to me with
+fuller voice. The clear grey eyes were frank and steadfast as ever, but
+shadow had passed into them, deepening them, illuminating them.
+
+For a space we talked of our two selves, our trivial plans and doings.
+
+"Tom left something to you," said Norah, rising, "not in his will, that
+was only a few lines. He told me to give it to you, with his love."
+
+She brought it to me. It was the picture he had always treasured, his
+first success; a child looking on death; "The Riddle" he had named it.
+
+We spoke of him, of his work, which since had come to be appraised at
+truer value, for it was out of fashion while he lived.
+
+"Was he a disappointed man, do you think?" I asked.
+
+"No," answered Norah. "I am sure not. He was too fond of his work."
+
+"But he dreamt of becoming a second Millet. He confessed it to me once.
+And he died an engraver."
+
+"But they were good engravings," smiled Norah.
+
+"I remember a favourite saying of his," continued Norah, after a pause;
+"I do not know whether it was original or not. 'The stars guide us. They
+are not our goal.'"
+
+"Ah, yes, we aim at the moon and--hit the currant bush."
+
+"It is necessary always to allow for deflection," laughed Norah.
+"Apparently it takes a would-be poet to write a successful comic opera."
+
+"Ah, you do not understand!" I cried. "It was not mere ambition; cap
+and bells or laurel wreath! that is small matter. I wanted to help. The
+world's cry of pain, I used to hear it as a boy. I hear it yet. I meant
+to help. They that are heavy laden. I hear their cry. They cry from dawn
+to dawn and none heed them: we pass upon the other side. Man and woman,
+child and beast. I hear their dumb cry in the night. The child's sob
+in the silence, the man's fierce curse of wrong. The dog beneath the
+vivisector's knife, the overdriven brute, the creature tortured for an
+hour that a gourmet may enjoy an instant's pleasure; they cried to me.
+The wrong and the sorrow and the pain, the long, low, endless moan God's
+ears are weary of; I hear it day and night. I thought to help."
+
+I had risen. She took my face between her quiet, cool hands.
+
+"What do we know? We see but a corner of the scheme. This fortress
+of laughter that a few of you have been set apart to guard--this
+rallying-point for all the forces of joy and gladness! how do you know
+it may not be the key to the whole battle! It is far removed from the
+grand charges and you think yourself forgotten. Trust your leader, be
+true to your post."
+
+I looked into her sweet grey eyes.
+
+"You always help me," I said.
+
+"Do I?" she answered. "I am so glad."
+
+She put her firm white hand in mine.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Paul Kelver, by Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
+
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diff --git a/old/old/1334.zip b/old/old/1334.zip
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+*Project Gutenberg's Etext of Paul Kelver, by Jerome K. Jerome*

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+Paul Kelver

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+June, 1998   [Etext #1334]

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+

+

+

+

+Paul Kelver

+By

+Jerome K. Jerome

+

+

+

+

+CONTENTS.

+

+PROLOGUE

+

+BOOK I

+

+I.  PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO

+MEET THE MAN IN GREY

+

+II.  IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH

+

+III.  HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY

+

+IV.  PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF

+THEM THE ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL, AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE

+GOLDEN LOCKS

+

+V.  IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY

+

+VI.  OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF

+THE LOVE-LIT EYES

+

+VII. OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW

+

+VIII.  HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING

+

+IX.  OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL

+

+X.  IN WHICH PAUL IS SHIPWRECKED, AND CAST INTO DEEP WATERS

+

+

+BOOK II.

+

+I. DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED

+

+II.  PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY, AND

+BECOMES CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN

+

+III. GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM. BUT BEFORE SETTING

+OUT, HE WILL GO A-VISITING

+

+IV.  LEADS TO A MEETING

+

+V.  HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL

+

+VI.  OF THE GLORY AND GOODNESS AND THE EVIL THAT GO TO THE MAKING OF

+LOVE

+

+VII.  HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST

+

+VIII.  AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN

+

+IX.  THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING

+

+X.   PAUL FINDS HIS WAY

+

+

+

+

+PAUL KELVER

+

+

+

+

+PROLOGUE.

+

+IN WHICH THE AUTHOR SEEKS TO CAST THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THIS STORY

+UPON ANOTHER.

+

+At the corner of a long, straight, brick-built street in the far East

+End of London--one of those lifeless streets, made of two drab walls

+upon which the level lines, formed by the precisely even window-sills

+and doorsteps, stretch in weary perspective from end to end,

+suggesting petrified diagrams proving dead problems--stands a house

+that ever draws me to it; so that often, when least conscious of my

+footsteps, I awake to find myself hurrying through noisy, crowded

+thoroughfares, where flaring naphtha lamps illumine fierce, patient,

+leaden-coloured faces; through dim-lit, empty streets, where monstrous

+shadows come and go upon the close-drawn blinds; through narrow,

+noisome streets, where the gutters swarm with children, and each

+ever-open doorway vomits riot; past reeking corners, and across waste

+places, till at last I reach the dreary goal of my memory-driven

+desire, and, coming to a halt beside the broken railings, find rest.

+

+The house, larger than its fellows, built when the street was still a

+country lane, edging the marshes, strikes a strange note of

+individuality amid the surrounding harmony of hideousness.  It is

+encompassed on two sides by what was once a garden, though now but a

+barren patch of stones and dust where clothes--it is odd any one

+should have thought of washing--hang in perpetuity; while about the

+door continue the remnants of a porch, which the stucco falling has

+left exposed in all its naked insincerity.

+

+Occasionally I drift hitherward in the day time, when slatternly women

+gossip round the area gates, and the silence is broken by the hoarse,

+wailing cry of "Coals--any coals--three and sixpence a

+sack--co-o-o-als!" chanted in a tone that absence of response has

+stamped with chronic melancholy; but then the street knows me not, and

+my old friend of the corner, ashamed of its shabbiness in the

+unpitying sunlight, turns its face away, and will not see me as I

+pass.

+

+Not until the Night, merciful alone of all things to the ugly, draws

+her veil across its sordid features will it, as some fond old nurse,

+sought out in after years, open wide its arms to welcome me.  Then the

+teeming life it now shelters, hushed for a time within its walls, the

+flickering flare from the "King of Prussia" opposite extinguished,

+will it talk with me of the past, asking me many questions, reminding

+me of many things I had forgotten.  Then into the silent street come

+the well-remembered footsteps; in and out the creaking gate pass, not

+seeing me, the well-remembered faces; and we talk concerning them; as

+two cronies, turning the torn leaves of some old album where the faded

+portraits in forgotten fashions, speak together in low tones of those

+now dead or scattered, with now a smile and now a sigh, and many an

+"Ah me!" or "Dear, dear!"

+

+This bent, worn man, coming towards us with quick impatient steps,

+which yet cease every fifty yards or so, while he pauses, leaning

+heavily upon his high Malacca cane:  "It is a handsome face, is it

+not?" I ask, as I gaze upon it, shadow framed.

+

+"Aye, handsome enough," answers the old House; "and handsomer still it

+must have been before you and I knew it, before mean care had furrowed

+it with fretful lines."

+

+"I never could make out," continues the old House, musingly, "whom you

+took after; for they were a handsome pair, your father and your

+mother, though Lord! what a couple of children!"

+

+"Children!" I say in surprise, for my father must have been past five

+and thirty before the House could have known him, and my mother's face

+is very close to mine, in the darkness, so that I see the many grey

+hairs mingling with the bonny brown.

+

+"Children," repeats the old House, irritably, so it seems to me, not

+liking, perhaps, its opinions questioned, a failing common to old

+folk; "the most helpless pair of children I ever set eyes upon.  Who

+but a child, I should like to know, would have conceived the notion of

+repairing his fortune by becoming a solicitor at thirty-eight, or,

+having conceived such a notion, would have selected the outskirts of

+Poplar as a likely centre in which to put up his door-plate?"

+

+"It was considered to be a rising neighbourhood," I reply, a little

+resentful.  No son cares to hear the family wisdom criticised, even

+though at the bottom of his heart he may be in agreement with the

+critic.  "All sorts and conditions of men, whose affairs were in

+connection with the sea would, it was thought, come to reside

+hereabout, so as to be near to the new docks; and had they, it is not

+unreasonable to suppose they would have quarrelled and disputed with

+one another, much to the advantage of a cute solicitor, convenient to

+their hand."

+

+"Stuff and nonsense," retorts the old House, shortly; "why, the mere

+smell of the place would have been sufficient to keep a sensible man

+away.  And"--the grim brick face before me twists itself into a goblin

+smile--"he, of all men in the world, as 'the cute solicitor,' giving

+advice to shady clients, eager to get out of trouble by the shortest

+way, can you fancy it! he who for two years starved himself, living on

+five shillings a week--that was before you came to London, when he was

+here alone.  Even your mother knew nothing of it till years

+afterwards--so that no man should be a penny the poorer for having

+trusted his good name.  Do you think the crew of chandlers and

+brokers, dock hustlers and freight wreckers would have found him a

+useful man of business, even had they come to settle here?"

+

+I have no answer; nor does the old House wait for any, but talks on.

+

+"And your mother! would any but a child have taken that soft-tongued

+wanton to her bosom, and not have seen through acting so transparent?

+Would any but the veriest child that never ought to have been let out

+into the world by itself have thought to dree her weird in such folly?

+Children! poor babies they were, both of them."

+

+"Tell me," I say--for at such times all my stock of common sense is

+not sufficient to convince me that the old House is but clay.  From

+its walls so full of voices, from its floors so thick with footsteps,

+surely it has learned to live; as a violin, long played on, comes to

+learn at last a music of its own.  "Tell me, I was but a child to whom

+life speaks in a strange tongue, was there any truth in the story?"

+

+"Truth!" snaps out the old House; "just truth enough to plant a lie

+upon; and Lord knows not much ground is needed for that weed.  I saw

+what I saw, and I know what I know.  Your mother had a good man, and

+your father a true wife, but it was the old story:  a man's way is not

+a woman's way, and a woman's way is not a man's way, so there lives

+ever doubt between them."

+

+"But they came together in the end," I say, remembering.

+

+"Aye, in the end," answers the House.  "That is when you begin to

+understand, you men and women, when you come to the end."

+

+The grave face of a not too recently washed angel peeps shyly at me

+through the railings, then, as I turn my head, darts back and

+disappears.

+

+"What has become of her?" I ask.

+

+"She? Oh, she is well enough," replies the House.  "She lives close

+here.  You must have passed the shop.  You might have seen her had you

+looked in.  She weighs fourteen stone, about; and has nine children

+living.  She would be pleased to see you."

+

+"Thank you," I say, with a laugh that is not wholly a laugh; "I do not

+think I will call."  But I still hear the pit-pat of her tiny feet,

+dying down the long street.

+

+The faces thicken round me.  A large looming, rubicund visage smiles

+kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of

+instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval.  I turn

+from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth

+and the loveliest eyes I ever have known in a man.

+

+"Was he as bad, do you think, as they said?" I ask of my ancient

+friend.

+

+"Shouldn't wonder," the old House answers.  "I never knew a worse--nor

+a better."

+

+The wind whisks it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling

+nimbly by aid of a stick.  Three corkscrew curls each side of her head

+bob with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the

+most alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to

+herself some fascinating secret, "I'd like to skin 'em.  I'd like to

+skin 'em all.  I'd like to skin 'em all alive!"

+

+It sounds a fiendish sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old

+lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps

+beyond my ken.

+

+Then, as though choosing contrasts, follows a fair, laughing face.  I

+saw it in the life only a few hours ago--at least, not it, but the

+poor daub that Evil has painted over it, hating the sweetness

+underlying.  And as I stand gazing at it, wishing it were of the dead

+who change not, there drifts back from the shadows that other face,

+the one of the wicked mouth and the tender eyes, so that I stand again

+helpless between the two I loved so well, he from whom I learned my

+first steps in manhood, she from whom I caught my first glimpse of the

+beauty and the mystery of woman.  And again the cry rises from my

+heart, "Whose fault was it--yours or hers?"  And again I hear his

+mocking laugh as he answers, "Whose fault?  God made us."  And

+thinking of her and of the love I bore her, which was as the love of a

+young pilgrim to a saint, it comes into my blood to hate him.  But

+when I look into his eyes and see the pain that lives there, my pity

+grows stronger than my misery, and I can only echo his words, "God

+made us."

+

+Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but

+the centre round which they circle remains always the one:  a little

+lad with golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy,

+awkward ways and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.

+

+And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask:  "Would he know

+me, could he see me, do you think?"

+

+"How should he," answers the old House, "you are so different to what

+he would expect.  Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?"

+

+"It is sad to think he would not recognise me," I say.

+

+"It might be sadder if he did," grumbles the old House.

+

+We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House

+is thinking.  Soon it speaks as I expected.

+

+"You--writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him?  There

+is something that you know."

+

+It is the favourite theme of the old House.  I never visit it but it

+suggests to me this idea.

+

+"But he has done nothing?" I say.

+

+"He has lived," answers the old House.  "Is not that enough?"

+

+"Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times," I persist.

+"How of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?"

+

+The old House waxes impatient of me.

+

+"'The people!'" it retorts, "what are you all but children in a

+dim-lit room, waiting until one by one you are called out to sleep.

+And one mounts upon a stool and tells a tale to the others who have

+gathered round.  Who shall say what will please them, what will not."

+

+Returning home with musing footsteps through the softly breathing

+streets, I ponder the words of the old House.  Is it but as some

+foolish mother thinking all the world interested in her child, or may

+there lie wisdom in its counsel?  Then to my guidance or misguidance

+comes the thought of a certain small section of the Public who often

+of an evening commands of me a story; and who, when I have told her of

+the dreadful giants and of the gallant youths who slay them, of the

+wood-cutter's sons who rescue maidens from Ogre-guarded castles; of

+the Princesses the most beautiful in all the world, of the Princes

+with magic swords, still unsatisfied, creeps closer yet, saying:  "Now

+tell me a real story," adding for my comprehending:  "You know:  about

+a little girl who lived in a big house with her father and mother, and

+who was sometimes naughty, you know."

+

+So perhaps among the many there may be some who for a moment will turn

+aside from tales of haughty Heroes, ruffling it in Court and Camp, to

+listen to the story of a very ordinary lad who lived with very

+ordinary folk in a modern London street, and who grew up to be a very

+ordinary sort of man, loving a little and grieving a little, helping a

+few and harming a few, struggling and failing and hoping; and if any

+such there be, let them come round me.

+

+But let not those who come to me grow indignant as they listen,

+saying:  "This rascal tells us but a humdrum story, where nothing is

+as it should be;" for I warn all beforehand that I tell but of things

+that I have seen.  My villains, I fear, are but poor sinners, not

+altogether bad; and my good men but sorry saints.  My princes do not

+always slay their dragons; alas, sometimes, the dragon eats the

+prince.  The wicked fairies often prove more powerful than the good.

+The magic thread leads sometimes wrong, and even the hero is not

+always brave and true.

+

+So let those come round me only who will be content to hear but their

+own story, told by another, saying as they listen, "So dreamt I.  Ah,

+yes, that is true, I remember."

+

+

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+PAUL, ARRIVED IN A STRANGE LAND, LEARNS MANY THINGS, AND GOES TO MEET

+THE MAN IN GREY.

+

+Fate intended me for a singularly fortunate man.  Properly, I ought to

+have been born in June, which being, as is well known, the luckiest

+month in all the year for such events, should, by thoughtful parents,

+be more generally selected.  How it was I came to be born in May,

+which is, on the other hand, of all the twelve the most unlucky, as I

+have proved, I leave to those more conversant with the subject to

+explain.  An early nurse, the first human being of whom I have any

+distinct recollection, unhesitatingly attributed the unfortunate fact

+to my natural impatience; which quality she at the same time predicted

+would lead me into even greater trouble, a prophecy impressed by

+future events with the stamp of prescience.  It was from this same

+bony lady that I likewise learned the manner of my coming.  It seems

+that I arrived, quite unexpectedly, two hours after news had reached

+the house of the ruin of my father's mines through inundation;

+misfortunes, as it was expounded to me, never coming singly in this

+world to any one.  That all things might be of a piece, my poor

+mother, attempting to reach the bell, fell against and broke the

+cheval-glass, thus further saddening herself with the conviction--for

+no amount of reasoning ever succeeded in purging her Welsh blood of

+its natural superstition--that whatever might be the result of future

+battles with my evil star, the first seven years of tiny existence had

+been, by her act, doomed to disaster.

+

+"And I must confess," added the knobbly Mrs. Fursey, with a sigh, "it

+does look as though there must be some truth in the saying, after

+all."

+

+"Then ain't I a lucky little boy?" I asked.  For hitherto it had been

+Mrs. Fursey's method to impress upon me my exceptional good fortune.

+That I could and did, involuntarily, retire to bed at six, while less

+happily placed children were deprived of their natural rest until

+eight or nine o'clock, had always been held up to me as an astounding

+piece of luck.  Some little boys had not a bed at all; for the which,

+in my more riotous moments, I envied them.  Again, that at the first

+sign of a cold it became my unavoidable privilege to lunch off linseed

+gruel and sup off brimstone and treacle--a compound named with

+deliberate intent to deceive the innocent, the treacle, so far as

+taste is concerned, being wickedly subordinated to the brimstone--was

+another example of Fortune's favouritism:  other little boys were so

+astoundingly unlucky as to be left alone when they felt ill.  If

+further proof were needed to convince that I had been signalled out by

+Providence as its especial protege, there remained always the

+circumstance that I possessed Mrs. Fursey for my nurse.  The

+suggestion that I was not altogether the luckiest of children was a

+new departure.

+

+The good dame evidently perceived her error, and made haste to correct

+it.

+

+"Oh, you! You are lucky enough," she replied; "I was thinking of your

+poor mother."

+

+"Isn't mamma lucky?"

+

+"Well, she hasn't been too lucky since you came."

+

+"Wasn't it lucky, her having me?"

+

+"I can't say it was, at that particular time."

+

+"Didn't she want me?"

+

+Mrs. Fursey was one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion

+that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of

+perpetual apology for its existence.

+

+"Well, I daresay she could have done without you," was the answer.

+

+I can see the picture plainly still.  I am sitting on a low chair

+before the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands,

+meanwhile Mrs. Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity

+against her thimble.  At that moment knocked at my small soul for the

+first time the problem of life.

+

+Suddenly, without moving, I said:

+

+"Then why did she take me in?"

+

+The rasping click of the needle on the thimble ceased abruptly.

+

+"Took you in!  What's the child talking about?  Who's took you in?"

+

+"Why, mamma.  If she didn't want me, why did she take me in?"

+

+But even while, with heart full of dignified resentment, I propounded

+this, as I proudly felt, logically unanswerable question, I was glad

+that she had.  The vision of my being refused at the bedroom window

+presented itself to my imagination.  I saw the stork, perplexed and

+annoyed, looking as I had sometimes seen Tom Pinfold look when the

+fish he had been holding out by the tail had been sniffed at by Anna,

+and the kitchen door shut in his face.  Would the stork also have gone

+away thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long,

+compass-like legs of his, and muttering to himself.  And here,

+incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me.  In the

+garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm,

+though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous

+and uncomfortable.  Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion?  And

+where would the stork have taken me to then?  Possibly to Mrs.

+Fursey's:  their cottage was the nearest.  But I felt sure Mrs. Fursey

+would not have taken me in; and next to them, at the first house in

+the village, lived Mr. Chumdley, the cobbler, who was lame, and who

+sat all day hammering boots with very dirty hands, in a little cave

+half under the ground, his whole appearance suggesting a poor-spirited

+ogre.  I should have hated being his little boy.  Possibly nobody

+would have taken me in.  I grew pensive, thinking of myself as the

+rejected of all the village.  What would the stork have done with me,

+left on his hands, so to speak.  The reflection prompted a fresh

+question.

+

+"Nurse, where did I come from?"

+

+"Why, I've told you often.  The stork brought you."

+

+"Yes, I know.  But where did the stork get me from?"  Mrs. Fursey

+paused for quite a long while before replying.  Possibly she was

+reflecting whether such answer might not make me unduly conceited.

+Eventually she must have decided to run that risk; other opportunities

+could be relied upon for neutralising the effect.

+

+"Oh, from Heaven."

+

+"But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to," I answered; "not

+where you comed from."  I know I said "comed," for I remember that at

+this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor

+mother.  "Comed" and "goned," which I had worked out for myself, were

+particular favourites of mine.

+

+Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence.  She had been

+pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my

+education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same

+subject only confused a child.

+

+"You came from Heaven," repeated Mrs. Fursey, "and you'll go to

+Heaven--if you're good."

+

+"Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?"

+

+"So they say."  Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what

+might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually

+took no responsibility.

+

+"And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?"  Mrs. Fursey's reply to

+this was decidedly more emphatic.

+

+"Of course I did.  Where do you think I came from?"

+

+At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my

+eyes.  Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew

+should be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as

+it appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm

+disappeared.

+

+But this was not all.  Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a

+fresh grief.  I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that

+my fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls.  With a

+child's egoism I seized only upon my own particular case.

+

+"Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?" I asked.  "Weren't they

+fond of me up there?"

+

+The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom,

+for she answered more sympathetically than usual.

+

+"Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay.  I like you, but I like to

+get rid of you sometimes."  There could be no doubt as to this last.

+Even at the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was

+not occasionally half-past five.

+

+The answer comforted me not.  It remained clear that I was not wanted

+either in Heaven nor upon the earth.  God did not want me.  He was

+glad to get rid of me.  My mother did not want me.  She could have

+done without me.  Nobody wanted me.  Why was I here?

+

+And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark

+room, came into my childish brain the feeling that Something,

+somewhere, must have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I

+belonged to and that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part

+of me as I of It.  The feeling came back to me more than once during

+my childhood, though I could never put it into words.  Years later the

+son of the Portuguese Jew explained to me my thought.  But all that I

+myself could have told was that in that moment I knew for the first

+time that I lived, that I was I.

+

+The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little

+boy, sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions

+concerning life.

+

+Suddenly a new thought came to me, or rather the recollection of an

+old.

+

+"Nurse, why haven't we got a husband?"

+

+Mrs. Fursey left off her sewing, and stared at me.

+

+"What maggot has the child got into its head now?" was her

+observation; "who hasn't got a husband?"

+

+"Why, mamma."

+

+"Don't talk nonsense, Master Paul; you know your mamma has got a

+husband."

+

+"No, she ain't."

+

+"And don't contradict.  Your mamma's husband is your papa, who lives

+in London."

+

+"What's the good of _him_!"

+

+Mrs. Fursey's reply appeared to me to be unnecessarily vehement.

+

+"You wicked child, you; where's your commandments?  Your father is in

+London working hard to earn money to keep you in idleness, and you sit

+there and say 'What's the good of him!'  I'd be ashamed to be such an

+ungrateful little brat."

+

+I had not meant to be ungrateful.  My words were but the repetition of

+a conversation I had overheard the day before between my mother and my

+aunt.

+

+Had said my aunt:  "There she goes, moping again.  Drat me if ever I

+saw such a thing to mope as a woman."

+

+My aunt was entitled to preach on the subject.  She herself grumbled

+all day about all things, but she did it cheerfully.

+

+My mother was standing with her hands clasped behind her--a favourite

+attitude of hers--gazing through the high French window into the

+garden beyond.  It must have been spring time, for I remember the

+white and yellow crocuses decking the grass.

+

+"I want a husband," had answered my mother, in a tone so ludicrously

+childish that at sound of it I had looked up from the fairy story I

+was reading, half expectant to find her changed into a little girl; "I

+hate not having a husband."

+

+"Help us and save us," my aunt had retorted; "how many more does a

+girl want?  She's got one."

+

+"What's the good of him all that way off," had pouted my mother; "I

+want him here where I can get at him."

+

+I had often heard of this father of mine, who lived far away in

+London, and to whom we owed all the blessings of life; but my childish

+endeavours to square information with reflection had resulted in my

+assigning to him an entirely spiritual existence.  I agreed with my

+mother that such an one, however to be revered, was no substitute for

+the flesh and blood father possessed by luckier folk--the big, strong,

+masculine thing that would carry a fellow pig-a-back round the garden,

+or take a chap to sail in boats.

+

+"You don't understand me, nurse," I explained; "what I mean is a

+husband you can get at."

+

+"Well, and you'll 'get at him,' poor gentleman, one of these days,"

+answered Mrs. Fursey.  "When he's ready for you he'll send for you,

+and then you'll go to him in London."

+

+I felt that still Mrs. Fursey didn't understand.  But I foresaw that

+further explanation would only shock her, so contented myself with a

+simple, matter-of-fact question.

+

+"How do you get to London; do you have to die first?"

+

+"I do think," said Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of resigned despair

+rather than of surprise, "that, without exception, you are the

+silliest little boy I ever came across.  I've no patience with you."

+

+"I am very sorry, nurse," I answered; "I thought--"

+

+"Then," interrupted Mrs. Fursey, in the voice of many generations,

+"you shouldn't think.  London," continued the good dame, her

+experience no doubt suggesting that the shortest road to peace would

+be through my understanding of this matter, "is a big town, and you go

+there in a train.  Some time--soon now--your father will write to your

+mother that everything is ready.  Then you and your mother and your

+aunt will leave this place and go to London, and I shall be rid of

+you."

+

+"And shan't we come back here ever any more?"

+

+"Never again."

+

+"And I'll never play in the garden again, never go down to the

+pebble-ridge to tea, or to Jacob's tower?"

+

+"Never again."  I think Mrs. Fursey took a pleasure in the phrase.  It

+sounded, as she said it, like something out of the prayer-book.

+

+"And I'll never see Anna, or Tom Pinfold, or old Yeo, or Pincher, or

+you, ever any more?"  In this moment of the crumbling from under me of

+all my footholds I would have clung even to that dry tuft, Mrs. Fursey

+herself.

+

+"Never any more.  You'll go away and begin an entirely new life.  And

+I do hope, Master Paul," added Mrs. Fursey, piously, "it may be a

+better one.  That you will make up your mind to--"

+

+But Mrs. Fursey's well-meant exhortations, whatever they may have

+been, fell upon deaf ears.  Here was I face to face with yet another

+problem.  This life into which I had fallen:  it was understandable!

+One went away, leaving the pleasant places that one knew, never to

+return to them.  One left one's labour and one's play to enter upon a

+new existence in a strange land.  One parted from the friends one had

+always known, one saw them never again.  Life was indeed a strange

+thing; and, would a body comprehend it, then must a body sit staring

+into the fire, thinking very hard, unheedful of all idle chatter.

+

+That night, when my mother came to kiss me good-night, I turned my

+face to the wall and pretended to be asleep, for children as well as

+grown-ups have their foolish moods; but when I felt the soft curls

+brush my cheek, my pride gave way, and clasping my arms about her

+neck, and drawing her face still closer down to mine; I voiced the

+question that all the evening had been knocking at my heart:

+

+"I suppose you couldn't send me back now, could you?  You see, you've

+had me so long."

+

+"Send you back?"

+

+"Yes.  I'd be too big for the stork to carry now, wouldn't I?"

+

+My mother knelt down beside the bed so that her face and mine were on

+a level, and looking into her eyes, the fear that had been haunting me

+fell from me.

+

+"Who has been talking foolishly to a foolish little boy?" asked my

+mother, keeping my arms still clasped about her neck.

+

+"Oh, nurse and I were discussing things, you know," I answered, "and

+she said you could have done without me.  Somehow, I did not mind

+repeating the words now; clearly it could have been but Mrs. Fursey's

+fun.

+

+My mother drew me closer to her.

+

+"And what made her think that?"

+

+"Well, you see," I replied, "I came at a very awkward time, didn't I;

+when you had a lot of other troubles."

+

+My mother laughed, but the next moment looked grave again.

+

+"I did not know you thought about such things," she said; "we must be

+more together, you and I, Paul, and you shall tell me all you think,

+because nurse does not quite understand you.  It is true what she said

+about the trouble; it came just at that time.  But I could not have

+done without you.  I was very unhappy, and you were sent to comfort me

+and help me to bear it."  I liked this explanation better.

+

+"Then it was lucky, your having me?" I said.  Again my mother laughed,

+and again there followed that graver look upon her childish face.

+

+"Will you remember what I am going to say?"  She spoke so earnestly

+that I, wriggling into a sitting posture, became earnest also.

+

+"I'll try," I answered; "but I ain't got a very good memory, have I?"

+

+"Not very," smiled my mother; "but if you think about it a good deal

+it will not leave you.  When you are a good boy, and later on, when

+you are a good man, then I am the luckiest little mother in all the

+world.  And every time you fail, that means bad luck for me.  You will

+remember that after I'm gone, when you are a big man, won't you,

+Paul?"

+

+So, both of us quite serious, I promised; and though I smile now when

+I remember, seeing before me those two earnest, childish faces, yet I

+think, however little success it may be I have to boast of, it would

+perhaps have been still less had I entirely forgotten.

+

+From that day my mother waxes in my memory; Mrs. Fursey, of the many

+promontories, waning.  There were sunny mornings in the neglected

+garden, where the leaves played round us while we worked and read;

+twilight evenings in the window seat where, half hidden by the dark

+red curtains, we would talk in whispers, why I know not, of good men

+and noble women, ogres, fairies, saints and demons; they were pleasant

+days.

+

+Possibly our curriculum lacked method; maybe it was too varied and

+extensive for my age, in consequence of which chronology became

+confused within my brain, and fact and fiction more confounded than

+has usually been considered permissible, even in history.  I saw

+Aphrodite, ready armed and risen from the sea, move with stately grace

+to meet King Canute, who, throned upon the sand, bade her come no

+further lest she should wet his feet.  In forest glade I saw King

+Rufus fall from a poisoned arrow shot by Robin Hood; but thanks to

+sweet Queen Eleanor, who sucked the poison from his wound, I knew he

+lived.  Oliver Cromwell, having killed King Charles, married his

+widow, and was in turn stabbed by Hamlet.  Ulysses, in the Argo, it

+was fixed upon my mind, had discovered America.  Romulus and Remus had

+slain the wolf and rescued Little Red Riding Hood.  Good King Arthur,

+for letting the cakes burn, had been murdered by his uncle in the

+Tower of London.  Prometheus, bound to the Rock, had been saved by

+good St. George.  Paris had given the apple to William Tell.  What

+matter! the information was there.  It needed rearranging, that was

+all.

+

+Sometimes, of an afternoon, we would climb the steep winding pathway

+through the woods, past awful precipices, spirit-haunted, by grassy

+swards where fairies danced o' nights, by briar and bracken sheltered

+Caves where fearsome creatures lurked, till high above the creeping

+sea we would reach the open plateau where rose old Jacob's ruined

+tower.  "Jacob's Folly" it was more often called about the country

+side, and by some "The Devil's Tower;" for legend had it that there

+old Jacob and his master, the Devil, had often met in windy weather to

+wave false wrecking lights to troubled ships.  Who "old Jacob" was, I

+never, that I can remember, learned, nor how nor why he built the

+Tower.  Certain only it is his memory was unpopular, and the fisher

+folk would swear that still on stormy nights strange lights would

+gleam and flash from the ivy-curtained windows of his Folly.

+

+But in day time no spot was more inviting, the short moss-grass before

+its shattered door, the lichen on its crumbling stones.  From its

+topmost platform one saw the distant mountains, faint like spectres,

+and the silent ships that came and vanished; and about one's feet the

+pleasant farm lands and the grave, sweet river.

+

+Smaller and poorer the world has grown since then.  Now, behind those

+hills lie naught but smoky towns and dingy villages; but then they

+screened a land of wonder where princesses dwelt in castles, where the

+cities were of gold.  Now the ocean is but six days' journey wide,

+ending at the New York Custom House.  Then, had one set one's sail

+upon it, one would have travelled far and far, beyond the golden

+moonlight, beyond the gate of clouds; to the magic land of the blood

+red shore, t'other side o' the sun.  I never dreamt in those days a

+world could be so small.

+

+Upon the topmost platform a wooden seat ran round within the parapet,

+and sitting there hand in hand, sheltered from the wind which ever

+blew about the tower, my mother would people for me all the earth and

+air with the forms of myth and legend--perhaps unwisely, yet I do not

+know.  I took no harm from it, good rather, I think.  They were

+beautiful fancies, most of them; or so my mother turned them, making

+for love and pity, as do all the tales that live, whether poems or old

+wives fables.  But at that time of course they had no meaning for me

+other than the literal; so that my mother, looking into my eyes, would

+often hasten to add:  "But that, you know, is only an old

+superstition, and of course there are no such things nowadays."  Yet,

+forgetful sometimes of the time, and overtaken homeward by the

+shadows, we would hasten swiftly through the darkening path, holding

+each other tightly by the hand.

+

+Spring had waxed to summer, summer waned to autumn.  Then my aunt and

+I one morning, waiting at the breakfast table, saw through the open

+window my mother skipping, dancing, pirouetting up the garden path.

+She held a letter open in her hand, which as she drew near she waved

+about her head, singing:

+

+"Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then comes Wednesday morning."

+

+She caught me to her and began dancing with me round the room.

+

+Observed my aunt, who continued steadily to eat bread and butter:

+

+"Just like 'em all.  Goes mad with joy.  What for?  Because she's

+going to leave a decent house, to live in a poky hole in the East End

+of London, and keep one servant."

+

+To my aunt the second person ever remained a grammatical superfluity.

+Invariably she spoke not to but of a person, throwing out her

+conversation in the form of commentary.  This had the advantage of

+permitting the party intended to ignore it as mere impersonal

+philosophy.  Seeing it was generally uncomplimentary, most people

+preferred so to regard it; but my mother had never succeeded in

+schooling herself to indifference.

+

+"It's not a poky hole," she replied; "it's an old-fashioned house,

+near the river."

+

+"Plaistow marshes!" ejaculated my aunt, "calls it the river!"

+

+"So it is the river," returned my mother; "the river is the other side

+of the marshes."

+

+"Let's hope it will always stop there," said my aunt.

+

+"And it's got a garden," continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last

+remark; "which is quite an unusual feature in a London house.  And it

+isn't the East End of London; it is a rising suburb.  And you won't

+make me miserable because I am too happy."

+

+"Drat the woman!" said my aunt, "why can't she sit down and give us

+our tea before it's all cold?"

+

+"You are a disagreeable thing!" said my mother.

+

+"Not half milk," said my aunt.  My aunt was never in the least

+disturbed by other people's opinion of her, which was perhaps well for

+her.

+

+For three days my mother packed and sang; and a dozen times a day

+unpacked and laughed, looking for things wanted that were always found

+at the very bottom of the very last box looked into, so that Anna,

+waiting for a certain undergarment of my aunt's which shall be

+nameless, suggested a saving of time:

+

+"If I were you, ma'am," said Anna, "I'd look into the last box you're

+going to look into first."

+

+But it was found eventually in the first box-the box, that is, my

+mother had intended to search first, but which, acting on Anna's

+suggestion, she had reserved till the last. This caused my mother to

+be quite short with Anna, who she said had wasted her time.  But by

+Tuesday afternoon all stood ready:  we were to start early Wednesday

+morning.

+

+That evening, missing my mother in the house, I sought her in the

+garden and found her, as I had expected, on her favourite seat under

+the great lime tree; but to my surprise there were tears in her eyes.

+

+"But I thought you were glad we were going," I said.

+

+"So I am," answered my mother, drying her eyes only to make room for

+fresh tears.

+

+"Then why are you crying?"

+

+"Because I'm sorry to leave here."

+

+Grown-up folks with their contradictory ways were a continual puzzle

+to me in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now,

+myself included.

+

+We were up and off next day before the dawn.  The sun rose as the

+wagon reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our

+farewell look at Old Jacob's Tower.  My mother cried a little behind

+her veil; but my aunt only said, "I never did care for earwigs in my

+tea;" and as for myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much

+sentiment about anything.

+

+On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who

+in his sleep--and he slept often--imagined me to be a piece of

+stuffing out of place.  Then, grunting and wriggling, he would

+endeavour to rub me out, until the continued irritation of my head

+between the window and his back would cause him to awake, when he

+would look down upon me reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the

+carriage generally:  "It's a funny thing, ain't it, nobody's ever made

+a boy yet that could keep still for ten seconds."  After which he

+would pat me heartily on the head, to show he was not vexed with me,

+and fall to sleep again upon me.  He was a good-tempered man.

+

+My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had

+found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat

+upon; so I was left mainly to my own resources.  When I could get my

+head free of the big man's back, I gazed out of the window, and

+watched the flying fragments as we shed the world.  Now a village

+would fall from us, now the yellow corn-land would cling to us for

+awhile, or a wood catch at our rushing feet, and sometimes a strong

+town would stop us, and hold us, panting for a space.  Or, my eyes

+weary, I would sit and listen to the hoarse singing of the wheels

+beneath my feet.  It was a monotonous chaunt, ever the same two lines:

+

+     "Here we suffer grief and pain,

+     Here we meet to part again,"

+     

+followed by a low, rumbling laugh.  Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes

+pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and

+ever followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the

+iron wheels sing to me that same song.

+

+Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my

+having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring

+all the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me.  It was hot and stuffy

+in the dragon's stomach.  He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully

+overeaten himself; there were hundreds of us there, entirely

+undigested, including Mother Hubbard and a gentleman named Johnson,

+against whom, at that period, I entertained a strong prejudice by

+reason of our divergent views upon the subject of spelling.  Even in

+this hour of our mutual discomfort Johnson would not leave me alone,

+but persisted in asking me how I spelt Jonah.  Nobody was looking, so

+I kicked him.  He sprang up and came after me.  I tried to run away,

+but became wedged between Hop-o'-my-Thumb and Julius Caesar.  I

+suppose our tearing about must have hurt the dragon, for at that

+moment he gave vent to a most fearful scream, and I awoke to find the

+fat man rubbing his left shin, while we struggled slowly, with steps

+growing ever feebler, against a sea of brick that every moment closed

+in closer round us.

+

+We scrambled out of the carriage into a great echoing cave that might

+have been the dragon's home, where, to my alarm, my mother was

+immediately swooped down upon by a strange man in grey.

+

+"Why's he do that?" I asked of my aunt.

+

+"Because he's a fool," answered my aunt; "they all are."

+

+He put my mother down and came towards us.  He was a tall, thin man,

+with eyes one felt one would never be afraid of; and instinctively

+even then I associated him in my mind with windmills and a lank white

+horse.

+

+"Why, how he's grown," said the grey man, raising me in his arms until

+my mother beside me appeared to me in a new light as quite a little

+person; "and solid too."

+

+My mother whispered something.  I think from her face, for I knew the

+signs, it was praise of me.

+

+"And he's going to be our new fortune," she added aloud, as the grey

+man lowered me.

+

+"Then," said my aunt, who had this while been sitting rigid upon a

+flat black box, "don't drop him down a coal-mine.  That's all I say."

+

+I wondered at the time why the grey man's pale face should flush so

+crimson, and why my mother should whisper angrily:

+

+"Flow can you be so wicked, Fanny?  How dare you say such a thing?"

+

+"I only said 'don't drop him down a coal-mine,'" returned my aunt,

+apparently much surprised; "you don't want to drop him down a

+coal-mine, do you?"

+

+We passed through glittering, joyous streets, piled high each side

+with all the good things of the earth; toys and baubles, jewels and

+gold, things good to eat and good to drink, things good to wear and

+good to see; through pleasant ways where fountains splashed and

+flowers bloomed.  The people wore bright clothes, had happy faces.

+They rode in beautiful carriages, they strolled about, greeting one

+another with smiles.  The children ran and laughed.  London, thought I

+to myself, is the city of the fairies.

+

+It passed, and we sank into a grim city of hoarse, roaring streets,

+wherein the endless throngs swirled and surged as I had seen the

+yellow waters curve and fret, contending, where the river pauses,

+rock-bound.  Here were no bright costumes, no bright faces, none

+stayed to greet another; all was stern, and swift, and voiceless.

+London, then, said I to myself, is the city of the giants.  They must

+live in these towering castles side by side, and these hurrying

+thousands are their driven slaves.

+

+But this passed also, and we sank lower yet until we reached a third

+city, where a pale mist filled each sombre street.  None of the

+beautiful things of the world were to be seen here, but only the

+things coarse and ugly.  And wearily to and fro its sunless passages

+trudged with heavy steps a weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull,

+listless faces.  And London, I knew, was the city of the gnomes who

+labour sadly all their lives, imprisoned underground; and a terror

+seized me lest I, too, should remain chained here, deep down below the

+fairy city that was already but a dream.

+

+We stopped at last in a long, unfinished street.  I remember our

+pushing our way through a group of dirty urchins, all of whom, my aunt

+remarked in passing, ought to be skinned.  It was my aunt's one

+prescription for all to whom she took objection; but really in the

+present instance I think it would have been of service; nothing else

+whatever could have restored them to cleanliness.  Then the door

+closed behind us with an echoing clang, and the small, cold rooms came

+forward stiffly to greet us.

+

+The man in grey went to the one window and drew back the curtain; it

+was growing dusk now.  My aunt sat on a straight, hard chair and

+stared fixedly at the three-armed gaselier.  My mother stood in the

+centre of the room with one small ungloved hand upon the table, and I

+noticed--for I was very near--that the poor little one-legged thing

+was trembling.

+

+"Of course it's not what you've been accustomed to, Maggie," said the

+man in grey; "but it's only for a little while."

+

+He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back

+being to the light.

+

+My mother drew his arms around us both.

+

+"It is the best home in all the world," she said; and thus we stayed

+for awhile.

+

+"Nonsense," said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; "it's a poky

+hole, as I told her it would be.  Let her thank the Lord she's got a

+man clever enough to get her out of it.  I know him; he never could

+rest where he was put.  Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up."

+

+It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man

+laughed--I had not heard him laugh till then--and my mother ran to my

+aunt and kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.

+

+For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a

+screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in

+the evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued

+voices awoke me.  My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and

+the man in grey were talking together over their supper.

+

+"We must buy land," said the voice of the grey man; "London is coming

+this way.  The Somebodies" (I forget the name my father mentioned)

+"made all their money by buying up land round New York for a mere

+song.  Then, as the city spread, they became worth millions."

+

+"But where will you get the money from, Luke?" asked the voice of my

+mother.

+

+The voice of the grey man answered airily:

+

+"Oh, that's merely a matter of business.  You grant a mortgage.  The

+property goes up in value.  You borrow more.  Then you buy more--and

+so on."

+

+"I see," said my mother.

+

+"Being on the spot gives one such an advantage," said the grey man.

+"I shall know just when to buy.  It's a great thing, being on the

+spot."

+

+"Of course, it must be," said my mother.

+

+I suppose I must have dozed, for the next words I heard the grey man

+say were:

+

+"Of course you have the park opposite, but then the house is small."

+

+"But shall we need a very large one?" asked my mother.

+

+"One never knows," said the grey man.  "If I should go into

+Parliament--"

+

+At this point a hissing sound arose from the neighbourhood of the

+fire.

+

+"It _looks_," said my mother, "as if it were done."

+

+"If you will hold the dish," said the grey man, "I think I can pour it

+in without spilling."

+

+Again I must have dozed.

+

+"It depends," said the grey man, "upon what he is going to be.  For

+the classics, of course, Oxford."

+

+"He's going to be very clever," said my mother.  She spoke as one who

+knows.

+

+"We'll hope so," said the grey man.

+

+"I shouldn't be surprised," said my mother, "if he turned out a poet."

+

+The grey man said something in a low tone that I did not hear.

+

+"I'm not so sure," answered my mother, "it's in the blood.  I've often

+thought that you, Luke, ought to have been a poet."

+

+"I never had the time," said the grey man.  "There were one or two

+little things--"

+

+"They were very beautiful," interrupted my mother.  The clatter of the

+knives and forks continued undisturbed for a few moments.  Then

+continued the grey man:

+

+"There would be no harm, provided I made enough.  It's the law of

+nature.  One generation earns, the next spends.  We must see.  In any

+case, I think I should prefer Oxford for him."

+

+"It will be so hard parting from him," said my mother.

+

+"There will be the vacations," said the grey man, "when we shall

+travel."

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II.

+

+IN WHICH PAUL MAKES ACQUAINTANCE OF THE MAN WITH THE UGLY MOUTH.

+

+The case of my father and mother was not normal.  You understand they

+had been separated for some years, and though they were not young in

+age--indeed, before my childish eyes they loomed quite ancient folk,

+and in fact my father must have been nearly forty and my mother quit

+of thirty--yet, as you will come to think yourself, no doubt, during

+the course of my story, they were in all the essentials of life little

+more than boy and girl.  This I came to see later on, but at that

+time, had I been consulted by enquiring maid or bachelor, I might

+unwittingly have given wrong impressions concerning marriage in the

+general.  I should have described a husband as a man who could never

+rest quite content unless his wife were by his side; who twenty times

+a day would call from his office door:  "Maggie, are you doing

+anything important?  I want to talk to you about a matter of

+business."  ...  "Maggie, are you alone?  Oh, all right, I'll come

+down."  Of a wife I should have said she was a woman whose eyes were

+ever love-lit when resting on her man; who was glad where he was and

+troubled where he was not.  But in every case this might not have been

+correct.

+

+Also, I should have had something to say concerning the alarms and

+excursions attending residence with any married couple.  I should have

+recommended the holding up of feet under the table lest, mistaken for

+other feet, they should be trodden on and pressed.  Also, I should

+have advised against entry into any room unpreceded by what in

+Stageland is termed "noise without."  It is somewhat disconcerting to

+the nervous incomer to be met, the door still in his hand, by a sound

+as of people springing suddenly into the air, followed by a weird

+scuttling of feet, and then to discover the occupants sitting stiffly

+in opposite corners, deeply engaged in book or needlework.  But, as I

+have said, with regard to some households, such precautions might be

+needless.

+

+Personally, I fear, I exercised little or no controlling influence

+upon my parents in this respect, my intrusions coming soon to be

+greeted with:  "Oh, it's only Spud," in a tone of relief, accompanied

+generally by the sofa cushion; but of my aunt they stood more in awe.

+Not that she ever said anything, and, indeed, to do her justice, in

+her efforts to spare their feelings she erred, if at all, on the side

+of excess.  Never did she move a footstep about the house except to

+the music of a sustained and penetrating cough.  As my father once

+remarked, ungratefully, I must confess, the volume of bark produced by

+my aunt in a single day would have done credit to the dying efforts of

+a hospital load of consumptives; to a robust and perfectly healthy

+lady the cost in nervous force must have been prodigious.  Also, that

+no fear should live with them that her eyes had seen aught not

+intended for them, she would invariably enter backwards any room in

+which they might be, closing the door loudly and with difficulty

+before turning round:  and through dark passages she would walk

+singing.  No woman alive could have done more; yet--such is human

+nature!--neither my father nor my mother was grateful to her, so far

+as I could judge.

+

+Indeed, strange as it may appear, the more sympathetic towards them

+she showed herself, the more irritated against her did they become.

+

+"I believe, Fanny, you hate seeing Luke and me happy together," said

+my mother one day, coming up from the kitchen to find my aunt

+preparing for entry into the drawing-room by dropping teaspoons at

+five-second intervals outside the door:  "Don't make yourself so

+ridiculous."  My mother spoke really quite unkindly.

+

+"Hate it!" replied my aunt.  "Why should I?  Why shouldn't a pair of

+turtle doves bill and coo, when their united age is only a little over

+seventy, the pretty dears?"  The mildness of my aunt's answers often

+surprised me.

+

+As for my father, he grew positively vindictive.  I remember the

+occasion well.  It was the first, though not the last time I knew him

+lose his temper.  What brought up the subject I forget, but my father

+stopped suddenly; we were walking by the canal bank.

+

+"Your aunt"--my father may not have intended it, but his tone and

+manner when speaking of my aunt always conveyed to me the impression

+that he regarded me as personally responsible for her existence.  This

+used to weigh upon me.  "Your aunt is the most cantankerous, the

+most--" he broke off, and shook his fist towards the setting sun.  "I

+wish to God," said my father, "your aunt had a comfortable little

+income of her own, with a freehold cottage in the country, by God I

+do!"  But the next moment, ashamed, I suppose, of his brutality:  "Not

+but what sometimes, of course, she can be very nice, you know," he

+added; "don't tell your mother what I said just now."

+

+Another who followed with sympathetic interest the domestic comedy was

+Susan, our maid-of-all-work, the first of a long and varied series,

+extending unto the advent of Amy, to whom the blessing of Heaven.

+Susan was a stout and elderly female, liable to sudden fits of

+sleepiness, the result, we were given to understand, of trouble; but

+her heart, it was her own proud boast, was always in the right place.

+She could never look at my father and mother sitting anywhere near

+each other but she must flop down and weep awhile; the sight of

+connubial bliss always reminding her, so she would explain, of the

+past glories of her own married state.

+

+Though an earnest enquirer, I was never able myself to grasp the ins

+and outs of this past married life of Susan's.  Whether her answers

+were purposely framed to elude curiosity, or whether they were the

+result of a naturally incoherent mind, I cannot say.  Their tendency

+was to convey confusion.

+

+On Monday I have seen Susan shed tears of regret into the Brussels

+sprouts, that she had been debarred by the pressure of other duties

+from lately watering "his" grave, which, I gathered, was at Manor

+Park.  While on Tuesday I have listened, blood chilled, to the recital

+of her intentions should she ever again enjoy the luxury of getting

+her fingers near the scruff of his neck.

+

+"But, I thought, Susan, he was dead," was my very natural comment upon

+this outbreak.

+

+"So did I, Master Paul," was Susan's rejoinder; "that was his

+artfulness."

+

+"Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?"

+

+"Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get

+hold of him."

+

+"Then he wasn't a good man?"

+

+"Who?"

+

+"Your husband."

+

+"Who says he ain't a good man?"  It was Susan's flying leaps from

+tense to tense that most bewildered me.  "If anybody says he ain't

+I'll gouge their eye out!"

+

+I hastened to assure Susan that my observation had been intended in

+the nature of enquiry, not of assertion.

+

+"Brings me a bottle of gin--for my headaches--every time he comes

+home," continued Susan, showing cause for opinion, "every blessed

+time."

+

+And at some such point as this I would retire to the clearer

+atmosphere of German grammar or mixed fractions.

+

+We suffered a good deal from Susan one way and another; for having

+regard to the admirable position of her heart, we all felt it our duty

+to overlook mere failings of the flesh--all but my aunt, that is, who

+never made any pretence of being a sentimentalist.

+

+"She's a lazy hussy," was the opinion expressed of her one morning by

+my aunt, who was rinsing; "a gulping, snorting, lazy hussy, that's

+what she is."  There was some excuse for my aunt's indignation.  It

+was then eleven o'clock and Susan was still sleeping off an attack of

+what she called "new-ralgy."

+

+"She has seen a good deal of trouble," said my mother, who was wiping.

+

+"And if she was my cook and housemaid," replied my aunt, "she would

+see more, the slut!"

+

+"She's not a good servant in many respects," admitted my mother, "but

+I think she's good-hearted."

+

+"Oh, drat her heart," was my aunt's retort.  "The right place for that

+heart of hers is on the doorstep.  And that's where I'd put it, and

+her and her box alongside it, if I had my way."

+

+The departure of Susan did take place not long afterwards.  It

+occurred one Saturday night.  My mother came upstairs looking pale.

+

+"Luke," she said, "do please run for the doctor."

+

+"What's the matter?" asked my father.

+

+"Susan," gasped my mother, "she's lying on the kitchen floor breathing

+in the strangest fashion and quite unable to speak."

+

+"I'll go for Washburn," said my father; "if I am quick I shall catch

+him at the dispensary."

+

+Five minutes later my father came back panting, followed by the

+doctor.  This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the

+knack of looking bigger than even he really was.  He came down the

+kitchen stairs two at a time, shaking the whole house.  He brushed my

+mother aside, and bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her back

+with her mouth wide open.  Then he rose and looked at my father and

+mother, who were watching him with troubled faces; and then he opened

+his mouth, and there came from it a roar of laughter, the like of

+which sound I had never heard.

+

+The next moment he had seized a pail half full of water and had flung

+it over the woman.  She opened her eyes and sat up.

+

+"Feeling better?" said the doctor, with the pail still in his hand;

+"have another dose?"

+

+Susan began to gather herself together with the evident intention of

+expressing her feelings; but before she could find the first word, he

+had pushed the three of us outside and slammed the door behind us.

+

+From the top of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous

+voice raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the

+man's savage roar of laughter.  And, when for want of breath she would

+flag for a moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting:

+"Bravo!  Go it, my beauty, give it tongue!  Bark, bark!  I love to

+hear you," applauding her, clapping his hands and stamping his feet.

+

+"What a beast of a man," said my mother.

+

+"He is really a most interesting man when you come to know him,"

+explained my father.

+

+Replied my mother, stiffly:  "I don't ever mean to know him."  But it

+is only concerning the past that we possess knowledge.

+

+The riot from below ceased at length, and was followed by a new voice,

+speaking quietly and emphatically, and then we heard the doctor's step

+again upon the stairs.

+

+My mother held her purse open in her hand, and as the man entered the

+room she went forward to meet him.

+

+"How much do we owe you, Doctor?" said my mother.  She spoke in a

+voice trembling with severity.

+

+He closed the purse and gently pushed it back towards her.

+

+"A glass of beer and a chop, Mrs. Kelver," he answered, "which I am

+coming back in an hour to cook for myself.  And as you will be without

+any servant," he continued, while my mother stood staring at him

+incapable of utterance, "you had better let me cook some for you at

+the same time.  I am an expert at grilling chops."

+

+"But, really, Doctor--" my mother began.  He laid his huge hand upon

+her shoulder, and my mother sat down upon the nearest chair.

+

+"My dear lady," he said, "she's a person you never ought to have had

+inside your house.  She's promised me to be gone in half an hour, and

+I'm coming back to see she keeps her word.  Give her a month's wages,

+and have a clear fire ready for me."  And before my mother could

+reply, he had slammed the front door.

+

+"What a very odd sort of a man," said my mother, recovering herself.

+

+"He's a character," said my father; "you might not think it, but he's

+worshipped about here."

+

+"I hardly know what to make of him," said my mother; "I suppose I had

+better go out and get some chops;" which she did.

+

+Susan went, as sober as a judge, on Friday, as the saying is, her

+great anxiety being to get out of the house before the doctor

+returned.  The doctor himself arrived true to his time, and I lay

+awake--for no human being ever slept or felt he wanted to sleep while

+Dr. Washburn was anywhere near--and listened to the gusts of laughter

+that swept continually through the house.  Even my aunt laughed that

+supper time, and when the doctor himself laughed it seemed to me that

+the bed shook under me.  Not liking to be out of it, I did what spoilt

+little boys and even spoilt little girls sometimes will do under

+similar stress of feeling, wrapped the blanket round my legs and

+pattered down, with my face set to express the sudden desire of a

+sensitive and possibly short-lived child for parents' love.  My mother

+pretended to be angry, but that I knew was only her company manners.

+Besides, I really had, if not exactly a pain, an extremely

+uncomfortable sensation (one common to me about that period) as of

+having swallowed the dome of St. Paul's.  The doctor said it was a

+frequent complaint with children, the result of too early hours and

+too much study; and, taking me on his knee, wrote then and there a

+diet chart for me, which included one tablespoonful of golden syrup

+four times a day, and one ounce of sherbet to be placed upon the

+tongue and taken neat ten minutes before each meal.

+

+That evening will always live in my remembrance.  My mother was

+brighter than I had ever seen her.  A flush was on her cheek and a

+sparkle in her eye, and looking across at her as she sat holding a

+small painted screen to shield her face from the fire, the sense of

+beauty became suddenly born within me, and answering an impulse I

+could not have explained, I slipped down, still with my blanket around

+me, from the doctor's knee, and squatted on the edge of the fender,

+from where, when I thought no one was noticing me, I could steal

+furtive glances up into her face.

+

+So also my father seemed to me to have become all at once bigger and

+more dignified, talking with a vigour and an enjoyment that sat newly

+on him.  Aunt Fan was quite witty and agreeable--for her; and even I

+asked one or two questions, at which, for some reason or another,

+everybody laughed; which determined me to remember and ask those same

+questions again on some future occasion.

+

+That was the great charm of the man, that by the magnetic spell of his

+magnificent vitality he drew from everyone their best. In his company

+clever people waxed intellectual giants, while the dull sat amazed at

+their own originality.  Conversing with him, Podsnap might have been

+piquant, Dogberry incisive.  But better than all else, I found it

+listening to his own talk.  Of what he spoke I could tell you no more

+than could the children of Hamelin have told the tune the Pied Piper

+played.  I only know that at the tangled music of his strong voice the

+walls of the mean room faded away, and that beyond I saw a brave,

+laughing world that called to me; a world full of joyous fight, where

+some won and some lost. But that mattered not a jot, because whatever

+else came of it there was a right royal game for all; a world where

+merry gentlemen feared neither life nor death, and Fate was but the

+Master of the Revels.

+

+Such was my first introduction to Dr. Washburn, or to give him the

+name by which he was known in every slum and alley of that quarter,

+Dr. Fighting Hal; and in a minor key that evening was an index to the

+whole man.  Often he would wrinkle his nose as a dog before it bites,

+and then he was more brute than man--brutish in his instincts, in his

+appetites, brutish in his pleasure, brutish in his fun.  Or his deep

+blue eyes would grow soft as a mother's, and then you might have

+thought him an angel in a soft felt hat and a coat so loose-fitting as

+to suggest the possibility of his wings being folded away underneath.

+Often have I tried to make up my mind whether it has been better for

+me or worse that I ever came to know him; but as easy would it be for

+the tree to say whether the rushing winds and the wild rains have

+shaped it or mis-shaped.

+

+Susan's place remained vacant for some time.  My mother would explain

+to the few friends who occasionally came from afar to see us, that her

+"housemaid" she had been compelled to suddenly discharge, and that we

+were waiting for the arrival of a new and better specimen.  But the

+months passed and we still waited, and my father on the rare days when

+a client would ring the office bell, would, after pausing a decent

+interval, open the front door himself, and then call downstairs

+indignantly and loudly, to know why "Jane" or "Mary" could not attend

+to their work.  And my mother, that the bread-boy or the milkman might

+not put it about the neighbourhood that the Kelvers in the big corner

+house kept no servant, would hide herself behind a thick veil and

+fetch all things herself from streets a long way off.

+

+For this family of whom I am writing were, I confess, weak and human.

+Their poverty they were ashamed of as though it were a crime, and in

+consequence their life was more full of paltry and useless subterfuge

+than should be perhaps the life of brave men and women.  The larder, I

+fancy, was very often bare, but the port and sherry with the sweet

+biscuits stood always on the sideboard; and the fire had often to be

+low in the grate that my father's tall hat might shine resplendent and

+my mother's black silk rustle on Sundays.

+

+But I would not have you sneer at them, thinking all pretence must

+spring from snobbishness and never from mistaken self-respect.  Some

+fine gentleman writers there be--men whose world is bounded on the

+east by Bond Street--who see in the struggles of poverty to hide its

+darns only matter for jest.  But myself, I cannot laugh at them.  I

+know the long hopes and fears that centre round the hired waiter; the

+long cost of the cream and the ice jelly ordered the week before from

+the confectioner's.  But to me it is pathetic, not ridiculous.

+Heroism is not all of one pattern.  Dr. Washburn, had the Prince of

+Wales come to see him, would have put his bread and cheese and jug of

+beer upon the table, and helped His Royal Highness to half.  But my

+father and mother's tea was very weak that Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith

+might have a glass of wine should they come to dinner.  I remember the

+one egg for breakfast, my mother arguing that my father should have it

+because he had his business to attend to; my father insisting that my

+mother should eat it, she having to go out shopping, a compromise

+being effected by their dividing it between them, each clamouring for

+the white as the most nourishing.  And I know however little the meal

+looked upon the table when we started I always rose well satisfied.

+These are small things to speak of, but then you must bear in mind

+this is a story moving in narrow ways.

+

+To me this life came as a good time.  That I was encouraged to eat

+treacle in preference to butter seemed to me admirable.  Personally, I

+preferred sausages for dinner; and a supper of fried fish and

+potatoes, brought in stealthily in a carpet bag, was infinitely more

+enjoyable than the set meal where nothing was of interest till one

+came to the dessert.  What fun there was about it all!  The cleaning

+of the doorstep by night, when from the ill-lit street a gentleman

+with a piece of sacking round his legs might very well pass for a

+somewhat tall charwoman.  I would keep watch at the gate to give

+warning should any one looking like a possible late caller turn the

+corner of the street, coming back now and then in answer to a low

+whistle to help my father grope about in the dark for the hearthstone;

+he was always mislaying the hearthstone.  How much better, helping to

+clean the knives or running errands than wasting all one's morning

+dwelling upon the shocking irregularity of certain classes of French

+verbs; or making useless calculations as to how long X, walking four

+and a quarter miles an hour, would be overtaking Y, whose powers were

+limited to three and a half, but who had started two and three quarter

+hours sooner; the whole argument being reduced to sheer pedantry by

+reason of no information being afforded to the student concerning the

+respective thirstiness of X and Y.

+

+Even my father and mother were able to take it lightly with plenty of

+laughter and no groaning that I ever heard.  For over all lay the

+morning light of hope, and what prisoner, escaping from his dungeon,

+ever stayed to think of his torn hands and knees when beyond the

+distant opening he could see the sunlight glinting through the

+brambles?

+

+"I had no idea," said my mother, "there was so much to do in a house.

+In future I shall arrange for the servants to have regular hours, and

+a little time to themselves, for rest.  Don't you think it right,

+Luke?"

+

+"Quite right," replied my father; "and I'll tell you another thing

+we'll do.  I shall insist on the landlord's putting a marble doorstep

+to the next house we take; you pass a sponge over marble and it is

+always clean."

+

+"Or tesselated," suggested my mother.

+

+"Or tesselated," agreed my father; "but marble is more uncommon."

+

+Only once, can I recall a cloud.  That was one Sunday when my mother,

+speaking across the table in the middle of dinner, said to my father,

+"We might save the rest of that stew, Luke; there's an omelette

+coming."

+

+My father laid down the spoon.  "An omelette!"

+

+"Yes," said my mother.  "I thought I would like to try again."

+

+My father stepped into the back kitchen--we dined in the kitchen, as a

+rule, it saved much carriage--returning with the wood chopper.

+

+"What ever are you going to do, Luke, with the chopper?" said my

+mother.

+

+"Divide the omelette," replied my father.

+

+My mother began to cry.

+

+"Why, Maggie--!" said my father.

+

+"I know the other one was leathery," said my mother, "but it was the

+fault of the oven, you know it was, Luke."

+

+"My dear," said my father, "I only meant it as a joke."

+

+"I don't like that sort of joke," said my mother; "it isn't nice of

+you, Luke."

+

+I don't think, to be candid, my mother liked much any joke that was

+against herself.  Indeed, when I come to think of it, I have never met

+a woman who did, nor man, either.

+

+There had soon grown up a comradeship between my father and myself for

+he was the youngest thing I had met with as yet.  Sometimes my mother

+seemed very young, and later I met boys and girls nearer to my own age

+in years; but they grew, while my father remained always the same.

+The hair about his temples was turning grey, and when you looked close

+you saw many crow's feet and lines, especially about the mouth.  But

+his eyes were the eyes of a boy, his laugh the laugh of a boy, and his

+heart the heart of a boy.  So we were very close to each other.

+

+In a narrow strip of ground we called our garden we would play a

+cricket of our own, encompassed about by many novel rules, rendered

+necessary by the locality.  For instance, all hitting to leg was

+forbidden, as tending to endanger neighbouring windows, while hitting

+to off was likewise not to be encouraged, as causing a temporary

+adjournment of the game, while batter and bowler went through the

+house and out into the street to recover the ball from some predatory

+crowd of urchins to whom it had evidently appeared as a gift direct

+from Heaven.  Sometimes rising very early we would walk across the

+marshes to bathe in a small creek that led down to the river, but this

+was muddy work, necessitating much washing of legs on the return home.

+And on rare days we would, taking the train to Hackney and walking to

+the bridge, row up the river Lea, perhaps as far as Ponder's End.

+

+But these sports being hedged around with difficulties, more commonly

+for recreation we would take long walks.  There were pleasant nooks

+even in the neighbourhood of Plaistow marshes in those days.  Here and

+there a graceful elm still clung to the troubled soil.  Surrounded on

+all sides by hideousness, picturesque inns still remained hidden

+within green walls where, if you were careful not to pry too

+curiously, you might sit and sip your glass of beer beneath the oak

+and dream yourself where reeking chimneys and mean streets were not.

+During such walks my father would talk to me as he would talk to my

+mother, telling me all his wild, hopeful plans, discussing with me how

+I was to lodge at Oxford, to what particular branches of study and of

+sport I was to give my preference, speaking always with such catching

+confidence that I came to regard my sojourn in this brick and mortar

+prison as only a question of months.

+

+One day, talking of this future, and laughing as we walked briskly.

+through the shrill streets, I told him the words my mother had

+said--long ago, as it seemed to me, for life is as a stone rolling

+down-hill, and moves but slowly at first; she and I sitting on the

+moss at the foot of old "Jacob's Folly"--that he was our Prince

+fighting to deliver us from the grim castle called "Hard Times,"

+guarded by the dragon Poverty.

+

+My father laughed and his boyish face flushed with pleasure.

+

+"And she was right, Paul," he whispered, pressing my small hand in

+his--it was necessary to whisper, for the street where we were was

+very crowded, but I knew that he wanted to shout.  "I will fight him

+and I will slay him."  My father made passes in the air with his

+walking-stick, and it was evident from the way they drew aside that

+the people round about fancied he was mad.  "I will batter down the

+iron gates and she shall be free.  I will, God help me, I will."

+

+The gallant gentleman!  How long and how bravely he fought!  But in

+the end it was the Dragon triumphed, the Knight that lay upon the

+ground, his great heart still.  I have read how, with the sword of

+Honest Industry, one may always conquer this grim Dragon.  But such

+was in foolish books.  In truth, only with the sword of Chicanery and

+the stout buckler of Unscrupulousness shall you be certain of victory

+over him.  If you care not to use these, pray to your Gods, and take

+what comes with a stout heart.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III.

+

+HOW GOOD LUCK KNOCKED AT THE DOOR OF THE MAN IN GREY.

+

+"Louisa!" roared my father down the kitchen stairs, "are you all

+asleep?  Here have I had to answer the front door myself."  Then my

+father strode into his office, and the door slammed.  My father could

+be very angry when nobody was by.

+

+Quarter of an hour later his bell rang with a quick, authoritative

+jangle.  My mother, who was peeling potatoes with difficulty in

+wash-leather gloves, looked at my aunt who was shelling peas.  The

+bell rang again louder still this time.

+

+"Once for Louisa, twice for James, isn't it?" enquired my aunt.

+

+"You go, Paul," said my mother; "say that Louisa--" but with the words

+a sudden flush overspread my mother's face, and before I could lay

+down my slate she had drawn off her gloves and had passed me.  "No,

+don't stop your lessons, I'll go myself," she said, and ran out.

+

+A few minutes later the kitchen door opened softly, and my mother's

+hand, appearing through the jar, beckoned to me mysteriously.

+

+"Walk on your toes," whispered my mother, setting the example as she

+led the way up the stairs; which after the manner of stairs showed

+their disapproval of deception by creaking louder and more often than

+under any other circumstances; and in this manner we reached my

+parents' bedroom, where, in the old-fashioned wardrobe, relic of

+better days, reposed my best suit of clothes, or, to be strictly

+grammatical, my better.

+

+Never before had I worn these on a week-day morning, but all

+conversation not germane to the question of getting into them quickly

+my mother swept aside; and when I was complete, down even to the new

+shoes--Bluchers, we called them in those days--took me by the hand,

+and together we crept down as we had crept up, silent, stealthy and

+alert.  My mother led me to the street door and opened it.

+

+"Shan't I want my cap?" I whispered.  But my mother only shook her

+head and closed the door with a bang; and then the explanation of the

+pantomime came to me, for with such "business"--comic, shall I call

+it, or tragic?--I was becoming familiar; and, my mother's hand upon my

+shoulder, we entered my father's office.

+

+Whether from the fact that so often of an evening--our drawing-room

+being reserved always as a show-room in case of chance visitors;

+Cowper's poems, open face-downwards on the wobbly loo table; the

+half-finished crochet work, suggestive of elegant leisure, thrown

+carelessly over the arm of the smaller easy-chair--this office would

+become our sitting-room, its books and papers, as things of no

+account, being huddled out of sight; or whether from the readiness

+with which my father would come out of it at all times to play at

+something else--at cricket in the back garden on dry days or ninepins

+in the passage on wet, charging back into it again whenever a knock

+sounded at the front door, I cannot say.  But I know that as a child

+it never occurred to me to regard my father's profession as a serious

+affair.  To me he was merely playing there, surrounded by big books

+and bundles of documents, labelled profusely but consisting only of

+blank papers; by japanned tin boxes, lettered imposingly, but for the

+most part empty.  "Sutton Hampden, Esq.," I remember was practically

+my mother's work-box.  The "Drayton Estates" yielded apparently

+nothing but apples, a fruit of which my father was fond; while

+"Mortgages" it was not until later in life I discovered had no

+connection with poems in manuscript, some in course of correction,

+others completed.

+

+Now, as the door opened, he rose and came towards us.  His hair stood

+up from his head, for it was a habit of his to rumple it as he talked;

+and this added to his evident efforts to compose his face into an

+expression of businesslike gravity, added emphasis, if such were

+needed, to the suggestion of the over long schoolboy making believe.

+

+"This is the youngster," said my father, taking me from my mother, and

+passing me on.  "Tall for his age, isn't he?"

+

+With a twist of his thick lips, he rolled the evil-smelling cigar he

+was smoking from the left corner of his mouth to the right; and held

+out a fat and not too clean hand, which, as it closed round mine,

+brought to my mind the picture of the walrus in my natural history

+book; with the other he flapped me kindly on the head.

+

+"Like 'is mother, wonderfully like 'is mother, ain't 'e?" he observed,

+still holding my hand.  "And that," he added with a wink of one of his

+small eyes towards my father, "is about the 'ighest compliment I can

+pay 'im, eh?"

+

+His eyes were remarkably small, but marvellously bright and piercing;

+so much so that when he turned them again upon me I tried to think

+quickly of something nice about him, feeling sure that he could see

+right into me.

+

+"And where are you thinkin' of sendin' 'im?" he continued; "Eton or

+'Arrow?"

+

+"We haven't quite made up our minds as yet," replied my father; "at

+present we are educating him at home."

+

+"You take my tip," said the fat man, "and learn all you can.  Look at

+me!  If I'd 'ad the opportunity of being a schollard I wouldn't be

+here offering your father an extravagant price for doin' my work; I'd

+be able to do it myself."

+

+"You seem to have got on very well without it," laughed my father; and

+in truth his air of prosperity might have justified greater

+self-complacency.  Rings sparkled on his blunt fingers, and upon the

+swelling billows of his waistcoat rose and sank a massive gold cable.

+

+"I'd 'ave done better with it," he grunted.

+

+"But you look very clever," I said; and though divining with a child's

+cuteness that it was desired I should make a favourable impression

+upon him, I hoped this would please him, the words were yet

+spontaneous.

+

+He laughed heartily, his whole body shaking like some huge jelly.

+

+"Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool," he assented, "but I'd

+like myself better if I could talk about something else than business,

+and didn't drop my aitches.  And so would my little gell."

+

+"You have a daughter?" asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond

+of sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to

+disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.

+

+"I won't tell you about 'er.  But I'll just bring 'er to see you now

+and then, ma'am, if you don't mind," answered Mr. Hasluck.  "She don't

+often meet gentle-folks, an' it'll do 'er good."

+

+My mother glanced across at my father, but the man, intercepting her

+question, replied to it himself.

+

+"You needn't be afraid, ma'am, that she's anything like me," he

+assured her quite good-temperedly; "nobody ever believes she's my

+daughter, except me and the old woman.  She's a little lady, she is.

+Freak o' nature, I call it."

+

+"We shall be delighted," explained my mother.

+

+"Well, you will when you see 'er," replied Mr. Hasluck, quite

+contentedly.

+

+He pushed half-a-crown into my hand, overriding my parents'

+susceptibilities with the easy good-temper of a man accustomed to have

+his way in all things.

+

+"No squanderin' it on the 'eathen," was his parting injunction as I

+left the room; "you spend that on a Christian tradesman."

+

+It was the first money I ever remember having to spend, that

+half-crown of old Hasluck's; suggestions of the delights to be derived

+from a new pair of gloves for Sunday, from a Latin grammar, which

+would then be all my own, and so on, having hitherto displaced all

+less exalted visions concerning the disposal of chance coins coming

+into my small hands.  But on this occasion I was left free to decide

+for myself.

+

+The anxiety it gave me! the long tossing hours in bed! the tramping of

+the bewildering streets!  Even advice when asked for was denied me.

+

+"You must learn to think for yourself," said my father, who spoke

+eloquently on the necessity of early acquiring sound judgment and what

+he called "commercial aptitude."

