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Title: The Masterfolk - Wherein is Attempted the Unravelling of the Strange Affair - of my Lord Wyntwarde of Cavil and Miss Betty Modeyne
Author: MacFall, Haldane
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Masterfolk - Wherein is Attempted the Unravelling of the Strange Affair - of my Lord Wyntwarde of Cavil and Miss Betty Modeyne" ***
THE MASTERFOLK
New 6s. Novels
PIGS IN CLOVER
By FRANK DANBY
THE CALL OF THE WILD
By JACK LONDON
SPENDTHRIFT SUMMER
By MARGREY WILLIAMS
IN THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD
By FLORA ANNIE STEEL
BEGGAR’S MANOR
By R. MURRAY GILCHRIST
GORDON KEITH
By THOMAS NELSON PAGE
THE LUCK OF BARERAKES
By CAROLINE MARRIAGE
SIR JULIAN THE APOSTATE
By Mrs. CLEMENT PARSONS
TYPHOON
By JOSEPH CONRAD
JERUSALEM
By SELMA LAGERLÖF
’TWIXT GOD AND MAMMON
By WILLIAM EDWARDS TIREBUCK
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
20 & 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
THE MASTERFOLK
Wherein is attempted the unravelling
of the Strange Affair of my Lord
Wyntwarde of Cavil and Miss
Betty Modeyne
by
HALDANE MACFALL
Author of ‘The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer,’ etc.
[Illustration]
London
William Heinemann
1903
_All rights reserved_
TO
GEORGE MEREDITH
ESQUIRE
TO GIVE YOU THE SALUTE OF SOVEREIGNTY, SIR, CAN ADD NO TITTLE TO YOUR
STATURE; BUT THERE IS SOLDIER’S DELIGHT IN SALUTING A CONQUEROR--AND
TO YOUR BAYS THERE IS NO PRETENCE OF A PRETENDER
CONTENTS
OF THE BUDDING OF THE TREE OF LIFE
_Chapter_ _Page_
_I._ _Which shows some of the Gods in their Machinery, with
but a Shadowy Hint of the Printer’s Devil_ 3
_II._ _Wherein it is discovered that, likely enough from an
Ancestor who was Master of the Horse to King
Harry the Eighth, Master Oliver had inherited some
Gift of Horseplay, together with a Keen Eye for a
Fine Leg on a Woman_ 13
_III._ _Wherein Master Oliver comes to the Conclusion that, to
complete the Dramatic Picture, Greatness should have
known the Hair-Shirt and the Makeshifts of Adversity_ 20
_IV._ _Wherein it would appear that the most respectable Stucco
Architecture may be but a Screen for Gnawing Secrets_ 30
_V._ _Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne is introduced to the Study
of Nature_ 36
_VI._ _Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous is not
necessarily to be Great_ 41
_VII._ _Wherein Ambition shrinks from looking down the Ladder_ 51
_VIII._ _Wherein it is discovered that the Strength of Genius may
lie in the Hair_ 55
_IX._ _Wherein Master Oliver is convinced that it is Difficult
to play the Man’s Part on a Weak Stomach_ 71
_X._ _Wherein Master Oliver entertains Guests_ 77
_XI._ _Wherein Egoism begins to suspect that there is a
Bottom to the Pint Pot_ 82
_ XII._ _Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts_ 88
_XIII._ _Which contains Some Hints towards the Making of a
Baronet_ 93
_XIV._ _Which has to do with the Fascination of Naughtiness_ 97
_XV._ _Which tells of a Poet that offered Himself for
Sacrifice, and was rejected of the Gods_ 100
_XVI._ _Which hints at an Age of Gold_ 105
OF THE BUDDING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
_XVII._ _Which has to do with the Awakening of Youth_ 111
_XVIII._ _Of the Coming of Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin
Myre upon the Town_ 115
_XIX._ _Wherein a Strutting Cock comes near to losing a
Feather upon his Own Dunghill_ 118
_XX._ _Wherein Master Devlin throws a Fierce Sidelight
upon the Genius of Poetry_ 121
_XXI._ _Which discovers a Great Man in the Hour of his
Triumph_ 124
_XXII._ _Wherein we are obliged to spend a Brief Moment in
the Company of the Titled Aristocracy_ 128
_XXIII._ _Wherein the Major fights a Brilliant Rearguard
Action; and beats off a Pressing Attack_ 133
_XXIV._ _Which tells, with quite Unnecessary Frankness, of
what chanced at the Tavern of_ The Cock and
Bull _in Fleet Street_ 138
_XXV._ _Wherein the Major takes to his Bed_ 142
_XXVI._ _Wherein Tom Folly blunders along in his Self-centred
Gig--and drags a Dainty Little Lady’s Skirts
into the Wheel_ 144
_XXVII._ _Wherein a Dainty Little Lady, looking out of the
Window of a Shabby Home at a Shabbier
Destiny, joins the Streaming Crowd whose Faces
pass in the Street, drifting towards the Strange
Riot of Living_ 147
_XXVIII._ _Wherein Dawning Womanhood whispers that Dolls
are Dolls_ 150
_XXIX._ _Wherein Mr. Pompey Malahide loses his Breath in
the Midst of a Boast_ 155
_XXX._ _Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne posts a Letter_ 157
_XXXI._ _Wherein a Great Financier is satisfied with his
Bargain_ 159
_XXXII._ _Wherein the Gallant Major rises from the Dead_ 162
_XXXIII._ _Which has to do with one of those Emotional Crises
that change the Whole Tenor of a Man’s Political
Convictions_ 165
_XXXIV._ _Which, to some extent, discloses the Incident of the
Sentimental Tea-cups_ 170
_XXXV._ _Wherein we are bewildered by the Cooings of
Chivalry_ 175
_XXXVI._ _Which touches upon the Pains of enjoying the Glow
of Self-Abasement whilst maintaining a Position
of Dignity_ 177
_XXXVII._ _Which is Uneasy with the Restlessness of Youth_ 182
_XXXVIII._ _Which has to do with the Breaking of a Pretty
Lady’s Picture_ 186
_XXXIX._ _Wherein, the Barber letting the Cat out of the Bag,
we give Chase_ 189
_XL._ _Which, in Somewhat Indelicate Eavesdropping
Fashion, hovers about a Trysting-Place, and
Scandalously Repeats a Private Conversation_ 194
_XLI._ _Which discovers Something of Despised Poetry in a
Waste-paper Basket_ 197
_XLII._ _Wherein we are shown an Emotional Hairdresser at
Loggerheads with Destiny_ 199
_XLIII._ _Wherein we catch a Glimpse of the Benefits that accrue
to a Sound Commercial Education_ 203
_XLIV._ _Wherein a Palace of Art disappears in the Night_ 207
_XLV._ _Wherein a Poet burns his Verse to keep his Feet Warm_ 211
OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
_XLVI._ _Wherein the Husband of the Concierge fears that he
is growing Blind_ 217
_XLVII._ _Which introduces us to the First Lady of France_ 220
_XLVIII._ _Which has to do with the Motherhood of the World_ 223
_XLIX._ _Wherein the Rich Man’s Son seeks the Sweets of
Poverty--not Wholly without Success_ 225
_L._ _Wherein the Spring comes a-frolic into the Court_ 229
_LI._ _Wherein it is hinted that it were Best to “Touch not
the Catte botte a Glove”_ 234
_LII._ _Wherein Yankee Doodle is bugled--with a Strong
Foreign Accent_ 238
_LIII._ _Wherein we skip down the Highway of Youth_ 242
_LIV._ _Wherein the Widow Snacheur separates the Milk from
Human Kindness_ 249
_LV._ _Wherein is Some Worship of the Moon_ 252
_LVI._ _Wherein it is suspected that there has been Peeping
through Windows_ 256
_LVII._ _Which treats of what chanced at the Tavern of_
The Scarlet Jackass 261
_LVIII._ _Wherein the Tears of Compassion heal the Bleeding
Feet of a Straying Woman_ 271
_LIX._ _Wherein it is suspect that our Betty has the Healing
Touch_ 275
_LX._ _Wherein Betty feels the Keen Breath of Winter_ 277
_LXI._ _Wherein the Landlord of_ The Scarlet Jackass _is
unable to sing his Song_ 279
_LXII._ _Wherein a Comely Young Woman waits at a Window
all Night, watching for Sir Tom Fool--listening
for his Step_ 281
_LXIII._ _Wherein the Ceiling of the Tavern that is called_
The Scarlet Jackass _is stained with Blood_ 283
_LXIV._ _Wherein the Angel of the Annunciation enters into a
Garret_ 285
_LXV._ _Wherein Betty walks into the Desert_ 288
_LXVI._ _Which has to do with the Great Orgy of Youth_ 293
_LXVII._ _Wherein Youth finds the Cap and Bells to be but a
Bizarre Crown_ 300
_LXVIII._ _Wherein it is seen that a Man is More or Less
Responsible for his Father_ 301
_LXIX._ _Which treats of a Farewell Banquet to Departing
Youth--whereat Gaston Latour glitters with a
Hectic Glitter_ 305
_LXX._ _Wherein a Comely Young Woman broods upon the
Years_ 309
_LXXI._ _Which treats of a Harmless Riot amongst Such as
Dwell on Mount Parnassus_ 313
_LXXII._ _Wherein our Hero is ill at ease with his own
Shadow_ 315
_LXXIII._ _Wherein our Hero dabbles his Hands in the Turgid
Waters of Philosophy, and brings up Some Grains
of Truth from a Pebbly Bottom. A Chapter
that the Frivolous would do well to skip--the
Ironies being infrequent, if not wholly wanting,
and the Humours lacking in the Comic Interest_ 317
_LXXIV._ _Which sees the Day break in the Tavern of_ The
Golden Sun 323
_LXXV._ _Wherein our Hero goes out into the Night_ 329
_LXXVI._ _Wherein our Hero sets Foot upon the Road to
Rome_ 332
_LXXVII._ _Wherein Foul Things are plotted with Some
Glamour of Romance_ 336
_LXXVIII._ _Wherein our Hero scatters Some Pages of the
Indifferent Wisdom of the Ages to the even more
Indifferent Gulls_ 340
_LXXIX._ _Wherein the Honourable Rupert Greppel shows
Hidalgic_ 344
_LXXX._ _Which treats of the Masterfolk_ 349
_LXXXI._ _Wherein the Widow Snacheur comes into her
Fortune_ 351
_LXXXII._ _Wherein Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre
struts airily towards the Goal of Freedom_ 355
_LXXXIII._ _Which essays the High Epic Note_ 358
_LXXXIV._ _Which has to do with Blue Blood and a Jade-handled
Cane_ 360
_LXXXV._ _Wherein a Man of the World commits the Indiscretion
of putting his Experiences into Writing_ 363
_LXXXVI._ _Wherein our Hero, and Another, go Home_ 366
OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF LIFE
_LXXXVII._ _Which has to do with the Binding of Books in
Half-calf and the Whimsies of Calf Love_ 375
_LXXXVIII._ _Wherein it is suspected that, on Occasion, the
Trumpet of Fame is not Wholly Immaculate
of the Hiccup_ 381
_LXXXIX._ _Wherein Andrew Blotte draws aside the Arras that
hangs Across the Unknown and joins the Company
at a Larger Banquet_ 396
_XC._ _Wherein Hereditary Greatness fails to Glitter
Hidalgic_ 400
_XCI._ _Wherein the Heir of the Ffolliotts falls the Victim
to a Limited Badinage_ 403
_XCII._ _Wherein it is seen that the Blood of the Oldest
Families may run to Inconsequence and Mere
Vulgar Stains_ 407
_XCIII._ _Wherein our Hero comes into a Wide Heritage_ 411
_XCIV._ _Wherein it is suspected that the Garden of Eden was
Well Lost_ 413
OF THE BUDDING OF THE TREE OF LIFE
CHAPTER I
_Which shows Some of the Gods in their Machinery, with but a Shadowy
Hint of the Printer’s Devil_
Amidst the untidy litter of torn paper that strewed the bare plank
floor there stood a large double writing-table, spread with proofs and
manuscript and pamphlets; and, with his feet in the litter of the floor
and his elbows in the litter of the table, sat a gaunt yellow-haired
youth, solemnly writing.
Netherby Gomme peered at his work in the waning light of the departing
November afternoon; and the deepening dusk that took possession of the
shabby room, turning all things to the colour of shadows, strained
his attention, drawing long lines about his mouth and pronouncing
the pallor of his serious face--the grim mask of the humorist. The
slips of paper that were set into the sleeve-ends of his well-brushed
threadbare coat to save the soiling of his shirt-cuffs, and the long
reach of yellow sock that showed his feet thrust a wrinkled span beyond
the original intention of his much-knee’d trousers, marked the ordered
untidiness of the literary habit.
Everything in the room--the overflowed waste-paper basket at his feet;
the severe academic comfort of the polished wooden armchair that stood
yawning augustly vacant opposite to him; the shut door at his right
hand, with its curt announcement of “Editor” in stiff, forbidding
letters; the low bookshelves about the room with their rows of books of
reference, stacks of journals and literary scraps piled a-top of them;
the walls with their irregular array of calendars, advertisements,
notices, and printed and pictured odds and ends; the atmosphere of the
scrap-gathering paste-pot and of clippings from the knowledge of the
world; the sepulchral, monotonous clock that ticked its aggressive
statement of the passage of time as though with a cough of admonition
that, whatever journalism might be, life was short and art was long;
the naked mantel beneath it, which held the shabby soul of the
jerrybuilder turned to stone--for it is the hearth that is haunted by
the spirit of the architect, and this one had been a vulgar fellow--the
bare fireplace that did not even go through the feeble pretence of
giving comfort, for it had no fender, no hearthrug, but gaped, bored
and empty and black, upon the making of literature--everything marked
the room to be one of those scanty workshops where opinions are made,
the dingy editorial office of a struggling weekly review; and the
extent of the dinginess showed it to be a very struggling affair indeed.
The young man blotted his writing, and flipped through some pages of
manuscript:
“Oliver,” said he, without looking up, “a light, I think!... We have
here lying before us a most caustic literary criticism; but the
light is so far gone that we can scarce see the dogmatic gentleman’s
own literary infelicities--nay, can scarce see even his most split
infinitives.”
He spoke like a leading article, with a slight cockney accent.
In the gloom of a dark corner by the window, at a high desk that stood
against the wall, where he sat perched on a tall office stool with
his feet curled round its long legs, a small boy ceased reading, and,
fumbling about in the breast-pocket of his short Eton jacket, lugged
out a tin box, struck a match, and, leaning forward, set a flame to the
gas-jet. The place leaped into light. The youngster flung the matchbox
across the room, and went on with his reading. It fell at the feet of
the yellow-haired youth.
“Ah, Noll,” said he, stooping over and searching for it amongst the
torn fragments of paper, “like those of even greater genius, our aims
are only too often lost in the sea of wasted endeavour.”
He found the box; lit the gas at his right hand; coughed:
“Are you putting that down?” he asked drily of the grim unanswering
silence.
The boy took no notice. The yellow-haired youth chuckled, and the
deep-furrowed lines about his mouth broadened into a quizzical smile.
The boy Oliver could scarcely have been fourteen years of age, and had
he not been son of the editor, and that editor the thriftless owner of
but a very broken-winged Muse, and of a steadily diminishing literary
property, the boy must still have been at school. He sighed heavily,
rousing from his reading:
“I say, Netherby,” said he, “here’s a poem by that fellow with the
hair.”
He held out the manuscript.
Netherby Gomme looked up:
“A lyric?” he asked.
“No. Drivel.”
Netherby Gomme sighed, and sat back in his chair:
“With what candid brutality the sub-editorial mind treats the most
ecstatic flights of the imagination!” said he.
The boy Oliver shifted impatiently on his high stool:
“Shall I reject the ponderous rot?” he asked.
Netherby Gomme coughed:
“_We_--if you please, Oliver--_we_. It is always better to adopt the
editorial _we_ in matters of weight; and it throws the responsibility
upon the irresponsible gods of journalism.”
Noll sighed, stretched himself, and yawned.
“All right. We’ll reject it, eh?... No good troubling the governor”--he
jerked his thumb towards the editor’s room--“he’s so beastly short
this afternoon. But I had better _write_ the rejection, I suppose--the
father doesn’t like poets to be rejected on the printed form--they’re
so sensitive.”
He settled himself to write a letter, tongue in cheek, head down, and
quoting for the other’s approval as he wrote:
“_The--editor--regrets--that--whilst--he--appreciates--the--beauty
of--the--lines--herewith--returned--he--is--unable--to--make--use
of--them--owing--to----_”
He came to a halt and invited the prompt. None coming, he glanced over
his shoulder:
“What is it owing to, Netherby? I’m such a beastly poor liar. You’ve
been on the press so much longer. Hustle your vivid imagination and
chuck us an excuse.”
Netherby Gomme shook his head:
“I am only a humorist, Oliver--humour must walk knee-deep in truth. I
do not travel on Romance----”
“Oh, shut up!... No good chucking the idiot roughly.... It’s beastly
long.... We’ll chuck it for length, eh?”
Netherby Gomme smiled at him:
“Noll,” said he, “you are possessed of the magnificent carelessness of
the gods--and I never interfere with religious bodies.”
Noll turned to his writing again, and there was a steady scratching of
pen on paper.
Netherby Gomme sat for awhile, his face seamed with comic lines of grim
amusement:
“I suppose,” he said at last--“I suppose we have read the poem, Oliver?”
“No, _I_ haven’t. But _you_ can.”
Netherby Gomme moved uneasily in his seat:
“N-no. No thanks, Oliver. We’ll take it as read.”
He coughed:
“By the way, Oliver, have you got the dummy for next week’s issue over
there?”
Noll licked, sealed, and thumped the letter on the desk:
“Oh, ah, yes--I’m sitting on it and a bunch of keys to remind me.”
He took a bunch of keys from under him, and put them in his trousers
pocket, then lugged out from beneath him the dummy form of the review
in its brown-paper cover. He opened it, and wetting his finger on his
lip, he flipped through the leaves with their proofs pasted in position
for guidance to the printer.
“Look here, Netherby.” He held up the booklet, pointing to a blank
space. “The governor said I was to tell you we had better complete
this column with a poem--says verse gives a pleasant appearance to
the page.” He dropped the dummy on the desk in front of him. “It’s an
awful bore, Netherby,” said he, “but that bundle of poems he gave me
the other day took up such a lot of space on my desk that I flung them
into the waste-paper basket. Can’t you knock up about twenty lines of
amorous matter? I promise not to whistle.”
Netherby Gomme smiled grimly, sighed, took up a pen, and, drawing a
sheet of paper to him, prepared to write....
The yellow-haired youth had been with this literary venture from the
start. He had begun as office-boy; and as each member of the original
staff had fallen out, at the stern prunings of necessity, he had
been promoted to their places, until he sat alone, as leader-writer,
humorist, topical poet, sentimentalist, sub-editor, office lad, and
general usefulness. Scrupulous to the smallest detail, reliable in
the performance of the minutest fraction of his bond, he got through
his work with the facility of a man of affairs; and, like all busy
men, finding time for everything, he had spent his hours of leisure
outside the office in the humane atmosphere of the theatre, in the
tragic fellowship of the street, in the eternal fresh comedy of the
city’s by-ways, and in the company of the mighty masters of his tongue;
in this, the best school of education in all the round world, he had
acquired such a knowledge of letters, such a taste for the niceties
of the written word, and such a mastery in its use, as would have
astounded, as indeed it was destined to astound, even them that thought
they knew him to his fullest powers.
The other, the editor’s son, Oliver Baddlesmere, had come to the
office to complete establishment straight out of the schoolroom some
months back. He had been brought in to reduce the pressure of clerking
work, and, owing to extreme youth and inexperience, had been given the
simpler duties to perform, so that he came naturally and as a matter
of course to preside over the destinies of the poet’s corner and to
impart information to a hungry world from the battered volumes of an
encyclopædia, and suchlike heavy books of reference, the weight of
which, in the intervals of airily relieving the world’s thirst for
knowledge, the boy used for the purpose of pressing prints--of which
he was gathering a collection from the illustrated papers of the day,
pasting them into brown paper scrap-books of his own making.
Netherby Gomme had scarcely got under fair way with the writing of his
amorous matter when the boy whipped round on his office-stool.
“I say, Netherby,” said he; “your book _is_ making a splash all along
the Thames. The bookstalls are covered with it--the whole blessed town
is saffron with it.”
The yellow-haired youth smiled complacently; sitting back in his chair,
he nodded:
“Indeed?” he said.
Noll slipped down off the stool, took it up, and carried it over to the
fireplace:
“You were a chunk-head not to put your name to it!” he said. “But all
the same, you know, it’s been roaring funny to hear the father and
mother talk about it.”
He vaulted to the top of the high stool, scrambled on to his feet, and,
reaching up, opened the glass face of the clock:
“It almost bursts me sometimes that I can’t tell ’em you wrote it,” he
said. He got on tip-toe and put forward the large hand twenty minutes,
shut the face with a click, turned where he stood, and, thrusting his
hands into his trouser-pockets, he added confidentially:
“D’you know, Netherby, between you and me and the office ink-pot, I
never thought myself that you could be so uncommon funny.”
The yellow-haired youth blushed.
Clambering down off the stool, Noll carried it back to his desk, took
down a tall silk hat, ran his coat-sleeve round it, and put it on his
head.
Netherby Gomme coughed:
“Oliver,” said he--hesitated--made a pause--then added nervously:
“Oliver, I am going to confide in you. In fact, if I don’t I shall get
some sort of low malarial fever. Now, don’t treat the confidence with
the giggle of childishness.”
Noll sighed. He turned, leaped on to his office-stool, swung round, set
his feet on the bar, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms,
and, peering at the other out of the shadow from under the brim of his
hat, said gloomily:
“O lor! the little typewriter girl!... Why the dickens you don’t kiss
Julia and have done with it, Netherby, I can’t make out. Hang it, _I_
have!... It was very nice whilst it lasted, and all that, but there was
nothing in it to write poetry about!”
Netherby Gomme flushed.
“Oliver,” said he, with biting distinctness, “we have not yet shown the
resentment that your vulgarity courts; but we would remind you that we
may be goaded into flinging the office ink-pot----” He stretched out
his long arm towards the large zinc well of ink before him.
Noll slid off the stool, putting it between them with the swift and
calculated strategy of experience, guarding his head with his raised
elbow:
“Chuck it, Netherby!” he bawled, dodging under cover of his desk
warily; and he added in a hoarse aside, jerking his thumb towards the
editor’s door: “Chuck it! I withdraw.”
The yellow-haired youth put down the heavy ink-pot.
Noll saw out of the corner of his alert eye that honour was satisfied,
and as he ran his finger pensively down a large splash of ink that had
dried on the wall beside his desk, he asked:
“Well?... About that confidence!”
Netherby Gomme cleared his throat:
“Now, Oliver, don’t say anything about this to anyone. It might make
me so ridiculous, and--professional humorists are keenly sensitive to
ridicule----”
“Lor!” said Noll, leaving the patch on the wall. “Get on.”
“This is in strict confidence, Noll.”
“Oh, it’s Julia all right enough,” growled Noll.
Gomme went on, ignoring the comment:
“Noll, it is one of the penalties of fame that its victims must appear
in the brilliant world of fashion.” He coughed. “Come here, Noll.” He
unlocked and pulled open the drawer before him, and Noll, aroused to
sudden interest, sidled over to him as he brought out from the drawer a
very carefully folded dress-coat. “Oliver, I’ve got a dress-coat. You
see, I may have to go into society at any moment, now that my book has
caught the public eye.”
Noll put out his hand:
“Let’s look at the thing,” said he eagerly.
Gomme caught his arm and kept him off it:
“Careful, Noll!” he gasped anxiously--“gently! or we shan’t get it
back into its folds.”
He put it away carefully, locked it up, and, sitting back in his chair,
he added gravely:
“Now, Noll, as one who has knowledge of the usages of polite
society----”
“Eh?” said Noll.
Gomme touched him on the shoulder nervously.
“No, no, Noll--I’m not accusing you of practising them. But as one
born within the pale of good society--from no fault of your own, I
admit--ought one to put scent on the coat?”
Noll whistled:
“Je--hoshaphat!” said he, “I never noticed.” He pushed his hat back on
his head, thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and fixed a
searching eye on experience: “I’m not sure. N-no--I don’t think so. The
governor doesn’t.”
The yellow-haired youth shook his head solemnly:
“It’s a most awkward point, Oliver--a most awkward point--and somewhat
momentous.... One’s first step at the threshold of a career should not
be a stumble.”
Noll’s face lighted up with a suggestion:
“Tell you what I should do, Netherby. Just scent your handkerchief; and
if it kicks up a beastly lot of notice and makes you uncomfortable, you
can always get rid of it----”
“Indeed, Oliver!”
“Rather. Hand it to a lady and ask her if it is hers. Gives you a sort
of introduction, too.”
Netherby Gomme stared aghast:
“B-but, Oliver, surely one is introduced in society!”
“Rather not--it ain’t form.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know; it’s the new hospitality. But about that scent,
Netherby--let us try some on me, and I’ll see if it worries the mother.
The father’ll soon be nasty about it if it’s bad form.”
Gomme shook his head, and sighed heavily:
“Ah, Oliver, one has to be very careful in one’s pose on entering a new
world.”
Noll nodded:
“Rather!... Do you know, Netherby, it’s a rummy thing how one begins to
wash one’s self and think about ornaments and things when one becomes a
man, eh?”
“A most rummy thing indeed, Noll.”
Netherby Gomme sighed.
Noll looked at him with interest:
“It must be wonderful to feel famous,” he said.
“It is,” said Gomme gloomily. “Wonderful.”
“But I don’t see why you should be so beastly miserable about it,
Netherby. It don’t hurt, does it?”
“Not exactly, Noll.” The yellow-haired youth sighed. “I am only
suffering from the mood of the time.... Pessimism is on the town.... A
clerk with any claim to culture must affect Decadence this season--and
it gives me the hump.” He coughed. “Causes me acute mental discomfort.”
Noll snorted:
“Then I should chuck it,” he said. “When I was a kid I used to worry if
I were not the same as the other kids; but--hullo!” He looked up at the
clock. “It seems to me it’s about time to go and get tea.”
He winked an eye solemnly at Gomme, and whistled his way airily out of
the office. The door swung open, revealing a dingy stair-landing, shut
with a bang, and swallowed him.
The sound of Noll’s retreating footsteps on the stair had scarce faded
away into the distant echoes of the street, when the door that led to
the editor’s room opened, and a well-groomed man of about thirty-five
entered the office. Anthony Baddlesmere was a handsome, well-set-up
fellow--indeed, it was as much from his father as from his mother that
Noll inherited his good looks. He was handsome to the degree of beauty;
and this it was, perhaps, which, in spite of the easy carriage of the
body and the subtle air of good-breeding, gave the impression of some
indecision of character in the man. Or it may have been that this
indecision was increased by a certain embarrassment as he endeavoured
to get a firm note into his voice:
“Oh, Gomme--have you completed the dummy yet--for this week’s issue?”
Gomme got up from his chair and searched for the dummy amongst the
papers on Noll’s desk. But Anthony Baddlesmere had seated himself on
the corner of the desk, and, fingering a paper-knife, he said:
“Oh--er--never mind. There’s another matter, Netherby.... It’s some
years since I started this sorry venture in this office.” He sighed,
and passed his hand over his forehead wearily--“more years than I care
to remember. You, the office-boy, were a lank lad of thirteen--I a
young man, full of literary enthusiasms.... I tried to sell the public
artistic wares”--he shrugged his shoulders--“tried to show them vital
things--real things, instead of sham--tried to encourage promising
youth”--he laughed sadly--“and a nice waste-paper basket we’ve made of
it!”
He swung his foot and kicked the waste-paper basket into the middle of
the room, sending its contents flying over the floor.
Netherby Gomme coughed:
“Yes, sir,” said he, “a great deal of the promise of youth goes into
the waste-paper basket.”
Anthony Baddlesmere laughed uncomfortably; the laugh died out of his
eyes, obliterated by a frown:
“Downstairs,” he went on, as though repeating an unpleasant task he had
set himself--“downstairs they have given the public trash--cheap. And I
have lost.... In me the literary enthusiasm, a little chilled, perhaps,
remains; but the youth has gone. As for you--you are office-boy still,
to all purposes, and lank still--but, lord! how you have grown!”