+

+"No, dear," said my mother, "Mr. Hasluck wanted you to spend it as you

+like.  If I told you, that would be spending it as I liked.  Your

+father and I want to see what you will do with it."

+

+The good little boys in the books bought presents or gave away to

+people in distress.  For this I hated them with the malignity the

+lower nature ever feels towards the higher.  I consulted my aunt Fan.

+

+"If somebody gave you half-a-crown," I put it to her, "what would you

+buy with it?"

+

+"Side-combs," said my aunt; she was always losing or breaking her

+side-combs.

+

+"But I mean if you were me," I explained.

+

+"Drat the child!" said my aunt; "how do I know what he wants if he

+don't know himself.  Idiot!"

+

+The shop windows into which I stared, my nose glued to the pane!  The

+things I asked the price of!  The things I made up my mind to buy and

+then decided that I wouldn't buy!  Even my patient mother began to

+show signs of irritation.  It was rapidly assuming the dimensions of a

+family curse, was old Hasluck's half-crown.

+

+Then one day I made up my mind, and so ended the trouble.  In the

+window of a small plumber's shop in a back street near, stood on view

+among brass taps, rolls of lead piping and cistern requisites, various

+squares of coloured glass, the sort of thing chiefly used, I believe,

+for lavatory doors and staircase windows.  Some had stars in the

+centre, and others, more elaborate, were enriched with designs, severe

+but inoffensive.  I purchased a dozen of these, the plumber, an

+affable man who appeared glad to see me, throwing in two extra out of

+sheer generosity.

+

+Why I bought them I did not know at the time, and I do not know now.

+My mother cried when she saw them.  My father could get no further

+than:  "But what are you going to do with them?" to which I was unable

+to reply.  My aunt, alone, attempted comfort.

+

+"If a person fancies coloured glass," said my aunt, "then he's a fool

+not to buy coloured glass when he gets the chance.  We haven't all the

+same tastes."

+

+In the end, I cut myself badly with them and consented to their being

+thrown into the dust-bin.  But looking back, I have come to regard

+myself rather as the victim of Fate than of Folly.  Many folks have I

+met since, recipients of Hasluck's half-crowns--many a man who has

+slapped his pocket and blessed the day he first met that "Napoleon of

+Finance," as later he came to be known among his friends--but it ever

+ended so; coloured glass and cut fingers.  Is it fairy gold that he

+and his kind fling round?  It would seem to be.

+

+Next time old Hasluck knocked at our front door a maid in cap and

+apron opened it to him, and this was but the beginning of change.  New

+oilcloth glistened in the passage.  Lace curtains, such as in that

+neighbourhood were the hall-mark of the plutocrat, advertised our

+rising fortunes to the street, and greatest marvel of all, at least to

+my awed eyes, my father's Sunday clothes came into weekday wear, new

+ones taking their place in the great wardrobe that hitherto had been

+the stronghold of our gentility; to which we had ever turned for

+comfort when rendered despondent by contemplation of the weakness of

+our outer walls.  "Seeing that everything was all right" is how my

+mother would explain it.  She would lay the lilac silk upon the bed,

+fondly soothing down its rustling undulations, lingering lovingly over

+its deep frosted flounces of rich Honiton.  Maybe she had entered the

+room weary looking and depressed, but soon there would proceed from

+her a gentle humming as from some small winged thing when the sun

+first touches it and warms it, and sometimes by the time the Indian

+shawl, which could go through a wedding ring, but never would when it

+was wanted to, had been refolded and fastened again with the great

+cameo brooch, and the poke bonnet, like some fractious child, shaken

+and petted into good condition, she would be singing softly to

+herself, nodding her head to the words:  which were generally to the

+effect that somebody was too old and somebody else too bold and

+another too cold, "so he wouldn't do for me;" and stepping lightly as

+though the burden of the years had fallen from her.

+

+One evening--it was before the advent of this Hasluck--I remember

+climbing out of bed, for trouble was within me.  Creatures,

+indescribable but heavy, had sat upon my chest, after which I had

+fallen downstairs, slowly and reasonably for the first few hundred

+flights, then with haste for the next million miles or so, until I

+found myself in the street with nothing on but my nightshirt.

+Personally, I was shocked, but nobody else seemed to mind, and I

+hailed a two-penny 'bus and climbed in.  But when I tried to pay I

+found I hadn't any pockets, so I jumped out and ran away and the

+conductor came after me.  My feet were like lead, and with every step

+he gained on me, till with a scream I made one mighty effort and

+awoke.

+

+Feeling the need of comfort after these unpleasant but by no means

+unfamiliar experiences, I wrapped some clothes round me and crept

+downstairs.  The "office" was dark, but to my surprise a light shone

+from under the drawing-room door, and I opened it.

+

+The candles in the silver candlesticks were lighted, and in state, one

+in each easy-chair, sat my father and mother, both in their best

+clothes; my father in the buckled shoes and the frilled shirt that I

+had never seen him wear before, my mother with the Indian shawl about

+her shoulders, and upon her head the cap of ceremony that reposed

+three hundred and sixty days out of the year in its round wicker-work

+nest lined with silk.  They started guiltily as I pushed open the

+door, but I congratulate myself that I had sense enough--or was it

+instinct--to ask no questions.

+

+The last time I had seen them, three hours ago, they had been engaged,

+the lights carefully extinguished, cleaning the ground floor windows,

+my father the outside, my mother within, and it astonished me the

+change not only in their appearance, but in their manner and bearing,

+and even in their very voices.  My father brought over from the

+sideboard the sherry and sweet biscuits and poured out and handed a

+glass to my mother, and he and my mother drank to each other, while I

+between them ate the biscuits, and the conversation was of Byron's

+poems and the great glass palace in Hyde Park.

+

+I wonder am I disloyal setting this down?  Maybe to others it shows

+but a foolish man and woman, and that is far from my intention.  I

+dwell upon such trifles because to me the memory of them is very

+tender.  The virtues of our loved ones we admire, yet after all 'tis

+but what we expected of them:  how could they do otherwise?  Their

+failings we would forget; no one of us is perfect.  But over their

+follies we love to linger, smiling.

+

+To me personally, old Hasluck's coming and all that followed thereupon

+made perhaps more difference than to any one else.  My father now was

+busy all the day; if not in his office, then away in the grim city of

+the giants, as I still thought of it; while to my mother came every

+day more social and domestic duties; so that for a time I was left

+much to my own resources.

+

+Rambling--"bummelling," as the Germans term it--was my bent.  This my

+mother would have checked, but my father said:

+

+"Don't molly-coddle him.  Let him learn to be smart."

+

+"I don't think the smart people are always the nicest," demurred my

+mother.  "I don't call you at all 'smart,' Luke."

+

+My father appeared surprised, but reflected.

+

+"I should call myself smart--in a sense," he explained, after

+consideration.

+

+"Perhaps you are right, dear," replied my mother; "and of course boys

+are different from girls."

+

+Sometimes I would wander Victoria Park way, which was then surrounded

+by many small cottages in leafy gardens; or even reach as far as

+Clapton, where old red brick Georgian houses still stood behind high

+palings, and tall elms gave to the wide road on sunny afternoons an

+old-world air of peace.  But such excursions were the exception, for

+strange though it may read, the narrow, squalid streets had greater

+hold on me.  Not the few main thoroughfares, filled ever with a dull,

+deep throbbing as of some tireless iron machine; where the endless

+human files, streaming ever up and down, crossing and recrossing,

+seemed mere rushing chains of flesh and blood, working upon unseen

+wheels; but the dim, weary, lifeless streets--the dark, tortuous

+roots, as I fancied them, of that grim forest of entangled brick.

+Mystery lurked in their gloom.  Fear whispered from behind their

+silence.  Dumb figures flitted swiftly to and fro, never pausing,

+never glancing right nor left.  Far-off footsteps, rising swiftly into

+sound, as swiftly fading, echoed round their lonely comers.  Dreading,

+yet drawn on, I would creep along their pavements as through some city

+of the dead, thinking of the eyes I saw not watching from the thousand

+windows; starting at each muffled sound penetrating the long, dreary

+walls, behind which that close-packed, writhing life lay hid.

+

+One day there came a cry from behind a curtained window.  I stood

+still for a moment and then ran; but before I could get far enough

+away I heard it again, a long, piercing cry, growing fiercer before it

+ceased; so that I ran faster still, not heeding where I went, till I

+found myself in a raw, unfinished street, ending in black waste land,

+bordering the river.  I stopped, panting, wondering how I should find

+my way again.  To recover myself and think I sat upon the doorstep of

+an empty house, and there came dancing down the road with a curious,

+half-running, half-hopping step--something like a water wagtail's--a

+child, a boy about my own age, who, after eyeing me strangely sat down

+beside me.

+

+We watched each other for a few minutes; and I noticed that his mouth

+kept opening and shutting, though he said nothing.  Suddenly, edging

+closer to me, he spoke in a thick whisper.  It sounded as though his

+mouth were full of wool.

+

+"Wot 'appens to yer when yer dead?"

+

+"If you're good you go to Heaven.  If you're bad you go to Hell."

+

+"Long way off, both of 'em, ain't they?"

+

+"Yes.  Millions of miles."

+

+"They can't come after yer?  Can't fetch yer back again?"

+

+"No, never."

+

+The doorstep that we occupied was the last.  A yard beyond began the

+black waste of mud.  From the other end of the street, now growing

+dark, he never took his staring eyes for an instant.

+

+"Ever seen a stiff 'un--a dead 'un?"

+

+"No."

+

+"I 'ave--stuck a pin into 'im.  'E never felt it.  Don't feel anything

+when yer dead, do yer?"

+

+All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms

+and legs, and making faces.  Comical figures made of ginger-bread,

+with quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought

+then in bakers' shops:  he made me hungry, reminding me of such.

+

+"Of course not.  When you are dead you're not there, you know.  Our

+bodies are but senseless clay."  I was glad I remembered that line.  I

+tried to think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it

+evaded me.

+

+"I like you," he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in the

+chest. It was the token of palship among the youth of that

+neighbourhood, and gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship

+with children is an affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew

+him for my first chum.

+

+He wormed himself up.

+

+"Yer won't tell?" he said.

+

+I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that

+I should agree.

+

+"Say 'I swear.'"

+

+"I swear."

+

+The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like

+secret oaths.  Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.

+

+"Good-bye, cockey."

+

+But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust

+it into my hand.  Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his

+ran off across the mud.

+

+I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going.  He stumbled

+a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but

+struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.

+

+I shouted to him, but he never looked back.  At every few yards he

+would sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching

+himself free would flounder forward.  Then, still some distance from

+the river, he fell upon his face, and did not rise again.  I saw his

+arms beating feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily

+slime closed over him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving

+underneath the mud.  And after a time even that ceased.

+

+It was late before I reached home, and fortunately my father and

+mother were still out.  I did not tell any one what I had seen, having

+sworn not to; and as time went on the incident haunted me less and

+less until it became subservient to my will.  But of my fancy for

+those silent, lifeless streets it cured me for the time.  From behind

+their still walls I would hear that long cry; down their narrow vistas

+see that writhing figure, like some animated ginger-bread, hopping,

+springing, falling.

+

+Yet in the more crowded streets another trouble awaited me, one more

+tangible.

+

+Have you ever noticed a pack of sparrows round some crumbs perchance

+that you have thrown out from your window?  Suddenly the rest of the

+flock will set upon one.  There is a tremendous Lilliputian hubbub, a

+tossing of tiny wings and heads, a babel of shrill chirps.  It is

+comical.

+

+"Spiteful little imps they are," you say to yourself, much amused.

+

+So I have heard good-tempered men and women calling out to one another

+with a laugh.

+

+"There go those young devils chivvying that poor little beggar again;

+ought to be ashamed of theirselves."

+

+But, oh! the anguish of the poor little beggar!  Can any one who has

+not been through it imagine it!  Reduced to its actualities, what was

+it?  Gibes and jeers that, after all, break no bones.  A few pinches,

+kicks and slaps; at worst a few hard knocks.  But the dreading of it

+beforehand!  Terror lived in every street, hid, waiting for me, round

+each corner.  The half-dozen wrangling over their marbles--had they

+seen me?  The boy whistling as he stood staring into the print shop,

+would I get past him without his noticing me; or would he, swinging

+round upon his heel, raise the shrill whoop that brought them from

+every doorway to hunt me?

+

+The shame, when caught at last and cornered:  the grinning face that

+would stop to watch; the careless jokes of passers-by, regarding the

+whole thing but as a sparrows' squabble:  worst of all, perhaps, the

+rare pity!  The after humiliation when, finally released, I would dart

+away, followed by shouted taunts and laughter; every eye turned to

+watch me, shrinking by; my whole small carcass shaking with dry sobs

+of bitterness and rage!

+

+If only I could have turned and faced them!  So far as the mere

+bearing of pain was concerned, I knew myself brave.  The physical

+suffering resulting from any number of stand-up fights would have been

+trivial compared with the mental agony I endured.  That I, the comrade

+of a hundred heroes--I, who nightly rode with Richard Coeur de Lion,

+who against Sir Lancelot himself had couched a lance, and that not

+altogether unsuccessful, I to whom all damsels in distress were wont

+to look for succour--that I should run from varlets such as these!

+

+My friend, my bosom friend, good Robin Hood! how would he have behaved

+under similar circumstances? how Ivanhoe, my chosen companion in all

+quests of knightly enterprise? how--to come to modern times--Jack

+Harkaway, mere schoolboy though he might be?  Would not one and all

+have welcomed such incident with a joyous shout, and in a trice have

+scattered to the winds the worthless herd?

+

+But, alas! upon my pale lips the joyous shout sank into an unheard

+whisper, and the thing that became scattered to the wind was myself,

+the first opening that occurred.

+

+Sometimes, the blood boiling in my veins, I would turn, thinking to go

+back and at all risk defying my tormentors, prove to myself I was no

+coward.  But before I had retraced my steps a dozen paces, I would see

+in imagination the whole scene again before me:  the laughing crowd,

+the halting passers-by, the spiteful, mocking little faces every way I

+turned; and so instead would creep on home, and climbing stealthily up

+into my own room, cry my heart out in the dark upon my bed.

+

+Until one blessed day, when a blessed Fairy, in the form of a small

+kitten, lifted the spell that bound me, and set free my limbs.

+

+I have always had a passionate affection for the dumb world, if it be

+dumb.  My first playmate, I remember, was a water rat.  A stream ran

+at the bottom of our garden; and sometimes, escaping the vigilant eye

+of Mrs. Fursey, I would steal out with my supper and join him on the

+banks.  There, hidden behind the osiers, we would play at banquets,

+he, it is true, doing most of the banqueting, and I the make-believe.

+But it was a good game; added to which it was the only game I could

+ever get him to play, though I tried.  He was a one-ideaed rat.

+

+Later I came into the possession of a white specimen all my own.  He

+lived chiefly in the outside breast pocket of my jacket, in company

+with my handkerchief, so that glancing down I could generally see his

+little pink eyes gleaming up at me, except on very cold days, when it

+would be only his tail that I could see; and when I felt miserable,

+somehow he would know it, and, swarming up, push his little cold snout

+against my ear.  He died just so, clinging round my neck; and from

+many of my fellow-men and women have I parted with less pain.  It

+sounds callous to say so; but, after all, our feelings are not under

+our own control; and I have never been able to understand the use of

+pretending to emotions one has not.  All this, however, comes later.

+Let me return now to my fairy kitten.

+

+I heard its cry of pain from afar, and instinctively hastened my

+steps.  Three or four times I heard it again, and at each call I ran

+faster, till, breathless, I arrived upon the scene, the opening of a

+narrow court, leading out of a by-street.  At first I saw nothing but

+the backs of a small mob of urchins.  Then from the centre of them

+came another wailing appeal for help, and without waiting for any

+invitation, I pushed my way into the group.

+

+What I saw was Hecuba to me--gave me the motive and the cue for

+passion, transformed me from the dull and muddy-mettled little

+John-a-dreams I had been into a small, blind Fury.  Pale Thought, that

+mental emetic, banished from my system, I became the healthy,

+unreasoning animal, and acted as such.

+

+From my methods, I frankly admit, science was absent.  In simple,

+primitive fashion that would have charmed a Darwinian disciple to

+observe, I "went for" the whole crowd.  To employ the expressive idiom

+of the neighbourhood, I was "all over it and inside."  Something clung

+about my feet.  By kicking myself free and then standing on it I

+gained the advantage of quite an extra foot in height; I don't know

+what it was and didn't care.  I fought with my arms and I fought with

+my legs; where I could get in with my head I did.  I fought whatever

+came to hand in a spirit of simple thankfulness, grateful for what I

+could reach and indifferent to what was beyond me.

+

+That the "show"--if again I may be permitted the local idiom--was not

+entirely mine I was well aware.  That not alone my person but my

+property also was being damaged in the rear became dimly conveyed to

+me through the sensation of draught.  Already the world to the left of

+me was mere picturesque perspective, while the growing importance of

+my nose was threatening the absorption of all my other features.

+These things did not trouble me.  I merely noted them as phenomena and

+continued to punch steadily.

+

+Until I found that I was punching something soft and yet unyielding.

+I looked up to see what this foreign matter that thus mysteriously had

+entered into the mixture might be, and discovered it to be a

+policeman.  Still I did not care.  The felon's dock! the prison cell!

+a fig for such mere bogies.  An impudent word, an insulting look, and

+I would have gone for the Law itself.  Pale Thought--it must have been

+a livid green by this time--still trembled at respectful distance from

+me.

+

+Fortunately for all of us, he was not impertinent, and though he spoke

+the language of his order, his tone disarmed offence.

+

+"Now, then.  Now, then.  What is all this about?"

+

+There was no need for me to answer.  A dozen voluble tongues were

+ready to explain to him; and to explain wholly in my favour.  This

+time the crowd was with me.  Let a man school himself to bear

+dispraise, for thereby alone shall he call his soul his own.  But let

+no man lie, saying he is indifferent to popular opinion.  That was my

+first taste of public applause.  The public was not select, and the

+applause might, by the sticklers for English pure and undefiled, have

+been deemed ill-worded, but to me it was the sweetest music I had ever

+heard, or have heard since.  I was called a "plucky little devil," a

+"fair 'ot 'un," not only a "good 'un," but a "good 'un" preceded by

+the adjective that in the East bestows upon its principal every

+admirable quality that can possibly apply.  Under the circumstances it

+likewise fitted me literally; but I knew it was intended rather in its

+complimentary sense.

+

+Kind, if dirty, hands wiped my face.  A neighbouring butcher presented

+me with a choice morsel of steak, not to eat but to wear; and I found

+it, if I may so express myself without infringing copyright, "grateful

+and comforting."  My enemies had long since scooted, some of them, I

+had rejoiced to notice, with lame and halting steps.  The mutilated

+kitten had been restored to its owner, a lady of ample bosom, who,

+carried beyond judgment by emotion, publicly offered to adopt me on

+the spot.  The Law suggested, not for the first time, that everybody

+should now move on; and slowly, followed by feminine commendation

+mingled with masculine advice as to improved methods for the future, I

+was allowed to drift away.

+

+My bones ached, my flesh stung me, yet I walked as upon air.

+Gradually I became conscious that I was not alone.  A light, pattering

+step was trying to keep pace with me.  Graciously I slacked my speed,

+and the pattering step settled down beside me.  Every now and again

+she would run ahead and then turn round to look up into my face, much

+as your small dog does when he happens not to be misbehaving himself

+and desires you to note the fact.  Evidently she approved of me.  I

+was not at my best, as far as appearance was concerned, but women are

+kittle cattle, and I think she preferred me so.  Thus we walked for

+quite a long distance without speaking, I drinking in the tribute of

+her worship and enjoying it.  Then gaining confidence, she shyly put

+her hand into mine, and finding I did not repel her, promptly assumed

+possession of me, according to woman's way.

+

+For her age and station she must have been a person of means, for

+having tried in vain various methods to make me more acceptable to

+followers and such as having passed would turn their heads, she said:

+

+"I know, gelatines;" and disappearing into a sweetstuff shop, returned

+with quite a quantity.  With these, first sucked till glutinous, we

+joined my many tatters.  I still attracted attention, but felt warmer.

+

+She informed me that her name was Cissy, and that her father's shop

+was in Three Colt Street.  I informed her that my name was Paul, and

+that my father was a lawyer.  I also pointed out to her that a lawyer

+is much superior in social position to a shopkeeper, which she

+acknowledged cheerfully.  We parted at the corner of the Stainsby

+Road, and I let her kiss me once.  It was understood that in the

+Stainsby Road we might meet again.

+

+I left Eliza gaping after me, the front door in her hand, and ran

+straight up into my own room.  Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, The Last

+of the Barons, Rob Roy!  I looked them all in the face and was not

+ashamed.  I also was a gentleman.

+

+My mother was much troubled when she saw me, but my father, hearing

+the story, approved.

+

+"But he looks so awful," said my mother.  "In this world," said my

+father, "one must occasionally be aggressive--if necessary, brutal."

+

+My father would at times be quite savage in his sentiments.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV.

+

+PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM THE

+ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL.  AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS.

+

+The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare.

+The jingle of the tram-bell and the rattle of the omnibus and cart

+mingle continuously with the rain of many feet, beating ceaselessly

+upon its pavements.  But at the time of which I write it was an empty,

+voiceless way, bounded on the one side by the long, echoing wall of

+the docks and on the other by occasional small houses isolated amid

+market gardens, drying grounds and rubbish heaps.  Only one thing

+remains--or did remain last time I passed along it, connecting it with

+its former self--and that is the one-storeyed brick cottage at the

+commencement of the bridge, and which was formerly the toll-house.  I

+remember this toll-house so well because it was there that my

+childhood fell from me, and sad and frightened I saw the world beyond.

+

+I cannot explain it better.  I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on

+a visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which

+to keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing

+nature.

+

+"Have the half-crown in your hand," my mother would direct me, while

+making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the

+bottom of my knickerbocker pocket; "but of course if he won't take it,

+why, you must bring it home again."

+

+I am not sure, but I think he was some distant connection of ours; at

+all events, I know he was a kind friend.  I, seated in the velvet

+chair of state, he would unroll his case of instruments before me, and

+ask me to choose, recommending with affectionate eulogisms the most

+murderous looking.

+

+But on my opening my mouth to discuss the fearful topic, lo! a pair

+would shoot from under his coat-sleeve, and almost before I knew what

+had happened, the trouble would be over.  After that we would have tea

+together.  He was an old bachelor, and his house stood in a great

+garden--for Plaistow in those days was a picturesque village--and out

+of the plentiful fruit thereof his housekeeper made the most wonderful

+of jams and jellies.  Oh, they were good, those teas!  Generally our

+conversation was of my mother who, it appeared, was once a little

+girl:  not at all the sort of little girl I should have imagined her;

+on the contrary, a prankish, wilful little girl, though good company,

+I should say, if all the tales he told of her were true.  And I am

+inclined to think they were, in spite of the fact that my mother, when

+I repeated them to her, would laugh, saying she was sure she had no

+recollection of anything of the kind, adding severely that it was a

+pity he and I could not find something better to gossip about.  Yet

+her next question would be:

+

+"And what else did he say, if you please?" explaining impatiently when

+my answer was not of the kind expected:  "No, no, I mean about me."

+

+The tea things cleared away, he would bring out his great microscope.

+To me it was a peep-hole into a fairy world where dwelt strange

+dragons, mighty monsters, so that I came to regard him as a sort of

+harmless magician.  It was his pet study, and looking back, I cannot

+help associating his enthusiasm for all things microscopical with the

+fact that he was an exceptionally little man himself, but one of the

+biggest hearted that ever breathed.

+

+On leaving I would formally hand him my half-crown, "with mamma's

+compliments," and he would formally accept it.  But on putting my hand

+into my jacket pocket when outside the gate I would invariably find it

+there.  The first time I took it back to him, but unblushingly he

+repudiated all knowledge.

+

+"Must be another half-crown," he suggested; "such things do happen.

+One puts change into a pocket and overlooks it.  Slippery things,

+half-crowns."

+

+Returning home on this particular day of days, I paused upon the

+bridge, and watched for awhile the lazy barges manoeuvring their way

+between the piers.  It was one of those hushed summer evenings when

+the air even of grim cities is full of whispering voices; and as,

+turning away from the river, I passed through the white toll-gate, I

+had a sense of leaving myself behind me on the bridge.  So vivid was

+the impression, that I looked back, half expecting to see myself still

+leaning over the iron parapet, looking down into the sunlit water.

+

+It sounds foolish, but I leave it standing, wondering if to others a

+like experience has ever come.  The little chap never came back to me.

+He passed away from me as a man's body may possibly pass away from

+him, leaving him only remembrance and regret.  For a time I tried to

+play his games, to dream his dreams, but the substance was wanting.  I

+was only a thin ghost, making believe.

+

+It troubled me for quite a spell of time, even to the point of tears,

+this feeling that my childhood lay behind me, this sudden realisation

+that I was travelling swiftly the strange road called growing up.  I

+did not want to grow up; could nothing be done to stop it?  Rather

+would I be always as I had been, playing, dreaming.  The dark way

+frightened me.  Must I go forward?

+

+Then gradually, but very slowly, with the long months and years, came

+to me the consciousness of a new being, new pulsations, sensories,

+throbbings, rooted in but differing widely from the old; and little

+Paul, the Paul of whom I have hitherto spoken, faded from my life.

+

+So likewise must I let him fade with sorrow from this book.  But

+before I part with him entirely, let me recall what else I can

+remember of him.  Thus we shall be quit of him, and he will interfere

+with us no more.

+

+Chief among the pictures that I see is that of my aunt Fan, crouching

+over the kitchen fire; her skirt and crinoline rolled up round her

+waist, leaving as sacrifice to custom only her petticoat.  Up and down

+her body sways in rhythmic motion, her hands stroking affectionately

+her own knees; the while I, with paper knife for sword, or horse of

+broomstick, stand opposite her, flourishing and declaiming.  Sometimes

+I am a knight and she a wicked ogre.  She is slain, growling and

+swearing, and at once becomes the beautiful princess that I secure and

+bear away with me upon the prancing broomstick.  So long as the

+princess is merely holding sweet converse with me from her high-barred

+window, the scene is realistic, at least, to sufficiency; but the

+bearing away has to be make-believe; for my aunt cannot be persuaded

+to leave her chair before the fire, and the everlasting rubbing of her

+knees.

+

+At other times, with the assistance of the meat chopper, I am an

+Indian brave, and then she is Laughing Water or Singing Sunshine, and

+we go out scalping together; or in less bloodthirsty moods I am the

+Fairy Prince and she the Sleeping Beauty.  But in such parts she is

+not at her best.  Better, when seated in the centre of the up-turned

+table, I am Captain Cook, and she the Cannibal Chief.

+

+"I shall skin him and hang him in the larder till Sunday week," says

+my aunt, smacking her lips, "then he'll be just in right condition;

+not too tough and not too high."  She was always strong in detail, was

+my aunt Fan.

+

+I do not wish to deprive my aunt of any credit due to her, but the

+more I exercise my memory for evidence, the more I am convinced that

+her compliance on these occasions was not conceived entirely in the

+spirit of self-sacrifice.  Often would she suggest the game and even

+the theme; in such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old

+theatrical parlance, would have been termed the heavy lead, the

+dragons and the wicked uncles, the fussy necromancers and the

+uninvited fairies.  As authoress of a new cookery book for use in

+giant-land, my aunt, I am sure, would have been successful.  Most

+recipes that one reads are so monotonously meagre:  "Boil him," "Put

+her on the spit and roast her for supper," "Cook 'em in a pie--with

+plenty of gravy;" but my aunt into the domestic economy of Ogredom

+introduced variety and daintiness.

+

+"I think, my dear," my aunt would direct, "we'll have him stuffed with

+chestnuts and served on toast.  And don't forget the giblets.  They

+make such excellent sauce."

+

+With regard to the diet of imprisoned maidens she would advise:

+

+"Not too much fish--it spoils the flesh for roasting."

+

+The things that she would turn people into--king's sons, rightful

+princesses, such sort of people--people who after a time, one would

+think, must have quite forgotten what they started as.  To let her

+have her way was a lesson to me in natural history both present and

+pre-historic.  The most beautiful damsel that ever lived she would

+without a moment's hesitation turn into a Glyptodon or a Hippocrepian.

+Afterwards, when I could guess at the spelling, I would look these

+creatures up in the illustrated dictionary, and feel that under no

+circumstances could I have loved the lady ever again.  Warriors and

+kings she would delight in transforming into plaice or prawns, and

+haughty queens into Brussels sprouts.

+

+With gusto would she plan a complicated slaughter, paying heed to

+every detail:  the sharpening of the knives, the having ready of mops

+and pails of water for purposes of after cleaning up.  As a writer she

+would have followed the realistic school.

+

+Her death, with which we invariably wound up the afternoon, was

+another conscientious effort.  Indeed, her groans and writhings would

+sometimes frighten me.  I always welcomed the last gurgle.  That

+finished, but not a moment before, my aunt would let down her

+skirt--in this way suggesting the fall of the curtain upon our

+play--and set to work to get the tea.

+

+Another frequently recurring picture that I see is of myself in

+glazed-peaked cap explaining many things the while we walk through

+dingy streets to yet a smaller figure curly haired and open eyed.

+Still every now and then she runs ahead to turn and look admiringly

+into my face as on the day she first became captive to the praise and

+fame of me.

+

+I was glad of her company for more reasons than she knew of.  For one,

+she protected me against my baser self.  With her beside me I should

+not have dared to flee from sudden foes.  Indeed, together we courted

+adventure; for once you get used to it this standing hazard of attack

+adds a charm to outdoor exercise that older folk in districts better

+policed enjoy not.  So possibly my dog feels when together we take the

+air.  To me it is a simple walk, maybe a little tiresome, suggested

+rather by contemplation of my waistband than by desire for walking for

+mere walking's sake; to him an expedition full of danger and

+surprises:  "The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's

+doorstep! will he greet me with a friendly sniff or try to bite my

+head off?  This cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the

+lamp-post! shall we pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become

+locked in a life and death struggle?  Impossible to say.  This coming

+corner, now, 'Ware!  Is anybody waiting round there to kill me, or

+not?"

+

+But the trusting face beside me nerved me.  As reward in lonely places

+I would let her hold my hand.

+

+A second advantage I derived from her company was that of being less

+trampled on, less walked over, less swept aside into doorway or gutter

+than when alone.  A pretty, winsome face had this little maid, if

+Memory plays me not kindly false; but also she had a vocabulary; and

+when the blind idiot, male or female, instead of passing us by walking

+round us, would, after the custom of the blind idiot, seek to gain the

+other side of us by walking through us, she would use it.

+

+"Now, then, where yer coming to, old glass-eye?  We ain't sperrits.

+Can't yer see us?"

+

+And if they attempted reply, her child's treble, so strangely at

+variance with her dainty appearance, would only rise more shrill.

+

+"Garn!  They'd run out of 'eads when they was making you.  That's only

+a turnip wot you've got stuck on top of yer!"  I offer but specimens.

+

+Nor was it of the slightest use attempting personal chastisement, as

+sometimes an irate lady or gentleman would be foolish enough to do.

+As well might an hippopotamus attempt to reprove a terrier.  The only

+result was to provide comedy for the entire street.

+

+On these occasions our positions were reversed, I being the admiring

+spectator of her prowess.  Yet to me she was ever meek, almost

+irritatingly submissive.  She found out where I lived and would often

+come and wait for me for hours, her little face pressed tight against

+the iron railings, until either I came out or shook my head at her

+from my bedroom window, when she would run off, the dying away into

+silence of her pattering feet leaving me a little sad.

+

+I think I cared for her in a way, yet she never entered into my

+day-dreams, which means that she existed for me only in the outer

+world of shadows that lay round about me and was not of my real life.

+

+Also, I think she was unwise, introducing me to the shop, for children

+and dogs--one seems unconsciously to bracket them in one's

+thoughts--are snobbish little wretches.  If only her father had been a

+dealer in firewood I could have soothed myself by imagining mistakes.

+It was a common occurrence, as I well knew, for children of quite the

+best families to be brought up by wood choppers.  Fairies, the best

+intentioned in the world, but born muddlers, were generally

+responsible for these mishaps, which, however, always became righted

+in time for the wedding.  Or even had he been a pork butcher, and

+there were many in the neighbourhood, I could have thought of him as a

+swineherd, and so found precedent for hope.

+

+But a fishmonger--from six in the evening a fried fishmonger!  I

+searched history in vain.  Fried fishmongers were without the pale.

+

+So gradually our meetings became less frequent, though I knew that

+every afternoon she waited in the quiet Stainsby Road, where dwelt in

+semi-detached, six-roomed villas the aristocracy of Poplar, and that

+after awhile, for arriving late at times I have been witness to the

+sad fact, tears would trace pathetic patterns upon her

+dust-besprinkled cheeks; and with the advent of the world-illuminating

+Barbara, to which event I am drawing near, they ceased altogether.

+

+So began and ended my first romance.  One of these days--some quiet

+summer's afternoon, when even the air of Pigott Street vibrates with

+tenderness beneath the whispered sighs of Memory, I shall walk into

+the little grocer's shop and boldly ask to see her.  So far have I

+already gone as to trace her, and often have I tried to catch sight of

+her through the glass door, but hitherto in vain.  I know she is the

+more or less troubled mother of a numerous progeny.  I am told she has

+grown stout, and probable enough it is that her tongue has gained

+rather than lost in sharpness.  Yet under all the unrealities the

+clumsy-handed world has built about her, I shall see, I know, the

+lithesome little maid with fond, admiring eyes.  What help they were

+to me I never knew till I had lost them.  How hard to gain such eyes I

+have learned since.  Were we to write the truth in our confession

+books, should we not admit the quality we most admire in others is

+admiration of ourselves?  And is it not a wise selection?  If you

+would have me admirable, my friend, admire me, and speak your

+commendation without stint that in the sunshine of your praises I may

+wax.  For indifference maketh an indifferent man, and contempt a

+contemptible man.  Come, is it not true?  Does not all that is worthy

+in us grow best by honour?

+

+Chief among the remaining figures on my childhood's stage were the

+many servants of our house, the "generals," as they were termed.  So

+rapid, as a rule, was their transit through our kitchen that only one

+or two, conspicuous by reason of their lingering, remain upon my view.

+It was a neighbourhood in which domestic servants were not much

+required.  Those intending to take up the calling seriously went

+westward.  The local ranks were recruited mainly from the discontented

+or the disappointed, from those who, unappreciated at home, hoped from

+the stranger more discernment; or from the love-lorn, the jilted and

+the jealous, who took the cap and apron as in an earlier age their

+like would have taken the veil.  Maybe, to the comparative seclusion

+of our basement, as contrasted with the alternative frivolity of shop

+or factory, they felt in such mood more attuned.  With the advent of

+the new or the recovery of the old young man they would plunge again

+into the vain world, leaving my poor mother to search afresh amid the

+legions of the cursed.

+

+With these I made such comradeship as I could, for I had no child

+friends.  Kind creatures were most of them, at least so I found them.

+They were poor at "making believe," but would always squeeze ten

+minutes from their work to romp with me, and that, perhaps, was

+healthier for me.  What, perhaps, was not so good for me was that,

+staggered at the amount of "book-learning" implied by my conversation

+(for the journalistic instinct, I am inclined to think, was early

+displayed in me), they would listen open-mouthed to all my

+information, regarding me as a precocious oracle.  Sometimes they

+would obtain permission to take me home with them to tea, generously

+eager that their friends should also profit by me.  Then, encouraged

+by admiring, grinning faces, I would "hold forth," keenly enjoying the

+sound of my own proud piping.

+

+"As good as a book, ain't he?" was the tribute most often paid to me.

+

+"As good as a play," one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer,

+went so far as to say.

+

+Already I regarded myself as among the Immortals.

+

+One girl, a dear, wholesome creature named Janet, stayed with us for

+months and might have stayed years, but for her addiction to strong

+language.  The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the barge

+"Nancy Jane," trading between Purfleet and Ponder's End, her

+conversation was at once my terror and delight.

+

+"Janet," my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up

+instinctively to guard her ears, "how can you use such words?"

+

+"What words, mum?"

+

+"The things you have just called the gas man."

+

+"Him!  Well, did you see what he did, mum?  Walked straight into my

+clean kitchen, without even wiping his boots, the--" And before my

+mother could stop her, Janet had relieved her feelings by calling him

+it--or rather them--again, without any idea that she had done aught

+else than express in fitting phraseology a natural human emotion.

+

+We were good friends, Janet and I, and therefore it was that I

+personally undertook her reformation.  It was not an occasion for

+mincing one's words.  The stake at issue was, I felt, too important.

+I told her bluntly that if she persisted in using such language she

+would inevitably go to hell.

+

+"Then where's my father going?" demanded Janet.

+

+"Does he use language?"

+

+I gathered from Janet that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of

+hearing her father could ever again take interest in the feeble

+efforts of herself.

+

+"I am afraid, Janet," I explained, "that if he doesn't give it up--"

+

+"But it's the only way he can talk," interrupted Janet.  "He don't

+mean anything by it."

+

+I sighed, yet set my face against weakness.  "You see, Janet, people

+who swear do go there."

+

+But Janet would not believe.

+

+"God send my dear, kind father to hell just because he can't talk like

+the gentlefolks!  Don't you believe it of Him, Master Paul.  He's got

+more sense."

+

+I hope I pain no one by quoting Janet's common sense.  For that I

+should be sorry.  I remember her words because so often, when sinking

+in sloughs of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold.  More

+often than I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious

+voice of immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries,

+has it comforted me to whisper to myself:  "I don't believe it of Him.

+He's got more sense."

+

+And about that period I had need of all the comfort I could get.  As

+we descend the road of life, the journey, demanding so much of our

+attention, becomes of more importance than the journey's end; but to

+the child, standing at the valley's gate, the terminating hills are

+clearly visible.  What lies beyond them is his constant wonder.  I

+never questioned my parents directly on the subject, shrinking as so

+strangely we all do, both young and old, from discussion of the very

+matters of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my

+need, contented themselves with the vague generalities with which we

+seek to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs.  But

+there were foolish voices about me less reticent; while the

+literature, illustrated and otherwise, provided in those days for

+serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt brutality.

+If you did wrong you burnt in a fiery furnace for ever and ever.  Were

+your imagination weak you could turn to the accompanying illustration,

+and see at a glance how you yourself would writhe and shrink and

+scream, while cheerful devils, well organised, were busy stoking.  I

+had been burnt once, rather badly, in consequence of live coals, in

+course of transit on a shovel, being let fall upon me.  I imagined

+these burning coals, not confined to a mere part of my body, but

+pressing upon me everywhere, not snatched swiftly off by loving hands,

+the pain assuaged by applications of soft soap and the blue bag, but

+left there, eating into my flesh and veins.  And this continued for

+eternity.  You suffered for an hour, a day, a thousand years, and were

+no nearer to the end; ten thousand, a million years, and yet, as at

+the very first, it was for ever, and for ever still it would always be

+for ever!  I suffered also from insomnia about this period.

+

+"Then be good," replied the foolish voices round me; "never do wrong,

+and so avoid this endless agony."

+

+But it was so easy to do wrong.  There were so many wrong things to

+do, and the doing of them was so natural.

+

+"Then repent," said the voices, always ready.

+

+But how did one repent?  What was repentance?  Did I "hate my sin," as

+I was instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to hell for

+it?  Because the latter, even my child's sense told me, was no true

+repentance.  Yet how could one know the difference?

+

+Above all else there haunted me the fear of the "Unforgivable Sin."

+What this was I was never able to discover.  I dreaded to enquire too

+closely, lest I should find I had committed it.  Day and night the

+terror of it clung to me.

+

+"Believe," said the voices; "so only shall you be saved."  How

+believe?  How know you did believe?  Hours would I kneel in the dark,

+repeating in a whispered scream:

+

+"I believe, I believe.  Oh, I do believe!" and then rise with white

+knuckles, wondering if I really did believe.

+

+Another question rose to trouble me.  In the course of my meanderings

+I had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most

+disreputable specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him.

+Our first meeting had been outside a confectioner's window, in the

+Commercial Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against

+the glass, a mere palpitating Appetite on legs.  He had seized me by

+the collar, and hauled me into the shop.  There, dropping me upon a

+stool, he bade me eat.  Pride of race prompted me politely to decline,

+but his language became so awful that in fear and trembling I obeyed.

+So soon as I was finished--it cost him two and fourpence, I

+remember--we walked down to the docks together, and he told me stories

+of the sea and land that made my blood run cold.  Altogether, in the

+course of three weeks or a month, we met about half a dozen times,

+when much the same programme was gone through.  I think I was a fairly

+frank child, but I said nothing about him at home, feeling

+instinctively that if I did there would be an end of our comradeship,

+which was dear to me:  not merely by reason of the pastry, though I

+admit that was a consideration, but also for his wondrous tales.  I

+believed them all implicitly, and so came to regard him as one of the

+most interesting criminals as yet unhanged:  and what was sad about

+the case, as I felt myself, was that his recital of his many

+iniquities, instead of repelling, attracted me to him.  If ever there

+existed a sinner, here was one.  He chewed tobacco--one of the hundred

+or so deadly sins, according to my theological library--and was

+generally more or less drunk.  Not that a stranger would have noticed

+this; the only difference being that when sober he appeared

+constrained--was less his natural, genial self.  In a burst of

+confidence he once admitted to me that he was the biggest blackguard

+in the merchant service.  Unacquainted with the merchant service, as

+at the time I was, I saw no reason to doubt him.

+

+One night in a state of intoxication he walked over a gangway and was

+drowned.  Our mutual friend, the confectioner, seeing me pass the

+window, came out to tell me so; and having heard, I walked on, heavy

+of heart, and pondering.

+

+About his eternal destination there could be no question.  The known

+facts precluded the least ray of hope.  How could I be happy in

+heaven, supposing I eventually did succeed in slipping in, knowing

+that he, the lovable old scamp, was burning for ever in hell?

+

+How could Janet, taking it that she reformed and thus escaped

+damnation, be contented, knowing the father she loved doomed to

+torment?  The heavenly hosts, so I argued, could be composed only of

+the callous and indifferent.

+

+I wondered how people could go about their business, eat, drink and be

+merry, with tremendous fate hanging thus ever suspended over their

+heads.  When for a little space I myself forgot it, always it fell

+back upon me with increased weight.

+

+Nor was the contemplation of heaven itself particularly attractive to

+me, for it was a foolish paradise these foolish voices had fashioned

+out of their folly.  You stood about and sang hymns--for ever!  I was

+assured that my fear of finding the programme monotonous was due only

+to my state of original sin, that when I got there I should discover I

+liked it.  But I would have given much for the hope of avoiding both

+their heaven and their hell.

+

+Fortunately for my sanity I was not left long to brood unoccupied upon

+such themes.  Our worldly affairs, under the sunshine of old Hasluck's

+round red face, prospered--for awhile; and one afternoon my father,

+who had been away from home since breakfast time, calling me into his

+office where also sat my mother, informed me that the long-talked-of

+school was become at last a concrete thing.

+

+"The term commences next week," explained my father.  "It is not

+exactly what I had intended, but it will do--for the present.  Later,

+of course, you will go to one of the big public schools; your mother

+and I have not yet quite decided which."

+

+"You will meet other boys there, good and bad," said my mother, who

+sat clasping and unclasping her hands.  "Be very careful, dear, how

+you choose your companions."

+

+"You will learn to take your own part," said my father.  "School is an

+epitome of the world.  One must assert oneself, or one is sat upon."

+

+I knew not what to reply, the vista thus opened out to me was so

+unexpected.  My blood rejoiced, but my heart sank.

+

+"Take one of your long walks," said my father, smiling, "and think it

+over."

+

+"And if you are in any doubt, you know where to go for guidance, don't

+you?" whispered my mother, who was very grave.

+

+Yet I went to bed, dreaming of quite other things that night:  of

+Queens of Beauty bending down to crown my brows with laurel:  of

+wronged Princesses for whose cause I rode to death or victory.  For on

+my return home, being called into the drawing-room by my father, I

+stood transfixed, my cap in hand, staring with all my eyes at the

+vision that I saw.

+

+No such wonder had I ever seen before, at all events, not to my

+remembrance.  The maidens that one meets in Poplar streets may be fair

+enough in their way, but their millinery displays them not to

+advantage; and the few lady visitors that came to us were of a staid

+and matronly appearance.  Only out of pictures hitherto had such

+witchery looked upon me; and from these the spell faded as one gazed.

+

+I heard old Hasluck's smoky voice saying, "My little gell, Barbara,"

+and I went nearer to her, moving unconsciously.

+

+"You can kiss 'er," said the smoky voice again; "she won't bite."  But

+I did not kiss her.  Nor ever felt I wanted to, upon the mouth.

+

+I suppose she must have been about fourteen, and I a little over ten,

+though tall for my age.  Later I came to know she had that rare gold

+hair that holds the light, so that upon her face, which seemed of

+dainty porcelain, there ever fell a softened radiance as from some

+shining aureole; those blue eyes where dwell mysteries, shadow veiled.

+At the time I knew nothing, but that it seemed to me as though the

+fairy-tales had all come true.

+

+She smiled, understanding and well pleased with my confusion.  Child

+though I was--little more than child though she was, it flattered her

+vanity.

+

+Fair and sweet, you had but that one fault.  Would it had been

+another, less cruel to you yourself.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V.

+

+IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY.

+

+"Correct" is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe

+Doctor Florret and all his attributes.  He was a large man, but not

+too large--just the size one would select for the head-master of an

+important middle-class school; stout, not fat, suggesting comfort, not

+grossness.  His hands were white and well shaped.  On the left he wore

+a fine diamond ring, but it shone rather than sparkled.  He spoke of

+commonplace things in a voice that lent dignity even to the weather.

+His face, which was clean-shaven, radiated benignity tempered by

+discretion.

+

+So likewise all about him:  his wife, the feminine counterpart of

+himself.  Seeing them side by side one felt tempted to believe that

+for his special benefit original methods had been reverted to, and she

+fashioned, as his particular helpmeet, out of one of his own ribs.

+His furniture was solid, meant for use, not decoration.  His pictures,

+following the rule laid down for dress, graced without drawing

+attention to his walls.  He ever said the correct thing at the correct

+time in the correct manner.  Doubtful of the correct thing to do, one

+could always learn it by waiting till he did it; when one at once felt

+that nothing else could possibly have been correct.  He held on all

+matters the correct views.  To differ from him was to discover oneself

+a revolutionary.

+

+In practice, as I learned at the cost of four more or less wasted

+years, he of course followed the methods considered correct by English

+schoolmen from the days of Edward VI. onwards.

+

+Heaven knows I worked hard.  I wanted to learn.  Ambition--the all

+containing ambition of a boy that "has its centre everywhere nor cares

+to fix itself to form" stirred within me.  Did I pass a speaker at

+some corner, hatless, perspiring, pointing Utopias in the air to

+restless hungry eyes, at once I saw myself, a Demosthenes swaying

+multitudes, a statesman holding the House of Commons spellbound, the

+Prime Minister of England, worshipped by the entire country.  Even the

+Opposition papers, had I known of them, I should have imagined forced

+to reluctant admiration.  Did the echo of a distant drum fall upon my

+ear, then before me rose picturesque fields of carnage, one figure

+ever conspicuous:  Myself, well to the front, isolated.  Promotion in

+the British army of my dream being a matter purely of merit, I

+returned Commander-in-Chief.  Vast crowds thronged every flag-decked

+street.  I saw white waving hands from every roof and window.  I heard

+the dull, deep roar of welcome, as with superb seat upon my snow-white

+charger--or should it be coal-black?  The point cost me much

+consideration, so anxious was I that the day should be without a

+flaw--I slowly paced at the head of my victorious troops, between wild

+waves of upturned faces:  walked into a lamp-post or on to the toes of

+some irascible old gentleman, and awoke.  A drunken sailor stormed

+from between swing doors and tacked tumultuously down the street:  the

+factory chimney belching smoke became a swaying mast. The costers

+round about me shouted "Ay, ay, sir.  'Ready, ay, ready."  I was

+Christopher Columbus, Drake, Nelson, rolled into one.  Spurning the

+presumption of modern geographers, I discovered new continents.  I

+defeated the French--those useful French!  I died in the moment of

+victory.  A nation mourned me and I was buried in Westminster Abbey.

+Also I lived and was created a Duke.  Either alternative had its

+charm:  personally I was indifferent.  Boys who on November the ninth,

+as explained by letters from their mothers, read by Doctor Florret

+with a snort, were suffering from a severe toothache, told me on

+November the tenth of the glories of Lord Mayor's Shows.  I heard

+their chatter fainter and fainter as from an ever-increasing distance.

+The bells of Bow were ringing in my ears.  I saw myself a merchant

+prince, though still young.  Nobles crowded my counting house.  I lent

+them millions and married their daughters.  I listened, unobserved in

+a corner, to discussion on some new book.  Immediately I was a famous

+author.  All men praised me:  for of reviewers and their density I, in

+those days, knew nothing.  Poetry, fiction, history, I wrote them all;

+and all men read, and wondered.  Only here was a crumpled rose leaf in

+the pillow on which I laid my swelling head:  penmanship was vexation

+to me, and spelling puzzled me, so that I wrote with sorrow and many

+blots and scratchings out.  Almost I put aside the idea of becoming an

+author.

+

+But along whichever road I might fight my way to the Elysian Fields of

+fame, education, I dimly but most certainly comprehended, was a

+necessary weapon to my hand.  And so, with aching heart and aching

+head, I pored over my many books.  I see myself now in my small

+bedroom, my elbows planted on the shaky, one-legged table, startled

+every now and again by the frizzling of my hair coming in contact with

+the solitary candle.  On cold nights I wear my overcoat, turned up

+about the neck, a blanket round my legs, and often I must sit with my

+fingers in my ears, the better to shut out the sounds of life, rising

+importunately from below.  "A song, Of a song, To a song, A song, 0!

+song!"  "I love, Thou lovest, He she or it loves.  I should or would

+love" over and over again, till my own voice seems some strange

+buzzing thing about me, while my head grows smaller and smaller till I

+put my hands up frightened, wondering if it still be entire upon my

+shoulders.

+

+Was I more stupid than the average, or is a boy's brain physically

+incapable of the work our educational system demands of it?

+

+"Latin and Greek" I hear repeating the suave tones of Doctor Florret,

+echoing as ever the solemn croak of Correctness, "are useful as mental

+gymnastics."  My dear Doctor Florret and Co., cannot you, out of the

+vast storehouse of really necessary knowledge, select apparatus better

+fitted to strengthen and not overstrain the mental muscles of

+ten-to-fourteen?  You, gentle reader, with brain fully grown, trained

+by years of practice to its subtlest uses, take me from your

+bookshelf, say, your Browning or even your Shakespeare.  Come, you

+know this language well.  You have not merely learned:  it is your

+mother tongue.  Construe for me this short passage, these few verses:

+parse, analyse, resolve into component parts!  And now, will you

+maintain that it is good for Tommy, tear-stained, ink-bespattered

+little brat, to be given AEsop's Fables, Ovid's Metamorphoses to treat

+in like manner?  Would it not be just as sensible to insist upon his

+practising his skinny little arms with hundred pounds dumb-bells?

+

+We were the sons of City men, of not well-to-do professional men, of

+minor officials, clerks, shopkeepers, our roads leading through the

+workaday world.  Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies

+utterly useless to us.  How I hated them, these youth-tormenting

+Shades.  Homer! how I wished the fishermen had asked him that absurd

+riddle earlier.  Horace! why could not that shipwreck have succeeded:

+it would have in the case of any one but a classic.

+

+Until one blessed day there fell into my hands a wondrous talisman.

+

+Hearken unto me, ye heavy burdened little brethren of mine.  Waste not

+your substance upon tops and marbles, nor yet upon tuck (Do ye still

+call it "tuck"?), but scrape and save.  For in the neighbourhood of

+Paternoster Row there dwells a good magician who for silver will

+provide you with a "Key" that shall open wide for you the gates of

+Hades.

+

+By its aid, the Frogs of Aristophanes became my merry friends.  With

+Ulysses I wandered eagerly through Wonderland.  Doctor Florret was

+charmed with my progress, which was real, for now, at last, I was

+studying according to the laws of common sense, understanding first,

+explaining afterwards.  Let Youth, that the folly of Age would

+imprison in ignorance, provide itself with "Keys."

+

+But let me not seem to claim credit due to another.  Dan it was--Dan

+of the strong arm and the soft smile, Dan the wise hater of all

+useless labour, sharp-witted, easy-going Dan, who made this grand

+discovery.

+

+Dan followed me a term later into the Lower Fourth, but before he had

+been there a week was handling Latin verse with an ease and dexterity

+suggestive of unholy dealings with the Devil.  In a lonely corner of

+Regent's Park, first making sure no one was within earshot, he

+revealed to me his magic.

+

+"Don't tell the others," he commanded; "or it will get out, and then

+nobody will be any the better."

+

+"But is it right?" I asked.

+

+"Look here, young 'un," said Dan; "what are you here for--what's your

+father paying school fees for (it was the appeal to our

+conscientiousness most often employed by Dr. Florret himself), for you

+to play a silly game, or to learn something?

+

+"Because if it's only a game--we boys against the masters," continued

+Dan, "then let's play according to rule.  If we're here to

+learn--well, you've been in the class four months and I've just come,

+and I bet I know more Ovid than you do already."  Which was true.

+

+So I thanked Dan and shared with him his key; and all the Latin I

+remember, for whatever good it may be to me, I take it I owe to him.

+

+And knowledge of yet greater value do I owe to the good fortune that

+his sound mother wit was ever at my disposal to correct my dreamy

+unfeasibility; for from first to last he was my friend; and to have

+been the chosen friend of Dan, shrewd judge of man and boy, I deem no

+unimportant feather in my cap.  He "took to" me, he said, because I

+was so jolly green"--"such a rummy little mug."  No other reason would

+he ever give me, save only a sweet smile and a tumbling of my hair

+with his great hand; but I think I understood.  And I loved him

+because he was big and strong and handsome and kind; no one but a

+little boy knows how brutal or how kind a big boy can be.  I was still

+somewhat of an effeminate little chap, nervous and shy, with a pink

+and white face, and hair that no amount of wetting would make

+straight.  I was growing too fast, which took what strength I had, and

+my journey every day, added to school work and home work, maybe was

+too much for my years.  Every morning I had to be up at six, leaving

+the house before seven to catch the seven fifteen from Poplar station;

+and from Chalk Farm I had to walk yet another couple of miles.  But

+that I did not mind, for at Chalk Farm station Dan was always waiting

+for me.  In the afternoon we walked back together also; and when I was

+tired and my back ached--just as if some one had cut a piece out of

+it, I felt--he would put his arm round me, for he always knew, and oh,

+how strong and restful it was to lean against, so that one walked as

+in an easy-chair.

+

+It seems to me, remembering how I would walk thus by his side, looking

+up shyly into his face, thinking how strong and good he was, feeling

+so glad he liked me, I can understand a little how a woman loves.  He

+was so solid.  With his arm round me, it was good to feel weak.

+

+At first we were in the same class, the Lower Third.  He had no

+business there.  He was head and shoulders taller than any of us and

+years older.  It was a disgrace to him that he was not in the Upper

+Fourth.  The Doctor would tell him so before us all twenty times a

+week.  Old Waterhouse (I call him "Old Waterhouse" because "Mister

+Waterhouse, M.A.," would convey no meaning to me, and I should not

+know about whom I was speaking) who cordially liked him, was honestly

+grieved.  We, his friends, though it was pleasant to have him among

+us, suffered in our pride of him.  The only person quite contented was

+Dan himself.  It was his way in all things.  Others had their opinion

+of what was good for him.  He had his own, and his own was the only

+opinion that ever influenced him.  The Lower Third suited him.  For

+him personally the Upper Fourth had no attraction.

+

+And even in the Lower Third he was always at the bottom.  He preferred

+it.  He selected the seat and kept it, in spite of all allurements, in

+spite of all reproaches.  It was nearest to the door.  It enabled him

+to be first out and last in.  Also it afforded a certain sense of

+retirement.  Its occupant, to an extent screened from observation,

+became in the course of time almost forgotten.  To Dan's philosophical

+temperament its practical advantages outweighed all sentimental

+objection.

+

+Only on one occasion do I remember his losing it.  As a rule, tiresome

+questions, concerning past participles, square roots, or meridians

+never reached him, being snapped up in transit by arm-waving lovers of

+such trifles.  The few that by chance trickled so far he took no

+notice of.  They possessed no interest for him, and he never pretended

+that they did.  But one day, taken off his guard, he gave voice quite

+unconsciously to a correct reply, with the immediate result of finding

+himself in an exposed position on the front bench.  I had never seen

+Dan out of temper before, but that moment had any of us ventured upon

+a whispered congratulation we would have had our head punched, I feel

+confident.

+

+Old Waterhouse thought that here at last was reformation.  "Come,

+Brian," he cried, rubbing his long thin hands together with delight,

+"after all, you're not such a fool as you pretend."

+

+"Never said I was," muttered Dan to himself, with a backward glance of

+regret towards his lost seclusion; and before the day was out he had

+worked his way back to it again.

+

+As we were going out together, old Waterhouse passed us on the stairs:

+"Haven't you any sense of shame, my boy?" he asked sorrowfully, laying

+his hand kindly on Dan's shoulder.

+

+"Yes, sir," answered Dan, with his frank smile; "plenty.  It isn't

+yours, that's all."

+

+He was an excellent fighter.  In the whole school of over two hundred

+boys, not half a dozen, and those only Upper Sixth boys--fellows who

+came in top hats with umbrellas, and who wouldn't out of regard to

+their own dignity--could have challenged him with any chance of

+success.  Yet he fought very seldom, and then always in a bored, lazy

+fashion, as though he were doing it purely to oblige the other fellow.

+

+One afternoon, just as we were about to enter Regent's Park by the

+wicket opposite Hanover Gate, a biggish boy, an errand boy carrying an

+empty basket, and supported by two smaller boys, barred our way.

+

+"Can't come in here," said the boy with the basket.

+

+"Why not?" inquired Dan.

+

+"'Cos if you do I shall kick you," was the simple explanation.

+

+Without a word Dan turned away, prepared to walk on to the next

+opening.  The boy with the basket, evidently encouraged, followed us:

+"Now, I'm going to give you your coward's blow," he said, stepping in

+front of us; "will you take it quietly?"  It is a lonely way, the

+Outer Circle, on a winter's afternoon.

+

+"I'll tell you afterwards," said Dan, stopping short.

+

+The boy gave him a slight slap on the cheek.  It could not have hurt,

+but the indignity, of course, was great.  No boy of honour, according

+to our code, could have accepted it without retaliating.

+

+"Is that all?" asked Dan.

+

+"That's all--for the present," replied the boy with the basket.

+

+"Good-bye," said Dan, and walked on.

+

+"Glad he didn't insist on fighting," remarked Dan, cheerfully, as we

+proceeded; "I'm going to a party tonight."

+

+Yet on another occasion, in a street off Lisson Grove, he insisted on

+fighting a young rough half again his own weight, who, brushing up

+against him, had knocked his hat off into the mud.

+

+"I wouldn't have said anything about his knocking it off," explained

+Dan afterwards, tenderly brushing the poor bruised thing with his coat

+sleeve, "if he hadn't kicked it."

+

+On another occasion I remember, three or four of us, Dan among the

+number, were on our way one broiling summer's afternoon to Hadley

+Woods.  As we turned off from the highroad just beyond Barnet and

+struck into the fields, Dan drew from his pocket an enormous

+juicy-looking pear.

+

+"Where did you get that from?" inquired one, Dudley.

+

+"From that big greengrocer's opposite Barnet Church," answered Dan.

+"Have a bit?"

+

+"You told me you hadn't any more money," retorted Dudley, in

+reproachful tones.

+

+"No more I had," replied Dan, holding out a tempting slice at the end

+of his pocket-knife.

+

+"You must have had some, or you couldn't have bought that pear,"

+argued Dudley, accepting.

+

+"Didn't buy it."

+

+"Do you mean to say you stole it?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"You're a thief," denounced Dudley, wiping his mouth and throwing away

+a pip.

+

+"I know it.  So are you."

+

+"No, I'm not."

+

+"What's the good of talking nonsense.  You robbed an orchard only last

+Wednesday at Mill Hill, and gave yourself the stomach-ache."

+

+"That isn't stealing."

+

+"What is it?"

+

+"It isn't the same thing."

+

+"What's the difference?"

+

+And nothing could make Dan comprehend the difference.  "Stealing is

+stealing," he would have it, "whether you take it off a tree or out of

+a basket.  You're a thief, Dudley; so am I.  Anybody else say a

+piece?"

+

+The thermometer was at that point where morals become slack.  We all

+had a piece; but we were all of us shocked at Dan, and told him so.

+It did not agitate him in the least.

+

+To Dan I could speak my inmost thoughts, knowing he would understand

+me, and sometimes from him I received assistance and sometimes

+confusion.  The yearly examination was approaching.  My father and

+mother said nothing, but I knew how anxiously each of them awaited the

+result; my father, to see how much I had accomplished; my mother, how

+much I had endeavoured.  I had worked hard, but was doubtful, knowing

+that prizes depend less upon what you know than upon what you can make

+others believe you know; which applies to prizes beyond those of

+school.

+

+"Are you going in for anything, Dan?" I asked him.  We were discussing

+the subject, crossing Primrose Hill, one bright June morning.

+

+I knew the question absurd.  I asked it of him because I wanted him to

+ask it of me.

+

+"They're not giving away anything I particularly want," murmured Dan,

+in his lazy drawl:  looked at from that point of view, school prizes

+are, it must be confessed, not worth their cost.

+

+"You're sweating yourself, young 'un, of course?" he asked next, as I

+expected.

+

+"I mean to have a shot at the History," I admitted.  "Wish I was

+better at dates."

+

+"It's always two-thirds dates," Dan assured me, to my discouragement.

+"Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date

+that chap Raleigh was born."

+

+"I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize," I explained to

+him.  I never felt shy with Dan.  He never laughed at me.

+

+"You oughtn't to have done that," he said.  I stared.  "It isn't fair

+to the other fellows.  That won't be your winning the prize; that will

+be your getting it through favouritism."

+

+"But they can pray, too," I reminded him.

+

+"If you all pray for it," answered Dan, "then it will go, not to the

+fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the

+hardest.  That isn't old Florret's idea, I'm sure."

+

+"But we are told to pray for things we want," I insisted.

+

+"Beastly mean way of getting 'em," retorted Dan.  And no argument that

+came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right

+thinking on this point.

+

+He would judge all matters for himself.  In his opinion Achilles was a

+coward, not a hero.

+

+"He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of

+him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that," he argued;

+"King Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it

+wasn't playing the game.  There's no pluck in fighting if you know

+you're bound to win.  Beastly cads, I call them all."

+

+I won no prize that year.  Oddly enough, Dan did, for arithmetic; the

+only subject studied in the Lower Fourth that interested him.  He

+liked to see things coming right, he explained.

+

+My father shut himself up with me for half an hour and examined me

+himself.

+

+"It's very curious, Paul," he said, "you seem to know a good deal."

+

+"They asked me all the things I didn't know.  They seemed to do it on

+purpose," I blurted out, and laid my head upon my arm.  My father

+crossed the room and sat down beside me.

+

+"Spud!" he said--it was a long time since he had called me by that

+childish nickname--"perhaps you are going to be with me, one of the

+unlucky ones."

+

+"Are you unlucky?" I asked.

+

+"Invariably," answered my father, rumpling his hair.  "I don't know

+why.  I try hard--I do the right thing, but it turns out wrong.  It

+always does."

+

+"But I thought Mr. Hasluck was bringing us such good fortune," I said,

+looking up in surprise.  "We're getting on, aren't we?"

+

+"I have thought so before, so often," said my father, "and it has

+always ended in a--in a collapse."

+

+I put my arms round his neck, for I always felt to my father as to

+another boy; bigger than myself and older, but not so very much.

+

+"You see, when I married your mother," he went on, "I was a rich man.

+She had everything she wanted."

+

+"But you will get it all back," I cried.

+

+"I try to think so," he answered.  "I do think so--generally speaking.

+But there are times--you would not understand--they come to you."

+

+"But she is happy," I persisted; "we are all happy."

+

+He shook his head.

+

+"I watch her," he said.  "Women suffer more than we do.  They live

+more in the present.  I see my hopes, but she--she sees only me, and I

+have always been a failure.  She has lost faith in me.

+

+I could say nothing.  I understood but dimly.

+

+"That is why I want you to be an educated man, Paul," he continued

+after a silence.  "You can't think what a help education is to a man.

+I don't mean it helps you to get on in the world; I think for that it

+rather hampers you.  But it helps you to bear adversity.  To a man

+with a well-stored mind, life is interesting on a piece of bread and a

+cup of tea.  I know.  If it were not for you and your mother I should

+not trouble."

+

+And yet at that time our fortunes were at their brightest, so far as I

+remember them; and when they were dark again he was full of fresh

+hope, planning, scheming, dreaming again.  It was never acting.  A

+worse actor never trod this stage on which we fret.  His occasional

+attempts at a cheerfulness he did not feel inevitably resulted in our

+all three crying in one another's arms.  No; it was only when things

+were going well that experience came to his injury.  Child of

+misfortune, he ever rose, Antaeus-like, renewed in strength from

+contact with his mother.

+

+Nor must it be understood that his despondent moods, even in time of

+prosperity, were oft recurring.  Generally speaking, as he himself

+said, he was full of confidence.  Already had he fixed upon our new

+house in Guilford Street, then still a good residential quarter; while

+at the same time, as he would explain to my mother, sufficiently

+central for office purposes, close as it was to Lincoln and Grey's Inn

+and Bedford Row, pavements long worn with the weary footsteps of the

+Law's sad courtiers.

+

+"Poplar," said my father, "has disappointed me.  It seemed a good

+idea--a rapidly rising district, singularly destitute of solicitors.

+It ought to have turned out well, and yet somehow it hasn't."

+

+"There have been a few come," my mother reminded him.

+

+"Of a sort," admitted my father; "a criminal lawyer might gather

+something of a practice here, I have no doubt.  But for general work,

+of course, you must he in a central position.  Now, in Guilford Street

+people will come to me."

+

+"It should certainly be a pleasanter neighbourhood to live in," agreed

+my mother.

+

+"Later on," said my father, "in case I want the whole house for

+offices, we could live ourselves in Regent's Park.  It is quite near

+to the Park."

+

+"Of course you have consulted Mr. Hasluck?" asked my mother, who of

+the two was by far the more practical.

+

+"For Hasluck," replied my father, "it will be much more convenient.

+He grumbles every time at the distance."

+

+"I have never been quite able to understand," said my mother, "why Mr.

+Hasluck should have come so far out of his way.  There must surely be

+plenty of solicitors in the City."

+

+"He had heard of me," explained my father.  "A curiou[s] old

+fellow--likes his own way of doing things.  It's not everyone who

+would care for him as a client.  But I seem able to manage him."

+

+Often we would go together, my father and I, to Guilford Street.  It

+was a large corner house that had taken his fancy, half creeper

+covered, with a balcony, and pleasantly situated, overlooking the

+gardens of the Foundling Hospital.  The wizened old caretaker knew us

+well, and having opened the door, would leave us to wander through the

+empty, echoing rooms at our own will.  We furnished them handsomely in

+later Queen Anne style, of which my father was a connoisseur, sparing

+no necessary expense; for, as my father observed, good furniture is

+always worth its price, while to buy cheap is pure waste of money.

+

+"This," said my father, on the second floor, stepping from the bedroom

+into the smaller room adjoining, "I shall make your mother's boudoir.

+We will have the walls in lavender and maple green--she is fond of

+soft tones--and the window looks out upon the gardens.  There we will

+put her writing-table."

+

+My own bedroom was on the third floor, a sunny little room.

+

+"You will be quiet here," said my father, "and we can shut out the bed

+and the washstand with a screen."

+

+Later, I came to occupy it; though its rent--eight and sixpence a

+week, including attendance--was somewhat more than at the time I ought

+to have afforded.  Nevertheless, I adventured it, taking the

+opportunity of being an inmate of the house to refurnish it, unknown

+to my stout landlady, in later Queen Anne style, putting a neat brass

+plate with my father's name upon the door.  "Luke Kelver, Solicitor.

+Office hours, 10 till 4."  A medical student thought he occupied my

+mother's boudoir.  He was a dull dog, full of tiresome talk.  But I

+made acquaintanceship with him; and often of an evening would smoke my

+pipe there in silence while pretending to be listening to his

+monotonous brag.

+

+The poor thing!  he had no idea that he was only a foolish ghost; that

+his walls, seemingly covered with coarse-coloured prints of

+wooden-looking horses, simpering ballet girls and petrified

+prize-fighters, were in reality a delicate tone of lavender and maple

+green; that at her writing-table in the sunlit window sat my mother,

+her soft curls curtaining her quiet face.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI.

+

+OF THE SHADOW THAT CAME BETWEEN THE MAN IN GREY AND THE LADY OF THE

+LOVE-LIT EYES.

+

+"There's nothing missing," said my mother, "so far as I can find out.

+Depend upon it, that's the explanation:  she has got frightened and

+has run away.

+

+"But what was there to frighten her?" said my father, pausing with a

+decanter in one hand and the bottle in the other.

+

+"It was the idea of the thing," replied my mother.  "She has never

+been used to waiting at table.  She was actually crying about it only

+last night."

+

+"But what's to be done?" said my father.  "They will be here in less

+than an hour."

+

+"There will be no dinner for them," said my mother, "unless I put on

+an apron and bring it up myself."

+

+"Where does she live?" asked my father.

+

+"At Ilford," answered my mother.

+

+"We must make a joke of it," said my father.

+

+My mother, sitting down, began to cry.  It had been a trying week for

+my mother.  A party to dinner--to a real dinner, beginning with

+anchovies and ending with ices from the confectioner's; if only they

+would remain ices and not, giving way to unaccustomed influences,

+present themselves as cold custard--was an extraordinary departure

+from the even tenor of our narrow domestic way; indeed, I recollect

+none previous.  First there had been the house to clean and rearrange

+almost from top to bottom; endless small purchases to be made of

+articles that Need never misses, but which Ostentation, if ever you

+let her sneering nose inside the door, at once demands.  Then the

+kitchen range--it goes without saying:  one might imagine them all

+members of a stove union, controlled by some agitating old boiler out

+of work--had taken the opportunity to strike, refusing to bake another

+dish except under permanently improved conditions, necessitating weary

+days with plumbers.  Fat cookery books, long neglected on their shelf,

+had been consulted, argued with and abused; experiments made, failures

+sighed over, successes noted; cost calculated anxiously; means and

+ways adjusted, hope finally achieved, shadowed by fear.

+

+And now with victory practically won, to have the reward thus dashed

+from her hand at the last moment!  Downstairs in the kitchen would be

+the dinner, waiting for the guests; upstairs round the glittering

+table would be the assembled guests, waiting for their dinner.  But

+between the two yawned an impassable gulf.  The bridge, without a word

+of warning, had bolted--was probably by this time well on its way to

+Ilford.  There was excuse for my mother's tears.

+

+"Isn't it possible to get somebody else?" asked my father.

+

+"Impossible, in the time," said my mother.  "I had been training her

+for the whole week.  We had rehearsed it perfectly."

+

+"Have it in the kitchen," suggested my aunt, who was folding napkins

+to look like ships, which they didn't in the least, "and call it a

+picnic."  Really it seemed the only practical solution.

+

+There came a light knock at the front door.

+

+"It can't be anybody yet, surely," exclaimed my father in alarm,

+making for his coat.

+

+"It's Barbara, I expect," explained my mother.  "She promised to come

+round and help me dress.  But now, of course, I shan't want her."  My

+mother's nature was pessimistic.

+

+But with the words Barbara ran into the room, for I had taken it upon

+myself to admit her, knowing that shadows slipped out through the

+window when Barbara came in at the door--in those days, I mean.

+

+She kissed them all three, though it seemed but one movement, she was

+so quick.  And at once they saw the humour of the thing.

+

+"There's going to be no dinner," laughed my father.  "We are going to

+look surprised and pretend that it was yesterday.  It will be fun to

+see their faces."

+

+"There will be a very nice dinner," smiled my mother, "but it will be

+in the kitchen, and there's no way of getting it upstairs."  And they

+explained to her the situation.

+

+She stood for an instant, her sweet face the gravest in the group.

+Then a light broke upon it.

+

+"I'll get you someone," she said.

+

+"My dear, you don't even know the neighbourhood," began my mother.

+But Barbara had snatched the latchkey from its nail and was gone.

+

+With her disappearance, shadow fell again upon us.  "If there were

+only an hotel in this beastly neighbourhood," said my father.

+

+"You must entertain them by yourself, Luke," said my mother; "and I

+must wait--that's all."

+

+"Don't be absurd, Maggie," cried my father, getting angry.  "Can't

+cook bring it in?"