Netherby Gomme looked down at his scanty trousers and sighed:
“Yes, sir, I _have_ grown.”
“H’m! like a scandal,” said Baddlesmere; and a gleam of merriment
shot into his eyes, ran round the corners of his mouth, and vanished.
“Gomme,” said he, “we are at the end of our resources. This is our
last week in these rooms.... The office is bare--my home is bare. All
my money--all my wife’s literary success--all have gone to feed the
printing machine. It’s great inky maw has swallowed everything....
However, there is no debt--except to you. But that is a heavy one. My
conscience tells me that you ought not to have been allowed to remain
here and share in the collapse; you ought to have been promoted--to
have been sent to--to----”
He hesitated--stopped.
“Where, sir?” asked the yellow-haired youth.
The bald fact was that Baddlesmere had never given the matter a thought
until this disaster was upon him. He smiled sadly, and added vaguely:
“No place would have been good enough for you, Gomme.... You should
have been promoted long ago....” He roused and faced the position
boldly: “But you have been such a good friend to me and to the boy--so
useful a part of this office, that I am afraid I have treated you like
a part of myself, and have come by habit to think the hat that covered
my head covered yours.... Dame Fortune has knocked the hat off--and I
find there were two heads inside it.”
“Well, sir, we can look her in the face without the hat.”
“Yes, yes, Gomme--but I have looked over your head.”
“It has saved your eyes from the commonplace, sir, and my heart from a
bad chill. I wouldn’t have missed the past years in this office for a
fortune.”
“No, no, Gomme; nor I--nor I.”
“They have made a man of me,” the youth added hoarsely.
Baddlesmere put his hand on the other’s shoulder:
“But you should have been promoted--you should have been promoted....
And I could so easily have sent you to a better billet.” He sat down,
and, fidgeting with the paper-knife again, he added, after a pause: “By
the way, Gomme, I wish you did not write such a shocking bad hand.” He
smiled, half jesting, half serious. “Why don’t you practise writing?”
Gomme’s face became a dull, expressionless mask:
“I have, sir,” he said grimly.
“How? You have!”
“I’ve written a book,” he said.
Baddlesmere whistled:
“The devil you have!... Ah, Gomme, everybody writes books nowadays.”
“But they read mine, sir,” said Netherby Gomme. He dived his hand
into the breast-pocket of his coat, and, taking out a bundle of
press-cuttings, drew a much-thumbed one from the others. “Listen to the
mighty Thrumsby Burrage in _The Discriminator_, sir.” He read out the
paragraph:
“_We have here a refined humorist, whose work is stamped with the
hall-mark of genius._”
Baddlesmere nodded; he was only half listening.
“Oh yes,” said he--“_hall-mark of genius_ is Thrumsby Burrage.”
Gomme went on with a yawning travesty of the pulpit manner:
“_In the present day it is indeed a veritable intellectual treat to
come upon the subtle workmanship of a man of large experience of
life--workmanship marked by that delicate wit which grows only to
perfection in the cloistered atmosphere of scholarship._”
“Yes--_cloistered atmosphere_ is Thrumsby Burrage.”
Gomme’s eyes twinkled:
“_We rejoice that a new man of genius has risen amongst us, and we do
not hesitate to say that the anonymous writer of_ ‘The Tragedy of the
Ridiculous’ _is that man_.”
Anthony Baddlesmere shook off boredom, stood up slowly, stared at the
gaunt yellow-haired youth before him in frank tribute of bewilderment,
and said at last with hoarse surprise:
“_You_ wrote this book, Gomme?”
“Yes, sir,” said Netherby Gomme simply; “but when I write my
tragedy----”
Baddlesmere clapped a hand on his shoulder, and pleasure danced in his
eyes.
“But, good God! you are famous, man--famous!... And you must be making
a fortune.”
“No, sir--I sold the thing for a few pounds.”
Anthony Baddlesmere strode up and down the room.
“But, man,” said he--“I have been trying all my life, and with every
advantage, to create a work of art such as this; and here are you, a
mere stripling--damn it, scarcely out of knickerbockers--though, on
my soul, you are nearly as old as your trousers--here are you, a mere
stripling, famous!” He came to him, gripped him affectionately by the
shoulder. “Of all men that I know, I would rather this thing had come
to you than to any.” He turned and got to striding up and down the room
again. “Famous!--at least you will be as soon as you give out your own
name.”
Gomme’s face had flushed a little with the praise:
“But,” said he, “when I write my tragedy----”
Baddlesmere turned on him sharply:
“Tragedy be hanged!” said he. “My dear Gomme, you’ve got to recognise
that the world never takes its humorists seriously. It’s always looking
for the joke in their tragedies.... Which reminds me, Gomme, I’m afraid
to-morrow must see us out of this.”
Gomme’s face lost its mask:
“But, sir!” he faltered--fidgeting nervously with the papers
by his hand--“what are _you_ going to do? and Noll?--and Mrs.
Baddlesmere--when the blinds are pulled down?”
Baddlesmere strode over to the window, and, gazing down into the dusk
of the chilly street below, made no answer. He stood so for a long
while, and wondered.
He wondered if he _had_ given the public vital things!
His mind ran rapidly over the failure of his scheme--a scheme that, as
he now saw, had been inherent with failure at its very inception. He
saw now, as he stood there ruined by it, that it was folly to expect
a public to buy literature built up on the mere brilliant literary
exercises in technical skill of a smart group of young fellows who had
really had no claim upon the consideration of the world, nothing to
say, no gift but a capacity to use the machinery of letters prettily;
who had had positively nothing to offer to the world but old idioms
freshly arrayed in pretty clothes--make-believe kings at a calico-ball.
These had been but smart mediocrities--not an ounce of wisdom amongst
them all. It came to him now with grim irony, as he stood there in
confession to the clear-eyed judge of Self, that for all their cackle
of literary style and their contempt for everyone else, these men
had uttered no single thought worth preserving--that they had left
their youth behind and were growing bald a-top, and full-blown and
ordinary--except----
Yes, the work of this Netherby Gomme. He knew now as he ran over the
years, that all the best work had come from this youth’s pen--about
the only one of them all who had not given himself airs, who had put
down the absolute truth as he whimsically saw it, who had worked and
wrought amid bare walls and in hours snatched from toil-won leisure,
whilst they all sat and prated of what they intended to do, and of how
it should be done.
He turned from the window into the lighted office, and his glance
fell on his son Noll’s desk. It was the only artistic corner in the
room--the prints, mounted on brown paper, which the boy had tacked to
the wall, had a decorative effect that showed rare artistic taste in
one so young.
A touch of pride came into the man’s eyes, and went out in a frown.
Netherby Gomme, watching him in alert silence, with delicate tact
uttered no word.
As Baddlesmere moved towards the editor’s room he asked abruptly:
“Where’s Noll?”
“Heaven knows, sir,” said Netherby Gomme airily.
The door closed on the editor, and Gomme heard the slam of the outer
door, which told that Baddlesmere had begun to descend the stair.
“Heaven knows!” Gomme shook his head. “Playing with a sewer, most
like.... But God is very good to boys.”
CHAPTER II
_Wherein it is discovered that, likely enough from an Ancestor who
was Master of the Horse to King Harry the Eighth, Master Oliver had
inherited some Gift of Horseplay, together with a Keen Eye for a
Fine Leg on a Woman._
Netherby Gomme had been sitting some time writing at his desk when the
door behind him was stealthily opened and Noll’s head popped round its
edge. There was a sharp click of a pea in a tin pea-shooter as the
youngster let fly a careful aim at Gomme’s poll.
Gomme jumped, and scratched the back of his neck irritably:
“Curse it, Noll!” he growled testily.
“Naughty!” said Noll, coming into the room, but giving the
yellow-haired youth a wide circle as he moved to his desk, and keeping
a wary eye on him under a magnificent pretence of carelessness. “Caught
you on the raw that time, I think, my ink-stained warrior!” he added
cheerfully; but the fire was gone out of the old jest, and it was borne
in on the youngster that the oft-repeated joke is somewhat of a damp
squib. He broke the tin pea-shooter across his knee, and flung the two
pieces into the empty grate. Strolling over to his desk, he took up the
office-stool in his arms and carried it to the dusty fireplace. As he
scrambled on to the stool Netherby Gomme watched him under his brows.
“I am relieved to see, Noll,” he growled, “that you remember your
manhood and your pose as a literary prophet, and intend in future to
split hairs instead of spitting peas.” He scratched his head irritably
as the other, standing a-tip-toe on the stool, reached up and put back
the minute-hand of the clock. “Confound it!” he added, as Noll shut
the glass face with a snap, and came down gloomily off his stool--“the
whole world seems to be suffering from the vice of forced humour in
these days.”
“Don’t be waspish, Netherby,” said the youngster.
He carried the stool back to his desk, took off his silk hat, hung it
up, and solemnly mounted into his seat:
“I confess,” he said, and he sighed, “I do feel beastly young at times.”
“H’m!” grunted Netherby Gomme drily--“you weren’t very long over your
tea.”
“No.... As a matter of fact, I haven’t had any tea. I had to dodge the
governor, so I popped into the office below to call on your little
typewriter girl.”
Netherby Gomme moved peevishly in his chair:
“My dear Noll, for Heaven’s sake don’t call Julia my _typewriter
girl_!” said he--“you’d think you were talking of a sewing-machine.”
Noll raised his eyebrows.
“But--she is a bit of a sewing-machine--when she isn’t typewriting.” He
suddenly disappeared over the side of the stool and took up a defensive
attitude beyond his desk. “Chuck it!” he bawled--“shut up, Netherby!...
Put that ink-pot down and I’ll tell you the whole tragedy.”
Noll climbed on to his stool again as the keen glitter went out of
Gomme’s eyes, and, sitting perched there with his back against the
desk, he said calmly:
“Julia is missing!”
Gomme stared at him anxiously:
“Missing?”
Noll nodded:
“H’m--h’m!” said he. “They are getting rather fussy about it
downstairs, and inclined to be nasty.” He assumed an editorial
manner and continued: “We regret to state that there has been marked
uneasiness at Messrs. Rollit’s typewriting offices owing to the
fact that Miss Julia Wynne has not been heard of for the last hour;
and this conduct, which might have passed unnoticed in any ordinary
female clerk, has caused considerable anxiety in the office where she
usually carries on her avocation, for, owing to the regular habits and
exemplary conduct of the young person in question, the half-starved
beauty of whose Burne-Jones-like profile----”
“We have not yet thrown the office ink-pot, Oliver!” said Netherby
Gomme grimly.
Noll, guarding his head with his arm, peered out from beneath his elbow:
“No--but really, Netherby, it was beastly hard luck her being out. I
like to go and gaze at her. She has such a jolly nice mouth. I should
like to kiss it--it would do her a lot of good....” He disappeared over
the stool. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Put it down and I’ll chuck it. I
say, Netherby,” he added confidentially, coming out into the open and
disarming resentment by trusting Gomme’s honour; “I saw a ripping girl
to-day. She gave me quite a thrill.”
Gomme sat back in his chair:
“Indeed, Noll!” said he, putting his fingers together, elbows on
chair-arm--“this is most interesting.... What age was the lady?”
“Oh, quite twelve or thirteen. None of your Burne-Jones-like----”
He ducked his head under his arm and made for his desk backwards. He
scrambled on to his stool as he saw that the other was not for war:
“No; she _was_ a girl, that! Rich warm hair--reddish. Plumpish. Jolly
way of walking....” He paused for a moment and added critically: “She
went off a bit in the legs--but--they mostly do at that age.... I
offered her chocolates.... She sniffed.”
“Not very encouraging, Oliver!”
“It _was_ rather a blow,” said Noll. “But I think a woman ought to be
offish at first. I don’t like ’em too easily captured myself.”
“May I ask,” said Gomme grimly, “if she be a lady of position?”
“Well--her antecedents are somewhat humble. Her father is a--well--he’s
a butcher. But every tragedy should have comic relief--shouldn’t it,
Netherby?”
Netherby Gomme shook his head solemnly where he sat:
“Noll, you are very, very old. Let us try to be young again.”
“It’s so beastly slow being young,” grumbled Noll. “When I’m a
man--Jeroos’lum! I _should_ like to be a man--and shave!”
“And then you’ll damn the razor.... Ah, Noll, it is with the razor that
youth cuts its throat.”
There was a long pause. The boy sat brooding on some perplexing
problem; the yellow-haired youth watched him.
Noll broke the silence. He slipped down off his high seat, and came
over to Gomme:
“I say, Netherby, your book _is_ terrific though!”
“Thanks, Noll--you overwhelm me.... Ah, Noll, if all the world were
as prejudiced an admirer as you are--and as frankly honest in the
statement of their admiration--I might be a great man.”
“But, Netherby,” said Noll, eyeing him critically--“when did you
discover you were clever?”
Gomme coughed:
“Well--er--when people began to tell me my own stories.”
“I wish I could write that sort of comic rot,” said Noll enviously.
“Noll, it is easy enough to be funny. _I_ envy the man of action.”
The yellow-haired youth got up from his chair, lank and lean and
awkward, and paced the room with prowling gait.
“To feel the blood tingle through one in hair’s-breadth escapes--to
use one’s strength--to live, man, live!... To beat grips with life and
danger and death, instead of writing lyrics or other tomfoolery about
it, or about what you think other people ought to think about it!”
“Chuck it, Netherby!”
Gomme, pacing up and down the room, took no heed of the interruption.
“Writing history across the face of the world!... That is a bigger
thing than spilling ink.... I know what it feels like a little,” he
added. “The boxing sergeant knocked me down five times running in
rapid succession at the gymnasium last night, and at the first fall
I felt the transferred glory of what he must have felt. There is
wondrous delight, a sense of the sublime, in conquest--even with the
boxing-gloves on!... Of course, now, it would be something to write a
_tragedy_.”
Noll snorted:
“Oh, tragedy’s all piffle! You don’t go to a theatre to sniff.... Give
me a jolly good pantomime for an artistic jaunt. Shush! the governor.”
He vaulted on to his desk-stool as the door was flung open.
“Cafoshulam--it’s Julia!” he cried, swinging round on his stool again
as the door shut with a slam, and a pretty young woman in neat black
dress ran up to Netherby Gomme.
“Oh, Netherby,” she gasped, seizing his arm, “there’s a horror
of a man keeps following me about--from the time I was at the
coffee-shop--and I’ve been afraid to go back to the office lest he
should follow me there. And so, at last, I’ve run up here. What am I to
do? The man frightens me out of my wits.”
“Hush, Julia--keep calm.”
Gomme stroked her hand, and, leading her quickly to the editor’s room,
threw open the door:
“Quick, Julia--in here!”
Julia grasped his arm as he was about to shut the door upon her:
“No personal violence, please, Netherby. You won’t hurt him--will you?”
“My dear Julia,” said he, hurrying her into the room, “I am surprised
at such a suggestion!” He shut the door, and, turning his back upon it,
he added grimly: “Personal violence is quite contrary to the traditions
of this office, Noll--it should, in our judgment, be the very last
resource.” He coughed. “The office broom, I fear, Noll, is in the
editor’s cupboard----”
Noll whooped:
“Hooroosh!” cried he--“we haven’t had a row in the office for nearly
five weeks!”
There was a loud knock.
Noll whipped round on his high stool, and was immediately engrossed in
the heavy work of his office.
“Come in!” cried Netherby Gomme.
The door on to the landing was thrown open and revealed the figure of
an elaborately dressed exquisite, who entered the room deliberately,
diffusing scents--one of those well-polished, shining beings who never
seem to catch a speck of dust. He had an hereditary qualification
to pass for a gentleman--he knew how to dress for the part. He
could strain good taste in adornment to the uttermost stretch
without breaking it. He stood with the arrogant self-assurance that
largely stands for good-breeding amongst the inane, and though the
perfection of his clothes’ fit could not hide the fact that the lamp
of intelligence burnt but gutteringly at the top where were his wits,
he had the self-respect to ignore his defects. He looked calmly round
the room, and, taking a card with deliberate coolness from a silver
cardcase, he asked:
“Will someone--ah--kindly give my card to--ah--that most comely young
lady who--ah--has just come in?”
Gomme walked over to him and took the card, which the exquisite held
out to him between the first and second fingers of his lavender-gloved
hand.
“Will no one offer me a chair?” the affected voice asked plaintively.
Gomme motioned him to a seat by the empty fireplace, and the other
strolled thither and sat down on the edge of it with deliberate care.
The seat was gone--a bristling hollow only left. He took off his hat
and looked about the room with a cold, critical stare.
Gomme took the card to Noll.
“Mr. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott,” he read in a gruff whisper, handing
the card to the youngster; and he added grimly: “Destiny was against
the Thing from the beginning, Oliver. A man like that was bound to go
on all fours and eat grass.” He raised his voice: “The editor’s room,
please,” he said. And, as Noll scrambled down leisurely from his seat,
the yellow-haired youth added under his breath solemnly: “Oliver,
select the best office-broom, and as I cast him down the stairs, kindly
crack the hero’s shins. It will confuse his retreat. War is an art--not
a vulgar scrimmage.”
Noll solemnly carried the card into the editor’s office. Gomme went to
his seat, sat down, and aggressively paid no heed to the Thing.
The exquisite became nettled. Said he affectedly:
“That’s an awfully smart office-girl of yours----”
Netherby Gomme rose slowly from his chair, and, walking over to him,
stood and looked down at him with contempt.
“Oh, you’re a judge!” said he--“a sort of overdressed Paris awarding
the apple----”
“Oh, no,” protested the exquisite Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott; “you are
quite mistaken. I have never been in Paris, and I’m not at all keen
about apples.”
Gomme laughed loud. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott fidgeted uneasily.
“Are you the editor?” he asked.
Gomme smiled.
“No,” he said--and added drily: “Luckily for you.”
“Why luck-i-ly?”
Gomme coughed.
“The editor kicks like a horse.”
Ffolliott sniggered uneasily:
“Really!” he drawled. It was faintly borne in upon him that he was
neither shining nor making an impression. His eyes ranged aimlessly
round the room, and he added fatuously:
“So this is the sort of place where you literary fellows hang out!”
Gomme stared at him in grim silence.
The exquisite Ponsonby shifted in his seat:
“None of my people have ever been literary,” he drawled; “they all
belonged to the virile professions.... At least, I _suppose_ that’s
the office-girl.... However, as I said before, I’m not a literary man
myself----”
Gomme’s eyes glowed threateningly, but the resplendent fool seated
before him was too heavy-witted a dullard to hear anything but the
cackle of his own voice, or to be alert to anything but the sordid
desire of his own eyes.
Gomme laughed drily.
“Man?... You’re not a man!” said he.
Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott was genuinely shocked:
“Really, you know----”
He stopped. He saw that this yellow-haired, gaunt other man, a
loose-limbed, powerful fellow, was glaring at him in anything but
friendly fashion, and he was dumb.
Gomme’s level voice went calmly on:
“Tsh!” said he, “you’re a perambulating monkey, scented and got up
and flung upon the town by Providence to remind us all from what we
came--and to what we may return--if we forget that we were meant to
grow into God’s good image.”
“You--you’re a common fellow!” said Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott.
Gomme’s keen eyes remained fixed on him with a steady contempt, that
ate even into this dunce’s conceit. He went on, giving judgment on the
travesty of manhood that sat before him:
“You silly fool! It’s disgusting that a pretty woman can’t walk down
the high streets of the most civilized city in the world without the
risk of some painted peacock of an ’Arry like yourself----”
“’Arry, indeed!” bleated the exquisite. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott
was wounded in his most religious parts. “I have the blood of the
Plantagenets in my veins,” he said.
He was very indignant. He spoke with simple faith, as if of the
certainty of a glorious resurrection.
Gomme turned, and called out:
“Open the door, Oliver!”
The door swung open, and discovered Noll at the head of the stairway,
gripping a long broom in his hands.
“Oliver,” said Netherby, and his eyes shone, “this is, I think,
positively the first occasion on which we have flung a genuine
Plantagenet down the office-stairs. It is indeed an emotional
moment.... I am thrilled.”
He made a grab at the throat of Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, who evaded
it with an upward fling of the elbow as he scrambled in a ladylike way
to his patent-leather feet, and put himself into an affected attitude
of defence, his silk hat in one hand and his cane in the other.
“Wh--what are you--do--ing?” he asked plaintively.
Netherby Gomme laughed, eyeing him as might a hungry dog a bone.
“Ay, Noll; take careful aim,” said he, as the exquisite began to back
towards the door. “What a destiny, to bark the shins of the royal house
of Anjou!”
Noll could be seen at the head of the stairway, beyond the open door,
weighing the broom to get the balance and the grip, and swinging it
with careful aim at the place where he calculated would come the shins
of the exquisite Ponsonby.
Netherby Gomme pounced upon the retreating body of Ponsonby Wattles
Ffolliott, and this time he got his fingers inside the exquisite’s
collar.
“Go--away!” gasped Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott.
There was a sharp struggle as Gomme, gripping him by the throat, forced
him backwards to the open doorway, nearly jerking the complaining head
off the narrow shoulders, until the room swam round dazedly in the
revolving addled wits of the miserable man.
“I say,” he gasped--his plaintive voice in pained remonstrance as they
swung round the doorpost--“this is--horribly--sudden!” He groaned.
In his frenzy his gloved hand made a grab at the handle of the door,
which shut upon them with a loud slam.
Julia opened the office-door stealthily, and put forth an anxious
head. She could hear the scuffle outside. She ran into the room in a
state of nervous trepidation:
“How dreadful!” she said; ran back into the office; shut herself in.
A yell of victory from Noll told that the office broom had got home
amongst the shins of the Plantagenets.
Julia opened the door a little way again and peeped nervously into the
office.
She saw the door from the stairway fling open, and Gomme stroll in,
adjusting his coat and smoothing down his hair with his hands; and
through the open door there came the sound of fugitive anxious feet
going nervously before pursuit, rushing frantically down the stairs,
leaping and stumbling. Noll, with the broom poised in his hand, was
leaning over the balustrade, his legs and back exquisitely thrilled,
and as he flung the broom he burst into a cheer, his aim carrying away
the silk hat of the fugitive exquisite below.
“Ripping!” cried Noll, and dived down the stairs after the hat.
Gomme halted, and listened.
The distant sound of feet, rapidly descending the stairs, told of the
recuperative force and staying power of the Plantagenets even in defeat.
There was a loud crash of glass.
Julia started and wrung her hands.
A bland smile came over the face of Netherby Gomme:
“We have repeatedly pointed out to the landlord,” said he, “that the
large glass door at the foot of the stairs is a source of considerable
danger to any person proceeding down the staircase at an accelerated
pace.”
Julia came out from behind the door, and ran to Gomme:
“Netherby,” said she, “it made a horrible noise.” She wrung her hands,
grasped his arm. “I hope to goodness you haven’t dashed that stupid
man’s brains out.”
Netherby put his hand on her shoulder gently:
“It cannot be done, Julia,” said he. “No jury would convict on so weak
a charge.”
The tears sprang into Julia’s eyes:
“I hate to see men quarrel,” said she petulantly; “they always push
each other about instead of reasoning.”
Gomme laughed loud and long:
“Ah, Julia,” said he, tenderly taking her hand in his; “there are some
things beyond reason. Take ourselves. The reasons why a certain little
woman finds reasons for not being reasonable--oh, bother!”
The door shut with a loud slam, and Noll came into the room, trailing
the office broom after him.
“I say, Julia,” he said; “it’s very soothing and nice, but there’s some
one coming.”
He shot the broom into a corner, and vaulted on to his high stool, as
Julia put herself as far from Netherby as the office would allow.
Footsteps came to the door.
CHAPTER III
_Wherein Master Oliver comes to the Conclusion that, to complete the
Dramatic Picture, Greatness should have known the Hair-Shirt and the
Makeshifts of Adversity._
The door swung open, and a handsome woman of about thirty walked into
the dingy room. She was possessed of that calm and the fresh easy
manner and movement that come of generations of women who have exacted
respect from their fellows--and given it.
Netherby Gomme went to meet her, and as she shut the door she held out
her gloved hand to him:
“How are you, Mrs. Baddlesmere?” said he.
“How are you, Netherby?” It was a charming voice that spoke. “Julia,
too! why this thusness?”
Julia blushed and smiled embarrassedly:
Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to the boy:
“Hard at work, Noll?”
Noll shrugged his shoulders, where he sat hunched on his office-stool:
“No, mother, I miss my tobacco,” said he.
Mrs. Baddlesmere laughed lightly.
“Don’t be stupid, Noll. Remember, you promised me--for a fortnight, you
ridiculous child.”
Noll smiled dryly:
“Mother still thinks I am in knickerbockers,” said he. “She wanted me
to wear a sailor hat last summer with ribbons hanging down behind and
_H.M.S. Sardine_ on it in gold letters. Women have the strangest ideas
about men’s clothes--even the married ones.”
Caroline Baddlesmere went to the boy and put her arm through his.
“What an inky state you get into, my dear Noll!” she said.
“Literature is not to be made without the spilling of much ink,” said
Noll.
Caroline Baddlesmere sighed sadly.
“Well, Noll, after to-day you need not trouble with the spilling of
ink,” she said.
“Why, mother?”
Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to Gomme:
“I suppose, Netherby, you know that our days at the old office are
over--that we have failed to make the ends of this paper meet!”
“Mr. Baddlesmere has told me,” he said simply. It struck him painfully,
in spite of the calm of the delicate woman who stood before him, that
she too had been told the worst not very long: “I am afraid,” he added,
“it is a very anxious time for you, Mrs. Baddlesmere.”
“Yes, Netherby; but we must be packing what few things we want
to keep.” Cheerily drawing off her gloves, she added with sudden
seriousness: “I had not realized the position until Anthony told
me a day or two ago, but within twenty-four hours I had settled
everything--even the debts. And we have just taken a top-floor within
half-an-hour of Charing Cross. It’s very airy--and it’s a large
room--and the landlady’s a dear soul.” A twinkle came into her eyes.
“But I’m afraid we must give up our weekly receptions.” Her shoulders
gave the slightest suspicion of a shrug, and a serious catch came into
her voice: “I’m only distressed to think, Netherby, that your loyal
friendship to us has brought you no richer reward than a share in our
disaster----”
There was a heavy step on the landing without. Caroline Baddlesmere
dashed a handkerchief across her eyes, and, opening the editor’s door,
she signed to Julia to slip away with her.
There was a loud knock.
A big, gloomy man entered, flung the door to again dramatically, and
strode solemnly into the room. His lank iron-grey hair, the massive
pale clean-shaven face, the seedy frock-coat tightly buttoned across
his body, his close-fitting much-knee’d trousers, and deliberate
calculated stride, all gave him the air of a decayed actor of the old
school; and his large gesture and full dramatic voice, that gave value
to every word he spoke, heightened the impression; whilst the loose
black cloak that was flung back from his shoulders finished it.
“I am Eustace Lovegood,” he said tragically, and brought his cane down
upon the floor.
“Yes, sir,” said Gomme.
“Thanks, young man,” said he; “I require your confirmation of the
pathetic fact. I dined out last night”--he touched his forehead with
his forefinger wearily--“and my most unprofitable intellect reminds
me of what my bank-book and the neglect of the world have long since
ceased to remind me--that my name is Eustace and Lovegood.... I must
see the Editor.”
“Yes, sir.” Gomme waved him to the chair by the fireplace. “Be seated,
sir.”
Lovegood looked at the forbidding chair, then glowered at him.
“No,” said he, “I will _not_ be seated.”
As Gomme rose, and, hiding a smile behind a cough, moved towards the
editor’s office, the tragic eyes of Eustace Lovegood turned to the boy
Noll, where he sat, still as a statue, on his office-stool:
“Ah, Oliver!” said the big man; and a smile shot into his eyes. “How
is the boy Oliver?” He was moving towards Noll when the office-door
opened, and Caroline, followed by the others, entered the room.
“Hah, Caroline--a pleasant surprise indeed!”
He took off his hat with the grand air, and swept her a low bow. He
strode to her, and, raising her hand to his lips, kissed her white
fingers.
“What! you too, Miss Julia? I am your servant.”
They all smiled affectionately--he was obviously an old friend.