+

+"No one can cook a dinner and serve it, too," answered my mother,

+impatiently.  "Besides, she's not presentable."

+

+"What about Fan?" whispered my father.

+

+My mother merely looked.  It was sufficient.

+

+"Paul?" suggested my father.

+

+"Thank you," retorted my mother.  "I don't choose to have my son

+turned into a footman, if you do."

+

+"Well, hadn't you better go and dress?" was my father's next remark.

+

+"It won't take me long to put on an apron," was my mother's reply.

+

+"I was looking forward to seeing you in that new frock," said my

+father.  In the case of another, one might have attributed such a

+speech to tact; in the case of my father, one felt it was a happy

+accident.

+

+My mother confessed--speaking with a certain indulgence, as one does

+of one's own follies when past--that she herself also had looked

+forward to seeing herself therein.  Threatening discord melted into

+mutual sympathy.

+

+"I so wanted everything to be all right, for your sake, Luke," said my

+mother; "I know you were hoping it would help on the business."

+

+"I was only thinking of you, Maggie, dear," answered my father.  "You

+are my business."

+

+"I know, dear," said my mother.  "It is hard."

+

+The key turned in the lock, and we all stood quiet to listen.

+

+"She's come back alone," said my mother.  "I knew it was hopeless."

+

+The door opened.

+

+"Please, ma'am," said the new parlour-maid, "will I do?"

+

+She stood there, framed by the lintel, in the daintiest of aprons, the

+daintiest of caps upon her golden hair; and every objection she swept

+aside with the wind of her merry wilfulness.  No one ever had their

+way with her, nor wanted it.

+

+"You shall be footman," she ordered, turning to me--but this time my

+mother only laughed.  "Wait here till I come down again."  Then to my

+mother:  "Now, ma'am, are you ready?"

+

+It was the first time I had seen my mother, or, indeed, any other

+flesh and blood woman, in evening dress, and to tell the truth I was a

+little shocked.  Nay, more than a little, and showed it, I suppose;

+for my mother flushed and drew her shawl over the gleaming whiteness

+of her shoulders, pleading coldness.  But Barbara cried out against

+this, saying it was a sin such beauty should be hid; and my father,

+filching a shawl with a quick hand, so dextrously indeed as to suggest

+some previous practice in the feat, dropped on one knee--as though the

+world were some sweet picture book--and raised my mother's hand with

+grave reverence to his lips; and Barbara, standing behind my mother's

+chair, insisted on my following suit, saying the Queen was receiving.

+So I knelt also, glancing up shyly as towards the gracious face of

+some fair lady hitherto unknown, thus Catching my first glimpse of the

+philosophy of clothes.

+

+My memory lingers upon this scene by contrast with the sad, changed

+days that swiftly followed, when my mother's eyes would flash towards

+my father angry gleams, and her voice ring cruel and hard; though the

+moment he was gone her lips would tremble and her eyes grow soft again

+and fill with tears; when my father would sit with averted face and

+sullen lips tight pressed, or worse, would open them only to pour

+forth a rapid flood of savage speech; and fling out of the room,

+slamming the door behind him, and I would find him hours afterwards,

+sitting alone in the dark, with bowed head between his hands.

+

+Wretched, I would lie awake, hearing through the flimsy walls their

+passionate tones, now rising high, now fiercely forced into cold

+whispers; and then their words to each other sounded even crueller.

+

+In their estrangement from each other, so new to them, both clung

+closer to me, though they would tell me nothing, nor should I have

+understood if they had.  When my mother was sobbing softly, her arms

+clasping me tighter and tighter with each quivering throb, then I

+hated my father, who I felt had inflicted this sorrow upon her.  Yet

+when my father drew me down upon his knee, and I looked into his kind

+eyes so full of pain, then I felt angry with my mother, remembering

+her bitter tongue.

+

+It seemed to me as though some cruel, unseen thing had crept into the

+house to stand ever between them, so that they might never look into

+each other's loving eyes but only into the eyes of this evil shadow.

+The idea grew upon me until at times I could almost detect its outline

+in the air, feel a chillness as it passed me.  It trod silently

+through the pokey rooms, always alert to thrust its grinning face

+before them.  Now beside my mother it would whisper in her ear; and

+the next moment, stealing across to my father, answer for him with his

+voice, but strangely different.  I used to think I could hear it

+laughing to itself as it stepped back into enfolding space.

+

+To this day I seem to see it, ever following with noiseless footsteps

+man and woman, waiting patiently its opportunity to thrust its face

+between them.  So that I can read no love tale, but, glancing round, I

+see its mocking eyes behind my shoulder, reading also, with a silent

+laugh.  So that never can I meet with boy and girl, whispering in the

+twilight, but I see it lurking amid the half lights, just behind them,

+creeping after them with stealthy tread, as hand in hand they pass me

+in quiet ways.

+

+Shall any of us escape, or lies the road of all through this dark

+valley of the shadow of dead love?  Is it Love's ordeal? testing the

+feeble-hearted from the strong in faith, who shall find each other yet

+again, the darkness passed?

+

+Of the dinner itself, until time of dessert, I can give no consecutive

+account, for as footman, under the orders of this enthusiastic

+parlour-maid, my place was no sinecure, and but few opportunities of

+observation through the crack of the door were afforded me.  All that

+was clear to me was that the chief guest was a Mr. Teidelmann--or

+Tiedelmann, I cannot now remember which--a snuffy, mumbling old frump,

+with whose name then, however, I was familiar by reason of seeing it

+so often in huge letters, though with a Co. added, on dreary long

+blank walls, bordering the Limehouse reach.  He sat at my mother's

+right hand; and I wondered, noticing him so ugly and so foolish

+seeming, how she could be so interested in him, shouting much and

+often to him; for added to his other disattractions he was very deaf,

+which necessitated his putting his hand up to his ear at every other

+observation made to him, crying querulously:  "Eh, what?  What are you

+talking about?  Say it again,"--smiling upon him and paying close

+attention to his every want.  Even old Hasluck, opposite to him, and

+who, though pleasant enough in his careless way, was far from being a

+slave to politeness, roared himself purple, praising some new

+disinfectant of which this same Teidelmann appeared to be the

+proprietor.

+

+"My wife swears by it," bellowed Hasluck, leaning across the table.

+

+"Our drains!" chimed in Mrs. Hasluck, who was a homely soul; "well,

+you'd hardly know there was any in the house since I've took to using

+it."

+

+"What are they talking about?" asked Teidelmann, appealing to my

+mother.  "What's he say his wife does?"

+

+"Your disinfectant," explained my mother; "Mrs. Hasluck swears by it."

+

+"Who?"

+

+"Mrs. Hasluck."

+

+"Does she?  Delighted to hear it," grunted the old gentleman,

+evidently bored.

+

+"Nothing like it for a sick-room," persisted Hasluck; "might almost

+call it a scent."

+

+"Makes one quite anxious to be ill," remarked my aunt, addressing no

+one in particular.

+

+"Reminds me of cocoanuts," continued Hasluck.

+

+Its proprietor appeared not to hear, but Hasluck was determined his

+flattery should not be lost.

+

+"I say it reminds me of cocoanuts."  He screamed it this time.

+

+"Oh, does it?" was the reply.

+

+"Doesn't it you?"

+

+"Can't say it does," answered Teidelmann.  "As a matter of fact, don't

+know much about it myself.  Never use it."

+

+Old Teidelmann went on with his dinner, but Hasluck was still full of

+the subject.

+

+"Take my advice," he shouted, "and buy a bottle."

+

+"Buy a what?"

+

+"A bottle," roared the other, with an effort palpably beyond his

+strength.

+

+"What's he say?  What's he talking about now?" asked Teidelmann, again

+appealing to my mother.

+

+"He says you ought to buy a bottle," again explained my mother.

+

+"What of?"

+

+"Of your own disinfectant."

+

+"Silly fool!"

+

+Whether he intended the remark to be heard and thus to close the topic

+(which it did), or whether, as deaf people are apt to, merely

+misjudged the audibility of an intended sotto vocalism, I cannot say.

+I only know that outside in the passage I heard the words distinctly,

+and therefore assume they reached round the table also.

+

+A lull in the conversation followed, but Hasluck was not thin-skinned,

+and the next thing I distinguished was his cheery laugh.

+

+"He's quite right," was Hasluck's comment; "that's what I am

+undoubtedly.  Because I can't talk about anything but shop myself, I

+think everybody else is the same sort of fool."

+

+But he was doing himself an injustice, for on my next arrival in the

+passage he was again shouting across the table, and this time

+Teidelmann was evidently interested.

+

+"Well, if you could spare the time, I'd be more obliged than I can

+tell you," Hasluck was saying.  "I know absolutely nothing about

+pictures myself, and Pearsall says you are one of the best judges in

+Europe."

+

+"He ought to know," chuckled old Teidelmann.  "He's tried often enough

+to palm off rubbish onto me."

+

+"That last purchase of yours must have been a good thing for young--"

+Hasluck mentioned the name of a painter since world famous; "been the

+making of him, I should say."

+

+"I gave him two thousand for the six," replied Teidelmann, "and

+they'll sell for twenty thousand."

+

+"But you'll never sell them?" exclaimed my father.

+

+"No," grunted old Teidelmann, "but my widow will."  There came a soft,

+low laugh from a corner of the table I could not see.

+

+"It's Anderson's great disappointment," followed a languid, caressing

+voice (the musical laugh translated into prose, it seemed), "that he

+has never been able to educate me to a proper appreciation of art.

+He'll pay thousands of pounds for a child in rags or a badly dressed

+Madonna.  Such a waste of money, it appears to me."

+

+"But you would pay thousands for a diamond to hang upon your neck,"

+argued my father's voice.

+

+"It would enhance the beauty of my neck," replied the musical voice.

+

+"An even more absolute waste of money," was my father's answer, spoken

+low.  And I heard again the musical, soft laugh.

+

+"Who is she?" I asked Barbara.

+

+"The second Mrs. Teidelmann," whispered Barbara.  "She is quite a

+swell.  Married him for his money--I don't like her myself, but she's

+very beautiful."

+

+"As beautiful as you?" I asked incredulously.  We were sitting on the

+stairs, sharing a jelly.

+

+"Oh, me!" answered Barbara.  "I'm only a child.  Nobody takes any

+notice of me--except other kids, like you."  For some reason she

+appeared out of conceit with herself, which was not her usual state of

+mind.

+

+"But everybody thinks you beautiful," I maintained.

+

+"Who?" she asked quickly.

+

+"Dr. Hal," I answered.

+

+We were with our backs to the light, so that I could not see her face.

+

+"What did he say?" she asked, and her voice had more of contentment in

+it.

+

+I could not remember his exact words, but about the sense of them I

+was positive.

+

+"Ask him what he thinks of me, as if you wanted to know yourself,"

+Barbara instructed me, "and don't forget what he says this time.  I'm

+curious."  And though it seemed to me a foolish command--for what

+could he say of her more than I myself could tell her--I never

+questioned Barbara's wishes.

+

+Yet if I am right in thinking that jealousy of Mrs. Teidelmann may

+have clouded for a moment Barbara's sunny nature, surely there was no

+reason for this, seeing that no one attracted greater attention

+throughout the dinner than the parlour-maid.

+

+"Where ever did you get her from?" asked Mrs. Florret, Barbara having

+just descended the kitchen stairs.

+

+"A neat-handed Phillis," commented Dr. Florret with approval.

+

+"I'll take good care she never waits at my table," laughed the wife of

+our minister, the Rev. Cottle, a broad-built, breezy-voiced woman,

+mother of eleven, eight of them boys.

+

+"To tell the truth," said my mother, "she's only here temporarily."

+

+"As a matter of fact," said my father, "we have to thank Mrs. Hasluck

+for her."

+

+"Don't leave me out of it," laughed Hasluck; "can't let the old girl

+take all the credit."

+

+Later my father absent-mindedly addressed her as "My dear," at which

+Mrs. Cottle shot a swift glance towards my mother; and before that

+incident could have been forgotten, Hasluck, when no one was looking,

+pinched her elbow, which would not have mattered had not the

+unexpectedness of it drawn from her an involuntary "augh," upon which,

+for the reputation of the house, and the dinner being then towards its

+end; my mother deemed it better to take the whole company into her

+confidence.  Naturally the story gained for Barbara still greater

+admiration, so that when with the dessert, discarding the apron but

+still wearing the dainty cap, which showed wisdom, she and the footman

+took their places among the guests, she was even more than before the

+centre of attention and remark.

+

+"It was very nice of you," said Mrs. Cottle, thus completing the

+circle of compliments, "and, as I always tell my girls, that is better

+than being beautiful."

+

+"Kind hearts," added Dr. Florret, summing up the case, "are more than

+coronets."  Dr. Florret had ever ready for the occasion the correct

+quotation, but from him, somehow, it never irritated; rather it fell

+upon the ear as a necessary rounding and completing of the theme; like

+the Amen in church.

+

+Only to my aunt would further observations have occurred.

+

+"When I was a girl," said my aunt, breaking suddenly upon the passing

+silence, "I used to look into the glass and say to myself:  'Fanny,

+you've got to be amiable,' and I was amiable," added my aunt,

+challenging contradiction with a look; "nobody can say that I wasn't,

+for years."

+

+"It didn't pay?" suggested Hasluck.

+

+"It attracted," replied my aunt, "no attention whatever."

+

+Hasluck had changed places with my mother, and having after many

+experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old

+Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the

+case would permit.  Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than

+business.  It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida

+(I am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the

+details of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion,

+so I have been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise

+of the moment, once during the protracted preliminaries of a cocoa

+scheme becoming converted to Quakerism.

+

+But for the most of us interest lay in a discussion between Washburn

+and Florret concerning the superior advantages attaching to residence

+in the East End.

+

+As a rule, incorrect opinion found itself unable to exist in Dr.

+Florret's presence.  As no bird, it is said, can continue its song

+once looked at by an owl, so all originality grew silent under the

+cold stare of his disapproving eye.  But Dr. "Fighting Hal" was no

+gentle warbler of thought.  Vehement, direct, indifferent, he swept

+through all polite argument as a strong wind through a murmuring wood,

+carrying his partisans with him further than they meant to go, and

+quite unable to turn back; leaving his opponents clinging

+desperately--upside down, anyhow--to their perches, angry, their

+feathers much ruffled.

+

+"Life!" flung out Washburn--Dr. Florret had just laid down

+unimpeachable rules for the conduct of all mankind on all

+occasions--"what do you respectable folk know of life?  You are not

+men and women, you are marionettes.  You don't move to your natural

+emotions implanted by God; you dance according to the latest book of

+etiquette.  You live and love, laugh and weep and sin by rule.  Only

+one moment do you come face to face with life; that is in the moment

+when you die, leaving the other puppets to be dressed in black and

+make believe to cry."

+

+It was a favourite subject of denunciation with him, the artificiality

+of us all.

+

+"Little doll," he had once called me, and I had resented the term.

+

+"That's all you are, little Paul," he had persisted, "a good little

+hard-working doll, that does what it's made to do, and thinks what

+it's made to think.  We are all dolls.  Your father is a

+gallant-hearted, soft-headed little doll; your mother the sweetest and

+primmest of dolls.  And I'm a silly, dissatisfied doll that longs to

+be a man, but hasn't the pluck.  We are only dolls, little Paul."

+

+"He's a trifle--a trifle whimsical on some subjects," explained my

+father, on my repeating this conversation.

+

+"There are a certain class of men," explained my mother--"you will

+meet with them more as you grow up--who talk for talking's sake.  They

+don't know what they mean.  And nobody else does either."

+

+"But what would you have?" argued Dr. Florret, "that every man should

+do that which is right in his own eyes?"

+

+"Far better than, like the old man in the fable, he should do what

+every other fool thinks right," retorted Washburn.  "The other day I

+called to see whether a patient of mine was still alive or not.  His

+wife was washing clothes in the front room.  'How's your husband?' I

+asked.  'I think he's dead,' replied the woman.  Then, without leaving

+off her work, 'Jim,' she shouted, 'are you there?'  No answer came

+from the inner room.  'He's a goner,' she said, wringing out a

+stocking."

+

+"But surely," said Dr. Florret, "you don't admire a woman for being

+indifferent to the death of her husband?"

+

+"I don't admire her for that," replied Washburn, "and I don't blame

+her.  I didn't make the world and I'm not responsible for it.  What I

+do admire her for is not pretending a grief she didn't feel.  In

+Berkeley Square she'd have met me at the door with an agonised face

+and a handkerchief to her eyes.

+

+"Assume a virtue, if you have it not," murmured Dr. Florret.

+

+"Go on," said Washburn.  "How does it run?  'That monster, custom, who

+all sense doth eat, of devil's habit, is angel yet in this, that to

+the use of actions fair and good he gives a frock that aptly is put

+on.'  So was the lion's skin by the ass, but it showed him only the

+more an ass.  Here asses go about as asses, but there are lions also.

+I had a woman under my hands only a little while ago.  I could have

+cured her easily.  Why she got worse every day instead of better I

+could not understand.  Then by accident learned the truth:  instead of

+helping me she was doing all she could to kill herself.  'I must,

+Doctor,' she cried.  'I must. I have promised.  If I get well he will

+only leave me, and if I die now he has sworn to be good to the

+children.'  Here, I tell you, they live--think their thoughts, work

+their will, kill those they hate, die for those they love; savages if

+you like, but savage men and women, not bloodless dolls."

+

+"I prefer the dolls," concluded Dr. Florret.

+

+"I admit they are pretty," answered Washburn.

+

+"I remember," said my father, "the first masked ball I ever went to

+when I was a student in Paris.  It struck me just as you say, Hal;

+everybody was so exactly alike.  I was glad to get out into the street

+and see faces."

+

+"But I thought they always unmasked at midnight," said the second Mrs.

+Teidelmann in her soft, languid tones.

+

+"I did not wait," explained my father.

+

+"That was a pity," she replied.  "I should have been interested to see

+what they were like, underneath."

+

+"I might have been disappointed," answered my father.  "I agree with

+Dr. Florret that sometimes the mask is an improvement."

+

+Barbara was right.  She was a beautiful woman, with a face that would

+have been singularly winning if one could have avoided the hard cold

+eyes ever restless behind the half-closed lids.

+

+Always she was very kind to me.  Moreover, since the disappearance of

+Cissy she was the first to bestow again upon me a good opinion of my

+small self.  My mother praised me when I was good, which to her was

+the one thing needful; but few of us, I fear, child or grown-up, take

+much pride in our solid virtues, finding them generally hindrances to

+our desires:  like the oyster's pearl, of more comfort to the world

+than to ourselves.  If others there were who admired me, very

+guardedly must they have kept the secret I would so gladly have shared

+with them.  But this new friend of ours--or had I not better at once

+say enemy--made me feel when in her presence a person of importance.

+How it was accomplished I cannot explain.  No word of flattery nor

+even of mere approval ever passed her lips.  Her charm to me was not

+that she admired me, but that she led me by some mysterious process to

+admire myself.

+

+And yet in spite of this and many lesser kindnesses she showed to me,

+I never really liked her; but rather feared her, dreading always the

+sudden raising of those ever half-closed eyelids.

+

+She sat next to my father at the corner of the table, her chin resting

+on her long white hands, her sweet lips parted, and as often as his

+eyes were turned away from her, her soft low voice would draw them

+back again.  Once she laid her hand on his, laughing the while at some

+light jest of his, and I saw that he flushed; and following his quick

+glance, saw that my mother's eyes were watching also.

+

+I have spoken of my father only as he then appeared to me, a child--an

+older chum with many lines about his mobile mouth, the tumbled hair

+edged round with grey; but looking back with older eyes, I see him a

+slightly stooping, yet still tall and graceful man, with the face of a

+poet--the face I mean a poet ought to possess but rarely does, nature

+apparently abhorring the obvious--with the shy eyes of a boy, and a

+voice tender as a woman's.  Never the dingiest little drab that

+entered the kitchen but adored him, speaking always of "the master" in

+tones of fond proprietorship, for to the most slatternly his "orders"

+had ever the air of requests for favours.  Women, I so often read, can

+care for only masterful men.  But may there not be variety in women as

+in other species?  Or perhaps--if the suggestion be not

+over-daring--the many writers, deeming themselves authorities upon

+this subject of woman, may in this one particular have erred?  I only

+know my father spoke to few women whose eyes did not brighten.  Yet

+hardly should I call him a masterful man.

+

+"I think it's all right," whispered Hasluck to my father in the

+passage--they were the last to go.  "What does she think of it, eh?"

+

+"I think she'll be with us," answered my father.

+

+"Nothing like food for bringing people together," said Hasluck.

+"Good-night."

+

+The door closed, but Something had crept into the house.  It stood

+between my father and mother.  It followed them silently up the narrow

+creaking stairs.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII.

+

+OF THE PASSING OF THE SHADOW.

+

+Better is little, than treasure and trouble therewith.  Better a

+dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

+None but a great man would have dared to utter such a glaring

+commonplace as that.  Not only on Sundays now, but all the week, came

+the hot joint to table, and on every day there was pudding, till a

+body grew indifferent to pudding; thus a joy-giving luxury of life

+being lost and but another item added to the long list of

+uninteresting needs.  Now we could eat and drink without stint.  No

+need now to organise for the morrow's hash.  No need now to cut one's

+bread instead of breaking it, thinking of Saturday's bread pudding.

+But there the saying fails, for never now were we merry.  A silent

+unseen guest sat with us at the board, so that no longer we laughed

+and teased as over the half pound of sausages or the two sweet-scented

+herrings; but talked constrainedly of empty things that lay outside

+us.

+

+Easy enough would it have been for us to move to Guilford Street.

+Occasionally in the spiritless tones in which they now spoke on all

+subjects save the one, my mother and father would discuss the project;

+but always into the conversation would fall, sooner or later, some

+loosened thought to stir it to anger, and so the aching months went

+by, and the cloud grew.

+

+Then one day the news came that old Teidelmann had died suddenly in

+his counting house.

+

+"You are going to her?" said my mother.

+

+"I have been sent for," said my father; "I must--it may mean

+business."

+

+My mother laughed bitterly; why, at the time, I could not understand;

+and my father flung out of the house.  During the many hours that he

+was away my mother remained locked in her room, and, stealing

+sometimes to the door, I was sure I heard her crying; and that she

+should grieve so at old Teidelmann's death puzzled me.

+

+She came oftener to our house after that.  Her mourning added, I

+think, to her beauty, softening--or seeming to soften--the hardness of

+her eyes.  Always she was very sweet to my mother, who by contrast

+beside her appeared witless and ungracious; and to me, whatever her

+motive, she was kindness itself; hardly ever arriving without some

+trifling gift or plan for affording me some childish treat.  By

+instinct she understood exactly what I desired and liked, the books

+that would appeal to me as those my mother gave me never did, the

+pleasures that did please me as opposed to the pleasures that should

+have pleased me.  Often my mother, talking to me, would chill me with

+the vista of the life that lay before me:  a narrow, viewless way

+between twin endless walls of "Must" and "Must not."  This soft-voiced

+lady set me dreaming of life as of sunny fields through which one

+wandered laughing, along the winding path of Will; so that, although

+as I have said, there lurked at the bottom of my thoughts a fear of

+her; yet something within me I seemed unable to control went out to

+her, drawn by her subtle sympathy and understanding of it.

+

+"Has he ever seen a pantomime?" she asked of my father one morning,

+looking at me the while with a whimsical screwing of her mouth.

+

+My heart leaped within me.  My father raised his eyebrows:  "What

+would your mother say, do you think?" he asked.  My heart sank.

+

+"She thinks," I replied, "that theatres are very wicked places."  It

+was the first time that any doubt as to the correctness of my mother's

+judgments had ever crossed my mind.

+

+Mrs. Teidelmann's smile strengthened my doubt.  "Dear me," she said,

+"I am afraid I must be very wicked.  I have always regarded a

+pantomime as quite a moral entertainment.  All the bad people go down

+so very straight to--well, to the fit and proper place for them.  And

+we could promise to leave before the Clown stole the sausages,

+couldn't we, Paul?"

+

+My mother was called and came; and I could not help thinking how

+insignificant she looked with her pale face and plain dark frock,

+standing stiffly beside this shining lady in her rustling clothes.

+

+"You will let him come, Mrs. Kelver," she pleaded in her soft

+caressing tones; "it's Dick Whittington, you know--such an excellent

+moral."

+

+My mother had stood silent, clasping and unclasping her hands, a

+childish trick she had when troubled; and her lips were trembling.

+Important as the matter loomed before my own eyes, I wondered at her

+agitation.

+

+"I am very sorry," said my mother, "it is very kind of you.  But I

+would rather he did not go."

+

+"Just this once," persisted Mrs. Teidelmann.  "It is holiday time."

+

+A ray of sunlight fell into the room, lighting upon her coaxing face,

+making where my mother stood seem shadow.

+

+"I would rather he did not go," repeated my mother, and her voice

+sounded harsh and grating.  "When he is older others must judge for

+him, but for the present he must be guided by me--alone."

+

+"I really don't think there could be any harm, Maggie," urged my

+father.  "Things have changed since we were young."

+

+"That may be," answered my mother, still in the same harsh voice; "it

+is long ago since then."

+

+"I didn't intend it that way," said my father with a short laugh.

+

+"I merely meant that I may be wrong," answered my mother.  "I seem so

+old among you all--so out of place.  I have tried to change, but I

+cannot."

+

+"We will say no more about it," said Mrs. Teidelmann, sweetly.  "I

+merely thought it would give him pleasure; and he has worked so hard

+this last term, his father tells me."

+

+She laid her hand caressingly on my shoulder, drawing me a little

+closer to her; and it remained there.

+

+"It was very kind of you," said my mother, "I would do anything to

+give him pleasure, anything-I could.  He knows that.  He understands."

+

+My mother's hand, I knew, was seeking mine, but I was angry and would

+not see; and without another word she left the room.

+

+My mother did not allude again to the subject; but the very next

+afternoon she took me herself to a hall in the neighbourhood, where we

+saw a magic-lantern, followed by a conjurer.  She had dressed herself

+in a prettier frock than she had worn for many a long day, and was

+brighter and gayer in herself than had lately been her wont, laughing

+and talking merrily.  But I, nursing my wrongs, remained moody and

+sulky.  At any other time such rare amusement would have overjoyed me;

+but the wonders of the great theatre that from other boys I had heard

+so much of, that from gaudy-coloured posters I had built up for

+myself, were floating vague and undefined before me in the air; and

+neither the open-mouthed sleeper, swallowing his endless chain of

+rats; nor even the live rabbit found in the stout old gentleman's

+hat--the last sort of person in whose hat one would have expected to

+find such a thing--could draw away my mind from the joy I had caught a

+glimpse of only to lose.

+

+So we walked home through the muddy, darkening streets, speaking but

+little; and that night, waking--or rather half waking, as children

+do--I thought I saw a figure in white crouching at the foot of my bed.

+I must have gone to sleep again; and later, though I cannot say

+whether the intervening time was short or long, I opened my eyes to

+see it still there; and frightened, I cried out; and my mother rose

+from her knees.

+

+She laughed, a curious broken laugh, in answer to my questions.  "It

+was a silly dream I had," she explained "I must have been thinking of

+the conjurer we saw.  I dreamt that a wicked Magician had spirited you

+away from me.  I could not find you and was all alone in the world."

+

+She put her arms around me, so tight as almost to hurt me.  And thus

+we remained until again I must have fallen asleep.

+

+It was towards the close of these same holidays that my mother and I

+called upon Mrs. Teidelmann in her great stone-built house at Clapton.

+She had sent a note round that morning, saying she was suffering from

+terrible headaches that quite took her senses away, so that she was

+unable to come out.  She would be leaving England in a few days to

+travel.  Would my mother come and see her, she would like to say

+good-bye to her before she went.  My mother handed the letter across

+the table to my father.

+

+"Of course you will go," said my father.  "Poor girl, I wonder what

+the cause can be.  She used to be so free from everything of the

+kind."

+

+"Do you think it well for me to go?" said my mother.  "What can she

+have to say to me?"

+

+"Oh, just to say good-bye," answered my father.  "It would look so

+pointed not to go."

+

+It was a dull, sombre house without, but one entered through its

+commonplace door as through the weed-grown rock into Aladdin's cave.

+Old Teidelmann had been a great collector all his life, and his

+treasures, now scattered through a dozen galleries, were then heaped

+there in curious confusion.  Pictures filled every inch of wall, stood

+propped against the wonderful old furniture, were even stretched

+unframed across the ceilings.  Statues gleamed from every corner (a

+few of the statues were, I remember, the only things out of the entire

+collection that Mrs. Teidelmann kept for herself), carvings,

+embroideries, priceless china, miniatures framed in gems, illuminated

+missals and gorgeously bound books crowded the room.  The ugly little

+thick-lipped man had surrounded himself with the beauty of every age,

+brought from every land.  He himself must have been the only thing

+cheap and uninteresting to be found within his own walls; and now he

+lay shrivelled up in his coffin, under a monument by means of which an

+unknown cemetery became quite famous.

+

+Instructions had been given that my mother was to be shown up into

+Mrs. Teidelmann's boudoir.  She was lying on a sofa near the fire when

+we entered, asleep, dressed in a loose lace robe that fell away,

+showing her thin but snow-white arms, her rich dark hair falling loose

+about her.  In sleep she looked less beautiful:  harder and with a

+suggestion of coarseness about the face, of which at other times it

+showed no trace.  My mother said she would wait, perhaps Mrs.

+Teidelmann would awake; and the servant, closing the door softly, left

+us alone with her.

+

+An old French clock standing on the mantelpiece, a heart supported by

+Cupids, ticked with a muffled, soothing sound.  My mother, choosing a

+chair by the window, sat with her eyes fixed on the sleeping woman's

+face, and it seemed to me--though this may have been but my fancy born

+of after-thought--that a faint smile relaxed for a moment the sleeping

+woman's pained, pressed lips.  Neither I nor my mother spoke, the only

+sound in the room being the hushed ticking of the great gilt clock.

+Until the other woman after a few slight movements of unrest began to

+talk in her sleep.

+

+Only confused murmurs escaped her at first, and then I heard her

+whisper my father's name.  Very low--hardly more than breathed--were

+the words, but upon the silence each syllable struck clear and

+distinct:  "Ah no, we must not.  Luke, my darling."

+

+My mother rose swiftly from her chair, but she spoke in quite

+matter-of-fact tones.

+

+"Go, Paul," she said, "wait for me downstairs;" and noiselessly

+opening the door, she pushed me gently out, and closed it again behind

+me.

+

+It was half an hour or more before she came down, and at once we left

+the house, letting ourselves out.  All the way home my mother never

+once spoke, but walked as one in a dream with eyes that saw not.  With

+her hand upon the lock of our gate she came back to life.

+

+"You must say nothing, Paul, do you understand?" she said.  "When

+people are delirious they use strange words that have no meaning.  Do

+you understand, Paul; you must never breathe a word--never."

+

+I promised, and we entered the house; and from that day my mother's

+whole manner changed.  Not another angry word ever again escaped her

+lips, never an angry flash lighted up again her eyes.  Mrs. Teidelmann

+remained away three months.  My father, of course, wrote to her often,

+for he was managing all her affairs.  But my mother wrote to her

+also--though this my father, I do not think, knew--long letters that

+she would go away by herself to pen, writing them always in the

+twilight, close to the window.

+

+"Why do you choose this time, just when it's getting dark, to write

+your letters," my father would expostulate, when by chance he happened

+to look into the room.  "Let me ring for the lamp, you will strain

+your eyes."  But my mother would always excuse herself, saying she had

+only a few lines to finish.

+

+"I can think better in this light," she would explain.

+

+And when Mrs. Teidelmann returned, it was my mother who was the first

+to call upon her; before even my father knew that she was back.  And

+from thence onward one might have thought them the closest of friends,

+my mother visiting her often, speaking of her to all in terms of

+praise and liking.

+

+In this way peace returned unto the house, and my father was tender

+again in all his words and actions towards my mother, and my mother

+thoughtful as before of all his wants and whims, her voice soft and

+low, the sweet smile ever lurking around her lips as in the old days

+before this evil thing had come to dwell among us; and I might have

+forgotten it had ever cast its blight upon our life but that every day

+my mother grew feebler, the little ways that had seemed a part of her

+gone from her.

+

+The summer came and went--that time in towns of panting days and

+stifling nights, when through the open window crawls to one's face the

+hot foul air, heavy with reeking odours drawn from a thousand streets;

+when lying awake one seems to hear the fitful breathing of the myriad

+mass around, as of some over-laboured beast too tired to even rest;

+and my mother moved about the house ever more listlessly.

+

+"There's nothing really the matter with her," said Dr. Hal, "only

+weakness.  It is the place.  Cannot you get her away from it?"

+

+"I cannot leave myself," said my father, "just yet; but there is no

+reason why you and the boy should not take a holiday.  This year I can

+afford it, and later I might possibly join you."

+

+My mother consented, as she did to all things now, and so it came

+about that again of afternoons we climbed--though more slowly and with

+many pauses--the steep path to the ruined tower old Jacob in his happy

+foolishness had built upon the headland, rested once again upon its

+topmost platform, sheltered from the wind that ever blew about its

+crumbling walls, saw once more the distant mountains, faint like

+spectres, and the silent ships that came and vanished, and about our

+feet the pleasant farm lands, and the grave, sweet river.

+

+We had taken lodgings in the village:  smaller now it seemed than

+previously; but wonderful its sunny calm, after the turmoil of the

+fierce dark streets.  Mrs. Fursey was there still, but quite another

+than the Mrs. Fursey of my remembrance, a still angular but cheery

+dame, bent no longer on suppressing me, but rather on drawing me out

+before admiring neighbours, as one saying:  "The material was

+unpromising, as you know.  There were times when I almost despaired.

+But with patience, and--may I say, a natural gift that way--you see

+what can be accomplished!"  And Anna, now a buxom wife and mother,

+with an uncontrollable desire to fall upon and kiss me at most

+unexpected moments, necessitating a never sleeping watchfulness on my

+part, and a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat.

+And old Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave.  On the bench

+before him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and

+tapped and hammered:  pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we

+want to be toddling.  You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much

+toddling there is to be done."  Dapper boots, sighing:  "Oh, please

+make haste, we are waiting to dance and to strut.  Jack walks in the

+lane, Jill waits by the gate.  Oh, deary, how slowly he taps."  Stout

+sober boots, saying:  "As soon as you can, old friend.  Remember we've

+work to do."  Flat-footed old boots, rusty and limp, mumbling:  "We

+haven't much time, Mr. Chumbley.  Just a patch, that is all, we

+haven't much further to go."  And old Joe, still peddling his pack,

+with the help of the same old jokes.  And Tom Pinfold, still puzzled

+and scratching his head, the rejected fish still hanging by its tail

+from his expostulating hand; one might almost have imagined it the

+same fish.  Grown-up folks had changed but little.  Only the foolish

+children had been playing tricks; parties I had left mere sucking

+babes now swaggering in pinafore or knickerbocker; children I had

+known now mincing it as men and women; such affectation annoyed me.

+

+One afternoon--it was towards the close of the last week of our

+stay--my mother and I had climbed, as was so often our wont, to the

+upper platform of old Jacob's tower.  My mother leant upon the

+parapet, her eyes fixed dreamingly upon the distant mountains, and a

+smile crept to her lips.

+

+"What are you thinking of?" I asked.

+

+"Oh, only of things that happened over there"--she nodded her head

+towards the distant hills as to some old crony with whom she shares

+secrets--"when I was a girl."

+

+"You lived there, long ago, didn't you, when you were young?" I asked.

+Boys do not always stop to consider whether their questions might or

+might not be better expressed.

+

+"You're very rude," said my mother--it was long since a tone of her

+old self had rung from her in answer to any touch; "it was a very

+little while ago."

+

+Suddenly she raised her head and listened.  Perhaps some twenty

+seconds she remained so with her lips parted, and then from the woods

+came a faint, long-drawn "Coo-ee."  We ran to the side of the tower

+commanding the pathway from the village, and waited until from among

+the dark pines my father emerged into the sunlight.

+

+Seeing us, he shouted again and waved his stick, and from the light of

+his eves and his gallant bearing, and the spring of his step across

+the heathery turf, we knew instinctively that trouble had come upon

+him.  He always rose to meet it with that look and air.  It was the

+old Norse blood in his veins, I suppose.  So, one imagines, must those

+godless old Pirates have sprung to their feet when the North wind,

+loosed as a hawk from the leash, struck at the beaked prow.

+

+We heard his quick step on the rickety stair, and the next moment he

+was between us, breathing a little hard, but laughing.

+

+He stood for awhile beside my mother without speaking, both of them

+gazing at the distant hills among which, as my mother had explained,

+things had happened long ago.  And maybe, "over there," their memories

+met and looked upon each other with kind eyes.

+

+"Do you remember," said my father, "we climbed up here--it was the

+first walk we took together after coming here.  We discussed our plans

+for the future, how we would retrieve our fortunes."

+

+"And the future," answered my mother, "has a way of making plans for

+us instead."

+

+"It would seem so," replied my father, with a laugh.  "I am an unlucky

+beggar, Maggie.  I dropped all your money as well as my own down that

+wretched mine."

+

+"It was the will--it was Fate, or whatever you call it," said my

+mother.  "You could not help that, Luke."

+

+"If only that damned pump hadn't jambed," said my father.

+

+"Do you remember that Mrs. Tharand?" asked my mother.

+

+"Yes, what of her?"

+

+"A worldly woman, I always thought her.  She called on me the morning

+we were leaving; I don't think you saw her.  'I've been through more

+worries than you would think, to look at me,' she said to me,

+laughing.  I've always remembered her words:  'and of all the troubles

+that come to us in this world, believe me, Mrs. Kelver, money troubles

+are the easiest to bear.'"

+

+"I wish I could think so," said my father.

+

+"She rather irritated me at the time," continued my mother.  "I

+thought it one of those commonplaces with which we console ourselves

+for other people's misfortunes.  But now I know she spoke the truth."

+

+There was silence between them for awhile.  Then said my father in a

+cheery tone:

+

+"I've broken with old Hasluck."

+

+"I thought you would be compelled to sooner or later," answered my

+mother.

+

+"Hasluck," exclaimed my father, with sudden vehemence, "is little

+better than a thief; I told him so."

+

+"What did he say?" asked my mother.

+

+"Laughed, and said that was better than some people."

+

+My father laughed himself.

+

+I wish to do the memory of Noel Hasluck no injustice.  Ever was he a

+kind friend to me; not only then, but in later years, when, having

+come to learn that kindness is rarer in the world than I had dreamt, I

+was glad of it.  Added to which, if only for Barbara's sake, I would

+prefer to write of him throughout in terms of praise.  Yet even were

+his good-tempered, thick-skinned ghost (and unless it were

+good-tempered and thick-skinned it would be no true ghost of old Noel

+Hasluck) to be reading over my shoulder the words as I write them

+down, I think it would agree with me--I do not think it would be

+offended with me (for ever in his life he was an admirer and a lover

+of the Truth, being one of those good fighters capable of respecting

+even his foe, his enemy, against whom from ten to four, occasionally a

+little later, he fought right valiantly) for saying that of all the

+men who go down into the City each day in a cab or 'bus or train, he

+was perhaps one of the most unprincipled:  and whether that be saying

+much or little I leave to those with more knowledge to decide.

+

+To do others, as it was his conviction, right or wrong, that they

+would do him if ever he gave them half a chance, was his notion of

+"business;" and in most of his transactions he was successful.  "I

+play a game," he would argue, "where cheating is the rule.  Nine out

+of every ten men round the table are sharpers like myself, and the

+tenth man is a fool who has no business to be there.  We prey upon

+each other, and the cutest of us is the winner."

+

+"But the innocent people, lured by your fine promises," I ventured

+once to suggest to him, "the widows and the orphans?"

+

+"My dear lad," he said, with a laugh, laying his fat hand upon my

+shoulder, "I remember one of your widows writing me a pathetic letter

+about some shares she had taken in a Silver Company of mine.  Lord

+knows where the mine is now--somewhere in Spain, I think.  It looked

+as though all her savings were gone.  She had an only son, and it was

+nearly all they possessed in the world, etc., etc.--you know the sort

+of thing.  Well, I did what I've often been numskull enough to do in

+similar cases, wrote and offered to buy her out at par.  A week later

+she answered, thanking me, but saying it did not matter.  There had

+occurred a momentary rise, and she had sold out at a profit--to her

+own brother-in-law, as I discovered, happening to come across the

+transfers.  You can find widows and orphans round the Monte Carlo card

+tables, if you like to look for them; they are no more deserving of

+consideration than the rest of the crowd.  Besides, if it comes to

+that, I'm an orphan myself;" and he laughed again, one of his deep,

+hearty, honest laughs.  No one ever possessed a laugh more suggestive

+in its every cadence of simple, transparent honesty.  He used to say

+himself it was worth thousands to him.

+

+Better from the Moralists' point of view had such a man been an

+out-and-out rogue.  Then might one have pointed, crying:  "Behold:

+Dishonesty, as you will observe in the person of our awful example, to

+be hated, needs but to be seen."  But the duty of the Chronicler is to

+bear witness to what he knows, leaving Truth with the whole case

+before her to sum up and direct the verdict.  In the City, old Hasluck

+had a bad reputation and deserved it; in Stoke-Newington--then a green

+suburb, containing many fine old houses, standing in great wooded

+gardens--he was loved and respected.  In his business, he was a man

+void of all moral sense, without bowels of compassion for any living

+thing; in retirement, a man with a strong sense of duty and a fine

+regard for the rights and feelings of others, never happier than when

+planning to help or give pleasure.  In his office, he would have

+robbed his own mother.  At home, he would have spent his last penny to

+add to her happiness or comfort.  I make no attempt to explain.  I

+only know that such men do exist, and that Hasluck was one of them.

+One avoids difficulties by dismissing them as a product of our

+curiously complex civilisation--a convenient phrase; let us hope the

+recording angel may be equally impressed by it.

+

+Casting about for some reason of excuse to myself for my liking of

+him, I hit upon the expedient of regarding him as a modern Robin Hood,

+whom we are taught to admire without shame, a Robin Hood up to date,

+adapted to the changed conditions of modern environment; making his

+living relieving the rich; taking pleasure relieving the poor.

+

+"What will you do?" asked my mother.

+

+"I shall have to give up the office," answered my father.  "Without

+him there's not enough to keep it going.  He was quite good-tempered

+about the matter--offered to divide the work, letting me retain the

+straightforward portion for whatever that might be worth.  But I

+declined.  Now I know, I feel I would rather have nothing more to do

+with him."

+

+"I think you were quite right," agreed my mother.

+

+"What I blame myself for," said my father, "is that I didn't see

+through him before.  Of course he has been making a mere tool of me

+from the beginning.  I ought to have seen through him.  Why didn't I?"

+

+They discussed the future, or, rather, my father discussed, my mother

+listening in silence, stealing a puzzled look at him from time to

+time, as though there were something she could not understand.

+

+He would take a situation in the City.  One had been offered him.  It

+might sound poor, but it would be a steady income on which we must

+contrive to live.  The little money he had saved must be kept for

+investments--nothing speculative--judicious "dealings," by means of

+which a cool, clear-headed man could soon accumulate capital.  Here

+the training acquired by working for old Hasluck would serve him well.

+One man my father knew--quite a dull, commonplace man--starting a few

+years ago with only a few hundreds, was now worth tens of thousands.

+Foresight was the necessary qualification.  You watched the "tendency"

+of things.  So often had my father said to himself:  "This is going to

+be a big thing.  That other, it is no good," and in every instance his

+prognostications had been verified.  He had "felt it;" some men had

+that gift.  Now was the time to use it for practical purposes.

+

+"Here," said my father, breaking off, and casting an approving eye

+upon the surrounding scenery, "would be a pleasant place to end one's

+days.  The house you had was very pretty and you liked it.  We might

+enlarge it, the drawing-room might be thrown out--perhaps another

+wing."  I felt that our good fortune as from this day was at last

+established.

+

+But my mother had been listening with growing impatience, her puzzled

+glances giving place gradually to flashes of anger; and now she turned

+her face full upon him, her question written plainly thereon,

+demanding answer.

+

+Some idea of it I had even then, watching her; and since I have come

+to read it word for word:  "But that woman--that woman that loves you,

+that you love.  Ah, I know--why do you play with me?  She is rich.

+With her your life will be smooth.  And the boy--it will be better far

+for him.  Cannot you three wait a little longer?  What more can I do?

+Cannot you see that I am surely dying--dying as quickly as I

+can--dying as that poor creature your friend once told us of; knowing

+it was the only thing she could do for those she loved.  Be honest

+with me:  I am no longer jealous.  All that is past:  a man is ever

+younger than a woman, and a man changes.  I do not blame you.  It is

+for the best.  She and I have talked; it is far better so.  Only be

+honest with me, or at least silent.  Will you not honour me enough for

+even that?"

+

+My father did not answer, having that to speak of that put my mother's

+question out of her mind for all time; so that until the end no word

+concerning that other woman passed again between them.  Twenty years

+later, nearly, I myself happened to meet her, and then long physical

+suffering had chased the wantonness away for ever from the pain-worn

+mouth; but in that hour of waning voices, as some trouble of the

+fretful day when evening falls, so she faded from their life; and if

+even the remembrance of her returned at times to either of them, I

+think it must have been in those moments when, for no seeming reason,

+shyly their hands sought one another.

+

+So the truth of the sad ado--how far my mother's suspicions wronged my

+father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that

+was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain but

+in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true

+vision--I never knew.  Later, long after the curtain of green earth

+had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with

+Doctor Hal, who must have seen something of the play and with more

+understanding eyes than mine, and who thereupon delivered to me a

+short lecture on life in general, a performance at which he excelled.

+

+"Flee from temptation and pray that you may be delivered from evil,"

+shouted the Doctor--(his was not the Socratic method)--"but remember

+this:  that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a time

+when, however fast you run, you will be overtaken--cornered--no one to

+deliver you but yourself--the gods sitting round interested.  It is a

+grim fight, for the Thing, you may be sure, has chosen its right

+moment.  And every woman in the world will sympathise with you and be

+just to you, not even despising you should you be overcome; for

+however they may talk, every woman in the world knows that male and

+female cannot be judged by the same standard.  To woman, Nature and

+the Law speak with one voice:  'Sin not, lest you be cursed of your

+sex!'  It is no law of man:  it is the law of creation.  When the

+woman sins, she sins not only against her conscience, but against her

+every instinct.  But to the man Nature whispers:  'Yield.'  It is the

+Law alone that holds him back.  Therefore every woman in the world,

+knowing this, will be just to you--every woman in the world but

+one--the woman that loves you.  From her, hope for no sympathy, hope

+for no justice."

+

+"Then you think--" I began.

+

+"I think," said the Doctor, "that your father loved your mother

+devotedly; but he was one of those fighters that for the first

+half-dozen rounds or so cause their backers much anxiety.  It is a

+dangerous method."

+

+"Then you think my mother--"

+

+"I think your mother was a good woman, Paul; and the good woman will

+never be satisfied with man till the Lord lets her take him to pieces

+and put him together herself."

+

+My father had been pacing to and fro the tiny platform.  Now he came

+to a halt opposite my mother, placing his hands upon her shoulders.

+

+"I want you to help me, Maggie--help me to be brave.  I have only a

+year or two longer to live, and there's a lot to be done in that

+time."

+

+Slowly the anger died out of my mother's face.

+

+"You remember that fall I had when the cage broke," my father went on.

+"Andrews, as you know, feared from the first it might lead to that.

+But I always laughed at him."

+

+"How long have you known?" my mother asked.

+

+"Oh, about six months.  I felt it at the beginning of the year, but I

+didn't say anything to Washburn till a month later.  I thought it

+might be only fancy."

+

+"And he is sure?"

+

+My father nodded.

+

+"But why have you never told me?"

+

+"Because," replied my father, with a laugh, "I didn't want you to

+know.  If I could have done without you, I should not have told you

+now."

+

+And at this there came a light into my mother's face that never

+altogether left it until the end.

+

+She drew him down beside her on the seat.  I had come nearer; and my

+father, stretching out his hand, would have had me with them.  But my

+mother, putting her arms about him, held him close to her, as though

+in that moment she would have had him to herself alone.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII.

+

+HOW THE MAN IN GREY MADE READY FOR HIS GOING.

+

+The eighteen months that followed--for the end came sooner than we had

+expected--were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother had

+ever known; or if happy be not altogether the right word, let me say

+the most beautiful, and most nearly perfect.  To them it was as though

+God in His sweet thoughtfulness had sent death to knock lightly at the

+door, saying:  "Not yet.  You have still a little longer to be

+together.  In a little while."  In those last days all things false

+and meaningless they laid aside.  Nothing was of real importance to

+them but that they should love each other, comforting each other,

+learning to understand each other.  Again we lived poorly; but there

+was now no pitiful straining to keep up appearances, no haunting

+terror of what the neighbours might think.  The petty cares and

+worries concerning matters not worth a moment's thought, the mean

+desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from them.

+There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity.

+Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards at

+things.  Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me that

+we make a mistake seeking to keep Death, God's go-between, ever from

+our thoughts.  Is it not closing the door to a friend who would help

+us would we let him (for who knows life so well), whispering to us:

+"In a little while.  Only a little longer that you have to be

+together.  Is it worth taking so much thought for self?  Is it worth

+while being unkind?"

+

+From them a graciousness emanated pervading all around.  Even my aunt

+Fan decided for the second time in her career to give amiability a

+trial.  This intention she announced publicly to my mother and myself

+one afternoon soon after our return from Devonshire.

+

+"I'm a beast of an old woman," said my aunt, suddenly.

+

+"Don't say that, Fan," urged my mother.

+

+"What's the good of saying 'Don't say it' when I've just said it,"

+snapped back my aunt.

+

+"It's your manner," explained my mother; "people sometimes think you

+disagreeable."

+

+"They'd be daft if they didn't," interrupted my aunt.  "Of course you

+don't really mean it," continued my mother.

+

+"Stuff and nonsense," snorted my aunt; "does she think I'm a fool.  I

+like being disagreeable.  I like to see 'em squirming."

+

+My mother laughed.

+

+"I can be agreeable," continued my aunt, "if I choose.  Nobody more

+so."

+

+"Then why not choose?" suggested my mother.  "I tried it once," said

+my aunt, "and it fell flat.  Nothing could have fallen flatter."

+

+"It may not have attracted much attention," replied my mother, with a

+smile, "but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention."

+

+"It wasn't only that," returned my aunt, "it was that it gave no

+satisfaction to anybody.  It didn't suit me.  A disagreeable person is

+at their best when they are disagreeable."

+

+"I can hardly agree with you there," answered my mother.

+

+"I could do it again," communed my aunt to herself.  There was a

+suggestion of vindictiveness in her tones.  "It's easy enough.  Look

+at the sort of fools that are agreeable."

+

+"I'm sure you could be if you tried," urged my mother.

+

+"Let 'em have it," continued my aunt, still to herself; "that's the

+way to teach 'em sense.  Let 'em have it."

+

+And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother

+altogether wrong.  My father was the first to notice the change.

+

+"Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?" he asked.  It was

+one evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into

+effect.  "Nothing happened, has there?"

+

+"No," answered my mother, "nothing that I know of."

+

+"Her manner is so strange," explained my father, "so--so weird."

+

+My mother smiled.  "Don't say anything to her.  She's trying to be

+agreeable."

+

+My father laughed and then looked wistful.  "I almost wish she

+wouldn't," he remarked; "we were used to it, and she was rather

+amusing."

+

+But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same

+time that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure.  This

+was the introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley.

+Properly speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being

+the order in which he had been christened in the year 1815.  But in

+course of time, and particularly during his school career, it had been

+borne in upon him that Wellington is a burdensome name for a

+commonplace mortal to bear, and very wisely he had reversed the

+arrangement.  He was a slightly pompous but simpleminded little old

+gentleman, very proud of his position as head clerk to Mr. Stillwood,

+the solicitor to whom my father was now assistant.  Stillwood,

+Waterhead and Royal dated back to the Georges, and was a firm bound up

+with the history--occasionally shady--of aristocratic England.  True,

+in these later years its glory was dwindling.  Old Mr. Stillwood, its

+sole surviving representative, declined to be troubled with new

+partners, explaining frankly, in answer to all applications, that the

+business was a dying one, and that attempting to work it up again

+would be but putting new wine into worn-out skins.  But though its

+clientele was a yearly diminishing quantity, much business yet

+remained to it, and that of a good class, its name being still a

+synonym for solid respectability; and my father had deemed himself

+fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment.  James Gadley had

+entered the firm as office boy in the days of its pride, and had never

+awakened to the fact that it was not still the most important legal

+firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street.  Nothing

+delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the many

+strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been

+concerned, all of which he had at his tongue's tip.  Could he find a

+hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional

+reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, "the

+capital of, let us say, a foreign country," or "a certain town not a

+thousand miles from where we are now sitting."  The majority of his

+friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage

+him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case

+were one involving suspicion of mystery and crime.  When, during their

+very first conversation, he exclaimed:  "Now why--why, after keeping

+away from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her

+know whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return

+to her?  That is what I want explained to me!" he paused, as was his

+wont, for sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as

+others, with a yawn:  "Oh, I'm sure I don't know.  Felt he wanted to

+see her, I suppose," replied with prompt intelligence:

+

+"To murder her--by slow poison."

+

+"To murder her!  But why?"

+

+"In order to marry the other woman."

+

+"What other woman?"

+

+"The woman he had just met and fallen in love with.  Before that it

+was immaterial to him what had become of his wife.  This woman had

+said to him:  'Come back to me a free man or never see my face

+again.'"

+

+"Dear me!  Now that's very curious."

+

+"Nothing of the sort.  Plain common sense."

+

+"I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a

+little later, and he did marry again."

+

+"Told you so," remarked my aunt.

+

+In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light

+thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human

+action.  Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y.,

+for into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark

+criminal intent.

+

+"I think you are a little too severe," Mr. Gadley would now and then

+plead.

+

+"We're all of us miserable sinners," my aunt would cheerfully affirm;

+"only we don't all get the same chances."

+

+An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in "a western town once

+famous as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name," my aunt

+was convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged

+another under which her children--should she ever marry and be blessed

+with such--would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of

+seven hundred pounds.

+

+The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always

+fascinated Mr. Gadley.

+

+"I have to thank you, ma'am," he would remark on rising, "for a most

+delightful conversation.  I may not be able to agree with your

+conclusions, but they afford food for reflection."

+

+To which my aunt would reply, "I hate talking to any one who agrees

+with me.  It's like taking a walk to see one's own looking-glass.  I'd

+rather talk to somebody who didn't, even if he were a fool," which for

+her was gracious.

+

+He was a stout little gentleman with a stomach that protruded about a

+foot in front of him, and of this he appeared to be quite unaware.

+Nor would it have mattered had it not been for his desire when talking

+to approach as close to his listener as possible.  Gradually in the

+course of conversation, his stomach acting as a gentle battering ram,

+he would in this way drive you backwards round the room, sometimes,

+unless you were artful, pinning you hopelessly into a corner, when it

+would surprise him that in spite of all his efforts he never succeeded

+in getting any nearer to you.  His first evening at our house he was

+talking to my aunt from the corner of his chair.  As he grew more

+interested so he drew his chair nearer and nearer, till at length,

+having withdrawn inch by inch to avoid his encroachments, my aunt was

+sitting on the extreme edge of her own.  His next move sent her on to

+the floor.  She said nothing, which surprised me; but on the occasion

+of his next visit she was busy darning stockings, an unusual

+occupation for her.  He approached nearer and nearer as before; but

+this time she sat her ground, and it was he who in course of time

+sprang back with an exclamation foreign to the subject under

+discussion.

+

+Ever afterwards my aunt met him with stockings in her hand, and they

+talked with a space between their chairs.

+

+Nothing further came of it, though his being a widower added to their

+intercourse that spice of possibility no woman is ever too old to

+relish; but that he admired her intellectually was evident.  Once he

+even went so far as to exclaim:  "Miss Davies, you should have been a

+solicitor's wife!" to his thinking the crown of feminine ambition.  To

+which my aunt had replied:  "Chances are I should have been if one had

+ever asked me."  And warmed by appreciation, my aunt's amiability took

+root and flourished, though assuming, as all growth developed late is

+apt to, fantastic shape.

+

+There came to her the idea, by no means ill-founded, that by flattery

+one can most readily render oneself agreeable; so conscientiously she

+set to work to flatter in season and out.  I am sure she meant to give

+pleasure, but the effect produced was that of thinly veiled sarcasm.

+

+My father would relate to us some trifling story, some incident

+noticed during the day that had seemed to him amusing.  At once she

+would break out into enthusiasm, holding up her hands in astonishment.

+

+"What a funny man he is!  And to think that it comes to him naturally

+without an effort.  What a gift it is!"

+

+On my mother appearing in a new bonnet, or an old one retrimmed, an

+event not unfrequent; for in these days my mother took more thought

+than ever formerly for her appearance (you will understand, you women

+who have loved), she would step back in simulated amazement.

+

+"Don't tell me it's a married woman with a boy getting on for

+fourteen.  It's a girl.  A saucy, tripping girl.  That's what it is."

+

+Persons have been known, I believe, whose vanity, not checked in time,

+has grown into a hopeless disease.  But I am inclined to think that a

+dose of my aunt, about this period, would have cured the most

+obstinate case.

+

+So also, and solely for our benefit, she assumed a vivacity and

+spriteliness that ill suited her, that having regard to her age and

+tendency towards rheumatism must have cost her no small effort.  From

+these experiences there remains to me the perhaps immoral opinion that

+Virtue, in common with all other things, is at her best when

+unassuming.

+

+Occasionally the old Adam--or should one say Eve--would assert itself

+in my aunt, and then, still thoughtful for others, she would descend

+into the kitchen and be disagreeable to Amy, our new servitor, who

+never minded it.  Amy was a philosopher who reconciled herself to all

+things by the reflection that there were only twenty-four hours in a

+day.  It sounds a dismal theory, but from it Amy succeeded in

+extracting perpetual cheerfulness.  My mother would apologise to her

+for my aunt's interference.

+

+"Lord bless you, mum, it don't matter.  If I wasn't listening to her

+something else worse might be happening.  Everything's all the same

+when it's over."

+

+Amy had come to us merely as a stop gap, explaining to my mother that

+she was about to be married and desired only a temporary engagement to

+bridge over the few weeks between then and the ceremony.

+

+"It's rather unsatisfactory," had said my mother.  "I dislike

+changes."

+

+"I can quite understand it, mum," had replied Amy; "I dislike 'em

+myself.  Only I heard you were in a hurry, and I thought maybe that

+while you were on the lookout for somebody permanent--"

+

+So on that understanding she came.  A month later my mother asked her

+when she thought the marriage would actually take place.

+

+"Don't think I'm wishing you to go," explained my mother, "indeed I'd

+like you to stop.  I only want to know in time to make my

+arrangements."

+

+"Oh, some time in the spring, I expect," was Amy's answer.

+

+"Oh!" said my mother, "I understood it was coming off almost

+immediately."

+

+Amy appeared shocked.

+

+"I must know a little bit more about him before I go as far as that,"

+she said.

+

+"But I don't understand," said my mother; "you told me when you came

+to me that you were going to be married in a few weeks."

+

+"Oh, that one!"  Her tone suggested that an unfair strain was being

+put upon her memory.  "I didn't feel I wanted him as much as I thought

+I did when it came to the point."

+

+"You had meantime met the other one?" suggested my mother, with a

+smile.

+

+"Well, we can't help our feelings, can we, mum?" admitted Amy,

+frankly, "and what I always say is"--she spoke as one with experience

+even then--"better change your mind before it's too late afterwards."

+

+Amiable, sweet-faced, broad-hearted Amy! most faithful of friends, but

+oh! most faithless of lovers.  Age has not withered nor custom staled

+her liking for infinite variety.  Butchers, bakers, soldiers, sailors,

+Jacks of all trades!  Does the sighing procession never pass before

+you, Amy, pointing ghostly fingers of reproach!  Still Amy is engaged.

+To whom at the particular moment I cannot say, but I fancy to an early

+one who has lately become a widower.  After more exact knowledge I do

+not care to enquire; for to confess ignorance on the subject, implying

+that one has treated as a triviality and has forgotten the most

+important detail of a matter that to her is of vital importance, is to

+hurt her feelings; while to angle for information is but to entangle

+oneself.  To speak of Him as "Tom," when Tom has belonged for weeks to

+the dead and buried past, to hastily correct oneself to "Dick" when

+there hasn't been a Dick for years, clearly not to know that he is now

+Harry, annoys her even more.  In my mother's time we always referred

+to him as "Dearest."  It was the title with which she herself

+distinguished them all, and it avoided confusion.

+

+"Well, and how's Dearest?" my mother would enquire, opening the door

+to Amy on the Sunday evening.

+

+"Oh, very well indeed, mum, thank you, and he sends you his respects,"

+or, "Well, not so nicely as I could wish.  I'm a little anxious about

+him, poor dear!"

+

+"When you are married you will be able to take good care of him."

+

+"That's really what he wants--some one to take care of him.  It's what

+they all want, the poor dears."

+

+"And when is it coming off?"

+

+"In the spring, mum."  She always chose the spring when possible.

+

+Amy was nice to all men, and to Amy all men were nice.  Could she have

+married a dozen, she might have settled down, with only occasional

+regrets concerning those left without in the cold.  But to ask her to

+select only one out of so many "poor dears" was to suggest shameful

+waste of affection.

+

+We had meant to keep our grim secret to ourselves; but to hide one's

+troubles long from Amy was like keeping cold hands from the fire.

+Very soon she knew everything that was to be known, drawing it all

+from my mother as from some overburdened child.  Then she put my

+mother down into a chair and stood over her.

+

+"Now you leave the house and everything connected with it to me, mum,"

+commanded Amy; "you've got something else to do."

+

+And from that day we were in the hands of Amy, and had nothing else to

+do but praise the Lord for His goodness.

+

+Barbara also found out (from Washburn, I expect), though she said

+nothing, but came often.  Old Hasluck would have come himself, I am

+sure, had he thought he would be welcome.  As it was, he always sent

+kind messages and presents of fruit and flowers by Barbara, and always

+welcomed me most heartily whenever she allowed me to see her home.

+

+She brought, as ever, sunshine with her, making all trouble seem far

+off and shadowy.  My mother tended to the fire of love, but Barbara

+lit the cheerful lamp of laughter.

+

+And with the lessening days my father seemed to grow younger, life

+lying lighter on him.

+

+One summer's night he and I were walking with Barbara to Poplar

+station, for sometimes, when he was not looking tired, she would order

+him to fetch his hat and stick, explaining to him with a caress, "I

+like them tall and slight and full grown.  The young ones, they don't

+know how to flirt!  We will take the boy with us as gooseberry;" and

+he, pretending to be anxious that my mother did not see, would kiss

+her hand, and slip out quietly with her arm linked under his.  It was

+admirable the way he would enter into the spirit of the thing.

+

+The last cloud faded from before the moon as we turned the corner, and

+even the East India Dock Road lay restful in front of us.

+

+"I have always regarded myself," said my father, "as a failure in

+life, and it has troubled me."  I felt him pulled the slightest little

+bit away from me, as though Barbara, who held his other arm, had drawn

+him towards her with a swift pressure.  "But do you know the idea that

+has come to me within the last few months?  That on the whole I have

+been successful.  I am like a man," continued my father, "who in some

+deep wood has been frightened, thinking he has lost his way, and

+suddenly coming to the end of it, finds that by some lucky chance he

+has been guided to the right point after all.  I cannot tell you what

+a comfort it is to me.

+

+"What is the right point?" asked Barbara.

+

+"Ah, that I cannot tell you," answered my father, with a laugh.  "I

+only know that for me it is here where I am.  All the time I thought I

+was wandering away from it I was drawing nearer to it.  It is very

+wonderful.  I am just where I ought to be.  If I had only known I

+never need have worried."

+

+Whether it would have troubled either him or my mother very much even

+had it been otherwise I cannot say, for Life, so small a thing when

+looked at beside Death, seemed to have lost all terror for them; but

+be that as it may, I like to remember that Fortune at the last was

+kind to my father, prospering his adventures, not to the extent his

+sanguine nature had dreamt, but sufficiently:  so that no fear for our

+future marred the peaceful passing of his tender spirit.

+

+Or should I award thanks not to Fate, but rather to sweet Barbara, and

+behind her do I not detect shameless old Hasluck, grinning

+good-naturedly in the background?

+

+"Now, Uncle Luke, I want your advice.  Dad's given me this cheque as a

+birthday present.  I don't want to spend it.  How shall I invest it?"

+

+"My dear, why not consult your father?"

+

+"Now, Uncle Luke, dad's a dear, especially after dinner, but you and I

+know him.  Giving me a present is one thing, doing business for me is

+another.  He'd unload on me.  He'd never be able to resist the

+temptation."

+

+My father would suggest, and Barbara would thank him.  But a minute

+later would murmur:  "You don't know anything about Argentinos."

+

+My father did not, but Barbara did; to quite a remarkable extent for a

+young girl.

+

+"That child has insisted on leaving this cheque with me and I have

+advised her to buy Argentinos," my father would observe after she was

+gone.  "I am going to put a few hundreds into them myself.  I hope

+they will turn out all right, if only for her sake.  I have a

+presentiment somehow that they will."

+

+A month later Barbara would greet him with:  "Isn't it lucky we bought

+Argentinos!"

+

+"Yes; they haven't turned out badly, have they?  I had a feeling, you

+know, for Argentinos."

+

+"You're a genius, Uncle Luke.  And now we will sell out and buy

+Calcuttas, won't we?"

+

+"Sell out?  But why?"

+

+"You said so.  You said, 'We will sell out in about a month and be

+quite safe.'"

+

+"My dear, I've no recollection of it."

+

+But Barbara had, and before she had done with him, so had he.  And the

+next day Argentinos would be sold--not any too soon--and Calcuttas

+bought.

+

+Could money so gained bring a blessing with it?  The question would

+plague my father.

+

+"It's very much like gambling," he would mutter uneasily to himself at

+each success, "uncommonly like gambling."

+

+"It is for your mother," he would impress upon me.  "When she is gone,

+Paul, put it aside, Keep it for doing good; that may make it clean.

+Start your own life without any help from it."

+

+He need not have troubled.  It went the road that all luck derived

+however indirectly from old Hasluck ever went.  Yet it served good

+purpose on its way.

+

+But the most marvellous feat, to my thinking, ever accomplished by

+Barbara was the bearing off of my father and mother to witness "A

+Voice from the Grave, or the Power of Love, New and Original Drama in

+five acts and thirteen tableaux."

+

+They had been bred in a narrow creed, both my father and my mother.

+That Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has

+drowned much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from

+hearsay do foolishly to speak but ill of it.  If ever earnest times

+should come again, not how to enjoy but how to live being the

+question, Fate demanding of us to show not what we have but what we

+are, we may regret that they are fewer among us than formerly, those

+who trained themselves to despise all pleasure, because in pleasure

+they saw the subtlest foe to principle and duty.  No graceful growth,

+this Puritanism, for its roots are in the hard, stern facts of life;

+but it is strong, and from it has sprung all that is worth preserving

+in the Anglo-Saxon character.  Its men feared and its women loved God,

+and if their words were harsh their hearts were tender.  If they shut

+out the sunshine from their lives it was that their eyes might see

+better the glory lying beyond; and if their view be correct, that

+earth's threescore years and ten are but as preparation for eternity,

+then who shall call them even foolish for turning away their thoughts

+from its allurements.

+

+"Still, I think I should like to have a look at one, just to see what

+it is like," argued my father; "one cannot judge of a thing that one

+knows nothing about."

+

+I imagine it was his first argument rather than his second that

+convinced my mother.

+

+"That is true," she answered.  "I remember how shocked my poor father

+was when he found me one night at the bedroom window reading Sir

+Walter Scott by the light of the moon."

+

+"What about the boy?" said my father, for I had been included in the

+invitation.

+

+"We will all be wicked together," said my mother.

+

+So an evening or two later the four of us stood at the corner of

+Pigott Street waiting for the 'bus.

+

+"It is a close evening," said my father; "let's go the whole hog and

+ride outside."

+

+In those days for a lady to ride outside a 'bus was as in these days

+for a lady to smoke in public.  Surely my mother's guardian angel must

+have betaken himself off in a huff.

+

+"Will you keep close behind and see to my skirt?" answered my mother,

+commencing preparations.  If you will remember that these were the

+days of crinolines, that the "knife-boards" of omnibuses were then

+approached by a perpendicular ladder, the rungs two feet apart, you

+will understand the necessity for such precaution.

+

+Which of us was the most excited throughout that long ride it would be

+difficult to say.  Barbara, feeling keenly her responsibility as

+prompter and leader of the dread enterprise, sat anxious, as she

+explained to us afterwards, hoping there would be nothing shocking in

+the play, nothing to belie its innocent title; pleased with her

+success so far, yet still fearful of failure, doubtful till the last

+moment lest we should suddenly repent, and stopping the 'bus, flee

+from the wrath to come.  My father was the youngest of us all.

+Compared with him I was sober and contained.  He fidgeted:  people

+remarked upon it.  He hummed.  But for the stern eye of a thin young

+man sitting next to him trying to read a paper, I believe he would

+have broken out into song.  Every minute he would lean across to

+enquire of my mother:  "How are you feeling--all right?"  To which my

+mother would reply with a nod and a smile, She sat very silent

+herself, clasping and unclasping her hands.  As for myself, I remember

+feeling so sorry for the crowds that passed us on their way home.  It

+was sad to think of the long dull evening that lay before them.  I

+wondered how they could face it.

+

+Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle.  The lights were

+low and the house only half full when we reached them.

+

+"It seems very orderly and--and respectable," whispered my mother.

+There seemed a touch of disappointment in her tone.

+

+"We are rather early," replied Barbara; "it will be livelier when the

+band comes in and they turn up the gas."

+

+But even when this happened my mother was not content.  "There is so

+little room for the actors," she complained.

+

+It was explained to her that the green curtain would go up, that the

+stage lay behind.

+

+So we waited, my mother sitting stiffly on the extreme edge of her

+seat, holding me tightly by the hand; I believe with some vague idea

+of flight, should out of that vault-scented gloom the devil suddenly

+appear to claim us for his own.  But before the curtain was quite up

+she had forgotten him.

+

+You poor folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps

+oftener, what do you know of plays?  You see no drama, you see but

+middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly

+pretending to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the

+Chemist, making believe to be a haughty Princess.  How can you, a

+grown man, waste money on a seat to witness such tomfoolery!  What we

+saw was something very different.  A young and beautiful girl--true,

+not a lady by birth, being merely the daughter of an honest yeoman,

+but one equal in all the essentials of womanhood to the noblest in the

+land--suffered before our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had

+one not seen it for oneself, one would never have believed Fate could

+have accumulated upon the head of any single individual.  Beside her

+woes our own poor troubles sank into insignificance.  We had used to

+grieve, as my mother in a whisper reminded my father, if now and again

+we had not been able to afford meat for dinner.  This poor creature,

+driven even from her wretched attic, compelled to wander through the

+snow without so much as an umbrella to protect her, had not even a

+crust to eat; and yet never lost her faith in Providence.  It was a

+lesson, as my mother remarked afterwards, that she should never

+forget.  And virtue had been triumphant, let shallow cynics say what

+they will.  Had we not proved it with our own senses?  The villain--I

+think his Christian name, if one can apply the word "Christian" in

+connection with such a fiend, was Jasper--had never really loved the

+heroine.  He was incapable of love.  My mother had felt this before he

+had been on the stage five minutes, and my father--in spite of

+protests from callous people behind who appeared to be utterly

+indifferent to what was going on under their very noses--had agreed

+with her.  What he was in love with was her fortune--the fortune that

+had been left to her by her uncle in Australia, but about which nobody

+but the villain knew anything.  Had she swerved a hair's breadth from

+the course of almost supernatural rectitude, had her love for the hero

+ever weakened, her belief in him--in spite of damning evidence to the

+contrary--for a moment wavered, then wickedness might have triumphed.

+How at times, knowing all the facts but helpless to interfere, we

+trembled, lest deceived by the cruel lies the villain told her; she

+should yield to importunity.  How we thrilled when, in language

+eloquent though rude, she flung his false love back into his teeth.

+Yet still we feared.  We knew well that it was not the hero who had

+done the murder.  "Poor dear," as Amy would have called him, he was

+quite incapable of doing anything requiring one-half as much

+smartness.  We knew that it was not he, poor innocent lamb! who had

+betrayed the lady with the French accent; we had heard her on the

+subject and had formed a very shrewd conjecture.  But appearances, we

+could not help admitting, were terribly to his disfavour.  The

+circumstantial evidence against him would have hanged an Archbishop.

+Could she in face of it still retain her faith?  There were moments

+when my mother restrained with difficulty her desire to rise and

+explain.

+

+Between the acts Barbara would whisper to her that she was not to

+mind, because it was only a play, and that everything would be sure to

+come right in the end.

+

+"I know, my dear," my mother would answer, laughing, "it is very

+foolish of me; I forget.  Paul, when you see me getting excited, you

+must remind me."

+

+But of what use was I in such case!  I, who only by holding on to the

+arms of my seat could keep myself from swarming down on to the stage

+to fling myself between this noble damsel and her persecutor--this

+fair-haired, creamy angel in whose presence for the time being I had

+forgotten even Barbara.

+

+The end came at last. The uncle from Australia was not dead.  The

+villain--bungler as well as knave--had killed the wrong man, somebody

+of no importance whatever.  As a matter of fact, the comic man himself

+was the uncle from Australia--had been so all along.  My mother had

+had a suspicion of this from the very first. She told us so three

+times, to make up, I suppose, for not having mentioned it before.  How

+we cheered and laughed, in spite of the tears in our eyes.

+

+By pure accident it happened to be the first night of the piece, and

+the author, in response to much shouting and whistling, came before

+the curtain.  He was fat and looked commonplace; but I deemed him a

+genius, and my mother said he had a good face, and waved her

+handkerchief wildly; while my father shouted "Bravo!" long after

+everybody else had finished; and people round about muttered "packed

+house," which I didn't understand at the time, but came to later.

+

+And stranger still, it happened to be before that very same curtain

+that many years later I myself stepped forth to make my first bow as a

+playwright.  I saw the house but dimly, for on such occasion one's

+vision is apt to be clouded.  All that I saw clearly was in the front

+row of the second circle--a sweet face laughing though the tears were

+in her eyes; and she waved to me a handkerchief.  And on one side of

+her stood a gallant gentleman with merry eyes who shouted "Bravo!" and

+on the other a dreamy-looking lad; but he appeared disappointed,

+having expected better work from me.  And the fourth face I could not

+see, for it was turned away from me.

+

+Barbara, determined on completeness, insisted upon supper.  In those

+days respectability fed at home; but one resort possible there was, an

+eating-house with some pretence to gaiety behind St. Clement Danes,

+and to that she led us.  It was a long, narrow room, divided into

+wooden compartments, after the old coffee-house plan, a gangway down

+the centre.  Now we should call it a dismal hole, and closing the door

+hasten away.  But to Adam, Eve in her Sunday fig-leaves was a

+stylishly dressed woman; and to my eyes, with its gilded mirrors and

+its flaring gas, the place seemed a palace.

+

+Barbara ordered oysters, a fish that familiarity with its empty shell

+had made me curious concerning.  Truly no spot on the globe is so rich

+in oyster shells as the East End of London.  A stranger might be led

+to the impression (erroneous) that the customary lunch of the East End

+labourer consists of oysters.  How they collect there in such

+quantities is a mystery, though Washburn, to whom I once presented the

+problem, found no difficulty in solving it to his own satisfaction:

+"To the rich man the oyster; to the poor man the shell; thus are the

+Creator's gifts divided among all His creatures; none being sent empty

+away."  For drink the others had stout and I had ginger beer.  The

+waiter, who called me "Sir," advised against this mixture; but among

+us all the dominating sentiment by this time was that nothing really

+mattered very much.  Afterwards my father called for a cigar and

+boldly lighted it, though my mother looked anxious; and fortunately

+perhaps it would not draw.  And then it came out that he himself had

+once written a play.

+

+"You never told me of that," complained my mother.

+

+"It was a long while ago," replied my father; "nothing came of it."

+

+"It might have been a success," said my mother; "you always had a gift

+for writing."

+

+"I must look it over again," said my father; "I had quite forgotten

+it.  I have an impression it wasn't at all bad."

+

+"It can be of much help," said my mother, "a good play.  It makes one

+think."

+

+We put Barbara into a cab and rode home ourselves inside a 'bus.  My

+mother was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her

+to lean against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his

+shoulder.  A coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man's arm round

+her likewise, and she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his

+coat.

+

+"They can do with a bit of nursing, can't they?" said the man with a

+grin to the conductor.

+

+"Ah, they're just kids," agreed the conductor, sympathetically,

+"that's what they are, all of 'em, just kids."

+

+So the day ended.  But oh, the emptiness of the morrow!  Life without

+a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!--no comic

+uncles, no creamy angels!  Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life!

+Even my mother at moments was quite irritable.

+

+We were much together again, my father and I, about this time.  Often,

+making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him,

+he leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm.  To this day

+I can always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road.  And on

+Saturday afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb

+the hill and sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together,

+watching the dim vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.

+

+At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying.  The "year to

+two" of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become

+converted in my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning;

+the meanwhile he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy.

+How could I know it was his great heart rising to his need.

+

+The comprehension came to me suddenly.  It was one afternoon in early

+spring.  I was on my way to the City to meet him.  The Holborn Viaduct

+was then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence

+always much disorganised.  The 'bus on which I was riding became

+entangled in a block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes

+we had been merely crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent

+moving by short, painful jerks.  It came to me while I was sitting

+there with a sharp spasm of physical pain.  I jumped from the 'bus and

+began to run, and the terror and the hurt of it grew with every step.

+I ran as if I feared he might be dead before I could reach the office.

+He was waiting for me with a smile as usual, and I flung myself

+sobbing into his arms.

+

+I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had

+had a fear something had happened to him, for from that time forward

+he dropped all reserve with me, and talked openly of our approaching

+parting.

+

+"It might have come to us earlier, my dear boy," he would say with his

+arm round me, "or it might have been a little later.  A year or so one

+way or the other, what does it matter?  And it is only for a little

+while, Paul.  We shall meet again."

+

+But I could not answer him, for clutch them to me as I would, all my

+beliefs--the beliefs in which I had been bred, the beliefs that until

+then I had never doubted, in that hour of their first trial, were

+falling from me.  I could not even pray.  If I could have prayed for

+anything, it would have been for my father's life.  But if prayer were

+all powerful, as they said, would our loved ones ever die?  Man has

+not faith enough, they would explain; if he had there would be no

+parting.  So the Lord jests with His creatures, offering with the one

+hand to snatch back with the other.  I flung the mockery from me.

+There was no firm foothold anywhere.  What were all the religions of

+the word but narcotics with which Humanity seeks to dull its pain,

+drugs in which it drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble that death

+pricks.

+

+I do not mean my thoughts took this form.  I was little more than a

+lad, and to the young all thought is dumb, speaking only with a cry.

+But they were there, vague, inarticulate.  Thoughts do not come to us

+as we grow older.  They are with us all our lives.  We learn their

+language, that is all.

+

+One fair still evening it burst from me.  We had lingered in the Park

+longer than usual, slowly pacing the broad avenue leading from the

+Observatory to the Heath.  I poured forth all my doubts and

+fears--that he was leaving me for ever, that I should never see him

+again, I could not believe.  What could I do to believe?

+

+"I am glad you have spoken, Paul," he said, "it would have been sad

+had we parted not understanding each other.  It has been my fault.  I

+did not know you had these doubts.  They come to all of us sooner or

+later.  But we hide them from one another.  It is foolish."

+

+"But tell me," I cried, "what can I do?  How can I make myself

+believe?"

+

+"My dear lad," answered my father, "how can it matter what we believe

+or disbelieve?  It will not alter God's facts.  Would you liken Him to

+some irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?"

+

+"What do you believe," I asked, "father, really I mean."

+

+The night had fallen.  My father put his arm round me and drew me to

+him.

+

+"That we are God's children, little brother," he answered, "that what

+He wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be

+best. I cannot think that He will let us die:  that were to think of

+Him as without purpose.  But His uses may not be our desires.  We must

+trust Him.  'Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.'"

+

+We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.

+

+"'Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity'--you remember the

+verse--Faith in God's goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may be

+fulfiled.  But these concern but ourselves--the greatest of all is

+Charity."

+

+Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and

+there a point of light.

+

+"Be kind, that is all it means," continued my father.  "Often we do

+what we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good.

+We cannot understand--maybe the old laws we have misread.  But the new

+Law, that we love one another--all creatures He has made; that is so

+clear.  And if it be that we are here together only for a little

+while, Paul, the future dark, how much the greater need have we of one

+another."

+

+I looked up into my father's face, and the peace that shone from it

+slid into my soul and gave me strength.

+

+

+

+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, between long, lifeless walls.

+I looked into Hal's face from time to time, and he was laughing; but

+every now and then he would look over his shoulder at the man behind

+him still following doggedly, and then his face would be twisted into

+a comically terrified grimace.  Turning into a narrow cul-de-sac, Hal

+suddenly ducked behind a wide brick buttress, and the man, still

+running, passed us.  And then Hal stood up and called to him, and the

+man turned, looked into Hal's eyes, and understood.

+

+He was not a coward.  Besides, even a rat when cornered will fight for

+its life.  He made a rush at Hal, and Hal made no attempt to defend

+himself.  He stood there laughing, and the man struck him full in the

+face, and the blood spurted out and flowed down into his mouth.  The

+man came on again, though terror was in every line of his face, all

+his desire being to escape.  But this time Hal drove him back again.

+They fought for awhile, if one can call it fighting, till the man, mad

+for air, reeled against the wall, stood there quivering convulsively,

+his mouth wide open, resembling more than anything else some huge

+dying fish.  And Hal drew away and waited.

+

+I have no desire to see again the sight I saw that quiet, still

+evening, framed by those high, windowless walls, from behind which

+sounded with ceaseless regularity the gentle swish of the incoming

+tide.  All sense of retribution was drowned in the sight of Hal's

+evident enjoyment of his sport.  The judge had disappeared, leaving

+the work to be accomplished by a savage animal loosened for the

+purpose.

+

+The wretched creature flung itself again towards its only door of

+escape, fought with the vehemence of despair, to be flung back again,

+a hideous, bleeding mass of broken flesh.  I tried to cling to Hal's

+arm, but one jerk of his steel muscles flung me ten feet away.

+

+"Keep off, you fool!" he cried.  "I won't kill him.  I'm keeping my

+head.  I shall know when to stop."  And I crept away and waited.

+

+Hal joined me a little later, wiping the blood from his face.  We made

+our way to a small public-house near the river, and from there Hal

+sent a couple of men on whom he could rely with instructions how to

+act.  I never heard any more of the matter.  It was a subject on which

+I did not care to speak to Hal.  I can only hope that good came of it.

+

+There was a spot--it has been cleared away since to make room for the

+approach to Greenwich Tunnel--it was then the entrance to a grain

+depot in connection with the Milwall Docks.  A curious brick well it

+resembled, in the centre of which a roadway wound downward, corkscrew

+fashion, disappearing at the bottom into darkness under a yawning

+arch.  The place possessed the curious property of being ever filled

+with a ceaseless murmur, as though it were some aerial maelstrom,

+drawing into its silent vacuum all wandering waves of sound from the

+restless human ocean flowing round it.  No single tone could one ever

+distinguish:  it was a mingling of all voices, heard there like the

+murmur of a sea-soaked shell.

+

+We passed through it on our return.  Its work for the day was

+finished, its strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons

+thundering up and down its spiral way.  Hal paused, leaning against

+the railings that encircled its centre, and listened.

+

+"Hark, do you not hear it, Paul?" he asked.  "It is the music of

+Humanity.  All human notes are needful to its making:  the faint wail

+of the new-born, the cry of the dying thief; the beating of the

+hammers, the merry trip of dancers; the clatter of the teacups, the

+roaring of the streets; the crooning of the mother to her babe, the

+scream of the tortured child; the meeting kiss of lovers, the sob of

+those that part.  Listen! prayers and curses, sighs and laughter; the

+soft breathing of the sleeping, the fretful feet of pain; voices of

+pity, voices of hate; the glad song of the strong, the foolish

+complaining of the weak.  Listen to it, Paul!  Right and wrong, good

+and evil, hope and despair, it is but one voice--a single note, drawn

+by the sweep of the Player's hand across the quivering strings of man.

+What is the meaning of it, Paul?  Can you read it?  Sometimes it seems

+to me a note of joy, so full, so endless, so complete, that I cry:

+'Blessed be the Lord whose hammers have beaten upon us, whose fires

+have shaped us to His ends!'  And sometimes it sounds to me a dying

+note, so that I could curse Him who in wantonness has wrung it from

+the anguish of His creatures--till I would that I could fling myself,

+Prometheus like, between Him and His victims, calling:  "My darkness,

+but their light; my agony, 0 God; their hope!'"

+

+The faint light from a neighbouring gas-lamp fell upon his face that

+an hour before I had seen the face of a wild beast. The ugly mouth was

+quivering, tears stood in his great, tender eyes.  Could his prayer in

+that moment have been granted, could he have pressed against his bosom

+all the pain of the world, he would have rejoiced.

+

+He shook himself together with a laugh.  "Come, Paul, we have had a

+busy afternoon, and I'm thirsty.  Let us drink some beer, my boy, good

+sound beer, and plenty of it."

+

+My mother fell ill that winter.  Mountain born and mountain bred, the

+close streets had never agreed with her, and scolded by all of us, she

+promised, "come the fine weather," to put sentiment behind her, and go

+away from them.

+

+"I'm thinking she will," said Hal, gripping my shoulder with his

+strong hand, "but it'll be by herself that she'll go, lad.  My wonder

+is," he continued, "that she has held out so long.  If anything, it is

+you that have kept her alive.  Now that you are off her mind to a

+certain extent, she is worrying about your father, I expect.  These

+women, they never will believe a man can take care of himself, even in

+Heaven.  She's never quite trusted the Lord with him, and never will

+till she's there to give an eye to things herself."

+

+Hal's prophecy fell true.  She left "come the fine weather," as she

+had promised:  I remember it was the first day primroses were hawked

+in the street.  But another death had occurred just before; which,

+concerning me closely as it does, I had better here dispose of; and

+that was the death of old Mr. Stillwood, who passed away rich in

+honour and regret, and was buried with much ostentation and much

+sincere sorrow; for he had been to many of his clients, mostly old

+folk, rather a friend than a mere man of business, and had gained from

+all with whom he had come in contact, respect, and from many real

+affection.

+

+In conformity with the old legal fashions that in his life he had so

+fondly clung to, his will was read aloud by Mr. Gadley after the

+return from the funeral, and many were the tears its recital called

+forth.  Written years ago by himself and never altered, its quaint

+phraseology was full of kindly thought and expression.  No one had

+been forgotten.  Clerks, servants, poor relations, all had been

+treated with even-handed justice, while for those with claim upon him,

+ample provision had been made.  Few wills, I think, could ever have

+been read less open to criticism.

+

+Old Gadley slipped his arm into mine as we left the house.  "If you've

+nothing to do, young 'un," he said, "I'll get you to come with me to

+the office.  I have got all the keys in my pocket, and we shall be

+quiet.  It will be sad work for me, and I had rather we were alone.  A

+couple of hours will show us everything."

+

+We lighted the wax candles--old Stillwood could never tolerate gas in

+his own room--and opening the safe took out the heavy ledgers one by

+one, and from them Gadley dictated figures which I wrote down and

+added up.

+

+"Thirty years I have kept these books for him," said old Gadley, as we

+laid by the last of them, "thirty years come Christmas next, he and I

+together.  No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now

+people to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them

+about, drop greasy crumbs upon them--I know their ways, the

+brutes!--scribble all over them.  And he who always would have

+everything so neat and orderly!"

+

+We came to the end of them in less than the time old Gadley had

+thought needful:  in such perfect order had everything been

+maintained.  I was preparing to go, but old Gadley had drawn a couple

+of small keys from his pocket, and was shuffling again towards the

+safe.

+

+"Only one more," he explained in answer to my look, "his own private

+ledger.  It will merely be in the nature of a summary, but we'll just

+glance through it."

+

+He opened an inner drawer and took from it a small thick volume bound

+in green leather and closed with two brass locks.  An ancient volume,

+it appeared, its strong binding faded and stained.  Old Gadley sat

+down with it at the dead man's own desk, and snuffing the two shaded

+candles, unlocked and opened it.  I was standing opposite, so that the

+book to me was upside down, but the date on the first page, "1841,"

+caught my eye, as also the small neat writing now brown with age.

+

+"So neat, so orderly he always was," murmured old Gadley again,

+smoothing the page affectionately with his hand, and I waited for his

+dictation.

+

+But no glib flow of figures fell from him.  His eyebrows suddenly

+contracted, his body stiffened itself.  Then for the next quarter of

+an hour nothing sounded in the quiet room but his turning of the

+creakling pages.  Once or twice he glanced round swiftly over his

+shoulder, as though haunted by the idea of some one behind him; then

+back to the neat, closely written folios, his little eyes, now

+exhibiting a comical look of horror, starting out of his round red

+face.  First slowly, then quickly with trembling hands he turned the

+pages, till the continual ratling of the leaves sounded like strange,

+mocking laughter through the silent, empty room; almost one could

+imagine it coming from some watching creature hidden in the shadows.

+

+The end reached, he sat staring before him, his whole body quivering,

+great beads of sweat upon his shiny bald head.

+

+"Am I mad?" was all he could find to say.  "Kelver, am I mad?"

+

+He handed me the book.  It was a cynically truthful record of fraud,

+extending over thirty years.  Every client, every friend, every

+relative that had fallen into his net he had robbed:  the fortunate

+ones of a part, the majority of their all.  Its very first entry

+debited him with the proceeds of his own partner's estate.  Its last

+ran --"Re Kelver--various sales of stock."  To his credit were his

+payments year after year of imaginary interests on imaginary

+securities, the surplus accounted for with simple brevity:

+"Transferred to own account."  No record could have been more clear,

+more frank.  Beneath each transaction was written its true history;

+the actual investments, sometimes necessary, carefully distinguished

+from the false.  In neat red ink would occur here and there a note for

+his own guidance:  "Eldest child comes of age August, '73.  Be

+prepared for trustees desiring production."  Turning to "August, '73,"

+one found that genuine investment had been made, to be sold again a

+few months later on.  From beginning to end not a single false step

+had he committed.  Suspicious clients had been ear-marked:  the

+trusting discriminated with gratitude, and milked again and again to

+meet emergency.

+

+As a piece of organisation it was magnificent.  No one but a financial

+genius could have picked a dozen steps through such a network of

+chicanery.  For half a lifetime he had moved among it, dignified,

+respected and secure.

+

+Whether even he could have maintained his position for another month

+was doubtful.  Suicide, though hinted at, was proved to have been

+impossible.  It seemed as though with his amazing audacity he had

+tricked even Death into becoming his accomplice.

+

+"But it is impossible, Kelver!" cried Gadley, "this must be some

+dream.  Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal!  What is the meaning of it?"

+

+He took the book into his hands again, then burst into tears.  "You

+never knew him," wailed the poor little man.  "Stillwood, Waterhead

+and Royal!  I came here as office boy fifty years ago.  He was more

+like a friend to me than--" and again the sobs shook his little fat

+body.

+

+I locked the books away and put him into his hat and coat.  But I had

+much difficulty in getting him out of the office.

+

+"I daren't, young 'un," he cried, drawing back.  "Fifty years I have

+walked out of this office, proud of it, proud of being connected with

+it.  I daren't face the street!"

+

+All the way home his only idea was:  Could it not be hidden?  Honest,

+kindly little man that he was, he seemed to have no thought for the

+unfortunate victims.  The good name of his master, of his friend,

+gone!  Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal, a by-word!  To have avoided

+that I believe he would have been willing for yet another hundred

+clients to be ruined.

+

+I saw him to his door, then turned homeward; and to my surprise in a

+dark by-street heard myself laughing heartily.  I checked myself

+instantly, feeling ashamed of my callousness, of my seeming

+indifference to the trouble even of myself and my mother.  Yet as

+there passed before me the remembrance of that imposing and expensive

+funeral with its mournful following of tearful faces; the hushed

+reading of the will with its accompaniment of rustling approval; the

+picture of the admirably sympathetic clergyman consoling with white

+hands Mrs. Stillwood, inclined to hysteria, but anxious concerning her

+two hundred pounds' worth of crape which by no possibility of means

+could now be paid for--recurred to me the obituary notice in "The

+Chelsea Weekly Chronicle":  the humour of the thing swept all else

+before it, and I laughed again--I could not help it--loud and long.

+It was my first introduction to the comedy of life, which is apt to be

+more brutal than the comedy of fiction.

+

+But nearing home, the serious side of the matter forced itself

+uppermost.  Fortunately, our supposed dividends had been paid to us by

+Mr. Stillwood only the month before.  Could I keep the thing from

+troubling my mother's last days?  It would be hard work.  I should

+have to do it alone, for a perhaps foolish pride prevented my taking

+Hal into my confidence, even made his friendship a dread to me, lest

+he should come to learn and offer help.  There is a higher generosity,

+it is said, that can receive with pleasure as well as bestow favour;

+but I have never felt it.  Could I be sure of acting my part, of not

+betraying myself to her sharp eyes, of keeping newspapers and chance

+gossip away from her?  Good shrewd Amy I cautioned, but I shrank from

+even speaking on the subject to Hal, and my fear was lest he should

+blunder into the subject, which for the usual nine days occupied much

+public attention.  But fortunately he appeared not even to have heard

+of the scandal.

+

+Possibly had the need lasted longer I might have failed, but as it

+was, a few weeks saw the end.

+

+"Don't leave me to-day, Paul," whispered my mother to me one morning.

+So I stayed, and in the evening my mother put her arms around my neck

+and I lay beside her, my head upon her breast, as I used to when a

+little boy.  And when the morning came I was alone.

+

+

+

+BOOK II.

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+DESCRIBES THE DESERT ISLAND TO WHICH PAUL WAS DRIFTED.

+

+"Room to let for a single gentleman."  Sometimes in an idle hour,

+impelled by foolishness, I will knock at the door.  It is opened after

+a longer or shorter interval by the "slavey"--in the morning,

+slatternly, her arms concealed beneath her apron; in the afternoon,

+smart in dirty cap and apron.  How well I know her!  Unchanged, not

+grown an inch--her round bewildered eyes, her open mouth, her touzled

+hair, her scored red hands.  With an effort I refrain from muttering:

+"So sorry, forgot my key," from pushing past her and mounting two at a

+time the narrow stairs, carpeted to the first floor, but bare beyond.

+Instead, I say, "Oh, what rooms have you to let?" when, scuttling to

+the top of the kitchen stairs, she will call over the banisters:  "A

+gentleman to see the rooms."  There comes up, panting, a

+harassed-looking, elderly female, but genteel in black.  She crushes

+past the little "slavey," and approaching, eyes me critically.

+

+"I have a very nice room on the first floor," she informs me, "and one

+behind on the third."

+

+I agree to see them, explaining that I am seeking them for a young

+friend of mine.  We squeeze past the hat and umbrella stand:  there is

+just room, but one must keep close to the wall.  The first floor is

+rather an imposing apartment, with a marble-topped sideboard measuring

+quite three feet by two, the doors of which will remain closed if you

+introduce a wad of paper between them.  A green table-cloth, matching

+the curtains, covers the loo-table.  The lamp is perfectly safe so

+long as it stands in the exact centre of the table, but should not be

+shifted.  A paper fire-stove ornament in some mysterious way bestows

+upon the room an air of chastity.  Above the mantelpiece is a

+fly-blown mirror, between the once gilt frame and glass of which can

+be inserted invitation cards; indeed, one or two so remain, proving

+that the tenants even of "bed-sitting-rooms" are not excluded from

+social delights.  The wall opposite is adorned by an oleograph of the

+kind Cheap Jacks sell by auction on Saturday nights in the Pimlico

+Road, and warrant as "hand-made."  Generally speaking, it is a Swiss

+landscape.  There appears to be more "body" in a Swiss landscape than

+in scenes from less favoured localities.  A dilapidated mill, a

+foaming torrent, a mountain, a maiden and a cow can at the least be

+relied upon.  An easy chair (I disclaim all responsibility for the

+adjective), stuffed with many coils of steel wire, each possessing a

+"business end" in admirable working order, and covered with horsehair,

+highly glazed, awaits the uninitiated.  There is one way of sitting

+upon it, and only one:  by using the extreme edge, and planting your

+feet firmly on the floor.  If you attempt to lean back in it you

+inevitably slide out of it.  When so treated it seems to say to you:

+"Excuse me, you are very heavy, and you would really be much more

+comfortable upon the floor.  Thank you so much."  The bed is behind

+the door, and the washstand behind the bed.  If you sit facing the

+window you can forget the bed.  On the other hand, if more than one

+friend come to call on you, you are glad of it.  As a matter of fact,

+experienced visitors prefer it--make straight for it, refusing with

+firmness to exchange it for the easy chair.

+

+"And this room is?"

+

+"Eight shillings a week, sir--with attendance, of course."

+

+"Any extras?"

+

+"The lamp, sir, is eighteenpence a week; and the kitchen fire, if the

+gentleman wishes to dine at home, two shillings."

+

+"And fire?"

+

+"Sixpence a scuttle, sir, I charge for coals."

+

+"It's rather a small scuttle."

+

+The landlady bridles a little.  "The usual size, I think, sir."  One

+presumes there is a special size in coal-scuttles made exclusively for

+lodging-house keepers.

+

+I agree that while I am about it I may as well see the other room, the

+third floor back.  The landlady opens the door for me, but remains

+herself on the landing.  She is a stout lady, and does not wish to

+dwarf the apartment by comparison.  The arrangement here does not

+allow of your ignoring the bed.  It is the life and soul of the room,

+and it declines to efface itself.  Its only possible rival is the

+washstand, straw-coloured; with staring white basin and jug, together

+with other appurtenances.  It glares defiantly from its corner.  "I

+know I'm small," it seems to say; "but I'm very useful; and I won't be

+ignored."  The remaining furniture consists of a couple of

+chairs--there is no hypocrisy about them:  they are not easy and they

+do not pretend to be easy; a small chest of light-painted drawers

+before the window, with white china handles, upon which is a tiny

+looking-glass; and, occupying the entire remaining space, after

+allowing three square feet for the tenant, when he arrives, an

+attenuated four-legged table apparently home-made.  The only ornament

+in the room is, suspended above the fireplace, a funeral card, framed

+in beer corks.  As the corpse introduced by the ancient Egyptians into

+their banquets, it is hung there perhaps to remind the occupant of the

+apartment that the luxuries and allurements of life have their end; or

+maybe it consoles him in despondent moments with the reflection that

+after all he might be worse off.

+

+The rent of this room is three-and-sixpence a week, also including

+attendance; lamp, as for the first floor, eighteen-pence; but kitchen

+fire a shilling.

+

+"But why should kitchen fire for the first floor be two shillings, and

+for this only one?"

+

+"Well, as a rule, sir, the first floor wants more cooking done."

+

+You are quite right, my dear lady, I was forgetting.  The gentleman in

+the third floor back! cooking for him is not a great tax upon the

+kitchen fire.  His breakfast, it is what, madam, we call plain, I

+think.  His lunch he takes out.  You may see him, walking round the

+quiet square, up and down the narrow street that, leading to nowhere

+in particular, is between twelve and two somewhat deserted.  He

+carries a paper bag, into which at intervals, when he is sure nobody

+is looking, his mouth disappears.  From studying the neighbourhood one

+can guess what it contains.  Saveloys hereabouts are plentiful and

+only twopence each.  There are pie shops, where meat pies are twopence

+and fruit pies a penny.  The lady behind the counter, using deftly a

+broad, flat knife, lifts the little dainty with one twist clean from

+its tiny dish:  it is marvellous, having regard to the thinness of the

+pastry, that she never breaks one.  Roley-poley pudding, sweet and

+wonderfully satisfying, more especially when cold, is but a penny a

+slice.  Peas pudding, though this is an awkward thing to eat out of a

+bag, is comforting upon cold days.  Then with his tea he takes two

+eggs or a haddock, the fourpenny size; maybe on rare occasions, a chop

+or steak; and you fry it for him, madam, though every time he urges on

+you how much he would prefer it grilled, for fried in your one

+frying-pan its flavour becomes somewhat confused.  But maybe this is

+the better for him, for, shutting his eyes and trusting only to smell

+and flavour, he can imagine himself enjoying variety.  He can begin

+with herrings, pass on to liver and bacon, opening his eyes again for

+a moment perceive that he has now arrived at the joint, and closing

+them again, wind up with distinct suggestion of toasted cheese, thus

+avoiding monotony.  For dinner he goes out again.  Maybe he is not

+hungry, late meals are a mistake; or, maybe, putting his hand into his

+pocket and making calculations beneath a lamp-post, appetite may come

+to him.  Then there are places cheerful with the sound of frizzling

+fat, where fried plaice brown and odorous may be had for three

+halfpence, and a handful of sliced potatoes for a penny; where for

+fourpence succulent stewed eels may be discussed; vinegar ad lib.; or

+for sevenpence--but these are red-letter evenings--half a sheep's head

+may be indulged in, which is a supper fit for any king, who happened

+to be hungry.

+

+I explain that I will discuss the matter with my young friend when he

+arrives.  The landlady says, "Certainly, sir:"  she is used to what

+she calls the "wandering Christian;" and easing my conscience by

+slipping a shilling into the "slavey's" astonished, lukewarm hand, I

+pass out again into the long, dreary street, now echoing maybe to the

+sad cry of "Muffins!"

+

+Or sometimes of an evening, the lamp lighted, the remnants of the meat

+tea cleared away, the flickering firelight cosifying the dingy rooms,

+I go a-visiting.  There is no need for me to ring the bell, to mount

+the stairs.  Through the thin transparent walls I can see you plainly,

+old friends of mine, fashions a little changed, that is all.  We wore

+bell-shaped trousers; eight-and-six to measure, seven-and-six if from

+stock; fastened our neckties in dashing style with a horseshoe pin.  I

+think in the matter of waistcoats we had the advantage of you; ours

+were gayer, braver.  Our cuffs and collars were of paper:  sixpence-

+halfpenny the dozen, three-halfpence the pair.  On Sunday they were

+white and glistening; on Monday less aggressively obvious; on Tuesday

+morning decidedly dappled.  But on Tuesday evening, when with natty

+cane, or umbrella neatly rolled in patent leather case, we took our

+promenade down Oxford Street--fashionable hour nine to ten p.m.--we

+could shoot our arms and cock our chins with the best.  Your

+india-rubber linen has its advantages.  Storm does not wither it; it

+braves better the heat and turmoil of the day.  The passing of a

+sponge! and your "Dicky" is itself again.  We had to use bread-crumbs,

+and so sacrifice the glaze.  Yet I cannot help thinking that for the

+first few hours, at all events, our paper was more dazzling.

+

+For the rest I see no change in you, old friends.  I wave you greeting

+from the misty street.  God rest you, gallant gentlemen, lonely and

+friendless and despised; making the best of joyless lives; keeping

+yourselves genteel on twelve, fifteen, or eighteen (ah, but you are

+plutocrats!) shillings a week; saving something even of that, maybe,

+to help the old mother in the country, so proud of her "gentleman" son

+who has book learning and who is "something in the City."  May nothing

+you dismay.  Bullied, and badgered, and baited from nine to six though

+you may be, from then till bedtime you are rorty young dogs.  The

+half-guinea topper, "as worn by the Prince of Wales" (ah, how many a

+meal has it not cost!), warmed before the fire, brushed and polished

+and coaxed, shines resplendent.  The second pair of trousers are drawn

+from beneath the bed; in the gaslight, with well-marked crease from

+top to toe, they will pass for new.  A pleasant evening to you!  May

+your cheap necktie make all the impression your soul can desire!  May

+your penny cigar be mistaken for Havana!  May the barmaid charm your

+simple heart by addressing you as "Baby!"  May some sweet shop-girl

+throw a kindly glance at you, inviting you to walk with her!  May she

+snigger at your humour; may other dogs cast envious looks at you, and

+may no harm come of it!

+

+You dreamers of dreams, you who while your companions play and sleep

+will toil upward in the night!  You have read Mr. Smiles' "Self-Help,"

+Longfellow's "Psalm of Life," and so strengthened attack with

+confidence "French Without a Master," "Bookkeeping in Six Lessons."

+With a sigh to yourselves you turn aside from the alluring streets,

+from the bright, bewitching eyes, into the stuffy air of Birkbeck

+Institutions, Polytechnic Schools.  May success compensate you for

+your youth devoid of pleasure!  May the partner's chair you seen in

+visions be yours before the end!  May you live one day in Clapham in a

+twelve-roomed house!

+

+And, after all, we have our moments, have we not?  The Saturday night

+at the play.  The hours of waiting, they are short.  We converse with

+kindred souls of the British Drama, its past and future:  we have our

+views.  We dream of Florence This, Kate That; in a little while we

+shall see her.  Ah, could she but know how we loved her!  Her photo is

+on our mantelpiece, transforming the dismal little room into a shrine.

+The poem we have so often commenced! when it is finished we will post

+it to her.  At least she will acknowledge its receipt; we can kiss the

+paper her hand has rested on.  The great doors groan, then quiver.

+Ah, the wild thrill of that moment!  Now push for all you are worth:

+charge, wriggle, squirm!  It is an epitome of life.  We are

+through--collarless, panting, pummelled from top to toe:  but what of

+that?  Upward, still upward; then downward with leaps at risk of our

+neck, from bench to bench through the gloom.  We have gained the front

+row!  Would we exchange sensations with the stallite, strolling

+languidly to his seat?  The extravagant dinner once a week!  We

+banquet _a la Francais_, in Soho, for one-and-six, including wine.

+Does Tortoni ever give his customers a repast they enjoy more?  I trow

+not.

+

+My first lodging was an attic in a square the other side of

+Blackfriars Bridge.  The rent of the room, if I remember rightly, was

+three shillings a week with cooking, half-a-crown without.  I

+purchased a methylated spirit stove with kettle and frying-pan, and

+took it without.

+

+Old Hasluck would have helped me willingly, and there were others to

+whom I might have appealed, but a boy's pride held me back.  I would

+make my way alone, win my place in the world by myself.  To Hal,

+knowing he would sympathise with me, I confided the truth.

+

+"Had your mother lived," he told me, "I should have had something to

+say on the subject.  Of course, I knew what had happened, but as it

+is--well, you need not be afraid, I shall not offer you help; indeed,

+I should refuse it were you to ask.  Put your Carlyle in your pocket:

+he is not all voices, but he is the best maker of men I know.  The

+great thing to learn of life is not to be afraid of it."

+

+"Look me up now and then," he added, "and we'll talk about the stars,

+the future of Socialism, and the Woman Question--anything you like

+except about yourself and your twopenny-half-penny affairs."

+

+From another it would have sounded brutal, but I understood him.  And

+so we shook hands and parted for longer than either of us at the time

+expected.  The Franco-German War broke out a few weeks later on, and

+Hal, the love of adventure always strong within him, volunteered his

+services, which were accepted.  It was some years before we met again.

+

+On the door-post of a house in Farringdon Street, not far from the

+Circus, stood in those days a small brass plate, announcing that the

+"Ludgate News Rooms" occupied the third and fourth floors, and that

+the admission to the same was one penny.  We were a seedy company that

+every morning crowded into these rooms:  clerks, shopmen, superior

+artisans, travellers, warehousemen--all of us out of work.  Most of us

+were young, but with us was mingled a sprinkling of elder men, and

+these latter were always the saddest and most silent of this little

+whispering army of the down-at-heel.  Roughly speaking, we were

+divided into two groups:  the newcomers, cheery, confident.  These

+would flit from newspaper to newspaper with buzz of pleasant

+anticipation, select their advertisement as one choosing some dainty

+out of a rich and varied menu card, and replying to it as one

+conferring favour.

+

+"Dear Sir,--in reply to your advertisement in to-day's _Standard_, I

+shall be pleased to accept the post vacant in your office.  I am of

+good appearance and address.  I am an excellent--"  It was really

+marvellous the quality and number of our attainments.  French! we

+wrote and spoke it fluently, _a la Ahn_.  German! of this we possessed

+a slighter knowledge, it was true, but sufficient for mere purposes of

+commerce.  Bookkeeping! arithmetic! geometry! we played with them.

+The love of work! it was a passion with us.  Our moral character! it

+would have adorned a Free Kirk Elder.  "I could call on you to-morrow

+or Friday between eleven and one, or on Saturday any time up till two.

+Salary required, two guineas a week.  An early answer will oblige.

+Yours truly."

+

+The old stagers did not buzz.  Hour after hour they sat writing,

+steadily, methodically, with day by day less hope and heavier fears:

+

+"Sir,-Your advt. in to-day's _D. T._  I am--" of such and such an age.

+List of qualifications less lengthy, set forth with more modesty;

+object desired being air of verisimilitude.--"If you decide to engage

+me I will endeavour to give you every satisfaction.  Any time you like

+to appoint I will call on you.  I should not ask a high salary to

+start with.  Yours obediently."

+

+Dozens of the first letter, hundreds of the second, I wrote with

+painful care, pen carefully chosen, the one-inch margin down the left

+hand side of the paper first portioned off with dots.  To three or

+four I received a curt reply, instructing me to call.  But the shyness

+that had stood so in my way during the earlier half of my school days

+had now, I know not why, returned upon me, hampering me at every turn.

+A shy child grown-up folks at all events can understand and forgive;

+but a shy young man is not unnaturally regarded as a fool.  I gave the

+impression of being awkward, stupid, sulky.  The more I strove against

+my temperament the worse I became.  My attempts to be at my ease, to

+assert myself, resulted--I could see it myself--only in rudeness.

+

+"Well, I have got to see one or two others.  We will write and let you

+know," was the conclusion of each interview, and the end, as far as I

+was concerned, of the enterprise.

+

+My few pounds, guard them how I would, were dwindling rapidly.

+Looking back, it is easy enough to regard one's early struggles from a

+humorous point of view.  One knows the story, it all ended happily.

+But at the time there is no means of telling whether one's biography

+is going to be comedy or tragedy.  There were moments when I felt

+confident it was going to be the latter.  Occasionally, when one is

+feeling well, it is not unpleasant to contemplate with pathetic

+sympathy one's own death-bed.  One thinks of the friends and relations

+who at last will understand and regret one, be sorry they had not

+behaved themselves better.  But myself, there was no one to regret.  I

+felt very small, very helpless.  The world was big.  I feared it might

+walk over me, trample me down, never seeing me.  I seemed unable to

+attract its attention.

+

+One morning I found waiting for me at the Reading Room another of the

+usual missives.  It ran:  "Will Mr. P. Kelver call at the above

+address to-morrow morning between ten-thirty and eleven.  The paper

+was headed:  "Lott and Co., Indian Commission Agents, Aldersgate

+Street."  Without much hope I returned to my lodgings, changed my

+clothes, donned my silk hat, took my one pair of gloves, drew its silk

+case over my holey umbrella; and so equipped for fight with Fate made

+my way to Aldersgate Street.  For a quarter of an hour or so, being

+too soon, I walked up and down the pavement outside the house, gazing

+at the second-floor windows, behind which, so the door-plate had

+informed me, were the offices of Lott & Co.  I could not recall their

+advertisement, nor my reply to it.  The firm was evidently not in a

+very flourishing condition.  I wondered idly what salary they would

+offer.  For a moment I dreamt of a Cheeryble Brother asking me kindly

+if I thought I could do with thirty shillings a week as a beginning;

+but the next I recalled my usual fate, and considered whether it was

+even worth while to climb the stairs, go through what to me was a

+painful ordeal, merely to be impressed again with the sense of my own

+worthlessness.

+

+A fine rain began to fall.  I did not wish to unroll my umbrella, yet

+felt nervous for my hat.  It was five minutes to the half hour.

+Listlessly I crossed the road and mounted the bare stairs to the

+second floor.  Two doors faced me, one marked "Private."  I tapped

+lightly at the second.  Not hearing any response, after a second or

+two I tapped again.  A sound reached me, but it was unintelligible.  I

+knocked yet again, still louder.  This time I heard a reply in a

+shrill, plaintive tone:

+

+"Oh, do come in."

+

+The tone was one of pathetic entreaty.  I turned the handle and

+entered.  It was a small room, dimly lighted by a dirty window, the

+bottom half of which was rendered opaque by tissue paper pasted to its

+panes.  The place suggested a village shop rather than an office.

+Pots of jam, jars of pickles, bottles of wine, biscuit tins, parcels

+of drapery, boxes of candles, bars of soap, boots, packets of

+stationery, boxes of cigars, tinned provisions, guns,

+cartridges--things sufficient to furnish a desert island littered

+every available corner.  At a small desk under the window sat a youth

+with a remarkably small body and a remarkably large head; so

+disproportionate were the two I should hardly have been surprised had

+he put up his hands and taken it off.  Half in the room and half out,

+I paused.

+

+"Is this Lott & Co.?" I enquired.

+

+"No," he answered; "it's a room."  One eye was fixed upon me, dull and

+glassy; it never blinked, it never wavered.  With the help of the

+other he continued his writing.

+

+"I mean," I explained, coming entirely into the room, "are these the

+offices of Lott & Co.?"

+

+"It's one of them," he replied; "the back one.  If you're really

+anxious for a job, you can shut the door."

+

+I complied with his suggestion, and then announced that I was Mr.

+Kelver--Mr. Paul Kelver.

+

+"Minikin's my name," he returned, "Sylvanus Minikin.  You don't happen

+by any chance to know what you've come for, I suppose?"

+

+Looking at his body, my inclination was to pick my way among the goods

+that covered the floor and pull his ears for him.  From his grave and

+massive face, he might, for all I knew, be the head clerk.

+

+"I have called to see Mr. Lott," I replied, with dignity; "I have an

+appointment."  I produced the letter from my pocket, and leaning

+across a sewing-machine, I handed it to him for his inspection.

+Having read it, he suddenly took from its socket the eye with which he

+had been hitherto regarding me, and proceeding to polish it upon his

+pocket handkerchief, turned upon me his other.  Having satisfied

+himself, he handed me back my letter.

+

+"Want my advice?" he asked.

+

+I thought it might be useful to me, so replied in the affirmative.

+

+"Hook it," was his curt counsel.

+

+"Why?" I asked.  "Isn't he a good employer?"

+

+Replacing his glass eye, he turned again to his work.  "If employment

+is what you want," answered Mr. Minikin, "you'll get it.  Best

+employer in London.  He'll keep you going for twenty-four hours a day,

+and then offer you overtime at half salary."

+

+"I must get something to do," I confessed.

+

+"Sit down then," suggested Mr. Minikin.  "Rest while you can."

+

+I took the chair; it was the only chair in the room, with the

+exception of the one Minikin was sitting on.

+

+"Apart from his being a bit of a driver," I asked, "what sort of a man

+is he?  Is he pleasant?"

+

+"Never saw him put out but once," answered Minikin.

+

+It sounded well.  "When was that?" I asked.

+

+"All the time I've known him."

+

+My spirits continued to sink.  Had I been left alone with Minikin much

+longer, I might have ended by following his advice, "hooking it"

+before Mr. Lott arrived.  But the next moment I heard the other door

+open, and some one entered the private office.  Then the bell rang,

+and Minikin disappeared, leaving the communicating door ajar behind

+him.  The conversation that I overheard was as follows:

+

+"Why isn't Mr. Skeat here?"

+

+"Because he hasn't come."

+

+"Where are the letters?"

+

+"Under your nose."

+

+"How dare you answer me like that?"

+

+"Well, it's the truth.  They are under your nose."

+

+"Did you give Thorneycroft's man my message?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"What did he answer?"

+

+"Said you were a liar."

+

+"Oh, he did, did he!  What did you reply?"

+

+"Asked him to tell me something I didn't know."

+

+"Thought that clever, didn't you?"

+

+"Not bad."

+

+Whatever faults might be laid to Mr. Lott's door, he at least, I

+concluded, possesssed the virtue of self-control.

+

+"Anybody been here?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Who?"

+

+"Mr. Kelver--Mr. Paul Kelver."

+

+"Kelver, Kelver.  Who's Kelver?"

+

+"Know what he is--a fool."

+

+"What do you mean?"

+

+"He's come after the place."

+

+"Is he there?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"What's he like?"

+

+"Not bad looking; fair--"

+

+"Idiot!  I mean is he smart?"

+

+"Just at present--got all his Sunday clothes on."

+

+"Send him in to me.  Don't go, don't go."

+

+"How can I send him in to you if I don't go?"

+

+"Take these.  Have you finished those bills of lading?"

+

+"No."

+

+"Good God! when will you have finished them?"

+

+"Half an hour after I have begun them."

+

+"Get out, get out!  Has that door been open all the time?"

+

+"Well, I don't suppose it's opened itself."

+

+Minikin re-entered with papers in his hand.  "In you go," he said.

+"Heaven help you!"  And I passed in and closed the door behind me.

+

+The room was a replica of the one I had just left.  If possible, it

+was more crowded, more packed with miscellaneous articles.  I picked

+my way through these and approached the desk.  Mr. Lott was a small,

+dingy-looking man, with very dirty hands, and small, restless eyes.  I

+was glad that he was not imposing, or my shyness might have descended

+upon me; as it was, I felt better able to do myself justice.  At once

+he plunged into the business by seizing and waving in front of my eyes

+a bulky bundle of letters tied together with red tape.

+

+"One hundred and seventeen answers to an advertisement," he cried with

+evident satisfaction, "in one day!  That shows you the state of the

+labour market!"

+

+I agreed it was appalling.

+

+"Poor devils, poor devils!" murmured Mr. Lott "what will become of

+them?  Some of them will starve.  Terrible death, starvation, Kelver;

+takes such a long time--especially when you're young."

+

+Here also I found myself in accord with him.

+

+"Living with your parents?"

+

+I explained to him my situation.

+

+"Any friends?"

+

+I informed him I was entirely dependent upon my own efforts.

+

+"Any money?  Anything coming in?"

+

+I told him I had a few pounds still remaining to me, but that after

+that was gone I should be penniless.

+

+"And to think, Kelver, that there are hundreds, thousands of young

+fellows precisely in your position!  How sad, how very sad!  How long

+have you been looking for a berth?"

+

+"A month," I answered him.

+

+"I thought as much.  Do you know why I selected your letter out of the

+whole batch?"

+

+I replied I hoped it was because he judged from it I should prove

+satisfactory.

+

+"Because it's the worst written of them all."  He pushed it across to

+me.  "Look at it.  Awful, isn't it?"

+

+I admitted that handwriting was not my strong point.

+

+"Nor spelling either," he added, and with truth.  "Who do you think

+will engage you if I don't?"

+

+"Nobody," he continued, without waiting for me to reply.  "A month

+hence you will still be looking for a berth, and a month after that.

+Now, I'm going to do you a good turn; save you from destitution; give

+you a start in life."

+

+I expressed my gratitude.

+

+He waived it aside.  "That is my notion of philanthropy:  help those

+that nobody else will help.  That young fellow in the other room--he

+isn't a bad worker, he's smart, but he's impertinent."

+

+I murmured that I had gathered so much.

+

+"Doesn't mean to be, can't help it.  Noticed his trick of looking at

+you with his glass eye, keeping the other turned away from you?"

+

+I replied that I had.

+

+"Always does it.  Used to irritate his last employer to madness.  Said

+to him one day:  'Do turn that signal lamp of yours off, Minikin, and

+look at me with your real eye.'  What do you think he answered?  That

+it was the only one he'd got, and that he didn't want to expose it to

+shocks.  Wouldn't have mattered so much if it hadn't been one of the

+ugliest men in London."

+

+I murmured my indignation.

+

+"I put up with him.  Nobody else would.  The poor fellow must live."

+

+I expressed admiration at Mr. Lott's humanity.

+

+"You don't mind work?  You're not one of those good-for-nothings who

+sleep all day and wake up when it's time to go home?"

+

+I assured him that in whatever else I might fail I could promise him

+industry.

+

+"With some of them," complained Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness,

+"it's nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets.  Work,

+business--oh, no.  I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into

+the workhouse.  No thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds

+them, clothes them.  How much salary do you want?"

+

+I hesitated.  I gathered this was not a Cheeryble Brother; it would be

+necessary to be moderate in one's demands.  "Five-and-twenty shillings

+a week," I suggested.

+

+He repeated the figure in a scream.  "Five-and-twenty shillings for

+writing like that!  And can't spell commission!  Don't know anything

+about the business.  Five-and-twenty!--Tell you what I'll do:  I'll

+give you twelve."

+

+"But I can't live on twelve," I explained.

+

+"Can't live on twelve!  Do you know why?  Because you don't know how

+to live.  I know you all.  One veal and ham pie, one roley-poley, one

+Dutch cheese and a pint of bitter."

+

+His recital made my mouth water.

+

+"You overload your stomachs, then you can't work.  Half the diseases

+you young fellows suffer from are brought about by overeating."

+

+"Now, you take my advice," continued Mr. Lott; "try vegetarianism.  In

+the morning, a little oatmeal.  Wonderfully strengthening stuff,

+oatmeal:  look at the Scotch.  For dinner, beans.  Why, do you know

+there's more nourishment in half a pint of lentil beans than in a

+pound of beefsteak--more gluten.  That's what you want, more gluten;

+no corpses, no dead bodies.  Why, I've known young fellows,

+vegetarians, who have lived like fighting cocks on sevenpence a day.

+Seven times seven are forty-nine.  How much do you pay for your room?"

+

+I told him.

+

+"Four-and-a-penny and two-and-six makes six-and-seven.  That leaves

+you five and fivepence for mere foolery.  Good God!  what more do you

+want?"

+

+"I'll take eighteen, sir," I answered.  "I can't really manage on

+less."

+

+"Very well, I won't beat you down," he answered.  "Fifteen shillings a

+week."

+

+"I said eighteen," I persisted.

+

+"Well, and I said fifteen," he retorted, somewhat indignant at the

+quibbling.  "That's splitting the difference, isn't it?  I can't be

+fairer than that."

+

+I dared not throw away the one opportunity that had occurred.

+Anything was better than return to the Reading Rooms, and the empty

+days full of despair.  I accepted, and it was agreed that I should

+come the following Monday morning.

+

+"Nabbed?" was Minikin's enquiry on my return to the back office for my

+hat.

+

+I nodded.

+

+"What's he wasting on you?"

+

+"Fifteen shillings a week," I whispered.

+

+"Felt sure somehow that he'd take a liking to you," answered Minikin.

+"Don't be ungrateful and look thin on it."

+

+Outside the door I heard Mr. Lott's shrill voice demanding to know

+where postage stamps were to be found.

+

+"At the Post-office," was Minikin's reply.

+

+The hours were long--in fact, we had no office hours; we got away when

+we could, which was rarely before seven or eight--but my work was

+interesting.  It consisted of buying for unfortunate clients in India

+or the Colonies anything they might happen to want, from a stage coach

+to a pot of marmalade; packing it and shipping it across to them.  Our

+"commission" was anything they could be persuaded to pay over and

+above the value of the article.  I was not much interfered with.

+There was that to be said for Lott & Co., so long as the work was done

+he was quite content to leave one to one's own way of doing it.  And

+hastening through the busy streets, bargaining in shop or warehouse,

+bustling important in and out the swarming docks, I often thanked my

+stars that I was not as some poor two-pound-a-week clerk chained to a

+dreary desk.

+

+The fifteen shillings a week was a tight fit; but that was not my

+trouble.  Reduce your denominator--you know the quotation.  I found it

+no philosophical cant, but a practical solution of life.  My food cost

+me on the average a shilling a day.  If more of us limited our

+commissariat bill to the same figure, there would be less dyspepsia

+abroad.  Generally I cooked my own meals in my own frying-pan; but

+occasionally I would indulge myself with a more orthodox dinner at a

+cook shop, or tea with hot buttered toast at a coffee-shop; and but

+for the greasy table-cloth and the dirty-handed waiter, such would

+have been even greater delights.  The shilling a week for amusements

+afforded me at least one, occasionally two, visits to the theatre, for

+in those days there were Paradises where for sixpence one could be a

+god.  Fourpence a week on tobacco gave me half-a-dozen cigarettes a

+day; I have spent more on smoke and derived less satisfaction.  Dress

+was my greatest difficulty.  One anxiety in life the poor man is

+saved:  he knows not the haunting sense of debt.  My tailor never

+dunned me.  His principle was half-a-crown down on receipt of order,

+the balance on the handing over of the goods.  No system is perfect;

+the method avoided friction, it is true; yet on the other hand it was

+annoying to be compelled to promenade, come Sundays, in shiny elbows

+and frayed trousers, knowing all the while that finished, waiting, was

+a suit in which one might have made one's mark--had only one shut

+one's eyes passing that pastry-cook's window on pay-day.  Surely there

+should be a sumptuary law compelling pastry-cooks to deal in cellars

+or behind drawn blinds.

+

+Were it because of its mere material hardships that to this day I

+think of that period of my life with a shudder, I should not here

+confess to it.  I was alone.  I knew not a living soul to whom I dared

+to speak, who cared to speak to me.  For those first twelve months

+after my mother's death I lived alone, thought alone, felt alone.  In

+the morning, during the busy day, it was possible to bear; but in the

+evenings the sense of desolation gripped me like a physical pain.  The

+summer evenings came again, bringing with them the long, lingering

+light so laden with melancholy.  I would walk into the Parks and,

+sitting there, watch with hungry eyes the men and women, boys and

+girls, moving all around me, talking, laughing, interested in one

+another; feeling myself some speechless ghost, seeing but not seen,

+crying to the living with a voice they heard not.  Sometimes a

+solitary figure would pass by and glance back at me; some lonely

+creature like myself longing for human sympathy.  In the teeming city

+must have been thousands such--young men and women to whom a friendly

+ear, a kindly voice, would have been as the water of life.  Each

+imprisoned in his solitary cell of shyness, we looked at one another

+through the grating with condoling eyes; further than that was

+forbidden to us.  Once, in Kensington Gardens, a woman turned, then

+slowly retracing her steps, sat down beside me on the bench.  Neither

+of us spoke; had I done so she would have risen and moved away; yet

+there was understanding between us.  To each of us it was some comfort

+to sit thus for a little while beside the other.  Had she poured out

+her heart to me, she could have told me nothing more than I knew:  "I,

+too, am lonely, friendless; I, too, long for the sound of a voice, the

+touch of a hand.  It is hard for you, it is harder still for me, a

+girl; shut out from the bright world that laughs around me; denied the

+right of youth to joy and pleasure; denied the right of womanhood to

+love and tenderness."

+

+The footsteps to and fro grew fewer.  She moved to rise.  Stirred by

+an impulse, I stretched out my hand, then seeing the flush upon her

+face, drew it back hastily.  But the next moment, changing her mind,

+she held hers out to me, and I took it.  It was the first clasp of a

+hand I had felt since six months before I had said good-bye to Hal.

+She turned and walked quickly away.  I stood watching her; she never

+looked round, and I never saw her again.

+

+I take no credit to myself for keeping straight, as it is termed,

+during these days.  For good or evil, my shyness prevented my taking

+part in the flirtations of the streets.  Whether inviting eyes were

+ever thrown to me as to others, I cannot say.  Sometimes, fancying

+so--hoping so, I would follow.  Yet never could I summon up sufficient

+resolution to face the possible rebuff before some less timid swain

+would swoop down upon the quarry.  Then I would hurry on, cursing

+myself for the poorness of my spirit, fancying mocking contempt in the

+laughter that followed me.

+

+On a Sunday I would rise early and take long solitary walks into the

+country.  One winter's day--I remember it was on the road between

+Edgware and Stanmore--there issued from a by-road a little ahead of me

+a party of boys and girls, young people about my own age, bound

+evidently on a skating expedition.  I could hear the musical ring of

+their blades, clattering as they walked, and the sound of their merry

+laughter so clear and bell-like through the frosty air.  And an aching

+anguish fell upon me.  I felt a mad desire to run after them, to plead

+with them to let me walk with them a little way, to let me laugh and

+talk with them.  Every now and then they would pirouette to cry some

+jest to one another.  I could see their faces:  the girls' so sweetly

+alluring, framed by their dainty hats and furs, the bright colour in

+their cheeks, the light in their teasing eyes.  A little further on

+they turned aside into a by-lane, and I stood at the corner listening

+till the last echo of their joyous voices died away, and on a stone

+that still remains standing there I sat down and sobbed.

+

+I would walk about the streets always till very late.  I dreaded the

+echoing clang of the little front door when I closed it behind me, the

+climbing of the silent stairs, the solitude that waited for me in my

+empty room.  It would rise and come towards me like some living thing,

+kissing me with cold lips.  Often, unable to bear the closeness of its

+presence, I would creep out into the streets.  There, even though it

+followed me, I was not alone with it.  Sometimes I would pace them the

+whole night, sharing them with the other outcasts while the city

+slept.

+

+Occasionally, during these nightly wanderings would come to me moments

+of exaltation when fear fell from me and my blood would leap with joy

+at prospect of the fierce struggle opening out before me.  Then it was

+the ghostly city sighing round me that seemed dead, I the only living

+thing real among a world of shadows.  In long, echoing streets I would

+laugh and shout.  Misunderstanding policemen would turn their

+bull's-eyes on me, gruffly give me practical advice:  they knew not

+who I was!  I stood the centre of a vast galanty-show:  the phantom

+houses came and went; from some there shone bright lights; the doors

+were open, and little figures flitted in and out, the tiny coaches

+glided to and fro, manikins grotesque but pitiful crept across the

+star-lit curtain.

+

+Then the mood would change.  The city, grim and vast, stretched round

+me endless.  I crawled, a mere atom, within its folds, helpless,

+insignificant, absurd.  The houseless forms that shared my vigil were

+my fellows.  What were we?  Animalcule upon its bosom, that it saw

+not, heeded not.  For company I would mingle with them:  ragged men,

+frowsy women, ageless youths, gathered round the red glow of some

+coffee stall.

+

+Rarely would we speak to one another.  More like animals we browsed

+there, sipping the halfpenny cup of hot water coloured with coffee

+grounds (at least it was warm), munching the moist slab of coarse

+cake; looking with dull, indifferent eyes each upon the wretchedness

+of the others.  Perhaps some two would whisper to each other in

+listless, monotonous tone, broken here and there by a short, mirthless

+laugh; some shivering creature, not yet case-hardened to despair,

+seek, perhaps, the relief of curses that none heeded.  Later, a faint

+chill breeze would shake the shadows loose, a thin, wan light streak

+the dark air with shade, and silently, stealthily, we would fade away

+and disappear.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II.

+

+PAUL, ESCAPING FROM HIS SOLITUDE, FALLS INTO STRANGE COMPANY.  AND

+BECOMES CAPTIVE TO ONE OF HAUGHTY MIEN.

+

+All things pass, even the self-inflicted sufferings of shy young men,

+condemned by temperament to solitude.  Came the winter evenings, I

+took to work:  in it one may drown much sorrow for oneself.  With its

+handful of fire, its two candles lighted, my "apartment" was more

+inviting.  I bought myself paper, pens and ink.  Great or small, what

+more can a writer do?  He is but the would-be medium:  will the spirit

+voices employ him or reject him?

+

+London, with its million characters, grave and gay; its ten thousand

+romances, its mysteries, its pathos, and its humour, lay to my hand.

+It stretched before me, asking only intelligent observation, more or

+less truthful report.  But that I could make a story out of the things

+I really knew never occurred to me.  My tales were of cottage maidens,

+of bucolic yeomen.  My scenes were laid in windmills, among mountains,

+or in moated granges.  I fancy this phase of folly is common to most

+youthful fictionists.

+

+A trail of gentle melancholy lay over them.  Sentiment was more

+popular then than it is now, and, as do all beginners, I scrupulously

+followed fashion.  Generally speaking, to be a heroine of mine was

+fatal.  However naturally her hair might curl--and curly hair, I

+believe, is the hall-mark of vitality; whatever other indications of

+vigorous health she might exhibit in the first chapter, such as

+"dancing eyes," "colour that came and went," "ringing laughter,"

+"fawn-like agility," she was tolerably certain, poor girl, to end in

+an untimely grave.  Snowdrops and early primroses (my botany I worked

+up from a useful little volume, "Our Garden Favourites, Illustrated")

+grew there as in a forcing house; and if in the neighbourhood of the

+coast, the sea-breezes would choose that particular churchyard,

+somewhat irreverently, for their favourite playground.  Years later a

+white-haired man would come there leading little children by the hand,

+and to them he would tell the tale anew, which must have been a dismal

+entertainment for them.

+

+Now and then, by way of change, it would be the gentleman who would

+fall a victim of the deadly atmosphere of my literature.  It was of no

+particular consequence, so he himself would conclude in his last

+soliloquy; "it was better so."  Snowdrops and primroses, for whatever

+consolation they might have been to him, it was hopeless for him to

+expect; his grave, marked by a rude cross, being as a rule situate in

+an exceptionally unfrequented portion of the African veldt or amid

+burning sands.  For description of final scenery on these occasions a

+visit to the British Museum reading-room would be necessary.

+

+Dismal little fledgelings!  And again and again would I drive them

+from the nest; again and again they fluttered back to me, soiled,

+crumpled, physically damaged.  Yet one person had admired them, cried

+over them--myself.

+

+All methods I tried.  Sometimes I would send them forth accompanied by

+a curt business note of the take-it-or-leave-it order.  At other times

+I would attach to it pathetic appeals for its consideration.

+Sometimes I would give value to it, stating that the price was five

+guineas and requesting that the cheque should be crossed; at other

+times seek to tickle editorial cupidity by offering this, my first

+contribution to their pages, for nothing--my sample packet, so to

+speak, sent gratis, one trial surely sufficient.  Now I would write

+sarcastically, enclosing together with the stamped envelope for return

+a brutally penned note of rejection.  Or I would write frankly,

+explaining elaborately that I was a beginner, and asking to be told my

+faults--if any.

+

+Not one found a resting place for its feet.  A month, a week, a couple

+of days, they would remain away from me, then return.  I never lost a

+single one.  I wished I had.  It would have varied the monotony.

+

+I hated the poor little slavey who, bursting joyously into the room,

+would hold them out to me from between her apron-hidden thumb and

+finger; her chronic sniff I translated into contempt.  If flying down

+the stairs at the sound of the postman's knock I secured it from his

+hands, it seemed to me he smiled.  Tearing them from their envelopes,

+I would curse them, abuse them, fling them into the fire sometimes;

+but before they were more than scorched I would snatch them out,

+smooth them, reread them.  The editor himself could never have seen

+them; it was impossible; some jealous underling had done this thing.

+I had sent them to the wrong paper.  They had arrived at the

+inopportune moment.  Their triumph would come.  Rewriting the first

+and last sheets, I would send them forth again with fresh hope.

+

+Meanwhile, understanding that the would-be happy warrior must shine in

+camp as well as field, I sought to fit myself also for the social side

+of life.  Smoking and drinking were the twin sins I found most

+difficulty in acquiring.  I am not claiming a mental excellence so

+much as confessing a bodily infirmity.  The spirit had always been

+willing, but my flesh was weak.  Fired by emulation, I had at school

+occasionally essayed a cigarette.  The result had been distinctly

+unsatisfactory, and after some two or three attempts, I had abandoned,

+for the time being, all further endeavour; excusing my

+faint-heartedness by telling myself with sanctimonious air that

+smoking was bad for growing boys; attempting to delude myself by

+assuming, in presence of contemporaries of stronger stomach, fine pose

+of disapproval; yet in my heart knowing myself a young hypocrite,

+disguising physical cowardice in the robes of moral courage:  a

+self-deception to which human nature is prone.

+

+So likewise now and again I had tasted the wine that was red, and that

+stood year in, year out, decanted on our sideboard.  The true

+inwardness of St. Paul's prescription had been revealed to me; the

+attitude--sometimes sneered at--of those who drink it under doctor's

+orders, regarding it purely as a medicine, appeared to me reasonable.

+I had noticed also that others, some of them grown men even, making

+wry faces, when drinking my mother's claret, and had concluded

+therefrom that taste for strong liquor was an accomplishment less

+easily acquired than is generally supposed.  The lack of it in a young

+man could be no disgrace, and accordingly effort in that direction

+also had I weakly postponed.

+

+But now, a gentleman at large, my education could no longer be

+delayed.  To the artist in particular was training--and severe

+training--an absolute necessity.  Recently fashion has changed

+somewhat, but a quarter of a century ago a genius who did not smoke

+and drink--and that more than was good for him--would have been

+dismissed without further evidence as an impostor.  About the genius I

+was hopeful, but at no time positively certain.  As regarded the

+smoking and drinking, so much at least I could make sure of.  I set to

+work methodically, conscientiously.  Smoking, experience taught me,

+was better practised on Saturday nights, Sunday affording me the

+opportunity of walking off the effects.  Patience and determination

+were eventually crowned with success:  I learned to smoke a cigarette

+to all appearance as though I were enjoying it.  Young men of less

+character might here have rested content, but attainment of the

+highest has always been with me a motive force.  The cigarette

+conquered, I next proceeded to attack the cigar.  My first one I

+remember well:  most men do.  It was at a smoking concert held in the

+Islington Drill Hall, to which Minikin had invited me.  Not feeling

+sure whether my growing dizziness were due solely to the cigar, or in

+part to the hot, over-crowded room, I made my excuses and slipped out.

+I found myself in a small courtyard, divided from a neighbouring

+garden by a low wall.  The cause of my trouble was clearly the cigar.

+My inclination was to take it from my mouth and see how far I could

+throw it.  Conscience, on the other hand, urged me to persevere.  It

+occurred to me that if climbing on to the wall I could walk along it

+from end to end, there would be no excuse for my not heeding the

+counsels of perfection.  If, on the contrary, try as I might, the wall

+proved not wide enough for my footsteps, then I should be entitled to

+lose the beastly thing, and, as best I could, make my way home to bed.

+I attained the wall with some difficulty and commenced my

+self-inflicted ordeal.  Two yards further I found myself lying across

+the wall, my legs hanging down one side, my head overhanging the

+other.  The position proving suitable to my requirements, I maintained

+it.  Inclination, again seizing its opportunity, urged me then and

+there to take a solemn vow never to smoke again.  I am proud to write

+that through that hour of temptation I remained firm; strengthening

+myself by whispering to myself:  "Never despair.  What others can do,

+so can you.  Is not all victory won through suffering?"

+

+A liking for drink I had found, if possible, even yet more difficult

+of achievement.  Spirits I almost despaired of.  Once, confusing

+bottles, I drank some hair oil in mistake for whiskey, and found it

+decidedly less nauseous.  But twice a week I would force myself to

+swallow a glass of beer, standing over myself insisting on my draining

+it to the bitter dregs.  As reward afterwards, to take the taste out

+of my mouth, I would treat myself to chocolates; at the same time

+comforting myself by assuring myself that it was for my good, that

+there would come a day when I should really like it, and be grateful

+to myself for having been severe with myself.

+

+In other and more sensible directions I sought also to progress.

+Gradually I was overcoming my shyness.  It was a slow process.  I

+found the best plan was not to mind being shy, to accept it as part of

+my temperament, and with others laugh at it.  The coldness of an

+indifferent world is of service in hardening a too sensitive skin.

+The gradual rubbings of existence were rounding off my many corners.

+I became possible to my fellow creatures, and they to me.  I began to

+take pleasure in their company.

+

+By directing me to this particular house in Nelson Square, Fate had

+done to me a kindness.  I flatter myself we were an interesting

+menagerie gathered together under its leaky roof.  Mrs. Peedles, our

+landlady, who slept in the basement with the slavey, had been an

+actress in Charles Keane's company at the old Princess's.  There, it

+is true, she had played only insignificant parts.  London, as she

+would explain to us was even then but a poor judge of art, with

+prejudices.  Besides an actor-manager, hampered by a wife--we

+understood.  But previously in the Provinces there had been a career

+of glory:  Juliet, Amy Robsart, Mrs. Haller in "The Stranger"--almost

+the entire roll of the "Legitimates".  Showed we any signs of

+disbelief, proof was forthcoming:  handbills a yard long, rich in

+notes of exclamation:  "On Tuesday Evening!  By Special Desire!!!

+Blessington's Theatre!  In the Meadow, adjoining the Falcon

+Arms!"--"On Saturday!  Under the Patronage of Col. Sir William and the

+Officers of the 74th!!!!  In the Corn Exchange!"  Maybe it would

+convince us further were she to run through a passage here and there,

+say Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking scene, or from Ophelia's entrance in

+the fourth act?  It would be no trouble; her memory was excellent.  We

+would hasten to assure her of our perfect faith.

+

+Listening to her, it was difficult, as she herself would frankly

+admit, to imagine her the once "arch Miss Lucretia Barry;" looking at

+her, to remember there had been an evening when she had been "the

+cynosure of every eye."  One found it necessary to fortify oneself

+with perusal of underlined extracts from ancient journals, much

+thumbed and creased, thoughtfully lent to one for the purpose.  Since

+those days Fate had woven round her a mantle of depression.  She was

+now a faded, watery-eyed little woman, prone on the slightest

+provocation to sit down suddenly On the nearest chair and at once

+commence a history of her troubles.  Quite unconscious of this

+failing, it was an idea of hers that she was an exceptionally cheerful

+person.

+

+"But there, fretting's no good.  We must grin and bear things in this

+world," she would conclude, wiping her eyes upon her apron.  "It's

+better to laugh than to cry, I always say."  And to prove that this

+was no mere idle sentiment, she would laugh then and there upon the

+spot.

+

+Much stair-climbing had bestowed upon her a shortness of breath, which

+no amount of panting in her resting moments was able to make good.

+

+"You don't know 'ow to breathe," explained our second floor front to

+her on one occasion, a kindly young man; "you don't swallow it, you

+only gargle with it.  Take a good draught and shut your mouth; don't

+be frightened of it; don't let it out again till it's done something:

+that's what it's 'ere for."

+

+He stood over her with his handkerchief pressed against her mouth to

+assist her; but it was of no use.

+

+"There don't seem any room for it inside me," she explained.

+

+Bells had become to her the business of life; she lived listening for

+them.  Converse to her was a filling in of time while waiting for

+interruptions.

+

+A bottle of whiskey fell into my hands that Christmas time, a present

+from a commercial traveller in the way of business.  Not liking

+whiskey myself, it was no sacrifice for me to reserve it for the

+occasional comfort of Mrs. Peedles, when, breathless, with her hands

+to her side, she would sink upon the chair nearest to my door.  Her

+poor, washed-out face would lighten at the suggestion.

+

+"Ah, well," she would reply, "I don't mind if I do.  It's a poor heart

+that never rejoices."

+

+And then, her tongue unloosened, she would sit there and tell me

+stories of my predecessors, young men lodgers who like myself had

+taken her bed-sitting-rooms, and of the woes and misfortunes that had

+overtaken them.  I gathered that a more unlucky house I could not have

+selected.  A former tenant of my own room, of whom I strangely

+reminded her, had written poetry on my very table.  He was now in

+Portland doing five years for forgery.  Mrs. Peedles appeared to

+regard the two accomplishments as merely different expressions of the

+same art.  Another of her young men, as she affectionately called us,

+had been of studious ambition.  His career up to a point appeared to

+have been brilliant.  "What he mightn't have been," according to Mrs.

+Peedles, there was practically no saying; what he happened to be at

+the moment of conversation was an unpromising inmate of the Hanwell

+lunatic asylum.

+

+"I've always noticed it," Mrs. Peedles would explain; "it's always the

+most deserving, those that try hardest, to whom trouble comes.  I'm

+sure I don't know why."

+

+I was glad on the whole when that bottle of whiskey was finished.  A

+second might have driven me to suicide.

+

+There was no Mr. Peedles--at least, not for Mrs. Peedles, though as an

+individual he continued to exist. He had been "general utility" at the

+Princess's--the old terms were still in vogue at that time--a fine

+figure of a man in his day, so I was given to understand, but one

+easily led away, especially by minxes.  Mrs. Peedles spoke bitterly of

+general utilities as people of not much use.

+

+For working days Mrs. Peedles had one dress and one cap, both black

+and void of ostentation; but on Sundays and holidays she would appear

+metamorphosed.  She had carefully preserved the bulk of her stage

+wardrobe, even to the paste-decked shoes and tinsel jewelry.

+Shapeless in classic garb as Hermia, or bulgy in brocade and velvet as

+Lady Teazle, she would receive her few visitors on Sunday evenings,

+discarded puppets like herself, with whom the conversation was of

+gayer nights before their wires had been cut; or, her glory hid from

+the ribald street beneath a mackintosh, pay her few calls.  Maybe it

+was the unusual excitement that then brought colour into her furrowed

+cheeks, that straightened and darkened her eyebrows, at other times so

+singularly unobtrusive.  Be this how it may, the change was

+remarkable, only the thin grey hair and the work-worn hands remaining

+for purposes of identification.  Nor was the transformation merely one

+of surface.  Mrs. Peedles hung on her hook behind the kitchen door,

+dingy, limp, discarded; out of the wardrobe with the silks and satins

+was lifted down to be put on as an undergarment Miss Lucretia Barry,

+like her costumes somewhat aged, somewhat withered, but still

+distinctly "arch."