As his voice ceased there was a brisk step on the landing outside--a
sharp knock--and the door flew open. A little man with a big moustache
entered fussily, on jerky restless feet, and glanced sharply round the
room; he was best known as a minor critic--one of those men who condemn
everything they do not understand:
“How do, Mrs. Baddlesmere?” he said, with a harsh voice and nervous
manner.
His eyes glanced away to Julia, to whom he nodded:
“How do, Miss Julia?”
His glance jumped to Noll where he sat observant, chin in palms, on the
high office-chair:
“How do, Master Noll?”
The boy nodded:
“You’ve forgotten your hat, Fosse,” said he.
The fussy little man snapped off his hat:
“So I have--so I have!” he yapped.
Eustace Lovegood took three heavy paces towards Gomme, and said, with a
black frown, in a confidential aside:
“Faugh! that dreadful fussy little man of rude health--and the scarlet
voice!”
Mr. Fosse turned at the grumbled bass:
“How do, Lovegood?” said he.
“Thanks,” said Lovegood solemnly--“I don’t.”
And he added in growled aside to Netherby Gomme:
“I wish this person would not be familiar with my health.”
Mr. Fosse skipped nervously towards Caroline Baddlesmere:
“Eh--eh! Well, Mrs. Baddlesmere; and how’s the book?”
Caroline Baddlesmere’s shoulders gave the slightest possible shrug:
“My book is dead, Mr. Fosse.”
Fosse folded his arms:
“Precisely,” said he. “Honestly, it lacked the vital element of
style.” He blew out his narrow little chest--he had the floor. “You
have tragedy--pathos--and--er, yes--comedy. Yes, you have a certain
amount of humour--a marvellous amount, indeed, for a woman, if you will
excuse my saying so. Yet, comedy but raises a laugh”--he shrugged his
little shoulders--“and there you are!... Tragedy but appeals to the
emotions--draws a tear”--he shrugged his little shoulders again--“and
there you are!... But Style is independent of laughter or tears.
Tragedy----”
“Pish!” pshawed Eustace Lovegood. He stepped a pace into the room:
“Tragedy!” he roared scornfully, glaring at the fussy minor critic
before him; and even the light of the conceited little Egoism seemed
to flicker out, blown aside by the big man’s contempt: “Tragedy is the
mere melodrama of life--the shedding of blood but the indecent accident
of death.... It is comedy, the expression of the joy of living, that is
worthy the serious attention of genius.” He rose on his toes and made
an elephantine gesture of sending off butterflies into the air. “The
exquisite little _mot_--the fairy fabric of a dainty paradox--the swift
epigram! Think of it--the rapture of the exquisite agony that is in the
elaborate workmanship to create the spontaneous repartee!”
Mr. Fosse was not quite sure whether he was being chaffed. He was one
of those men so wanting in humour that he accused the humorous of
lacking humour. He knew that his thin voice sank to insignificance in
the deep thunder of this big man.
“Er--yes. N’yes,” he said--and glanced uneasily at the others. Gomme’s
face was a stolid impenetrable mask.
Fosse skipped over to Gomme, and seizing him by the coat-lapel he said
nervously:
“Oh--ah--Mr. Gomme----”
Eustace Lovegood snorted and strolled away to where Caroline stood.
Fosse blinked uncomfortably at Gomme.
“Ah--as a matter of fact--I came on business,” said he. His harsh jerky
voice dropped into confidential whisper. “Might I beg of you to put in
a little paragraph about my coming novel?”
Gomme nodded.
The little critic coughed:
“If--you could hint--just _hint_ that it is somewhat daringly original!
I don’t even mind if you hint that it is rather--sinful--with--er--just
a little suggestion that I am the English Maupassant, eh!... I can
assure you,” he added, touching Gomme’s arm, “I can _assure_ you that
Thrumsby Burrage of _The Discriminator_ said so at dinner last night.”
Netherby Gomme coughed:
“I did not know that Thrumsby Burrage drank,” said he.
“Does he? Indeed! Very sad!” The fussy little man’s foxy eyes turned
inwards, searching through his quick weasel intelligence to discover
the connection, but failed: “Very sad indeed! Genius is nearly always
wanting in the moral attributes.... But to return--if you would suggest
that my work contains that--er--that--er----”
Netherby Gomme nodded:
“That combination of religion and immorality which is so alluring
to the British public in a work of art,” said he--“yes, I _quite_
understand.”
Fosse roused from his self-concentration:
“N’yes,” said he--“but perhaps if I----”
“Certainly, Mr. Fosse; I was about to suggest that you should write it
yourself; and we’ll whip it into shape----”
“Delighted, my dear fellow, delighted!” The fussy little man’s fussy
little feet began to shuffle with eagerness; he skipped towards Gomme’s
desk.
Gomme put himself in his way:
“If you would send it by post, please, Mr. Fosse! Good-evening!”
Fosse came to a halt:
“Oh--a moment!”
He took a pinch of Gomme’s coat-sleeve:
“Y’know the whole town’s as hot over this new humorist, the fellow
that wrote _The Tragedy of the Ridiculous_, as they were over Mrs.
Baddlesmere a few years ago; but, y’know, they’re overdoing it--they’re
overdoing it. There’s bound to be reaction. So I’ve just written a
scalding little thing about it.”
Gomme’s eyes twinkled:
“But----”
Fosse tugged impatiently at his sleeve:
“Y’know, it doesn’t do to go with the crowd. Art is only for the elect.
The popular verdict _must_ be vulgar----”
Noll, watching from his high perch on the office-stool, raised his
voice:
“Now, that’s curious, Fosse,” said he--“for he was here only this
morning--and _he_ was talking about _you_.”
Fosse was intensely interested:
“Indeed!” said he--“how very interesting! May I ask what he said?”
“Well, you know, it was a private conversation--I don’t quite exactly
like to say----”
“It will go no farther--go no farther,” persisted Fosse, on the tip-toe
of eagerness.
“Well, he said you ought to chuck literature and try
window-cleaning----”
Lovegood’s deep chuckle echoed about the room, and Caroline Baddlesmere
reprovingly said:
“Noll!”
The little man’s face became scarlet; then went white. He raised
himself on his little high heels as far as his full rigidity of back
and limb and pride would take him, and, tilting his nose in the air:
“Puppy!” he snorted, and walked angrily out of the office.
Julia went and scolded Noll, who hugged her.
Lovegood turned to Caroline Baddlesmere, and the laughter went out of
his eyes:
“Caroline,” said he, “I have heard rumours of the disaster impending
here--Anthony told me only this morning.”
“Yes, Eustace. I’ve gone quite out of the fashion--just like yourself.
But we must not whimper when the days are black.”
“It grieves me,” said the big man sadly.... “You are not a good subject
for the boiled potato--the homely bun.”
“Nonsense, Eustace; we were all happy enough in the old Paris
days--before I made my mark with the book.”
Eustace Lovegood’s eyes turned into the past. “Ah, the Paris days!”
said he, and fell into reverie.... “That reminds me,” he added after
awhile. “Last night, as I supped under the stars at an itinerant
barrow, regaling myself on a wondrous baked potato, a wandering
musician splitting the air with peevish song in the murk of the London
night, like some lost soul from the damned--most dramatic situation--a
note of tragedy in the blackness of the world----” His mind wandered
off into his thoughts, and he stood for awhile gazing into the night
that was gone, forgetful of all that stood about him.
“Well, Eustace!”
The big man’s consciousness came back to his body with a start and he
took up his tale again: “A little woman in seedy clothes, a tattered
shadow, flitted out of the other shadows of the lamp-lit night, and
touched me on the arm. She wanted money.... It was the husk--the dusty
shabby husk--of little Kate Ormsby, whose singing had some vogue a few
years ago----”
“Kate Ormsby?--who was engaged to poor drunken Andrew Blotte?” she
asked hoarsely.
“Ah, but remember, Caroline, he did not drink when he was engaged to
Kate Ormsby. Blotte was the most brilliant in promise of us all.... All
_that_ began when Paul Pangbutt took her away from him----”
“But--why didn’t you send her to me?”
Caroline suddenly flushed embarrassedly, and added with a dry laugh:
“Ah--I forgot.”
She traced her confusion with her fingers on the palm of her slender
hand.
Lovegood went on dreamily:
“Since Paul Pangbutt threw her over in Paris, like one of his discarded
painting-rags, she has steadily gone down hill.... She wanted to know
if I had seen Paul since he returned from his tour of the European
courts and had set up his big studio in Kensington.” He shrugged his
huge shoulders. “But I told her that the great did not much care about
associating with me--that most of those that once knew my Christian
name have forgotten even my surname.”
Caroline nodded:
“Kate Ormsby never had imagination,” said she--“she does not realize
how greatness crowds out the memory.”
Lovegood smiled sadly:
“She sings for money at tavern doors now,” he said--“and she was such a
dainty creature!”
“Yes--I suppose you gave her your last half-crown, Eustace!”
The big man put out a deprecating hand:
“You exaggerate, Caroline; I lent her a florin----”
She nodded:
“And so there was no lunch to day--and will be no dinner!”
“Pray do not exaggerate, Caroline. I wish you would not exaggerate....
I shall not regale at a restaurant--that is all.... Look at the
potentiality of satisfaction in the homely bun!... As a matter of fact,
I think the moderns eat too much flesh----”
“Tut!” said Caroline Baddlesmere--“don’t make excuses to your own
conscience.... But you want to say something, Eustace--I know by the
way you are fiddling with other subjects. Do say it like a good fellow.”
Lovegood coughed:
“Yes--the fact is--I--have--in my room--an old chippendale
writing-table. It belonged to an eighteenth-century ancestor who wrote
the most execrable verse. You remember the modest piece of furniture?”
A twinkle shot into Caroline’s eyes:
“Well, since you press the question, Eustace, there _is_ a piece of
furniture in your room.”
“It is grown somewhat shabby,” he resumed--“and a friend of mine who
has long had a great fancy for it----”
“Yes,” said Caroline slyly--“what was your friend’s name, did you say?”
“Oh--ah--yes--his name is Gordon.”
Caroline nodded:
“Yes,” said she--“I suspected it was your uncle, Eustace--his Christian
name is, I think, Isaac.”
The big man chuckled:
“Do you know, now I come to think of it, his Christian name _is_
Isaac,” he said.... “He has long had a fancy for it. I called in just
now as I passed, and told him he might have it.... It will give me more
room----”
“Oh, yes--it _will_ give you more room,” said Caroline dryly. “Go on,
Eustace.”
“Yes,” said he--“I detest to feel cramped. And I thought--as an old
friend--I might be permitted to suggest that--as you might want a
little loose cash on changing houses----”
Caroline Baddlesmere stamped her foot:
“I am exceedingly angry with you, Eustace. You had no right to sell an
heirloom,” she said furiously. “Your room is a positive disgrace of
emptiness as it is.” She made an effort to keep her voice steady....
“It is quite bare and homeless enough to make me miserable every time I
think of it.”
Lovegood touched her arm:
“Well, it’s done now,” he said pathetically--“and unless you take the
money I don’t quite see how I am to proceed in the matter--without
thwarting my original intention----” he added fatuously.
“I shall go and have the whole bargain cancelled,” she said.
“Hush! Caroline; I don’t think it would be quite a proper place for a
gentlewoman to be seen in--upon my word----”
“Who is the pawnbroker?” she asked bluntly.
Lovegood coughed:
“Caroline, I do not think I deserve this unkindness. He is a collector
of second-hand oddities. As a matter of fact, I only lent it.”
Caroline tried to keep back the tears:
“You are a ridiculous good fellow,” she said; “but you do exasperate
me.... What on earth are you going to write upon?”
Lovegood looked relieved:
“I wrote for an hour in bed this morning,” he said. “It was an
intellectual treat. I shall always compose the finer flights of my
imagination in bed in future.”
Caroline laughed, with a sob in the laugh, and stroked the big fellow’s
sleeve affectionately:
“No, Eustace--I cannot accept it, old friend.” She dashed the
handkerchief to her eyes, and added airily: “Well, well--it’s really
very serious--I shall have to wear shabby gowns again. Hush!”
She signed for silence.
They all listened.
There was a shuffling footstep on the landing, and a ridiculous and
quavering attempt at a drinking song. The door was flung open and a
man, giddy with strong liquors, lurched into the room.
He came to an unsteady standstill, blinked at them all, and solemnly
took off his hat.
“My God!” muttered Caroline Baddlesmere--“it’s Andrew Blotte!”
“Here’s poor Mr. Andrew Blotte,” said Julia in a frightened whisper to
Noll.
“Hullo, Mr. Blotte!” cried Noll from his high perch--“we’ve just been
talking about you.”
The drunken man sniggered:
“Talk of a nightmare--and you hear it hiccup!” said he.
But the effort at merriment upset his balance, and he made at a rolling
gait for the desk, gripped at it to steady himself, and turning himself
very carefully so as to avoid confusing his feet, he sat himself down
against the edge of it.
His face became a bland smile.
His was a splendid head. From the square brow the strong hair sprang
like a lion’s mane, and the fine massive head was set on the shoulders
in a way that gave a sense of forcefulness in the man. But the
once-handsome features were now heavy with drink, their beautiful form
was being scarred deep with harsh lines, and the hint of beauty was
only a haunting shadow of the thing that had once been. His chin and
jowls were sprinkled with a grizzled growth of beard a couple of days
old.
He waved his hand round the room, and brought it with a strong
masterful grip upon the desk on which he leaned.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, somewhat shame-facedly--“I
had only looked for Anthony Baddlesmere--to find out his new
address--but the fact is----” He looked slowly round the room, and his
eyes lighted up as he recognised Caroline: “Ah, Caroline!--just the
person I would have wished to see. You’ll excuse me maintaining a firm
position--here--but the fact is--I’m far from sober.”
“Ah, Andrew!” she said, coming to his side.
“Yes, Caroline--I’ve been watching the almonds bloom--I have
been walking on air--in realms where there is no solid, base,
nor tangible reality. Tush! And you would call me--not sober!...
Most--ridiculous--prejudice!... Why should people of taste be sober,
when by tasting what tastes well they may walk on air? Such a strange
convention!... Consider the position: You stroll down the filthy Strand
in muddied boots, all the shabby world hurrying by, thinking sordidly
of money and greynesses--or crawling along with hunger in their eyes
under the miserable gas-lamps.... Sip the nectar of the gods, commune
with Bacchus, and you are in a street of the world of dreams--you are
a-riot--you walk on the wind--the trees are all in bloom--faces are
laughing at you--the very cast-iron lamps come to greet you--the air is
full of music--you sing--everyone sings!... Tush! you are a god.”
“Ah, Andrew--when vice becomes a virtue, virtue seems but a feeble
vice.”
Andrew Blotte laughed:
“It’s your trick, Caroline,” he said airily; and added, in a
thick-voiced confidential aside, glancing round the room with drunken
caution:
“It’s rather a confidential matter, Caroline--but--we seem to be
amongst friends. So I suppose it’s all right. We’re amongst intimates,
eh? Good! All right.”
He whistled a refrain gallingly out of tune.
“Andrew!--Andrew----!” She put her white hand on his arm.
Andrew Blotte patted the slender fingers:
“Now don’t go wasting shame on me, Caroline. The fact is--nobody ever
expects me to be in anything but a shameful condition. Think what a
disappointment I must be when I am sober! What more embarrassing to a
sober community than the return of the prodigal son?”... He laughed
sadly, then seriousness came back to him. “But what I want to say is
this: I hear you want money.... Well, I can lend you a loan.... I
can’t get it to-day because--well, you see, it’s rather a ridiculous
position--the fact is, I’m not quite aggressively sober--and my
landlady has strict orders not to give me any money unless I am able
to count a handful of small change without leaning for support on a
physical basis.... Rather acute, I think--isn’t it?... But I’ll make a
note of it for to-morrow. I’ll tie a knot on my handkerchief--hic----”
(He fumbled for his handkerchief with drunken awkwardness.) “No!--_you_
tie a knot on my handkerchief.”
He held it out, and she took it to humour the poor fellow.
“Andrew,” she said, “do go and rest awhile in Anthony’s room. There’s a
comfortable armchair for you.”
“No,” he said peevishly, “I don’t want to rest. I’m always resting.
Andrew Blotte is tired of Andrew Blotte....” His mood suddenly changed;
a light came into his eyes: “Yes,” said he, “I will promise to rest--if
you’ll promise to take my loan.”
Caroline shook her head.
Lovegood went over to him:
“Come, Blotte,” said he.
Andrew Blotte shook his head:
“No,” said he. “I mustn’t rest.... I’ve promised to take a poem before
gaslight to the editor of that new literary review--forget his name,
but his address is on one of my cuffs--somewhere....” He chuckled,
as at some reminiscence: “He said he wanted a sonnet of two or three
pages or so, but I told him it couldn’t be done--even Will Shakespeare
couldn’t do it.... But he wasn’t to be put off.” He dug Lovegood in his
tightly buttoned ribs: “He said I _might choose my own subject_!... But
I told him--hic--he must mean a madr’gal.... We became quite friendly.
For an illiterate person he was almost poetical. He confessed he had
known love. Even editors have not always been bald. But--it is time to
come and see the almonds bloom.”
He took Lovegood’s arm and made for the door. As they strode out
together he turned and kissed his fingers to them all.
Caroline followed them to the head of the stairs to see them depart.
Julia slipped anxiously across the room to Netherby Gomme:
“Netherby, what is this? Is it all really true?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Netherby?” The tears sprang into her eyes.
“I guessed what I guessed, Julia; but I have only known to-day.”
“Where are they going to live?”
Netherby Gomme smiled sadly:
“Well--Mrs. Baddlesmere has taken what is called by the house-agents
the _spacious, well-lit, and airy upper floor of an imposing family
mansion in the West End_.... _We_ should call it an attic in
Hammersmith.”
Noll, who had slid down from his office-stool, crept up to Julia:
“I say, Julia,” said he, “things seem a bit sour, don’t they?... I
suppose you and Netherby will be wanting to get married, too, and all
that sort of tomfoolery--and I had hoped to have coloured a meerschaum
pipe for him as a wedding-present. I did begin one, but it made me so
jolly sick. I have started a sailor on it now. Awfully ripping chap!
Said he didn’t mind doing it for half-a-crown if I supplied the ’baccy.
He’s a terrific clever fellow--he can spit fifteen feet! I measured
it.... I was very lucky to get him”--he sighed heavily--“but I don’t
see how the deuce I shall pay him for the job now.”
Julia put her hand on Noll’s shoulder:
“You are such a sadly vulgar boy at times, Noll,” she said. She dabbed
her eyes with her handkerchief.
“What are you sniffing about, Julia?” he asked, knitting his brows.
“The mother has taken a jolly nice top-floor, _I_ can tell you. One of
the rooms is whopping big. We are going to do our own cooking--on such
a rummy little stove. It’ll be a tremendous lark, won’t it? Roof slopes
like a hen-roost.... I once poached an egg in the lid of a biscuit-tin
over two candles--Jeroosalem! it _did_ take a time--but it _was_ an
egg--it never quite got out of the wollopy condition, I don’t know
why--and it burst half-way through the business--I think I kept jogging
it up too often with a pencil to see if it were stiffening. But it was
the most eggy egg I ever tasted.”
Julia laughed lightly to smother a sob:
“You are a ridiculous boy, Noll,” she said.
Noll held her out at arms’ length and looked at her keenly:
“What _are_ you sniffing about, Julia? Anyone been annoying you?”
Caroline had stolen back to the room. She walked over to Julia and put
her hand on her shoulder:
“It’s all right, Julia,” she said gently--“no one will be any the worse
for it. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“Of course,” said the boy Noll, straddling his legs and peering at the
coming years--“every great man begins in an attic.”
CHAPTER IV
_Wherein it would appear that the most respectable Stucco Architecture
may be but a Screen for Gnawing Secrets_
The boy Noll shut the door that gave on to the narrow landing from
the two large attics which were now his home, pushed back the silk
hat on his head, and thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets,
and whistling an air, he glanced up at the skylight above him to see
whether the weather held.
He tramped slowly down a few steps of the top flight of carpetless
stairs that proclaim the attic heights, and halted aimlessly.
It was more than vaguely borne in upon him that a great change had come
over his life since, a month ago, he had taken down his prints from the
walls of his empty home, and, with them tucked in a bundle under his
arm, had walked into the twilight, trudging it on foot after the cart
that contained the few pieces of furniture and such belongings as had
not been sold, and, at the solemn journey’s end, skipping up three or
four whitened steps, had entered the doors of this stucco well-to-do
house that was let in apartments, standing, one of a row of like
houses, glued together along the length of a long winding street--a
“street with a good address,” the advertisement had it.
The cushioned and unthinking ease of childhood was gone, buried in that
empty house he had left behind him--the door was shut on that for ever.
The rougher, hardier period of boyhood was upon him.
It now came to the boy, who had never even wondered where everything
came from, that each such everything had always had to be won by the
sweat of toil. He had wondered more than once why that for which he
had asked had sometimes been refused. But he now realized that the
lucky-bag from which childhood gets all it wants was empty--sold at
a tap of the hammer with the other things in that dead house, by an
auctioneer fellow--gone--vanished.
He tramped down some half-dozen bare board steps that resounded to his
boots, and halted again.
He was beginning to see that the fuel of life was not to be had for
the asking. His mother sitting the livelong day and far into the night
in that big attic he had just left--the one with his little bed in the
corner of it, the large room that served as general sitting-room by
day, his bed with coloured covering becoming in the daylight a couch
therein--his mother sitting there writing, with absent eyes fixed on
her distant purpose, brought into hard reality the harder fact that
money had to be earned--that it did not come from Somewhere for the
beckoning. His father’s long absences, and his boots muddied with long
trudges, were significant and unspoken about, hinting of mysteries he
could not wholly fathom--nor was the serious gaze of the handsome face
as his father sat at night and stared at the stove less troubling to
the boy.
He tramped down another step or two.
It bothered him that he could not help. He knew he must grow into youth
before his hand could win this wage that all the world was hurrying
after.
He tramped down a few more steps.
For one thing he felt glad. He had thought it a bore when his mother
had made out a scheme of reading for him, making him give his morning
and a couple of hours of the afternoon to a course of English
literature and history, and a promise to keep up his mathematics; but,
as a matter of fact, and to his intense surprise, he was enjoying it.
He tramped down a couple of steps.
It was so like the mother to have clung to her books when she sold even
her silks and satins!
He tramped down another step.
He wondered why there was no carpet to the attic flight. He wondered
who lived in the rooms on each of these four landings below. That Major
Modeyne, who lived on this one below them, seemed such a pleasant old
fellow--it was a great pity he came in so late and so often the worse
for liquor.... But he was mighty funny over it. He wondered if he felt
as funny as he looked. It seemed such an odd thing to fill one’s self
with strong liquors until one glugged hiccuping and ran over!
He tramped down several steps.
The boy had always thought of himself as being a part of a vague body
of people called gentlefolk--a people who were always provided for from
some gentlemanly source of livelihood which demanded clean hands and
a sense of duty and no manual labour or a shop, quite a species apart
from the mere middle-class world, and for whom the working classes
provided the comforts of life, cleaning their boots and doing them
service. Tradesmen and the labouring class, of course, were bound to
earn a livelihood--a thing which he had always felt, without being
expressly told so, to be rather a vulgar thing to do; although, of
course, it was a very good thing for that sort of people.
As he reached the bottom of the uncarpeted stair, and was about to step
on to the drugget of the landing, a door opened, and there came out on
to the landing a child of about twelve.
She shook back the nut-brown hair from her clear grey eyes and gazed
defiantly at Noll:
“You’re a fool!” she said.
Noll took off his hat, sat down on the bottom step, put his chin in his
hands, and gazed at her:
“You’re very pretty,” he said.
“I didn’t say you were an impudent fool,” she said hotly--“I meant a
common, vulgar tomfool.”
Noll nodded.
The dainty slender girl before him gazed at him sternly:
“It was you that put all the water-cans about the landing, and the
water-jugs on the stairs, for my father to fall amongst when”--she
hesitated and flushed angrily--“when he came back late last night.”
Noll nodded:
“Yes,” said he--“and he fell amongst them.” He chuckled. “I watched
him over the rail. It was moonlight up here. He came crawling up the
stairs in the dark, saying Shush! to himself if a board creaked, and
carrying his boots in his hand so as not to wake the landlady--and when
he got on to this landing he gave a monstrous hiccup that jolly nearly
pulled him off his feet, and he tripped up amongst the cans--away went
his boots, and fell in the hall below. D’you know, I shall never play
a lark on your father again--he’s such a gentleman. Most people would
have sworn themselves putrid, but he just rubbed his shins and elbows,
sat up in the moonlight, and said with a hiccup: ‘_What a prodigious
number of stars there are at the north pole! Shakespeare has cracked
every nut--when beggars die, says he, there are no comets seen, the
heavens themselves blaze forth the fall of the landed gentry.... I did
not know all heaven held so many, various, multitudinous, and vast
prodigious stars!_’”
The girl waited grimly until he had done:
“It was you who made a booby-trap in his bed so that he could not get
into it?”
Noll nodded:
“Yes,” said he; “he looked jolly comic under the bed; he got under--he
must have slept there.”
“That’s just where you are mistaken,” said the child with a sneer. “I
never go to bed until my father is asleep. I got him out.... I suppose
you thought you were funny!”
Noll nodded:
“Yes,” he said; “I did, last night. But I don’t now. I think I was a
cad.”
“So do I,” she said....
Noll sat for awhile and gazed at her.
He got up and held out his hand sheepishly:
“Shake hands,” said he; “I apologize. It’s my birthday to-day.”
Betty considered.
She hesitated--then put out a delicate thin hand:
“What age are you?” she asked.
“Fourteen,” said Noll.
“I shall be twelve to-morrow,” she said.
“Then let’s keep it now,” said Noll. “I’m going to see a splendid
fellow, a friend of mine--he’s a prodigious clever fellow--he’s written
a book.”
The child’s eyes glittered:
“Has he?” she asked.
“Yes, rather. Come and see him too.”
“All right,” she said; “but come in and have tea first, and I’ll put on
my hat and jacket. We shan’t be very late out, shall we?”
“I’ll bring you back the moment you like,” said Noll. “We only have
high tea in the evenings now, so my people don’t mind my being late to
an hour or so; they know I’m with Netherby. But we’ll be back sharp,
and you can come to tea with us, eh? I’d like to introduce you to my
mother.”
The child nodded, and led the way into the Major’s quarters.
Noll, with the boy’s quick vision, took in a first picture of the
little lady’s surroundings that never left him.
It was a large and airy room, furnished within the absolute limits of
necessity. In a corner by a door stood the child’s little white bed,
but it required more imagination than was given to the ordinary to call
up the image of a small child that stood every night listening at that
other door to hear whether her father’s breathing were heavy enough for
sleep; to call up the vision of the slight figure that nightly opened
that same door with stealthy care to make sure of the candle being out,
and all danger of fire set far from the reach of awkward drunken hands;
it demanded a keener ear than his to hear the last sigh of the child as
she slipped into her bed in the small hours of the night and lay down
to take her long-delayed rest in that sleep that should have sealed her
eyes for hours, and had already held the rest of the world for a half
of the night.
The dainty little figure that now stood before the mirror, giving to
her hat just that touch which makes or mars the adornment of women,
showed no peevish rebellion against, nor carping discontent with, the
sordid burden of life that had been thrust upon her far too young and
sadly thin little shoulders. She might indeed have gone, as she stood,
to Court, and withal taught the ladies of fashion there assembled more
than something of the queenly attitude.
The atmosphere of the child it was that took the sense of emptiness
from the empty room. The little table that stood before the fireplace,
with a napkin spread upon it for tablecloth--it had been washed by
her small hands--and the coarse tea-things set out upon it: these
things and the kettle that bubbled on the hob had quite evidently been
deserted by the child when she marched out to her attack in the passage.
Noll now proceeded to make the tea at her bidding--she giving him
orders as she gazed into the mirror, in which she commanded a view of
the room.