+

+In the room next to me lived a law-writer and his wife.  They were

+very old and miserably poor.  The fault was none of theirs.  Despite

+copy-books maxims, there is in this world such a thing as

+ill-luck-persistent, monotonous, that gradually wears away all power

+of resistance.  I learned from them their history:  it was hopelessly

+simple, hopelessly uninstructive.  He had been a schoolmaster, she a

+pupil teacher; they had married young, and for a while the world had

+smiled upon them.  Then came illness, attacking them both:  nothing

+out of which any moral could be deduced, a mere case of bad drains

+resulting in typhoid fever.  They had started again, saddled by debt,

+and after years of effort had succeeded in clearing themselves, only

+to fall again, this time in helping a friend.  Nor was it even a case

+of folly:  a poor man who had helped them in their trouble, hardly

+could they have done otherwise without proving themselves ungrateful.

+And so on, a tedious tale, commonplace, trivial.  Now listless,

+patient, hard working, they had arrived at an animal-like indifference

+to their fate, content so long as they could obtain the bare

+necessities of existence, passive when these were not forthcoming,

+their interest in life limited to the one luxury of the poor--an

+occasional glass of beer or spirits.  Often days would go by without

+his obtaining any work, and then they would more or less starve.  Law

+documents are generally given out to such men in the evening, to be

+returned finished the next morning.  Waking in the night, I would hear

+through the thin wooden partition that divided our rooms the even

+scratching of his pen.

+

+Thus cheek by jowl we worked, I my side of the screen, he his:  youth

+and age, hope and realisation.

+

+Out of him my fears fashioned a vision of the future.  Past his door I

+would slink on tiptoe, dread meeting him upon the stairs.  Once had

+not he said to himself:  "The world's mine oyster?"  May not the

+voices of the night have proclaimed him also king?  Might I not be but

+an idle dreamer, mistaking desire for power?  Would not the world

+prove stronger than I?  At such times I would see my life before me:

+the clerkship at thirty shillings a week rising by slow instalments,

+it may be, to one hundred and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at

+Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the

+slatternly woman; the squalling children.  How could I, unaided,

+expect to raise myself from the ruck?  Was not this the more likely

+picture?

+

+Our second floor front was a young fellow in the commercial line.

+Jarman was Young London personified--blatant yet kind-hearted;

+aggressively self-assertive, generous to a fault; cunning, yet at the

+same time frank; shrewd, cheery, and full of pluck.  "Never say die"

+was his motto, and anything less dead it would be difficult to

+imagine.  All day long he was noisy, and all night long he snored.  He

+woke with a start, bathed like a porpoise, sang while dressing, roared

+for his boots, and whistled during his breakfast. His entrance and

+exit were always to an orchestration of banging doors, directions

+concerning his meals shouted at the top of his voice as he plunged up

+or down the stairs, the clattering and rattling of brooms and pails

+flying before his feet.  His departure always left behind it the

+suggestion that the house was now to let; it came almost as a shock to

+meet a human being on the landing.  He would have conveyed an

+atmosphere of bustle to the Egyptian pyramids.

+

+Sometimes carrying his own supper-tray, arranged for two, he would

+march into my room.  At first, resenting his familiarity, I would hint

+at my desire to be alone, would explain that I was busy.

+

+"You fire away, Shakespeare Redivivus," he would reply.  "Don't delay

+the tragedy.  Why should London wait?  I'll keep quiet."

+

+But his notion of keeping quiet was to retire into a corner and there

+amuse himself by enacting a tragedy of his own in a hoarse whisper,

+accompanied by appropriate gesture.

+

+"Ah, ah!" I would hear him muttering to himself, "I 'ave killed 'er

+good old father; I 'ave falsely accused 'er young man of all the

+crimes that I 'ave myself committed; I 'ave robbed 'er of 'er

+ancestral estates.  Yet she loves me not!  It is streeange!"  Then

+changing his bass to a shrill falsetto:  "It is a cold and dismal

+night:  the snow falls fast. I will leave me 'at and umbrella be'ind

+the door and go out for a walk with the chee-ild.  Aha! who is this?

+'E also 'as forgotten 'is umbrella.  Ah, now I know 'im in the pitch

+dark by 'is cigarette!  Villain, murderer, silly josser! it is you!"

+Then with lightning change of voice and gesture:  "Mary, I love yer!"

+"Sir Jasper Murgatroyd, let me avail myself of this opportunity to

+tell you what I think of you--"  "No, no; the 'ouses close in 'alf an

+hour; there is not tee-ime.  Fly with me instead!"  "Never!  Un'and

+me!"  "'Ear me!  Ah, what 'ave I done?  I 'ave slipped upon a piece of

+orange peel and broke me 'ead!  If you will kindly ask them to turn

+off the snow and give me a little moonlight, I will confess all."

+

+Finding it (much to Jarman's surprise) impossible to renew the thread

+of my work, I would abandon my attempts at literature, and instead

+listen to his talk, which was always interesting.  His conversation

+was, it is true, generally about himself, but it was none the less

+attractive on that account.  His love affairs, which appeared to be

+numerous, formed his chief topic.  There was no reserve about Jarman:

+his life contained no secret chambers.  What he "told her straight,"

+what she "up and said to him" in reply was for all the world that

+cared to hear.  So far his search after the ideal had met with but ill

+success.

+

+"Girls," he would say, "they're all alike, till you know 'em.  So long

+as they're trying to palm themselves off on yer, they'll persuade you

+there isn't such another article in all the market.  When they've got

+yer order--ah, then yer find out what they're really made of.  And you

+take it from me, 'Omer Junior, most of 'em are put together cheap.

+Bah! it sickens me sometimes to read the way you paper-stainers talk

+about 'em-angels, goddesses, fairies!  They've just been getting at

+yer.  You're giving 'em just the price they're asking without

+examining the article.  Girls ain't a special make, like what you seem

+to think 'em.  We're all turned out of the same old slop shop."

+

+"Not that I say, mind yer," he would continue, "that there are none of

+the right sort.  They're to be 'ad--real good 'uns.  All I say is,

+taking 'em at their own valuation ain't the way to do business with

+'em."

+

+What he was on the look out for--to quote his own description--was a

+really first class article, not something from which the paint would

+come off almost before you got it home.

+

+"They're to be found," he would cheerfully affirm, "but you've got to

+look for 'em.  They're not the sort that advertises."

+

+Behind Jarman in the second floor back resided one whom Jarman had

+nicknamed "The Lady 'Ortensia."  I believe before my arrival there had

+been love passages between the two; but neither of them, so I

+gathered, had upon closer inspection satisfied the other's standard.

+Their present attitude towards each other was that of insult thinly

+veiled under exaggerated politeness.  Miss Rosina Sellars was, in her

+own language, a "lady assistant," in common parlance, a barmaid at the

+Ludgate Hill Station refreshment room.  She was a large, flabby young

+woman.  With less powder, her complexion might by admirers have been

+termed creamy; as it was, it presented the appearance rather of

+underdone pastry.  To be on all occasions "quite the lady" was her

+pride.  There were those who held the angle of her dignity to be

+exaggerated.  Jarman would beg her for her own sake to be more careful

+lest one day she should fall down backwards and hurt herself.  On the

+other hand, her bearing was certainly calculated to check familiarity.

+Even stockbrokers' clerks--young men as a class with the bump of

+reverence but poorly developed--would in her presence falter and grow

+hesitating.  She had cultivated the art of not noticing to something

+approaching perfection.  She could draw the noisiest customer a glass

+of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange it for three of whiskey,

+which he had; take his money and return him his change without ever

+seeing him, hearing him, or knowing he was there.  It shattered the

+self-assertion of the youngest of commercial travellers.  Her tone and

+manner, outside rare moments of excitement, were suggestive of an

+offended but forgiving iceberg.  Jarman invariably passed her with his

+coat collar turned up to his ears, and even thus protected might have

+been observed to shiver.  Her stare, in conjunction with her "I beg

+your pardon!" was a moral douche that would have rendered apologetic

+and explanatory Don Juan himself.

+

+To me she was always gracious, which by contrast to her general

+attitude towards my sex of studied disdain, I confess flattered me.

+She was good enough to observe to Mrs. Peedles, who repeated it to me,

+that I was the only gentleman in the house who knew how to behave

+himself.

+

+The entire first floor was occupied by an Irishman and--they never

+minced the matter themselves, so hardly is there need for me to do so.

+She was a charming little dark-eyed woman, an ex-tight-rope dancer,

+and always greatly offended Mrs. Peedles by claiming Miss Lucretia

+Barry as a sister artiste.

+

+"Of course I don't know how it may be now," would reply Mrs. Peedles,

+with some slight asperity; "but in my time we ladies of the legitimate

+stage used to look down upon dancers and such sort.  Of course, no

+offence to you, Mrs. O'Kelly."

+

+Neither of them was in the least offended.

+

+"Sure, Mrs. Peedles, ye could never have looked down upon the

+Signora," the O'Kelly would answer laughing.  "Ye had to lie back and

+look up to her.  Why, I've got the crick in me neck to this day!"

+

+"Ah! my dear, and you don't know how nervous I was when glancing down

+I'd see his handsome face just underneath me, thinking that with one

+false step I might spoil it for ever," would reply the Signora.

+

+"Me darling!  I'd have died happy, just smothered in loveliness!"

+would return the O'Kelly; and he and the Signora would rush into each

+other's arms, and the sound of their kisses would quite excite the

+little slavey sweeping down the stairs outside.

+

+He was a barrister attached in theory to the Western Circuit; in

+practice, somewhat indifferent to it, much more attached to the lower

+strata of Bohemia and the Signora.  At the present he was earning all

+sufficient for the simple needs of himself and the Signora as a

+teacher of music and singing.  His method was simple and suited

+admirably the locality.  Unless specially requested, he never troubled

+his pupils with such tiresome things as scales and exercises.  His

+plan was to discover the song the young man fancied himself singing,

+the particular jingle the young lady yearned to knock out of the

+piano, and to teach it to them.  Was it "Tom Bowling?"  Well and good.

+Come on; follow your leader.  The O'Kelly would sing the first line.

+

+"Now then, try that.  Don't be afraid.  Just open yer mouth and gave

+it tongue.  That's all right.  Everything has a beginning.  Sure,

+later on, we'll get the time and tune, maybe a little expression."

+

+Whether the system had any merit in it, I cannot answer.  Certain it

+was that as often as not it achieved success.  Gradually--say, by the

+end of twelve eighteen-penny lessons--out of storm and chaos "Tom

+Bowling" would emerge, recognisable for all men to hear.  Had the

+pupil any voice to start with, the O'Kelly improved it; had he none,

+the O'Kelly would help him to disguise the fact.

+

+"Take it easy, now; take it easy," the O'Kelly would counsel.  "Sure,

+it's a delicate organ, yer voice.  Don't ye strain it now.  Ye're at

+yer best when ye're just low and sweet."

+

+So also with the blushing pianiste.  At the end of a month a tune was

+distinctly discernible; she could hear it herself, and was happy.  His

+repute spread.

+

+Twice already had he eloped with the Signora (and twice again was he

+to repeat the operation, before I finally lost sight of him:  to break

+oneself of habit is always difficult) and once by well-meaning friends

+had he been induced to return to home, if not to beauty.  His wife,

+who was considerably older than himself, possessed, so he would inform

+me with tears in his eyes, every moral excellence that should attract

+mankind.  Upon her goodness and virtue, her piety and

+conscientiousness he would descant to me by the half hour.  His

+sincerity it was impossible to question.  It was beyond doubt that he

+respected her, admired her, honoured her.  She was a saint, an

+angel--a wretch, a villain such as he, was not fit to breathe the same

+pure air.  To do him justice, it must be admitted he showed no

+particular desire to do so.  As an aunt or grandmother, I believe he

+would have suffered her gladly.  He had nothing to say against her,

+except that he found himself unable to live with her.

+

+That she must have been a lady of exceptional merit one felt

+convinced.  The Signora, who had met her only once, and then under

+somewhat trying conditions, spoke her praises with equal enthusiasm.

+Had she, the Signora, enjoyed the advantage of meeting such a model

+earlier, she, the Signora, might have been a better woman.  It seemed

+a pity the introduction could not have taken place sooner and under

+different circumstances.  Could they both have adopted her as a sort

+of mutual mother-in-law, it would have given them, I am positive, the

+greatest satisfaction.  On her occasional visits they would have vied

+with each other in showing her affectionate attention.  For the

+deserted lady I tried to feel sorry, but could not avoid the

+reflection that it would have been better for all parties had she been

+less patient and forgiving.  Her husband was evidently much more

+suited to the Signora.

+

+Indeed, the relationship between these two was more a true marriage

+than one generally meets with.  No pair of love-birds could have been

+more snug together.  In their virtues and failings alike they fitted

+each other.  When sober the immorality of their behaviour never

+troubled them; in fact, when sober nothing ever troubled them.  They

+laughed, joked, played through life, two happy children.  To be

+shocked at them was impossible.  I tried it and failed.

+

+But now and again there came an evening when they were not sober.  It

+happened when funds were high.  On such occasion the O'Kelly would

+return laden with bottles of a certain sweet champagne, of which they

+were both extremely fond; and a friend or two would be invited to

+share in the festivity.  Whether any exceptional quality resided in

+this particular brand of champagne I am not prepared to argue; my own

+personal experience of it has prompted me to avoid it for the rest of

+my life.  Its effect upon them was certainly unique.  Instead of

+intoxicating them, it sobered them:  there is no other way of

+explaining it.  With the third or fourth glass they began to take

+serious views of life.  Before the end of the second bottle they would

+be staring at each other, appalled at contemplation of their own

+transgression.  The Signora, the tears streaming down her pretty face,

+would declare herself a wicked, wicked woman; she had dragged down

+into shame the most blameless, the most virtuous of men.  Emptying her

+glass, she would bury her face in her hands, and with her elbows on

+her knees, in an agony of remorse, sit rocking to and fro.  The

+O'Kelly, throwing himself at her feet, would passionately abjure her

+to "look up."  She had, it appeared, got hold of the thing at the

+wrong end; it was he who had dragged her down.

+

+At this point metaphor would become confused.  Each had been dragged

+down by the other one and ruined; also each one was the other one's

+good angel.  All that was commendable in the Signora, she owed to the

+O'Kelly.  Whatever was not discreditable about the O'Kelly was in the

+nature of a loan from the Signora.  With the help of more champagne

+the right course would grow plain to them.  She would go back

+broken-hearted but repentant to the tight-rope; he would return a

+better but a blighted man to Mrs. O'Kelly and the Western Circuit.

+This would be their last evening together on earth.  A fresh bottle

+would be broached, and the guest or guests called upon to assist in

+the ceremony of renunciation; glasses full to the brim this time.

+

+So much tragedy did they continue to instil into the scene that on the

+first occasion of my witnessing it I was unable to refrain from

+mingling my tears with theirs.  As, however, the next morning they had

+forgotten all about it, and as nothing came of it, nor of several

+subsequent repetitions, I should have believed a separation between

+them impossible but that even while I was an inmate of the house the

+thing actually happened.

+

+It came about in this wise.  His friends, having discovered him, had

+pointed out to him again his duty.  The Signora--a really excellent

+little woman so far as intention was concerned--had seconded their

+endeavours, with the result that on a certain evening in autumn we of

+the house assembled all of us on the first floor to support them on

+the occasion of their final--so we all deemed it then--leave-taking.

+For eleven o'clock two four-wheeled cabs had been ordered, one to

+transport the O'Kelly with his belongings to Hampstead and

+respectability; in the other the Signora would journey sorrowfully to

+the Tower Basin, there to join a circus company sailing for the

+Continent.

+

+I knocked at the door some quarter of an hour before the appointed

+hour of the party.  I fancy the idea had originated with the Signora.

+

+"Dear Willie has something to say to you," she had informed me that

+morning on the stairs.  "He has taken a sincere liking to you, and it

+is something very important."

+

+They were sitting one each side the fireplace, looking very serious; a

+bottle of the sobering champagne stood upon the table.  The Signora

+rose and kissed me gravely on the brow; the O'Kelly laid both hands

+upon my shoulders, and sat me down on a chair between them.

+

+"Mr. Kelver," said the Signora, "you are very young."

+

+I hinted--it was one of those rare occasions upon which gallantry can

+be combined with truth--that I found myself in company.

+

+The Signora smiled sadly, and shook her head.

+

+"Age," said the O'Kelly, "is a matter of feeling.  Kelver, may ye

+never be as old as I am feeling now."

+

+"As _we_ are feeling," corrected the Signora.  "Kelver," said the

+O'Kelly, pouring out a third glass of champagne, "we want ye to

+promise us something."

+

+"It will make us both happier," added the Signora.

+

+"That ye will take warning," continued the O'Kelly, "by our wretched

+example.  Paul, in this world there is only one path to possible

+happiness.  The path of strict--" he paused.

+

+"Propriety," suggested the Signora.

+

+"Of strict propriety," agreed the O'Kelly.  "Deviate from it,"

+continued the O'Kelly, impressively, "and what is the result?"

+

+"Unutterable misery," supplied the Signora.

+

+"Ye think we two have been happy here together," said the O'Kelly.

+

+I replied that such was the conclusion to which observation had

+directed me.

+

+"We tried to appear so," explained the Signora; "it was merely on the

+outside.  In reality all the time we hated each other.  Tell him,

+Willie, dear, how we have hated each other."

+

+"It is impossible," said the O'Kelly, finishing and putting down his

+glass, "to give ye any idea, Kelver, how we have hated each other."

+

+"How we have quarrelled!" said the Signora.  "Tell him, dear, how we

+have quarrelled."

+

+"All day long and half the night," concluded the O'Kelly.

+

+"Fought," added the Signora.  "You see, Mr. Kelver, people in--in our

+position always do.  If it had been otherwise, if--if everything had

+been proper, then of course we should have loved each other.  As it

+is, it has been a cat and dog existence.  Hasn't it been a cat and dog

+existence, Willie?"

+

+"It's been just hell upon earth," murmured the O'Kelly, with his eyes

+fixed gloomily upon the fire-stove ornament.  Deadly in earnest though

+they both were, I could not repress a laugh, their excellent intention

+was so obvious.  The Signora burst into tears.

+

+"He doesn't believe us," she wailed.

+

+"Me dear," replied the O'Kelly, throwing up his part with promptness

+and satisfaction, "how could ye expect it?  How could he believe that

+any man could look at ye and hate ye?"

+

+"It's all my fault," cried the little woman; "I am such a wicked

+creature.  I cannot even be miserable when I am doing wrong.  A decent

+woman in my place would have been wretched and unhappy, and made

+everybody about her wretched and unhappy, and so have set a good

+example and have been a warning.  I don't seem to have any conscience,

+and I do try."  The poor little lady was sobbing her heart out.

+

+When not shy I could be sensible, and of the O'Kelly and the Signora

+one could be no more shy than of a pair of robin redbreasts.  Besides,

+I was really fond of them; they had been very good to me.

+

+"Dear Miss Beltoni," I answered, "I am going to take warning by you

+both."

+

+She pressed my hand.  "Oh, do, please do," she murmured.  "We really

+have been miserable--now and then."

+

+"I am never going to be content," I assured her, "until I find a lady

+as charming and as amiable as you, and if ever I get her I'll take

+good care never to run any risk of losing her."

+

+It sounded well and pleased us all.  The O'Kelly shook me warmly by

+the hand, and this time spoke his real feelings.

+

+"Me boy," he said, "all women are good--for somebody.  But the woman

+that is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who's

+the best for somebody else.  Ye understand?"

+

+I said I did.

+

+At eight o'clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived--as Flora MacDonald,

+in green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking.

+As a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles

+and the subject of deserted wives in general.

+

+"A fine-looking man," allowed Mrs. Peedles, "but weak--weak as water."

+

+The Signora agreed that unfortunately there did exist such men:  'twas

+pitiful but true.

+

+"My dear," continued Mrs. Peedles, "she wasn't even a lady."

+

+The Signora expressed astonishment at the deterioration in Mr.

+Peedles' taste thus implied.

+

+"I won't go so far as to say we never had a difference," continued

+Mrs. Peedles, whose object appeared to be an impartial statement of

+the whole case.  "There may have been incompatability of temperament,

+as they say.  Myself, I have always been of a playful

+disposition--frivolous, some might call me."

+

+The Signora protested; the O'Kelly declined to listen to such

+aspersion on her character even from Mrs. Peedles herself.

+

+Mrs. Peedles, thus corrected, allowed that maybe frivolous was too

+sweeping an accusation:  say sportive.

+

+"But a good wife to him I always was," asserted Mrs. Peedles, with a

+fine sense of justice; "never flighty, like some of them.  I challenge

+any one to accuse me of having been flighty."

+

+We felt we should not believe any one who did, and told her so.

+

+Mrs. Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a

+confidential attitude.  "If they want to go, let 'em go, I always

+say," she whispered loudly into the Signora's ear.  "Ten to one

+they'll find they've only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire.

+One can always comfort oneself with that."

+

+There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles.  Her

+virtuous sympathies, I gathered, were with the Signora.  Mr. O'Kelly's

+return to Mrs. O'Kelly evidently manifested itself in the light of a

+shameful desertion.  Having regard to the fact, patent to all who knew

+him, that the poor fellow was sacrificing every inclination to stern

+sense of duty, such view of the matter was rough on him.  But

+philosophers from all ages have agreed that our good deeds are the

+whips with which Fate punishes us for our bad.

+

+"My dear," continued Mrs. Peedles, "when Mr. Peedles left me I thought

+that I should never smile again.  Yet here you see me laughing away

+through life, just as ever.  You'll get over it all right."  And Mrs.

+Peedles wiped away her tears and smiled upon the Signora; upon which

+the Signora commenced to cry again.

+

+Happily, timely diversion was made at this point by the bursting into

+the room of Jarman, who upon perceiving Mrs. Peedles, at once gave

+vent to a hoot, supposed to be expressive of Scottish joy, and without

+a moment's hesitation commenced to dance a reel.

+

+My neighbours of the first floor knocked at the door a little while

+afterwards; and genteelly late arrived Miss Rosina Sellars, coldly

+gleaming in a decollete but awe-inspiring costume of mingled black and

+scarlet, out of which her fair, if fleshy, neck and arms shone

+luxuriant.

+

+We did not go into supper; instead, supper came into us from the

+restaurant at the corner of the Blackfriars Road.  I cannot say that

+at first it was a festive meal.  The O'Kelly and the Signora made

+effort, as in duty bound, to be cheerful, but for awhile were somewhat

+unsuccessful.  The third floor front wasted no time in speech, but ate

+and drank copiously.  Miss Sellars, retaining her gloves--which was

+perhaps wise, her hands being her weak point--signalled me out, much

+to my embarrassment, as the recipient of her most polite conversation.

+Mrs. Peedles became reminiscent of parties generally.  Seeing that

+most of Mrs. Peedles' former friends and acquaintances were either

+dead or in more or less trouble, her efforts did not tend to enliven

+the table.  One gathering, of which the present strangely reminded

+her, was a funeral, chiefly remarkable from discovery of the romantic

+fact, late in the proceedings, that the gentleman in whose honour the

+whole affair had been organised was not dead at all; but instead,

+having taken advantage of an error arising out of a railway accident,

+was at the moment eloping with the wife of his own chief mourner.  As

+Mrs. Peedles explained, and as one could well credit, it had been an

+awkward position for all present.  Nobody had quite known whether to

+feel glad or sorry--with the exception of the chief mourner, upon

+whose personal undertaking that the company might regard the ceremony

+as merely postponed, festivities came to an end.

+

+Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman.  As a

+delicate attention to Mrs. Peedles and her costume he sunk his

+nationality and became for the evening, according to his own

+declaration, "a braw laddie."  With her--his "sonsie lassie," so he

+termed her--he flirted in the broadest, if not purest, Scotch.  The

+O'Kelly for him became "the Laird;" the third floor "Jamie o' the

+Ilk;" Miss Sellars, "the bonnie wee rose;" myself, "the chiel."

+Periods of silence were dispersed by suggestions that we should "hoot

+awa'," Jarman himself setting us the example.

+

+With the clearance away of the eatables, making room for the

+production of a more varied supply of bottles, matters began to mend.

+Mrs. Peedles became more arch, Jarman's Scotch more striking and

+extensive, the Lady 'Ortensia's remarks less depressingly genteel, her

+aitches less accentuated.

+

+Jarman rose to propose the health of the O'Kelly, coupled with that of

+the Signora.  To the O'Kelly, in a burst of generosity, Jarman

+promised our united patronage.  To Jarman it appeared that by

+employing the O'Kelly to defend us whenever we got into trouble with

+the police, and by recommending him to our friends, a steady income

+should be assured to him.

+

+The O'Kelly replied feelingly to the effect that Nelson Square,

+Blackfriars, would ever remain engraved upon his memory as the fairest

+and brightest spot on earth.  Personally, nothing would have given him

+greater pleasure than to die among the dear friends who now surrounded

+him.  But there was such a thing as duty, and he and the Signora had

+come to the conclusion that true happiness could only be obtained by

+acting according to one's conscience, even if it made one miserable.

+

+Jarman, warming to his work, then proposed the health of Mrs. Peedles,

+as true-hearted and hard-breathing a lady as ever it had been his

+privilege to know.  Her talent for cheery conversation was familiar to

+us all, upon it he need not enlarge; all he would say was that

+personally never did she go out of his room without leaving him more

+cheerful than when she entered it.

+

+After that--I forget in what--we drank the health of the Lady

+'Ortensia.  Persons there were--Jarman would not attempt to disguise

+the fact--who complained that the Lady 'Ortensia was too distant, "too

+stand-offish."  With such complaint he himself had no sympathy; but

+tastes differed.  If the Lady 'Ortensia were inclined to be exclusive,

+who should blame her?  Everybody knew their own business best. For use

+in a second floor front he could not honestly recommend the Lady

+'Ortensia; it would not be giving her a fair chance, and it would not

+be giving the second floor a fair chance.  But for any gentleman

+fitting up marble halls, for any one on the lookout for a really

+"toney article," Jarman would say:  Inquire for Miss Rosina Sellars,

+and see that you get her.

+

+There followed my turn.  There had been literary chaps in the past,

+Jarman admitted so much.  Against them he had nothing to say.  They

+had no doubt done their best.  But the gentleman whose health Jarman

+wished the company now to drink had this advantage over them:  that

+they were dead, and he wasn't.  Some of this gentleman's work Jarman

+had read--in manuscript; but that was a distinction purely temporary.

+He, Jarman, claimed to be no judge of literature, but this he could

+and would say, it took a good deal to make him miserable, yet this the

+literary efforts of Mr. Kelver invariably accomplished.

+

+Mrs. Peedles, speaking without rising, from personal observation in

+the daytime--which she hoped would not be deemed a liberty;

+literature, even in manuscript, being, so to speak, public

+property--found herself in a position to confirm all that Mr. Jarman

+had remarked.  Speaking as one not entirely without authority on the

+subject of literature and the drama, Mrs. Peedles could say that

+passages she had read had struck her as distinctly not half bad.  Some

+of the love-scenes, in particular, had made her to feel quite a girl

+again.  How he had acquired such knowledge was not for her to say.

+Cries of "Naughty!" from Jarman, and "Oh, Mr. Kelver, I shall be quite

+afraid of you," roguishly from Miss Sellars.

+

+The O'Kelly, who, having abandoned his favourite champagne for less

+sobering liquor, had since supper-time become rapidly more cheerful,

+felt sure there was a future before me.  That he had not seen any of

+my work, so he assured me, in no way lessened his opinion of it.  One

+thing only would he impress upon me:  that the best work was the

+result of strict attention to virtue.  His advice to me was to marry

+young and be happy.

+

+My persevering efforts of the last few months towards the acquisition

+of convivial habits appeared this evening to be receiving their

+reward.  The O'Kelly's sweet champagne I had drunk with less dislike

+than hitherto; a white, syrupy sort of stuff, out of a fat and

+artistic-looking bottle, I had found distinctly grateful to the

+palate.  Dimly the quotation about taking things at the flood, and so

+getting on quickly, floated through my brain, coupled with another one

+about fortune favouring the bold.  It had seemed to me a good occasion

+to try for the second time in my life a full flavoured cigar.  I had

+selected with the caution of a connoisseur one of mottled green

+complexion from the O'Kelly's largest box.  And so far all had gone

+well.  An easy self-confidence, delightful by reason of its novelty,

+had replaced my customary shyness; a sense of lightness--of positive

+airiness, emanating from myself, pervaded all things.  Tossing off

+another glass of the champagne, I rose to reply.

+

+Modesty in my present mood would have been affectation.  To such dear

+and well-beloved friends I had no hesitation in admitting the truth,

+that I was a clever fellow--a damned clever fellow.  I knew it, they

+knew it, in a short time everybody would know it.  But they need not

+fear that in the hour of my pride, when it arrived, I should prove

+ungrateful.  Never should I forget their kindness to me, a lonely

+young man, alone in a lonely--  Here the pathos of my own situation

+overcame me; words seemed weak.  "Jarman--"  I meant, putting my hand

+upon his head, to have blessed him for his goodness to me; but he

+being not exactly where he looked to be, I just missed him, and sat

+down on the edge of my chair, which was a hard one.  I had not

+intended this to be the end of my speech, by a long one; but Jarman,

+whispering to me:  "Ended at exactly the right moment; shows the born

+orator," strong inclination to remain seated, now that I was down

+seconding his counsel, and the company being clearly satisfied, I

+decided to leave things where they were.

+

+A delightful dreaminess was stealing over me.  Everything and

+everybody appeared to be a long way off, but, whether because of this

+or in spite of it, exceedingly attractive.  Never had I noticed the

+Signora so bewitching; in a motherly sort of way even the third floor

+front was good to look upon; Mrs. Peedles I could almost have believed

+to be the real Flora MacDonald sitting in front of me.  But the vision

+of Miss Rosina Sellars made literally my head to swim.  Never before

+had I dared to cast upon female loveliness the satisfying gaze with

+which I now boldly regarded her every movement.  Evidently she noticed

+it, for she turned away her eyes.  I had heard that exceptionally

+strong-minded people merely by concentrating their will could make

+other, ordinary people, do just whatever they, the exceptionally

+strong-minded people, wished.  I willed that Miss Rosina Sellars

+should turn her eyes again towards me.  Victory crowned my efforts.

+Evidently I was one of these exceptionally strong-minded persons.

+Slowly her eyes came round and met mine with a smile--a helpless,

+pathetic smile that said, so I read it:  "You know no woman can resist

+you:  be merciful!"

+

+Inflamed by the brutal lust of conquest, I suppose I must have willed

+still further, for the next thing I remember is sitting with Miss

+Sellars on the sofa, holding her hand, the while the O'Kelly sang a

+sentimental ballad, only one line of which comes back to me:  "For the

+angels must have told him, and he knows I love him now," much stress

+upon the "now."  The others had their backs towards us.  Miss Sellars,

+with a look that pierced my heart, dropped her somewhat large head

+upon my shoulder, leaving, as I observed the next day, a patch of

+powder on my coat.

+

+Miss Sellars observed that one of the saddest things in the world was

+unrequited love.

+

+I replied gallantly, "Whateryou know about it?"

+

+"Ah, you men, you men," murmured Miss Sellars; "you're all alike."

+

+This suggested a personal aspersion on my character.  "Not allus," I

+murmured.

+

+"You don't know what love is," said Miss Sellars.  "You're not old

+enough."

+

+The O'Kelly had passed on to Sullivan's "Sweethearts," then in its

+first popularity.

+

+     "Oh, love for a year--a week--a day!

+     But oh for the love that loves al-wa-ay[s]!"

+     

+Miss Sellars' languishing eyes were fixed upon me; Miss Sellars' red

+lips pouted and twitched; Miss Sellars' white bosom rose and fell.

+Never, so it seemed to me, had so large an amount of beauty been

+concentrated in one being.

+

+"Yeserdo," I said.  "I love you."

+

+I stooped to kiss the red lips, but something was in my way.  It

+turned out to be a cold cigar.  Miss Sellars thoughtfully removed it,

+and threw it away.  Our lips met.  Her large arms closed about my neck

+and held me tight.

+

+"Well, I'm sure!" came the voice of Mrs. Peedles, as from afar.  "Nice

+goings on!"

+

+I have vague remembrance of a somewhat heated discussion, in which

+everybody but myself appeared to be taking extreme interest--of Miss

+Sellars in her most ladylike and chilling tones defending me against

+the charge of "being no gentleman," which Mrs. Peedles was explaining

+nobody had said I wasn't.  The argument seemed to be of the circular

+order.  No gentleman had ever kissed Miss Sellars who had not every

+right to do so, nor ever would.  To kiss Miss Sellars without such

+right was to declare oneself no gentleman.  Miss Sellars appealed to

+me to clear my character from the aspersion of being no gentleman.  I

+was trying to understand the situation, when Jarman, seizing me

+somewhat roughly by the arm, suggested my going to bed.  Miss Sellars,

+seizing my other arm, suggested my refusing to go to bed.  So far I

+was with Miss Sellars.  I didn't want to go to bed, and said so.  My

+desire to sit up longer was proof positive to Miss Sellars that I was

+a gentleman, but to no one else.  The argument shifted, the question

+being now as to whether Miss Sellars were a lady.  To prove the point

+it was, according to Miss Sellars, necessary that I should repeat I

+loved her.  I did repeat it, adding, with faint remembrance of my own

+fiction, that if a life's devotion was likely to be of the slightest

+further proof, my heart's blood was at her service.  This cleared the

+air, Mrs. Peedles observing that under such circumstances it only

+remained for her to withdraw everything she had said; to which Miss

+Sellars replied graciously that she had always known Mrs. Peedles to

+be a good sort at the bottom.

+

+Nevertheless, gaiety was gone from among us, and for this, in some way

+I could not understand, I appeared to be responsible.  Jarman was

+distinctly sulky.  The O'Kelly, suddenly thinking of the time, went to

+the door and discovered that the two cabs were waiting.  The third

+floor recollected that work had to be finished.  I myself felt sleepy.

+

+Our host and hostess departed; Jarman again suggested bed, and this

+time I agreed with him.  After a slight misunderstanding with the

+door, I found myself upon the stairs.  I had never noticed before that

+they were quite perpendicular.  Adapting myself to the changed

+conditions, I climbed them with the help of my hands.  I accomplished

+the last flight somewhat quickly, and feeling tired, sat down the

+moment I was within my own room.  Jarman knocked at the door.  I told

+him to come in; but he didn't.  It occurred to me that the reason was

+I was sitting on the floor with my back against the door.  The

+discovery amused me exceedingly and I laughed; and Jarman, baffled,

+descended to his own floor.  I found getting into bed a difficulty,

+owing to the strange behaviour of the room.  It spun round and round.

+Now the bed was just in front of me, now it was behind me.  I managed

+at last to catch it before it could get past me, and holding on by the

+ironwork, frustrated its efforts to throw me out again on to the

+floor.

+

+But it was some time before I went to sleep, and over my intervening

+experiences I draw a veil.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III.

+

+GOOD FRIENDS SHOW PAUL THE ROAD TO FREEDOM.  BUT BEFORE SETTING OUT,

+HE WILL GO A-VISITING.

+

+The sun was streaming into my window when I woke in the morning.  I

+sat up and listened.  The roar of the streets told me plainly that the

+day had begun without me.  I reached out my hand for my watch; it was

+not in its usual place upon the rickety dressing-table.  I raised

+myself still higher and looked about me.  My clothes lay scattered on

+the floor.  One boot, in solitary state, occupied the chair by the

+fireplace; the other I could not see anywhere.

+

+During the night my head appeared to have grown considerably.  I

+wondered idly for the moment whether I had not made a mistake and put

+on Minikin's; if so, I should be glad to exchange back for my own.

+This thing I had got was a top-heavy affair, and was aching most

+confoundedly.

+

+Suddenly the recollection of the previous night rushed at me and shook

+me awake.  From a neighbouring steeple rang chimes:  I counted with

+care.  Eleven o'clock.  I sprang out of bed, and at once sat down upon

+the floor.

+

+I remembered how, holding on to the bed, I had felt the room waltzing

+wildly round and round.  It had not quite steadied itself even yet.

+It was still rotating, not whirling now, but staggering feebly, as

+though worn out by its all-night orgie.  Creeping to the wash-stand, I

+succeeded, after one or two false plunges, in getting my head inside

+the basin.  Then, drawing on my trousers with difficulty and reaching

+the easy-chair, I sat down and reviewed matters so far as I was able,

+commencing from the present and working back towards the past.

+

+I was feeling very ill.  That was quite clear.  Something had

+disagreed with me.

+

+"That strong cigar," I whispered feebly to myself; "I ought never to

+have ventured upon it.  And then the little room with all those people

+in it.  Besides, I have been working very hard.  I must really take

+more exercise.

+

+It gave me some satisfaction to observe that, shuffling and cowardly

+though I might be, I was not a person easily bamboozled.

+

+"Nonsense," I told myself brutally; "don't try to deceive me.  You

+were drunk."

+

+"Not drunk," I pleaded; "don't say drunk; it is such a coarse

+expression.  Some people cannot stand sweet champagne, so I have

+heard.  It affected my liver.  Do please make it a question of liver."

+

+"Drunk," I persisted unrelentingly, "hopelessly, vulgarly drunk--drunk

+as any 'Arry after a Bank Holiday."

+

+"It is the first time," I murmured.

+

+"It was your first opportunity," I replied.

+

+"Never again," I promised.

+

+"The stock phrase," I returned.

+

+"How old are you?"

+

+"Nineteen."

+

+"So you have not even the excuse of youth.  How do you know that it

+will not grow upon you; that, having thus commenced a downward career,

+you will not sink lower and lower, and so end by becoming a confirmed

+sot?"

+

+My heavy head dropped into my hands, and I groaned.  Many a temperance

+tale perused on Sunday afternoons came back to me.  Imaginative in all

+directions, I watched myself hastening toward a drunkard's grave, now

+heroically struggling against temptation, now weakly yielding, the

+craving growing upon me.  In the misty air about me I saw my father's

+white face, my mother's sad eyes.  I thought of Barbara, of the scorn

+that could quiver round that bewitching mouth; of Hal, with his

+tremendous contempt for all forms of weakness.  Shame of the present

+and terror of the future between them racked my mind.

+

+"It shall be never again!" I cried aloud.  "By God, it shall!"  (At

+nineteen one is apt to be vehement.)  "I will leave this house at

+once," I continued to myself aloud; "I will get away from its

+unwholesome atmosphere.  I will wipe it out of my mind, and all

+connected with it.  I will make a fresh start.  I will--"

+

+Something I had been dimly conscious of at the back of my brain came

+forward and stood before me:  the flabby figure of Miss Rosina

+Sellars.  What was she doing here?  What right had she to step between

+me and my regeneration?

+

+"The right of your affianced bride," my other half explained, with a

+grim smile to myself.

+

+"Did I really go so far as that?"

+

+"We will not go into details," I replied; "I do not wish to dwell upon

+them.  That was the result."

+

+"I was--I was not quite myself at the time.  I did not know what I was

+doing."

+

+"As a rule, we don't when we do foolish things; but we have to abide

+by the consequences, all the same.  Unfortunately, it happened to be

+in the presence of witnesses, and she is not the sort of lady to be

+easily got rid of.  You will marry her and settle down with her in two

+small rooms.  Her people will be your people.  You will come to know

+them better before many days are passed.  Among them she is regarded

+as 'the lady,' from which you can judge of them.  A nice commencement

+of your career, is it not, my ambitious young friend?  A nice mess you

+have made of it!"

+

+"What am I to do?" I asked.

+

+"Upon my word, I don't know," I answered.

+

+I passed a wretched day.  Ashamed to face Mrs. Peedles or even the

+slavey, I kept to my room, with the door locked.  At dusk, feeling a

+little better--or, rather, less bad, I stole out and indulged in a

+simple meal, consisting of tea without sugar and a kippered herring,

+at a neighbouring coffee-house.  Another gentleman, taking his seat

+opposite to me and ordering hot buttered toast, I left hastily.

+

+At eight o'clock in the evening Minikin called round from the office

+to know what had happened.  Seeking help from shame, I confessed to

+him the truth.

+

+"Thought as much," he answered.  "Seems to have been an A1 from the

+look of you."

+

+"I am glad it has happened, now it is over," I said to him.  "It will

+be a lesson I shall never forget."

+

+"I know," said Minikin.  "Nothing like a fair and square drunk for

+making you feel real good; better than a sermon."

+

+In my trouble I felt the need of advice; and Minikin, though my

+junior, was, I knew, far more experienced in worldly affairs than I

+was.

+

+"That's not the worst," I confided to him.  "What do you think I've

+done?"

+

+"Killed a policeman?" suggested Minikin.

+

+"Got myself engaged."

+

+"No one like you quiet fellows for going it when you do begin,"

+commented Minikin.  "Nice girl?"

+

+"I don't know," I answered.  "I only know I don't want her.  How can I

+get out of it?"

+

+Minikin removed his left eye and commenced to polish it upon his

+handkerchief, a habit he had when in doubt.  From looking into it he

+appeared to derive inspiration.

+

+"Take-her-own-part sort of a girl?"

+

+I intimated that he had diagnosed Miss Rosina Sellars correctly.

+

+"Know how much you're earning?"

+

+"She knows I live up here in this attic and do my own cooking," I

+answered.

+

+Minikin glanced round the room.  "Must be fond of you."

+

+"She thinks I'm clever," I explained, "and that I shall make my way.

+

+"And she's willing to wait?"

+

+I nodded.

+

+"Well, I should let her wait," replied Minikin, replacing his eye.

+"There's plenty of time before you."

+

+"But she's a barmaid, and she'll expect me to walk with her, to take

+her out on Sundays, to go and see her friends.  I can't do it.

+Besides, she's right:  I mean to get on.  Then she'll stick to me.

+It's awful!"

+

+"How did it happen?" asked Minikin.

+

+"I don't know," I replied.  "I didn't know I had done it till it was

+over."

+

+"Anybody present?"

+

+"Half-a-dozen of them," I groaned.

+

+The door opened, and Jarman entered; he never troubled to knock

+anywhere.  In place of his usual noisy greeting, he crossed in silence

+and shook me gravely by the hand.

+

+"Friend of yours?" he asked, indicating Minikin.

+

+I introduced them to each other.

+

+"Proud to meet you," said Jarman.

+

+"Glad to hear it," said Minikin.  "Don't look as if you'd got much

+else to be stuck up about."

+

+"Don't mind him," I explained to Jarman.  "He was born like it."

+

+"Wonderful gift" replied Jarman.  "D'ye know what I should do if I 'ad

+it?"  He did not wait for Minikin's reply.  "'Ire myself out to break

+up evening parties.  Ever thought of it seriously?"

+

+Minikin replied that he would give the idea consideration.

+

+"Make your fortune going round the suburbs," assured him Jarman.

+"Pity you weren't 'ere last night," he continued; "might 'ave saved

+our young friend 'ere a deal of trouble.  Has 'e told you the news?"

+

+I explained that I had already put Minikin in possession of all the

+facts.

+

+"Now you've got a good, steady eye," said Jarman, upon whom Minikin,

+according to his manner, had fixed his glass orb; "'ow d'ye think 'e

+is looking?"

+

+"As well as can be expected under the circumstances, don't you think?"

+answered Minikin.

+

+"Does 'e know the circumstances?  Has 'e seen the girl?" asked Jarman.

+

+I replied he had not as yet enjoyed that privilege.  "Then 'e don't

+know the worst," said Jarman.  "A hundred and sixty pounds of 'er, and

+still growing!  Bit of a load for 'im, ain't it?"

+

+"Some of 'em do have luck," was Minikin's rejoinder.  Jarman leant

+forward and took further stock for a few seconds of his new

+acquaintance.

+

+"That's a fine 'ead of yours," he remarked; "all your own?  No

+offence," continued Jarman, without giving Minikin time for repartee.

+"I was merely thinking there must be room for a lot of sense in it.

+Now, what do you, as a practical man, advise 'im:  dose of poison, or

+Waterloo Bridge and a brick?"

+

+"I suppose there's no doubt," I interjected, "that we are actually

+engaged?"

+

+"Not a blooming shadow," assured me Jarman, cheerfully, "so far as

+she's concerned."

+

+"I shall tell her plainly," I explained, "that I was drunk at the

+time."

+

+"And 'ow are you going to convince 'er of it?" asked Jarman.  "You

+think your telling 'er you loved 'er proves it.   So it would to

+anybody else, but not to 'er.  You can't expect it.  Besides, if every

+girl is going to give up 'er catch just because the fellow 'adn't all

+'is wits about 'im at the time--well, what do you think?"  He appealed

+to Minikin.

+

+To Minikin it appeared that if such contention were allowed girls

+might as well shut up shop.

+

+Jarman, who now that he had "got even" with Minikin, was more friendly

+disposed towards that young man, drew his chair closer to him and

+entered upon a private and confidential argument, from which I

+appeared to be entirely excluded.

+

+"You see," explained Jarman, "this ain't an ordinary case.  This

+chap's going to be the future Poet Laureate.  Now, when the Prince of

+Wales invites him to dine at Marlborough 'ouse, 'e don't want to go

+there tacked on to a girl that carries aitches with her in a bag, and

+don't know which end of the spoon out of which to drink 'er soup."

+

+"It makes a difference, of course," agreed Minikin.

+

+"What we've got to do," said Jarman, "is to get 'im out of it.  And

+upon my sivvy, blessed if I see 'ow to do it!"

+

+"She fancies him?" asked Minikin.

+

+"What she fancies," explained Jarman, "is that nature intended 'er to

+be a lady.  And it's no good pointing out to 'er the mistake she's

+making, because she ain't got sense enough to see it."

+

+"No good talking straight to her," suggested Minikin, "telling her

+that it can never be?"

+

+"That's our difficulty," replied Jarman; "it can be.  This chap"--I

+listened as might a prisoner in the dock to the argument of counsel,

+interested but impotent--"don't know enough to come in out of the

+rain, as the saying is.  'E's just the sort of chap this sort of thing

+does 'appen to."

+

+"But he don't want her," urged Minikin.  "He says he don't want her."

+

+"Yes, to you and me," answered Jarman; "and of course 'e don't.  I'm

+not saying 'e's a natural born idiot.  But let 'er come along and do a

+snivel--tell 'im that 'e's breaking 'er 'eart, and appeal to 'im to

+be'ave as a gentleman, and all that sort of thing, and what do you

+think will be the result?"

+

+Minikin agreed that the problem presented difficulties.

+

+"Of course, if 'twas you or me, we should just tell 'er to put 'erself

+away somewhere where the moth couldn't get at 'er and wait till we

+sent round for 'er; and there'd be an end of the matter.  But with 'im

+it's different."

+

+"He is a bit of a soft," agreed Minikin.

+

+"'Tain't 'is fault," explained Jarman; "'twas the way 'e was brought

+up.  'E fancies girls are the sort of things one sees in plays, going

+about saying 'Un'and me!'  'Let me pass!'  Maybe some of 'em are, but

+this ain't one of 'em."

+

+"How did it happen?" asked Minikin.

+

+"'Ow does it 'appen nine times out of ten?" returned Jarman.  "'E was

+a bit misty, and she was wide awake.  'E gets a bit spoony, and--well,

+you know."

+

+"Artful things, girls," commented Minikin.

+

+"Can't blame 'em," returned Jarman, with generosity; "it's their

+business.  Got to dispose of themselves somehow.  Oughtn't to be

+binding without a written order dated the next morning; that'd make it

+all right."

+

+"Couldn't prove a prior engagement?" suggested Minikin.

+

+"She'd want to see the girl first before she'd believe it--only

+natural," returned Jarman.

+

+"Couldn't get a girl?" urged Minikin.

+

+"Who could you trust?" asked the cautious Jarman.  "Besides, there

+ain't time.  She's letting 'im rest to-day; to-morrow evening she'll

+be down on 'im."

+

+"Don't see anything for it," said Minikin, "but for him to do a bunk."

+

+"Not a bad idea that," mused Jarman; "only where's 'e to bunk to?"

+

+"Needn't go far," said Minikin.

+

+"She'd find 'im out and follow 'im," said Jarman.  "She can look after

+herself, mind you.  Don't you go doing 'er any injustice."

+

+"He could change his name," suggested Minikin.

+

+"'Ow could 'e get a crib?" asked Jarman; "no character, no

+references."

+

+"I've got it," cried Jarman, starting up; "the stage!"

+

+"Can he act?" asked Minikin.

+

+"Can do anything," retorted my supporter, "that don't want too much

+sense.  That's 'is sanctuary, the stage.  No questions asked, no

+character wanted.  Lord! why didn't I think of it before?"

+

+"Wants a bit of getting on to, doesn't it?" suggested Minikin.

+

+"Depends upon where you want to get," replied Jarman.  For the first

+time since the commencement of the discussion he turned to me.  "Can

+you sing?" he asked me.

+

+I replied that I could a little, though I had never done so in public.

+

+"Sing something now," demanded Jarman; "let's 'ear you.  Wait a

+minute!" he cried.

+

+He slipped out of the room.  I heard him pause upon the landing below

+and knock at the door of the fair Rosina's room.  The next minute he

+returned.

+

+"It's all right," he explained; "she's not in yet.  Now, sing for all

+you're worth.  Remember, it's for life and freedom."

+

+I sang "Sally in Our Alley," not with much spirit, I am inclined to

+think.  With every mention of the lady's name there rose before me the

+abundant form and features of my _fiancee_, which checked the feeling

+that should have trembled through my voice.  But Jarman, though not

+enthusiastic, was content.

+

+"It isn't what I call a grand opera voice," he commented, "but it

+ought to do all right for a chorus where economy is the chief point to

+be considered.  Now, I'll tell you what to do.  You go to-morrow

+straight to the O'Kelly, and put the whole thing before 'im.  'E's a

+good sort; 'e'll touch you up a bit, and maybe give you a few

+introductions.  Lucky for you, this is just the right time.  There's

+one or two things comin' on, and if Fate ain't dead against you,

+you'll lose your amorita, or whatever it's called, and not find 'er

+again till it's too late."

+

+I was not in the mood that evening to feel hopeful about anything; but

+I thanked both of them for their kind intentions and promised to think

+the suggestion over on the morrow, when, as it was generally agreed, I

+should be in a more fitting state to bring cool judgment to bear upon

+the subject; and they rose to take their departure.

+

+Leaving Minikin to descend alone, Jarman returned the next minute.

+"Consols are down a bit this week," he whispered, with the door in his

+hand.  "If you want a little of the ready to carry you through, don't

+go sellin' out.  I can manage a few pounds.  Suck a couple of lemons

+and you'll be all right in the morning.  So long."

+

+I followed his advice regarding the lemons, and finding it correct,

+went to the office next morning as usual.  Lott & Co., in

+consideration of my agreeing to a deduction of two shillings on the

+week's salary, allowed himself to overlook the matter.  I had intended

+acting on Jarman' S advice, to call upon the O'Kelly at his address of

+respectability in Hampstead that evening, and had posted him a note

+saying I was coming.  Before leaving the office, however, I received a

+reply to the effect that he would be out that evening, and asking me

+to make it the following Friday instead.  Disappointed, I returned to

+my lodgings in a depressed state of mind.  Jarman 's scheme, which had

+appeared hopeful and even attractive during the daytime, now loomed

+shadowy and impossible before me.  The emptiness of the first floor

+parlour as I passed its open door struck a chill upon me, reminding me

+of the disappearance of a friend to whom, in spite of moral

+disapproval, I had during these last few months become attached.

+Unable to work, the old pain of loneliness returned upon me.  I sat

+for awhile in the darkness, listening to the scratching of the pen of

+my neighbour, the old law-writer, and the sense of despair that its

+sound always communicated to me encompassed me about this evening with

+heavier weight than usual.

+

+After all, was not the sympathy of the Lady 'Ortensia, stimulated for

+personal purposes though it might be, better than nothing?  At least,

+here was some living creature to whom I belonged, to whom my existence

+or nonexistence was of interest, who, if only for her own sake, was

+bound to share my hopes, my fears.

+

+It was in this mood that I heard a slight tap at the door.  In the dim

+passage stood the small slavey, holding out a note.  I took it, and

+returning, lighted my candle.  The envelope was pink and scented.  It

+was addressed, in handwriting not so bad as I had expected, to "Paul

+Kelver, Esquire."  I opened it and read:

+

+"Dr mr. Paul--I herd as how you was took hill hafter the party.  I

+feer you are not strong.  You must not work so hard or you will be

+hill and then I shall be very cros with you.  I hop you are well now.

+If so I am going for a wark and you may come with me if you are good.

+With much love.  From your affechonat

+                                                               ROSIE."

+                                                                      

+In spite of the spelling, a curious, tingling sensation stole over me

+as I read this my first love-letter.  A faint mist swam before my

+eyes.  Through it, glorified and softened, I saw the face of my

+betrothed, pasty yet alluring, her large white fleshy arms stretched

+out invitingly toward me.  Moved by a sudden hot haste that seized me,

+I dressed myself with trembling hands; I appeared to be anxious to act

+without giving myself time for thought.  Complete, with a colour in my

+cheeks unusual to them, and a burning in my eyes, I descended and

+knocked with a nervous hand at the door of the second floor back.

+

+"Who's that?" came in answer Miss Sellars' sharp tones.

+

+"It is I--Paul."

+

+"Oh, wait a minute, dear."  The tone was sweeter.  There followed the

+sound of scurried footsteps, a rustling of clothes, a banging of

+drawers, a few moments' dead silence, and then:

+

+"You can come in now, dear."

+

+I entered.  It was a small, untidy room, smelling of smoky lamp; but

+all I saw distinctly at the moment was Miss Sellars with her arms

+above her head, pinning her hat upon her straw-coloured hair.

+

+With the sight of her before me in the flesh, my feelings underwent a

+sudden revulsion.  During the few minutes she had kept me waiting

+outside the door I had suffered from an almost uncontrollable desire

+to turn the handle and rush in.  Now, had I acted on impulse, I should

+have run out.  Not that she was an unpleasant-looking girl by any

+means; it was the atmosphere of coarseness, of commonness, around her

+that repelled me.  The fastidiousness--finikinness; if you will--that

+would so often spoil my rare chop, put before me by a waitress with

+dirty finger-nails, forced me to disregard the ample charms she no

+doubt did possess, to fasten my eyes exclusively upon her red, rough

+hands and the one or two warts that grew thereon.

+

+"You're a very naughty boy," told me Miss Sellars, finishing the

+fastening of her hat.  "Why didn't you come in and see me in the

+dinner-_h_our?  I've a great mind not to kiss you."

+

+The powder she had evidently dabbed on hastily was plainly visible

+upon her face; the round, soft arms were hidden beneath ill-fitting

+sleeves of some crapey material, the thought of which put my teeth on

+edge.  I wished her intention had been stronger.  Instead, relenting,

+she offered me her flowery cheek, which I saluted gingerly, the taste

+of it reminding me of certain pale, thin dough-cakes manufactured by

+the wife of our school porter and sold to us in playtime at four a

+penny, and which, having regard to their satisfying quality, had been

+popular with me in those days.

+

+At the top of the kitchen stairs Miss Sellars paused and called down

+shrilly to Mrs. Peedles, who in course of time appeared, panting.

+

+"Oh, me and Mr. Kelver are going out for a short walk, Mrs. Peedles.

+I shan't want any supper.  Good night."

+

+"Oh, good night, my dear," replied Mrs. Peedles.  "Hope you'll enjoy

+yourselves.  Is Mr. Kelver there?"

+

+"He's round the corner," I heard Miss Sellars explain in a lower

+voice; and there followed a snigger.

+

+"He's a bit shy, ain't he?" suggested Mrs. Peedles in a whisper.

+

+"I've had enough of the other sort," was Miss Sellars' answer in low

+tones.

+

+"Ah, well; it's the shy ones that come out the strongest after a

+bit--leastways, that's been my experience."

+

+"He'll do all right.  So long."

+

+Miss Sellars, buttoning a burst glove, rejoined me.

+

+"I suppose you've never had a sweetheart before?" asked Miss Sellars,

+as we turned into the Blackfriars Road.

+

+I admitted that this was my first experience.

+

+"I can't a-bear a flirty man," explained Miss Sellars.  "That's why I

+took to you from the beginning.  You was so quiet."

+

+I began to wish that nature had bestowed upon me a noisier

+temperament.

+

+"Anybody could see you was a gentleman," continued Miss Sellars.

+"Heaps and heaps of hoffers I've had--_h_undreds you might almost say.

+But what I've always told 'em is, 'I like you very much indeed as a

+friend, but I'm not going to marry any one but a gentleman.'  Don't

+you think I was right?"

+

+I murmured it was only what I should have expected of her.

+

+"You may take my harm, if you like," suggested Miss Sellars, as we

+crossed St. George's Circus; and linked, we pursued our way along the

+Kennington Park Road.

+

+Fortunately, there was not much need for me to talk.  Miss Sellars was

+content to supply most of the conversation herself, and all of it was

+about herself.

+

+I learned that her instincts since childhood had been toward

+gentility.  Nor was this to be wondered at, seeing that her family--on

+her mother's side, at all events,--were connected distinctly with "the

+_h_ighest in the land."  _Mesalliances_, however, are common in all

+communities, and one of them, a particularly flagrant specimen--her

+"Mar" had, alas! contracted, having married--what did I think?  I

+should never guess--a waiter!  Miss Sellars, stopping in the act of

+crossing Newington Butts to shudder at the recollection of her female

+parent's shame, was nearly run down by a tramcar.

+

+Mr. and Mrs. Sellars did not appear to have "hit it off" together.

+Could one wonder:  Mrs. Sellars with an uncle on the Stock Exchange,

+and Mr. Sellars with one on Peckham Rye?  I gathered his calling to

+have been, chiefly, "three shies a penny."  Mrs. Sellars was now,

+however, happily dead; and if no other good thing had come out of the

+catastrophe, it had determined Miss Sellars to take warning by her

+mother's error and avoid connection with the lowly born.  She it was

+who, with my help, would lift the family back again to its proper

+position in society.

+

+"It used to be a joke against me," explained Miss Sellars, "heven when

+I was quite a child.  I never could tolerate anything low.  Why, one

+day when I was only seven years old, what do you think happened?"

+

+I confessed my inability to guess.

+

+"Well, I'll tell you," said Miss Sellars; "it'll just show you.  Uncle

+Joseph--that was father's uncle, you understand?"

+

+I assured Miss Sellars that the point was fixed in my mind.

+

+"Well, one day when he came to see us he takes a cocoanut out of his

+pocket and offers it to me.  'Thank you,' I says; 'I don't heat

+cocoanuts that have been shied at by just anybody and missed!'  It

+made him so wild.  After that," explained Miss Sellars, "they used to

+call me at home the Princess of Wales."

+

+I murmured it was a pretty fancy.

+

+"Some people," replied Miss Sellars, with a giggle, "says it fits me;

+but, of course, that's only their nonsense."

+

+Not knowing what to reply, I remained silent, which appeared to

+somewhat disappoint Miss Sellars.

+

+Out of the Clapham Road we turned into a by-street of two-storeyed

+houses.

+

+"You'll come in and have a bit of supper?" suggested Miss Sellars.

+"Mar's quite hanxious to see you."

+

+I found sufficient courage to say I was not feeling well, and would

+much rather return home.

+

+"Oh, but you must just come in for five minutes, dear.  It'll look so

+funny if you don't.  I told 'em we was coming."

+

+"I would really rather not," I urged; "some other evening."  I felt a

+presentiment, I confided to her, that on this particular evening I

+should not shine to advantage.

+

+"Oh, you mustn't be so shy," said Miss Sellars.  "I don't like shy

+fellows--not too shy.  That's silly."  And Miss Sellars took my arm

+with a decided grip, making it clear to me that escape could be

+obtained only by an unseemly struggle in the street; not being

+prepared for which, I meekly yielded.

+

+We knocked at the door of one of the small houses, Miss Sellars

+retaining her hold upon me until it had been opened to us by a lank

+young man in his shirt-sleeves and closed behind us.

+

+"Don't gentlemen wear coats of a hevening nowadays?" asked Miss

+Sellars, tartly, of the lank young man.  "New fashion just come in?"

+

+"I don't know what gentlemen wear in the evening or what they don't,"

+retorted the lank young man, who appeared to be in an aggressive mood.

+"If I can find one in this street, I'll ast him and let you know."

+

+"Mother in the droaring-room?" enquired Miss Sellars, ignoring the

+retort.

+

+"They're all of 'em in the parlour, if that's what you mean," returned

+the lank young man, "the whole blooming shoot.  If you stand up

+against the wall and don't breathe, there'll just be room for you."

+

+Sweeping by the lank young man, Miss Sellars opened the parlour door,

+and towing me in behind her, shut it.

+

+"Well, Mar, here we are," announced Miss Sellars.  An enormously stout

+lady, ornamented with a cap that appeared to have been made out of a

+bandanna handkerchief, rose to greet us, thus revealing the fact that

+she had been sitting upon an extremely small horsehair-covered

+easy-chair, the disproportion between the lady and her support being

+quite pathetic.

+

+"I am charmed, Mr.--"

+

+"Kelver," supplied Miss Sellars.

+

+"Kelver, to make your ac-quain-tance," recited Mrs. Sellars in the

+tone of one repeating a lesson.

+

+I bowed, and murmured that the honour was entirely mine.

+

+"Don't mention it," replied Mrs. Sellars.  "Pray be seated."

+

+Mrs. Sellars herself set the example by suddenly giving way and

+dropping down into her chair, which thus again became invisible.  It

+received her with an agonised groan.

+

+Indeed, the insistence with which this article of furniture throughout

+the evening cal1ed attention to its sufferings was really quite

+distracting.  With every breath that Mrs. Sellars took it moaned

+wearily.  There were moments when it literally shrieked.  I could not

+have accepted Mrs. Sellars' offer had I wished, there being no chair

+vacant and no room for another.  A young man with watery eyes, sitting

+just behind me between a fat young lady and a lean one, rose and

+suggested my taking his place.  Miss Sellars introduced me to him as

+her cousin Joseph something or other, and we shook hands.

+

+The watery-eyed Joseph remarked that it had been a fine day between

+the showers, and hoped that the morrow would be either wet or dry;

+upon which the lean young lady, having slapped him, asked admiringly

+of the fat young lady if he wasn't a "silly fool;" to which the fat

+young lady replied, with somewhat unnecessary severity, I thought,

+that no one could help being what they were born.  To this the lean

+young lady retorted that it was with precisely similar reflection that

+she herself controlled her own feelings when tempted to resent the fat

+young lady's "nasty jealous temper."

+

+The threatened quarrel was nipped in the bud by the discretion of Miss

+Sellars, who took the opportunity of the fat young lady's momentary

+speechlessness to introduce me promptly to both of them.  They also, I

+learned, were cousins.  The lean girl said she had "erd on me," and

+immediately fell into an uncontrollable fit of giggles; of which the

+watery-eyed Joseph requested me to take no notice, explaining that she

+always went off like that at exactly three-quarters to the half-hour

+every evening, Sundays and holidays excepted; that she had taken

+everything possible for it without effect, and that what he himself

+advised was that she should have it off.

+

+The fat girl, seizing the chance afforded her, remarked genteelly that

+she too had "heard hof me," with emphasis upon the "hof."  She also

+remarked it was a long walk from Blackfriars Bridge.

+

+"All depends upon the company, eh?  Bet they didn't find it too long."

+

+This came from a loud-voiced, red-faced man sitting on the sofa beside

+a somewhat melancholy-looking female dressed in bright green.  These

+twain I discovered to be Uncle and Aunt Gutton.  From an observation

+dropped later in the evening concerning government restrictions on the

+sale of methylated spirit, and hastily smothered, I gathered that

+their line was oil and colour.

+

+Mr. Gutton's forte appeared to be badinage.  He it was who, on my

+explaining my heightened colour as due to the closeness of the

+evening, congratulated his niece on having secured so warm a partner.

+

+"Will be jolly handy," shouted Uncle Gutton, "for Rosina, seeing she's

+always complaining of her cold feet."

+

+Here the lank young man attempted to squeeze himself into the room,

+but found his entrance barred by the square, squat figure of the

+watery-eyed young man.

+

+"Don't push," advised the watery-eyed young man.  "Walk over me

+quietly."

+

+"Well, why don't yer get out of the way," growled the lank young man,

+now coated, but still aggressive.

+

+"Where am I to get to?" asked the watery-eyed young man, with some

+reason.  "Say the word and I'll 'ang myself up to the gas bracket."

+

+"In my courting days," roared Uncle Gutton, "the girls used to be able

+to find seats, even if there wasn't enough chairs to go all round."

+

+The sentiment was received with varying degrees of approbation.  The

+watery-eyed young man, sitting down, put the lean young lady on his

+knee, and in spite of her struggles and sounding slaps, heroically

+retained her there.

+

+"Now, then, Rosie," shouted Uncle Gutton, who appeared to have

+constituted himself master of the ceremonies, "don't stand about, my

+girl; you'll get tired."

+

+Left to herself, I am inclined to think my _fiancee_ would have spared

+me; but Uncle Gutton, having been invited to a love comedy, was not to

+be cheated of any part of the performance, and the audience clearly

+being with him, there was nothing for it but compliance.  I seated

+myself, and amid plaudits accommodated the ample and heavy Rosina upon

+my knee.

+

+"Good-bye," called out to me the watery-eyed young man, as behind the

+fair Rosina I disappeared from his view.  "See you again later on."

+

+"I used to be a plump girl myself before I married," observed Aunt

+Gutton.  "Plump as butter I was at one time."

+

+"It isn't what one eats," said the maternal Sellars.  "I myself don't

+eat enough to keep a fly, and my legs--"

+

+"That'll do, Mar," interrupted the filial Sellars, tartly.

+

+"I was only going to say, my dear--"

+

+"We all know what you was going to say, Mar," retorted Miss Sellars.

+"We've heard it before, and it isn't interesting."

+

+Mrs. Sellars relapsed into silence.

+

+"'Ard work and plenty of it keeps you thin enough, I notice," remarked

+the lank young man, with bitterness.  To him I was now introduced, he

+being Mr. George Sellars.  "Seen 'im before," was his curt greeting.

+

+At supper--referred to by Mrs. Sellars again in the tone of one

+remembering a lesson, as a cold col-la-tion, with the accent on the

+"tion"--I sat between Miss Sellars and the lean young lady, with Aunt

+and Uncle Gutton opposite to us.  It was remarked with approval that I

+did not appear to be hungry.

+

+"Had too many kisses afore he started," suggested Uncle Gutton, with

+his mouth full of cold roast pork and pickles.  "Wonderfully

+nourishing thing, kisses, eh?  Look at mother and me.  That's all we

+live on."

+

+Aunt Gutton sighed, and observed that she had always been a poor

+feeder.

+

+The watery-eyed young man, observing he had never tasted them

+himself--at which sally there was much laughter--said he would not

+mind trying a sample if the lean young lady would kindly pass him one.

+

+The lean young lady opined that, not being used to high living, it

+might disagree with him.

+

+"Just one," pleaded the watery-eyed young man, "to go with this bit of

+cracklin'."

+

+The lean young lady, amid renewed applause, first thoughtfully wiping

+her mouth, acceded to his request.

+

+The watery-eyed young man turned it over with the air of a gourmet.

+

+"Not bad," was his verdict.  "Reminds me of onions."  At this there

+was another burst of laughter.

+

+"Now then, ain't Paul goin' to have one?" shouted Uncle Gutton, when

+the laughter had subsided.

+

+Amid silence, feeling as wretched as perhaps I have ever felt in my

+life before or since, I received one from the gracious Miss Sellars,

+wet and sounding.

+

+"Looks better for it already," commented the delighted Uncle Gutton.

+"He'll soon get fat on 'em."

+

+"Not too many at first," advised the watery-eyed young man.  "Looks to

+me as if he's got a weak stomach."

+

+I think, had the meal lasted much longer, I should have made a dash

+for the street; the contemplation of such step was forming in my mind.

+But Miss Sellars, looking at her watch, declared we must be getting

+home at once, for the which I could have kissed her voluntarily; and,

+being a young lady of decision, at once rose and commenced

+leave-taking.  Polite protests were attempted, but these, with

+enthusiastic assistance from myself, she swept aside.

+

+"Don't want any one to walk home with you?" suggested Uncle Gutton.

+"Sure you won't feel lonely by yourselves, eh?"

+

+"We shan't come to no harm," assured him Miss Sellars.

+

+"P'raps you're right," agreed Uncle Gutton.  "There don't seem to be

+much of the fiery and untamed about him, so far as I can see."

+

+"'Slow waters run deep,'" reminded us Aunt Gutton, with a waggish

+shake of her head.

+

+"No question about the slow," assented Uncle Gutton.  "If you don't

+like him--" observed Miss Sellars, speaking with dignity.

+

+"To be quite candid with you, my girl, I don't," answered Uncle

+Gutton, whose temper, maybe as the result of too much cold pork and

+whiskey, seemed to have suddenly changed.

+

+"Well, he happens to be good enough for me," recommenced Miss Sellars.

+

+"I'm sorry to hear a niece of mine say so," interrupted Uncle Gutton.

+"If you want my opinion of him--"

+

+"If ever I do I'll call round some time when you're sober and ast you

+for it," returned Miss Sellars.  "And as for being your niece, you was

+here when I came, and I don't see very well as how I could have got

+out of it.  You needn't throw that in my teeth."

+

+The gust was dispersed by the practical remark of brother George to

+the effect that the last tram for Walworth left the Oval at

+eleven-thirty; to which he further added the suggestion that the

+Clapham Road was wide and well adapted to a row.

+

+"There ain't going to be no rows," replied Uncle Gutton, returning to

+amiability as suddenly as he had departed from it.  "We understand

+each other, don't we, my girl?"

+

+"That's all right, uncle.  I know what you mean," returned Miss

+Sellars, with equal handsomeness.

+

+"Bring him round again when he's feeling better," added Uncle Gutton,

+"and we'll have another look at him."

+

+"What you want," advised the watery-eyed young man on shaking hands

+with me, "is complete rest and a tombstone."

+

+I wished at the time I could have followed his prescription.

+

+The maternal Sellars waddled after us into the passage, which she

+completely blocked.  She told me she was delight-ted to have met me,

+and that she was always at home on Sundays.

+

+I said I would remember it, and thanked her warmly for a pleasant

+evening, at Miss Sellars' request calling her Ma.

+

+Outside, Miss Sellars agreed that my presentiment had proved

+correct--that I had not shone to advantage.  Our journey home on a

+tramcar was a somewhat silent proceeding.  At the door of her room she

+forgave me, and kissed me good night.  Had I been frank with her, I

+should have thanked her for that evening's experience.  It had made my

+course plain to me.

+

+The next day, which was Thursday, I wandered about the streets till

+two o'clock in the morning, when I slipped in quietly, passing Miss

+Sellars' door with my boots in my hand.

+

+After Mr. Lott's departure on Friday, which, fortunately, was pay-day,

+I set my desk in order and confided to Minikin written instructions

+concerning all matters unfinished.

+

+"I shall not be here to-morrow," I told him.  "Going to follow your

+advice."

+

+"Found anything to do?" he asked.

+

+"Not yet," I answered.

+

+"Suppose you can't get anything?"

+

+"If the worst comes to the worst," I replied, "I can hang myself."

+

+"Well, you know the girl.  Maybe you are right," he agreed.

+

+"Hope it won't throw much extra work on you," I said.

+

+"Well, I shan't be catching it if it does," was his answer.  "That's

+all right."

+

+He walked with me to the "Angel," and there we parted.

+

+"If you do get on to the stage," he said, "and it's anything worth

+seeing, and you send me an order, and I can find the time, maybe I'll

+come and see you."

+

+I thanked him for his promised support and jumped upon the tram.

+

+The O'Kelly's address was in Belsize Square.  I was about to ring and

+knock, as requested by a highly-polished brass plate, when I became

+aware of pieces of small coal falling about me on the doorstep.

+Looking up, I perceived the O'Kelly leaning out of an attic window.

+From signs I gathered I was to retire from the doorstep and wait.  In

+a few minutes the door opened and his hand beckoned me to enter.

+

+"Walk quietly," he whispered; and on tip-toe we climbed up to the

+attic from where had fallen the coal.  "I've been waiting for ye,"

+explained the O'Kelly, speaking low.  "Me wife--a good woman, Paul;

+sure, a better woman never lived; ye'll like her when ye know her,

+later on--she might not care about ye're calling.  She'd want to know

+where I met ye, and--ye understand?  Besides," added the O'Kelly, "we

+can smoke up here;" and seating himself where he could keep an eye

+upon the door, near to a small cupboard out of which he produced a

+pipe still alight, the O'Kelly prepared himself to listen.

+

+I told him briefly the reason of my visit.

+

+"It was my fault, Paul," he was good enough to say; "my fault

+entirely.  Between ourselves, it was a damned silly idea, that party,

+the whole thing altogether.  Don't ye think so?"

+

+I replied that I was naturally prejudiced against it myself.

+

+"Most unfortunate for me," continued the O'Kelly; "I know that.  Me

+cabman took me to Hammersmith instead of Hampstead; said I told him

+Hammersmith.  Didn't get home here till three o'clock in the morning.

+Most unfortunate--under the circumstances."