The lad’s eyes wandered over the walls, which were bare enough to bring
his quick attention to rest on the picture of a man in uniform that
hungover the mantel--the picture of handsome Cornelius Mauduit Modeyne
as he had been when he married the mild beauty with the tragic eyes
that dreamed out of the picture hanging pendant to his, and to whom
the child bore more than a little likeness. Had the pictures been
inspired with the history of these lives, they would have revealed the
early death of the brooding beauty in the birth of the small child
whose hands were now the only hands that tended these two miniatures
with the caressing touch of affection--the man’s picture would have
continued the confidence, and told of handsome Corney Modeyne’s seeking
relief from loneliness in the mad lees of the bottle--it would have
whispered, too, of the meeting of his old comrades in his room to tell
him he must slip quietly out of his old regiment--of his retirement
with a step of rank--of the two years of his living upon his relations
until they grew first weary, then exasperated, then hostile towards
him, and the always rather silent child that flushed at all their harsh
thrusts at her easy-going father--and of his final collapse as that
mysterious personage who is an urgent daily “something in the city.” It
would have revealed what was hidden even from the buzzing gossips of
the Street with the Good Address--that Major Cornelius Mauduit Modeyne,
when he sallied out at the breakfast hour with a swaggering air, in
well-groomed attire, polished boots, and shining hat, as soon as he
could be got out of bed by the silent child who guarded all his secrets
that could be hid, owed his good care to those self-same small hands.
As it would also have revealed that, in spite of all shame, the dainty
hands that did these things and had these cares, touched everything
that had to do with this foolish sinning man with a fierce affection.
Indeed, there is more in noble tradition than in blood. The battle-cry
of the ancient Modeynes had been Loyalty.
Modeyne came of old aristocratic Catholic stock, but he had long ceased
to attend his church; and the image, a very beautiful image of the Mary
and Child, that stood upon his mantel was the sole relic of his old
beliefs--even it did not stand there from any vague sentiment towards
his church; indeed, it had not gone to the pawnbroker as much from
negligence as from religious bias.
The child would sing to herself at times the beautiful lines of the
_Ave Maria_ that Gounod has set to Bach’s Fugue, just as she would lilt
a nursery rhyme; but the learning of it was an early reminiscence of
her father in his cups, moved to song. Her prayers, on going to bed
at night, were just a part of her duty in putting off her clothes--it
warmed and coloured the child’s imagination, was the full stop to her
day, but it was quite aloof from the conduct of the world. From Modeyne
the child had inherited remarkable charm of manner as well as much of
her dainty delicacy....
The hat and jacket being arranged to her taste, the child went and sat
down beside Noll, and presided over the hospitalities. She apologized
for the thickness of the bread and butter, but she said it was her last
meal of the day, and she was always hungry for it. She remembered she
had some cake, and tripped off to the cupboard; but her face fell when
she took the fragment out of its carefully enwrapping silver-paper.
“I got it nearly a month ago--for my father’s birthday,” she said
simply. “I’m afraid it’s gone dry.”
“I like it all rubbly best,” said Noll--“it tastes so nutty.” He
deceived the child into a smile. In any case he was in the caterpillar
stage of youth.
They ate it between them.
“It _is_ rather nutty,” she said. “I never noticed that before.”
Childhood takes the world for granted.
As the two went cheerily down the stairs and out into the street,
the boy’s heart lightened; the gnawing sense of loneliness that had
oppressed him fell from him, and the stucco street turned to a way of
palaces in the grey of the twilight.
CHAPTER V
_Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne is introduced to the Study of Nature_
As they stood on the doorstep, waiting for the answer to their ring at
Netherby Gomme’s bell, Betty broke a pensive silence:
“I have never spoken to an author,” she said.
She had not imagined the spring of literature as running in so dingy a
well.
Noll pshawed airily:
“I’ve known a lot,” said he. “They’re just like everybody else, except
when they think they are not--and then they are beastly tedious.”
The door was opened by the grim old lady who was mother to Netherby
Gomme. Her, Noll saluted cheerily. The old lady shook hands with him
and darted a jealous look at the girl.
Noll explained:
“I have brought a friend of mine,” said he--“Miss Betty Modeyne.” The
old lady bowed stiffly to the child.
Noll took off his hat:
“I suppose Netherby is in?” he said, calmly walking into the passage;
and the child followed him.
The old lady shut the outer door:
“Yes,” she said--“he’s about finished work by this, I think.”
“Don’t you trouble to come up, Mrs. Gomme,” said Noll airily, opening
the sitting-room door with elaborate formality for the old lady; “I
know the way up, don’t I?”
She smiled. The light suddenly snapped out of her shrewd eyes
again--she glanced sharply at the girl:
“I suppose,” said she, “the little lady will remain with me?”
Noll laughed:
“Oh no; she wants to see a great writer in his workshop,” he said; and
the jealousy went out of the old lady’s eyes. She nodded and smiled as
she withdrew to her chair by the fire.
The youngsters made a move for the heights.
Noll, when he had shut the old lady’s door, said to Betty in a whisper:
“That’s her bedroom at the back.”
They mounted the stairs.
“She lets the other floors,” added Noll, as they passed shut doors.
“Netherby’s room is right at the top....”
Netherby Gomme made his visitors welcome. The talk was soon rattling at
a pace.
He suddenly missed from her place the dainty little figure, and,
looking up, he found that she was making a round of the attic, his
beloved workshop. The child had slipped off to peer at the prints
which hung tacked on to the walls on squares of stiff brown paper--the
overflow from Noll’s collection. They added a delightful touch of
beauty to the dingy place, and were in splendid sombre harmony with the
books, themselves amongst the most decorative of all ornaments--which
here held possession of every nook and cranny, and overflowed every
shelf.
Netherby Gomme went and lit a candle, holding it for her that she might
see the better.
“What does that say to you?” he asked the solemn child. She was gazing
intently at Timothy Cole’s exquisite wood engraving of Millet’s “Sower.”
“It says--no, it _sings_ to me,” she said, trying with deliberate
searching to find the absolute word, as a young thrush tries its notes;
and the effort of her intellect to express the right hair’s-breadth
value touched Gomme’s instincts and made the art leap within him. He
nodded. The child faced the picture, and went on haltingly:
“It sings to me of---- It is a man walking in a furrow--and all the
earth seems to be whispering--in a sort of hush--as if live things
were coming out of the silence. Twilight is far more full of spirits
than any other time--things that beckon and tell secrets. The dusk is
always filled with whispers, as if sweet young things were being born,
and poor dying things were glad to be going to sleep.... That’s the
sower--he walks along and sows. And he is solemn, because he knows
that all that he flings on the dark earth will spring in the dusk, and
become alive.”
Netherby stroked her head:
“Betty,” said he, “do you think the artist who painted that picture
meant you to feel all that?”
“Didn’t he?” she asked simply. She looked at it again with serious
grey eyes. She shook her head doggedly. “No; that isn’t just a man
in a field. Sometimes pictures look as if they had been painted just
because the painter wanted to show how cleverly he could draw an eye or
an ear or a bootlace; but, look! this sower has not got any of these
things, yet somehow they are there--they seem to come in as one looks.
The sowing in the twilight is the thing. I can hear the big clumsy man
walking with long strides, his heavy footfall all muffled in the brown
earth. I can see it and hear it and smell it----”
The child ceased speaking, at a loss to explain, her little brows knit
as she stood searching for expression.
The boy Noll stood at gaze, wondering.
Netherby Gomme said not a word.
The girl sighed:
“Doesn’t it say that to you?” she asked, looking up at the big awkward
fellow, whose intent face, lit by the candle-light, showed large eyes
fixed on some distant thought.
He came back to earth:
“Yes, Betty,” said he--“something like that. That is one of the world’s
masterpieces.”
“Masterpiece.” The child repeated the word lovingly--“I like that
word--masterpiece.”
She went to the next print. It was the wondrous little wood-engraving
of the vision as seen by the youthful Holman Hunt of The Lady of
Shalott when the mirror cracks from side to side and the web on the
loom flies wide, for her eyes have seen unheeding Lancelot.
The child looked at it for a long while:
“I think I know what that means,” she said--“the lady has been weaving
something, and it has all got tangled about her, and she can’t undo the
knots.”
She sighed:
“It is so hard to undo the knots,” she said.
Netherby Gomme coughed:
“Have you ever heard the ballad of _The Lady of Shalott_, Betty?” he
asked.
The child shook her dainty head.
“Sit down in a cosy chair and I’ll read it to you,” he said. And he set
his armchair for her, seating himself by his lamp.
He took up a battered, dog-eared volume of Tennyson and read the
immortal ballad, and Betty, to the haunting music of the verse, strayed
into the meads by Camelot, and, lingering by the river’s brink, she
listened with the awed reapers amongst the bearded barley, watching
the heavy barges glide by until there came wending past that most
tragic barge of all that floated down to the hushed death-song of the
broken-hearted faery Lady of Shalott.
Netherby Gomme closed the book gently, and watched the child.
Her eyes were full of tears:
“But--but why did she die?” she asked eagerly.
“She loved what could not give her love,” he said.
The child nodded her head:
“I think I understand,” she said.
The child sat silent for a long while. Then she took the lighted candle
and went and peered at the little design. She came back to the table,
and put down the candle upon it:
“I like the way that lady’s head is placed right up against the top of
the picture,” she said--“as if she felt something were crushing her
down....” She put her small hands on her dainty head--“crushing and
crushing her down--and she can’t get away from it, because--it’s all
tangled--tangled--tangled. And it won’t come right.... It always feels
just like that.”
“Good God!” said Netherby Gomme hoarsely--“has this child begun to
suffer already?”
The child went to his knee and gazed at him:
“Your eyes are full of tears,” she said.
He blew his nose noisily:
“You must not take my tears too seriously, Betty,” said he--“I am a
humorist.”
“But Mr.----”
“No, no, Betty--no misters, please, between us here--plain Netherby,”
he corrected her.
“But, Netherby,” she said simply, “I thought everyone had known
suffering.”
“No, thank God,” said he.
“Only women?” she asked.
“No--it isn’t a matter of man or woman. Only God’s aristocracy are
crucified,” he said. “Only a few suffer so.”
She looked into the beyond; a smile ran round the serious little lips:
“I _am_ glad to hear that,” she said.
And she added after a while:
“I shall sleep better now.”
Netherby turned in his chair and looked at the child solemnly:
“Come here, little woman,” he said.
She came to him, with her light walk, a dainty lank child, wrought of
the finest fibre.
Me held out his two hands, and she put a slender little hand in each.
“Betty,” he asked, “who have you heard say these things?”
“No one,” she said simply--“I just feel them so.”
Netherby stroked her head:
“One of these days, Betty, the world will listen to you. But don’t
trouble about things until you are grown up--just enjoy your life now.
Noll, Betty is too much indoors. She must get out into the fresh air of
the world--she must study nature--we must take her to the theatre.”
Betty’s eyes sparkled:
“I’ve never been to a theatre,” she said, her nerves dancing.
“Then we’ll go to a pit to-morrow night, Noll, eh? all three of us.”
When Betty and Noll with Netherby descended the stairs, the door of the
old lady’s sitting-room was open.
Betty turned and walked in--stepped lightly to the side of the old
woman where she sat before the fire in her armchair, her old watchful
eyes fixed on the open door, and the child leaned forward and kissed
her withered old cheek:
“I love you,” she said, “because you love Netherby; and you have his
big kind eyes.”
The old lady put out her old hand and stroked the child’s head:
“But you are leaving Master Noll sadly out in the cold, my little
lady,” she said.
Betty turned and looked at Noll:
“Oh no,” said she--“I love him in quite a different way.”
The old lady laughed.
The next morning being Betty’s birthday, she found at her door a sheet
of stiff brown paper on which was fixed the print of “The Sower,” the
whole set in a battered old picture-frame of Noll’s. It was the first
birthday gift she had ever had--as long as she could remember....
The evening of her twelfth birthday Betty spent in the pit of a theatre.
The sound of the rushing feet of the theatre-goers passing eagerly
into the pit in holiday humour; the rustle of silk and satin and the
leisurely entrance of handsomely dressed women into the more gorgeous
comfort of the stalls as they dawdled to their elaborate seats; the
delicious tunings of violins as the bandsmen took their places in
the orchestra; the burst of music; the echo of the stage carpenter’s
hammer from the screened world hidden by the great curtain beyond
the footlights; the lowering of lights and resulting sudden darkness
in the theatre; the sharp clink of a bell for the ringing up of the
curtain; the hushing into silence of the whispering audience; the slow
uprolling of the great curtain as it was gathered into the flies; and
the footlights disclosed another world, flinging its large picture upon
the vision--the fantastic reality of the drama--a world that comes to
life for a little while and holds the imagination as it were held by a
dream.
So the child sat, between Noll and Netherby, holding a hand of each. It
struck her keen wits as strange that in the large drawing-rooms of her
fashionable relations she had felt no warmth of affection towards the
glittering women who turned their cold critical eyes upon this child
of their ne’er-do-weel soldier kinsman--yet here were two lads, whom
she had not known a couple of days ago, winning her confidence by their
large chivalry, their whole-souled friendship now grown as old as her
life--friendship such as makes of life a splendid adventure.
When the curtain came down on the last act, the child sighed. She
realized with a pang that the play was over.
CHAPTER VI
_Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous is not necessarily to be
Great_
In a large and richly furnished studio that was the splendid workshop
of a fashionable portrait-painter there stood before an easel a
handsome fair-bearded man--handsome, though the head was small--a
fellow who held himself with self-reliance, straight and satisfied. And
with the calculated stroke of one who has mastered the technique of his
craft, he set down the loaded brush on the embrowned canvas, yielding
a touch of colour that told like living flesh on the portrait of the
pretty woman whose likeness he was building up into life.
The stroke of colour pleased him, and he stood back and peered at it.
He turned his head and glanced keenly at the pretty woman where she sat
in the handsome chair that stood on the painter’s throne before him,
her beauty enhanced and brought out by the carefully arranged crimson
draping that was set in the grand manner as a heavy curtain looped
behind her with golden cords and tassel--indeed, she made a telling
picture as she sat there framed in by the great screen that was placed
at her left hand to keep away the draught from the large double doors
near by.
The beauty of Lady Persimmon, as the world knows, had caught roving
royal eyes; and she was at the height of her vogue, gathering from this
strange source of public esteem such homage as is given to the toy of a
court. She was, in very truth, exquisite as a butterfly.
“Ah,” said she with languid, lazy accent that caressed the words she
uttered, “I should love to live in Bohemia.” And she added with a pout:
“Society is such a weary round--and so spiteful!”
Paul Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:
“A part of the price you must pay for being a beautiful woman, my dear
lady,” he said--and he went back to his painting.
“What? Spite!” she asked, the handsome brows meeting in questioning
furrows. Her lips were very red--_half open with delicious whisperings
of scarlet sin_, a minor poet had it--so she would keep them half open,
though she most pronouncedly estranged herself from the minor poet for
close upon a fortnight in display of her deep resentment. Thus, too,
she was now being limned.
Pangbutt painted the corner of her pathetic mouth:
“Spite is the unwitting tribute of a petty mind,” he pronounced.
“I don’t see that that is any excuse for it,” she said smartly.
Pangbutt stood back; and he uttered a light laugh:
“The world is one vast engine of criticism,” he said. “A man is not
a critic because he writes for a newspaper. That act is generally
the mark of his incapacity. We are all discriminators. Bless my
soul--_conversation_ is criticism more than half the time! And why not?”
“That’s rather alarming, isn’t it?” she cooed. “Fancy if we criticised
our friends!”
“Exactly what you do!” he pshawed. “You give your friendship: it is
criticism in action. On others you turn a cold shoulder. You have said
no word--but you have passed criticism. You have--well!--you have
turned a very pretty but cruel back--uttered a more brutal verdict than
tongue ever spoke.”
She laughed lightly:
“You’re a charming colourist, Paul--but all your craft cannot whitewash
spite,” she said.
“No, no,” said he. “I only say that criticism has its shabby side.
Spite is criticism gone sour.... But, tsha! I don’t believe there is
all this venom in the world.” He laid down his palette: “It’s a very
comfortable old world.... I’m afraid the light has gone.”
He pushed the easel aside, and came to where she sat. He set a foot on
the throne, and leaned his elbow upon his knee, gazing into her eyes:
“The light has gone, and your great beauty calls for all the light--it
dares the sun’s severest cross-examination.”
He held out his hand and she placed her slender fingers in his; she
felt his admiring regard upon her. He pressed her fingers:
“You are firing my art as it has never been fired--you have given my
craft all that it has lacked--yet your beauty, that exquisite thing
over which you have no control, which is of no willing of yours,
not even your own gift to yourself, is so subtle, so elusive, so
wonderful, that all the colours of my art, all my knowledge of their
use, cannot give more than a hint of that which you have, and without
the asking. You are the living thing--I can at best but paint some poor
suggestion of it. And when I have done, what is there in all my effort
of the warmth and the sweetness, of the mystic fragrance of you?...
Yet”--he played with her fingers--“yet,” he added, “you are giving me
that inspiration that will set me above my fellows--the artist has
never been anything of moment until fired by the flame of a great
passion--and it may be that your beauty will make my art to glow and
live.”
“I am glad,” she said, “if I--have----”
She hesitated prettily, and he kissed her fingers.
She was really thinking that this was a doing of the thing handsomely,
but young Nick Bellenden of the Guards talked less and made of loving
a more exciting affair. After all, the embrace was chief part of the
business--not this dandified talk.
Thus they played at half-revealed travesties of passion; she keeping
back much she would not have had him guess; he himself, perhaps, only
half-realizing how little he allowed her glamour to interfere with
his art until the light was gone and his craft at rest. The man had
not even the excuse of jumping blood, the plea of hot-headedness. He
never allowed his intrigues to interfere with his self-ordained task of
setting a crown of contemporary fame upon his achievement....
It was dusk when he said inquiringly:
“You’ll have some tea?”
He rang the bell.
She laughed gaily:
“You have not turned on the light,” she said.
He snapped the trigger of the electric switch, and the room burst into
light.
An old man-servant flung open the door and entered, bearing a
glittering tea-service on a silver salver. As he came into view round
the edge of the high screen, Pangbutt beckoned him towards the throne:
“Set the tray by her ladyship, Dukes,” said he.
The old butler set down the things on the throne at her feet.
Lady Persimmon lolled back in her chair:
“Nevertheless,” she said, “I should love, just for a little while, to
live in Bohemia.”
Pangbutt laughed. It had been borne in upon him that this gentle beauty
had deft resource and a somewhat confirmed habit in steering awkward
corners. He came back to argument:
“But Bohemia, too, has its shabby side,” he said--“there is spite even
in Bohemia.... I’m afraid I’m watering down some of your illusions,
Lady Persimmon.”
“Ah, it’s quite easy to see that _you_ were not long in Bohemia--not
long enough to be infected with its home-sickness.”
The butler passed stealthily out of the room on silent feet--and the
catch on the door faintly clicked.
The pretty woman nestled back amongst her cushions, and gazed through
half-closed lids with languorous eyes at the man who poured out the tea
near her feet.
“It’s so pleasant,” she said with a comfortable sigh, “to see the
tea--the silver--the china. The fragrance of it all----”
He stopped, the silver teapot in his hand, and smiled:
“But there are no footmen in Bohemia--very little silver--very
indifferent china.” He handed her a cup of tea. “They live as often as
not upon imagination--and mad cow is their chiefest dish.”
She raised inquiring eyebrows:
“Mad cow?” she asked.
He nodded:
“Hunger,” said he, and he laughed.... “It doesn’t sound an alluring
dish, does it?”
“How dreadful!” she purred, and sipped tea. “Still”--she sighed--“it
must be rather exciting. It must be so romantic--to starve.”
Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:
“This is an age of romance, then,” said he.
She sighed, prattling on:
“And it must be delicious to be famous.”
The flattery sent a smirk to Pangbutt’s lips:
“Ah, Fame----!” he said.
The handle of the door moved, clicking in its turning, and Pangbutt,
looking over his shoulder, where he stood by the edge of the great
screen, saw the door open, and a haggard face look in. The intruder
came into the room a step or so.
Pangbutt gasped with frank surprise:
“Anthony? Good God, where have you sprung from?”
“Sorry to come before the light has quite gone, Paul; but I’m starving.”
“Starving?”
Anthony nodded his head:
“H’m, h’m! There you have the real devil in the machinery--and I’m
turning on the lime-light of confession.” He glanced round the great
studio deliberately: “This is rather a handsome room to confess in--a
palace to our rooms in the old Paris days, eh?”
Pangbutt was cudgelling his wits to say something that would discover
the presence of the seated lady behind the screen to the careless
intruder, when Anthony strode up to him; and as the corner of the
throne came into his range of vision beyond the end of the screen, he
caught sight of the tray with the bright tea-things upon it.
“Food, ye gods!” he cried, and strode towards the tray. “Paul,” he said
hoarsely--“I must have food.”
He stretched out his hand to the tray--halted--hesitated--stood up and
took off his hat, as, on passing the screen, the enthroned sitter came
into his view.
He bowed:
“Madame,” said he--“I apologize for my want of manners. The truth
is I pawned them weeks ago--with my waistcoat and the last family
portrait--a miniature of my uncle the general--a most polished person,
who would have died of an apoplectic fit to see himself coming to move
in such mixed company----”
Pangbutt coughed; and mumbling their names, as the fashion is, he
introduced them, adding:
“A friend of mine--from Bohemia.”
His eyes laughed to her. He turned to Anthony as the two bowed to each
other formally:
“Anthony,” said he--“the sight of you takes me back to Paris--and
makeshifts.”
“Makeshifts!” Anthony laughed sadly, and, rousing, added--“I say, Paul,
have you finished with the crumbs on that tray?”
Pangbutt uttered an embarrassed laugh, and went and rang the bell.
“Anthony was always impatient for the dinner-hour,” he said--and
turning to Dukes as he appeared at the door he added--“Take away the
tray, Dukes----”
Anthony put out his hand:
“I say--couldn’t he--leave the tray? I see some crumbs.... Bring
another tray, Dukes.”
Pangbutt signed to the old butler to wait:
“A glass of wine, Anthony?” he asked.
“Tsah! you don’t understand, Paul. I’m not playing with my vitals--I’m
starving, man,” he said hoarsely.
“A chicken?”
“The man’s a god!”
“D’you mind it cold?”
“Heavens, Paul! I shall die in the midst of all these elaborate
courtesies--this rigid etiquette!”
He sank down wearily upon a corner of the painting throne, and fidgeted
with the tea-things on the tray.
Pangbutt gave an embarrassed laugh, and turned to the butler:
“Dukes, bring up a tray--cold chicken--wine--anything you can get.
Quick as you can.”
“Yessir!” said Dukes, and formally disappeared.
The beauty had been markedly uneasy; she now rose to take her leave.
“I must be running away, Mr. Pangbutt,” she said; and bowing over her
shoulder to Anthony, who rose and returned her bow with stiff precision
as she stepped lightly down from the throne: “So sorry!” she said.
As Pangbutt moved with her through the door she asked him in
confidential undertone:
“Who’s the savage? Where does he come from?”
“Bohemia,” he said, with a dry mocking smile; and he lingered about
her on the landing, to assist her with her cloak. He escorted her
downstairs to her carriage....
When they were gone from the studio, Anthony Baddlesmere rose from his
seat, carrying the last piece of a tea-cake in his hand, and, walking
over to the easel, as he ate the cake he regarded the picture with
critical eye:
“H’m! ’Tain’t bad!” he growled.
Pangbutt entered the room and shut the door.
He laughed:
“Her ladyship doesn’t seem to be so enamoured of Bohemia after all,” he
muttered.
“Eh?” asked Anthony.
“Oh--nothing--nothing,” said Pangbutt. “I am afraid we have spoilt a
pretty woman’s illusion.”
Anthony gazed at the canvas before him:
“To destroy a pretty woman’s illusions is cruel as plucking out a
child’s eyes,” he said, and added: “Who’s the doll?”
“Lady Persimmon; but----”
“What? Eleanor Persimmon, who married old Gilders Persimmon?... He dyed
his beard for the wedding--naughty old man--and he’s had to renew it
ever since----”
Pangbutt went to the fireplace, and he turned and said severely:
“Sir Gilders Persimmon is not in his youth, but----”
“No, no, Paul--I’m not blaming him for being a ruin--but he’s so
damned badly restored.” He turned to the picture. “So you are Eleanor
Persimmon, my lady!” He gazed at the portrait dreamily; and, suddenly
rousing, added: “Not much of a likeness, old boy, is it?”
Pangbutt smiled wryly.
Anthony peered round the easel at him:
“I suppose she babbles all the time!” said he.
Pangbutt stiffened before the fire:
“Lady Persimmon is a most charming woman,” he said.
“Yes, yes; it’s in the family,” Anthony said airily--“she’s a sort of
cousin of mine. My brother had rather a calf-love for her--when he was
seventeen--and a calf.”
Pangbutt flushed:
“I do not care to discuss Lady Persimmon,” he said stiffly.
“No, no; I can quite understand that,” said Anthony breezily. “Nor do
I--nor do I. She was always rather uninteresting.”
He walked over to the throne: “Ho, ho!” thought he. “H’m! ha! Paul
still worships the titled classes. He was always weak in the first
commandment.”
He sat down wearily and searched aimlessly under the little covers of
the cake-dishes on the tray.
“Paul,” said he, “I exaggerated when I said there were crumbs....”
And he added with a laugh--“I don’t suppose cousin Eleanor recognised
cousin Anthony--I was only sixteen--besides, she would not be prepared
for his rising at her pretty feet like a down-at-heels pantomime clown
in this Palace of Art--this lofty pleasure-house.”
“You wrong Lady Persimmon by insinuation,” said Pangbutt sulkily--“she
is a woman of most generous sentiments.”
Anthony uttered a funny little laughing grunt:
“Cousin Eleanor was always the soul of sentiment and--delicate
self-indulgence. She used to adore the portrait of Shelley--weep over
Chatterton--cry over Kit Marlowe--and--married a baronet in an advanced
state of decay.”
He got up, strode to the easel again, and examined the picture.
Pangbutt watched him under his brows with sulky attention, lolling
against the mantelpiece.
“Come, Paul, old boy,” Anthony said at last--“I’ve been sketching the
doll’s soul for you; but you’ve got none of _that_ into her picture....
The colour and technique may be all there--and it is splendidly
handled--_but where’s the woman?_”
Anthony’s frank criticism, his just and keen appreciation of the
good and the weak side of a work of art, had always won Pangbutt’s
admiration; and the scowl left his eyes now as the praise bit into his
conceit. The detraction passed by him:
“D’you know, Anthony,” he said--“sometimes I suspect I am too
successful--too easily successful--and I have a horror of becoming
commonplace.”
His eyes followed the other as he slouched carelessly back to the
throne and flung himself upon it.
“Pooh! Nonsense, Paul.” He searched aimlessly amongst the empty plates
again: “That’s all cant. Look at _me_. I’m as empty as a bubble--but
it’s just as difficult to write sparkling prose on an empty stomach as
to be a poetic alderman.”
Pangbutt gazed down at his own shining boots complacently:
“I have not forgotten what personal discomfort was, in the old Paris
days. I detested it. I determined from the first to be rid of it....
Where are you living?”
The man that sat on the throne shrugged his shoulders, gazing at
vacancy sadly:
“In a very shabby corner of Bohemia, Paul, where, in the streets,
every vagrant wind makes whirlpools of stray papers--that shuffle
by--like the damned restless whispering ghosts of rejected poems--or
other stammerings that are the inky outpourings of broken literary
careers.... Not at all the sort of place that you would like,
old boy.... But, Paul”--he looked round the room--“you muttered
something--about--a chicken--just now----”
Paul laughed--a little embarrassedly; and rang the bell:
“You’d like to take off your overcoat?” he asked.
Anthony laughed drily:
“Tsh! Paul!--we’ll avoid delicate subjects, please. But since I am in
the confessional, I ought to add that I haven’t a coat or waistcoat.
Misfortune makes us acquainted with strange underclothes.”
Paul Pangbutt smiled; but a frown followed close upon the smile, and
blackened it. He was possessed of that peculiar egoism which, at the
sight of the pitiful, is but roused to a delicious self-pity.
“Ah,” said he; and a little suspicion of patronage slipped into his
manner, as it does when we are content to comfort our friends with
phrases--“I have not forgotten what makeshifts were in Paris--before I
made my mark.... I always detested frayed cuffs.”
A funny little smile played about the lips of the seated man; he nodded
grimly:
“H’m, yes. Having no shirt at all has _that_ advantage--the cuffs do
not fray.”