+

+I could quite imagine it.

+

+"But I'm glad ye've come," said the O'Kelly.  "I had a notion ye did

+something foolish that evening, but I couldn't remember precisely

+what.  It's been worrying me."

+

+"It's been worrying me also, I can assure you," I told him; and I gave

+him an account of my Wednesday evening's experience.

+

+"I'll go round to-morrow morning," he said, "and see one or two

+people.  It's not a bad idea, that of Jarman's.  I think I may be able

+to arrange something for ye."

+

+He fixed a time for me to call again upon him the next day, when Mrs.

+O'Kelly would be away from home.  He instructed me to walk quietly up

+and down on the opposite side of the road with my eye on the attic

+window, and not to come across unless he waved a handkerchief.

+

+Rising to go, I thanked him for his kindness.  "Don't put it that way,

+me dear Paul," he answered.  "If I don't get ye out of this scrape I

+shall never forgive meself.  If we damned silly fools don't help one

+another," he added, with his pleasant laugh, "who is to help us?"

+

+We crept downstairs as we had crept up.  As we reached the first

+floor, the drawing-room door suddenly opened.

+

+"William!" cried a sharp voice.

+

+"Me dear," answered the O'Kelly, snatching his pipe from his mouth and

+thrusting it, still alight, into his trousers pocket.  I made the rest

+of the descent by myself, and slipping out, closed the door behind me

+as noiselessly as possible.

+

+Again I did not return to Nelson Square until the early hours, and the

+next morning did not venture out until I had heard Miss Sellars, who

+appeared to be in a bad temper, leave the house.  Then running to the

+top of the kitchen stairs, I called for Mrs. Peedles.  I told her I

+was going to leave her, and, judging the truth to be the simplest

+explanation, I told her the reason why.

+

+"My dear," said Mrs. Peedles, "I am only too glad to hear it.  It

+wasn't for me to interfere, but I couldn't help seeing you were making

+a fool of yourself.  I only hope you'll get clear off, and you may

+depend upon me to do all I can to help you."

+

+"You don't think I'm acting dishonourably, do you, Mrs. Peedles?" I

+asked.

+

+"My dear," replied Mrs. Peedles, "it's a difficult world to live

+in--leastways, that's been my experience of it."

+

+I had just completed my packing--it had not taken me long--when I

+heard upon the stairs the heavy panting that always announced to me

+the up-coming of Mrs. Peedles.  She entered with a bundle of old

+manuscripts under her arm, torn and tumbled booklets of various shapes

+and sizes.  These she plumped down upon the rickety table, and herself

+upon the nearest chair.

+

+"Put them in your box, my dear," said Mrs. Peedles.  "They'll come in

+useful to you later on."

+

+I glanced at the bundle.  I saw it was a collection of old plays in

+manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined.  The top one I

+noticed was "The Bloodspot:  Or the Maiden, the Miser and the

+Murderer;" the second, "The Female Highwayman."

+

+"Everybody's forgotten 'em," explained Mrs. Peedles, "but there's some

+good stuff in all of them."

+

+"But what am I to do with them?" I enquired.

+

+"Just whatever you like, my dear," explained Mrs. Peedles.  "It's

+quite safe.  They're all of 'em dead, the authors of 'em.  I've picked

+'em out most carefully.  You just take a scene from one and a scene

+from the other.  With judgment and your talent you'll make a dozen

+good plays out of that little lot when your time comes."

+

+"But they wouldn't be my plays, Mrs. Peedles," I suggested.

+

+"They will if I give them to you," answered Mrs. Peedles.  "You put

+'em in your box.  And never mind the bit of rent," added Mrs. Peedles;

+"you can pay me that later on."

+

+I kissed the kind old soul good-bye and took her gift with me to my

+new lodgings in Camden Town.  Many a time have I been hard put to it

+for plot or scene, and more than once in weak mood have I turned with

+guilty intent the torn and crumpled pages of Mrs. Peedles's donation

+to my literary equipment.  It is pleasant to be able to put my hand

+upon my heart and reflect that never yet have I yielded to the

+temptation.  Always have I laid them back within their drawer, saying

+to myself, with stern reproof:

+

+"No, no, Paul.  Stand or fall by your own merits.  Never

+plagiarise--in any case, not from this 'little lot.'"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV.

+

+LEADS TO A MEETING.

+

+"Don't be nervous," said the O'Kelly, "and don't try to do too much.

+You have a very fair voice, but it's not powerful.  Keep cool and open

+your mouth."

+

+It was eleven o'clock in the morning.  We were standing at the

+entrance of the narrow court leading to the stage door.  For a

+fortnight past the O'Kelly had been coaching me.  It had been nervous

+work for both of us, but especially for the O'Kelly.  Mrs. O'Kelly, a

+thin, acid-looking lady, of whom I once or twice had caught a glimpse

+while promenading Belsize Square awaiting the O'Kelly's signal, was a

+serious-minded lady, with a conscientious objection to all music not

+of a sacred character.  With the hope of winning the O'Kelly from one

+at least of his sinful tendencies, the piano had been got rid of, and

+its place in the drawing-room filled by an American organ of

+exceptionally lugubrious tone.  With this we had had to make shift,

+and though the O'Kelly--a veritable musical genius--had succeeded in

+evolving from it an accompaniment to "Sally in Our Alley" less

+misleading and confusing than might otherwise have been the case, the

+result had not been to lighten our labours.  My rendering of the

+famous ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not intended

+by the composer.  Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ a

+definition since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad.

+Involuntarily one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as

+satisfactorily as the young man appeared to anticipate.  Was there

+not, when one came to think of it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained

+within the temperament of the complainful hero that would ill assort

+with those instincts toward frivolity the careful observer could not

+avoid discerning in the charming yet nevertheless somewhat shallow

+character of Sally.

+

+"Lighter, lighter.  Not so soulful," would demand the O'Kelly, as the

+solemn notes rolled jerkily from the groaning instrument beneath his

+hands.

+

+Once we were nearly caught, Mrs. O'Kelly returning from a district

+visitors' committee meeting earlier than was expected.  Hastily I was

+hidden in a small conservatory adjutting from the first floor landing,

+where, crouching behind flower-pots, I listened in fear and trembling

+to the severe cross-examination of the O'Kelly.

+

+"William, do not prevaricate.  It was not a hymn."

+

+"Me dear, so much depends upon the time.  Let me give ye an example of

+what I mean."

+

+"William, pray in my presence not to play tricks with sacred melodies.

+If you have no respect for religion, please remember that I have.

+Besides, why should you be playing hymns in any time at ten o'clock in

+the morning?  It is not like you, William, and I do not credit your

+explanation.  And you were singing.  I distinctly heard the word

+'Sally' as I opened the door."

+

+"Salvation, me dear," corrected the O'Kelly.

+

+"Your enunciation, William, is not usually so much at fault."

+

+"A little hoarseness, me dear," explained the O'Kelly.

+

+"Your voice did not sound hoarse.  Perhaps it will be better if we do

+not pursue the subject further."

+

+With this the O'Kelly appeared to agree.

+

+"A lady a little difficult to get on with when ye're feeling well and

+strong," so the O'Kelly would explain her; "but if ye happen to be

+ill, one of the kindest, most devoted of women.  When I was down with

+typhoid three years ago, a tenderer nurse no man could have had.  I

+shall never forget it.  And so she would be again to-morrow, if there

+was anything serious the matter with me."

+

+I murmured the well-known quotation.

+

+"Mrs. O'Kelly to a T," concurred the O'Kelly.  "I sometimes wonder if

+Lady Scott may not have been the same sort of woman."

+

+"The unfortunate part of it is," continued the O'Kelly, "that I'm such

+a healthy beggar; it don't give her a chance.  If I were only a

+chronic invalid, now, there's nothing that woman would not do to make

+me happy.  As it is--"  The O'Kelly struck a chord.  We resumed our

+studies.

+

+But to return to our conversation at the stage door.

+

+"Meet me at the Cheshire Cheese at one o'clock," said the O'Kelly,

+shaking hands.  "If ye don't get on here, we'll try something else;

+but I've spoken to Hodgson, and I think ye will.  Good luck to ye!"

+

+He went his way and I mine.  In a glass box just behind the door a

+curved-nose, round-eyed little man, looking like an angry bird in a

+cage, demanded of me my business.  I showed him my letter of

+appointment.

+

+"Up the passage, across the stage, along the corridor, first floor,

+second door on the right," he instructed me in one breath, and shut

+the window with a snap.

+

+I proceeded up the passage.  It somewhat surprised me to discover that

+I was not in the least excited at the thought of this, my first

+introduction to "behind the scenes."

+

+I recall my father's asking a young soldier on his return from the

+Crimea what had been his sensations at the commencement of his first

+charge.

+

+"Well," replied the young fellow, "I was worrying all the time,

+remembering I had rushed out leaving the beer tap running in the

+canteen, and I could not forget it."

+

+So far as the stage I found my way in safety.  Pausing for a moment

+and glancing round, my impression was not so much disillusionment

+concerning all things theatrical as realisation of my worst

+forebodings.  In that one moment all glamour connected with the stage

+fell from me, nor has it since ever returned to me.  From the tawdry

+decorations of the auditorium to the childish make-belief littered

+around on the stage, I saw the Theatre a painted thing of shreds and

+patches--the grown child's doll's-house.  The Drama may improve us,

+elevate us, interest and teach us.  I am sure it does; long may it

+flourish!  But so likewise does the dressing and undressing of dolls,

+the opening of the front of the house, and the tenderly putting of

+them away to bed in rooms they completely fill, train our little dears

+to the duties and the joys of motherhood.  Toys! what wise child

+despises them?  Art, fiction, the musical glasses:  are they not

+preparing us for the time, however distant, when we shall at last be

+grown up?

+

+In a maze of ways beyond the stage I lost myself, but eventually,

+guided by voices, came to a large room furnished barely with many

+chairs and worn settees, and here I found some twenty to thirty ladies

+and gentlemen already seated.  They were of varying ages, sizes and

+appearance, but all of them alike in having about them that

+impossible-to-define but impossible-to-mistake suggestion of

+theatricality.  The men were chiefly remarkable for having no hair on

+their faces, but a good deal upon their heads; the ladies, one and

+all, were blessed with remarkably pink and white complexions and

+exceptionally bright eyes.  The conversation, carried on in subdued

+but penetrating voices, was chiefly of "him" and "her."  Everybody

+appeared to be on an affectionate footing with everybody else, the

+terms of address being "My dear," "My love," "Old girl," "Old

+chappie," Christian names--when name of any sort was needful--alone

+being employed.  I hesitated for a minute with the door in my hand,

+fearing I had stumbled upon a family gathering.  As, however, nobody

+seemed disconcerted at my entry, I ventured to take a vacant seat next

+to an extremely small and boyish-looking gentleman and to ask him if

+this was the room in which I, an applicant for a place in the chorus

+of the forthcoming comic opera, ought to be waiting.

+

+He had large, fishy eyes, with which he looked me up and down.  For

+such a length of time he remained thus regarding me in silence that a

+massive gentleman sitting near, who had overheard, took it upon

+himself to reply in the affirmative, adding that from what he knew of

+Butterworth we would all of us be waiting here a damned sight longer

+than any gentleman should keep other ladies and gentlemen waiting for

+no reason at all.

+

+"I think it exceedingly bad form," observed the fishy-eyed gentleman,

+in deep contralto tones, "for any gentleman to take it upon himself to

+reply to a remark addressed to quite another gentleman."

+

+"I beg your pardon," retorted the large gentleman.  "I thought you

+were asleep."

+

+"I think it very ill manners," remarked the small gentlemen in the

+same slow and impressive tones, "for any gentleman to tell another

+gentleman, who happens to be wide awake, that he thought he was

+asleep."

+

+"Sir," returned the massive gentleman, assuming with the help of a

+large umbrella a quite Johnsonian attitude, "I decline to alter my

+manners to suit your taste."

+

+"If you are satisfied with them," replied the small gentleman, "I

+cannot help it.  But I think you are making a mistake."

+

+"Does anybody know what the opera is about?" asked a bright little

+woman at the other end of the room.

+

+"Does anybody ever know what a comic opera is about?" asked another

+lady, whose appearance suggested experience.

+

+"I once asked the author," observed a weary-looking gentleman,

+speaking from a corner.  "His reply was:  'Well, if you had asked me

+at the beginning of the rehearsals I might have been able to tell you,

+but damned if I could now![']"

+

+"It wouldn't surprise me," observed a good-looking gentleman in a

+velvet coat, "if there occurred somewhere in the proceedings a

+drinking chorus for male voices."

+

+"Possibly, if we are good," added a thin lady with golden hair, "the

+heroine will confide to us her love troubles, which will interest us

+and excite us."

+

+The door at the further end of the room opened and a name was

+cal[l]ed.  An elderly lady rose and went out.

+

+"Poor old Gertie!" remarked sympathetically the thin lady with the

+golden hair.  "I'm told that she really had a voice once."

+

+"When poor young Bond first came to London," said the massive

+gentleman who was sitting on my left, "I remember his telling me he

+applied to Lord Barrymore's 'tiger,' Alexander Lee, I mean, of course,

+who was then running the Strand Theatre, for a place in the chorus.

+Lee heard him sing two lines, and then jumped up.  'Thanks, that'll

+do; good morning,' says Lee.  Bond knew he had got a good voice, so he

+asked Lee what was wrong.  'What's wrong?' shouts Lee.  'Do you think

+I hire a chorus to show up my principals?'"

+

+"Having regard to the company present," commented the fishy-eyed

+gentleman, "I consider that anecdote as distinctly lacking in tact."

+

+The feeling of the company appeared to be with the fish-eyed young

+man.

+

+For the next half hour the door at the further end of the room

+continued to open and close, devouring, ogre-fashion, each time some

+dainty human morsel, now chorus gentleman, now chorus lady.

+Conversation among our thinning ranks became more fitful, a growing

+anxiety making for silence.

+

+At length, "Mr. Horace Moncrieff" called the voice of the unseen

+Charon.  In common with the rest, I glanced round languidly to see

+what sort of man "Mr. Horace Moncrieff" might be.  The door was pushed

+open further.  Charon, now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a

+drooping moustache, put his head into the room and repeated

+impatiently his invitation to the apparently coy Moncrieff.  It

+suddenly occurred to me that I was Mr. Horace Moncrieff.

+

+"So glad you've found yourself," said the pale-faced young man, as I

+joined him at the door.  "Please don't lose yourself again; we're

+rather pressed for time."

+

+I crossed with him through a deserted refreshment bar--one of the

+saddest of sights--into a room beyond.  A melancholy-looking gentleman

+was seated at the piano.  Beside him stood a tall, handsome man, who

+was opening and reading rapidly from a bundle of letters he held in

+his hand.  A big, burly, bored-looking gentleman was making desperate

+efforts to be amused at the staccato conversation of a sharp-faced,

+restless-eyed gentleman, whose peculiarity was that he never by any

+chance looked at the person to whom he was talking, but always at

+something or somebody else.

+

+"Moncrieff?" enquired the tall, handsome man--whom I later discovered

+to be Mr. Hodgson, the manager--without raising his eyes from his

+letters.

+

+The pale-faced gentleman responded for me.

+

+"Fire away," said Mr. Hodgson.

+

+"What is it?" asked of me wearily the melancholy gentleman at the

+piano.

+

+"'Sally in Our Alley,'" I replied.

+

+"What are you?" interrupted Mr. Hodgson.  He had never once looked at

+me, and did not now.

+

+"A tenor," I replied.  "Not a full tenor," I added, remembering the

+O'Kelly's instructions.

+

+"Utterly impossible to fill a tenor," remarked the restless-eyed

+gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking

+gentleman.  "Ever tried?"

+

+Everybody laughed, with the exception of the melancholy gentleman at

+the piano, Mr. Hodgson throwing in his contribution without raising

+his eyes from his letters.  Throughout the proceedings the

+restless-eyed gentleman continued to make humorous observations of

+this nature, at which everybody laughed, excepting always the

+melancholy pianist--a short, sharp, mechanical laugh, devoid of the

+least suggestion of amusement.  The restless-eyed gentleman, it

+appeared, was the leading low comedian of the theatre.

+

+"Go on," said the melancholy gentleman, and commenced the

+accompaniment.

+

+"Tell me when he's going to begin," remarked Mr. Hodgson at the

+conclusion of the first verse.

+

+"He has a fair voice," said my accompanist. "He's evidently nervous."

+

+"There is a prejudice throughout theatrical audiences," observed Mr.

+Hodgson, "in favour of a voice they can hear.  That is all I am trying

+to impress upon him."

+

+The second verse, so I imagined, I sang in the voice of a trumpet.

+The burly gentleman--the translator of the French libretto, as he

+turned out to be; the author of the English version, as he preferred

+to be called--acknowledged to having distinctly detected a sound.  The

+restless-eyed comedian suggested an announcement from the stage

+requesting strict silence during my part of the performance.

+

+The sickness of fear was stealing over me.  My voice, so it seemed to

+me, disappointed at the effect it had produced, had retired, sulky,

+into my boots, whence it refused to emerge.

+

+"Your voice is all right--very good," whispered the musical conductor.

+"They want to hear the best you can do, that's all."

+

+At this my voice ran up my legs and out of my mouth.  "Thirty

+shillings a week, half salary for rehearsals.  If that's all right,

+Mr. Catchpole will give you your agreement.  If not, very much

+obliged.  Good morning," said Mr. Hodgson, still absorbed in his

+correspondence.

+

+With the pale-faced young man I retired to a desk in the corner, where

+a few seconds sufficed for the completion of the business.  Leaving, I

+sought to catch the eye of my melancholy friend, but he appeared too

+sunk in dejection to notice anything.  The restless-eyed comedian,

+looking at the author of the English version and addressing me as

+Boanerges, wished me good morning, at which the everybody laughed;

+and, informed as to the way out by the pale-faced Mr. Catchpole, I

+left.

+

+The first "call" was for the following Monday at two o'clock.  I found

+the theatre full of life and bustle.  The principals, who had just

+finished their own rehearsal, were talking together in a group.  We

+ladies and gentlemen of the chorus filled the centre of the stage.  I

+noticed the lady I had heard referred to as Gertie; as also the thin

+lady with the golden hair.  The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed

+young man were again in close proximity; so long as I knew them they

+always were together, possessed, apparently, of a sympathetic

+antipathy for each other.  The fishy-eyed young gentleman was

+explaining the age at which he thought decayed chorus singers ought,

+in justice to themselves and the public, to retire from the

+profession; the massive gentleman, the age and size at which he

+thought parcels of boys ought to be learning manners across their

+mother's knee.

+

+Mr. Hodgson, still reading letters exactly as I had left him four days

+ago, stood close to the footlights.  My friend, the musical director,

+armed with a violin and supported by about a dozen other musicians,

+occupied the orchestra.  The adapter and the stage manager--a

+Frenchman whom I found it good policy to mistake for a born

+Englishman--sat deep in confabulation at a small table underneath a

+temporary gas jet.  Quarter of an hour or so passed by, and then the

+stage manager, becoming suddenly in a hurry, rang a small bell

+furiously.

+

+"Clear, please; all clear," shouted a small boy, with important air

+suggestive of a fox terrier; and, following the others, I retreated to

+the wings.

+

+The comedian and the leading lady--whom I knew well from the front,

+but whom I should never have recognised--severed themselves from their

+companions and joined Mr. Hodgson by the footlights.  As a preliminary

+we were sorted out, according to our sizes, into loving couples.

+

+"Ah," said the stage manager, casting an admiring gaze upon the

+fishy-eyed young man, whose height might have been a little over five

+feet two, "I have the very girl for you--a beauty!"  Darting into the

+group of ladies, he returned with quite the biggest specimen, a lady

+of magnificent proportions, whom, with the air of the virtuous uncle

+of melodrama, he bestowed upon the fishy-eyed young man.  To the

+massive gentleman was given a sharp-faced little lady, who at a

+distance appeared quite girlish.  Myself I found mated to the thin

+lady with the golden hair.

+

+At last complete, we took our places in the then approved semi-circle,

+and the attenuated orchestra struck up the opening chorus.  My music,

+which had been sent me by post, I had gone over with the O'Kelly, and

+about that I felt confident; but for the rest, ill at ease.

+

+"I am afraid," said the thin lady, "I must ask you to put your arm

+round my waist. It's very shocking, I know, but, you see, our salary

+depends upon it.  Do you think you could manage it?"

+

+I glanced into her face.  A whimsical expression of fun replied to me

+and drove away my shyness.  I carried out her instructions to the best

+of my ability.

+

+The indefatigable stage manager ran in and out among us while we sang,

+driving this couple back a foot or so, this other forward, herding

+this group closer together, throughout another making space,

+suggesting the idea of a sheep-dog at work.

+

+"Very good, very good indeed," commented Mr. Hodgson at the

+conclusion.  "We will go over it once more, and this time in tune."

+

+"And we will make love," added the stage manager; "not like

+marionettes, but like ladies and gentlemen all alive."  Seizing the

+lady nearest to him, he explained to us by object lesson how the real

+peasant invariably behaves when under influence of the grand passion,

+standing gracefully with hands clasped upon heart, head inclined at an

+angle of forty-five, his whole countenance eloquent with tender

+adoration.

+

+"If he expects" remarked the massive gentleman _sotto voce_ to an

+experienced-looking young lady, "a performance of Romeo thrown in, I,

+for one, shall want an extra ten shillings a week."

+

+Casting the lady aside and seizing upon a gentleman, our stage manager

+then proceeded to show the ladies how a village maiden should receive

+affectionate advances:  one shoulder a trifle higher than the other,

+body from the waist upward gently waggling, roguish expression in left

+eye.

+

+"Ah, he's a bit new to it," replied the experienced young lady.

+"He'll get over all that."

+

+Again we started.  Whether others attempted to follow the stage

+manager's directions I cannot say, my whole attention being centred

+upon the fishy-eyed young man, who did, implicitly.  Soon it became

+apparent that the whole of us were watching the fishy-eyed young man

+to the utter neglect of our own business.  Mr. Hodgson even looked up

+from his letters; the orchestra was playing out of time; the author of

+the English version and the leading lady exchanged glances.  Three

+people only appeared not to be enjoying themselves:  the chief

+comedian, the stage manager and the fishy-eyed young gentleman

+himself, who pursued his labours methodically and conscientiously.

+There was a whispered confabulation between the leading low comedian,

+Mr. Hodgson and the stage manager.  As a result, the music ceased and

+the fishy-eyed young gentleman was requested to explain what he was

+doing.

+

+"Only making love," replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman.

+

+"You were playing the fool, sir," retorted the leading low comedian,

+severely.

+

+"That is a very unkind remark," replied the fishy-eyed young

+gentleman, evidently hurt, "to make to a gentleman who is doing his

+best."

+

+Mr. Hodgson behind his letters was laughing.  "Poor fellow," he

+murmured; "I suppose he can't help it.  Go on."

+

+"We are not producing a pantomime, you know," urged our comedian.

+

+"I want to give him a chance, poor devil," explained Mr. Hodgson in a

+lower voice.  "Only support of a widowed mother."

+

+Our comedian appeared inclined to argue; but at this point Mr.

+Hodgson's correspondence became absorbing.

+

+For the chorus the second act was a busy one.  We opened as soldiers

+and vivandieres, every warrior in this way possessing his own private

+travelling bar.  Our stage manager again explained to us by example

+how a soldier behaves, first under stress of patriotic emotion, and

+secondly under stress of cheap cognac, the difference being somewhat

+subtle:  patriotism displaying itself by slaps upon the chest, and

+cheap cognac by slaps upon the forehead.  A little later we were

+conspirators; our stage manager, with the help of a tablecloth, showed

+us how to conspire.  Next we were a mob, led by the sentimental

+baritone; our stage manager, ruffling his hair, expounded to us how a

+mob led by a sentimental baritone would naturally behave itself.  The

+act wound up with a fight.  Our stage manager, minus his coat,

+demonstrated to us how to fight and die, the dying being a painful and

+dusty performance, necessitating, as it did, much rolling about on the

+stage.  The fishy-eyed young gentleman throughout the whole of it was

+again the centre of attraction.  Whether he were solemnly slapping his

+chest and singing about glory, or solemnly patting his head and

+singing about grapes, was immaterial:  he was the soldier for us.

+What the plot was about did not matter, so long as he was in it.  Who

+led the mob one did not care; one's desire was to see him lead.  How

+others fought and died was matter of no moment; to see him slaughtered

+was sufficient.  Whether his unconsciousness was assumed or natural I

+cannot say; in either case it was admirable.  An earnest young man,

+over-anxious, if anything, to do his duty by his employers, was the

+extent of the charge that could be brought against him.  Our chief

+comedian frowned and fumed; our stage manager was in despair.  Mr.

+Hodgson and the author of the English version, on the contrary,

+appeared kindly disposed towards the gentleman.  In addition to the

+widowed mother, Mr. Hodgson had invented for him five younger brothers

+and sisters utterly destitute but for his earnings.  To deprive so

+exemplary a son and brother of the means of earning a livelihood for

+dear ones dependent upon him was not in Mr. Hodgson's heart.  Our

+chief comedian dissociated himself from all uncharitable

+feelings--would subscribe towards the subsistence of the young man out

+of his own pocket, his only concern being the success of the opera.

+The author of the English version was convinced the young man would

+not accept a charity; had known him for years--was a most sensitive

+creature.

+

+The rehearsal proceeded.  In the last act it became necessary for me

+to kiss the thin lady.

+

+"I am very sorry," said the thin lady, "but duty is duty.  It has to

+be done."

+

+Again I followed directions.  The thin lady was good enough to

+congratulate me on my performance.

+

+The last three or four rehearsals we performed in company with the

+principals.  Divided counsels rendered them decidedly harassing.  Our

+chief comedian had his views, and they were decided; the leading lady

+had hers, and was generous with them.  The author of the English

+version possessed his also, but of these nobody took much notice.

+Once every twenty minutes the stage manager washed his hands of the

+whole affair and left the theatre in despair, and anybody's hat that

+happened to be handy, to return a few minutes later full of renewed

+hope.  The sentimental baritone was sarcastic, the tenor distinctly

+rude to everybody.  Mr. Hodgson's method was to agree with all and

+listen to none.  The smaller fry of the company, together with the

+more pushing of the chorus, supported each in turn, when the others

+were not looking.  Up to the dress rehearsal it was anybody's opera.

+

+About one thing, and about one thing, only, had the principals fallen

+into perfect agreement, and that was that the fishy-eyed young

+gentleman was out of place in a romantic opera.  The tenor would be

+making impassioned love to the leading lady.  Perception would come to

+both of them that, though they might be occupying geographically the

+centre of the stage, dramatically they were not.  Without a shred of

+evidence, yet with perfect justice, they would unhesitatingly blame

+for this the fishy-eyed young man.

+

+"I wasn't doing anything," he would explain meekly.  "I was only

+looking."  It was perfectly true; that was all he was doing.

+

+"Then don't look," would comment the tenor.

+

+The fishy-eyed young gentleman obediently would turn his face away

+from them; and in some mysterious manner the situation would thereupon

+become even yet more hopelessly ridiculous.

+

+"My scene, I think, sir!" would thunder our chief comedian, a little

+later on.

+

+"I am only doing what I was told to do," answered the fishy-eyed young

+gentleman; and nobody could say that he was not.

+

+"Take a circus, and run him as a side-show," counselled our comedian.

+

+"I am afraid he would never be any good as a side-show," replied Mr.

+Hodgson, who was reading letters.

+

+On the first night, passing the gallery entrance on my way to the

+stage door, the sight of the huge crowd assembled there waiting gave

+me my first taste of artistic joy.  I was a part of what they had come

+to see, to praise or to condemn, to listen to, to watch.  Within the

+theatre there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement, amounting

+almost to hysteria.  The bird-like gentleman in his glass cage was

+fluttering, agitated.  The hands of the stage carpenters putting the

+finishing touches to the scenery were trembling, their voices

+passionate with anxiety; the fox-terrier-like call-boy was pale with

+sense of responsibility.

+

+I made my way to the dressing-room--a long, low, wooden corridor,

+furnished from end to end with a wide shelf that served as common

+dressing-table, lighted by a dozen flaring gas-jets, wire-shielded.

+Here awaited us gentlemen of the chorus the wigmaker's assistant,

+whose duty it was to make us up.  From one to another he ran, armed

+with his hare's foot, his box of paints and his bundle of crepe hair.

+My turn arriving, he seized me by the head, jabbed a wig upon me, and

+in less than a couple of minutes I left his hands the orthodox peasant

+of the stage, white of forehead and pink of cheek, with curly

+moustache and lips of coral.  Glancing into the glass, I could not

+help feeling pleased with myself; a moustache, without doubt, suited

+me.

+

+The chorus ladies, when I met them on the stage, were a revelation to

+me.  Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist of

+chiefly, yet in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that

+artificial glare, it seemed fit and fascinating.  The close

+approximation to so much bare flesh, its curious, subtle odour was

+almost intoxicating.  Dr. Johnson's excuse to Garrick for the rarity

+of his visits to the theatre recurred to me with understanding.

+

+"How do you like my costume?" asked the thin lady with the golden

+hair.

+

+"I think you--"  We were standing apart behind a piece of projecting

+scenery.  She laid her hand upon my mouth, laughing.

+

+"How old are you?" she asked me.

+

+"Isn't that a rude question?" I answered.  "I don't ask your age.

+

+"Mine," she replied, "entitles me to talk to you as I should to a boy

+of my own--I had one once.  Get out of this life if you can.  It's bad

+for a woman; it's worse still for a man.  To you especially it will be

+harmful."

+

+"Why to me in particular?"

+

+"Because you are an exceedingly foolish little boy," she answered,

+with another laugh, "and are rather nice."

+

+She slipped away and joined the others.  The chorus was now entirely

+assembled on the stage.  The sound of the rapidly-filling house

+reached us, softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull,

+continuous droning, as of water pouring into some huge cistern.

+Suddenly there fell upon our ears a startling crash; the overture had

+commenced.  The stage manager--more suggestive of a sheep-dog than

+ever, but lacking the calm dignity, the self-possession born of

+conscious capability distinctive of his prototype; a fussy,

+argumentative sheep-dog--rushed into the midst of us and worried us

+into our positions, where the more experienced continued to converse

+in whispers, the rest of us waiting nervously, trying to remember our

+words.  The chorus master, taking his stand with his back to the

+proscenium, held his white-gloved hand in readiness.  The curtain

+rushed up, the house, a nightmare of white faces, appearing to run

+towards us.  The chorus-master's white-gloved hand flung upward.  A

+roar of voices struck upon my ear, but whether my own were of them I

+could not say; if I were singing at all it was unconsciously,

+mechanically.  Later, I found myself standing in the wings beside the

+thin lady; the stage was in the occupation of the principals.  On my

+next entrance my senses were more with me; I was able to look about

+me.  Here and there a strongly-marked face among the audience stood

+out, but the majority were as indistinguishable as so many blades of

+grass.  Looked at from the stage, the house seemed no more real than

+from the front do the painted faces upon a black cloth.

+

+The curtain fell amid the usual applause, sounding to us behind it

+like the rattle of tiny stones against a window-pane.  Three times it

+rose and fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then

+followed a scamper for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being

+filled with the rustling of skirts and the scurrying of feet.

+

+It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into

+his own.  The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the

+tenor and the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with

+the exquisite delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that

+its further presence might be embarrassing, it turned to go, half to

+the east, the other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man,

+starting from the centre, was the last to leave the stage.  In another

+moment he would have disappeared from view.  There came a voice from

+the gallery, clear, distinct, pathetic with entreaty:

+

+"Don't go.  Get behind a tree."

+

+The request was instantly seconded by a roar of applause from every

+part of the house, followed by laughter.  From that point onward the

+house was chiefly concerned with the fortunes of the fishy-eyed young

+gentleman.  At his next entrance, disguised as a conspirator, he was

+welcomed with enthusiasm, his passing away regretted loudly.  At the

+fall of the curtain, the tenor, furious, rushed up to him, and,

+shaking a fist in his face, demanded what he meant by it.

+

+"I wasn't doing anything," explained the fishy-eyed young man.

+

+"You went off sideways!" roared the tenor.

+

+"Well, you told me not to look at you," explained meekly the

+fishy-eyed young gentleman.  "I must go off somehow.  I regard you as

+a very difficult man to please."

+

+At the final fall of the curtain the house appeared divided as

+regarded the merits of the opera; but for "Goggles" there was a

+unanimous and enthusiastic call, and the while we were dressing a

+message came for "Goggles" that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his

+private room.

+

+"He can make a funny face, no doubt about it," commented one

+gentleman, as "Goggles" left the room.

+

+"I defy him to make a funnier one than God Almighty's made for him,"

+responded the massive gentleman.

+

+"There's a deal in luck," observed, with a sigh, another, a tall,

+handsome young gentleman possessed of a rich bass voice.

+

+Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting

+upon the pavement outside.  Not interested in them myself, I was

+hurrying past, when one laid a hand upon my shoulder.  I turned.  He

+was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vandyke beard and

+soft, dreamy eyes.

+

+"Dan!" I cried.

+

+"I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act," he answered.  "In

+the second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it.  Are you

+in a hurry?"

+

+"Not at all," I answered.  "Are you?"

+

+"No," he replied; "we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write

+my notice to-morrow.  Come and have supper with me at the Albion and

+we will talk.  You look tired, young 'un."

+

+"No," I assured him, "only excited--partly at meeting you."

+

+He laughed, and drew my arm through his.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V.

+

+HOW ON A SWEET GREY MORNING THE FUTURE CAME TO PAUL.

+

+Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories.  They revealed points

+of similarity.  Leaving school some considerable time earlier than

+myself, Dan had gone to Cambridge; but two years later, in consequence

+of the death of his father, of a wound contracted in the Indian Mutiny

+and never cured, had been compelled to bring his college career to an

+untimely termination.

+

+"You might not have expected that to grieve me," said Dan, with a

+smile, "but, as a matter of fact, it was a severe blow to me.  At

+Cambridge I discovered that I was by temperament a scholar.  The

+reason why at school I took no interest in learning was because

+learning was, of set purpose, made as uninteresting as possible.  Like

+a Cook's tourist party through a picture gallery, we were rushed

+through education; the object being not that we should see and

+understand, but that we should be able to say that we had done it.  At

+college I chose my own subjects, studied them in my own way.  I fed on

+knowledge, was not stuffed with it like a Strassburg goose."

+

+Returning to London, he had taken a situation in a bank, the chairman

+of which had been an old friend of his father.  The advantage was that

+while earning a small income he had time to continue his studies; but

+the deadly monotony of the work had appalled him, and upon the death

+of his mother he had shaken the cloying dust of the City from his

+brain and joined a small "fit-up" theatrical company.  On the stage he

+had remained for another eighteen months; had played all roles, from

+"Romeo" to "Paul Pry," had helped to paint the scenery, had assisted

+in the bill-posting.  The latter, so he told me, he had found one of

+the most difficult of accomplishments, the paste-laden poster having

+an innate tendency to recoil upon the amateur's own head, and to stick

+there.  Wearying of the stage proper, he had joined a circus company,

+had been "Signor Ricardo, the daring bare-back rider," also one of the

+"Brothers Roscius in their marvellous trapeze act;" inclining again

+towards respectability, had been a waiter for three months at Ostend;

+from that, a footman.

+

+"One never knows," remarked Dan.  "I may come to be a society

+novelist; if so, inside knowledge of the aristocracy will give me

+decided advantage over the majority of my competitors."

+

+Other callings he had sampled:  had tramped through Ireland with a

+fiddle; through Scotland with a lecture on Palestine, assisted by

+dissolving views; had been a billiard-marker; next a schoolmaster.

+For the last three months he had been a journalist, dramatic and

+musical critic to a Sunday newspaper.  Often had I dreamt of such a

+position for myself.

+

+"How did you obtain it?" I asked.

+

+"The idea occurred to me," replied Dan, "late one afternoon,

+sauntering down the Strand, wondering what I should do next.  I was on

+my beam ends, with only a few shillings in my pocket; but luck has

+always been with me.  I entered the first newspaper office I came to,

+walked upstairs to the first floor, and opening the first door without

+knocking, passed through a small, empty room into a larger one,

+littered with books and papers.  It was growing dark.  A gentleman of

+extremely youthful figure was running round and round, cursing to

+himself because of three things:  he had upset the ink, could not find

+the matches, and had broken the bell-pull.  In the gloom, assuming him

+to be the office boy, I thought it would be fun to mistake him for the

+editor.  As a matter of fact, he turned out to be the editor.  I lit

+the gas for him, and found him another ink-pot.  He was a slim young

+man with the voice and manner of a schoolboy.  I don't suppose he is

+any more than five or six-and-twenty.  He owes his position to the

+fact of his aunt's being the proprietress.  He asked me if he knew me.

+Before I could tell him that he didn't, he went on talking.  He

+appeared to be labouring under a general sense of injury.

+

+"'People come into this office,' he said; 'they seem to look upon it

+as a shelter from the rain--people I don't know from Adam.  And that

+damned fool downstairs lets them march straight up--anybody, men with

+articles on safety valves, people who have merely come to kick up a

+row about something or another.  Half my work I have to do on the

+stairs.

+

+"I recommended to him that he should insist upon strangers writing

+their business upon a slip of paper.  He thought it a good idea.

+

+"'For the last three-quarters of an hour,' he said, 'have I been

+trying to finish this one column, and four times have I been

+interrupted.'

+

+"At that precise moment there came another knock at the door.

+

+"'I won't see him!' he cried.  'I don't care who he is; I won't see

+him.  Send him away!  Send everybody away!'

+

+"I went to the door.  He was an elderly gentleman.  He made to sweep

+by me; but I barred his way, and closed the editorial door behind me.

+He seemed surprised; but I told him it was impossible for him to see

+the editor that afternoon, and suggested his writing his business on a

+sheet of paper, which I handed to him for the purpose.  I remained in

+that ante-room for half an hour, and during that time I suppose I must

+have sent away about ten or a dozen people.  I don't think their

+business could have been important, or I should have heard about it

+afterwards.  The last to come was a tired-looking gentleman, smoking a

+cigarette.  I asked him his name.

+

+"He looked at me in surprise, and then answered, 'Idiot!'

+

+"I remained firm, however, and refused to let him pass.

+

+"'It's a bit awkward,' he retorted.  'Don't you think you could make

+an exception in favour of the sub-editor on press night?'

+

+"I replied that such would be contrary to my instructions.

+

+"'Oh, all right,' he answered.  'I'd like to know who's going to the

+Royalty to-night, that's all.  It's seven o'clock already.'

+

+"An idea occurred to me.  If the sub-editor of a paper doesn't know

+whom to send to a theatre, it must mean that the post of dramatic

+critic on that paper is for some reason or another vacant.

+

+"'Oh, that's all right,' I told him.  'I shall be in time enough.'

+

+"He appeared neither pleased nor displeased.  'Have you arranged with

+the Guv'nor?' he asked me.

+

+"'I'm just waiting to see him again for a few minutes,' I returned.

+'It'll be all right.  Have you got the ticket?'

+

+"'Haven't seen it,' he replied.

+

+"'About a column?' I suggested.

+

+"'Three-quarters,' he preferred, and went.

+

+"The moment he was gone, I slipped downstairs and met a printer's boy

+coming up.

+

+"'What's the name of your sub?' I asked him.  'Tall man with a black

+moustache, looks tired.'

+

+"'Oh, you mean Penton,' explained the boy.

+

+"'That's the name,' I answered; 'couldn't think of it.'

+

+"I walked straight into the editor; he was still irritable.  'What is

+it?  What is it now?' he snapped out.

+

+"'I only want the ticket for the Royalty Theatre,' I answered.

+'Penton says you've got it.'

+

+"'I don't know where it is,' he growled.

+

+"I found it after some little search upon his desk.

+

+"'Who's going?' he asked.

+

+"'I am,' I said.  And I went.

+

+"They have never discovered to this day that I appointed myself.

+Penton thinks I am some relation of the proprietress, and in

+consequence everybody treats me with marked respect.  Mrs. Wallace

+herself, the proprietress, thinks I am the discovery of Penton, in

+whose judgment she has great faith; and with her I get on admirably.

+The paper I don't think is doing too well, and the salary is small,

+but sufficient.  Journalism suits my temperament, and I dare say I

+shall keep to it."

+

+"You've been somewhat of a rolling stone hitherto," I commented.

+

+He laughed.  "From the stone's point of view," he answered, "I never

+could see the advantage of being smothered in moss.  I should always

+prefer remaining the stone, unhidden, able to move and see about me.

+But now, to speak of other matters, what are your plans for the

+immediate future?  Your opera, thanks to the gentlemen, the gods have

+dubbed 'Goggles,' will, I fancy, run through the winter.  Are you

+getting any salary?"

+

+"Thirty shillings a week," I explained to him, "with full salary for

+matinees."

+

+"Say two pounds," he replied.  "With my three we could set up an

+establishment of our own.  I have an idea that is original.  Shall we

+work it out together?"

+

+I assured him with fervour that nothing would please me better.

+

+"There are four delightful rooms in Queen's Square," he continued.

+"They are charmingly furnished:  a fine sitting-room in the front,

+with two bedrooms and a kitchen behind.  Their last tenant was a

+Polish Revolutionary, who, three months ago, poor fellow, was foolish

+enough to venture back to Russia, and who is now living rent free.

+The landlord of the house is an original old fellow, Deleglise the

+engraver.  He occupies the rest of the house himself.  He has told me

+I can have the rooms for anything I like to offer, and I should

+suggest thirty shillings a week, though under ordinary circumstances

+they would be worth three or four pounds.  But he will only let us

+have them on the understanding that we 'do for' ourselves.  He is

+quite an oddity.  He hates petticoats, especially elderly petticoats.

+He has one servant, an old Frenchwoman, who, I believe, was

+housekeeper to his mother, and he and she do the housework together,

+most of their time quarrelling over it.  Nothing else of the genus

+domestic female will he allow inside the door; not even an occasional

+charwoman would be permitted to us.  On the other hand, it is a

+beautiful old Georgian house, with Adams mantelpieces, a stone

+staircase, and oak-panelled rooms; and our portion would be the entire

+second floor:  no pianos and no landlady.  He is a widower with one

+child, a girl of about fourteen or maybe a little older.  Now, what do

+you say?  I am a very fair cook; will you be house-and-parlour-maid?"

+

+I needed no pressing.  A week later we were installed there, and for

+nearly two years we lived there.  At the risk of offending an adorable

+but somewhat touchy sex, convinced that man, left to himself, is

+capable of little more than putting himself to bed, and that only in a

+rough-and-ready fashion, truth compels me to record the fact that

+without female assistance or supervision of any kind we passed through

+those two years, and yet exist to tell the tale.  Dan had not idly

+boasted.  Better plain cooking I never want to taste; so good a cup of

+coffee, omelette, or devilled kidney I rarely have tasted.  Had he

+always confined his efforts within the boundaries of his abilities,

+there would be little to record beyond continuous and monotonous

+success.  But stirred into dangerous ambition at the call of an

+occasional tea or supper party, lured out of his depths by the example

+of old Deleglise, our landlord--a man who for twenty years had made

+cooking his hobby--Dan would at intervals venture upon experiment.

+Pastry, it became evident, was a thing he should never have touched:

+his hand was heavy and his temperament too serious.  There was a thing

+called lemon sponge, necessitating much beating of eggs.  In the

+cookery-book--a remarkably fat volume, luscious with illustrations of

+highly-coloured food--it appeared an airy and graceful structure of

+dazzling whiteness.  Served as Dan sent it to table, it suggested

+rather in form and colour a miniature earthquake.  Spongy it

+undoubtedly was.  One forced it apart with the assistance of one's

+spoon and fork; it yielded with a gentle tearing sound.  Another

+favourite dainty of his was manna-cake.  Concerning it I would merely

+remark that if it in any way resembled anything the Children of Israel

+were compelled to eat, then there is explanation for that fretfulness

+and discontent for which they have been, perhaps, unjustly

+blamed--some excuse even for their backward-flung desires in the

+direction of the Egyptian fleshpots.  Moses himself may have been

+blessed with exceptional digestion.  It was substantial, one must say

+that for it.  One slice of it--solid, firm, crusty on the outside,

+towards the centre marshy--satisfied most people to a sense of

+repletion.  For supper parties Dan would essay trifles--by no means

+open to the criticism of being light as air--souffle's that guests, in

+spite of my admonishing kicks, would persist in alluding to as

+pudding; and in winter-time, pancakes.  Later, as regards these

+latter, he acquired some skill; but at first the difficulty was the

+tossing.  I think myself a safer plan would have been to turn them by

+the aid of a knife and fork; it is less showy, but more sure.  At

+least, you avoid all danger of catching the half-baked thing upon your

+head instead of in the pan, of dropping it into the fire, or among the

+cinders.  But "Thorough" was always Dan's motto; and after all, small

+particles of coal or a few hairs can always be detected by the careful

+feeder, and removed.

+

+A more even-tempered man than Dan for twenty-three hours out of every

+twenty-four surely never breathed.  It was a revelation to me to

+discover that for the other he could be uncertain, irritable, even

+ungrateful.  At first, in a spirit of pure good nature, I would offer

+him counsel and advice; explain to him why, as it seemed to me, the

+custard was pimply, the mayonnaise sauce suggestive of hair oil.  What

+was my return?  Sneers, insult and abuse, followed, if I did not clear

+out quickly, by spoilt tomatoes, cold coffee grounds--anything that

+happened to be handy.  Pained, saddened, I would withdraw, he would

+kick the door to after me.  His greatest enemy appeared to be the

+oven.  The oven it was that set itself to thwart his best wrought

+schemes.  Always it was the oven's fault that the snowy bun appeared

+to have been made of red sandstone, the macaroni cheese of Cambrian

+clay.  One might have sympathised with him more had his language been

+more restrained.  As it was, the virulence of his reproaches almost

+inclined one to take the part of the oven.

+

+Concerning our house-maid, I can speak in terms of unqualified praise.

+There are, alas, fussy house-maids--who has not known and suffered

+them?--who overdo the thing, have no repose, no instinct telling them

+when to ease up and let the place alone.  I have always held the

+perpetual stirring up of dust a scientific error; left to itself, it

+is harmless, may even be regarded as a delicate domestic bloom,

+bestowing a touch of homeliness upon objects that without it gleam

+cold and unsympathetic.  Let sleeping dogs lie.  Why be continually

+waking up the stuff, filling the air with all manner of unhealthy

+germs?  Nature in her infinite wisdom has ordained that upon table,

+floor, or picture frame it shall sink and settle.  There it remains,

+quiet and inoffensive; there it will continue to remain so long as

+nobody interferes with it:  why worry it?  So also with crumbs, odd

+bits of string, particles of egg-shell, stumps of matches, ends of

+cigarettes:  what fitter place for such than under the nearest mat?

+To sweep them up is tiresome work.  They cling to the carpet, you get

+cross with them, curse them for their obstinacy, and feel ashamed of

+yourself for your childishness.  For every one you do persuade into

+the dust-pan, two jump out again.  You lose your temper, feel bitter

+towards the man that dropped them.  Your whole character becomes

+deteriorated.  Under the mat they are always willing to go.

+Compromise is true statesmanship.  There will come a day when you will

+be glad of an excuse for not doing something else that you ought to be

+doing.  Then you can take up the mats and feel quite industrious,

+contemplating the amount of work that really must be done--some time

+or another.

+

+To differentiate between the essential and the non-essential, that is

+where woman fails.  In the name of common sense, what is the use of

+washing a cup that half an hour later is going to be made dirty again?

+If the cat be willing and able to so clean a plate that not one speck

+of grease remain upon it, why deprive her of pleasure to inflict toil

+upon yourself?  If a bed looks made and feels made, then for all

+practical purposes it is made; why upset it merely to put it straight

+again?  It would surprise most women the amount of labour that can be

+avoided in a house.

+

+For needlework, I confess, I never acquired skill.  Dan had learnt to

+handle a thimble, but my own second finger was ever reluctant to come

+forward when wanted.  It had to be found, all other fingers removed

+out of its way.  Then, feebly, nervously, it would push, slip, get

+itself pricked badly with the head of the needle, and, thoroughly

+frightened, remain incapable of further action.  More practical I

+found it to push the needle through by help of the door or table.

+

+The opera, as Dan had predicted, ran far into the following year.

+When it was done with, another--in which "Goggles" appeared as one of

+the principals--took its place, and was even more successful.  After

+the experience of Nelson Square, my present salary of thirty-five

+shillings, occasionally forty shillings, a week seemed to me princely.

+There floated before my eyes the possibility of my becoming a great

+opera singer.  On six hundred pounds a week, I felt I could be

+content.  But the O'Kelly set himself to dispel this dream.

+

+"Ye'd be making a mistake, me boy," explained the O'Kelly.  "Ye'd be

+just wasting ye're time.  I wouldn't tell ye so if I weren't convinced

+of it."

+

+"I know it is not powerful," I admitted.

+

+"Ye might almost call it thin," added the O'Kelly.

+

+"It might be good enough for comic opera," I argued.  "People appear

+to succeed in comic opera without much voice.

+

+"Sure, there ye're right," agreed the O'Kelly, with a sigh.  "An' of

+course if ye had an exceptionally fine presence and were strikingly

+handsome--"

+

+"One can do a good deal with make-up," I suggested.

+

+The O'Kelly shook his head.  "It's never quite the same thing.  It

+would depend upon your acting."

+

+I dreamt of becoming a second Kean, of taking Macready's place.  It

+need not interfere with my literary ambition.  I could combine the

+two:  fill Drury Lane in the evening, turn out epoch-making novels in

+the morning, write my own plays.

+

+Every day I studied in the reading-room of the British Museum.

+Wearying of success in Art, I might eventually go into Parliament:  a

+Prime Minister with a thorough knowledge of history:  why not?  With

+Ollendorf for guide, I continued French and German.  It might be the

+diplomatic service that would appeal to me in my old age.  An

+ambassadorship!  It would be a pleasant termination to a brilliant

+career.

+

+There was excuse for my optimistic mood about this period.  All things

+were going well with me.  A story of mine had been accepted.  I forget

+for the moment the name of the journal:  it is dead now.  Most of the

+papers in which my early efforts appeared are dead.  My contributions

+might be likened to their swan songs.  Proofs had been sent me, which

+I had corrected and returned.  But proofs are not facts.  This had

+happened to me once before, and I had been lifted to the skies only to

+fall the more heavily.  The paper had collapsed before my story had

+appeared.  (Ah, why had they delayed?  It might have saved them!)

+This time I remembered the proverb, and kept my own counsel, slipping

+out early each morning on the day of publication to buy the paper, to

+scan eagerly its columns.  For weeks I suffered hope deferred.  But at

+last, one bright winter's day in January, walking down the Harrow

+Road, I found myself standing still, suddenly stunned, before a bill

+outside a small news-vendor's shop.  It was the first time I had seen

+my real name in print:  "The Witch of Moel Sarbod:  a legend of Mona,

+by Paul Kelver."  (For this I had even risked discovery by the Lady

+'Ortensia.)  My legs trembling under me, I entered the shop.  A

+ruffianly-looking man in dirty shirt-sleeves, who appeared astonished

+that any one should want a copy, found one at length on the floor

+underneath the counter.  With it in my pocket, I retraced my footsteps

+as in a dream.  On a seat in Paddington Green I sat down and read it.

+The hundred best books!  I have waded through them all; they have

+never charmed me as charmed me that one short story in that now

+forgotten journal.  Need I add it was a sad and sentimental

+composition.  Once upon a time there lived a mighty King; one--but

+with the names I will not bore you; they are somewhat unpronounceable.

+Their selection had cost me many hours of study in the British Museum

+reading-rooms, surrounded by lexicons of the Welsh language,

+gazetteers, translations from the early Celtic poets--with footnotes.

+He loved and was beloved by a beautiful Princess, whose name, being

+translated, was Purity.  One day the King, hunting, lost his way, and

+being weary, lay down and fell asleep.  And by chance the spot whereon

+he lay was near to a place which by infinite pains, with the aid of a

+magnifying glass, I had discovered upon the map, and which means in

+English the Cave of the Waters, where dwelt a wicked Sorceress, who,

+while he slept, cast her spells upon him, so that he awoke to forget

+his kingly honour and the good of all his people, his only desire

+being towards the Witch of Moel Sarbod.

+

+Now, there lived in this Kingdom by the sea a great Magician; and

+Purity, who loved the King far better than herself, bethought her of

+him, and of all she had heard concerning his power and wisdom; and

+went to him and besought his aid that she might save the King.  There

+was but one way to accomplish this:  with bare feet Purity must climb

+the rocky path leading to the Witch's dwelling, go boldly up to her,

+not fearing her sharp claws nor her strong teeth, and kiss her upon

+the mouth.  In this way the spirit of Purity would pass into the

+Witch's soul, and she would become a woman.  But the form and spirit

+of the Witch would pass into Purity, transforming her, and in the Cave

+of the Waters she must forever abide.  Thus Purity gave herself that

+the King might live.  With bleeding feet she climbed the rocky path,

+clasped the Witch's form within her arms, kissed her on the mouth.

+And the Witch became a woman and reigned with the King over his

+people, wisely and helpfully.  But Purity became a hideous witch, and

+to this day abides on Moel Sarbod, where is the Cave of the Waters.

+And they who climb the mountain's side still hear above the roaring of

+the cataract the sobbing of Purity, the King's betrothed.  But many

+liken it rather to a joyous song of love triumphant.

+

+No writer worth his salt was ever satisfied with anything he ever

+wrote, so I have been told, and so I try to believe.  Evidently I am

+not worth my salt.  Candid friends, and others, to whom in my salad

+days I used to show my work, asking for a frank opinion, meaning, of

+course, though never would they understand me, their unadulterated

+praise, would assure me for my good, that this, my first to whom the

+gods gave life, was but a feeble, ill-shaped child:  its attempted

+early English a cross between "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "Old

+Moore's Almanac;" its scenery--which had cost me weeks of research--an

+apparent attempt to sum up in the language of a local guide book the

+leading characteristics of the Garden of Eden combined with Dante's

+Inferno; its pathos of the penny-plain and two-penny-coloured order.

+Maybe they were right.  Much have I written since that at the time

+appeared to me good, that I have read later with regret, with burning

+cheek, with frowning brow.  But of this, my first-born, the harbinger

+of all my hopes, I am no judge.  Touching the yellowing, badly-printed

+pages, I feel again the deep thrill of joy with which I first unfolded

+them and read.  Again I am a youngster, and life opens out before

+me--inmeasurable, no goal too high.  This child of my brain, my work:

+it shall spread my name throughout the world.  It shall be a household

+world in lands that I shall never see.  Friends whose voices I shall

+never hear will speak of me.  I shall die, but it shall live, yield

+fresh seed, bear fruit I know not of.  Generations yet unborn shall

+read it and remember me.  My thoughts, my words, my spirit:  in it I

+shall live again; it shall keep my memory green.

+

+The long, long thoughts of boyhood!  We elders smile at them.  The

+little world spins round; the little voices of an hour sink hushed.

+The crawling generations come and go.  The solar system drops from

+space.  The eternal mechanism reforms and shapes itself anew.  Time,

+turning, ploughs another furrow.  So, growing sleepy, we murmur with a

+yawn.  Is it that we see clearer, or that our eyes are growing dim?

+Let the young men see their visions, dream their dreams, hug to

+themselves their hopes of enduring fame; so shall they serve the world

+better.

+

+I brushed the tears from my eyes and looked up.  Half-a-dozen urchins,

+male and female, were gaping at me open-mouthed.  They scattered

+shouting, whether compliment or insult I know not:  probably the

+latter.  I flung them a handful of coppers, which for the moment

+silenced them; and went upon my way.  How bright, how fair the

+bustling streets, golden in the winter sunshine, thronged with life,

+with effort!  Laughter rang around me.  Sweet music rolled from

+barrel-organs.  The strenuous voices of the costermongers called

+invitation to the fruitful earth.  Errand boys passed me whistling

+shrilly joyous melodies.  Perspiring tradesmen shouted generous offers

+to the needy.  Men and women hurried by with smiling faces.  Sleek

+cats purred in sheltered nooks, till merry dogs invited them to sport.

+The sparrows, feasting in the roadway, chirped their hymn of praise.

+

+At the Marble Arch I jumped upon a 'bus.  I mentioned to the conductor

+in mounting that it was a fine day.  He replied that he had noticed it

+himself.  The retort struck me as a brilliant repartee.  Our coachman,

+all but run into by a hansom cab driven by a surly old fellow of

+patriarchal appearance, remarked upon the danger of allowing horses

+out in charge of bits of boys.  How full the world of wit and humour!

+

+Almost without knowing it, I found myself in earnest conversation with

+a young man sitting next to me.  We conversed of life, of love.  Not

+until afterwards, reflecting upon the matter, did it surprise me that

+to a mere chance acquaintance of the moment he had spoken of the one

+thing dearest to his heart:  a sweet but clearly wayward maiden, the

+Hebe of a small, old-fashioned coffee-shop the 'bus was at that moment

+passing.  Hitherto I had not been the recipient of confidences.  It

+occurred to me that as a rule not even my friends spoke much to me

+concerning their own affairs; generally it was I who spoke to them of

+mine.  I sympathised with him, advised him--how, I do not recollect.

+He said, however, he thought that I was right; and at Regent Street he

+left me, expressing his determination to follow my counsel, whatever

+it may have been.

+

+Between Berners Street and the Circus I lent a shilling to a couple of

+young ladies who had just discovered with amusement, quickly swallowed

+by despair, that they neither of them had any money with them.  (They

+returned it next day in postage stamps, with a charming note.)  The

+assurance with which I tendered the slight service astonished me

+myself.  At any other time I should have hesitated, argued with my

+fears, offered it with an appearance of sulky constraint, and been

+declined.  For a moment they were doubtful, then, looking at me,

+accepted with a delightful smile.  They consulted me as to the way to

+Paternoster Row.  I instructed them, adding a literary anecdote, which

+seemed to interest them.  I even ventured on a compliment, neatly

+phrased, I am inclined to think.  Evidently it pleased--a result

+hitherto unusual in the case of my compliments.  At the corner of

+Southampton Row I parted from them with regret.  Why had I never

+noticed before how full of pleasant people this sweet and smiling

+London?

+

+At the corner of Queen's Square a decent-looking woman stopped me to

+ask the way to the Children's Hospital at Chelsea, explaining she had

+made a mistake, thinking it was the one in Great Ormond Street where

+her child lay.  I directed her, then glancing into her face, noticed

+how tired she looked, and a vista of the weary pavements she would

+have to tramp flashed before me.  I slipped some money into her hand

+and told her to take a 'bus.  She flushed, then thanked me.  I turned

+a few yards further on; she was starting after me, amazement on her

+face.  I laughed and waved my hand to her.  She smiled back in return,

+and went her way.

+

+A rain began to fall.  I paused upon the doorstep for a minute,

+enjoying the cool drops upon by upturned face, the tonic sharpness of

+the keen east wind; then slipped my key into the lock and entered.

+

+The door of old Deleglise's studio on the first floor happened to he

+open.  Hitherto, beyond the usual formal salutations, when by chance

+we met upon the stairs, I had exchanged but few words with my

+eccentric landlord; but remembering his kindly face, the desire came

+upon me to tell him my good fortune.  I felt sure his eyes would

+lighten with delight.  By instinct I knew him for a young man's man.

+

+I tapped lightly; no answer came.  Someone was talking; it sounded

+like a girl's voice.  I pushed the door further open and walked in;

+such was the custom of the house.  It was a large room, built over the

+yard, lighted by one high window, before which was the engraving desk,

+shaded under a screen of tissue paper.  At the further end of the room

+stood a large cheval-glass, and in front of this, its back towards me,

+was a figure that excited my curiosity; so that remaining where I was,

+partly hidden behind a large easel, I watched it for awhile in

+silence.  Above a heavily flounced blue skirt, which fell in creases

+on the floor and trailed a couple of yards or so behind, it wore a

+black low-cut sleeveless bodice--much too big for it--of the fashion

+early Victorian.  A good deal of dark-brown hair, fastened up by

+hair-pins that stuck out in all directions like quills upon a

+porcupine, suggesting collapse with every movement, was ornamented by

+three enormous green feathers, one of which hung limply over the

+lady's left ear.  Three times, while I watched, unnoticed, the lady

+propped it into a more befitting attitude, and three times, limp and

+intoxicated-looking, it fell back into its former foolish position.

+Her long, thin arms, displaying a pair of brilliantly red elbows,

+pointed to quite a dangerous degree, terminated in hands so very

+sunburnt as to convey the impression of a pair of remarkably

+well-fitting gloves.  Her right hand grasped and waved with

+determination a large lace fan, her left clutched fiercely the front

+of her skirt.  With a sweeping curtsey to herself in the glass, which

+would have been more effective could she have avoided tying her legs

+together with her skirt--a _contretemps_ necessitating the use of both

+hands and a succession of jumps before she could disentangle

+herself--she remarked so soon as she had recovered her balance:

+

+"So sorry I am late.  My carriage was unfortunately delayed."

+

+The excuse, I gathered, was accepted, for with a gracious smile and a

+vigorous bow, by help of which every hairpin made distinct further

+advance towards freedom, she turned, and with much dignity and head

+over the right shoulder took a short walk to the left.  At the end of

+six short steps she stopped and began kicking.  For what reason, I, at

+first, could not comprehend.  It dawned upon me after awhile that her

+object was the adjustment of her train.  Finding the manoeuvre too

+difficult of accomplishment by feet alone, she stooped, and, taking

+the stuff up in her hands, threw it behind her.  Then, facing north,

+she retraced her steps to the glass, talking to herself, as she

+walked, in the high-pitched drawl, distinctive, as my stage knowledge

+told me, of aristocratic society.

+

+"Oh, do you think so--really?  Ah, yes; you say that.  Certainly not!

+I shouldn't think of it."  There followed what I am inclined to

+believe was intended for a laugh, musical but tantalising.  If so,

+want of practice marred the effort.  The performance failed to satisfy

+even herself.  She tried again; it was still only a giggle.

+

+Before the glass she paused, and with a haughty inclination of her

+head succeeded for the third time in displacing the intoxicated

+feather.

+

+"Oh, bother the silly thing!" she said in a voice so natural as to be,

+by contrast with her previous tone, quite startling.

+

+She fixed it again with difficulty, muttering something inarticulate.

+Then, her left hand resting on an imaginary coat-sleeve, her right

+holding her skirt sufficiently high to enable her to move, she

+commenced to majestically gyrate.

+

+Whether, hampered as she was by excess of skirt, handicapped by the

+natural clumsiness of her age, catastrophe in any case would not

+sooner or later have overtaken her, I have my doubts.  I have since

+learnt her own view to be that but for catching sight, in turning, of

+my face, staring at her through the bars of the easel, all would have

+gone well and gracefully.  Avoiding controversy on this point, the

+facts to be recorded are, that, seeing me, she uttered a sudden

+exclamation of surprise, dropped her skirt, trod on her train, felt

+her hair coming down, tried to do two things at once, and sat upon the

+floor.  I ran to her assistance.  With flaming face and flashing eyes

+she sprang to her feet.  There was a sound as of the rushing down of

+avalanches.  The blue flounced skirt lay round her on the floor.  She

+stood above its billowy folds, reminiscent of Venus rising from the

+waves--a gawky, angular Venus in a short serge frock, reaching a

+little below her knees, black stockings and a pair of prunella boots

+of a size suggesting she had yet some inches to grow before reaching

+her full height.

+

+"I hope you haven't hurt yourself," I said.

+

+The next moment I didn't care whether she had or whether she hadn't.

+She did not reply to my kindly meant enquiry.  Instead, her hand swept

+through the air in the form of an ample semi-circle.  It terminated on

+my ear.  It was not a small hand; it was not a soft hand; it was not

+that sort of hand.  The sound of the contact rang through the room

+like a pistol shot; I beard it with my other ear.  I sprang at her,

+and catching her before she had recovered her equilibrium, kissed her.

+I did not kiss her because I wanted to.  I kissed her because I could

+not box her ears back in return, which I should have preferred doing.

+I kissed her, hoping it would make her mad.  It did.  If a look could

+have killed me, such would have been the tragic ending of this story.

+It did not kill me; it did me good.

+

+"You horrid boy!" she cried.  "You horrid, horrid boy!"

+

+There, I admit, she scored.  I did not in the least object to her

+thinking me horrid, but at nineteen one does object to being mistaken

+for a boy.

+

+"I am not a boy," I explained.

+

+"Yes, you are," she retorted; "a beast of a boy!"

+

+"If you do it again," I warned her--a sudden movement on her part

+hinting to me the possibility--"I'll kiss you again!  I mean it."

+

+"Leave the room!" she commanded, pointing with her angular arm towards

+the door.

+

+I did not wish to remain.  I was about to retire with as much dignity

+as circumstances permitted.

+

+"Boy!" she added.

+

+At that I turned.  "Now I won't go!" I replied.  "See if I do."

+

+We stood glaring at each other.

+

+"What right have you in here?" she demanded.

+

+"I came to see Mr. Deleglise," I answered.  "I suppose you are Miss

+Deleglise.  It doesn't seem to me that you know how to treat a

+visitor."

+

+"Who are you?" she asked.

+

+"Mr. Horace Moncrieff," I replied.  I was using at the period both my

+names indiscriminately, but for this occasion Horace Moncrieff I

+judged the more awe-inspiring.

+

+She snorted.  "I know.  You're the house-maid.  You sweep all the

+crumbs under the mats."

+

+Now this was a subject about which at the time I was feeling somewhat

+sore.  "Needs must when the Devil drives;" but as matters were, Dan

+and I could well have afforded domestic assistance.  It rankled in my

+mind that to fit in with the foolish fad of old Deleglise, I the

+future Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, Kean, Macready and Phelps

+rolled into one, should be compelled to the performance of menial

+duties.  On this morning of all others, my brilliant literary career

+just commenced, the anomaly of the thing appeared naturally more

+glaring.

+

+Besides, how came she to know I swept the crumbs under the mat--that

+it was my method?  Had she and Dan been discussing me, ridiculing me

+behind my back?  What right had Dan to reveal the secrets of our

+menage to this chit of a school-girl?  Had he done so? or had she been

+prying, poking her tilted nose into matters that did not concern her?

+Pity it was she had no mother to occasionally spank her, teach her

+proper behaviour.

+

+"Where I sweep our crumbs is nothing to do with you," I replied with

+some spirit.  "That I have to sweep them at all is the fault of your

+father.  A sensible girl--"

+

+"How dare you speak against my father!" she interrupted me with

+blazing eyes.

+

+"We will not discuss the question further," I answered, with sense and

+dignity.

+

+"I think you had better not!" she retorted.

+

+Turning her back on me, she commenced to gather up her hairpins--there

+must have been about a hundred of them.  I assisted her to the extent

+of picking up about twenty, which I handed to her with a bow:  it may

+have been a little stiff, but that was only to be expected.  I wished

+to show her that her bad example had not affected my own manners.

+

+"I am sorry my presence should have annoyed you," I said.  "It was

+quite an accident.  I entered the room thinking your father was here."

+

+"When you saw he wasn't, you might have gone out again," she replied,

+"instead of hiding yourself behind a picture."

+

+"I didn't hide myself," I explained.  "The easel happened to be in the

+way."

+

+"And you stopped there and watched me."

+

+"I couldn't help it."

+

+She looked round and our eyes met.  They were frank, grey eyes.  An

+expression of merriment shot into them.  I laughed.

+

+Then she laughed:  it was a delightful laugh, the laugh one would have

+expected from her.

+

+"You might at least have coughed," she suggested.

+

+"It was so amusing," I pleaded.

+

+"I suppose it was," she agreed, and held out her hand.  "Did I hurt

+you?" she asked.

+

+"Yes, you did," I answered, taking it.

+

+"Well, it was enough to annoy me, wasn't it?" she suggested.

+

+"Evidently," I agreed.

+

+"I am going to a ball next week," she explained, "a grown-up ball, and

+I've got to wear a skirt.  I wanted to see if I could manage a train."

+

+"Well, to be candid, you can't," I assured her.

+

+"It does seem difficult."

+

+"Shall I show you?" I asked.

+

+"What do you know about it?"

+

+"Well, I see it done every night."

+

+"Oh, yes; of course, you're on the stage.  Yes, do."

+

+We readjusted the torn skirt, accommodating it better to her figure by

+the help of hairpins.  I showed her how to hold the train, and, I

+humming a tune, we commenced to waltz.

+

+"I shouldn't count my steps," I suggested to her.  "It takes your mind

+away from the music."

+

+"I don't waltz well," she admitted meekly.  "I know I don't do

+anything well--except play hockey."

+

+"And try not to tread on your partner's feet.  That's a very bad

+fault."

+

+"I do try not to," she explained.

+

+"It comes with practice," I assured her.

+

+"I'll get Tom to give me half an hour every evening," she said.  "He

+dances beautifully."

+

+"Who's Tom?"

+

+"Oh, father."

+

+"Why do you call your father Tom?  It doesn't sound respectful."

+

+"Oh, he likes it; and it suits him so much better than father.

+Besides, he isn't like a real father.  He does everything I want him

+to."

+

+"Is that good for you?"

+

+"No; it's very bad for me--everybody says so.  When you come to think

+of it, of course it isn't the way to bring up a girl.  I tell him, but

+he merely laughs--says it's the only way he knows.  I do hope I turn

+out all right.  Am I doing it better now?"

+

+"A little.  Don't be too anxious about it.  Don't look at your feet."

+

+"But if I don't they go all wrong.  It was you who trod on mine that

+time."

+

+"I know.  I'm sorry.  It's a little difficult not to."

+

+"Am I holding my train all right?"

+

+"Well, there's no need to grip it as if you were afraid it would run

+away.  It will follow all right.  Hold it gracefully."

+

+"I wish I wasn't a girl."

+

+"Oh, you'll get used to it."  We concluded our dance.

+

+"What do I do--say 'Thank you'?"

+

+"Yes, prettily."

+

+"What does he do?"

+

+"Oh, he takes you back to your chaperon, or suggests refreshment, or

+you sit and talk."

+

+"I hate talking.  I never know what to say."

+

+"Oh, that's his duty.  He'll try and amuse you, then you must laugh.

+You have a nice laugh."

+

+"But I never know when to laugh.  If I laugh when I want to it always

+offends people.  What do you do if somebody asks you to dance and you

+don't want to dance with them?"

+

+"Oh, you say your programme is full."

+

+"But if it isn't?"

+

+"Well, you tell a lie."

+

+"Couldn't I say I don't dance well, and that I'm sure they'd get on

+better with somebody else?"

+

+"It would be the truth, but they might not believe it."

+

+"I hope nobody asks me that I don't want."

+

+"Well, he won't a second time, anyhow."

+

+"You are rude."

+

+"You are only a school-girl."

+

+"I look a woman in my new frock, I really do."

+

+"I should doubt it."

+

+"You shall see me, then you'll be polite.  It is because you are a boy

+you are rude.  Men are much nicer."

+

+"Oh, are they?"

+

+"Yes.  You will be, when you are a man."

+

+The sound of voices rose suddenly in the hall.

+

+"Tom!" cried Miss Deleglise; and collecting her skirt in both hands,

+bolted down the corkscrew staircase leading to the kitchen, leaving me

+standing in the centre of the studio.

+

+The door opened and old Deleglise entered, accompanied by a small,

+slight man with red hair and beard and somewhat watery eyes.

+

+Deleglise himself was a handsome old fellow, then a man of about

+fifty-five.  His massive, mobile face, illuminated by bright, restless

+eyes, was crowned with a lion-like mane of iron-grey hair.  Till a few

+years ago he had been a painter of considerable note.  But in

+questions of art his temper was short.  Pre-Raphaelism had gone out of

+fashion for the time being; the tendency of the new age was towards

+impressionism, and in disgust old Deleglise had broken his palette

+across his knee, and swore never to paint again.  Artistic work of

+some sort being necessary to his temperament, he contented himself now

+with engraving.  At the moment he was engaged upon the reproduction of

+Memlinc's Shrine of St. Ursula, with photographs of which he had just

+returned from Bruges.

+

+At sight of me his face lighted with a smile, and he advanced with

+outstretched hand.

+

+"Ah; my lad, so you have got over your shyness and come to visit the

+old bear in his den.  Good boy.  I like young faces."

+

+He had a clear, musical voice, ever with the suggestion of a laugh

+behind it.  He laid his hand upon my shoulder.

+

+"Why, you are looking as if you had come into a fortune," he added,

+"and didn't know what a piece of bad luck that can be to a young

+fellow like yourself."

+

+"How could it be bad luck?" I asked, laughing.

+

+"Takes all the sauce out of life, young man," answered Deleglise.

+"What interest is there in running a race with the prize already in

+your possession, tell me that?"

+

+"It is not that kind of fortune," I answered, "it is another.  I have

+had my first story accepted.  It is in print.  Look."

+

+I handed him the paper.  He spread it out upon the engraving board

+before him.