Pangbutt’s scowl came flitting back:
“Yes; I know.... You and the others always made a jest of the
disgusting pinch and meanness of it all----”
The weary man nodded:
“Ah, yes, it’s true,” said he, and he sighed--“the road was very
weary--very dusty--sometimes--in Paris.”
The other strode vigorously up and down the room, with that vigour that
had set him on the road to success: his eyes were fixed within:
“But _I_ determined at the first chance I got to shake off that dust
of the students’ quarter of Paris. I detested the untidiness of them
all--the leanness and the grim jest of it--and the everlasting loans
that were never paid.”
Anthony’s face, as he watched the impatient striding from under his
brows, listening to the triumphant note of success, flickered with
a grim smile. Paul Pangbutt had not been exactly notorious for the
lending of loans. It came to him that his quest for help was not going
to be an easy one.
The other suddenly came to a halt, and looked keenly at Anthony where
he sat; remembering that this brooding man was the real subject of
talk, he added:
“But--are things really as low with you as you say, Anthony?... You
always made a jest of hard work.”
Anthony laughed sadly:
“And sometimes we got a good deal of hard work out of a jest; eh,
Paul?” The smile died out of his eyes as soon as he had spoken:
“No,” he added, “there’s no jest in it--unless the gods laugh at
misfortune.... I am about at the end of things.”
Pangbutt assumed the fatherly note:
“Anthony,” said he--“I hope you will not mind my saying so, but you
were always most reckless in your expenditure--or rather in your loans
to all that army of hangers-on about you.”
It came to Anthony, as he stood in the withering blight of this man’s
lack of sympathy, that if he were going to ask for help he must set
aside all delicacy and put the situation before him bluntly. He made an
unwilling start:
“Some years ago, Paul,” he said, “after you had made your mark in
Paris, and were doing the round of the foreign courts, you no doubt
heard that Caroline made rather a sensation with a book.”
Pangbutt nodded:
“I have read it,” he said--but his attitude was enigma.
Anthony was relieved to find there was to be no oratorial protest in
honour of Style. He went on as though repeating a distasteful task he
had set himself:
“It has been attacked from all sides. It is as dead--as--a railway
sandwich.”
“That is rather a misfortune,” said Pangbutt.
Anthony laughed. He felt strangely ashamed--of himself--of his friend.
And it flashed through his thinking parts, with lightning stroke, that
this was the man whom Caroline had nursed through the typhoid.
He was roused from his reflections by Pangbutt’s sharp question:
“And you?”
He searched about in his mind for what he had last said:
“Eh? Me? Oh, ah, yes; I tried to grow a garden of literature in Fleet
Street--to bring to blossom the tender buds of the new school of
thought. But my star was not in journalism. My paper was burnt up
in the fire of the young immortals who flocked to my office, whose
masterpieces few would buy--or read.” He smiled a wan smile, and
sighed: “The paper has gone into ash.... That’s why, when the wind
blows keen, there is so much dust in Fleet Street.”
Pangbutt’s eyes were fixed critically upon his own survey of this man’s
past, and he had but half listened to the other’s words:
“On the whole,” said he drily, “you have not been very fortunate, then?”
Anthony laughed sadly, but said nothing.
It was definitely borne in upon him that he would never be able to ask
this man for money.
The other was embarrassed by the silence:
“What are you going to do?” he asked uncomfortably.
Anthony roused himself. He took up the thread of his appeal, but he now
went on vaguely--he felt that it was hopeless:
“Oh, ah, yes.... Well, my verse is sunk to the honour of neglect--which
is not a matter wholly wanting in subtle flattery, since all the
clever young men tell me it is the reward of true poetry. But--here’s
food!” he cried, as the door opened and the butler entered, carrying
a tray, well laden: “Here’s food--so poetry go hang!” He seized the
carving-knife almost before Dukes had set down the tray; and the
austere servant took up the other discarded empty tray and softly
withdrew from the room. “A most radiant fowl!” cried Anthony, carving
it with swift precision.... “I say, Paul--you won’t mind my taking the
wings in my pocket for the youngster--he’s been a little sickly of
late!”
He carved off the wings and breast, and his searching glance fell on a
large handsome quarto that lay upon the throne by his side.
“Hullo!” said he--“a large-paper edition!” He turned it over and saw
that it was verse. “What idiot has been writing verses now?”
Pangbutt smiled:
“That’s a volume of collected poems by Sir Gilders Persimmon,” he said.
“Indecent old thing!... May I have the fly-leaf for the chicken?”
Pangbutt almost put out his hand in panic, fearing sacrilege; but he
said instead, rather stiffly:
“It is an autograph copy from my friend, Sir Gilders Persimmon; and----”
“Yes, yes--quite so. It’s luxury to write poetry when you’re rich,” he
said--“poetry should be handsomely treated.”
“Ah, Anthony--we scoff at riches----”
“Who scoffs at riches?” Anthony looked up sharply.
“We all sneer at times.”
Anthony laughed:
“They don’t trouble _my_ sleep much--not half so much as the lack of
them.”
Pangbutt smiled drily:
“Well,” said he--“you confess by insinuation that it’s very pleasant to
be even so discredited a thing as a millionaire?”
“I don’t know, Paul. I don’t call on ’em. When all’s said, they are
no worse than the folk who do call on ’em. The rich man, too, stands
before his abysses--he has his blood-curdlings like the poorest....
There are honest men and dishonest, even amongst the rich. Look at your
speculative millionaire--your mighty company-promoter! He don’t sleep
too well, thank God; but look at him.... To-day, society is licking his
boots--licking them, Paul--for who so sublime a boot-licker as your
hereditary flunkey of the Court? To-morrow---- Hang it, I’m talking
like a curate.” He laughed. “I always gabble of millionaires in my
sleep when the landlady is pressing for the rent.”
Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:
“Nevertheless,” said he--“there’s something rather wonderful about a
millionaire.”
“A very proper and right sentiment, Paul! Of course, a millionaire is
a colossal article of commerce. Bigness appeals to the imagination. So
a school-boy looks at a bishop and thinks the works of God are very
wonderful.... But riches are comparative--there’s a millionaire who
cannot buy a digestion. Give me a competency----”
Pangbutt’s lip curled:
“How much is a competency?” he asked.
“H’m--well----”
He stood up suddenly, listening.
There was a distant ring of a bell.
Anthony hurriedly folded his handkerchief over the scraps of food, and
thrust them into his pocket.
He strode towards Pangbutt as though to say something--hesitated--he
could not bring himself to ask for money. There was a second peal at
the bell.
“I must be off,” he said--“I hear visitors.”
And waving his hand to Pangbutt he stepped quickly to the doorway.
When he reached the door he again hesitated--shook his head--and
letting himself quietly out, closed the door gently after him.
Paul Pangbutt was alone.
He stood brooding.
His lips moved into a complacent smile:
“I believe my success awed him,” he said.
CHAPTER VII
_Wherein Ambition shrinks from looking down the Ladder_
The brooding man was still standing in the middle of the great studio
when the butler entered, with catlike tread, and handed him a card on a
silver salver.
Pangbutt took the card without looking at it.
“Take away the tray, Dukes,” he said.
He pointed with a trace of disgust to the broken meats, and, as he
watched the silent servant gathering up the relics of the hurried
feast, all that shabby Bohemian life, the very thought of which he
had banished for years, came flooding back with disgust across the
threshold of his splendid home.... How he loathed it!... But--the
strange irony of it all! That the brilliant ones of the time of
his pupillage should have gone under!... He himself had been the
commonplace one, the near to dullard--he smiled--but here was he, and
there were they!... Strange how the promise of youth is unfulfilled!...
The Baddlesmeres gone under! God! they of all people!... Whilst for
him? Fame, stretching out a vast glittering prospect as he topped the
hill of endeavour.... He had left no smallest effort unmade to advance
his own interests--and he stood at last in view of the promised land
where hang the glittering prizes. By heavens! they were within hand’s
reach----
He was roused by the butler’s voice, as the old servant opened the door
to depart:
“And this gentleman downstairs, sir?” said he.
“Ah, yes.” Pangbutt glanced at the card in his fingers:
“Eustace Lovegood!” he murmured in surprise. “H’m--he sends up his
card--evidently all goes well with Eustace Lovegood!”
He turned to Dukes:
“All right--show him up.”
The old servant vanished, the door stealthily closing after him.
Pangbutt’s face was scarred with a self-satisfied smirk: “They find me
in rather altered circumstances.”
There was no mistaking the comfort of the reflection.
He was about to stride towards the fireplace and take up a baronial
attitude, but put his hands behind his back instead, and stared at the
floor, pondering. He tried to rouse his memory:
“But--let me see--Lovegood made rather a mark? What was it?”
The door opened, and Eustace Lovegood strode tragically into the room,
the old black cloak swinging at his back.
Pangbutt turned: “O lord!” he growled into his beard, “another of the
failures!”
He eyed Lovegood cynically until he halted; and, seeing that he would
have to speak, he said:
“You asked to see me, Mr. Lovegood.”
Lovegood put his heels together and bowed.
Pangbutt had to speak again.
“Can I do anything for you?” he asked.
Eustace Lovegood strode up to him, put his strong hand on his shoulder,
and looked him in the face:
“Nothing,” he said in his deep bass--“nothing ... except to remember
that we were once friends.”
Pangbutt, in spite of a biting desire to play the swaggering lord, at
once took the defensive. This man made him feel diffident even on his
own elaborate carpet.
“Why do you choose to remind me of that to-night?” he asked sullenly,
trying to assert himself.
Eustace took his hand from his shoulder, and fixed his gloomy eyes upon
him:
“As I stood in the shadows of your hall just now,” said he slowly,
“Anthony Baddlesmere passed out.”
Pangbutt uttered a light cynical laugh:
“What?” said he--“without nodding to you?”
Lovegood’s great brows met in a black frown:
“His eyes were on a broken career.... But I saw that he had not yet
become a good beggar.”
A sneer curled the bearded lips of the other:
“And you?” he asked flippantly.
“I am better practised.... I have come to beg for him.”
Pangbutt’s lips curled into a deeper contempt:
“Yes,” said he--“you were always a good borrower, Eustace Lovegood.”
“I have not grown rich upon it.”
“So I see.”
Lovegood smiled grimly:
“Do I owe you anything?” he asked.
Pangbutt hesitated:
“N-no,” he said; “I am bound to confess--not for yourself.”
“Perhaps your confession involves by implication that there may be
virtue even in borrowing--for those in need!”
“I cannot deny it.”
“Then I have grown virtuous--I have come to borrow.... Nay, man--to ask
you to pay back.... Anthony Baddlesmere--did he want help?”
“He did not ask for help,” said the painter lamely.
The eyes of the great tragic man before him saw into the nakedness of
his very conceit; and Paul Pangbutt realized that his chief weapon,
his cold pride of egoism, was useless against the truth-seeking eyes of
Eustace Lovegood--was without awe to him. He recoiled under the calm
eyes of this big gentle fellow as he spoke:
“Paul--you never could see the soul in a man.... You could only value
what part of him could be bought in shops, or whittled into shapes
in the academies. The man who was here to-night is almost destitute.
Anthony and Caroline Baddlesmere--who were the Bountifuls to all of us
in Paris--destitute!”
“I am not the cause of it,” Pangbutt answered sullenly.
An ugly frown came over the big man’s eyes:
“No, but he helped you to this.” He swept his hand round the room
slowly. “He gave you a footing at the Embassy in Paris.... I need not
go into details.... The rest is here. And you could let him leave your
house ashamed to ask for help!”
Pangbutt made an effort to take the domineering careless attitude; but
he realized that his play-acting was worse than lost on this man’s grim
regard.
“I did not grasp that it was so serious, Lovegood.... I will--drop in
one day--and--see if something cannot be done----”
He saw the smile of contempt move the pale heavy features of Eustace
Lovegood as he shrugged his huge shoulders, and, with an exhaustive
snort of disgust, strode slowly out of the room.
The door closed after him with a loud resounding slam, rattled on its
hinges, and was still.
Pangbutt stood brooding with frowning eyes fixed upon it:
He shrugged his shoulders:
“Lovegood never loses the grand manner,” he thought, “even when he has
no necktie. Damnation! the Past seems never to be buried.... We think
the day is dead because we blowout the candle and lie down at night.
We forget the world’s the same--’tis we that sleep. Tush! the Past is
never dead--until it’s our winding-sheet----”
He saw himself reflected in a large mirror. He gazed at the
well-groomed man of the world that stood there in the mirrored
make-believe room, solid as he; and he laughed bitterly as it
came to him that this dandified spruce shadow that mimicked his
magnificence had thought to shake off at a wish the years of sordid
striving together with the Things that had been Done and Rejected
and--Forsaken!... Tshah; he had been congratulating this spruce fellow
upon it only a few minutes gone by--thanking his most gentlemanly star
that he had done with the whole gang. And to-day--they were pushing
stealthily at his doors, creeping into his magnificent home, nay,
bursting into his life again--thrusting jeering faces into his, whether
he would or not. Indeed, his smug shadow sneered at him--for behind
the well-bred silence of his old comrades was the knowledge of his low
origin--and he had no pride in aught but hiding what had been to a
bigger man his source of pride.
Perhaps he ought to help--for decency’s sake; but----
Strange--these were the very people who had given him his chance in
life. But for them, he had still been a mediocrity in Paris.
But why should he have the whole crew “hail-fellow”?
If a man is to rise above the crowd he must stand alone--be rid of
encumbrances----
He started:
A door slammed below.
There was the loud noise of a gathering tumult without. It was coming
up the stairs--his stairs!
“Curse it! is all Bedlam abroad to-night?” said he.
He strode angrily towards the uproar beyond the great folding doors;
but they were flung open, and there entered a gust of loud laughter and
the shuffle of many feet upon the stairs.
CHAPTER VIII
_Wherein it is discovered that the Strength of Genius may lie in the
Hair_
With a loud shout of laughter there burst riotously into the room
several young fellows, pushing before them the indignant and
expostulating Lovegood.
A shock-headed fellow, Rippley the sculptor, dressed with the
picturesque carelessness of an art student, left the others, advanced
to their scowling host, and said breezily:
“Look ’ere, Paul Pangbutt--the boys have come to give old Jack Lawrence
a house-warming--down the street, you know.”
“Indeed!” said Pangbutt icily; and with cutting coldness he added: “I
presume that this news should interest me!”
Rippley was hugely pleased:
“Yes, rather! He’s setting up a studio almost next door to you--but the
old rip isn’t in this evening; so, as we have the beer and stuff in a
dray outside, we’ve converted it into a surprise party for you instead,
d’you see?”
Pangbutt’s blanched face was moved to a sneer:
“Really, so spontaneous an honour cannot but flatter,” he said.
“Of course,” roared Rippley jovially. He went up to his sulky host and
slapped him on the shoulder. It floated through Pangbutt’s mind with
something like a twinge of jealousy that they had never given _him_ a
house-warming when he took his studio, months ago now.
“Oh, yes,” he said bitterly--“make yourselves at home.”
The sculptor gave him a sounding thump on the shoulder:
“That’s a good generous fellow!” cried he, and winked at the others.
“All the scum of Bohemia is coming here to-night. We have invited
’em--in your name.... _Of course_ you don’t mind. I _said_ you
wouldn’t.”
Through the open door there came gusts of hilarity from below, and the
sound of horseplay.
The sculptor chuckled.
Pangbutt scowled:
“Oh, no--treat the place like a pot-house,” he said. “Of course I am
delighted,” he added ironically.
Rippley turned and winked an eye solemnly at the others; he burst into
a jovial laugh, and gripping Pangbutt’s shoulder with his great hand:
“Good old Paul,” cried he--“of course you are!... But we found old
Lovegood before us--the sly old dog.”
He left his sulky host, and, walking up to Lovegood, punched his
embarrassed bulk in the ribs.
Lovegood strode over to the brooding man:
“Pangbutt,” he said--“you would rather have them go. Why don’t you say
so?”
“No, no--let them alone.”
He waved the subject aside irritably with his hand, and walked
impatiently to the fireplace, where he turned and, leaning his
shoulders against the mantel, scowled at the riot.
There was a shuffle of feet, as of men carrying a heavy burden, and,
with a roar, the noisy crew swung through the great doorway and came
swarming into the room, headed by half a dozen that carried a full
beer-barrel on slings, followed by a red-headed fellow frantically
blaring a trombone before another who carried Andrew Blotte upon his
shoulders, crowned with a wreath of roses and considerably the worse
for strong liquors.
They gave their sulking host a shout as they streamed in. The rest of
the noisy crew, talking and laughing, escorted a couple of pretty but
gauche girl-models, who were awkwardly carrying bouquets as they might
have carried cabbages; long streamers of coloured ribbon hung from
their nosegays.
The barrel was carried at the run to the most handy armchair, and
plumped into the seat. The handicraftsmen of Louis Quinze must have
turned in their graves--it was a fine specimen of the period. With a
whoop they set hiccuping Andrew Blotte astride of the barrel--one of
the girls, picking up his wreath of roses, which had fallen to the
floor, set it awry on his head. From under its shadow his eyes blinked
drunkenly at the room.
The men were all smoking.
Rippley came forward and, addressing Pangbutt, said:
“You don’t mind our smoking, eh?”
Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders:
“I was not aware my permission was necessary--but of course----”
“_Of course_ you don’t,” roared Rippley; and turning to the others he
put his tongue in his cheek:
“Gentlemen, you may smoke,” said he; “nor, indeed, has friend Paul
any conscientious objections to the ladies smokin’.” He turned to the
red-haired man with the trombone:
“Milk the bell,” said he, “my fluffsome Reubens.”
The red-haired fellow with the incipient beard, whom they called Fluffy
Reubens, uttered a startled wail on the trombone, and walking over to
the bell-pull, tolled the bell solemnly as he might have milked a cow.
He smiled at the peal that rang and rang through the house:
“It’s rather a good bell,” said he. “Nothing throaty about its top
notes.” He turned to his scowling host: “We will put you to as little
trouble as possible, Paul,” he said--“so I ring the bell. But if you
would not mind asking your swoggle-eyed bottle-washer for the glasses
it wouldn’t strain the etiquette----”
Rippley burst out laughing:
“That idiotic hireling man of yours thought we were bailiffs--his
language was really quite naughty--for a butler. So Fluffy
flung himself at his old legs and I clapped a hand over his
fowling-piece--the language was within an ace of being obscene. We
whipped him off his legs and sat on his chest and head, or he would
have bawled murder. Of course we _quite_ understand, indeed sympathize
with, his haughty attitude towards tax-gatherers; but we cannot lightly
put aside his stone-blindness to genius when he sees it in full flare
of the electric light----” The old butler, sulky as his master,
appeared at the door and stood there with stiff dignity. Rippley turned
to him:
“Glasses, mister!” cried he.
The old servant took not the slightest notice--he was deaf to all
vulgar appeal.
Pangbutt nodded to him:
“Glasses, Dukes,” he said.
“Yessir.”
The old man solemnly turned and left the room.
Fluffy Reubens, who had been gazing sentimentally at the portrait
upon the easel, turned to the gilt chair that yawned empty amidst its
picturesque setting on the painter’s throne:
“What! the society beauty has flown!”
Rippley kissed his hand to the portrait:
“I put it,” said he, “that Eustace Lovegood take the beauty’s chair.”
There was a din of acclamation; and the big man stepped tragically on
to the throne and took the seat. His pale face smiled.
“This is no longer a vulgar brawl,” said he--“but an ordered debauch.”
Rippley turned and, staring at Blotte where he sat solemnly astride of
the cask, blinking drunkenly from under his wreath, gave him a hail:
“Cheer up, my bilious Bacchus!” cried he. “A smile to greet this
picnic!”
Lovegood coughed:
“But what is Bacchus without the cup?” said he.
Andrew Blotte, astride the cask, raised his hand as for oration, but
overbalanced and tumbled from the barrel to the carpet. Several sprang
to help him to his feet; and as he stood with difficulty they restored
his fallen wreath. He strode with drunken solemnity into the middle
of the room, towards his host, where he stood brooding before the
fireplace; and as Blotte came the scowl left the hard pale face of the
other, and his mouth fell open a little way--but he took command of
himself in the winking of an eyelid, and the blood poured back into his
heart:
“My God!” slipped from him in a hoarse whisper; “Andrew Blotte!”
Andrew Blotte pulled himself up to a halt, and blinking at his memory,
shuffling amongst the faces that were ghosts of the past, he tried to
gather his rambling thoughts together, and said with slow precision and
friendly confidence:
“I once knew a--fellow (hic)--rather like you.... Clean-shaven
poetic-looking fellow, rather good-looking--nevertheless--rather like
you.” He giggled drunkenly. “He--_he_ thought he could paint, too.” He
blew through his lips. “We all thought we could do things--in Paris....
Youth lives on illusions----”
It struck Paul Pangbutt as he stood there, his arms folded before him,
and his eyes set on the poor drunken wreck of a once brilliant youth,
that it was nothing less than devil’s irony that had sent _this_ broken
man into his life _this_ night--the night which his profession might,
as likely as not, have chosen to do him honour--it was the evening of
the elections at the Academy.
Blotte roused; and added solemnly:
“He was one of your good fellows--always the fine gentleman--with as
keen an eye on his dignity as--a--colonial bishop. Nevertheless, he was
rather like you.” He sniggered, and came closer to Pangbutt; gazing at
him hazily he added: “You’ll excuse me, but I’ve quite forgotten the
point--and I can’t remember your name.... We have not been formally
introduced--there is that excuse for us.... Oh, ah, yes, though--I
remember--to be sure--(hic)--yes. He stood just about your height--he
was a good-looking fellow--whee-hew--better-looking fellow than you....
Of course--that’s strictly between you and me and”--he swept his
hand towards the silent others--“and pandlemonium!... Looked like a
poet--but his brain was--mostly--self-respect.... That was _it_--_he_
looked a man--_I_ was wholly insignificant.... _He_ had the grand
manner--_I_ didn’t give a slop-can for manners. Never did. Always had a
positive idioshincrasy against dancing-masters--except for dancing....
Of course,” he added slowly, gazing with heavy eyes into the past--“of
course when a woman appeared on the scene, he--cut me out--hiccup----”
A sneer came to Pangbutt’s pale lips:
“Indeed!” said he. “Such modesty----”
“Sit down, Blotte,” roared the sculptor, Rippley.
The poor drunken fellow took no slightest notice of the interruption,
but continued his tale:
“Of course--it was easy enough. It wasn’t worth scoring the trick.
But--he was a shabby devil--though he stood just about your height....”
He whistled aimlessly.... “About this time, what d’you think? the
fellow got into the Embassy set--hiccup--God knows how!... Don’t ask
me.... The Baddlesmeres were connected with Embassy people--and the
fellow got a footing.... Cæsar was always ambitious.... So he dropped
Kate Ormsby--poor little devil!... She was such a pretty creature--and
I spent the rest of my youth in telling her that the fellow would come
back to her--God forgive me!...”
Pangbutt shifted uneasily; but his cynical voice showed no uneasiness:
“Really,” said he coldly--“your biography is not without romance, Mr.
Blotte.”
“Quite so,” said Blotte. “She sings outside taverns now.... I consider
it a most damned unladylike thing to do.... Saw her--last winter--snow
on ground--and formally asked her hand in marriage--hiccup. But,” he
smiled, “she--hiccup--she said I wasn’t sober.... Rather bad taste of
her, I thought----”
The man-servant entered the room with the glasses on a tray; Fluffy
Reubens nudged Rippley, and jerked his thumb towards Blotte.
“Sit down, Blotte,” cried Fluffy Reubens--“and dry up.”
“Aha!” cried Rippley--“the glasses, gentlemen! Blotte, I give you
better advice--come and be moistened.”
The drunken man nodded to his host:
“You’ll excuse me,” he said; and he strolled off unsteadily towards the
glasses.
There was a loud shout of laughter, as Rippley, to cause a diversion,
poured a libation of beer on the old butler’s bald head, dedicating him
to Venus: the old man, with the beer trickling down his nose, and scorn
upon his lip, solemnly withdrew.
Rippley started the cask of beer, the girls handing the glasses about
as they were filled.
Lovegood, master of the revels, coughed:
“How naturally Rippley presides at the cask!” said he. “Heaven meant
him for an honest publican; but native conceit, or some other maggot in
the brain, turned his hands to sculpture.”
Pangbutt fretted in sullen silence, wondering when the crew would
be done and gone. He even told himself that it would have been less
embarrassing if he had gone to see the Baddlesmeres--and for the rest
of the evening he brooded upon it.
Lovegood sat back in his chair, glad to get all eyes away from the host:
“Ah, English-brewed ale to-night!” said he tragically. “None of your
sour wines of France.” He turned to one of the girl-models--“Sweet
Andromache, a tankard for the chair!” said he.
The girl carried beer to him in a tumbler, giggling.
“No, no--give me the juice of the pagan grape--of such alone is brewed
the nectar of the gods!” said a slim man who lounged on a sofa, glass
in hand. He was Aubrey, the poet, and he was as beautiful as a woman,
and with his mass of dark hair drawn from his brows and hiding his
ears he looked like one: “Ah, that dissipation should destroy the
complexion, and to be intoxicated should have grown unpoetic--to be
drunk and disorderly simply to be sordid! The exquisite orgies of the
deliciously wicked Greeks are done. The Bacchic frenzy is dead. Nay,
Pan--even Pan--Pan is dead.”
Tears came to the eyes of Andrew Blotte, and he shook his head sadly.
The wreath came over one eye.
Lovegood blew his nose dramatically:
“Poor, poor Pan!” said he. “Really it is quite a tearful statement.
It had escaped me that it was the anniversary of Pan.” He turned to
the girl-model they called Andromache and held out his empty tumbler:
“Repeat the dose, therefore, Andromache,” said he; “we must drink
to the translation of Pan--since we cannot go to his funeral. Though
I don’t wholly give up Pan on Aubrey’s mere report. Poets are so
scandalous; they will make any misstatement to fit a rhyme--or blast
careers to assist a dramatic situation.”
Rippley withdrew his nose from a foaming glass of beer:
“I wish you poet johnnies would bury Pan,” he said. “You’re always
diggin’ ’im up--or the other dead Greeks.”
Aubrey yawned wearily:
“Don’t jabber art, Rippley. You make my head ache....”
Pangbutt roused, and, walking over to Lovegood, asked him in a whisper
for the Baddlesmeres’ address. The big man fumbled in the breast-pocket
of his shiny black coat.
A shout of protest caught his attention.
“Nonsense, Aubrey,” cried Rippley--“sheer nonsense!”
Lovegood looked up, and put out his hand:
“Order, gentlemen!” said he in thundering bass. “It is most unseemly to
insinuate that poets talk nonsense.”
He searched again for the pencil, and wrote the address on the other’s
cuff. They were roused from their colloquy by a quarrel. Pangbutt
returned to the fireplace, his brows set.
Lovegood stood up:
“Order, gentlemen, order!” he called.
Aubrey languidly appealed to him from the sofa:
“Rippley says he has an idea,” he complained pathetically.
Lovegood motioned for silence:
“Hush, Aubrey! you should never repeat a scandal,” said he.
Rippley laughed:
“I have, though--a rippin’ idea!”
“Really?” said Lovegood, and he coughed. “Attention, gentlemen--whilst
Mr. Rippley yields up an entirely original and rippin’ idea!”
Rippley sniggered:
“You make me feel quite nervous,” he said. “But--_you_ know, I’ve got a
rippin’ idea for a statoo: A fellow struggling alone against the weight
of his pre-ordained destiny, which keeps coming back on ’im, don’t you
know! He works for Fame, but finds his load getting heavier and heavier
to his hand. Ambition, Pluck, Endurance--all are no good. Doom broods
over all--Span of Life don’t give enough time--Age creeps on and numbs
his Strength. And when the poor devil gets near the top of the hill,
there stands Death at the summit to cut him down at the end of his
labours--and he sees the night-mist of Oblivion stretching beyond--a
mist in which the greatest names are faintly dying away----”
“But, my dear plasterer,” said Fluffy Reubens, “how are you going to
express this in stone?”
“That’s just it!” said the tousle-headed sculptor, warm to his idea.
“That Greek Johnny that pushed a great hanking stone up a hill, and
kept letting it go again----” He made an effort to recall the name and
shook his head: “No, it wasn’t ’Erkyools----”
Aubrey tittered, and languidly corrected him with cutting precision:
“Her--cu--les, Rippley--Hercules!”
“No, no--it wasn’t ’im,” said Rippley impatiently. “T’other fellow.”
“Rippley,” said the languid poet, turning half-shut eyes of contempt
upon him, “your originality staggers me.”
“Ra-ther!” said Rippley. “When I got that idea you could have knocked
me down with the brains of a minor poet.”
Lovegood coughed:
“The Grecian gentleman who pushed the--er--hanking great stone up the
hill,” said he with measured accent, “I have read somewhere, was called
Sisyphus.”
Rippley bounced and clutched at the air.
“Sisyphus--that’s the chap!... Knew Aubrey was wrong about its being
’Erkyools.... Rummy things the old Greeks used to do! luckily for
sculpture and the schoolmasters.” He bent his eyes on his idea again:
“But what licks me is Fame!... Such a comical thing is Fame!... Now,
look at this fellow Sisyphus: A great muscular chap pushes the dickens
of a big stone up a hill, and keeps having to let it go again before he
reaches the top. It ain’t much to build a reputation on. But Plato or
some blanky poet comes along and writes it down--and that fellow goes
pushing and heaving that stone up a hill through the ages. Then look at
Aubrey--_he_ works just as hard at his confounded rhymes; yet no one
reads _him_, but everyone goes on talking about ’Omer.”
“Omar Khayyam?” asked Aubrey flippantly.
“Khayyam be damned!” said the shock-headed sculptor. “No--old ’Omer
’imself. A fine, hairy old fellow, with big workmanlike head! Good
solid old poetry! None of your rhymes and jingles and frills and
coloured neckties and long nails and modern----”
Lovegood tapped his glass on the arm of the judgment-seat:
“It is the painful duty of the chair,” said he, “to remind our sculptor
that he claims to have been infected with an _original_ and rippin’
idea.”
Rippley shook himself peevishly:
“This bleating minor poet keeps diggin’ his dandified elbow into my
ideas until he makes ’em sulk in their tents like--like Ash-heels.”
“Achilles, Rippley--Achilles!” cooed the poet gently.
Rippley turned upon him:
“I say, poet,” said he, walking up to the languid Aubrey, “you’re
looking sallow; you poets don’t take enough exercise. I bet I put you
under that sofa.”
Aubrey rose to his feet in alarm, and took up a mild attitude of
protest:
“Now, don’t be vulgar, Rippley!” said he.
But the thick-set little sculptor jumped at him and bore him to the
ground. The two rolled on the carpet until Rippley, getting the grip of
the plaintive poet, pushed his slim figure, expostulating, beneath the
sofa, where he disappeared from view under its hangings, amidst a roar
of applause.
Lovegood coughed:
“Poetry is fallen on rough times indeed,” said he.
Pangbutt stood frowning at the riot. How these tomfools took him back
to the years of his insignificance and Paris!
The door was flung open and a stoutish woman, her hands thrust in the
side-pockets of her jacket, stepped into the doorway with swaggering
stride. Glancing calmly round the room, she called airily, in a
strident, jolly voice:
“How do, Pangbutt?”
She nodded to him:
“They told me this rotten party was to be at Jack Lawrence’s. But his
place is as black as your blooming frontispiece. I’ve been huntin’
for this scum all over the shop, until a policeman sniggered and told
me there was a deal of cock-crowin’ goin’ on here.” She turned to the
roomful of them: “Hullo, boys! and what are you all up to?... Nothing
unladylike, I hope, eh?”
She laughed the question jovially.
“No, no,” they all cried.
Blotte waved his arm, standing by the barrel:
“Come along, jovial Emma,” said he, and hiccuped.
“Eh?” she queried; “quite sure I’m not----”
“No, no,” they chorused. “Come along!”
Blotte took up an oratorical attitude by the beer-cask:
“Come in--rollicking Emma--you’re making quite a draught--gives
me--hic--quite a chill. I must have something to warm me--from within
outwards.”
He drew his empty tumbler out of his pocket.
Emma laughed shrilly, and flung the door to:
“My word,” cried she, “you _are_ going it!... Heigho! I say, boys, I
have only a paragraph or two to send in to the papers and I’m finished;
so let me rest.... Which is the largest and most comfortable seat?”
She moved towards the empty sofa.
As she swung herself round to sit down, she said shrilly:
“Don’t see that poetic idiot Aubrey here. Where’s he braying to-night?”
“He isn’t braying, robustious Emma,” said Lovegood from the chair.
“He’s on all fours, eating the thistles of humiliation.”
Emma Hartroff plumped her weight on to the sofa, and a wail arose from
under her.
She started--then laughed:
“Bless my soul! I have known a sofa to groan before--but this one cries
out!” she rattled; and added indignantly:
“As if I didn’t know my figure was gone!”
Aubrey’s voice came plaintively from under her foundations:
“Most adorable Emma,” he groaned.
Lovegood coughed:
“You press heavily upon a poet’s husk,” he said solemnly. “Arise,
madam, as you love poetry, and free him.”
Emma arose.
As Aubrey crawled out, all tousled and tossed, from under the sofa, a
shout went up. He gathered himself on to his feet and brushed his knees.
She sat down:
“The ecstatic ass is not dead, after all,” she said.
Aubrey bowed, polite and affected as always:
“Ah, madam,” said he--“the weight of your opposition crushes me.”
Lovegood chuckled:
“But you have not his death upon your conscience, glorious Emma. The
recorded word remains unbroken--no one has yet seen a dead donkey.”
Emma Hartroff shrugged her shoulders:
“That is of no consequence,” she said. “But there are other--serious
things. There’s no doubt about it--I’ve begun to apologize for my
figure.”
“Hush, Emma!” Lovegood’s pale face became serious “You should never
apologize for the acts of Providence. It is most irreligious.”
Aubrey, who had taken his stand against the end of the sofa, folded his
arms, and said absently:
“‘The wit that rouses rippling laughter now,
May be but winnow’d chaff at fifty--
Raise but a cackling laugh at fourscore years.’”
They all thumped on the tables and tapped heels upon the floor:
“Certainly,” cried the chorus.
Emma Hartroff stood up:
“Tsh!” she hushed; “let the inspired idiot speak.”
She sat down in a hush of silence.
Aubrey ran his hands through his hair:
“‘The eyes that catch our eyes, and check our breath with sweet,
delicious ecstasies
May be but line-marked eyes, with disillusion’d sight at fifty--
Tear-fill’d, and inward cast in age’s loneliness at fourscore years.
But shall we therefore fear to laugh--since jests grow old?
Or cease to garner for old age’s ease--since graveyards yawn alike
for spendthrift and for thrifty?
Shall we fulfil, with homage of a loveless life, black Pessimism’s
scold
That that we do matters as little, after the years we lease, as the
worn idols to whom none now bow?’”
Emma Hartroff, pointing to the vacant place beside her, waved him to it:
“H’m!... Sit down, Aubrey.”
Aubrey sat down, and, lolling back comfortably in the corner of it, he
spread himself out luxuriously.
Andrew Blotte cheered:
“Excellent! Ex’lent!” he said solemnly. “That ain’t--hiccup--altogether
bad.... Wonderful thing, genius!”
Lovegood tapped on his chair-arm, and there was silence:
“It is my painful duty,” said he, rising to his feet, “to put it to the
republic of letters that our poet be not again heard this evening.”
They all held out their hands, and solemnly turned their thumbs down.
Lovegood nodded gloomily:
“The ayes have it,” he said.... “Citizens, I thank you for recording
in dignified silence the contempt which you felt compelled to express
for so pathetic an exhibition of mediocrity.” He sighed sadly. “Beer,
please, coy Andromache!...”
Blotte strolled unsteadily over to where Emma Hartroff sat on the sofa;
and straddling out his legs he gazed at her pensively--the wreath of
roses awry over his brow.
“Well, my merry Andrew,” said she, “get it off your chest. What’s
worrying you?”
“Emma,” said he slowly, “you don’t do yourself justice.” He put his
head on one side critically, and uttered a rending hiccup: “you ought
to (hiccup) put plum-juice on the--lobes--of your ears. It would make
you look so voluptuous.”
“Get out,” said she. “But look here, Master Andrew, what have _you_
been doing of late?”
He stood swaying and balancing himself, the wreath awry on his head,
and hiccuped:
“I’ve been trying to discover the source of heartburn in a radish,”
he said. “Sorry I can’t stay any longer, adorable Emma,” he added
flirtily, “but will you come with me to the sunny south to see the
almonds bloom?”
“Oh--get out!”
He sighed:
“Well--I must go alone.” And he added dramatically, spilling much beer
in Emma’s lap: “Away from this black cauldron of the city, to meet the
pageant of the Spring!”
He turned and shuffled over slowly to Paul Pangbutt:
“Good-bye, old--Polyglot!...” He crooned. “I forget your name--but I’m
sorry I can’t stay.... This palace of varieties” (he waved his arm
round the room) is most alluring--but I’m sorry--I can’t stay.”
Pangbutt nodded, humouring him:
“I understand,” he said.
“Of course you do.” Blotte burst out into a great laugh. He suddenly
button-holed him again: “I say, I suppose _you_ wouldn’t care
to--come--and see the almonds bloom?”
He gazed at his dandified host, and slowly shook his head. The wreath
came down over one eye:
“You won’t come to meet the pageant of the Spring?”
He shook his head in answer to the other’s shake; and, turning
clumsily, lurched towards the door.
Emma Hartroff called to him from her sofa:
“Where are you going, Blotte?”
At the door Blotte halted and faced the room:
“Goo’-night!” he said. “I would embrace you, Emma, but there are so
many of you it would seem polygamous.”
He squealed gaily, and kicked out a leg--it nearly flung him off his
feet.
As he fumbled at the handle:
“Quite sure,” said he, hanging to the door, “quite sure you won’t all
come--and walk on air--and--sing?”
He shook his head sadly:
“Will no one come with me to see the almonds bloom?” said he; and fell
through the doorway with a clatter, his feet inside.
Pangbutt hurried after him:
“A moment,” said he, as he passed Lovegood. “I’ll see him out. My
guests do not require a host.”
Lovegood smiled grimly:
“No,” said he--“they are a host in themselves.”
The door closed on Pangbutt.
A titter went round the room.
Emma Hartroff sat up suddenly on the sofa:
“I say, boys,” said she, “Anthony Baddlesmere’s a bit down at heels,
ain’t he? Eh?... Met him an hour ago--looked as if he’d pawned his
shirt. I should have thought Caroline Baddlesmere’s book----”
Aubrey opened a sleepy eye where he lay on the sofa:
“Who says Caroline Baddlesmere?” he asked drowsily.
Emma turned on him:
“_I_ say Caroline Baddlesmere,” she said. “I say she has written a
book--which is more than your worst enemy could say of you, Aubrey.”
Aubrey yawned:
“Ah! Book is rather a large word, most blunt Emma. Every school-girl
prints her literary effusions nowadays. But print and binding do not
make a book.”
He yawned again.
Rippley raised his eyebrows:
“Aubrey’s quite inspired to-night,” he said.
The fussy little minor critic, Fosse, jumped into the opportunity for
an opinion:
“One cannot but admire the personality of Caroline Baddlesmere,” he
began.
Rippley winked to the others:
“Shorthand writer, please,” he called. “The lips of James Fosse are
about to drop pearls.”
Fosse flushed impatiently, but held doggedly to his opportunity:
“But her work was bound to die. It lacked the dainty quality of
style”--he twiddled fingers in the air, seeking the expression
of subtleties too exquisite for translation by the tongue--“that
illuminating light that only comes to the virile-minded; the
epigram--finesse--the er--er----”
“Quite so,” growled Lovegood gloomily--“quite so, Mr. Fosse. Unlike
your genius, the thrills of cachinnation never followed at her heels.”
Fosse’s fussy eyes looked perplexed:
“N-no, no. Perhaps not. Still--that was not exactly what----”
“Sit down, Fosse!” cried Rippley impatiently. “Let the other ass speak.”
Fosse sat down.
Aubrey drowsily took up the cue:
“Woman,” said he languidly--“woman is adorably illogical--deliciously
ridiculous--exquisitely attractive; but woman has no sense of
humour----”
Emma Hartroff laughed shrilly:
“Good old Aubrey!” cried she. “I always said that our minor poet was
lineally descended from his mother.”
“Silence!” Lovegood’s bass boomed through the room. “Silence! I will
have no one insinuate that our poet’s mother was an ass.”
Tumblers on tables, and feet on floor, thundered applause.
Aubrey, lying back on the sofa, his arms folded, and his head drooped
forward, drowsily opened his eyes:
“I repeat,” said he--“Caroline Baddlesmere was simply
popular. Popularity is merely a vulgar mood--signifying the
commonplace--signifying nothing.”
Rippley laughed:
“Well, you are not above trying for it, old man,” said he. “And it’s a
mighty sight easier to be unknown.”
Aubrey yawned:
“I seek nothing from popularity,” he said.
“Then why do you print yourself?” asked Rippley.
“I am in love with art.... I have the perplexing preference for the
elements of inspiration rather than for the elements of popularity.”
Rippley snorted:
“Oh--go to sleep!” said he.
Aubrey turned to Emma Hartroff apologetically:
“I’m sorry,” he murmured drowsily, “but I have been wandering in the
meads by running streams all day, and it has only made me sleepy. I had
done better to have invented my own facts in Nature--Nature does not
select--like the good God, she is most wasteful.”
Emma Hartroff jumped to her feet, and strode up and down a turn or so,
her hands in her pockets. She came to a halt, and straddling in the
middle of the room, she said suddenly:
“D’you know, boys--I _like_ Caroline Baddlesmere!”
Lovegood coughed:
“Fame, indeed, for Caroline Baddlesmere,” said he.
“Yes.” She nodded her head decidedly. “Caroline Baddlesmere’s a rippin’
good sort.”
Lovegood, sitting back in his chair, eyed the straddling figure
gloomily from under his dark brows:
“Certificate of character for Caroline Baddlesmere!” he growled.
“Yes.” She nodded again. “I’m ding-dong sorry she’s struck bad luck;
but--y’know--Caroline is a bit of a new woman.... Now, _I_ like a woman
to _be_ a woman--and _act_ like a woman--and--and--_dress_ like a
woman!”
There was loud and prolonged laughter, and shouts of satiric applause,
and cat-calls.
She herself dressed like a policeman.
Tumblers were banged on the tables.
There were loud cries:
“Good old Emma!”
“Sublime Emma!”
“Gorgeous Emma!”
She bent her brows on her mood, and set her feet more firmly apart.
“Yes,” said she--“I like a gentle voice in a woman.”
The laughter became hysteric.
Lovegood raised a gloomy eyebrow:
“What’s the matter with Caroline Baddlesmere’s voice?” he growled.
She turned on him:
“Look here, Eustace; can Caroline Baddlesmere cook?”
“God knows!” he said. “Why should she? The Creator did not make woman
in the image of a Dutch oven!”
Emma Hartroff sat down, and uttered a sigh:
“Oh, you’re beyond me, Eustace. I don’t like you when you’re serious.”
She turned to the others: “Our humorist is as solemn as a pawnbroker,”
she said.
There were loud cries of “Order! order!”
Rippley stood up:
“Someone _dared_ to speak of pawnbrokers!” he said.
Emma Hartroff seized the tails of his coat:
“For heaven’s sake, let us have no fines to-night, Rippley--I’m
stone-broke----”
She started--gave a shrill scream--and added:
“Gracious, boys! I forgot. I have to knock up some paragraphs for _The
Midnight Sun_.”
She fumbled in the breast-pocket of her jacket, and lugged out a
note-book.
“Bother!” said she; “what shall I write about?”
She licked the pencil, and cudgelled her genius, but nothing came of it.
Rippley looked down upon her contemptuously:
“Blue Stephens! Emma,” said he--“you have no imagination. _Brilliant
Literary and Artistic Reception at Mr. Pangbutt’s!_”
“Right you are!” she bawled. “That’ll do, rippin’!... Someone dictate,
and I’ll write”--she looked round--“You, Lovegood! You have the most
gorgeous imagination.”
Lovegood bowed:
“I cannot agree with him who said that the flattery of woman has no
end,” he said drily.
“Oh, chuck epigram,” she said--“and dictate, like a good chap.”
He set his gaze on the theme, and the great black brows met:
“_The select Conversazione in the spacious and brilliantly-lighted
rooms--of the--er--world-famous portrait-painter was attended by----_”
Emma Hartroff held up her pencil:
“Easy all!” said she--“_attended--by_----All right. Go on.”
Fluffy Reubens took up the dictation:
“----_by the élite of the fashionable world and the flower of Upper
Bohemia_----”
Emma Hartroff’s pencil scratched down the addition:
“_Upper--Bohemia_,” said she.
Lovegood coughed:
“Which idiot is writing this masterpiece, Emma? the fluffsome Reubens
or I?”
Fluffy Reubens apologized:
“I was so afraid that élite might be left out,” he said.
“I am sorry,” said Lovegood sadly, “that so old a friend should think
me so barren an artist.”
Emma Hartroff looked up:
“Oh, chuck argument,” she said impatiently. “Go on, Lovegood!”
She licked her pencil invitingly:
Lovegood entered into his inspiration again:
“_The palatial rooms were resplendent with a hundred lights, and
the myriad glass lustres shone like stars above the well-bred Babel
assembled in this gorgeous modern palace. Amongst the witty throng
mingled eminent men--in the arts and the--er--liberal professions._” He
coughed. “Aubrey represents the liberal professions--though he rarely
achieves his larger intentions----”
“Shut up, Lovegood--and dictate,” said Emma.
Lovegood sighed, and got back to his task:
“_To say nothing of much beauty and fashion_----”
Emma simpered:
“Flatterer!” she said giddily.
Lovegood bowed:
“_Mr. Fosse, the English Maupassant, was to be seen flitting from
group to group, discoursing on the magnetism of style. Mr. Carver
Rippley, whose possible election to the Academy was the topic of much
speculation, explained away the motive of his coming masterpiece in
marble. Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre_----”
A bottle-necked man with a shapeless head, colourless hair, and a fat
puffy underlip beneath a slovenly moustache slowly rose from a chair.
Rippley flung himself upon him, punched him in the midriff, and threw
him back into his seat. Rippley’s brows were knit:
“For God’s sake,” said he, frowning at Lovegood--“don’t start Quogge
Myre talking. He always takes two columns of close print to yield up an
idea--and then it isn’t his own.”
Lovegood chuckled grimly:
“_A most pleasant evening showed Mr. Pangbutt to be not only a man of
mark in the fashionable world, but a brilliant and amusing host--his
loud, jolly laugh and gay camaraderie setting the keynote of refined
amusement to the distinguished party that poured through his palatial
rooms._”
Emma Hartroff looked up--the pencil on her lip:
“Hang it all, you’ve left _me_ out, Lovegood!” she said.
Lovegood smiled:
“I distinctly mentioned beauty and fashion, Emma. But I will give
you the personal note: _Miss Hartroff was elegantly dressed in
peau-de-suede gloves of the latest colour_----”
Rippley said “Naughty!”
Lovegood coughed:
“_Mr. Aubrey, languidly witty, was the soul of poetry in motion._”
There was a gentle snore.
Rippley held up a hand, motioning for silence:
“Ts-s-sh!” he hushed; and he added in a whisper: “Poetry sleeps.”
Aubrey was heavily asleep in his corner of the sofa; chin on chest, his
inert arms fallen listless by his sides.
Lovegood rose from his chair, and said in a low growl:
“Citizens, the republic of letters is again called upon to record its
august vote.” He pointed tragically to the sleeping beauty: “This weary
Affair that lies before you, its lank indecent limbs stretched in such
graceless attitude of repose, has once already, during this evening,
offended your eyes, insulted your intelligence, galled your ears, with
the declaiming of unasked-for verse.”
“Intolerable!” growled Rippley; and
“Intolerable!” growled they all.
“Hush!” said Rippley.
Lovegood pointed a scornful hand at the sleeping poet:
“The Thing stood up, stopped conversation, and--uttered indifferent
verse!” said he.
They all shook their heads.
Lovegood’s pale face glowered upon them:
“Here is a being, old before his time, usurping the wisdom of the
world--which were bad enough--but, worse still, offending your sight,
as citizen Rippley might say, by affecting the hair of decadence.”
Fluffy Reubens coughed:
“Preposterous,” growled he--“cut it off.”
An angelic smile spread over the pale features of Eustace Lovegood:
“How great thought travels!” he said ecstatically--“how thought begets
thought!... Now that was precisely what flashed into my thinking
machinery. What? Scissors? Oh, ah, yes--materialistic Emma always
carries scissors. But the executioner! who is worthy to clip the
godlike locks?”
Rippley stole over to Emma and took the scissors.
Lovegood smiled:
“Ah, yes, Rippley! Thy subtle fingers, creating such blood-curdling
insignificances in clay, shall at last be used to noble ends--at
last be put to their originally designed calling of barber.” Rippley
was snipping off the hair with unskilful gashes, the severed locks
falling softly upon the floor. “Thou, Rippley, shalt make minor poetry
illustrious--thou shalt breathe notoriety into the nostrils of Aubrey’s
verse--thou shalt give him through a success of scandal what his rhymes
can never bring him--a grip on the skirts of Fame. Since Fame his verse
can never bring him, he shall flirt with her through Infamy.”
Rippley held up a lock:
“Anyone else have some?” he asked.
Lovegood chuckled ironically:
“But shear the glory from him tenderly, deftly,” said he. “You’re
not cutting a hedge. Set aside each lock that falls, that the
hero-worshipper may wear a snippet from a poet’s brow.... All the dear
delightful barmaids will want a lock. Peckham tea-parties will thrill
at the touch of it--Clapham culture sob--West Kensington be troubled.
And in the town I can hear all the little coffee-girls a-weeping....
Pan is not dead. The news is worse than that--Pan is growing bald and
middle-aged.... Poets should be heard, not seen.”
Rippley dropped the scissors and whipped into a seat, uttering a
smothered guffaw, as Aubrey roused and yawned.
Lovegood sat down:
“Silence,” said he--“the sleeping beauty wakes.”
The poet opened his eyes drowsily, and rose slowly, sleepily, from the
sofa, amidst a tense silence.
As he stood up, his hair raggedly clipped about his head, making his
long neck inordinately naked, a titter ran round the guests.
He shivered:
“I dreamed,” he said; and ran his hand over his hair.
“I dreamed----”
He ran his hand over his hair again.
Emma Hartroff got up from her seat and, thrusting her hands into her
pockets, she straddled before him, gazing at him.
His eyes were staring blankly into space.
She tittered:
“Well, I’m blowed!” said she--“Modern Poetry seems to be all rhymes and
neckties.”
The poet burst into tears.
* * * * *
For a month the boy Noll lay seriously ill; but at last his young body
began to gain vigour, and strength slowly to come back to him.
CHAPTER IX
_Wherein Master Oliver is convinced that it is Difficult to play the
Man’s Part on a Weak Stomach_
In a large attic the glow of a stove, that roared of warmth, gave a
sense of comfort to the spacious, rambling, rather bare room; and from
its opened iron door the ruddy light of its furnace flared cheerily
upon the floor.
Near by sat Caroline Baddlesmere at a small table, where a shaded lamp
flung down a golden glory upon the white pages of the printer’s proofs
she was correcting, reflecting little amber lights that played about
her handsome eye-pits and nostrils and mouth and chin.
Along the low walls, almost to where the steep roof met them, books
were piled for lack of shelves; and the largeness of the room and the
atmosphere of the books gave the suggestion of a library that was
strangely at variance with a small bed in the far end of the large
place, where a candle dimly showed the boy Oliver lying amongst his
pillows, watching Netherby Gomme and Julia as they whispered their
confidences seated on chairs hard by him. The candle’s light painted
their faces picturesquely against the black hollow of an open doorway
that led to a smaller attic which was the Baddlesmeres’ sleeping-room.
Eyes grown accustomed to this gloom might have seen that a thin line
of blue smoke curled upwards from the bed, for Noll was colouring the
wedding-present--keeping a sharp look-out lest anyone should see him,
and raising a screen of bedclothes with his knees, between himself and
detection....
Caroline roused from her work, disturbed by the loud sniff of a shabby
little maid-of-all-work who entered the room, a dusting-brush under her
arm and a dusting-rag in her hand.
“Please, lidy,” said the girl, “may I finish a bit of work by the light
of the stove?--I won’t be more than four-and-twenty shakes, and I’ll be
very quiet.”
Caroline nodded good-humouredly.
The lank child--she was little more--stooped down by the blaze of warm
light that came from the stove’s open door, and lugging a battered
periodical out of her pocket, smoothed it out and began to read....
“What are you doing, Victoria May Alice?” asked Caroline, after a
while, smiling at the calm effrontery of the girl.
Victoria May Alice uttered a loud sniff:
“I was just a-finishing this here chapter, lidy--it’s so blamey dark
on the landing. I’d got to such a beautiful part--where Sir ’Enery
Marjorrybanks is a-telling of the lady’s-maid as her eyes is so magical
and is just a-seein’ of poems in their liquid depths, and all that....
It give me a kind of nice hump the way they was a-goin’ hon----”
“What are you reading, Victoria May Alice?” Caroline held out her hand.
“Let me see it.”
The smudgy little maid handed her the periodical:
“It’s _Bow Bells_, marm--what that rummy gent brings me--him what they
calls Lovegood.”
She went and stood beside her chair as Caroline looked at the paper;
and with long bony fingers, not very clean, the girl proceeded to do
the honours:
“That’s the picture of Sir ’Enery a-kissin’ of the girl hunder the
hoak-tree. She’s purtendin’ she don’t like it. I wonder why they always
does that in high-class society. I kissed a ’airdresser once, and it
was better than a lobster salad--but (_sniff_) that’s neither ’ere nor
there.... I like them wonderful whiskers of Sir’’Enery Marjorrybanks--I
like ’is name, too, it’s like crackin’ nuts--Marjorrybanks.”
“Marchbanks, Victoria!”
Victoria May Alice looked hard at the handsome lady before her,
suspiciously:
“Garn, mem!” said she--“you’re coddin’.”
A smile flickered about the corners of Caroline’s mouth:
“No,” she said severely--“you must believe me, Victoria.”
“Well,” said Victoria May Alice--“I’ll allow I most generally does. But
if that there don’t spell Marjorrybanks I’ll darn my stockings.”
Caroline Baddlesmere nodded:
“Then,” said she, “Victoria May Alice will have to darn her stockings.”
Victoria May Alice considered:
“No, mem,” said she--“I takes back the stockin’s. I dessay you’re
right.” She put her head on one side and surveyed the difficulty with
one eye half shut.... She sighed: “All I can say is that it ain’t the
way _we_ was taught to spell at the board-school. But I suppose it’s
all right. I reckon it’s high-toned and hupper-class to spell things
as they ain’t got no reason to be spelled. There was a lady here quite
recent as was callin’ on the first floor as is given to indulgence” She
tippled with an imaginary glass of wine. “And this party as was callin’
on the one as is given to----”
“Hush, Victoria,” said Caroline.
“Yes, _you_ know--well, she was a-doin’ of the thing regular formal and
in style, I can tell you, powdered footman and a red-nosed geezer with
white leather breeches a-sittin’ on the coachman’s box, and all--well,
she rings the bell in the old party’s room as--_you_ know--and in I
hustles, a-doin’ up my bun on the back of my ’ead with my ’and as I
stood at the door. She asked for her broom. ‘Yes, lidy,’ says I, and
takes her one up from the kitchen. But she was that short, you’d think
I’d hit her on the bonnet!... What d’you think she was gettin’ at?...
Why--her bloomin’ brow-ham!”
Victoria May Alice, in the attitude of a coachman on his box, and with
mighty clucks and “gees” and “whoas,” whipped up imaginary horses.
A shrill voice called from far below:
“Victoria--May--Yall--liss!”
The little maid-of-all-work went out of the door, and, leaning over the
balustrade, she called down the stairs at the top pitch of her shrill
voice, standing a-tiptoe to give her lean lungs full play:
“Yes--marm! I’m a-com--ing!”
She came back into the room, and added placidly:
“I ’ate ’er voice. It goes through yer like a gimlet.... But (sniff)
she ain’t bad--not all through--when you knows ’er.” She sniffed.
The shrill voice came mounting up the stairs:
“Victoria--May--Yall--liss!”