+

+"Ah, that's better," he said, "that's better.  Charlie," he turned to

+the red-headed man, who had seated himself listlessly in the one

+easy-chair the room contained, "come here."

+

+The red-headed man rose and wandered towards us.  "Let me introduce

+you to Mr. Paul Kelver, our new fellow servant.  Our lady has accepted

+him.  He has just been elected; his first story is in print."

+

+The red-haired man stretched out his long thin hand.  "I have thirty

+years of fame," said the red-haired man--"could I say world-wide?"

+

+He turned for confirmation to old Deleglise, who laughed.  "I think

+you can."

+

+"If I could give it you would you exchange with me--at this moment?"

+

+"You would be a fool if you did," he went on.  "One's first success,

+one's first victory!  It is the lover's first kiss.  Fortune grows old

+and wrinkled, frowns more often than she smiles.  We become

+indifferent to her, quarrel with her, make it up again.  But the joy

+of her first kiss after the long wooing!  Burn it into your memory, my

+young friend, that it may live with you always!"

+

+He strolled away.  Old Deleglise took up the parable.

+

+"Ah, yes; one's first success, Paul!  Laugh, my boy, cry!  Shut

+yourself up in your room, shout, dance!  Throw your hat into the air

+and cry hurrah!  Make the most of it, Paul.  Hug it to your heart,

+think of it, dream of it.  This is the finest hour of your life, my

+boy.  There will never come another like it--never!"

+

+He crossed the studio, and taking from its nail a small oil painting,

+brought it over and laid it on the board beside my paper.  It was a

+fascinating little picture, painted with that exquisite minutiae and

+development of detail that a newer school was then ridiculing:  as

+though Art had but one note to her voice.  The dead figure of an old

+man lay upon a bed.  A child had crept into the darkened room, and

+supporting itself by clutching tightly at the sheet, was gazing with

+solemn curiosity upon the white, still face.

+

+"That was mine," said old Deleglise.  "It was hung in the Academy

+thirty-six years ago, and bought for ten guineas by a dentist at Bury

+St. Edmunds.  He went mad a few years later and died in a lunatic

+asylum.  I had never lost sight of it, and the executors were quite

+agreeable to my having it back again for the same ten guineas.  I used

+to go every morning to the Academy to look at it.  I thought it the

+cleverest bit of work in the whole gallery, and I'm not at all sure

+that it wasn't.  I saw myself a second Teniers, another Millet.  Look

+how that light coming through the open door is treated; isn't it good?

+Somebody will pay a thousand guineas for it before I have been dead a

+dozen years, and it is worth it.  But I wouldn't sell it myself now

+for five thousand.  One's first success; it is worth all the rest of

+life!"

+

+"All?" queried the red-haired man from his easy-chair.  We looked

+round.  The lady of the skirt had entered, now her own proper self:  a

+young girl of about fifteen, angular, awkward-looking, but bringing

+into the room with her that atmosphere of life, of hope, that is the

+eternal message of youth.  She was not beautiful, not then--plain one

+might almost have called her but for her frank, grey eyes, her mass of

+dark-brown hair now gathered into a long thick plait.  A light came

+into old Deleglise's eyes.

+

+"You are right, not all," he murmured to the red-haired man.

+

+She came forward shyly.  I found it difficult to recognise in her the

+flaming Fury that a few minutes before had sprung at me from the

+billows of her torn blue skirt.  She shook hands with the red-haired

+man and kissed her father.

+

+"My daughter," said old Deleglise, introducing me to her.  "Mr. Paul

+Kelver, a literary gent."

+

+"Mr. Kelver and I have met already," she explained.  "He has been

+waiting for you here in the studio."

+

+"And have you been entertaining him?" asked Deleglise.  "Oh, yes, I

+entertained him," she replied.  Her voice was singularly like her

+father's, with just the same suggestion of ever a laugh behind it.

+

+"We entertained each other," I said.

+

+"That's all right," said old Deleglise.  "Stop and lunch with us.  We

+will make ourselves a curry."

+

+

+

+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?"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII.

+

+HOW PAUL SET FORTH UPON A QUEST.

+

+Of old Deleglise's Sunday suppers, which, costumed from head to foot

+in spotless linen, he cooked himself in his great kitchen, moving with

+flushed, earnest face about the gleaming stove, while behind him his

+guests waited, ranged round the massive oaken table glittering with

+cut glass and silver, among which fluttered the deft hands of

+Madeline, his ancient whitecapped Bonne, much has been already

+recorded, and by those possessed of greater knowledge.  They who sat

+there talking in whispers until such time as old Deleglise turned

+towards them again, radiant with consciousness of success, the savoury

+triumph steaming between his hands, when, like the sudden swell of the

+Moonlight Sonata, the talk would rush once more into a roar, were men

+whose names were then--and some are still--more or less household

+words throughout the English-speaking world.  Artists, musicians,

+actors, writers, scholars, droles, their wit and wisdom, their sayings

+and their doings must be tolerably familiar to readers of memoir and

+biography; and if to such their epigrams appear less brilliant, their

+jests less laughable than to us who heard them spoken, that is merely

+because fashion in humour and in understanding changes as in all else.

+

+You, gentle reader of my book, I shall not trouble with second-hand

+record of that which you can read elsewhere.  For me it will be but to

+write briefly of my own brief glimpse into that charmed circle.

+Concerning this story more are the afternoon At Homes held by Dan and

+myself upon the second floor of the old Georgian house in pleasant,

+quiet Queen Square.  For cook and house-maid on these days it would be

+a busy morning.  Failing other supervision, Dan and I agreed that to

+secure success on these important occasions each of us should

+criticise the work of the other.  I passed judgment on Dan's cooking,

+he upon my house-work.

+

+"Too much soda," I would declare, sampling the cake.

+

+"You silly Juggins!  It's meant to taste of soda--it's a soda cake."

+

+"I know that.  It isn't meant to taste of nothing but soda.  There

+wants to be some cake about it also.  This thing, so far as flavour is

+concerned, is nothing but a Seidlitz powder.  You can't give people

+solidified Seidlitz powders for tea!"

+

+Dan would fume, but I would remain firm.  The soda cake would be laid

+aside, and something else attempted.  His cookery was the one thing

+Dan was obstinate about.  He would never admit that anything could

+possibly be wrong with it.  His most ghastly failures he would devour

+himself later on with pretended enjoyment.  I have known him finish a

+sponge cake, the centre of which had to be eaten with a teaspoon,

+declaring it was delicious; that eating a dry sponge cake was like

+eating dust; that a sponge cake ought to be a trifle syrupy towards

+the centre.  Afterwards he would be strangely silent and drink brandy

+out of a wine-glass.

+

+"Call these knives clean?"  It would be Dan's turn.

+

+"Yes, I do."

+

+Dan would draw his finger across one, producing chiaro-oscuro.

+

+"Not if you go fingering them.  Why don't you leave them alone and go

+on with your own work?"

+

+"You've just wiped them, that's all."

+

+"Well, there isn't any knife-powder."

+

+"Yes, there is."

+

+"Besides, it ruins knives, over-cleaning them--takes all the edge off.

+We shall want them pretty sharp to cut those lemon buns of yours."

+

+"Over-cleaning them!  You don't take any pride in the place."

+

+"Good Lord!  Don't I work from morning to night?"

+

+"You lazy young devil!"

+

+"Makes one lazy, your cooking.  How can a man work when he is

+suffering all day long from indigestion?"

+

+But Dan would not be content until I had found the board and cleaned

+the knives to his complete satisfaction.  Perhaps it was as well that

+in this way all things once a week were set in order.  After lunch

+house-maid and cook would vanish, two carefully dressed gentlemen

+being left alone to receive their guests.

+

+These would be gathered generally from among Dan's journalistic

+acquaintances and my companions of the theatre.  Occasionally, Minikin

+and Jarman would be of the number, Mrs. Peedles even once or twice

+arriving breathless on our landing.  Left to myself, I perhaps should

+not have invited them, deeming them hardly fitting company to mingle

+with our other visitors; but Dan, having once been introduced to them,

+overrode such objection.

+

+"My dear Lord Chamberlain," Dan would reply, "an ounce of originality

+is worth a ton of convention.  Little tin ladies and gentlemen all

+made to pattern!  One can find them everywhere.  Your friends would be

+an acquisition to any society."

+

+"But are they quite good form?" I hinted.

+

+"I'll tell you what we will do," replied Dan.  "We'll forget that Mrs.

+Peedles keeps a lodging-house in Blackfriars.  We will speak of her as

+our friend, 'that dear, quaint old creature, Lady P.'  A title that is

+an oddity, whose costume always suggests the wardrobe of a provincial

+actress!  My dear Paul, your society novelist would make a fortune out

+of such a character.  The personages of her amusing anecdotes, instead

+of being third-rate theatrical folk, shall be Earl Blank and the

+Baroness de Dash.  The editors of society journals shall pay me a

+shilling a line for them.  Jarman--yes, Jarman shall be the son of a

+South American millionaire.  Vulgar?  Nonsense! you mean racy.

+Minikin--he looks much more like forty than twenty--he shall be an

+eminent scientist.  His head will then appear the natural size; his

+glass eye, the result of a chemical experiment, a touch of

+distinction; his uncompromising rudeness, a lovable characteristic.

+We will make him buy a yard of red ribbon and wear it across his

+shirt-front, and address him as Herr Professor.  It will explain

+slight errors of English grammar and all peculiarities of accent.

+They shall be our lions.  You leave it to me.  We will invite

+commonplace, middle-class folk to meet them."

+

+And this, to my terror and alarm, Dan persisted in doing.  Jarman

+entered into the spirit of the joke with gusto.  So far as he was

+concerned, our guests, from the beginning to the end, were one and

+all, I am confident, deceived.  The more he swaggered, the more he

+boasted, the more he talked about himself--and it was a failing he was

+prone to--the greater was his success.  At the persistent endeavours

+of Dan's journalistic acquaintances to excite his cupidity by visions

+of new journals, to be started with a mere couple of thousand pounds

+and by the inherent merit of their ideas to command at once a

+circulation of hundreds of thousands, I could afford to laugh.  But

+watching the tremendous efforts of my actress friends to fascinate

+him--luring him into corners, gazing at him with languishing eyes,

+trotting out all their little tricks for his exclusive benefit,

+quarrelling about him among themselves--my conscience would prick me,

+lest our jest should end in a contretemps.  Fortunately, Jarman

+himself, was a gentleman of uncommon sense, or my fears might have

+been realised.  I should have been sorry myself to have been asked to

+remain stone under the blandishments of girls young and old, of women

+handsome and once, no doubt, good looking, showered upon him during

+that winter.  But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no slave to

+female charms.  He enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and

+eventually married the eldest daughter of a small blacking factory.

+She was a plain girl, but pleasant, and later brought to Jarman

+possession of the factory.  When I meet him--he is now stout and

+rubicund--he gives me the idea of a man who has attained to his

+ideals.

+

+With Minikin we had more trouble.  People turned up possessed of

+scientific smattering.  We had to explain that the Professor never

+talked shop.  Others were owners of unexpected knowledge of German,

+which they insisted upon airing.  We had to explain that the Herr

+Professor was in London to learn English, and had taken a vow during

+his residence neither to speak nor listen to his native tongue.  It

+was remarked that his acquaintance with colloquial English slang, for

+a foreigner, was quite unusual.  Occasionally he was too rude, even

+for a scientist, informing ladies, clamouring to know how he liked

+English women, that he didn't like them silly; telling one gentleman,

+a friend of Dan, a rather important man who once asked him, referring

+to his yard of ribbon, what he got it for, that he got it for

+fourpence.  We had to explain him as a gentleman who had been soured

+by a love disappointment.  The ladies forgave him; the gentlemen said

+it was a damned lucky thing for the girl.  Altogether, Minikin took a

+good deal of explaining.

+

+Lady Peedles, our guests decided among themselves, must be the widow

+of some one in the City who had been knighted in a crowd.  They made

+fun of her behind her back, but to her face were most effusive.  "My

+dear Lady Peedles" was the phrase most often heard in our rooms

+whenever she was present.  At the theatre "my friend Lady Peedles"

+became a person much spoken of--generally in loud tones.  My own

+social position I found decidedly improved by reason of her ladyship's

+evident liking for myself.  It went abroad that I was her presumptive

+heir.  I was courted as a gentleman of expectations.

+

+The fishy-eyed young man became one of our regular guests.  Dan won

+his heart by never laughing at him.

+

+"I like talking to you," said the fishy-eyed young man one afternoon

+to Dan.  "You don't go into fits of laughter when I remark that it has

+been a fine day; most people do.  Of course, on the stage I don't

+mind.  I know I am a funny little devil.  I get my living by being a

+funny little devil.  There is a photograph of me hanging in the

+theatre lobby.  I saw a workman stop and look at it the other day as

+he passed; I was just behind him.  He burst into a roar of laughter.

+'Little--!  He makes me laugh to look at him!' he cluttered to

+himself.  Well, that's all right; I want the man in the gallery to

+think me funny, but it annoys me when people laugh at me off the

+stage.  If I am out to dinner anywhere and ask somebody to pass the

+mustard, I never get it; instead, they burst out laughing.  I don't

+want people to laugh at me when I am having my dinner.  I want my

+dinner.  It makes me very angry sometimes."

+

+"I know," agreed Dan, sympathetically.  "The world never grasps the

+fact that man is a collection, not a single exhibit.  I remember being

+at a house once where the chief guest happened to be a great Hebrew

+scholar.  One tea time, a Miss Henman, passing the butter to some one

+in a hurry, let it slip out of her hand.  'Why is Miss Henman like a

+caterpillar?' asked our learned guest in a sepulchral voice.  Nobody

+appeared to know.  'Because she makes the butter fly.'  It never

+occurred to any one of us that the Doctor could possibly joke.  There

+was dead silence for about a minute.  Then our hostess, looking grave,

+remarked:  'Oh, do you really think so?'"

+

+"If I were to enter a room full of people," said the fishy-eyed young

+man, "and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus,

+they would think it the funniest story they had heard in years."

+

+He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he

+undoubtedly who was drawing the house.  But he was not happy.

+

+"I am not a comic actor, really," he explained.  "I could play Romeo,

+so far as feeling is concerned, and play it damned well.  There is a

+fine vein of poetry in me.  But of course it's no good to me with this

+face of mine."

+

+"But are you not sinning your mercies, you fellows?" Dan replied.

+"There is young Kelver here.  At school it was always his trouble that

+he could give us a good time and make us laugh, which nobody else in

+the whole school could do.  His ambition was to kick a ball as well as

+a hundred other fellows could kick it.  He could tell us a good story

+now if he would only write what the Almighty intended him to write,

+instead of gloomy rigmaroles about suffering Princesses in Welsh

+caves.  I don't say it's bad, but a hundred others could write the

+same sort of thing better."

+

+"Can't you understand," answered the little man; "the poorest

+tragedian that ever lived never wished himself the best of low

+comedians.  The court fool had an excellent salary, no doubt; and,

+likely enough, had got two-thirds of all the brain there was in the

+palace.  But not a wooden-headed man-at-arms but looked down upon him.

+Every gallery boy who pays a shilling to laugh at me regards himself

+as my intellectual superior; while to a fourth-rate spouter of blank

+verse he looks up in admiration."

+

+"Does it so very much matter," suggested Dan, "how the wooden-headed

+man-at-arms or the shilling gallery boy happens to regard you?"

+

+"Yes, it does," retorted Goggles, "because we happen to agree with

+them.  If I could earn five pounds a week as juvenile lead, I would

+never play a comic part again."

+

+"There I cannot follow you," returned Dan.  "I can understand the

+artist who would rather be the man of action, the poet who would

+rather be the statesman or the warrior; though personally my

+sympathies are precisely the other way--with Wolfe who thought it a

+more glorious work, the writing of a great poem, than the burning of

+so many cities and the killing of so many men.  We all serve the

+community.  It is difficult, looking at the matter from the inside, to

+say who serves it best.  Some feed it, some clothe it.  The churchman

+and the policeman between them look after its morals, keep it in

+order.  The doctor mends it when it injures itself; the lawyer helps

+it to quarrel, the soldier teaches it to fight.  We Bohemians amuse

+it, instruct it.  We can argue that we are the most important.  The

+others cater for its body, we for its mind.  But their work is more

+showy than ours and attracts more attention; and to attract attention

+is the aim and object of most of us.  But for Bohemians to worry among

+themselves which is the greatest, is utterly without reason.  The

+story-teller, the musician, the artist, the clown, we are members of a

+sharing troupe; one, with the ambition of the fat boy in Pickwick,

+makes the people's flesh creep; another makes them hold their sides

+with laughter.  The tragedian, soliloquising on his crimes, shows us

+how wicked we are; you, looking at a pair of lovers from under a

+scratch wig, show us how ridiculous we are.  Both lessons are

+necessary:  who shall say which is the superior teacher?"

+

+"Ah, I am not a philosopher," replied the little man, with a sigh.

+

+"Ah," returned Dan, with another, "and I am not a comic actor on my

+way to a salary of a hundred a week.  We all of us want the other

+boy's cake."

+

+The O'Kelly was another frequent visitor of ours.  The attic in

+Belsize Square had been closed.  In vain had the O'Kelly wafted

+incense, burned pastilles and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne.  In vain had

+he talked of rats, hinted at drains.

+

+"A wonderful woman," groaned the O'Kelly in tones of sorrowful

+admiration.  "There's no deceiving her."

+

+"But why submit?" was our natural argument.  "Why not say you are

+going to smoke, and do it?"

+

+"It's her theory, me boy," explained the O'Kelly, "that the home

+should be kept pure--a sort of a temple, ye know.  She's convinced

+that in time it is bound to exercise an influence upon me.  It's a

+beautiful idea, when ye come to think of it."

+

+Meanwhile, in the rooms of half-a-dozen sinful men the O'Kelly kept

+his own particular pipe, together with his own particular smoking

+mixture; and one such pipe and one such tobacco jar stood always on

+our mantelpiece.

+

+In the spring the forces of temptation raged round that feeble but

+most excellently intentioned citadel, the O'Kelly's conscience.  The

+Signora had returned to England, was performing then at Ashley's

+Theatre.  The O'Kelly would remain under long spells of silence,

+puffing vigorously at his pipe.  Or would fortify himself with paeans

+in praise of Mrs. O'Kelly.

+

+"If anything could ever make a model man of me"--he spoke in the tones

+of one whose doubts are stronger than his hopes--"it would he the

+example of that woman."

+

+It was one Saturday afternoon.  I had just returned from the matinee.

+

+"I don't believe," continued the O'Kelly, "I don't really believe she

+has ever done one single thing she oughtn't to, or left undone one

+single thing she ought, in the whole course of her life."

+

+"Maybe she has, and you don't know of it," I suggested, perceiving the

+idea might comfort him.

+

+"I wish I could think so," returned the O'Kelly.  "I don't mean

+anything really wrong," he corrected himself quickly, "but something

+just a little wrong.  I feel--I really feel I should like her better

+if she had."

+

+"Not that I mean I don't like her as it is, ye understand," corrected

+himself the O'Kelly a second time.  "I respect that woman--I cannot

+tell ye, me boy, how much I respect her.  Ye don't know her.  There

+was one morning, about a month ago.  That woman�she's down at six

+every morning, summer and winter; we have prayers at half-past. I was

+a trifle late meself:  it was never me strong point, as ye know, early

+rising.  Seven o'clock struck; she didn't appear, and I thought she

+had overslept herself.  I won't say I didn't feel pleased for the

+moment; it was an unworthy sentiment, but I almost wished she had.  I

+ran up to her room.  The door was open, the bedclothes folded down as

+she always leaves them.  She came in five minutes later.  She had got

+up at four that morning to welcome a troupe of native missionaries

+from East Africa on their arrival at Waterloo Station.  She's a saint,

+that woman; I am not worthy of her."

+

+"I shouldn't dwell too much on that phase of the subject," I

+suggested.

+

+"I can't help it, me boy," replied the O'Kelly.  "I feel I am not."

+

+"I don't for a moment say you are," I returned; "but I shouldn't harp

+upon the idea.  I don't think it good for you."

+

+"I never will be," he persisted gloomily, "never!"

+

+Evidently he was started on a dangerous train of reflection.  With the

+idea of luring him away from it, I led the conversation to the subject

+of champagne.

+

+"Most people like it dry," admitted the O'Kelly.  "Meself, I have

+always preferred it with just a suggestion of fruitiness."

+

+"There was a champagne," I said, "you used to be rather fond of when

+we--years ago."

+

+"I think I know the one ye mean," said the O'Kelly.  "It wasn't at all

+bad, considering the price."

+

+"You don't happen to remember where you got it?" I asked.

+

+"It was in Bridge Street," remembered the O'Kelly, "not so very far

+from the Circus."

+

+"It is a pleasant evening," I remarked; "let us take a walk."

+

+We found the place, half wine-shop, half office.

+

+"Just the same," commented the O'Kelly as we pushed open the door and

+entered.  "Not altered a bit."

+

+As in all probability barely twelve months had elapsed since his last

+visit, the fact in itself was not surprising.  Clearly the O'Kelly had

+been calculating time rather by sensation.  I ordered a bottle; and we

+sat down.  Myself, being prejudiced against the brand, I called for a

+glass of claret.  The O'Kelly finished the bottle.  I was glad to

+notice my ruse had been successful.  The virtue of that wine had not

+departed from it.  With every glass the O'Kelly became morally more

+elevated.  He left the place, determined that he would be worthy of

+Mrs. O'Kelly.  Walking down the Embankment, he asserted his

+determination of buying an alarm-clock that very evening.  At the

+corner of Westminster Bridge he became suddenly absorbed in his own

+thoughts.  Looking to discover the cause of his silence, I saw that

+his eyes were resting on a poster representing a charming lady

+standing on one leg upon a wire; below her--at some distance--appeared

+the peaks of mountains; the artist had even caught the likeness.  I

+cursed the luck that had directed our footsteps, but the next moment,

+lacking experience, was inclined to be reassured.

+

+"Me dear Paul," said the O'Kelly--he laid a fatherly hand upon my

+shoulder--"there are fair-faced, laughing women--sweet creatures, that

+ye want to put yer arm around and dance with."  He shook his head

+disapprovingly.  "There are the sainted women, who lead us up,

+Paul--up, always up."

+

+A look, such as the young man with the banner might have borne with

+him to the fields of snow and ice, suffused the O'Kelly's handsome

+face.  Without another word he crossed the road and entered an

+American store, where for six-and-elevenpence he purchased an alarm-

+clock the man assured us would awake an Egyptian mummy.  With this in

+his hand he waved me a good-bye, and jumped upon a Hampstead 'bus, and

+alone I strolled on to the theatre.

+

+Hal returned a little after Christmas and started himself in chambers

+in the City.  It was the nearest he dared venture, so he said, to

+civilisation.

+

+"I'd be no good in the West End," he explained.  "For a season I might

+attract as an eccentricity, but your swells would never stand me for

+longer--no more would any respectable folk, anywhere:  we don't get on

+together.  I commenced at Richmond.  It was a fashionable suburb then,

+and I thought I was going to do wonders.  I had everything in my

+favour, except myself.  I do know my work, nobody can deny that of me.

+My father spent every penny he had, poor gentleman, in buying me an

+old-established practice:  fine house, carriage and pair, white-haired

+butler--everything correct, except myself.  It was of no use.  I can

+hold myself in for a month or two; then I break out, the old original

+savage that I am under my frock coat.  I feel I must run amuck,

+stabbing, hacking at the prim, smiling Lies mincing round about me.  I

+can fool a silly woman for half-a-dozen visits; bow and rub my hands,

+purr round her sympathetically.  All the while I am longing to tell

+her the truth:

+

+"'Go home.  Wash your face; don't block up the pores of your skin with

+paint.  Let out your corsets.  You are thirty-three round the abdomen

+if you are an inch:  how can you expect your digestion to do its work

+when you're squeezing it into twenty-one?  Give up gadding about half

+your day and most of your night; you are old enough to have done with

+that sort of thing.  Let the children come, and suckle them yourself.

+You'll be all the better for them.  Don't loll in bed all the morning.

+Get up like a decent animal and do something for your living.  Use

+your brain, what there is of it, and your body.  At that price you can

+have health to-morrow, and at no other.  I can do nothing for you.'

+

+"And sooner or later I blurt it out."  He laughed his great roar.

+"Lord!  you should see the real face coming out of the simpering mask.

+

+"Pompous old fools, strutting into me like turkey-cocks!  By Jove, it

+was worth it!  They would dribble out, looking half their proper size

+after I had done telling them what was the matter with them.

+

+"'Do you want to know what you are really suffering from?' I would

+shout at them, when I could contain myself no longer.  'Gluttony, my

+dear sir; gluttony and drunkenness, and over-indulgence in other vices

+that shall be nameless.  Live like a man; get a little self-respect

+from somewhere; give up being an ape.  Treat your body properly and it

+will treat you properly.  That's the only prescription that will do

+you any good.'"

+

+He laughed again.  "'Tell the truth, you shame the Devil.'  But the

+Devil replies by starving you.  It's a fairly effective retort.  I am

+not the stuff successful family physicians are made of.  In the City I

+may manage to rub along.  One doesn't see so much of one's patients;

+they come and go.  Clerks and warehousemen my practice will be among

+chiefly.  The poor man does not so much mind being told the truth

+about himself; it is a blessing to which he is accustomed."

+

+We spoke but once of Barbara.  A photograph of her in her bride's

+dress stood upon my desk.  Occasionally, first fitting the room for

+the ceremony, sweeping away all impurity even from under the mats, and

+dressing myself with care, I would centre it amid flowers, and

+kneeling, kiss her hand where it rested on the back of the top-heavy

+looking chair without which no photographic studio is complete.

+

+One day he took it up, and looked at it long and hard.

+

+"The forehead denotes intellectuality; the eyes tenderness and

+courage.  The lower part of the face, on the other hand, suggests a

+good deal of animalism:  the finely cut nostrils show egotism--another

+word for selfishness; the nose itself, vanity; the lips, sensuousness

+and love of luxury.  I wonder what sort of woman she really is."  He

+laid the photograph back upon the desk.

+

+"I did not know you were so firm a believer in Lavater," I said.

+

+"Only when he agrees with what I know," he answered.  "Have I not

+described her rightly?"

+

+"I do not care to discuss her in that vein," I replied, feeling the

+blood mounting to my cheeks.

+

+"Too sacred a subject?" he laughed.  "It is the one ingredient of

+manhood I lack, ideality--an unfortunate deficiency for me.  I must

+probe, analyse, dissect, see the thing as it really is, know it for

+what it is."

+

+"Well, she is the Countess Huescar now," I said.  "For God's sake,

+leave her alone."

+

+He turned to me with the snarl of a beast. "How do you know she is the

+Countess Huescar?  Is it a special breed of woman made on purpose?

+How do you know she isn't my wife--brain and heart, flesh and blood,

+mine?  If she was, do you think I should give her up because some fool

+has stuck his label on her?"

+

+I felt the anger burning in my eyes.  "Yours, his!  She is no man's

+property.  She is herself," I cried.

+

+The wrinkles round his nose and mouth smoothed themselves out.  "You

+need not be afraid," he sneered.  "As you say, she is the Countess

+Huescar.  Can you imagine her as Mrs. Doctor Washburn?  I can't."  He

+took her photograph in his hand again.  "The lower part of the face is

+the true index to the character.  It shows the animal, and it is the

+animal that rules.  The soul, the intellect, it comes and goes; the

+animal remains always.  Sensuousness, love of luxury, vanity, those

+are the strings to which she dances.  To be a Countess is of more

+importance to her than to be a woman.  She is his, not mine.  Let him

+keep her."

+

+"You do not know her," I answered; "you never have.  You listen to

+what she says.  She does not know herself."

+

+He looked at me queerly.  "What do you think her to be?" he asked me.

+"A true woman, not the shallow thing she seems?"

+

+"A true woman," I persisted stoutly, "that you have not eyes enough to

+see."

+

+"You little fool!" he muttered, with the same queer look--"you little

+fool.  But let us hope you are wrong, Paul.  Let us hope, for her

+sake, you are wrong."

+

+It was at one of Deleglise's Sunday suppers that I first met Urban

+Vane.  The position, nor even the character, I fear it must be

+confessed, of his guests was never enquired into by old Deleglise.  A

+simple-minded, kindly old fellow himself, it was his fate to be

+occasionally surprised and grieved at the discovery that even the most

+entertaining of supper companions could fall short of the highest

+standard of conventional morality.

+

+"Dear, dear me!" he would complain, pacing up and down his studio with

+puzzled visage.  "The last man in the world of whom I should have

+expected to hear it.  So original in all his ideas.  Are you quite

+sure?"

+

+"I am afraid there can he no doubt about it."

+

+"I can't believe it!  I really can't believe it!  One of the most

+amusing men I ever met!"

+

+I remember a well-known artist one evening telling us with much sense

+of humour how he had just completed the sale of an old Spanish cabinet

+to two distinct and separate purchasers.

+

+"I sold it first," recounted the little gentleman with glee, "to old

+Jong, the dealer.  He has been worrying me about it for the last three

+months, and on Saturday afternoon, hearing that I was clearing out and

+going abroad, he came round again.  'Well, I am not sure I am in a

+position to sell it,' I told him.  'Who'll know?' he asked.  'They are

+not in, are they?'  'Not yet,' I answered, 'but I expect they will be

+some time on Monday.'  'Tell your man to open the door to me at eight

+o'clock on Monday morning,' he replied, 'we'll have it away without

+any fuss.  There needn't he any receipt.  I'm lending you a hundred

+pounds, in cash.'  I worked him up to a hundred and twenty, and he

+paid me.  Upon my word, I should never have thought of it, if he

+hadn't put the idea into my head.  But turning round at the door:

+'You won't go and sell it to some one else,' he suggested, 'between

+now and Monday?'  It serves him right for his damned impertinence.

+'Send and take it away to-day if you are at all nervous,' I told him.

+He looked at the thing, it is about twelve feet high altogether.  'I

+would if I could get a cart,' he muttered.  Then an idea struck him.

+'Does the top come off?'  'See for yourself,' I answered; 'it's your

+cabinet, not mine.'  I was feeling rather annoyed with him.  He

+examined it.  'That's all right,' he said; 'merely a couple of screws.

+I'll take the top with me now on my cab.'  He got a man in, and they

+took the upper cupboard away, leaving me the bottom.  Two hours later

+old Sir George called to see me about his wife's portrait.  The first

+thing he set eyes on was the remains of the cabinet:  he had always

+admired it.  'Hallo,' he asked, 'are you breaking up the studio

+literally?  What have you done with the other half?'  'I've sent it

+round to Jong's--'  He didn't give me time to finish.  'Save Jong's

+commission and sell it to me direct,' he said.  'We won't argue about

+the price and I'll pay you in cash.'

+

+"Well, if Providence comes forward and insists on taking charge of a

+man, it is hardly good manners to flout her.  Besides, his wife's

+portrait is worth twice as much as he is paying for it.  He handed me

+over the money in notes.  'Things not going quite smoothly with you

+just at the moment?' he asked me.  'Oh, about the same as usual,' I

+told him.  'You won't be offended at my taking it away with me this

+evening?' he asked.  'Not in the least,' I answered; 'you'll get it on

+the top of a four-wheeled cab.'  We called in a couple of men, and I

+helped them down with it, and confoundedly heavy it was.  'I shall

+send round to Jong's for the other half on Monday morning,' he said,

+speaking with his head through the cab window, 'and explain it to

+him.'  'Do,' I answered; 'he'll understand.'

+

+"I'm sorry I'm going away so early in the morning," concluded the

+little gentleman.  "I'd give back Jong ten per cent. of his money to

+see his face when he enters the studio."

+

+Everybody laughed; but after the little gentleman was gone, the

+subject cropped up again.

+

+"If I wake sufficiently early," remarked one, "I shall find an excuse

+to look in myself at eight o'clock.  Jong's face will certainly be

+worth seeing."

+

+"Rather rough both on him and Sir George," observed another.

+

+"Oh, he hasn't really done anything of the kind," chimed in old

+Deleglise in his rich, sweet voice.  "He made that all up.  It's just

+his fun; he's full of humour."

+

+"I am inclined to think that would be his idea of a joke," asserted

+the first speaker.

+

+Old Deleglise would not hear of it; but a week or two later I noticed

+an addition to old Deleglise's studio furniture in the shape of a

+handsome old carved cabinet twelve feet high.

+

+"He really had done it," explained old Deleglise, speaking in a

+whisper, though only he and I were present.  "Of course, it was only

+his fun; but it might have been misunderstood.  I thought it better to

+put the thing straight.  I shall get the money back from him when he

+returns.  A most amusing little man!"

+

+Old Deleglise possessed a house in Gower Street which fell vacant.

+One of his guests, a writer of poetical drama, was a man who three

+months after he had earned a thousand pounds never had a penny with

+which to bless himself.  They are dying out, these careless,

+good-natured, conscienceless Bohemians; but quarter of a century ago

+they still lingered in Alsatian London.  Turned out of his lodgings by

+a Philistine landlord, his sole possession in the wide world, two acts

+of a drama, for which he had already been paid, the problem of his

+future, though it troubled him but little, became acute to his

+friends.  Old Deleglise, treating the matter as a joke, pretending not

+to know who was the landlord, suggested he should apply to the agents

+for position as caretaker.  Some furniture was found for him, and the

+empty house in Gower Street became his shelter.  The immediate present

+thus provided for, kindly old Deleglise worried himself a good deal

+concerning what would become of his friend when the house was let.

+There appeared to be no need for worry.  Weeks, months went by.

+Applications were received by the agents in fair number, view cards

+signed by the dozen; but prospective tenants were never seen again.

+One Sunday evening our poet, warmed by old Deleglise's Burgundy,

+forgetful whose recommendation had secured him the lowly but timely

+appointment, himself revealed the secret.

+

+"Most convenient place I've got," so he told old Deleglise.  "Whole

+house to myself.  I wander about; it just suits me."

+

+"I'm glad to hear that," murmured old Deleglise.

+

+"Come and see me, and I'll cook you a chop," continued the other.

+"I've had the kitchen range brought up into the back drawing-room;

+saves going up and down stairs."

+

+"The devil you have!" growled old Deleglise.  "What do you think the

+owner of the house will say?"

+

+"Haven't the least idea who the poor old duffer is myself.  They've

+put me in as caretaker--an excellent arrangement:  avoids all argument

+about rent."

+

+"Afraid it will soon come to an end, that excellent arrangement;"

+remarked old Deleglise, drily.

+

+"Why?  Why should it?"

+

+"A house in Gower Street oughtn't to remain vacant long."

+

+"This one will."

+

+"You might tell me," asked old Deleglise, with a grim smile; "how do

+you manage it?  What happens when people come to look over the

+house--don't you let them in?"

+

+"I tried that at first," explained the poet, "but they would go on

+knocking, and boys and policemen passing would stop and help them.  It

+got to be a nuisance; so now I have them in, and get the thing over.

+I show them the room where the murder was committed.  If it's a

+nervous-looking party, I let them off with a brief summary.  If that

+doesn't do, I go into details and show them the blood-spots on the

+floor.  It's an interesting story of the gruesome order.  Come round

+one morning and I'll tell it to you.  I'm rather proud of it.  With

+the blinds down and a clock in the next room that ticks loudly, it

+goes well."

+

+Yet this was a man who, were the merest acquaintance to call upon him

+and ask for his assistance, would at once take him by the arm and lead

+him upstairs.  All notes and cheques that came into his hands he

+changed at once into gold.  Into some attic half filled with lumber he

+would fling it by the handful; then, locking the door, leave it there.

+On their hands and knees he and his friends, when they wanted any,

+would grovel for it, poking into corners, hunting under boxes, groping

+among broken furniture, feeling between cracks and crevices.  Nothing

+gave him greater delight than an expedition of this nature to what he

+termed his gold-field; it had for him, as he would explain, all the

+excitements of mining without the inconvenience and the distance.  He

+never knew how much was there.  For a certain period a pocketful could

+be picked up in five minutes.  Then he would entertain a dozen men at

+one of the best restaurants in London, tip cabmen and waiters with

+half-sovereigns, shower half-crowns as he walked through the streets,

+lend or give to anybody for the asking.  Later, half-an-hour's dusty

+search would be rewarded with a single coin.  It made no difference to

+him; he would dine in Soho for eighteenpence, smoke shag, and run into

+debt.

+

+The red-haired man, to whom Deleglise had introduced me on the day of

+my first meeting with the Lady of the train, was another of his most

+constant visitors.  It flattered my vanity that the red-haired man,

+whose name was famous throughout Europe and America, should condescend

+to confide to me--as he did and at some length--the deepest secrets of

+his bosom.  Awed--at all events at first--I would sit and listen while

+by the hour he would talk to me in corners, telling me of the women he

+had loved.  They formed a somewhat large collection.  Julias, Marias,

+Janets, even Janes--he had madly worshipped, deliriously adored so

+many it grew bewildering.  With a far-away look in his eyes, pain

+trembling through each note of his musical, soft voice, he would with

+bitter jest, with passionate outburst, recount how he had sobbed

+beneath the stars for love of Isabel, bitten his own flesh in frenzied

+yearning for Lenore.  He appeared from his own account--if in

+connection with a theme so poetical I may be allowed a commonplace

+expression--to have had no luck with any of them.  Of the remainder,

+an appreciable percentage had been mere passing visions, seen at a

+distance in the dawn, at twilight--generally speaking, when the light

+must have been uncertain.  Never again, though he had wandered in the

+neighbourhood for months, had he succeeded in meeting them.  It would

+occur to me that enquiries among the neighbours, applications to the

+local police, might possibly have been efficacious; but to have broken

+in upon his exalted mood with such suggestions would have demanded

+more nerve than at the time I possessed.  In consequence, my thoughts

+I kept to myself.

+

+"My God, boy!" he would conclude, "may you never love as I loved that

+woman Miriam"--or Henrietta, or Irene, as the case might be.

+

+For my sympathetic attitude towards the red-haired man I received one

+evening commendation from old Deleglise.

+

+"Good boy," said old Deleglise, laying his hand on my shoulder.  We

+were standing in the passage.  We had just shaken hands with the

+red-haired man, who, as usual, had been the last to leave.  "None of

+the others will listen to him.  He used to stop and confide it all to

+me after everybody else had gone.  Sometimes I have dropped asleep, to

+wake an hour later and find him still talking.  He gets it over early

+now.  Good boy!"

+

+Soon I learnt it was characteristic of the artist to be willing--nay,

+anxious, to confide his private affairs to any one and every one who

+would only listen.  Another characteristic appeared to be

+determination not to listen to anybody else's.  As attentive recipient

+of other people's troubles and emotions I was subjected to practically

+no competition whatever.  One gentleman, a leading actor of that day,

+I remember, immediately took me aside on my being introduced to him,

+and consulted me as to his best course of procedure under the

+extremely painful conditions that had lately arisen between himself

+and his wife.  We discussed the unfortunate position at some length,

+and I did my best to counsel fairly and impartially.

+

+"I wish you would lunch with me at White's to-morrow," he said.  "We

+can talk it over quietly.  Say half-past one.  By the bye, I didn't

+catch your name."

+

+I spelt it to him:  he wrote the appointment down on his shirt-cuff.

+I went to White's the next day and waited an hour, but he did not turn

+up.  I met him three weeks later at a garden-party with his wife.  But

+he appeared to have forgotten me.

+

+Observing old Deleglise's guests, comparing them with their names, it

+surprised me the disconnection between the worker and the work.

+Writers of noble sentiment, of elevated ideality, I found contained in

+men of commonplace appearance, of gross appetites, of conventional

+ideas.  It seemed doubtful whether they fully comprehended their own

+work; certainly it had no effect upon their own lives.  On the other

+hand, an innocent, boyish young man, who lived the most correct of

+lives with a girlish-looking wife in an ivy-covered cottage near

+Barnes Common, I discovered to be the writer of decadent stories at

+which the Empress Theodora might have blushed.  The men whose names

+were widest known were not the men who shone the brightest in

+Deleglise's kitchen; more often they appeared the dull dogs, listening

+enviously, or failing pathetically when they tried to compete with

+others who to the public were comparatively unknown.  After a time I

+ceased to confound the artist with the man, thought no more of judging

+the one by the other than of evolving a tenant from the house to which

+circumstances or carelessness might have directed him.  Clearly they

+were two creations originally independent of each other, settling down

+into a working partnership for purposes merely of mutual

+accommodation; the spirit evidently indifferent as to the particular

+body into which he crept, anxious only for a place to work in, easily

+contented.

+

+Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak.

+Cabinet Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped

+from Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries

+disguised in grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that

+with six strokes of the pen they could set half London laughing at

+whom they would; raw laddies with the burr yet clinging to their

+tongues, but who we knew would one day have the people dancing to the

+music of their words.  Neither wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor

+position counted.  Was a man interesting, amusing; had he ideas and

+thoughts of his own?  Then he was welcome.  Men who had come, men who

+were coming, met there on equal footing.  Among them, as years ago

+among my schoolmates, I found my place--somewhat to my

+dissatisfaction.  I amused.  Much rather would I have shocked them by

+the originality of my views, impressed them with the depth of my

+judgments.  They declined to be startled, refused to be impressed;

+instead, they laughed.  Nor from these men could I obtain sympathy in

+my disappointment.

+

+"What do you mean, you villain!" roared Deleglise's caretaker at me

+one evening on entering the kitchen.  "How dare you waste your time

+writing this sort of stuff?"

+

+He had a copy of the paper containing my "Witch of Moel Sarbod" in his

+hand--then some months old.  He screwed it up into a ball and flung it

+in my face.  "I've only just read it.  What did you get for it?"

+

+"Nothing," I answered.

+

+"Nothing!" he screamed.  "You got off for nothing?  You ought to have

+been whipped at the cart's tail!"

+

+"Oh, come, it's not as bad as that," suggested old Deleglise.

+

+"Not bad!  There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end."

+

+"There wasn't intended to be," I interrupted.

+

+"Why not, you swindler?  What were you sent into the world to do?  To

+make it laugh."

+

+"I want to make it think," I told him.

+

+"Make it think!  Hasn't it got enough to think about?  Aren't there

+ten thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers,

+long-eared philosophers, boring it to death?  Who are you to turn up

+your nose at your work and tell the Almighty His own business?  You

+are here to make us laugh.  Get on with your work, you confounded

+young idiot!"

+

+Urban Vane was the only one among them who understood me, who agreed

+with me that I was fitted for higher things than merely to minister to

+the world's need of laughter.  He alone it was who would listen with

+approval to my dreams of becoming a famous tragedian, a writer of

+soul-searching books, of passion-analysing plays.  I never saw him

+laugh himself, certainly not at anything funny.  "Humour!" he would

+explain in his languid drawl, "personally it doesn't amuse me."  One

+felt its introduction into the scheme of life had been an error.  He

+was a large, fleshy man, with a dreamy, caressing voice and strangely

+impassive face.  Where he came from, who he was, nobody knew.  Without

+ever passing a remark himself that was worth listening to, he,

+nevertheless, by some mysterious trick of manner I am unable to

+explain, soon established himself, even throughout that company, where

+as a rule men found their proper level, as a silent authority in all

+contests of wit or argument.  Stories at which he listened, bored,

+fell flat.  The _bon mot_ at which some faint suggestion of a smile

+quivered round his clean-shaven lips was felt to be the crown of the

+discussion.  I can only conclude his secret to have been his

+magnificent assumption of superiority, added to a sphinx-like

+impenetrability behind which he could always retire from any danger of

+exposure.  Subjects about which he knew nothing--and I have come to

+the conclusion they were more numerous than was suspected--became in

+his presence topics outside the radius of cultivated consideration:

+one felt ashamed of having introduced them.  His own subjects--they

+were few but exclusive--he had the knack of elevating into

+intellectual tests:  one felt ashamed, reflecting how little one knew

+about them.  Whether he really did possess a charm of manner, or

+whether the sense of his superiority with which he had imbued me it

+was that made any condescension he paid me a thing to grasp at, I am

+unable to say.  Certain it is that when he suggested I should throw up

+chorus singing and accompany him into the provinces as manager of a

+theatrical company he was then engaging to run a wonderful drama that

+was going to revolutionise the English stage and educate the English

+public, I allowed myself not a moment for consideration, but accepted

+his proposal with grateful delight.

+

+"Who is he?" asked Dan.  Somehow he had never impressed Dan; but then

+Dan was a fellow to impress whom was slow work.  As he himself

+confessed, he had no instinct for character.  "I judge," he would

+explain, "purely by observation."

+

+"What does that matter?" was my reply.

+

+"What does he know about the business?"

+

+"That's why he wants me."

+

+"What do you know about it?"

+

+"There's not much to know.  I can find out."

+

+"Take care you don't find out that there's more to know than you

+think.  What is this wonderful play of his?"

+

+"I haven't seen it yet; I don't think it's finished.  It's something

+from the Spanish or the Russian, I'm not sure.  I'm to put it into

+shape when he's done the translation.  He wants me to put my name to

+it as the adaptor."

+

+"Wonder he hasn't asked you to wear his clothes.  Has he got any

+money?"

+

+"Of course he has money.  How can you run a theatrical company without

+money?"

+

+"Have you seen the money?"

+

+"He doesn't carry it about with him in a bag."

+

+"I should have thought your ambition to be to act, not to manage.

+Managers are to be had cheap enough.  Why should he want some one who

+knows nothing about it?"

+

+"I'm going to act.  I'm going to play a leading part."

+

+"Great Scott!"

+

+"He'll do the management really himself; I shall simply advise him.

+But he doesn't want his own name to appear.

+

+"Why not?"

+

+"His people might object."

+

+"Who are his people?"

+

+"How do I know?  What a suspicious chap you are."

+

+Dan shrugged his shoulders.  "You are not an actor, you never will be;

+you are not a business man.  You've made a start at writing, that's

+your proper work.  Why not go on with it?"

+

+"I can't get on with it.  That one thing was accepted, and never paid

+for; everything else comes back regularly, just as before.  Besides, I

+can go on writing wherever I am."

+

+"You've got friends here to help you."

+

+"They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense."

+

+"Well, clever nonsense is worth writing.  It's better than stodgy

+sense:  literature is blocked up with that.  Why not follow their

+advice?"

+

+"Because I don't believe they are right.  I'm not a clown; I don't

+mean to be.  Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he

+has nothing else.  That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the

+highest.  I have knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct.

+I mean to prove it to you all.  Vane's the only man that understands

+me."

+

+Dan lit his pipe.  "Have you made up your mind to go?"

+

+"Of course I have.  It's an opportunity that doesn't occur twice.

+'There's a tide in the affairs�"

+

+"Thanks," interrupted Dan; "I've heard it before.  Well, if you've

+made up your mind, there's an end of the matter.  Good luck to you!

+You are young, and it's easier to learn things then than later."

+

+"You talk," I answered, "as if you were old enough to be my

+grandfather."

+

+He smiled and laid both hands upon my shoulders.  "So I am," he said,

+"quite old enough, little boy Paul.  Don't be angry; you'll always be

+little Paul to me."  He put his hands in his pockets and strolled to

+the window.

+

+"What'll you do?" I enquired.  "Will you keep on these rooms?"

+

+"No," he replied.  "I shall accept an offer that has been made to me

+to take the sub-editorship of a big Yorkshire paper.  It is an

+important position and will give me experience."

+

+"You'll never be happy mewed up in a provincial town," I told him.  "I

+shall want a London address, and I can easily afford it.  Let's keep

+them on together."

+

+He shook his head.  "It wouldn't be the same thing," he said.

+

+So there came a morning when we said good-bye.  Before Dan returned

+from the office I should be gone.  They had been pleasant months that

+we had spent together in these pretty rooms.  Though my life was

+calling to me full of hope, I felt the pain of leaving them.  Two

+years is a long period in a young man's life, when the sap is running

+swiftly.  My affections had already taken root there.  The green

+leaves in summer, in winter the bare branches of the square, the

+sparrows that chirped about the window-sills, the quiet peace of the

+great house, Dan, kindly old Deleglise:  around them my fibres clung,

+closer than I had known.  The Lady of the train:  she managed it now

+less clumsily.  Her hands and feet had grown smaller, her elbows

+rounder.  I found myself smiling as I thought of her--one always did

+smile when one thought of Norah, everybody did;--of her tomboy ways,

+her ringing laugh--there were those who termed it noisy; her

+irrepressible frankness--there were times when it was inconvenient.

+Would she ever become lady-like, sedate, proper?  One doubted it.  I

+tried to picture her a wife, the mistress of a house.  I found the

+smile deepening round my mouth.  What a jolly wife she would make!  I

+could see her bustling, full of importance; flying into tempers,

+lasting possibly for thirty seconds; then calling herself names,

+saving all argument by undertaking her own scolding, and doing it

+well.  I followed her to motherhood.  What a joke it would be!  What

+would she do with them?  She would just let them do what they liked

+with her.  She and they would be a parcel of children together, she

+the most excited of them all.  No; on second thoughts I could detect

+in her a strong vein of common sense.  They would have to mind their

+p's and q's.  I could see her romping with them, helping them to tear

+their clothes; but likewise I could see her flying after them,

+bringing back an armful struggling, bathing it, physicking it.

+Perhaps she would grow stout, grow grey; but she would still laugh

+more often than sigh, speak her mind, be quick, good-tempered Norah to

+the end.  Her character precluded all hope of surprise.  That, as I

+told myself, was its defect.  About her were none of those glorious

+possibilities that make of some girls charming mysteries.  A woman,

+said I to myself, should be a wondrous jewel, hiding unknown lights

+and shadows.  You, my dear Norah--I spoke my thoughts aloud, as had

+become a habit with me:  those who live much alone fall into this

+way--you are merely a crystal, not shallow--no, I should not call you

+shallow by any mans, but transparent.

+

+What would he be, her lover?  Some plain, matter-of-fact,

+business-like young fellow, a good player of cricket and football,

+fond of his dinner.  What a very uninteresting affair the love-making

+would be!  If she liked him--well, she would probably tell him so; if

+she didn't, he would know it in five minutes.

+

+As for inducing her to change her mind, wooing her, cajoling her--I

+heard myself laughing at the idea.

+

+There came a quick rap at the door.  "Come in," I cried; and she

+entered.

+

+"I came to say good-bye to you," she explained.  "I'm just going out.

+What were you laughing at?"

+

+"Oh, at an idea that occurred to me."

+

+"A funny one?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"Tell it me."

+

+"Well, it was something in connection with yourself.  It might offend

+you."

+

+"It wouldn't trouble you much if it did, would it?"

+

+"No, I don't suppose it would,"

+

+"Then why not tell me?"

+

+"I was thinking of your lover."

+

+It did offend her; I thought it would.  But she looked really

+interesting when she was cross.  Her grey eyes would flash, and her

+whole body quiver.  There was a charming spice of danger always about

+making her cross.

+

+"I suppose you think I shall never have one."

+

+"On the contrary, I think you will have a good many."  I had not

+thought so before then.  I formed the idea for the first time in that

+moment, while looking straight into her angry face.  It was still a

+childish face.

+

+The anger died out of it as it always did within the minute, and she

+laughed.  "It would be fun, wouldn't it.  I wonder what I should do

+with him?  It makes you feel very serious being in love, doesn't it?"

+

+"Very."

+

+"Have you ever been in love?"

+

+I hesitated for a moment.  Then the delight of talking about it

+overcame my fear of being chaffed.  Besides, when she felt it, nobody

+could be more delightfully sympathetic.  I determined to adventure it.

+

+"Yes," I answered, "ever since I was a boy.  If you are going to be

+foolish," I added, for I saw the laugh before it came, "I shan't talk

+to you about it."

+

+"I'm not--I won't, really," she pleaded, making her face serious

+again.  "What is she like?"

+

+I took from my breast pocket Barbara's photograph, and handed it to

+her in silence.

+

+"Is she really as beautiful as that?" she asked, gazing at it

+evidently fascinated.

+

+"More so," I assured her.  "Her expression is the most beautiful part

+of her.  Those are only her features."

+

+She sighed.  "I wish I was beautiful."

+

+"You are at an awkward age," I told her.  "It is impossible to say

+what you are going to be like."

+

+"Mamma was a lovely woman, everybody says so; and Tom I call awfully

+handsome.  Perhaps I'll be better when I'm filled out a bit more."  A

+small Venetian mirror hung between the two windows; she glanced up

+into it.  "It's my nose that irritates me," she said.  She rubbed it

+viciously, as if she would rub it out.

+

+"Some people admire snub noses," I explained to her.

+

+"No, really?"

+

+"Tennyson speaks of them as 'tip-tilted like the petals of a rose.'"

+

+"How nice of him!  Do you think he meant my sort?"  She rubbed it

+again, but in a kinder fashion; then looked again at Barbara's

+photograph.  "Who is she?"

+

+"She was Miss Hasluck," I answered; "she is the Countess Huescar now.

+She was married last summer."

+

+"Oh, yes, I remember; you told us about her.  You were children

+together.  But what's the good of your being in love with her if she's

+married?"

+

+"It makes my whole life beautiful."

+

+"Wanting somebody you can't have?"

+

+"I don't want her."

+

+"You said you were in love with her."

+

+"So I am."

+

+She handed me back the photograph, and I replaced it in my pocket.

+

+"I don't understand that sort of love," she said.  "If I loved anybody

+I should want to have them with me always.

+

+"She is with me always," I answered, "in my thoughts."  She looked at

+me with her clear grey eyes.  I found myself blinking.  Something

+seemed to be slipping from me, something I did not want to lose.  I

+remember a similar sensation once at the moment of waking from a

+strange, delicious dream to find the sunlight pouring in upon me

+through an open window.

+

+"That isn't being in love," she said.  "That's being in love with the

+idea of being in love.  That's the way I used to go to balls"--she

+laughed--"in front of the glass.  You caught me once, do you

+remember?"

+

+"And was it not sweeter," I argued, "the imagination?  You were the

+belle of the evening; you danced divinely every dance, were taken in

+to supper by the Lion.  In reality you trod upon your partner's toes,

+bumped and were bumped, were left a wallflower more than half the

+time, had a headache the next day.  Were not the dream balls the more

+delightful?"

+

+"No, they weren't," she answered without the slightest hesitation.

+"One real dance, when at last it came, was worth the whole of them.

+Oh, I know, I've heard you talking, all of you--of the faces that you

+see in dreams and that are ever so much more beautiful than the faces

+that you see when you're awake; of the wonderful songs that nobody

+ever sings, the wonderful pictures that nobody ever paints, and all

+the rest of it.  I don't believe a word of it.  It's tommyrot!"

+

+"I wish you wouldn't use slang."

+

+"Well, you know what I mean.  What is the proper word?  Give it me."

+

+"I suppose you mean cant," I suggested.

+

+"No, I don't.  Cant is something that you don't believe in yourself.

+It's tommyrot:  there isn't any other word.  When I'm in love it will

+be with something that is real."

+

+I was feeling angry with her.  "I know just what he will be like.  He

+will be a good-natured, commonplace--"

+

+"Whatever he is," she interrupted, "he'll be alive, and he'll want me

+and I shall want him.  Dreams are silly.  I prefer being up."  She

+clapped her hands.  "That's it."  Then, silent, she looked at me with

+an expression of new interest. "I've been wondering and wondering what

+it was:  you are not really awake yet.  You've never got up."

+

+I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my

+brain was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the

+truth.  And if so, what would "waking up," as she termed it, be like?

+A flash of memory recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking

+Bridge, when, as it had seemed to me, the little childish Paul had

+slipped away from me, leaving me lonely and bewildered to find another

+Self.  Was my boyhood in like manner now falling from me?  I found

+myself clinging to it with vague terror.  Its thoughts, its

+feelings--dreams:  they had grown sweet to me; must I lose them?  This

+cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to receive me:  I shrank away from it

+with fear.

+

+"Do you know, I think you will be rather nice when you wake up."

+

+Her words recalled me to myself.  "Perhaps I never shall wake up," I

+said.  "I don't want to wake up."

+

+"Oh, but one can't go on dreaming all one's life," she laughed.

+"You'll wake up, and fall in love with somebody real."  She came

+across to me, and taking the lapels of my coat in both her hands, gave

+me a vigorous shake.  "I hope she'll be somebody nice.  I am rather

+afraid."

+

+"You seem to think me a fool!" I was still angry with her, without

+quite knowing why.

+

+She shook me again.  "You know I don't.  But it isn't the nice people

+that take best care of themselves.  Tom can't.  I have to take care of

+him."

+

+I laughed.

+

+"I do, really.  You should hear me scold him.  I like taking care of

+people.  Good-bye."

+

+She held out her hand.  It was white now and shapely, but one could

+not have called it small.  Strong it felt and firm as it gripped mine.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII.

+

+AND HOW CAME BACK AGAIN.

+

+I left London, the drums beating in my heart, the flags waving in my

+brain.  Somewhat more than a year later, one foggy wet December

+evening, I sneaked back to it defeated--ah, that is a small thing,

+capable of redress--disgraced.  I returned to it as to a hiding-place

+where, lost in the crowd, I might waste my days unnoticed until such

+time as I could summon up sufficient resolution to put an end to my

+dead life.  I had been ambitious--dwelling again amid the bitterness

+of the months that followed my return, I write in the past tense.  I

+had been eager to make a name, a position for myself.  But were I to

+claim no higher aim, I should be doing injustice to my blood--to the

+great-souled gentleman whose whole life had been an ode to honour, to

+her of simple faith who had known no other prayer to teach me than the

+childish cry, "God help me to be good!"  I had wished to be a great

+man, but it was to have been a great good man.  The world was to have

+admired me, but to have respected me also.  I was to have been the

+knight without fear, but, rarer yet, without reproach--Galahad, not

+Launcelot.  I had learnt myself to be a feeble, backboneless fighter,

+conquered by the first serious assault of evil, a creature of mean

+fears, slave to every crack of the devil's whip, a feeder with swine.

+

+Urban Vane I had discovered to be a common swindler.  His play he had

+stolen from the desk of a well-known dramatist whose acquaintance he

+had made in Deleglise's kitchen.  The man had fallen ill, and Vane had

+been constant in his visits.  Partly recovering, the man had gone

+abroad to Italy.  Had he died there, as at the time was expected, the

+robbery might never have come to light.  News reached us in a small

+northern town that he had taken a fresh lease of life and was on his

+way back to England.  Then it was that Vane with calm indifference,

+smoking his cigar over a bottle of wine to which he had invited me,

+told me the bald truth, adorning it with some touches of wit.  Had the

+recital come upon me sooner, I might have acted differently; but six

+months' companionship with Urban Vane, if it had not, by grace of the

+Lord, destroyed the roots of whatever flower of manhood might have

+been implanted in me, had most certainly withered its leaves.

+

+The man was clever.  That he was not clever enough to perceive from

+the beginning what he has learnt since:  that honesty is the best

+policy--at least, for men with brains--remains somewhat of a mystery

+to me.  Where once he made his hundreds among shady ways, he now, I

+suppose, makes his thousands in the broad daylight of legitimate

+enterprise.  Chicanery in the blood, one might imagine, has to be

+worked out.  Urban Vanes are to be found in all callings.  They

+commence as scamps; years later, to one's astonishment, one finds them

+ornaments to their profession.  Wild oats are of various quality,

+according to the soil from which they are preserved.  We sow them in

+our various ways.

+

+At first I stormed.  Vane sat with an amused smile upon his lips and

+listened.

+

+"Your language, my dear Kelver," he replied, my vocabulary exhausted,

+"might wound me were I able to accept you as an authority upon this

+vexed question of morals.  With the rest of the world you preach one

+thing and practise another.  I have noticed it so often.  It is

+perhaps sad, but the preaching has ceased to interest me.  You profess

+to be very indignant with me for making use of another man's ideas.

+It is done every day.  You yourself were quite ready to take credit

+not due to you.  For months we have been travelling with this play:

+'Drama, in five acts, by Mr. Horace Moncrieff.'  Not more than two

+hundred lines of it are your own--excellent lines, I admit, but they

+do not constitute the play."

+

+This aspect of the affair had not occurred to me.  "But you asked me

+to put my name to it," I stammered.  "You said you did not want your

+own to appear--for private reasons.  You made a point of it."

+

+He waved away the smoke from his cigar.  "The man you are posing as

+would never have put his name to work not his own.  You never

+hesitated; on the contrary, you jumped at the chance of so easy an

+opening to your career as playwright.  My need, as you imagined it,

+was your opportunity."

+

+"But you said it was from the French," I argued; "you had merely

+translated it, I adapted it.  I don't defend the custom, but it is the

+custom:  the man who adapts a play calls himself the author.  They all

+do it."

+

+"I know," he answered.  "It has always amused me.  Our sick friend

+himself, whom I am sure we are both delighted to welcome back to life,

+has done it more than once, and made a very fair profit on the

+transaction.  Indeed, from internal evidence, I am strongly of opinion

+that this present play is a case in point.  Well, chickens come home

+to roost:  I adapt from him.  What is the difference?"

+

+"Simply this," he continued, pouring himself out another glass of

+wine, "that whereas, owing to the anomalous state of the copyright

+laws, stealing from the foreign author is legal and commendable,

+against stealing from the living English author there is a certain

+prejudice."

+

+"And the consequences, I am afraid, you will find somewhat

+unpleasant," I suggested.

+

+He laughed:  it was not a frivolity to which he was prone.  "You mean,

+my dear Kelver that you will."

+

+"Don't look so dumbfounded " he went on.  "You cannot be so stupid as

+you are pretending to be.  The original manuscript at the Lord

+Chamberlain's office is in your handwriting.  You knew our friend as

+well as I did, and visited him.  Why, the whole tour has been under

+your management.  You have arranged everything--most excellently; I

+have been quite surprised."

+

+My anger came later.  For the moment, the sudden light blinded me to

+everything but fear.

+

+"But you told me," I cried, "it was only a matter of form, that you

+wanted to keep your name out of it because--"

+

+He was looking at me with an expression of genuine astonishment.  My

+words began to appear humorous even to myself.  I found it difficult

+to believe I had been the fool I was now seeing myself to have been.

+

+"I am sorry," he said, "I am really sorry.  I took you for a man of

+the world.  I thought you merely did not wish to know anything."

+

+Still, to my shame, fear was the thing uppermost in my heart.  "You

+are not going to put it all on to me?" I pleaded.

+

+He had risen.  He laid his hand upon my shoulder.  Instead of flinging

+it off, I was glad of its kindly pressure.  He was the only man to

+whom I could look for help.

+

+"Don't take it so seriously," he said.  "He will merely think the

+manuscript has been lost.  As likely as not, he will be unable to

+remember whether he wrote it or merely thought of writing it.  No one

+in the company will say anything:  it isn't their business.  We must

+set to work.  I had altered it a good deal before you saw it, and

+changed all the names of the characters.  We will retain the third

+act:  it is the only thing of real value in the play.  The situation

+is not original; you have as much right to dish it up as he had.  In a

+fortnight we will have the whole thing so different that if he saw it

+himself he would only imagine we had got hold of the idea and had

+forestalled him."

+

+There were moments during the next few weeks when I listened to the

+voice of my good angel, when I saw clearly that even from the lowest

+point of view he was giving me sound advice.  I would go to the man,

+tell him frankly the whole truth.

+

+But Vane never left my elbow.  Suspecting, I suppose, he gave me

+clearly to understand that if I did so, I must expect no mercy from

+him.  My story, denounced by him as an outrageous lie, would be

+regarded as the funk-inspired subterfuge of a young rogue.  At the

+best I should handicap myself with suspicion that would last me

+throughout my career.  On the other hand, what harm had we done?

+Presented in some twenty or so small towns, where it would soon be

+forgotten, a play something like.  Most plays were something like.

+Our friend would produce his version and reap a rich harvest; ours

+would disappear.  If by any unlikely chance discussion should arise,

+the advertisement would he to his advantage.  So soon as possible we

+would replace it by a new piece altogether.  A young man of my genius

+could surely write something better than hotch-potch such as this;

+experience was all that I had lacked.  As regarded one's own

+conscience, was not the world's honesty a mere question of convention?

+Had he been a young man, and had we diddled him out of his play for a

+ten-pound note, we should have been applauded as sharp men of

+business.  The one commandment of the world was:  Don't get found out.

+The whole trouble, left alone, would sink and fade.  Later, we should

+tell it as a good joke--and be laughed with.

+

+So I fell from mine own esteem.  Vane helping me--and he had brains--I

+set feverishly to work.  I am glad to remember that every line I wrote

+was born in misery.  I tried to persuade Vane to let me make a new

+play altogether, which I offered to give him for nothing.  He

+expressed himself as grateful, but his frequently declared belief in

+my dramatic talent failed to induce his acceptance.

+

+"Later on, my dear Kelver," was his reply.  "For the present this is

+doing very well.  Going on as we are, we shall soon improve it out of

+all recognition, while at the same time losing nothing that is

+essential.  All your ideas are excellent."

+

+By the end of about three weeks we had got together a concoction that,

+so far as dialogue and characters were concerned, might be said to be

+our own.  There was good work in it, here and there.  Under other

+conditions I might have been proud of much that I had written.  As it

+was, I experienced only the terror of the thief dodging the constable:

+my cleverness might save me; it afforded me no further satisfaction.

+My humour, when I heard the people laughing at it, I remembered I had

+forged listening in vague fear to every creak upon the stairs,

+wondering in what form discovery might come upon me.  There was one

+speech, addressed by the hero to the villain:  "Yes, I admit it; I do

+love her.  But there is that which I love better--my self-respect!"

+Stepping down to the footlights and slapping his chest (which

+according to stage convention would appear to be a sort of moral

+jewel-box bursting with assorted virtues), our juvenile lead�-a

+gentleman who led a somewhat rabbit-like existence, perpetually diving

+down openings to avoid service of writs, at the instance of his wife,

+for alimony--would invariably bring down the house upon this

+sentiment.  Every night, listening to the applause, I would shudder,

+recalling how I had written it with burning cheeks.

+

+There was a character in the piece, a vicious old man, that from the

+beginning Vane had wanted me to play.  I had disliked the part and had

+refused, choosing instead to act a high-souled countryman, in the

+portrayal of whose irreproachable emotions I had taken pleasure.  Vane

+now renewed his arguments, and my power of resistance seeming to have

+departed from me, I accepted the exchange.  Certainly the old

+gentleman's scenes went with more snap, but at a cost of further

+degradation to myself.  Upon an older actor the effect might have been

+harmless, but the growing tree springs back less surely; I found

+myself taking pleasure in the coarse laughter that rewarded my

+suggestive leers, calling up all the evil in my nature to help me in

+the development of fresh "business."  Vane was enthusiastic in his

+praises, generous with his assistance.  Under his tuition I succeeded

+in making the part as unpleasant as we dared.  I had genius, so Vane

+told me; I understood so much of human nature.  One proof of the moral

+deterioration creeping over me was that I was beginning to like Vane.

+

+Looking back at the man as I see him plainly now, a very ordinary

+scamp, his pretension not even amusing, I find it difficult to present

+him as he appeared to my boyish eyes.  He was well educated and well

+read.  He gave himself the airs of a superior being by freak of fate

+compelled to abide in a world of inferior creatures.  To live among

+them in comfort it was necessary for him to outwardly conform to their

+conventions but to respect their reasoning would have been beneath

+him.  To accept their laws as binding on one's own conscience was,

+using the common expression, to give oneself away, to confess oneself

+commonplace.  Every decent instinct a man might own to was proof in

+Vane's eyes of his being "suburban," "bourgeois"--everything that was

+unintellectual.  It was the first time I had heard this sort of talk.

+Vane was one of the pioneers of the movement, which has since become

+somewhat tiresome.  To laugh at it is easy to a man of the world; boys

+are impressed by it.  From him I first heard the now familiar advocacy

+of pure Hedonism.  Pan, enticed from his dark groves, was to sit upon

+Olympus.

+

+My lower nature rose within me to proclaim the foolish chatterer as a

+prophet.  So life was not as I had been taught--a painful struggle

+between good and evil.  There was no such thing as evil; the senseless

+epithet was a libel upon Nature.  Not through wearisome repression,

+but rather through joyous expression of the animal lay advancement.

+

+Villains--workers in wrong for aesthetic pleasure of the art--are

+useful characters in fiction; in real life they do not exist. I am

+convinced the man believed most of the rubbish he talked.  Since the

+time of which I write he has done some service to the world.  I

+understand he is an excellent husband and father, a considerate

+master, a delightful host.  He intended, I have no doubt, to improve

+me, to enlarge my understanding, to free me from soul-stifling bondage

+of convention.  Not to credit him with this well-meaning intention

+would be to assume him something quite inhuman, to bestow upon him a

+dignity beyond his deserts.  I find it easier to regard him merely as

+a fool.

+

+Our leading lady was a handsome but coarse woman, somewhat

+over-developed.  Starting life as a music-hall singer, she had married

+a small tradesman in the south of London.  Some three or four years

+previous, her Juno-like charms had turned the head of a youthful

+novelist--a refined, sensitive man, of whom great things in literature

+had been expected, and, judging from his earlier work, not

+unreasonably.  He had run away with her, and eventually married her;

+the scandal was still fresh.  Already she had repented of her bargain.

+These women regard their infatuated lovers merely as steps in the

+social ladder, and he had failed to appreciably advance her.  Under

+her demoralising spell his ambition had died in him.  He no longer

+wrote, no longer took interest in anything beyond his own debasement.

+He was with us in the company, playing small parts, and playing them

+badly; he would have remained with us as bill-poster rather than have

+been sent away.

+

+Vane planned to bring this woman and myself together.  To her he

+pictured me a young gentleman of means, a coming author, who would

+soon be earning an income sufficient to keep her in every luxury.  To

+me he hinted that she had fallen in love with me.  I was never

+attracted to her by any feeling stronger than the admiration with

+which one views a handsome animal.  It was my vanity upon which he

+worked.  He envied me; any man would envy me; experience of life was

+what I needed to complete my genius.  The great intellects of this

+earth must learn all lessons, even at the cost of suffering to

+themselves and others.

+

+As years before I had laboured to acquire a liking for cigars and

+whiskey, deeming it an accomplishment necessary to a literary career,

+so painstakingly I now applied myself to the cultivation of a pretty

+taste in passion.  According to the literature, fictional and

+historical, Vane was kind enough to supply me with, men of note were

+invariably sad dogs.  That my temperament was not that of the sad dog,

+that I lacked instinct and inclination for the part, appeared to this

+young idiot of whom I am writing in the light of a defect.  That her

+languishing glances irritated rather than maddened me, that the

+occasional covert pressure of her hot, thick hand left me cold, I felt

+a reproach to my manhood.  I would fall in love with her.  Surely my

+blood was red like other men's.  Besides, was I not an artist, and was

+not profligacy the hall-mark of the artist?

+

+But one grows tired of the confessional.  Fate saved me from playing

+the part Vane had assigned me in this vulgar comedy, dragged me from

+my entanglement, flung me on my feet again.  She was a little brusque

+in the process; but I do not feel inclined to blame the kind lady for

+that.  The mud was creeping upward fast, and a quick hand must needs

+be rough.

+

+Our dramatic friend produced his play sooner than we had expected.  It

+crept out that something very like it had been seen in the Provinces.

+Argument followed, enquiries were set on foot.  "It will blow over,"

+said Vane.  But it seemed to be blowing our way.

+

+The salaries, as a rule, were paid by me on Friday night.  Vane, in

+the course of the evening, would bring me the money for me to

+distribute after the performance.  We were playing in the north of

+Ireland.  I had not seen Vane all that day.  So soon as I had changed

+my clothes I left my dressing-room to seek him.  The box-office

+keeper, meeting me, put a note into my hand.  It was short and to the

+point.  Vane had pocketed the evening's takings, and had left by the

+seven-fifty train!  He regretted causing inconvenience, but life was

+replete with small comedies; the wise man attached no seriousness to

+them.  We should probably meet again and enjoy a laugh over our

+experiences.

+

+Some rumour had got about.  I looked up from the letter to find myself

+surrounded by suspicious faces.  With dry lips I told them the truth.

+Only they happened not to regard it as the truth.  Vane throughout had

+contrived cleverly to them I was the manager, the sole person

+responsible.  My wearily spoken explanations were to them

+incomprehensible lies.  The quarter of an hour might have been worse

+for me had I been sufficiently alive to understand or care what they

+were saying.  A dull, listless apathy had come over me.  I felt the

+scene only stupid, ridiculous, tiresome.  There was some talk of

+giving me "a damned good hiding."  I doubt whether I should have known

+till the next morning whether the suggestion had been carried out or

+not.  I gathered that the true history of the play, the reason for the

+sudden alterations, had been known to them all along.  They appeared

+to have reserved their virtuous indignation till this evening.  As

+explanation of my apparent sleepiness, somebody, whether in kindness

+to me or not I cannot say, suggested I was drunk.  Fortunately, it

+carried conviction.  No further trains left the town that night; I was

+allowed to depart.  A deputation promised to be round at my lodgings

+early in the morning.