The untidy child stepped quickly back to the door, and putting out her
head through the cranny, yelled, with sing-song delivery:
“_Yes_--marm!--I’m a-comin’--I’m--a-coming! The top floor’s a-wantin’
coals hasty, marm; and a-gettin’ nasty about the size of the scuttles!”
She came blithely into the room, and, screwing up her mouth, said, with
a wise nod of the head:
“That’s one on the tender for ’er!”
Caroline suppressed a smile, and said reprovingly:
“I made no complaint about the size of the coal-scuttles, Victoria.”
Victoria May Alice sniffed:
“Lor bless yer, no,” said she; “but them coal-scuttles is what I calls
a vegitable halloocination.... You ain’t one to complain; but it’s
about time some one did it for yer.... My word, she do run it fine with
them egg-cups o’ coal! She don’t dare let _me_ fill the bucket--so I
gets off that job!” Sniff.
Caroline sighed:
“Ah, Victoria, she has to practise economy.”
Victoria May Alice nodded her head seriously:
“There’s some kinds of economy as is religion, and some kinds as is
against religion, mem,” said she. “She’s always talking of savin’ for
that blackguard son of hers in Australia.” She came near to Caroline
Baddlesmere and added in a hoarse whisper--“My solemn opinion is the
feller is doin’ his five years’ hard.”
“Now, now, Victoria--you are descending to scandal!”
“Perhaps I am--and again, perhaps I ain’t. Who’d be writing to her from
Wormwood Scrubbs Prison but her own relations--garn! D’yer think----”
“Now, now, Victoria!”
Victoria prepared to depart, but hesitated at the door:
“If Master Oliver’s a-wantin’ of anythink, lady, jest you put yer ’ead
over the rail and ’owl for it,” said she. Loud sniff. “It’s no good
being backward and modest in this ’ouse--nor, for that, in this dirty
city.... They----”
There was a furious ringing of a bell below, and the racket was
followed by an irritable yell:
“Victoria--May--Yall--liss!”
Victoria May Alice sniffed:
“My eye!” said she--“she’ll thump my ’ed when I go down!” And yelling
where she stood: “Yes--marm--I’m a-coming!” she turned to Caroline and
added in a confidential whisper: “No, lidy--it’s no gain being backward
and modest. _She_ don’t understand it, bless yer. Thinks you’re
weak--or can’t pay yer bill. And, bless yer, lidy, I don’t a-mind
a-carryin’ up of the scuttles--not to _this_ floor.”
Caroline nodded anxiously:
“Run along, Victoria, like a good girl.”
“Yes, lidy,” said she. Loud sniff.
As she turned to go she caught sight of Noll smoking in bed. She
smuggled a laugh into her hand:
“The ridic’lous little creature,” said she, and disappeared. The
door softly shut after her, and her weary young feet could be heard
shuffling down the stairs.
“I say, Julia,” said Noll, from his bed--“ain’t it time we had a meal?”
Caroline Baddlesmere looked up:
“There’s some bread soaked in milk for you, Noll--on the table. I will
heat it for you.”
The boy’s stomach turned against it. He shook his head:
“I’m afraid, mother, I can’t eat it,” he said.... “I’m sorry.”
Caroline, rising calmly, put on her cloak and hat and let herself out
of the room. She said she would soon be back....
Netherby leaned forward, chin in hand, and gazed at Julia.
“Julia,” he said, in a low whisper, “look how these people face poverty
and neglect--just because they have each other to work for. Why cannot
we, you and I, start life together--now--to-morrow?”
“But, Netherby----”
He took her slender fingers in his hand:
“My dear girl,” said he--“I am now known a little. The money will be
coming in soon. What more would you wait for?... Must I bring you the
moon?”
“But supposing I drag you down, Netherby----”
“My dear Julia--you talk as if you were sixteen stone, and I swimming
in a duck-pond. We can never be in want from now--not more than we are.”
“How can you be sure, Netherby?”
His stern face smiled:
“I can amuse the world. And the world cheerfully flings its pence to
its jesters. On the blackest night the court fool may warm his hands at
the hearth of the world. And I once heard the greatest ass in London
confess that it takes a clever fellow to be reckoned a remarkable fool
in these days, Julia.”
“This disaster to Caroline and Mr. Anthony has frightened me,” she
sighed.
“It has strengthened me,” he said--“given me courage. Here are gently
nurtured people, used to the luxuries of life, whose womenfolk wear the
bonnet of fashion without a strut, for they have never known any other;
here they are, living all hugger-mugger in a “spacious upper floor”
where even I, from the ranks, would be everlastingly seeing only the
faults--yet never so much as a whimper from them. They are as cheery as
though they had come into the family estates. Until the boy went sick,
Baddlesmere was never more amusing----”
She sighed:
“Ah, yes--they laugh to keep the tears away,” she said.
“But, my Julia, you would not have them live their life in one
long-drawn-out fear lest the world be full of fears!”
“But--how do you know your next book will be a success, Netherby?”
“I don’t know, dear. I once knew a man who was so afraid of getting a
chill that he wore goloshes after sunset--he died of heat-apoplexy.”
The boy Noll yawned:
“I say, Netherby,” he grumbled from the bed peevishly: “come here, you
and Julia, and sit on the bed--I can’t hear a word you say--it’s so
beastly dull seeing you billing and cooing there and missing all the
letterpress.”
Netherby chuckled hugely; and they both got up, he chuckling, and she
blushing, and came to the boy’s bedside. Noll was looking very sickly:
“Oh, Noll,” said Julia in alarm--“I’m sure you ought not to be smoking.
You are looking so pale.”
Noll coughed:
“Shush!” said he--“or mother’ll hear you.... I got back the pipe from
that sailor fellow--I told him I couldn’t pay him because I had had
money losses. He waived the fee--he said that though he commanded a
barge he’d colour a dozen meerschaum pipes for a good un like me, free
of cost--I had only to send along the pipes and the tobacco. Such a
gentlemanly fellow, he was! Though a bit dirty.... Thames sailors are
such warm-hearted johnnies--but they don’t keep their nails very nice.”
“But, Noll,” she said--“you ought not to be sitting up in bed without
your jacket on.”
She brought the lad his short black jacket, and he submitted to putting
it on graciously enough.
“Noll,” she said--“surely you cannot get any pleasure from smoking?”
“My dear Julia,” he said limply--“I shall never get the pipe coloured
in time for your wedding if you go on like this.... Unless you put it
off for a little.... You see, I’m not very used to a pipe--and I don’t
mind telling you it does make my head go round a bit. But--hullo! I
say, hold my pipe, Julia--there’s a whopping great moth!”
He handed the pipe to Julia, who took it reluctantly enough; he jumped
up, and, seizing a butterfly net which hung over a chest of drawers by
his bed-head, he leaped about on his tumbled bed in his night-shirt,
Eton jacket, and black stockings, making frantic sweeps at the
fluttering moth, which swerved aside, escaped the net, and fluttered
through the dark doorway into the next room. Noll leaped from his bed
and made after it, in hot pursuit, chasing it into the gloom of the
dark room beyond.
Julia sighed--put aside the pipe with dainty fingers of disgust--and
sat down again.
They could hear Noll fumbling about in the next room.
Netherby went and sat beside her.
He watched her in silence for awhile:
“Julia,” he said--“promise. You must promise.
Promise--promise--promise----”
They both started.
Through the open doorway came the boy, looking like misery, deathly
pale, and dragging the butterfly-net limply after him.
“O lor!” he said.
“My dear Noll!” said Julia--“what on earth have you been doing now?”
Noll halted wearily before them:
“It’s that sailor-man’s tobacco,” he said gloomily. “It was--too
much--for--my strength. I don’t think I’m a man--yet.... Netherby, you
and Julia can get married as soon as you like--I shall never smoke
again.”
He laid the butterfly-net on Gomme’s knees, and added, with a wan smile:
“I say, Netherby, let’s change places--you go and catch butterflies
whilst I kiss Julia.”
Julia jumped and uttered a little scream:
“Oh, Noll, you cruel boy--you’ve caught the moth!” she cried.
She put her deft fingers into the net, caught the struggling thing,
and, taking it out carefully, carried it to the window and let it fly
out into the darkness.
Noll smiled gloomily at Netherby:
“It’s very cruel of Julia,” said he. “It’s a beastly night--that
moth’ll get an awful cold in its chest--accompanied by sore throat,
fever, and chills, and violent perspiration--and developing into a
nasty hacking cough.”
CHAPTER X
_Wherein Master Oliver entertains Guests_
When Caroline Baddlesmere returned to the great bare room, and took off
her outdoor wraps, Noll was seemingly drowsing, Netherby Gomme sitting
on the bed by his side.
The boy had been lying very still for awhile when he touched Netherby’s
sleeve, signing to him to put down the ear of confidence:
“Netherby,” he whispered, “when it’s within a quarter of midnight, old
Modeyne will be fumbling at the door-latch down below.... I shan’t be
able to help Betty to bring him up to-night--so you might slip down on
tip-toe and just keep a flight of steps above her all the way. In case
she needs help you can pretend you are just going home.”
He took hold of Gomme’s coat-lapel:
“Don’t let her know you are on the look-out unless old Modeyne is very
far gone--he’s a goodish weight to push along.”
Netherby nodded.
A gleam shot into Noll’s eye; and he caught Gomme’s coat-lapel again:
“He comes up pretty quiet--he always takes his boots off _for fear of
waking the gossips_!” A twinkle glittered in his eyes: “The bother is
that once he begins undressing he takes off everything but his shirt,
and insists on going to sleep on the hall mat. Betty has got to keep
him moving--she knows exactly what to do.... Once he starts up the
stairs he is all right--unless he hiccups, and insists on apologizing
to the people whose doors he is passing.... You’ll know soon enough,
he nearly kicks their doors down. He looks killingly funny with his
braces hanging down behind and carrying his boots and things as he
goes crawling up the stairs, cracking his toes, and complaining that
_it is not seemly that rending Hiccup should climb the Whirling Stairs
of Ambition_. He sometimes lies down at the head of a flight of steps
and insists on going to sleep--he says that _we are the slaves of
convention, and an overplus of clips tends to an overtax of sleep_....
You’ve got to see that he doesn’t stop at the landlady’s door, or
he’ll kick it and chuckle in a loud whisper: _Behold where whispering
gossip lies!_ with the accent on the ‘lies.’ He’s a bit of a wag is old
Modeyne; but he won’t do anything low--he’s always a gentleman--even in
his night-shirt.” The lad’s face grew serious again. “Betty will be
waiting up for him--and she has no fire--and--I shall not be able to
help to-night.”
Netherby nodded.
There was a knock at the door; and the little lodging-house drudge
crept in, shut it after her, and set her back against it:
“Please, lidy,” she said with a loud sniff, “that lidy what walks like
a police-officer is a-straddlin’ on the mat outside.”
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the door behind her:
“I’ve forgot her name,” she went on. “I’ve showed her up, because it’s
such a leg-aching grind a-goin’ down and up them stairs twice--but I’ll
show her down again if yer don’t want to be bothered with her--and
Master Oliver all of a heap too!... I did give her a hint as it was the
small-pox likely enough--and I can easy work up the idea----”
The gift was pushed forward by the door opening behind her, and Emma
Hartroff entered the room, her hands thrust in the side-pockets of her
long jacket.
She greeted Caroline breezily:
“Hullo, Mrs. Baddlesmere--how are you all?... I could hear every word
the little slavey said.... I thought I might come and worry Noll a
bit--may I?”
Caroline had risen, and came forward to greet her.
“Yes, Miss Hartroff--of course you may.”
“I’m so glad--I was so afraid they’d send me away.”
Caroline, as she shook hands, whispered to her:
“If he show signs of drowsiness, please let him go to sleep.”
Emma Hartroff bowed an answer, and strode over to Noll’s bed; she
nodded to the others, who made way for her, and taking her straddling
stand near him, she surveyed the boy:
“You _do_ look pretty sick, on my word, Noll,” said she; and added
pathetically: “I wish I could do something for you--I never know what
to do with kids; but----”
“I say, Emma,” said Noll--“you ain’t going to a children’s party, are
you?”
Emma Hartroff raised eyebrows of inquiry:
“N-no, Noll!”
He signed to her to sit down beside him.
“Then don’t play the snivelling mother,” said he--“it ain’t your size.
Come and flirt with _me_--you may hold my hand.”
Emma Hartroff laughed good-naturedly, and sitting down on the bed
beside the boy, she took his hand:
“Noll, you are very old,” she said--and she blew a breath: “Phooh! you
_are_ high up.”
“Yes,” he nodded--“it makes me quite giddy when I smoke a pipe.”
A knock at the door--and the little drudge skipped in and shut it
again. She strode down the room on tip-toe to Caroline:
“Please, lidy--here’s that rummy gent as speaks like them beautiful
play-actors. He’s waitin’ to see you very partic’lar.” She giggled.
“He’s such a funny gentleman! Excuse my laughin’, mum, but he is that
hodd and ridic’lous! When I opened the door he says, says he: ‘Hail,
lugubrious smudgy serving-wench!’ says he.” She uttered a sniff, and
cocked her head thoughtfully: “I expect he’s a poet or that sort of
party. Jimmy, what a rum tailor he has! But if you ask me, mum, he
knows how to spell hungry. I knows a man’s eyes when he’s short of his
victuals. I ought ter.” Sniff. “I do love the the-ayter. They talks so
beautiful--just as if words had meanin’ in them. Not a bit like real
people----”
“May I ask what the gentleman is doing, meanwhile?” asked Caroline
drily.
The girl leaned forward, and added confidentially behind the back of
her hand:
“He’s on the mat.”
She jerked her thumb at the door.
Caroline shifted uneasily in her chair:
“I wish you would call gentlemen by their names, Victoria May Alice,”
she said irritably. “Do you mean Mr. Eustace Lovegood?”
“That’s ’im,” said Victoria May Alice.
“Then show him in, you stupid child.”
The face of Victoria May Alice cleared. She strode theatrically to
the door, flung it open like a footman, and, suppressing a spluttered
guffaw, announced mock-heroically:
“Mr. Eustace Lovegood!”
Lovegood walked in tragically--halted before Victoria May Alice, and
put his hand on her head:
“Victoria May Alice,” said he, “you will never do for the Embassy.
You do not take the world seriously. When you announce genius you
must shout it fearlessly, as though you had thrust a benefit upon the
world--not as though you were hurriedly hiding away undarned stockings
in a coffee canister.”
Victoria May Alice muffled a snigger in her hands and skipped from the
room.
Lovegood turned to his hostess:
“Ah, Caroline!” He advanced down the room slowly: “Your devoted
slave--Noll’s devoted slave! Ha! Mr. Gomme, your servant! Miss Julia! I
am your footstool.”
Caroline rose to meet him. She smiled:
“You wished to see me, Eustace!” she asked.
He nodded:
“I came to see if Noll were well,” he said.
She made as though she would lead him to the boy’s bedside:
“It will do Noll good just to see you,” she said.
The big man held her hand:
“Ah, my dear Caroline--I come for my own pleasure, not for his. Noll
being ill, the town seems unholy quiet. History is an empty tragedy
without its historian--an epic less than doggerel without its poet. And
the town, being bereft of Noll, has ceased to be moved with incident.
The world is become a dead-house. What an eye a boy has for calamities!
He scents an event in the air. He arrives before the accident. A boy is
always thrilled at the sight of a powder-cask----”
“I wish, Eustace, you were not always throwing lighted matches so near
the cask.”
The great fellow laughed jovially, and kissing her hand, he strode over
to the bed where Noll lay, his eyes upon him. The greetings were very
cordial. There had always been the alliance of understanding between
them.
“Noll,” said Lovegood, sitting down on the bed at his feet--“dear boy,
I am not well versed in the teething of infants, the lacy mysteries of
long-clothes, the cooing garrulities of the cradle, but--I _was_ once a
_boy_.... I remember the emotional moments of boyhood.... I have never
forgotten my first pork-pie.... I would fain have brought you a rare
roast goose, Oliver; but I had to decide on the homely chicken broth.”
He turned and called:
“What ho, without!”
“A-coming!” cried, from without, the shrill voice of Victoria May Alice.
The door was flung open, and there entered Victoria, carrying a smoking
bowl.
“Victoria May Alice,” said Lovegood--“bear the goblet to the king.”
Victoria May Alice bore the goblet.
She handed the bowl to Noll--spluttered into a guffaw behind a grimy
hand--and hurried from the room.
The big man, sitting at the foot of the bed, smiled.
“God bless you, Oliver,” said he--“and get well.”
Noll began to sup the fragrant broth with a spoon.
Lovegood got up from the bed--coughed--blew his nose.
Caroline caught his eye, and signed to him. He strode down the room to
her.
“Eustace,” she said, “I wish you would not spend your money on the boy.
You have no right to stint yourself--but--my dear fellow, you touch my
heart--and--I cannot scold you.”
He stroked her shoulder:
“Tut, tut! nonsense!” said he, “we must not grow sentimental before
we are forty----” He was interrupted by the click of the door, and,
looking round, found Victoria May Alice at his elbow. She said to
Caroline:
“My heye, mum, we is a-makin’ of a night of it!”
Lovegood laughed and strode back to his seat on Noll’s bed.
Caroline turned impatiently to the girl:
“Yes, yes, Victoria--what is it?”
Victoria May Alice sniffed:
“It ain’t _it_, mum--it’s _them_,” she said--“two of them comic
gentlemen,” she tittered, and pulled herself up behind a grimy
hand--“as is always a-hangin’ about with the party from the the-ayter.”
She jerked a thumb at Lovegood. “They’re on the ’all doorstep and
says is Master Noll at ’ome to partic’lar friends--and I says I’ll go
and see; but if they was a-comin’ into this blessed house they’ve got
to put out them dirty pipes. It’s not nice of them a-callin’ on the
gentry a-smokin’ that muck. I don’t like it. These here London people
has no manners. They wouldn’t do it if they was callin’ on a duchess
or a bandy-legged bishop, or people as keep a butler. But--they are so
ridic’lous! Specially that--te-hee!--fluffy gentleman. Blime me--if I
don’t go on to the the-ayter myself when I’m grown up. I calls that
Life----”
She stopped at the clatter of feet on the attic stairs:
“O lor!” she said resignedly--“here they comes, bless ’em!”
Caroline put out her hand and touched the girl’s arm:
“Victoria, my dear child, don’t be so noisy, please.”
“Beg pardon, lidy,” the child replied humbly, and with sepulchral
hoarseness.
There was a loud knock, and before there was time to answer it, Rippley
and Robbins boisterously entered the room.
Noll’s greetings were too boyish for whispered talk as they all found
seats.
Victoria May Alice winked at Fluffy Reubens.
“_He_ ain’t dead yet!” said she.
Caroline had scarcely returned to her work, when Victoria May Alice
stepped stealthily to her side:
“Mr. Fosse called just before these gentlemen, mum,” said she. “The
silly hass wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I says, ‘Well, it’s
scarlet fever if you will have it between yer bleery bicycle lamps,’
says I.” She put her lean little arms akimbo: “He’s so blimey pushing.”
She put her hand up to her mouth and added confidentially: “I can’t
abide Fosse myself----”
A distant yell from below called: “Victoria-May-Yallis!”
“Hullo!” said the girl, “there’s ’er voice a-yellin’ again.”
She stole away softly.
CHAPTER XI
_Wherein Egoism begins to Suspect that there is a Bottom to the Pint
Pot_
“Please, mum,” Victoria’s untidy head appeared round the edge of the
door, whispering hoarsely: “A gentleman as calls hisself Pangbutt is on
the hall mat downstairs.”
Caroline raised her head inquiringly:
“Mr. Paul Pangbutt?” she asked in frank surprise.
Victoria May Alice nodded violently:
“That’s the gent, mum--he said as you’d know his name.”
“Say I am not at home to visitors.”
“I did, mum--but he says as I was to say as he is partic’lar anxious to
see you. He called before--but he was that blimey gloomy I sent him off
for a walk--said as you wouldn’t be in for an hour--Lord ’elp me.”
Caroline hesitated.
“Wait,” she said. “Show Mr. Pangbutt upstairs, Victoria.”
Victoria May Alice dropped her dust-pan and brush with a rattle of
surprise:
“Oh!--you _will_ see him.... Bless yer, _I_ thought he’d be a gloomy
nuisance--he’s that solemn. I told him he hadn’t a charnce. He rather
calls for a sunshiny day to show him off, does Pangbutt.” She came in
and leaned forward toward Caroline: “Don’t yer hesitate to say a hint,
mum--I’d lie like Sapphira, if yer tips the wink. I was a-putting of
him off anyway--I’ve been a-hinting as you was in your bath, mum, but,
of course, if yer _want_ to see him, I’ll tell him it was all shine and
on second thoughts you ain’t a-goin’ to have one to-day.”
The girl went to the head of the stairs, rattled the tin dust-pan
against the brush handle to call the visitor’s attention down below,
and cried shrilly over the balustrade:
“Hi! mister--you can come up all right--it’s all off about the bath.”
She put her untidy head in at the door:
“He’s a-comin’ up, lidy,” she said; and, shutting the door, departed.
Caroline sighed wearily:
“I wish we could suppress that child,” she said....
The door opened and Victoria May Alice, in the gloom beyond the lamp,
cried, as a dark figure entered the room:
“The gentleman as says he’s Mr. Pangbutt, marm!”
A burst of laughter came from the group about the bed at some passing
sally from Noll.
Paul Pangbutt, blinking at the lamp-light, looked dazedly round the
room.
Caroline rose from her seat:
“Ah, Mr. Pangbutt!”
She bowed to him formally, and added airily:
“So the river of life brings us together again in strange places!”
He came to meet her haltingly:
“I particularly wished to see you--alone,” he said in a low tone and
with some embarrassment.
She bowed:
“We have drifted along such different ways,” she said coldly, “that I
could scarcely believe the little servant when she told me so.”
“I came to see if I could be of any help,” he said, almost in a whisper.
She laughed lightly:
“Help?”
Her voice rose in gay surprise.
“I heard you needed help,” he said, “nearly a month ago.”
“Thank you--no. But won’t you be seated?”
He went to the stove and gazed at it--rebuffed--perplexed.
Caroline resumed her seat:
“So you are settled in London at last!” she said. “I hear nearly a year
now.... You see you are quite a celebrity----”
A burst of laughter from the group about the bed made him start--and he
glanced suspiciously over his shoulder.
But they were oblivious of him.
“Come, Caroline,” he said hoarsely, “you needn’t wound me more than my
own miserable thoughts have been doing for these many days.”
“Then let us have no talk of help,” she said, dropping her voice also.
“Anthony has got some night-work on the papers at last. We are at the
end of the siege. Besides--how do you know I am not on the eve of
another masterpiece?” She laughed--a little sadly. “You mustn’t judge
me too closely by my gowns--they are a little out of the fashion,
beyond a doubt, but we may blossom again next spring.”
He drew a chair, a poor rickety piece of furniture, before the stove,
and sat down upon it.
She smiled as it struck her how, unconsciously, he had, even in a
troubled state of mind, taken the warmest place in the room. He sat for
some while, gazing drearily into the furnace.
She wished he would say his say, and let her get back to her work.
At last he spoke in a low voice:
“Ah, Caroline, you and Anthony are the true artists--I only a
fair-weather one.... I have always dreaded the attic. I never could put
aside discomfort.... Anthony was quite right--I am painting the most
soulless things.... They pay.”
She felt relieved. Anthony had evidently not gone with his hat in his
hand.
“Well--we do not yearn for the attic heights precisely,” she said drily.
He let the flippancy pass. He was too interested in himself to trouble
about their tastes.
“I am too successful,” he said.
She smiled:
“I am not sure it isn’t best so,” she said--“for you can help the
struggling ones to live----”
“Don’t stab me with that weapon”--he winced--“it is just exactly what I
have forgotten to do.” And he added half to himself: “Fame has been my
very God.”
Loud laughter filled the room.
Noll yawned drowsily at the far end of the attic.
“But how _do_ you tickle a trout?” he asked.
Caroline repressed a desire to laugh.
She shrugged her shoulders:
“Ah, Paul--you still worship at the old shrine--Fame, Posterity, and
all the Clap-Trap!... After all, the ages have their own intellectuals?”
“I do not think we should wholly neglect posterity,” he said largely.
He was deft in throwing the catchpenny. “We ought, if we paint a great
picture, to paint it with colours that will not decay.”
She smiled sadly, flipped over some proofs, and read:
“_All language dies, giving birth to other. Colour fades--paint
perishes, marble crumbles, the statue falls in the grass, the glowing
harmonies pass into blackness and are no more, the rains wash the
hand’s craft from the hardest stone--the cathedral, the masonry
of which, splendidly upspringing to the clouds, reaches towards
the swinging skies, crumbles at last and falls and sinks into the
gutter--is carried grain by grain in drainage of runnels to the
water-brook, or by babbling brook in rounded pebbles into the sea
of obliterate things. That literary works die, as all human effort
dies, is a part of the pathos of the unattainable--a part of the grim
tribute of Life to Death. In the life of the world, Homer is but of the
day before yesterday, and he is dead except to a few scholars; even
Shakespeare himself, who is but of yesterday, is read and known by how
few of those who utter so glibly the fragments of his wisdom! There
is no finality in literature--no end to art. The sweetest love-lyric
will one day sound scholastic, pattered by lips that, for all their
essaying, cannot taste its native tenderness--sounded in ears that
will be deaf to some subtle accent of it--heard by alien minds that
must strain by grammar and rule of thumb to catch its meaning, which
the very shepherds of its living day could grasp at its mere uttering.
But noble work, even though it pass away, gives birth to nobler, as
the heroic act ceases at the breathing of a breath, yet lives in the
remembering; and we should be content indeed to enrich and strengthen
the spirit of our age._”
He sat for awhile, after her voice had ceased; and, with puckered
brows, stared at the light:
“I have worked only for Fame,” he said. “I have shut out the
world--turned a deaf ear to its pain and cry--toiled and striven for
Fame alone. And I have won it.”
“Then you have found a pretty dry biscuit to feed your heart upon,” she
said.
He nodded:
“I have awaked to find myself alone.”
There was laughing applause by the bed.
Caroline smiled sadly:
“So you have been a little lonely, eh, Paul?”
“I am finding myself more and more alone.”
There was another gust of laughter from the group about the bed.
Pangbutt looked round uneasily.
The sphinx smile came to Caroline’s lips; she saw his uneasiness.
“Paul,” she said--“there are too many ghosts in your house.”
“Ghosts?” he asked moodily. He nodded after awhile:
“Perhaps there _are_ ghosts,” he said bitterly.
She leaned forward:
“Yes, Paul--when the twilight comes, and the day’s work is set aside,
all the colours turn to drab--and the ghosts of dead friendships and
dead follies come out and walk.”
He uttered a low bitter laugh:
“And yet there are they that are jealous because I am famous.”
Laughter burst into the room.
Pangbutt moved uneasily:
“How oddly those men laugh!” he said.
“You are grown suspicious, Paul--they are not even thinking of us....
Every nudge at the elbow is not Envy.”
Pangbutt sighed, and turned his eyes inwards again towards the man who
interested him most:
“I begin to think,” said he, “that I have been living in a fools’
paradise.”
Caroline’s eyes hardened:
“There are worse things than a fools’ paradise,” she said. “The man
who lives for himself alone may awake one day to find himself in a
mad-house--one with all the other ghosts that flit about his prison--a
shadow amongst shadows, seeking shadows.”
“A shadow?”
She nodded:
“A shadow, Paul.... There is no woman in your life--no child--no care
but for self. What does a childless, mateless man know of life? He has
not taken up its most initial gifts. He avoids its responsibilities,
its risks, its pains, its debt to God and man. Why should he expect, or
even hope for, the joys of life? Who can know real delight who shirks
the winning--or who shall find happiness that shrinks from sorrows?”
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently:
“Why should I become a part of the crowd?” he asked with contempt.
“You cannot turn your back on your fellows--unless you are to grow an
orchard of dead-sea apples,” she said.
He sat silent for awhile.
He gazed perplexedly at his ambitions:
“I have made a career--have won its prizes. Until to-night I considered
myself an object of envy.... I _am_ an object of envy.”
“Tush!” she said. “Better be a microbe than a loveless man.”
She laughed--but at the sight of his wrecked self-esteem falling about
his wretched hunched shoulders the laughter left her eyes.