+

+Our leading lady had left the theatre immediately on the fall of the

+curtain; it was not necessary for her to wait, her husband acting as

+her business man.  On reaching my rooms, I found her sitting by the

+fire.  It reminded me that our agent in advance having fallen ill, her

+husband had, at her suggestion, been appointed in his place, and had

+left us on the Wednesday to make the necessary preparations in the

+next town on our list. I thought that perhaps she had come round for

+her money, and the idea amused me.

+

+"Well?" she said, with her one smile.  I had been doing my best for

+some months to regard it as soul-consuming, but without any real

+success.

+

+"Well," I answered.  It bored me, her being there.  I wanted to be

+alone.

+

+"You don't seem overjoyed to see me.  What's the matter with you?

+What's happened?"

+

+I laughed.  "Vane's bolted and taken the week's money with him."

+

+"The beast!" she said.  "I knew he was that sort.  What ever made you

+take up with him?  Will it make much difference to you?"

+

+"It makes a difference all round," I replied.  "There's no money to

+pay any of you.  There's nothing to pay your fares back to London."

+

+She had risen.  "Here, let me understand this," she said.  "Are you

+the rich mug Vane's been representing you to be, or only his

+accomplice?"

+

+"The mug and the accomplice both," I answered, "without the rich.

+It's his tour.  He put my name to it because he didn't want his own to

+appear--for family reasons.  It's his play; he stole it--"

+

+She interrupted me with a whistle.  "I thought it looked a bit fishy,

+all those alterations.  But such funny things do happen in this

+profession!  Stole it, did he?"

+

+"The whole thing in manuscript.  I put my name to it for the same

+reason--he didn't want his own to appear."

+

+She dropped into her chair and laughed--a good-tempered laugh, loud

+and long.  "Well, I'm damned!" she said.  "The first man who has ever

+taken me in.  I should never have signed if I had thought it was his

+show.  I could see the sort he was with half an eye."  She jumped up

+from the chair.  "Here, let me get out of this," she said.  "I just

+looked in to know what time to-morrow; I'd forgotten.  You needn't say

+I came."

+

+Her hand upon the door, laughter seized her again, so that for support

+she had to lean against the wall.

+

+"Do you know why I really did come?" she said.  "You'll guess when you

+come to think it over, so I may as well tell you.  It's a bit of a

+joke.  I came to say 'yes' to what you asked me last night.  Have you

+forgotten?"

+

+I stared at her.  Last night!  It seemed a long while ago--so very

+unimportant what I might have said.

+

+She laughed again.  "So help me! if you haven't.  Well, you asked me

+to run away with you--that's all, to let our two souls unite.  Damned

+lucky I took a day to think it over!  Good-night."

+

+"Good-night," I answered, without moving.  I was gripping a chair to

+prevent myself from rushing at her, pushing her out of the room, and

+locking the door.  I wanted to be alone.

+

+I heard her turn the handle.  "Got a pound or two to carry you over?"

+It was a woman's voice.

+

+I put my hand into my pocket.  "One pound seventeen," I answered,

+counting it.  "It will pay my fare to London--or buy me a dinner and a

+second-hand revolver.  I haven't quite decided yet."

+

+"Oh, you get back and pull yourself together," she said.  "You're only

+a kid.  Good-night."

+

+I put a few things into a small bag and walked thirty miles that night

+into Belfast.  Arrived in London, I took a lodging in Deptford, where

+I was least likely to come in contact with any face I had ever seen

+before.  I maintained myself by giving singing lessons at sixpence the

+half-hour, evening lessons in French and German (the Lord forgive me!)

+to ambitious shop-boys at eighteen pence a week, making up tradesmen's

+books.  A few articles of jewellery I had retained enabled me to tide

+over bad periods.  For some four months I existed there, never going

+outside the neighbourhood.  Occasionally, wandering listlessly about

+the streets, some object, some vista, would strike me by reason of its

+familiarity.  Then I would turn and hasten back into my grave of dim,

+weltering streets.

+

+Of thoughts, emotions, during these dead days I was unconscious.

+Somewhere in my brain they may have been stirring, contending; but

+myself I lived as in a long, dull dream.  I ate, and drank, and woke,

+and slept, and walked and walked, and lounged by corners; staring by

+the hour together, seeing nothing.

+

+It has suprised me since to find the scenes I must then have witnessed

+photographed so clearly on my mind.  Tragedies, dramas, farces, played

+before me in that teeming underworld--the scenes present themselves to

+me distinct, complete; yet I have no recollection of ever having seen

+them.

+

+I fell ill.  It must have been some time in April, but I kept no count

+of days.  Nobody came near me, nobody knew of me.  I occupied a room

+at the top of a huge block of workmen's dwellings.  A woman who kept a

+second-hand store had lent me for a shilling a week a few articles of

+furniture.  Lying upon my chair-bedstead, I listened to the shrill

+sounds around me, that through the light and darkness never ceased.  A

+pint of milk, left each morning on the stone landing, kept me alive.

+I would wait for the man's descending footsteps, then crawl to the

+door.  I hoped I was going to die, regretting my returning strength,

+the desire for food that drove me out into the streets again.

+

+One night, a week or two after my partial recovery, I had wandered on

+and on for hour after hour.  The breaking dawn recalled me to myself.

+I was outside the palings of a park.  In the faint shadowy light it

+looked strange and unfamiliar.  I was too tired to walk further.  I

+scrambled over the low wooden fencing, and reaching a seat, dropped

+down and fell asleep.

+

+I was sitting in a sunny avenue; birds were singing joyously, bright

+flowers were all around me.  Norah was beside me, her frank, sweet

+eyes were looking into mine; they were full of tenderness, mingled

+with wonder.  It was a delightful dream:  I felt myself smiling.

+

+Suddenly I started to my feet.  Norah's strong hand drew me down

+again.

+

+I was in the broad walk, Regent's Park, where, I remembered, Norah

+often walked before breakfast. A park-keeper, the only other human

+creature within sight, was eyeing me suspiciously.  I saw

+myself--without a looking-glass--unkempt, ragged.  My intention was to

+run, but Norah was holding me by the arm.  Savagely I tried to shake

+her off.  I was weak from my recent illness, and, I suppose, half

+starved; it angered me to learn she was the stronger of the two.  In

+spite of my efforts, she dragged me back.

+

+Ashamed of my weakness, ashamed of everything about me, I burst into

+tears; and that of course made me still more ashamed.  To add to my

+discomfort, I had no handkerchief.  Holding me with one hand--it was

+quite sufficient--Norah produced her own, and wiped my eyes.  The

+park-keeper, satisfied, I suppose, that at all events I was not

+dangerous, with a grin passed on.

+

+"Where have you been, and what have you been doing?" asked Norah.  She

+still retained her grip upon me, and in her grey eyes was quiet

+determination.

+

+So, with my face turned away from her, I told her the whole miserable

+story, taking strange satisfaction in exaggerating, if anything, my

+own share of the disgrace.  My recital ended, I sat staring down the

+long, shadow-freckled way, and for awhile there was no sound but the

+chirping of the sparrows.

+

+Then behind me I beard a smothered laugh.  It was impossible to

+imagine it could come from Norah.  I turned quickly to see who had

+stolen upon us.  It was Norah who was laughing; though to do her

+justice she was trying to suppress it, holding her handkerchief to her

+face.  It was of no use, it would out; she abandoned the struggle, and

+gave way to it.  It astonished the sparrows into silence; they stood

+in a row upon the low iron border and looked at one another.

+

+"I am glad you think it funny," I said.

+

+"But it is funny," she persisted.  "Don't say you have lost your sense

+of humour, Paul; it was the one real thing you possessed.  You were so

+cocky--you don't know how cocky you were!  Everybody was a fool but

+Vane; nobody else but he appreciated you at your true worth.  You and

+he between you were going to reform the stage, to educate the public,

+to put everything and everybody to rights.  I am awfully sorry for all

+you've gone through; but now that it is over, can't you see yourself

+that it is funny?"

+

+Faintly, dimly, this aspect of the case, for the very first time,

+began to present itself to me; but I should have preferred Norah to

+have been impressed by its tragedy.

+

+"That is not all," I said.  "I nearly ran away with another man's

+wife."

+

+I was glad to notice that sobered her somewhat.  "Nearly?  Why not

+quite?" she asked more seriously.

+

+"She thought I was some young idiot with money," I replied bitterly,

+pleased with the effect I had produced.  "Vane had told her a pack of

+lies.  When she found out I was only a poor devil, ruined, disgraced,

+without a sixpence--�"  I made a gesture expressive of eloquent

+contempt for female nature generally.

+

+"I am sorry," said Norah; "I told you you would fall in love with

+something real."

+

+Her words irritated me, unreasonably, I confess.  "In love!" I

+replied; "good God, I was never in love with her!"

+

+"Then why did you nearly run away with her?"

+

+I was wishing now I had not mentioned the matter; it promised to be

+difficult of explanation.  "I don't know," I replied irritably.  "I

+thought she was in love with me.  She was very beautiful--at least,

+other people seemed to think she was.  Artists are not like ordinary

+men.  You must live--understand life, before you can teach it to

+others.  When a beautiful woman is in love with you--or pretends to

+be, you--you must say something.  You can't stand like a fool and--"

+

+Again her laughter interrupted me; this time she made no attempt to

+hide it.  The sparrows chirped angrily, and flew off to continue their

+conversation somewhere where there would be less noise.

+

+"You are the biggest baby, Paul," she said, so soon as she could

+speak, "I ever heard of."  She seized me by the shoulders, and turned

+me round.  "If you weren't looking so ill and miserable, I would shake

+you, Paul, till there wasn't a bit of breath left in your body."

+

+"How much money do you owe?" she asked--"to the people in the company

+and anybody else, I mean--roughly?"

+

+"About a hundred and fifty pounds," I answered.

+

+"Then if you rest day or night, Paul, till you have paid that hundred

+and fifty--every penny of it--I'll think you the meanest cad in

+London!"

+

+Her grey eyes were flashing quite alarmingly.  I felt almost afraid of

+her.  She could be so vehement at times.

+

+"But how can I?" I asked.

+

+"Go straight home," she commanded, "and write something funny:  an

+article, story--anything you like; only mind that it is funny.  Post

+it to me to-morrow, at the latest.  Dan is in London, editing a new

+weekly.  I'll have it copied out and sent to him.  I shan't say who it

+is from.  I shall merely ask him to read it and reply, at once.  If

+you've a grain of grit left in you, you'll write something that he

+will be glad to have and to pay for.  Pawn that ring on your finger

+and get yourself a good breakfast"--it was my mother's wedding-ring,

+the only piece of dispensable property I had not parted with--"_she_

+won't mind helping you.  But nobody else is going to--except

+yourself."

+

+She looked at her watch.  "I must be off."  She turned again.  "There

+is something I was forgetting.  B--"--she mentioned the name of the

+dramatist whose play Vane had stolen--"has been looking for you for

+the last three months.  If you hadn't been an idiot you might have

+saved yourself a good deal of trouble.  He is quite certain it was

+Vane stole the manuscript.  He asked the nurse to bring it to him an

+hour after Vane had left the house, and it couldn't be found.

+Besides, the man's character is well known.  And so is yours.  I won't

+tell it you," she laughed; "anyhow, it isn't that of a knave."

+

+She made a step towards me, then changed her mind.  "No," she said, "I

+shan't shake hands with you till you have paid the last penny that you

+owe.  Then I shall know that you are a man."

+

+She did not look back.  I watched her, till the sunlight, streaming in

+my eyes, raised a golden mist between us.

+

+Then I went to my work.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX.

+

+THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING.

+

+It took me three years to win that handshake.  For the first six

+months I remained in Deptford.  There was excellent material to be

+found there for humorous articles, essays, stories; likewise for

+stories tragic and pathetic.  But I owed a hundred and fifty pounds--a

+little over two hundred it reached to, I found, when I came to add up

+the actual figures.  So I paid strict attention to business, left the

+tears to be garnered by others--better fitted maybe for the task; kept

+to my own patch, reaped and took to market only the laughter.

+

+At the beginning I sent each manuscript to Norah; she had it copied

+out, debited me with the cost received payment, and sent me the

+balance.  At first my earnings were small; but Norah was an excellent

+agent; rapidly they increased.  Dan grew quite cross with her, wrote

+in pained surprise at her greed.  The "matter" was fair, but in no way

+remarkable.  Any friend of hers, of course, he was anxious to assist;

+but business was business.  In justice to his proprietors, he could

+not and would not pay more than the market value.  Miss Deleglise,

+replying curtly in the third person, found herself in perfect accord

+with Mr. Brian as to business being business.  If Mr. Brian could not

+afford to pay her price for material so excellent, other editors with

+whom Miss Deleglise was equally well acquainted could and would.

+Answer by return would greatly oblige, pending which the manuscript

+then in her hands she retained.  Mr. Brian, understanding he had found

+his match, grumbled but paid.  Whether he had any suspicion who "Jack

+Homer" might be, he never confessed; but he would have played the

+game, pulled his end of the rope, in either case.  Nor was he allowed

+to decide the question for himself.  Competition was introduced into

+the argument.  Of purpose a certain proportion of my work my agent

+sent elsewhere.  "Jack Homer" grew to be a commodity in demand.  For,

+seated at my rickety table, I laughed as I wrote, the fourth wall of

+the dismal room fading before my eyes revealing vistas beyond.

+

+Still, it was slow work.  Humour is not an industrious maid; declines

+to be bustled, will work only when she feels inclined--does not often

+feel inclined; gives herself a good many unnecessary airs; if worried,

+packs up and goes off, Heaven knows where! comes back when she thinks

+she will:  a somewhat unreliable young person.  To my literary labours

+I found it necessary to add journalism.  I lacked Dan's magnificent

+assurance.  Fate never befriends the nervous.  Had I burst into the

+editorial sanctum, the editor most surely would have been out if in,

+would have been a man of short ways, would have seen to it that I went

+out quickly.  But the idea was not to be thought of; Robert Macaire

+himself in my one coat would have been diffident, apologetic.  I

+joined the ranks of the penny-a-liners--to be literally exact, three

+halfpence a liners.  In company with half a dozen other shabby

+outsiders--some of them young men like myself seeking to climb;

+others, older men who had sunk--I attended inquests, police courts;

+flew after fire engines; rejoiced in street accidents; yearned for

+murders.  Somewhat vulture-like we lived precariously upon the

+misfortunes of others.  We made occasional half crowns by providing

+the public with scandal, occasional crowns by keeping our information

+to ourselves.

+

+"I think, gentlemen," would explain our spokesman in a hoarse whisper,

+on returning to the table, "I think the corpse's brother-in-law is

+anxious that the affair, if possible, should be kept out of the

+papers."

+

+The closeness and attention with which we would follow that particular

+case, the fulness and completeness of our notes, would be quite

+remarkable.  Our spokesman would rise, drift carelessly away, to

+return five minutes later, wiping his mouth.

+

+"Not a very interesting case, gentlemen, I don't think.  Shall we say

+five shillings apiece?"  Sometimes a sense of the dignity of our

+calling would induce us to stand out for ten.

+

+And here also my sense of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an

+undue advantage over my competitors.  Twelve good men and true had

+been asked to say how a Lascar sailor had met his death.  It was

+perfectly clear how he had met his death.  A plumber, working on the

+roof of a small two-storeyed house, had slipped and fallen on him.

+The plumber had escaped with a few bruises; the unfortunate sailor had

+been picked up dead.  Some blame attached to the plumber.  His mate,

+an excellent witness, told us the whole story.

+

+"I was fixing a gas-pipe on the first floor," said the man.  "The

+prisoner was on the roof."

+

+"We won't call him 'the prisoner,'" interrupted the coroner, "at

+least, not yet.  Refer to him, if you please, as the 'last witness.'"

+

+"The last witness," corrected himself the man.  "He shouts down the

+chimney to know if I was ready for him."

+

+"'Ready and waiting,' I says.

+

+"'Right,' he says; 'I'm coming in through the window.'

+

+"'Wait a bit,' I says; 'I'll go down and move the ladder for you.

+

+"'It's all right,' he says; 'I can reach it.'

+

+"'No, you can't,' I says.  'It's the other side of the chimney.'

+

+"'I can get round,' he says.

+

+"Well, before I knew what had happened, I hears him go, smack!  I

+rushes to the window and looks out:  I see him on the pavement,

+sitting up like.

+

+"'Hullo, Jim,' I says.  'Have you hurt yourself?'

+

+"'I think I'm all right,' he says, 'as far as I can tell.  But I wish

+you'd come down.  This bloke I've fallen on looks a bit sick.'"

+

+The others headed their flimsy "Sad Accident," a title truthful but

+not alluring.  I altered mine to "Plumber in a Hurry--Fatal Result."

+Saying as little as possible about the unfortunate sailor, I called

+the attention of plumbers generally to the coroner's very just remarks

+upon the folly of undue haste; pointed out to them, as a body, the

+trouble that would arise if somehow they could not cure themselves of

+this tendency to rush through their work without a moment's loss of

+time.

+

+It established for me a useful reputation.  The sub-editor of one

+evening paper condescended so far as to come out in his shirt-sleeves

+and shake hands with me.

+

+"That's the sort of thing we want," he told me; "a light touch, a bit

+of humour."

+

+I snatched fun from fires (I sincerely trust the insurance premiums

+were not overdue); culled quaintness from street rows; extracted

+merriment from catastrophes the most painful, and prospered.

+

+Though often within a stone's throw of the street, I unremittingly

+avoided the old house at Poplar.  I was suffering inconvenience at

+this period by reason of finding myself two distinct individuals,

+contending with each other.  My object was to encourage the new

+Paul--the sensible, practical, pushful Paul, whose career began to

+look promising; to drive away from interfering with me his strangely

+unlike twin--the old childish Paul of the sad, far-seeing eyes.

+Sometimes out of the cracked looking-glass his wistful, yearning face

+would plead to me; but I would sternly shake my head.  I knew well his

+cunning.  Had I let him have his way, he would have led me through the

+maze of streets he knew so well, past the broken railings (outside

+which be would have left my body standing), along the weedy pathway,

+through the cracked and dented door, up the creaking staircase to the

+dismal little chamber where we once--he and I together--had sat

+dreaming foolish dreams.

+

+"Come," he would whisper; "it is so near.  Let us push aside the chest

+of drawers very quietly, softly raise the broken sash, prop it open

+with the Latin dictionary, lean our elbows on the sill, listen to the

+voices of the weary city, voices calling to us from the darkness."

+

+But I was too wary to be caught.  "Later on," I would reply to him;

+"when I have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your

+wheedling.  Then I will go with you, if you are still in existence, my

+sentimental little friend.  We will dream again the old impractical,

+foolish dreams--and laugh at them."

+

+So he would fade away, and in his place would nod to me approvingly a

+businesslike-looking, wide-awake young fellow.

+

+But to one sentimental temptation I succumbed.  My position was by now

+assured; there was no longer any reason for my hiding myself.  I

+determined to move westward.  I had not intended to soar so high, but

+passing through Guildford Street one day, the creeper-covered corner

+house that my father had once thought of taking recalled itself to me.

+A card was in the fanlight.  I knocked and made enquiries.  A

+bed-sitting-room upon the third floor was vacant.  I remembered it

+well the moment the loquacious landlady opened its door.

+

+"This shall be your room, Paul," said my father.  So clearly his voice

+sounded behind me that I turned, forgetting for the moment it was but

+a memory.  "You will be quiet here, and we can shut out the bed and

+washstand with a screen."

+

+So my father had his way.  It was a pleasant, sunny little room,

+overlooking the gardens of the hospital.  I followed my father's

+suggestion, shut out the bed and washstand with a screen.  And

+sometimes of an evening it would amuse me to hear my father turn the

+handle of the door.

+

+"How are you getting on--all right?"

+

+"Famously."

+

+Often there came back to me the words he had once used.  "You must be

+the practical man, Paul, and get on.  Myself, I have always been

+somewhat of a dreamer.  I meant to do such great things in the world,

+and somehow I suppose I aimed too high.  I wasn't--practical."

+

+"But ought not one to aim high?" I had asked.

+

+My father had fidgeted in his chair.  "It is very difficult to say.

+It is all so--so very ununderstandable.  You aim high and you don't

+hit anything--at least, it seems as if you didn't.  Perhaps, after

+all, it is better to aim at something low, and--and hit it.  Yet it

+seems a pity--one's ideals, all the best part of one--I don't know why

+it is.    Perhaps we do not understand."

+

+For some months I had been writing over my own name.  One day a letter

+was forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed.

+It was a short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to

+the wedding of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper.  I had almost

+forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not

+unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly.  Also, I

+judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished me

+to be witness of the fact that my desertion had not left her

+disconsolate.  So much gratification I felt I owed her, and

+accordingly, purchasing a present as expensive as my means would

+permit, I made my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock coat

+and light grey trousers, to Kennington Church.

+

+The ceremony was already in progress.  Creeping on tiptoe up the

+aisle, I was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was laid

+upon my sleeve.

+

+"We're all here," whispered the O'Kelly; "just room for ye."

+

+Squeezing his hand as I passed, I sat down between the Signora and

+Mrs. Peedles.  Both ladies were weeping; the Signora silently, one

+tear at a time clinging fondly to her pretty face as though loath to

+fall from it; Mrs. Peedles copiously, with explosive gurgles, as of

+water from a bottle.

+

+"It is such a beautiful service," murmured the Signora, pressing my

+hand as I settled myself down.  "I should so--so love to be married."

+

+"Me darling," whispered the O'Kelly, seizing her other hand and

+kissing it covertly behind his open Prayer Book, "perhaps ye will

+be--one day."

+

+The Signora through her tears smiled at him, but with a sigh shook her

+head.

+

+Mrs. Peedles, clad, so far as the dim November light enabled me to

+judge, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth--nothing regal; the sort of

+thing one might assume to have been Her Majesty's second best, say

+third best, frock--explained that weddings always reminded her how

+fleeting a thing was love.

+

+"The poor dears!" she sobbed.  "But there, there's no telling.

+Perhaps they'll be happy.  I'm sure I hope they may be.  He looks

+harmless."

+

+Jarman, stretching out a hand to me from the other side of Mrs.

+Peedles, urged me to cheer up. "Don't wear your 'eart upon your

+sleeve," he advised.  "Try and smile."

+

+In the vestry I met old friends.  The maternal Sellars, stouter than

+ever, had been accommodated with a chair--at least, I assumed so, she

+being in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence.  She

+greeted me with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after

+my health with pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that,

+until the explanation broke upon me, somewhat puzzled me.

+

+Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much

+impressed, I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good

+fortune.  He expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me,

+shook me heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.

+

+"Won't be my fault if we're not," he added.  "Come and see us whenever

+you like."  He repeated this three times.  I gathered the general

+sentiment to be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of

+generosity.

+

+Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received

+my salute to a subdued murmur of applause.  She looked to my eyes

+handsomer than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing

+less exacting.  She also trusted she might always regard me as a

+friend.  I replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour;

+whereupon she kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother,

+shed some tears, explaining the reason to be that everybody was so

+good to her.

+

+Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of

+enormous white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register,

+whispering to me sympathetically:  "Better luck next time, old cock."

+

+The fat young lady--or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter, I

+cannot say for certain--who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I

+assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her

+opinion, I was worth all the others put together.

+

+"And so I told her," added the fat young lady--or the lean one grown

+stouter, "a dozen times if I told her once.  But there!"

+

+I murmured my obligations.

+

+Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of

+his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.

+

+"You take my tip," advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, "and keep

+out of it."

+

+"You speak from experience?" I suggested.

+

+"I'm as fond of a joke," said the watery-eyed Joseph, "as any man.

+But when it comes to buckets of water--"

+

+A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered

+for eleven o'clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph's

+revelations.

+

+"See you again, perhaps," he murmured, and pushed past me.

+

+What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold

+col-la-shon had been arranged for at a restaurant near by.  I walked

+there in company with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I

+particularly desired their companionship, but because Uncle Gutton,

+seizing me by the arm, left me no alternative.

+

+"Now then, young man," commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously

+so soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the

+others, "if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away.  I shan't mind,

+and maybe it'll do you good."

+

+I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.

+

+"Oh, all right," returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed.  "If

+you're willing to forgive and forget, so am I.  I never liked you, as

+I daresay you saw, and so I told Rosie.  'He may be cleverer than he

+looks,' I says, 'or be may be a bigger fool than I think him, though

+that's hardly likely.  You take my advice and get a full-grown

+article, then you'll know what you're doing.'

+

+I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.

+

+"I'm glad you think so," he returned, somewhat puzzled; "though if you

+wanted to call me names I shouldn't have blamed you.  Anyhow, you've

+took it like a sensible chap.  You've got over it, as I always told

+her you would.  Young men out of story-books don't die of broken

+hearts, even if for a month or two they do feel like standing on their

+head in the water-butt."

+

+"Why, I was in love myself three times," explained Uncle Gutton,

+"before I married the old woman."

+

+Aunt Gutton sighed and said she was afraid gentlemen didn't feel these

+things as much as they ought to.

+

+"They've got their living to earn," retorted Uncle Gutton.

+

+I agreed with Uncle Gutton that life could not be wasted in vain

+regret.

+

+"As for the rest," admitted Uncle Gutton, handsomely, "I was wrong.

+You've turned out better than I expected you would."

+

+I thanked him for his improved opinion, and as we entered the

+restaurant we shook hands.

+

+Minikin we found there waiting for us.  He explained that having been

+able to obtain only limited leave of absence from business, he had

+concluded the time would be better employed at the restaurant than at

+the church.  Others were there also with whom I was unacquainted,

+young sparks, admirers, I presume, of the Lady 'Ortensia in her

+professional capacity, fellow-clerks of Mr. Clapper, who was something

+in the City.  Altogether we must have numbered a score.

+

+Breakfast was laid in a large room on the first floor.  The wedding

+presents stood displayed upon a side-table.  My own, with my card

+attached, had not been seen by Mrs. Clapper till that moment.  She and

+her mother lingered, examining it.

+

+"Real silver!" I heard the maternal Sellars whisper, "Must have paid a

+ten pound note for it."

+

+"I hope you'll find it useful," I said.

+

+The maternal Sellars, drifting away, joined the others gathered

+together at the opposite end of the room.

+

+"I suppose you think I set my cap at you merely because you were a

+gentleman," said the Lady 'Ortensia.

+

+"Don't let's talk about it," I answered.  "We were both foolish."

+

+"I don't want you to think it was merely that," continued the Lady

+'Ortensia.  "I did like you.  And I wouldn't have disgraced you--at

+least, I'd have tried not to.  We women are quick to learn.  You never

+gave me time."

+

+"Believe me, things are much better as they are," I said.

+

+"I suppose so," she answered.  "I was a fool."  She glanced round; we

+still had the corner to ourselves.  "I told a rare pack of lies," she

+said; "I didn't seem able to help it; I was feeling sore all over.

+But I have always been ashamed of myself.  I'll tell them the truth,

+if you like."

+

+I thought I saw a way of making her mind easy.  "My dear girl," I

+said, "you have taken the blame upon yourself, and let me go

+scot-free.  It was generous of you."

+

+"You mean that?" she asked.

+

+"The truth," I answered, "would shift all the shame on to me.  It was

+I who broke my word, acted shabbily from beginning to end."

+

+"I hadn't looked at it in that light," she replied.  "Very well, I'll

+hold my tongue."

+

+My place at breakfast was to the left of the maternal Sellars, the

+Signora next to me, and the O'Kelly opposite.  Uncle Gutton faced the

+bride and bridegroom.  The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by

+flowers, so that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my

+ears, embellished with the mysterious significance of the unseen

+oracle.

+

+For the first quarter of an hour or so the meal proceeded almost in

+silence.  The maternal Sellars when not engaged in whispered argument

+with the perspiring waiter, was furtively occupied in working sums

+upon the table-cloth by aid of a blunt pencil.  The Signora, strangely

+unlike her usual self, was not in talkative mood.

+

+"It was so kind of them to invite me," said the Signora, speaking low.

+"But I feel I ought not to have come.

+

+"Why not?" I asked

+

+"I'm not fit to be here," murmured the Signora in a broken voice.

+"What right have I at wedding breakfasts?  Of course, for dear Willie

+it is different.  He has been married."

+

+The O'Kelly, who never when the Signora was present seemed to care

+much for conversation in which she was unable to participate, took

+advantage of his neighbour's being somewhat deaf to lapse into

+abstraction.  Jarman essayed a few witticisms of a general character,

+of which nobody took any notice.  The professional admirers of the

+Lady 'Ortensia, seated together at a corner of the table, appeared to

+be enjoying a small joke among themselves.  Occasionally, one or

+another of them would laugh nervously.  But for the most part the only

+sounds to be heard were the clatter of the knives and forks, the

+energetic shuffling of the waiter, and a curious hissing noise as of

+escaping gas, caused by Uncle Gutton drinking champagne.

+

+With the cutting, or, rather, the smashing into a hundred fragments,

+of the wedding cake--a work that taxed the united strength of bride

+and bridegroom to the utmost--the atmosphere lost something of its

+sombreness.  The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of

+being nearly done, commenced to simmer.  The maternal Sellars, putting

+away with her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced

+the table with a smile.

+

+"But it is a sad thing," sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment,

+with a shake of her huge head, "when your daughter marries, and goes

+away and leaves you."

+

+"Damned sight sadder," commented Uncle Gutton, "when she don't go off,

+but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her."

+

+I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the

+exclusive benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of

+the timbre that lends itself to secrecy.  One of the bridesmaids, a

+plain, elderly girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet.  I

+concluded her to be Miss Gutton.

+

+"It doesn't seem to me," said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the

+table, "that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used

+to be."

+

+"Got to know a bit about it, I expect," sounded the small, shrill

+voice of the unseen Joseph.

+

+"To my thinking," exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, "one of the

+evils crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the

+utterly needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings."  He

+spoke rapidly and with warmth.  "Take divorce.  At present, what is

+it?  The rich man's luxury."

+

+Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the

+occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.

+

+"The plain fact of the matter is," said Jarman, "girls have gone up in

+value.  Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with

+a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two.

+Nowadays--well, it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there

+as can afford a really first-class article."

+

+Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional

+brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have

+envied him:  the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into

+a laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.

+

+"Give and take," observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr.

+Clapper's roar had died away; "that's what you've got to do when

+you're married."

+

+"Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't

+want--that sums it up," came the bitter voice of the unseen.

+

+"Oh, do be quiet, Joe," advised the stout young lady, from which I

+concluded she had once been the lean young lady.  "You talk enough for

+a man."

+

+"Can't I open my mouth?" demanded the indignant oracle.

+

+"You look less foolish when you keep it shut," returned the stout

+young lady.

+

+"We'll show them how to get on," observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her

+bridegroom, with a smile.

+

+Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.

+

+"When me and the old girl there fixed things up," said Uncle Gutton,

+"we didn't talk no nonsense, and we didn't start with no

+misunderstandings.  'I'm not a duke,' I says--"

+

+"Had she been mistaking you for one?" enquired Minikin.

+

+Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh.  I

+feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton's little eyes should leave his

+head.

+

+"Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool," replied Uncle Gutton,

+glaring at the unabashed Minikin, "she did not.  'I'm not a duke,' I

+says, and _she_ had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic

+like.  'I'm not offering you a life of luxury and ease.  I'm offering

+you myself, just what you see, and nothing more.'

+

+"She took it?" asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his

+bread.

+

+"She accepted me, sir," returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would

+have awed any one but Minikin.  "Can you give me any good reason for

+her not doing so?"

+

+"No need to get mad with me," explained Minikin.  "I'm not blaming the

+poor woman.  We all have our moments of despair."

+

+The unfortunate Clapper again exploded.  Uncle Gutton rose to his

+feet.  The ready Jarman saved the situation.

+

+"'Ear! 'ear!" cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two

+knives.  "Silence for Uncle Gutton!  'E's going to propose a toast.

+'Ear, 'ear!"

+

+Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into

+applause.

+

+"What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say--" began Uncle Gutton.

+

+"Good old Uncle Gutton!" persisted the determined Jarman.  "Bride and

+bridegroom--long life to 'em!"

+

+Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against

+Minikin to evaporate.

+

+"Well," said Uncle Gutton, "if you think I'm the one to do it--"

+

+The response was unmistakable.  In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses

+and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed

+her chignon.  Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his

+task.  Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not

+interposed to assign to him the duty.

+

+Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he

+suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce

+censure of the Adulteration Act.  Reminded of the time by the maternal

+Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with

+such questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly

+interested, and directed himself to the main argument.  To his, Uncle

+Gutton's, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity,

+Mr. Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness.  Uncle Gutton it

+was who had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair

+Rosina would come eventually to desire--a plain, simple, hard-working,

+level-headed sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him:  such

+an one, in short, as Mr. Clapper himself--(at this Mr. Clapper

+expressed approval by a lengthy laugh)--a gentleman who, so far as

+Uncle Gutton's knowledge went, had but one fault:  a silly habit of

+laughing when there was nothing whatever to laugh at; of which, it was

+to be hoped, the cares and responsibilities of married life would cure

+him.  (To the rest of the discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a

+gravity painfully maintained.)  There had been moments, Uncle Gutton

+was compelled to admit, when the fair Rosina had shown inclination to

+make a fool of herself--to desire in place of honest worth mere

+painted baubles.  He used the term in no offensive sense.  Speaking

+for himself, what a man wanted beyond his weekly newspaper, he, Uncle

+Gutton, was unable to understand; but if there were fools in the world

+who wanted to read rubbish written by other fools, then the other

+fools would of course write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them.  He

+mentioned no names, but what he would say was:  a plain man for a

+sensible girl, and no painted baubles.

+

+The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect

+that if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it

+was about full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring

+his speech to a premature conclusion.  The bride and bridegroom were

+hustled into their clothes.  There followed much female embracing and

+male hand-shaking.  The rice having been forgotten, the waiter was

+almost thrown downstairs, with directions to at once procure some.

+There appearing danger of his not returning in time, the resourceful

+Jarman suggested cold semolina pudding as a substitute.  But the idea

+was discouraged by the bride.  A slipper of remarkable antiquity,

+discovered on the floor and regarded as a gift from Providence, was

+flung from the window by brother George, with admirable aim, and

+alighted on the roof of the cab.  The waiter, on his return, not being

+able to find it, seemed surprised.

+

+

+

+I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora,

+who were then living together in Lambeth.  Till that morning I had not

+seen the O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years

+before, so that we had much to tell each other.  For the third time

+now had the O'Kelly proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of

+the lady to whom he still referred as his "dear good wife."

+

+"But, under the circumstances, would it not be better," I suggested,

+"for her to obtain a divorce?  Then you and the Signora could marry

+and there would be an end to the whole trouble."

+

+"From a strictly worldly point of view," replied the O'Kelly, "it

+certainly would be; but Mrs. O'Kelly"--his voice took to itself

+unconsciously a tone of reverence--is not an ordinary woman.  You can

+have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness.  I had a letter

+from her only two months ago, a few weeks after the--the last

+occurrence.  Not one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed

+against her even unto seven times seven she would still consider it

+her duty to forgive me; that the 'home' would always be there for me

+to return to and repent."

+

+A tear stood in the O'Kelly's eye.  "A beautiful nature," he

+commented.  "There are not many women like her."

+

+"Not one in a million!" added the Signora, with enthusiasm.

+

+"Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy," I said.

+

+The O'Kelly spoke quite angrily.  "Don't ye say a word against her!  I

+won't listen to it.  Ye don't understand her.  She never will despair

+of reforming me."

+

+"You see, Mr. Kelver," explained the Signora, "the whole difficulty

+arises from my unfortunate profession.  It is impossible for me to

+keep out of dear Willie's way.  If I could earn my living by any other

+means, I would; but I can't.  And when he sees my name upon the

+posters, it's all over with him."

+

+"I do wish, Willie, dear," added the Signora in tones of gentle

+reproof, "that you were not quite so weak."

+

+"Me dear," replied the O'Kelly, "ye don't know how attractive ye are

+or ye wouldn't blame me."

+

+I laughed.  "Why don't you be firm," I suggested to the Signora, "send

+him packing about his business?"

+

+"I ought to," admitted the Signora.  "I always mean to, until I see

+him.  Then I don't seem able to say anything--not anything I ought

+to."

+

+"Ye do say it," contradicted the O'Kelly.  "Ye're an angel, only I

+won't listen to ye."

+

+"I don't say it as if I meant it," persisted the Signora.  "It's

+evident I don't."

+

+"I still think it a pity," I said, "someone does not explain to Mrs.

+O'Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness."

+

+"It is difficult to decide," argued the Signora.  "If ever you should

+want to leave me--"

+

+"Me darling!" exclaimed the O'Kelly.

+

+"But you may," insisted the Signora.  "Something may happen to help

+you, to show you how wicked it all is.  I shall be glad then to think

+that you will go back to her.  Because she is a good woman, Willie,

+you know she is."

+

+"She's a saint," agreed Willie.

+

+At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way

+towards Fleet Street.

+

+The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan.  He occupied

+chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the

+'Ortensia marriage, I called upon him.  Nothing in his manner of

+greeting me suggested the necessity of explanation.  Dan never

+demanded anything of his friends beyond their need of him.  Shaking

+hands with me, he pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing

+with his back to the fire, filled and lighted his pipe.

+

+"I left you alone," he said.  "You had to go through it, your slough

+of despond.  It lies across every path--that leads to anywhere.  Clear

+of it?"

+

+"I think so," I replied, smiling.

+

+"You are on the high road," he continued.  "You have only to walk

+steadily.  Sure you have left nothing behind you--in the slough?"

+

+"Nothing worth bringing out of it," I said.  "Why do you ask so

+seriously?"

+

+He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.

+

+"Don't leave him behind you," he said; "the little boy Paul--Paul the

+dreamer."

+

+I laughed.  "Oh, he!  He was only in my way."

+

+"Yes, here," answered Dan.  "This is not his world.  He is of no use

+to you here; won't help you to bread and cheese--no, nor kisses

+either.  But keep him near you.  Later, you will find, perhaps, that

+all along he has been the real Paul--the living, growing Paul; the

+other--the active, worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams

+are made of, his fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep."

+

+"I have been driving him away," I said.  "He is so--so impracticable."

+

+Dan shook his head gravely.  "It is not his world," he repeated.  "We

+must eat, drink--be husbands, fathers.  He does not understand.  Here

+he is the child.  Take care of him."

+

+We sat in silence for a little while--for longer, perhaps, than it

+seemed to us--Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied

+with his own thoughts.

+

+"You have an excellent agent," said Dan; "retain her services as long

+as you can.  She possesses the great advantage of having no

+conscience, as regards your affairs.  Women never have where they--"

+

+He broke off to stir the fire.

+

+"You like her?" I asked.  The words sounded feeble.  It is only the

+writer who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often

+selects by contrast.

+

+"She is my ideal woman," returned Dan; "true and strong and tender;

+clear as crystal, pure as dawn.  Like her!"

+

+He knocked the ashes from his pipe.  "We do not marry our ideals," he

+went on.  "We love with our hearts, not with our souls.  The woman I

+shall marry"--he sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face--"she

+will be some sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield's

+Dora.  Only I am not Doady, who always seems to me to have been

+somewhat of a--  He reminds me of you, Paul, a little.  Dickens was

+right; her helplessness, as time went on, would have bored him more

+and more instead of appealing to him."

+

+"And the women," I suggested, "do they marry their ideals?"

+

+He laughed.  "Ask them."

+

+"The difference between men and women," he continued, "is very slight;

+we exaggerate it for purposes of art.  What sort of man do you suppose

+he is, Norah's ideal?  Can't you imagine him?--But I can tell you the

+type of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart."

+

+He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in

+his eye.

+

+"A nice enough fellow--clever, perhaps, but someone--well, someone who

+will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will

+appeal to the mother side of her--not her ideal man, but the man for

+whom nature intended her."

+

+"Perhaps with her help," I said, "he may in time become her ideal."

+

+"There's a long road before him," growled Dan.

+

+It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopment

+with Hal.  I had seen neither of them since my return to London.  Old

+Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance,

+and he had insisted on my lunching with him.  I had found him greatly

+changed.  His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a

+fretful eagerness had become his motive force.  At first he had talked

+boastingly:  Had I seen the _Post_ for last Monday, the _Court

+Circular_ for the week before?  Had I read that Barbara had danced

+with the Crown Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been

+entertaining a Grand Duke?  What [duplicated line of text] I think of

+that! and such like.  Was not money master of the world?  Ay, and the

+nobs should be made to acknowledge it!

+

+But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.

+

+"No children," he had whispered to me across the table; "that's what I

+can't understand.  Nearly four years and no children!  What'll be the

+good of it all?  Where do I come in?  What do I get?  Damn these

+rotten popinjays!  What do they think we buy them for?"

+

+It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me.  It was

+the talk of the town for the next day--and the following eight.  She

+had heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to

+come and see her.

+

+"I thought you would rather hear it quietly," said Norah, "than learn

+it from a newspaper paragraph.  Besides, I wanted to tell you this.

+She did wrong when she married, putting aside love for position.  Now

+she has done right.  She has put aside her shame with all the

+advantages she derived from it.  She has proved herself a woman:  I

+respect her."

+

+Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought

+it.  I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort.  My

+goddess had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself.

+From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world.

+So some youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the

+Great Queen was but a woman.

+

+I never spoke with her again but once.  That was an evening three

+years later in Brussels.  Strolling idly after dinner the bright

+lights of a theatre invited me to enter.  It was somewhat late; the

+second act had commenced.  I slipped quietly into my seat, the only

+one vacant at the extreme end of the front row of the first range;

+then, looking down upon the stage, met her eyes.  A little later an

+attendant whispered to me that Madame G-- would like to see me; so at

+the fall of the curtain I went round.  Two men were in the

+dressing-room smoking, and on the table were some bottles of

+champagne.  She was standing before her glass, a loose shawl about her

+shoulders.

+

+"Excuse my shaking hands," she said.  "This damned hole is like a

+furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act."

+

+She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared

+with grease.

+

+"D'you know my husband?" she continued.  "Baron G--; Mr. Paul Kelver."

+

+The Baron rose.  He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man.

+"Delighted to meet Mr. Kelver," he said, speaking in excellent

+English.  "Any friend of my wife's is always a friend of mine."

+

+He held out his fat, perspiring hand.  I was not in the mood to attach

+much importance to ceremony.  I bowed and turned away, careless

+whether he was offended or not.

+

+"I am glad I saw you," she continued.  "Do you remember a girl called

+Barbara?  You and she were rather chums, years ago.

+

+"Yes," I answered, "I remember her."

+

+"Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago."  She was rubbing paint

+into her cheeks as she spoke.  "She asked me if ever I saw you to give

+you this.  I have been carrying it about with me ever since."

+

+She took a ring from her finger.  It was the one ring Barbara had worn

+as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold.  I had noticed

+it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's

+office framed by the dusty books and papers.  She dropped it into my

+outstretched palm.

+

+"Quite a pretty little romance," laughed the Baron.

+

+"That's all," added the woman at the glass.  "She said you would

+understand."

+

+From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me.  I hope

+never to see again that look upon a woman's face.

+

+"Thank you," I said.  "Yes, I understand.  It was very kind of you.  I

+shall always wear it."

+

+Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X.

+

+PAUL FINDS HIS WAY.

+

+Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying

+strict attention to business.  Often my other self, little Paul of the

+sad eyes, would seek to lure me from my work.  But for my vehement

+determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my

+honesty, my desire--growing day by day, till it became almost a

+physical hunger--to feel again the pressure of Norah's strong white

+hand in mine, he might possibly have succeeded.  Heaven only knows

+what then he might have made of me:  politician, minor poet, more or

+less able editor, hampered by convictions--something most surely of

+but little service to myself.  Now and again, with a week to spare--my

+humour making holiday, nothing to be done but await patiently its

+return--I would write stories for my own pleasure.  They made no mark;

+but success in purposeful work is of slower growth.  Had I

+persisted--but there was money to be earned.  And by the time my debts

+were paid, I had established a reputation.

+

+"Madness!" argued practical friends.  "You would be throwing away a

+certain fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence.  The one you

+know you can do, the other--it would be beginning your career all over

+again."

+

+"You would find it almost impossible now," explained those who spoke,

+I knew, words of wisdom, of experience.  "The world would never listen

+to you.  Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic

+actor insist upon playing Hamlet.  It might be the best Hamlet ever

+seen upon the stage; the audience would only laugh--or stop away."

+

+Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, "Goggles" and I, seeking some

+quiet corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other.  He

+would lay before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo--an

+excellent conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to

+interest me.  Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo.  But

+I listened with every sign of encouragement.  It was the price I paid

+him for, in turn, listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how

+monumental literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and

+built up.

+

+"Perhaps in a future existence," laughed Goggles, one evening, rising

+as the clock struck seven, "I shall be a great tragedian, and you a

+famous poet.  Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we

+are both sinning our mercies.  After all, to live is the most

+important thing in life."

+

+I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him

+to get into his coat.

+

+"Take my advice"--tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy

+eyes upon me.  Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should

+have laughed, his expression was so comical.  "Marry some dear little

+woman (he was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own

+weight); "one never understands life properly till the babies come to

+explain it to one."

+

+I returned to my easy-chair before the fire.  Wife, children, home!

+After all, was not that the true work of man--of the live man, not the

+dreamer?  I saw them round me, giving to my life dignity,

+responsibility.  The fair, sweet woman, helper, comrade, comforter,

+the little faces fashioned in our image, their questioning voices

+teaching us the answers to life's riddles.  All other hopes,

+ambitions, dreams, what were they?  Phantoms of the morning mist

+fading in the sunlight.

+

+Hodgson came to me one evening.  "I want you to write me a comic

+opera," he said.  He had an open letter in his hand which he was

+reading.  "The public seem to be getting tired of these eternal

+translations from the French.  I want something English, something new

+and original."

+

+"The English is easy enough," I replied; "but I shouldn't clamour for

+anything new and original if I were you."

+

+"Why not?" he asked, looking up from his letter.

+

+"You might get it," I answered.  "Then you would be disappointed."

+

+He laughed.  "Well, you know what I mean--something we could refer to

+as 'new and original' on the programme.  What do you say?  It will be

+a big chance for you, and I'm willing to risk it.  I'm sure you can do

+it.  People are beginning to talk about you."

+

+I had written a few farces, comediettas, and they had been successful.

+But the chief piece of the evening is a serious responsibility.  A

+young man may be excused for hesitating.  It can make, but also it can

+mar him.  A comic opera above all other forms of art--if I may be

+forgiven for using the sacred word in connection with such a

+subject--demands experience.

+

+I explained my fears.  I did not explain that in my desk lay a

+four-act drama throbbing with humanity, with life, with which it had

+been my hope--growing each day fainter--to take the theatrical public

+by storm, to establish myself as a serious playwright.

+

+"It's very simple," urged Hodgson.  "Provide Atherton plenty of comic

+business; you ought to be able to do that all right.  Give Gleeson

+something pretty in waltz time, and Duncan a part in which she can

+change her frock every quarter of an hour or so, and the thing is

+done."

+

+"I'll tell you what," continued Hodgson, "I'll take the whole crowd

+down to Richmond on Sunday.  We'll have a coach, and leave the theatre

+at half-past ten.  It will be an opportunity for you to study them.

+You'll be able to have a talk with them and get to know just what they

+can do.  Atherton has ideas in his head; he'll explain them to you.

+Then, next week, we'll draw up a contract and set to work."

+

+It was too good an opportunity to let slip, though I knew that if

+successful I should find myself pinned down firmer than ever to my

+role of jester.  But it is remunerative, the writing of comic opera.

+

+A small crowd had gathered in the Strand to see us start.

+

+"Nothing wrong, is there?" enquired the leading lady, in a tone of

+some anxiety, alighting a quarter of an hour late from her cab.  "It

+isn't a fire, is it?"

+

+"Merely assembled to see you," explained Mr. Hodgson, without raising

+his eyes from his letters.

+

+"Oh, good gracious!" cried the leading lady, "do let us get away

+quickly."

+

+"Box seat, my dear," returned Mr. Hodgson.

+

+The leading lady, accepting the proffered assistance of myself and

+three other gentlemen, mounted the ladder with charming hesitation.

+Some delay in getting off was caused by our low comedian, who twice,

+making believe to miss his footing, slid down again into the arms of

+the stolid door-keeper.  The crowd, composed for the most part of

+small boys approving the endeavour to amuse them, laughed and

+applauded.  Our low comedian thus encouraged, made a third attempt

+upon his hands and knees, and, gaining the roof, sat down upon the

+tenor, who smiled somewhat mechanically.

+

+The first dozen or so 'busses we passed our low comedian greeted by

+rising to his feet and bowing profoundly.  afterwards falling back

+upon either the tenor or myself.  Except by the tenor and myself his

+performance appeared to be much appreciated.  Charing Cross passed,

+and nobody seeming to be interested in our progress, to the relief of

+the tenor and myself, he settled down.

+

+"People sometimes ask me," said the low comedian, brushing the dust

+off his knees, "why I do this sort of thing off the stage.  It amuses

+me."

+

+"I was coming up to London the other day from Birmingham," he

+continued.  "At Willesden, when the ticket collector opened the door,

+I sprang out of the carriage and ran off down the platform.  Of

+course, he ran after me, shouting to all the others to stop me.  I

+dodged them for about a minute.  You wouldn't believe the excitement

+there was.  Quite fifty people left their seats to see what it was all

+about.  I explained to them when they caught me that I had been

+travelling second with a first-class ticket, which was the fact.

+People think I do it to attract attention.  I do it for my own

+pleasure."

+

+"It must be a troublesome way of amusing oneself," I suggested.

+

+"Exactly what my wife says," he replied; "she can never understand the

+desire that comes over us all, I suppose, at times, to play the fool.

+As a rule, when she is with me I don't do it."

+

+"She's not here today?" I asked, glancing round.

+

+"She suffers so from headaches," he answered, "she hardly ever goes

+anywhere."

+

+"I'm sorry."  I spoke not out of mere politeness; I really did feel

+sorry.

+

+During the drive to Richmond this irrepressible desire to amuse

+himself got the better of him more than once or twice.  Through

+Kensington he attracted a certain amount of attention by balancing the

+horn upon his nose.  At Kew he stopped the coach to request of a young

+ladies' boarding school change for sixpence.  At the foot of Richmond

+Hill he caused a crowd to assemble while trying to persuade a deaf old

+gentleman in a Bath-chair to allow his man to race us up the hill for

+a shilling.

+

+At these antics and such like our party laughed uproariously, with the

+exception of Hodgson, who had his correspondence to attend to, and an

+elegant young lady of some social standing who had lately emerged from

+the Divorce Court with a reputation worth to her in cash a hundred

+pounds a week.

+

+Arriving at the hotel quarter of an hour or so before lunch time, we

+strolled into the garden.  Our low comedian, observing an elderly

+gentleman of dignified appearance sipping a glass of Vermouth at a

+small table, stood for a moment rooted to the earth with astonishment,

+then, making a bee-line for the stranger, seized and shook him warmly

+by the hand.  We exchanged admiring glances with one another.

+

+"Charlie is in good form to-day," we told one another, and followed at

+his heels.

+

+The elderly gentleman had risen; he looked puzzled.  "And how's Aunt

+Martha?" asked him our low comedian.  "Dear old Aunt Martha!  Well, I

+am glad!  You do look bonny!  How is she?"

+

+"I'm afraid--" commenced the elderly gentleman.  Our low comedian

+started back.  Other visitors had gathered round.

+

+"Don't tell me anything has happened to her!  Not dead?  Don't tell me

+that!"

+

+He seized the bewildered gentleman by the shoulders and presented to

+him a face distorted by terror.

+

+"I really have not the faintest notion what you are talking about,"

+returned the gentleman, who seemed annoyed.  "I don't know you."

+

+"Not know me?  Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten--?  Isn't your

+name Steggles?"

+

+"No, it isn't," returned the stranger, somewhat shortly.

+

+"My mistake," replied our low comedian.  He tossed off at one gulp

+what remained of the stranger's Vermouth and walked away rapidly.

+

+The elderly gentleman, not seeing the humour of the joke, one of our

+party to soothe him explained to him that it was Atherton, _the_

+Atherton--Charlie Atherton.

+

+"Oh, is it," growled the elderly gentleman.  "Then will you tell him

+from me that when I want his damned tomfoolery I'll come to the

+theatre and pay for it."

+

+"What a disagreeable man," we said, as, following our low comedian, we

+made our way into the hotel.

+

+During lunch he continued in excellent spirits; kissed the bald back

+of the waiter's head, pretending to mistake it for a face, called for

+hot mustard and water, made believe to steal the silver, and when the

+finger-bowls arrived, took off his coat and requested the ladies to

+look the other way.

+

+After lunch he became suddenly serious, and slipping his arm through

+mine, led me by unfrequented paths.

+

+"Now, about this new opera," he said; "we don't want any of the old

+stale business.  Give us something new."

+

+I suggested that to do so might be difficult.

+

+"Not at all," he answered.  "Now, my idea is this.  I am a young

+fellow, and I'm in love with a girl."

+

+I promised to make a note of it.

+

+"Her father, apopletic old idiot--make him comic:  'Damme, sir!  By

+gad!' all that sort of thing."

+

+By persuading him that I understood what he meant, I rose in his

+estimation.

+

+"He won't have anything to say to me--thinks I'm an ass.  I'm a simple

+sort of fellow--on the outside.  But I'm not such a fool as I look."

+

+"You don't think we are getting too much out of the groove?" I

+enquired.

+

+His opinion was that the more so the better.

+

+"Very well.  Then, in the second act I disguise myself.  I'll come on

+as an organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a

+policeman, or a young swell about town.  Give me plenty of

+opportunity, that's the great thing--opportunity to be really funny, I

+mean.  We don't want any of the old stale tricks."

+

+I promised him my support.

+

+"Put a little pathos in it," he added, "give me a scene where I can

+show them I've something else in me besides merely humour.  We don't

+want to make them howl, but just to feel a little.  Let's send them

+out of the theatre saying:  'Well, Charlie's often made me laugh, but

+I'm damned if I knew he could make me cry before!'  See what I mean?"

+

+I told him I thought I did.

+

+The leading lady, meeting us on our return, requested, with pretty

+tone of authority, everybody else to go away and leave us.  There were

+cries of 'Naughty!"  The leading lady, laughing girlishly, took me by

+the hand and ran away with me.

+

+"I want to talk to you," said the leading lady, as soon as we had

+reached a secluded seat overlooking the river, "about my part in the

+new opera.  Now, can't you give me something original?  Do."

+

+Her pleading was so pretty, there was nothing for it but to pledge

+compliance.

+

+"I am so tired of being the simple village maiden," said the leading

+lady; "what I want is a part with some opportunity in it--a coquettish

+part.  I can flirt," assured me the leading lady, archly.  "Try me."

+

+I satisfied her of my perfect faith.

+

+"You might," said the leading lady, "see your way to making the plot

+depend upon me.  It always seems to me that the woman's part is never

+made enough of in comic opera.  I am sure a comic opera built round a

+woman would be a really great success.  Don't you agree with me, Mr.

+Kelver," pouted the leading lady, laying her pretty hand on mine.  "We

+are much more interesting than the men--now, aren't we?"

+

+Personally, as I told her, I agreed with her.

+

+The tenor, sipping tea with me on the balcony, beckoned me aside.

+

+"About this new opera," said the tenor; "doesn't it seem to you the

+time has come to make more of the story--that the public might prefer

+a little more human interest and a little less clowning?"

+

+I admitted that a good plot was essential.

+

+"It seems to me," said the tenor, "that if you could write an opera

+round an interesting love story, you would score a success.  Of

+course, let there be plenty of humour, but reduce it to its proper

+place.  As a support, it is excellent; when it is made the entire

+structure, it is apt to be tiresome--at least, that is my view."

+

+I replied with sincerity that there seemed to me much truth in what he

+said.

+

+"Of course, so far as I am personally concerned," went on the tenor,

+"it is immaterial.  I draw the same salary whether I'm on the stage

+five minutes or an hour.  But when you have a man of my position in

+the cast, and give him next to nothing to do--well, the public are

+disappointed."

+

+"Most naturally," I commented.

+

+"The lover," whispered the tenor, noticing the careless approach

+towards us of the low comedian, "that's the character they are

+thinking about all the time--men and women both.  It's human nature.

+Make your lover interesting--that's the secret."

+

+Waiting for the horses to be put to, I became aware of the fact that I

+was standing some distance from the others in company with a tall,

+thin, somewhat oldish-looking man.  He spoke in low, hurried tones,

+fearful evidently of being overheard and interrupted.

+

+"You'll forgive me, Mr. Kelver," he said--"Trevor, Marmaduke Trevor.

+I play the Duke of Bayswater in the second act."

+

+I was unable to recall him for the moment; there were quite a number

+of small parts in the second act.  But glancing into his sensitive

+face, I shrank from wounding him.

+

+"A capital performance," I lied.  "It has always amused me.

+

+He flushed with pleasure.  "I made a great success some years ago," he

+said, "in America with a soda-water syphon, and it occurred to me that

+if you could, Mr. Kelver, in a natural sort of way, drop in a small

+part leading up to a little business with a soda-water syphon, it

+might help the piece."

+

+I wrote him his soda-water scene, I am glad to remember, and insisted

+upon it, in spite of a good deal of opposition.  Some of the critics

+found fault with the incident, as lacking in originality.  But

+Marmaduke Trevor was quite right, it did help a little.

+

+Our return journey was an exaggerated repetition of our morning drive.

+Our low comedian produced hideous noises from the horn, and entered

+into contests of running wit with 'bus drivers--a decided mistake from

+his point of view, the score generally remaining with the 'bus driver.

+At Hammersmith, seizing the opportunity of a block in the traffic, he

+assumed the role of Cheap Jack, and, standing up on the back seat,

+offered all our hats for sale at temptingly low prices.

+

+"Got any ideas out of them?" asked Hodgson, when the time came for us

+to say good-night.

+

+"I'm thinking, if you don't mind," I answered, "of going down into the

+country and writing the piece quietly, away from everybody."

+

+"Perhaps you are right," agreed Hodgson.  "Too many cooks--  Be sure

+and have it ready for the autumn."

+

+I wrote it with some pleasure to myself amid the Yorkshire Wolds, and

+was able to read it to the whole company assembled before the close of

+the season.  My turning of the last page was followed by a dead

+silence.  The leading lady was the first to speak.  She asked if the

+clock upon the mantelpiece could be relied upon; because, if so, by

+leaving at once, she could just catch her train.  Hodgson, consulting

+his watch, thought, if anything, it was a little fast. The leading

+lady said she hoped it was, and went.  The only comforting words were

+spoken by the tenor.  He recalled to our mind a successful comic opera

+produced some years before at the Philharmonic.  He distinctly

+remembered that up to five minutes before the raising of the curtain

+everybody had regarded it as rubbish.  He also had a train to catch.

+Marmaduke Trevor, with a covert shake of the hand, urged me not to

+despair.  The low comedian, the last to go, told Hodgson he thought he

+might be able to do something with parts of it, if given a free hand.

+Hodgson and I left alone, looked at each other.

+

+"It's no good," said Hodgson, "from a box-office point of view.  Very

+clever."

+

+"How do you know it is no good from a box-office point of view?" I

+ventured to enquire.

+

+"I never made a mistake in my life," replied Hodgson.

+

+"You have produced one or two failures," I reminded him.

+

+"And shall again," he laughed.  "The right thing isn't easy to get."

+

+"Cheer up," he added kindly, "this is only your first attempt.  We

+must try and knock it into shape at rehearsal."

+

+Their notion of "knocking it into shape" was knocking it to pieces.

+

+"I'll tell you what we'll do," would say the low comedian; "we'll cut

+that scene out altogether."  Joyously he would draw his pencil through

+some four or five pages of my manuscript.

+

+"But it is essential to the story," I would argue.

+

+"Not at all."

+

+"But it is.  It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and

+falls in love with the gipsy."

+

+"My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that.  I meet Roderick at

+the ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?'  'Oh, I have escaped from

+prison.'  'Good business.  And how's Miriam?'  'Well and happy--she is

+going to be my wife!'  What more do you want?"

+

+"I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson," would observe the leading lady,

+"and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter,

+I fell in love with John--"

+

+"But John is in love with Arabella."

+

+"Oh, we've cut out Arabella.  I can sing all her songs.

+

+The tenor would lead me into a corner.  "I want you to write in a

+little scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first

+act.  I'll talk to her about it.  I think it will be rather pretty.  I

+want her--the second time I see her--to have come out of her room on

+to a balcony, and to be standing there bathed in moonlight."

+

+"But the first act takes place in the early morning."

+

+"I've thought of that.  We must alter it to the evening."

+

+"But the opera opens with a hunting scene.  People don't go hunting by

+moonlight."

+

+"It will be a novelty.  That's what's wanted for comic opera.  The

+ordinary hunting scene!  My dear boy, it has been done to death."

+

+I stood this sort of thing for a week.  "They are people of

+experience," I argued to myself; "they must know more about it than I

+do."  By the end of the week I had arrived at the conclusion that

+anyhow they didn't.  Added to which I lost my temper.  It is a thing I

+should advise any lady or gentleman thinking of entering the ranks or

+dramatic authorship to lose as soon as possible.  I took both

+manuscripts with me, and, entering Mr. Hodgson's private room, closed

+the door behind me.  One parcel was the opera as I had originally

+written it, a neat, intelligible manuscript, whatever its other

+merits.  The second, scored, interlined, altered, cut, interleaved,

+rewritten, reversed, turned inside out and topsy-turvy--one long,

+hopeless confusion from beginning to end--was the opera, as, everybody

+helping, we had "knocked it into shape."

+

+"That's your opera," I said, pushing across to him the bulkier bundle.

+"If you can understand it, if you can make head or tail of it, if you

+care to produce it, it is yours, and you are welcome to it.  This is

+mine!"  I laid it on the table beside the other.  "It may be good, it

+may be bad.  If it is played at all it is played as it is written.

+Regard the contract as cancelled, and make up your mind."

+

+He argued with force, and he argued with eloquence.  He appealed to my

+self-interest, he appealed to my better nature.  It occupied him forty

+minutes by the clock.  Then he called me an obstinate young fool,

+flung the opera as "knocked into shape" into the waste-paper

+basket--which was the only proper place for it, and, striding into the

+middle of the company, gave curt directions that the damned opera was

+to be played as it was written, and be damned to it!

+

+The company shrugged its shoulders, and for the next month kept them

+shrugged.  For awhile Hodgson remained away from the rehearsals, then

+returning, developed by degrees a melancholy interest in the somewhat

+gloomy proceedings.

+

+So far I had won, but my difficulty was to maintain the position.  The

+low comedian, reciting his lines with meaningless monotony, would

+pause occasionally to ask of me politely, whether this or that passage

+was intended to be serious or funny.

+

+"You think," the leading lady would enquire, more in sorrow than in

+anger, "that any girl would behave in this way--any real girl, I

+mean?"

+

+"Perhaps the audience will understand it," would console himself

+hopefully the tenor.  "Myself, I confess I don't."

+

+With a sinking heart concealed beneath an aggressively disagreeable

+manner, I remained firm in my "pigheaded conceit," as it was regarded,

+Hodgson generously supporting me against his own judgment.

+

+"It's bound to be a failure," he told me.  "I am spending some twelve

+to fifteen hundred pounds to teach you a lesson.  When you have learnt

+it we'll square accounts by your writing me an opera that will pay."

+

+"And if it does succeed?" I suggested.

+

+"My dear boy," replied Hodgson, "I never make mistakes."

+

+From all which a dramatic author of more experience would have

+gathered cheerfulness and hope, knowing that the time to be depressed

+is when the manager and company unanimously and unhesitatingly predict

+a six months' run.  But new to the business, I regarded my literary

+career as already at an end.  Belief in oneself is merely the match

+with which one lights oneself.  The oil is supplied by the belief in

+one of others; if that be not forthcoming, one goes out.  Later on I

+might try to light myself again, but for the present I felt myself

+dark and dismal.  My desire was to get away from my own smoke and

+smell.  The final dress rehearsal over, I took my leave of all

+concerned.  The next morning I would pack a knapsack and start upon a

+walking tour through Holland.  The English papers would not reach me.

+No human being should know my address.  In a month or so I would

+return, the piece would have disappeared--would be forgotten.  With

+courage, I might be able to forget it myself.

+

+"I shall run it for three weeks," said Hodgson, "then we'll withdraw

+it quietly, 'owing to previous arrangements'; or Duncan can suddenly

+fall ill--she's done it often enough to suit herself; she can do it

+this once to suit me.  Don't be upset.  There's nothing to be ashamed

+of in the piece; indeed, there is a good deal that will be praised.

+The idea is distinctly original.  As a matter of fact, that's the

+fault with it," added Hodgson, "it's too original."

+

+"You said you wanted it original," I reminded him.

+

+He laughed.  "Yes, but original for the stage, I meant--the old dolls

+in new frocks."

+

+I thanked him for all his kindness, and went home and packed my

+knapsack.

+

+For two months I wandered, avoiding beaten tracks, my only comrades a

+few books, belonging to no age, no country.  My worries fell from me,

+the personal affairs of Paul Kelver ceasing to appear the be all and

+the end all of the universe.  But for a chance meeting with

+Wellbourne, Deleglise's amateur caretaker of Gower Street fame, I

+should have delayed yet longer my return.  It was in one of the dead

+cities of the Zuyder Zee.  I was sitting under the lindens on the

+grass-grown quay, awaiting a slow, crawling boat that, four miles off,

+I watched a moving speck across the level pastures.  I heard his

+footsteps in the empty market-place behind me, and turned my head.  I

+did not rise, felt even no astonishment; anything might come to pass

+in that still land of dreams.  He seated himself beside me with a nod,

+and for awhile we smoked in silence.

+

+"All well with you?" I asked.

+

+"I am afraid not," he answered; "the poor fellow is in great trouble."

+

+"I'm not Wellbourne himself," he went on, in answer to my look; "I am

+only his spirit.  Have you ever tested that belief the Hindoos hold:

+that a man may leave his body, wander at will for a certain period,

+remembering only to return ere the thread connecting him with flesh

+and blood be stretched to breaking point?  It is quite correct.  I

+often lock the door of my lodging, leave myself behind, wander a free

+Spirit."

+

+He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coins and looked at them.

+"The thread that connects us, I am sorrow to say, is wearing somewhat

+thin," he sighed; "I shall have to be getting back to him before

+long--concern myself again with his troubles, follies.  It is somewhat

+vexing.  Life is really beautiful, when one is dead."

+

+"What was the trouble?" I enquired.

+

+"Haven't you heard?" he replied.  "Tom died five weeks ago, quite

+suddenly, of syncope.  We had none of us any idea."

+

+So Norah was alone in the world.  I rose to my feet.  The slowly

+moving speck had grown into a thin, dark streak; minute by minute it

+took shape and form.

+

+"By the way, I have to congratulate you," said Wellbourne.  "Your

+opera looked like being a big thing when I left London.  You didn't

+sell outright, I hope?"

+

+"No," I answered.  "Hodgson never expressed any desire to buy."

+

+"Lucky for you," said Wellbourne.

+

+I reached London the next evening.  Passing the theatre on my way to

+Queen's Square, it occurred to me to stop my cab for a few minutes and

+look in.

+

+I met the low comedian on his way to his dressing-room.  He shook me

+warmly by the hand.

+

+"Well," he said, "we're pulling them in.  I was right, you see, Give

+me plenty of opportunity.'  That's what I told you, didn't I?  Come

+and see the piece.  I think you will agree with me that I have done

+you justice."

+

+I thanked him.

+

+"Not at all," he returned; "it's a pleasure to work, when you've got

+something good to work on."

+

+I paid my respects to the leading lady.

+

+"I am so grateful to you," said the leading lady.  "It is so

+delightful to play a real live woman, for a change."

+

+The tenor was quite fatherly.

+

+"It is what I have been telling Hodgson for years," he said, "give

+them a simple human story."

+

+Crossing the stage, I ran against Marmaduke Trevor.

+

+"You will stay for my scene," he urged.

+

+"Another night," I answered.  "I have only just returned."

+

+He sank his voice to a whisper.  "I want to talk to you on business,

+when you have the time.  I am thinking of taking a theatre myself--not

+just now, but later on.  Of course, I don't want it to get about."

+

+I assured him of my secrecy.

+

+"If it comes off, I want you to write for me.  You understand the

+public.  We will talk it over."

+

+He passed onward with stealthy tread.

+

+I found Hodgson in the front of the house.

+

+"Two stalls not sold and six seats in the upper circle," he informed

+me; "not bad for a Thursday night."

+

+I expressed my gratification.

+

+"I knew you could do it," said Hodgson, "I felt sure of it merely from

+seeing that comedietta of yours at the Queen's.  I never make a

+mistake."

+

+Correction under the circumstances would have been unkind.  Promising

+to see him again in the morning, I left him with his customary good

+conceit of himself unimpaired, and went on to the Square.  I rang

+twice, but there was no response.  I was about to sound a third and

+final summons, when Norah joined me on the step.  She had been out

+shopping and was laden with parcels.

+

+"We must wait to shake hands," she laughed, as she opened the door.

+"I hope you have not been kept long.  Poor Annette grows deafer every

+day."

+

+"Have you nobody in the house with you but Annette?" I asked.

+

+"No one.  You know it was a whim of his.  I used to get quite cross

+with him at times.  But I should not like to go against his

+wishes--now."

+

+"Was there any reason for it?" I asked.

+

+"No," she answered; "if there had been I could have argued him out of

+it."  She paused at the door of the studio.  "I'll just get rid of

+these," she said, "and then I will be with you."

+

+A wood fire was burning on the open hearth, flashing alternate beams

+of light and shadow down the long bare room.  The high oak stool stood

+in its usual place beside the engraving desk, upon which lay old

+Deleglise's last unfinished plate, emitting a dull red glow.  I paced

+the creaking boards with halting steps, as through some ghostly

+gallery hung with dim portraits of the dead and living.  In a little

+while Norah entered and came to me with outstretched hand.

+

+"We will not light the lamp," she said, "the firelight is so

+pleasant."

+

+"But I want to see you," I replied.

+

+She had seated herself upon the broad stone kerb.  With her hand she

+stirred the logs; they shot into a clear white flame.  Thus, the light

+upon her face, she raised it gravely towards mine.  It spoke to me

+with fuller voice.  The clear grey eyes were frank and steadfast as

+ever, but shadow had passed into them, deepening them, illuminating

+them.

+

+For a space we talked of our two selves, our trivial plans and doings.

+

+"Tom left something to you," said Norah, rising, "not in his will,

+that was only a few lines.  He told me to give it to you, with his

+love."

+

+She brought it to me.  It was the picture he had always treasured, his

+first success; a child looking on death; "The Riddle" he had named it.

+

+We spoke of him, of his work, which since had come to be appraised at

+truer value, for it was out of fashion while he lived.

+

+"Was he a disappointed man, do you think?" I asked.

+

+"No," answered Norah.  "I am sure not.  He was too fond of his work."

+

+"But he dreamt of becoming a second Millet.  He confessed it to me

+once.  And he died an engraver."

+

+"But they were good engravings," smiled Norah.

+

+"I remember a favourite saying of his," continued Norah, after a

+pause; "I do not know whether it was original or not.  'The stars

+guide us.  They are not our goal.'"

+

+"Ah, yes, we aim at the moon and--hit the currant bush."

+

+"It is necessary always to allow for deflection," laughed Norah.

+"Apparently it takes a would-be poet to write a successful comic

+opera."

+

+"Ah, you do not understand!" I cried.  "It was not mere ambition; cap

+and bells or laurel wreath! that is small matter.  I wanted to help.

+The world's cry of pain, I used to hear it as a boy.  I hear it yet.

+I meant to help.  They that are heavy laden.  I hear their cry.  They

+cry from dawn to dawn and none heed them:  we pass upon the other

+side.  Man and woman, child and beast.  I hear their dumb cry in the

+night.  The child's sob in the silence, the man's fierce curse of

+wrong.  The dog beneath the vivisector's knife, the overdriven brute,

+the creature tortured for an hour that a gourmet may enjoy an

+instant's pleasure; they cried to me.  The wrong and the sorrow and

+the pain, the long, low, endless moan God's ears are weary of; I hear

+it day and night.  I thought to help."

+

+I had risen.  She took my face between her quiet, cool hands.

+

+"What do we know?  We see but a corner of the scheme.  This fortress

+of laughter that a few of you have been set apart to guard--this

+rallying-point for all the forces of joy and gladness!  how do you

+know it may not be the key to the whole battle!  It is far removed

+from the grand charges and you think yourself forgotten.  Trust your

+leader, be true to your post."

+

+I looked into her sweet grey eyes.

+

+"You always help me," I said.

+

+"Do I?" she answered.  "I am so glad."

+

+She put her firm white hand in mine.

+

+

+

+

+

+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Paul Kelver, by Jerome K. Jerome

+

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