She leaned forward:
“Listen,” she said.... “As I sat here some days ago, I could have
shrieked with terror--lest I should lose my boy. But I would rather go
mad with such fear than never have known the possibility of it--than
be as you are.... And for what? What is this Fame? Who gives it? Who
are these demi-gods who award it?... They don’t even know their own
minds for a generation--sometimes not for a year.... Supposing this
Fame, then, to which you are giving your life, be _nothing_ at all!”
She laughed sadly. “But we are getting quite serious,” she said; and
rising to her feet she put her hand on his stooped shoulders: “Paul,”
she said--“you are in love with a sad flirt--I should be ungallant, and
break off the engagement. A woman could treat you no worse.”
Paul rose, realizing his dismissal:
“Ah, well, Caroline, old friend,” said he--“it is very late--I must
be going.... You make me think of the old days when you kept us all
in order in Paris.... Good-night! It is so long since anybody took
sufficient interest in me to rate me.... Good-night!”
He moved towards the door, saying as he went:
“I must go and sit with my ghosts.... They never scold me--are never
angry with me, beyond pulling an ugly face now and again--only they are
so infernally dull.”
She saw him to the door:
“Good-night, Paul!” she said--and added, laughing: “Get you a wife--and
learn to play with children.”
She shut the door and went back to her task.
“Heigho! the man has quite forgiven himself for a life full of
meannesses,” she yawned.
She sat down wearily in her chair by the stove, and as she got out her
proofs to correct for the press, she sighed:
“Thank heaven, the last page!... Heigho! I am weary....”
She sank back in her chair; and as her eyes closed, her hand upon the
last corrected page, she fell fast asleep.
When Caroline awoke in the greying dawn, the small Betty was sitting in
a chair near the boy’s bed, solemnly reading by the guttering candle.
The child had set a kettle to boil; and tea-cups and an old brown
teapot of the kind that is called toby shone invitingly on the little
table whereon the candle feebly struggled against the cold light of the
coming day.
Caroline roused, and, walking to the child, she stroked the dainty
little head.
Betty rose, fetched the kettle that purred on the stove, and filled the
teapot; and, when she had let it stand for a spell, she drew off a cup
of tea.
She looked round.
Caroline was kneeling by the bed of the sleeping boy, her head buried
in her arms.
Betty slipped quietly from the room.
CHAPTER XII
_Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts_
It was a month or more before the boy was allowed to go into the
country; so that it was early summer by the time they sent him away
with Netherby--the small Betty being added to mother the party at
the last moment, there having arisen doubts as to the quality of the
housekeeping owing to the absent-mindedness of the bear-leader. So for
a fortnight there was a happy party at the old inn by Burford Bridge.
Where the Major slept during the fourteen nights was never known;
but city wags to this day aver that it was beside the wine-cooler
under the sideboard at _The Cock and Bull_ in Fleet Street. There are
discrepancies, but the weight of evidence lies near the wine-cooler....
The fresh air of the Surrey uplands soon had the lad Oliver strung
to the full pitch of devilment that is nature’s questionable gift to
boyhood; and he rapidly regained what Netherby Gomme, with meaning
accent, called his “habitual rude health.”...
Whilst Netherby Gomme filled the morning hours with the winning of
bread in his little room at the inn, Noll and Betty loitered by the
river and watched the shadowy grey trout lying along the trailing weeds
with blunt noses up stream below the stilly waters of the sluggish
flood; or they wandered in the meadows where the high whispering
poplars line the margin of the babbling rivulet, their gossip leafage
never ceasing the tattling of secrets with the gadding winds amongst
the passing rumours of the high heavens; or they climbed the long green
slope of Box Hill up to the swinging sky a-top, until it seemed that
they might touch the clouds by mere uplifting of outstretched hands,
all England lying like a pleasant garden at their feet; or, topping
the hill, they would clamber down its steep wooded side, and so out
upon the road at foot to the little stone bridge, where they would lean
over the parapet and watch the enamelled dragon-fly hang quivering
above the glassy pond, scintillant in gay attire with all his silver
armour on, bedecked in splendour of green and purple jewellery; or they
would flirt pebbles at the shy black water-hen that bobbed up to her
quaint swimmings; and so, strolling round by Dorking town, as the sun
topped its ascent and blazed hottest to its first hour of decline,
they would make for their inn, to drag Netherby out of his den for
luncheon, and get them into the breezy dining-room that gave on to
the grassy garden where the butterflies fluttered amongst the roses,
and the lurching flycatchers swooped down upon such of the gadding
beauties as were least bitter to their dainty palates, and drowsy bees
buzzed at their honey-gathering amongst the fragrant white trumpets
of the tobacco-plants, and the fantastic box-trees that hedged their
ken danced in the sunny glare that shimmered upwards from the panting
earth. And all the careless world was full of balladry.
The mid-day meal done, they would roam out on to the green lawn and
sit in the shade, reading some thrilling adventure, or, dragging
Netherby with them, break the law and invade the kitchen, where the
jolly hostess of the inn would point to the written word above the
chimney-place but scarce enforce the law, nay, even dust chairs
instead to hold them there; and the cook would pin a kitchen clout to
each of their shoulders to display their shame; so they would sit and
gossip of the little world about them; and the big-hearted busy woman
would discover little stores of hardbake and shortbread and suchlike
delightful evils for young stomachs, for she had a soft heart and was
fond of her joke--and Netherby came out ridiculously well on such
occasions, and the others were not wholly demure. The gay banter would
go a-tossing.
Or they would wander round to the stables to call upon their friend
Sim Crittenden--the prize-fighting ostler with the gentle eyes and the
temper that nought might ruffle and a singing voice like a baritone
god--who, leaning on the long wooden handle of his pitchfork, his
shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his braces hanging looped against his
breeches’ flanks, would stand at the end of the stables and sing to
them songs from Handel and the masters--_Ruddier than the Cherry_
and _Toreador_ and _Nazareth_, even descending, with apologies,
occasionally to _It’s a Great Big Shame_ or other latest music-hall
lilt.
Netherby, who began to fear a too poetic pastoral atmosphere at the
inn, was to have satisfaction in the life of action that he adored, and
a lively descent to vigorous prose.
The hard-hitting ostler was to strike the dramatic note.
Adventure came with the rougher element that rattled down in hired
carriages to the inn, chi-hiking and using squalid language along the
highroad on their week-end outing from London city. Cockney youth,
with fantastic picturesque tendencies as to dress, and crude love in
the wagonettes, descended to the ground, alighting before the inn, and
swarmed into the drinking-bar, thirsty with the swallowing of dust
and much shouting, buxom beauty hanging upon their arms with proud
gaze boldly cast upon their noisy lords from under the heavy hair that
shaded their frankly vulgar eyes, and with ear-racking laughings from
their full red lips to greet all their swaggering gentlemen’s uttermost
ribaldries.
Inflamed by beauty, cockney youth was on the strut, well-inclined to
debauch; and much beer did the rest.
They made the inn a riot of vulgarity.
Yet, all had gone well till twilight, and had as likely enough
gone well to the hour of their home-going--and they were already
foregathering in the tap-room for the drinking of the last glass--had
it not been for the garrulous and boastful habit of the gardener
of the inn, a red-bearded fellow of weak knees and splay feet, who
got to bragging about the inn’s ostler. However, a cockney youth, a
clean-limbed, quick-eyed cub, being grown something tongue-loosed by
reason of the beer, at once brought out his conceit and paraded it--it
also had to do with some little parochial honour in which he was held
with regard to the skilful use of his naked hands--he had made some
tough fellow’s nose bleed or arrived at the like godlike achievement.
He thought himself a match, he said, for any fellow that messed about
horses. This with prodigious blasphemies. Whereat the red-bearded
gardener laughed loudly; and the cockney youth, fired with wrath, hit
at the centre of the laugh, and missing the gardener’s mouth, the which
was no such difficult job for the tangled thicket of red hair about
the laugh, got his clumsy knuckles somewhere in the region of the
gardener’s nose and set the blood flowing.
The barman called for order, and the cockney youth, forgetting the
impiety of mishandling the authority of the chair, got his five fingers
into the potman’s neck-cloth.
Then it was seen that Sim Crittenden, the ostler, stopping in the midst
of the deep note of _Nazareth_, walked blithely out of the stables on
light springy feet, passed along the highroad before the inn, and swung
open the outer door of the drinking-bar.
He stood before them that brawled in the tavern and grimly eyed the
riot.
“Who undid the potman’s necktie?” he asked in a deep growl.
The cockney youth turned and put out his chin. He said he didn’t give
a ruddy geranium who did it, but he was sober enough to take the whole
responsibility of the humours of his particular wagonette on his own
naked shoulders. He personally detested the potman’s taste in ties.
The ostler knocked him down.
The cockney youth got up again and lashed out with his hands--London
breeds courage when it is not cowardice, to the full pitch; every
cockney is a potential hero when he is not a whining thief--he was
knocked down again.
He scrambled up, and began to feel about dazedly for the ostler’s face,
but was grown vague as to the object of his hate.
The ostler put down his hands and said that the other might now walk
out into the lane with the honours of war if he so willed it; and
he added that he hoped he would go out like a gentleman, as he, the
ostler, had a deep-seated distaste to making a mess of the bar with
anyone from London. He opened the door for him with the polish of a
courtier.
The cockney youth honestly thought of a dignified exit, but beauty
nudged at his elbow and whispered a mean design that he should kick the
ostler in the waistcoat.
He made the effort to this base end; was parried; and forthwith kicked
for his iniquity through the door into the road, receiving a violent
blow under the ear as he went.
They all rose up and rushed at the ostler. But they went to their
undoing. There was no refuge in retreat, no backing into the room from
the smite of the great hands, for the red-bearded gardener assailed
from behind--he had a heavy foot. One by one they joined him who stood
in the dusk on the King’s highway. And the road was strewn with their
hats.
The ostler came to the doorstep and touched his forelock:
“Shall I put in the horses, gentlemen?” said he.
They gathered together in the grey of the twilight muttering mean
vengeance, but the cockney youth who had brought them to it said
commandingly, “Chuck it!” which being interpreted meant that the
vulgarities were at an end.
He went up and held out a hand to the ostler:
“I know a better man than me,” said he--“when he hits me hard enough;
and you ain’t the one I’d choose to slap my face. Hold out your
olive-branch.”
The ostler held out a great paw and they shook hands; the ostler’s
grip, said the cockney youth, made his teeth ache.
The gardener strolled about and restored the scattered hats.
The ostler stood in the twilight and smiled.
The sulky fellows put aside evil desire and came and gripped the great
hand that made their knuckles creak.
Then he sang them old-world _Ruddier than the Cherry_ whilst their
women led their cockney loves aside to the dark shadows under the trees
and furtively comforted them.
It all struck the small Betty that it was an indecent sight. Yet there
was a thrill of contentment in her heart that it should have fallen to
the man who could sing _Nazareth_ like a god to do the blood-letting.
On the days when it rained, the little party, Betty and Noll and
Netherby, would sit in the small parlour of the inn where Nelson and
his Emma had spent those pitiful hours many years ago, the night before
the great Admiral posted to the sea-coast to hoist his flag aboard the
_Victory_, being at the beginning of that journey that ended in his
splendid death at the triumph of Trafalgar--his frail Emma going from
the little room, a broken woman, to Neglect, and Worse....
So the happy days went by, until the hour struck for departure. The
good hostess kissed Betty on the doorstep, the dainty little lady being
dressed for travel--and had to go indoors for the tears that would run,
fleeing from the distress of further good-byes.
The glorious sun found them at last, with their pathetically small
packages, at the little railway-station, the prize-fighting ostler
carrying Miss Betty’s little bag, and hovering about the party, a drag
at the corners of his mouth. He was sadly lacking as to his wonted
tuneful gaiety.
As the train came in he found an empty carriage for them.
Betty, stepping forward, held out a dainty hand.
The ostler took it, and, stooping down, stroked it between his mighty
palms:
“Look ye here, Miss Betty,” said he--“you’ll be a great lady some
day--I haven’t been chucked out of a markiss’s stables without spottin’
the breed when I see it--but it may likely enough take some nasty days
getting there.... Now, missee, if you ever wants anythink in my line
of business,” he added significantly, “this address will always find
me--it’s where my old mother lives. And if so be that you ever wants
physical assistance, jest you go to the nearest telegraph-office.
You’ve only got to say the word, and wheresoever it be in the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland or the parts lying adjacent
thereto, Sim Crittenden will spoil the handsomest face the Lord ever
made--so help me God!”
He took off his hat and held it in his hand, and they each in turn
shook his great fist.
He blew his nose strenuously as the train moved out of the station,
Betty, where she sat in the window, biting her handkerchief, the tears
streaming down the child’s face.
The prize-fighting ostler sang no song for several days.
CHAPTER XIII
_Which contains Some Hints towards the Making of a Baronet_
A door opened, and the echoing tramp of feet on the carpetless boards
of the corridor outside ushered the entrance of two men into a large
room, wholly devoid of furnishment--the plaster of its walls as bare as
its ceiling and floor.
The short, stout, red-faced man shut the door with a slam that
resounded through the empty place, thrust his thumbs in the armholes of
his waistcoat, and said with pride:
“Now, sir; how do you call that for a stoodio!”
In the fading daylight the younger man, dandified, self-possessed,
deliberate, dressed in the severest high fashion of the day, stepped to
the end of the great empty place and surveyed it calmly:
“Ah, Mr. Malahide--it is the sort of room I should delight to furnish
as I liked--and then live in it,” he said; and he sighed: “I have the
palatial instincts.”
He spoke with a charm of accent and of manner that drew the frank
admiration of the vulgar other; indeed, the stout Mr. Malahide was
looking at a handsome young Englishman in all the first graceful vigour
of early manhood--for Bartholomew Doome’s lithe slender build gave him
an easy carriage of the body that told of well-knit strength, and put
aside the hint of effeminacy suggested by the great beauty of the head.
As the stout man had said to his wife this very morning: “You could
find it in your heart to stroke him down with yer ’and, like a dam
race-’orse.”
Mr. Malahide pushed his silk hat back upon his florid head and looked
thereby even more vulgar than his Maker had intended him:
“Well,” said he--“ye like it, eh, sir?”
The smile still flickered about Bartholomew Doome’s lips:
“May I ask, Mr. Malahide,” he said drily--“what I am doing here?”
The fat little man kicked out his legs:
“That’s just it, sir,” said he--“that’s just it. Well, you see, it’s
this way. Now, Mr. Doome, I’m a pretty good-hearted, but rather damn
vulgar man----”
He waited patiently for an answer.
Doome looked at him steadily:
“Yes,” said he--“by the splendour of God, you are.”
“Good. Now, sir, I’ve made my bit of money in the house-furniture
business already; but Tankerton Wollup he’s at the top; and he’s dead
sure to become a bloomin’ baronet; and he’s as vulgar as I am.”
He paused, eyeing the floor at his feet, meditatively.
Doome nodded:
“I will only interrupt you to question the accuracy of your statements,
Mr. Malahide,” he said grimly.
Pompey Malahide laughed:
“Good,” said he. “Well, where Tankerton Wollup can climb, Pompey
Malahide can get his boots--and he’s going to--though Wollup’s father
did have the business shrewdness to christen him Tankerton--if you can
call it christening in Wardour Street.... Tankerton Wollup! Mine called
me Pompey! but, bless him, the old man’s only fault was his sentiment.
Pompey! Why, Tankerton’s a name to conjure with! Who’d suspect that his
Christian name was Isaac? And if yer had seen the dirty hole in the
city where he began and---- But, steady, Pompey, my boy--we mustn’t
rake up the manufacture of antique things. Besides, luck has been with
him all through--he is even a _red_ Jew.... However, sir, you have
brought to my shops of late more than one tip-top swell that bought the
real old stuff; and I don’t mind tellin’ you that that’s the side of my
business I intend to develop.... Wollup and me began life by debauching
public taste--and he’s chucking it--and it’s time I did.... I want to
meet my God like a man----”
Doome coughed:
“I thought it was as a baronet,” he said.
The dealer laughed loud and long:
“God! what a wit you have! Now, sir, don’t you hit me on the neck....
Well, I’ve got clear enough eyes to discover that _you_ know the good
stuff when you see it at sales, just by the good taste that’s born
in you. Now, it’s no manner o’ use putting that good stuff in _my_
windows--the people that furnish their houses slap through from my
shops don’t know the good stuff when they see it; and, I’ll be honest
with you, sir, I’ll be damned if _I_ do--and my partner, that did,
died last Saturday. You see, sir, the fact is I’m in a hole. I know
good stuff if it’s been the fashion long enough--but I have not the
knowledge to _set_ the fashion. _You_ have, but you can’t for want of
means; whilst I want to and have the means. I hope I’m not talkin’ like
a bleating cad,” he said.
Bartholomew Doome watched the fat, downright little dealer out of
languid eyes; but his alert mind followed every hint. And he had,
besides, a very soft corner in his heart for the man. But he said not a
word.
“Now, Mr. Doome, I like you--though they do say you are the wickedest
man in London----”
Bartholomew Doome flushed with pleasure--he was easily flattered by
genuine praise.
“Oh! Mr. Malahide!” he protested.
“Yes,” said the fat important little man, “I like you.”
Bartholomew Doome bowed. The dealer put out a hand.
“Don’t you sneer, Mr. Doome. A man can’t give more than he’s got--and
liking’s the biggest thing he’s got--to bestow.”
Bartholomew Doome smiled:
“You will know when I sneer, Mr. Malahide--I do not feel like it yet,”
he said.
“No; well, I’m glad of that, sir.... Because--I’m going to ask you if
you’ll accept an offer. You can but refuse it, when all’s said--and
break my heart.... I wouldn’t dare to make it, but I’m a shrewd
business man, and I’ve hunted up one or two young fellows I’ve seen
about with you, and asked them how you lived--and it has emboldened
me----”
“One moment, Mr. Malahide. I will ask you no names, but--may I ask how
my friends solved the problem?”
The fat dealer laughed embarrassedly:
“They said they were damned if they knew.”
Doome smiled:
“Yes,” said he--“that sounds like my friends.... And the fact is I
scarcely know myself.”
The dealer nodded:
“Well, sir; what I propose is this: I am not fool enough to think you
will turn shopman--it would ruffle you to death--and you’d make a poor
one when you did it--your university career has spoilt you for success
in business. But if you’ll drop in casually when I ring you up--there’s
a telephone in the next room--and give me an opinion whenever I want
it; and if you’ll let me furnish this room as your studio with anything
you like, just for an advertisement for me amongst your swell friends
and the newspapers--if you’ll give me the benefit of your good taste
and advice on my better-class furnishing business--I only ask for your
mornings--I’ll give you a thousand pound a year for it.”
He peered anxiously at the smart young fellow before him, and added
hoarsely:
“For God’s sake don’t say No. There’s my hand on it--or you can take
time to think it out if you like.”
He held out a fat jolly vulgar hand.
Bartholomew Doome grasped the hand:
“I’ll do it,” he said. “And I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Malahide,
I’ll be glad to do it.”
“Right-o!” bawled the fat little dealer, his red face perspiring with
glee as he walked briskly up and down rubbing his hands in his relief.
“By Rupert, I’m born to luck. Got _that_ beastly job over.... Well,
sir, the day after to-morrow you are free of all my shops, or anywhere
you like to pick things up; and just you order what you wish for this
room--there’s a couple of rather nice little rooms off it, and a jolly
little hall--do it all regardless of cost. And--oh yes---- Now look
here, Mr. Doome, to-day I cast the die. I’m straight off to give orders
to compete for a big hotel.”
He came close to Doome and whispered as though he feared the very walls
might hear. Doome listened closely.
The fat little man stood back a pace:
“Eh? Pretty strenuous idea, that!... Ye see, Wollup he did the one just
opposite.... Now, I don’t mind even dropping a bit of money over it.
Can you go over Wollup’s upholstery debauch to-morrow morning, then
meet me opposite after lunch, and just give me tips to lick Wollup off
his bunyanny feet?”
Doome nodded.
“Good!” said the beaming Pompey. “My manager will be at my elbow making
notes. Don’t take no notice of him. Just you plan the hotel like a
lady’s boodywar, in good colour and telling style--the sort o’ thing
that pleases the eye so you want to kiss it. Make it _sing_--like a
ruddy violin. It’s got to put me in front of Tankerton Wollup. See?
Just come in, sir, as if you had a mortgage on the place--don’t mind
me--and--well, it’ll be a bit of All-Right-O! See?... Oh,” he added,
growing suddenly serious--“look here, Mr. Doome--you see--my boy’s at
Harrow, so he’s all safe from me, bless the lad; but--my girls are
springing up--rising sixteen one of ’em--and--they are fine stylish
girls, too--but--sometimes--I have my qualms that I rub them on the raw
a bit. Now, you might give me a hint--now and again--if I--well--_you_
know! Just say: Malahide, my boy, you’re on the vulgar side, see?”
“Off side, eh?”
“That’s it.”
Doome laughed:
“You’ll be a baronet yet,” said he.
CHAPTER XIV
_Which has to do with the Fascination of Naughtiness_
Doome’s studio became the talk of the town.
Who, that is Who, has not sat therein?
It came to be a part of the great Social Function to have the entrance
to this handsome room.
The rich tapestries that hung the walls, the glowing colour and the
beauty of the furnishments were held in restraint by the chastening,
somewhat religious, atmosphere that made the whisper of wickedness add
such a mysterious charm to his habitation as it did to the attraction
of the dark-souled mysterious Doome himself. No one knew a single vice
against the slender handsome youth of the pale classic features and the
black hair and immaculate dress; but it was said that things were said.
And he was too charmingly delightful--and just a little alarming. Thus
gossip wagged an artful tongue.
Dingy-looking weak-eyed journalists of the inferior press sneered in
unsigned paragraphs of rancid English at his effeminacy, hinting at
unmentionable sins--who, had he struck them, would have thought a horse
had kicked them--he, whose only agony was that they should belittle him
with their praise. Rude sporting men, that passed their virile lives
gazing at horses galloping, said he wanted kicking. None kicked him.
Perhaps the great church candlesticks that rose in massive wrought
brass from the dark stained floor at the ends and by the sides of
the large room, holding aloft enormous candles half way to the high
ceiling, struck the religious note. Or it may have been the exquisitely
rich image of the Mary which stood on the mantel amongst the glowing
splendid nudes. But the yawning accents of the most garrulous society
babbler sank to a whisper on entrance. Nay, the most brilliant rakes
had been known to lower their strutting voices on coming into this
room. The faculty of reverence lies dormant in the cynic as in the fool.
Nobody had been known to see Doome at work. It was said that some
beautiful women could have said things, and they would. But they would
not. Yet his exquisite craftsmanship, the wondrous musical rhythm of
his line and the quaint and rather morbid fancy of the subjects that
came from his pen, together with a certain uncanniness of imagination,
continued to pour forth masterpieces in black and white, startling the
world of art and delighting the lovers of his genius.
It was significantly whispered that he never worked except at dead of
night, with the great candles lit, and all the old-world glass lustres
that hung from the ceiling aglow with a hundred lights; it was then,
said the traffickers in scandal, he came out to the practice of his art
in a silken dressing-gown--the most beautiful woman of London sitting
to him to snatch a little of immortality.
The scandal grew.
Society wrangled for him.
“Lord of Furnishments” (writes Bartholomew Doome about this time, the
summer being at wane, to Mr. Pompey Malahide)--“the air of this city
of London is stifling me; the very sins of the town are grown banal,
commonplace. I must to Paris. I leave no address for three months;
but a telegram to the Hotel Albe will be seen within three days. The
town is grown an empty caldron--you yourself had best get away with
your lovely daughters to some gayer city of fresh air and to change
of cheerful small vices and reflecting shop-windows.... But you will
go, whether I advise or not. Meanwhile I am letting the studio to the
Honourable Ponsonby Ffolliott, only son and heir to Lord Wyntwarde of
Cavil, until the twenty-seventh of September. It will take three full
days to rid it of the multifarious scents upon him, and to lay the
echoes of his yaw.... Can I procure you fal-lals of price for Miss
Mary, or adornments to mar the beauty of Miss Judith? Tush! I speak
cant. It is all nonsense about painting the rose. Why do beautiful
women wear clothes if so? And what a noise would be in Fleet Street,
if the roses came out wholly without adornment! Fancy thyself, Lord
of Furnishments, blushing like peony, taking thy Johnsonian walks
abroad, unbedecked and unadorned--not, as now, almost wholly hidden!
Thou wouldst be fantastically wonderful indeed, who art never wholly
devoid of fantasy. The ladies might come out better; but naughtiness
would the more shamefully abound. Personally, I am not against the
rose; but the gods have ordered the painting. So be it paint.
I think you have galled the emotions of the egregious rival. I passed
Tankerton Wollup on the Embankment meditating on the sea-gulls and
the factories beyond, alone with nature who was never given to
contemplate the works of nature. It is full time you joined the
Primrose League, captured a seat in the Commons, and rubbed elbows
with the nobility--when Tankerton Wollup has headache by reason of
your greatness. I see, too, in visions, Miss Judith with a coronet
a-top her pretty brows. But mark the law--rub elbows only with the
old nobility--the new aristocracy is so very exclusive. Have an eye
to subtleties; and thy translation is sure.
But should the gods burst the casket of their very uttermost honours
at your feet, and fill your broad lap with treasure, you will never
be greater than you are.
Yours, mightily beholden,
BARTHOLOMEW DOOME.
P.S.--The sting is ever in the tail. Nature herself hath so ordered
it. I ought to tell you that this Ponsonby Ffolliott thinks he can
paint. Gods of little Egypt, it is all very dreadful--makes the teeth
ache--but he is well satisfied. What more can heaven send? But the
point of the tail is this: ... He took to the arts, _patronized_
them, but six weeks ago. He had drawn ‘funny pictures’ as somewhat
ignoble school-boy at Harrow, it is true; but it was the study of
the nude model that finished the business--’twas beauty unadorned,
lacking even as to fig-leaf, attracted our recruit. He fell into
someone’s studio, a model sitting at the time, and the great idea was
bred--within the winking of an eyelid--leaped, hissing hot, from the
intellectual furnace.
There is already a more than ugly story going about that has to
do with this blood ass of Balaam coupled with that pretty little
ethereal woman who sat for me a while ago. I suppose one must believe
women capable of any enormity in these days. And these youths sin
such dirty mean sins--even sin has lost the grand manner.
And the tools of his craft! Such an ordering of the Latest Thing! I
was present--a silent witness. My poor easel for the making of the
mere black-and-white art is well put away in hiding, or had cracked
of envy in such splendid company. No expense spared.
Yet he has his patiences. Rubs out more than he puts in. Is indeed a
master of much bread-crumbs. He has the catch-words, too--is for Art
for Art’s sake, contemns Story, shrugs at the Anecdote, sneers at the
Soul, purrs of Values, insists that the Picture shall Keep Within the
Frame, rattles all the jargons, and shows a fine contempt for Sargent
and all the modern men--yet has almost decided that Whistler _may_
live--holds, however, that great Art died with the Renaissance; is
not quite sure what the Renaissance was--or where--or when. He chats
as glibly as the rest now--hee-haws against the hee-haws of Quogge
Myre--and not always in vain. Indeed there are degrees in asininity,
when splendour of hee-hawing out-brays the lesser hee-haw. And,
Beelzebub! such knees as are on him!”
CHAPTER XV
_Which tells of a Poet that offered Himself for Sacrifice, and was
Rejected of the Gods_
The last day of September has early bridal with the night. Though the
afternoon was not full spent, the dark shadows of the coming darkness
held the town. In the midst of the gloom that was in Doome’s studio
stood the sulky figure of the Honourable Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott;
and, at his feet, there crouched on the floor a very young and very
beautiful woman, and her head was bowed. Wringing her clasped hands
upon her knees she said hoarsely:
“God have mercy upon me--for this is an awful caricature of His
image.... I am lost--lost.”
He fidgeted peevishly:
“You know, my dear girl, this is most annoying,” said he, with
self-pitying drawl--“your taunts are in such bad taste--and it is so
absolutely embarrassing. And--I so positively detest being embarrassed.”
She rose to her feet wearily:
“Ponsonby, all my things are packed, ready to go--Heaven knows there
was not so much to pack--it is not that. I do not want to encumber
you--to embarrass you. I am going. This place is not such a bewitching
Paradise, nor its memories so sweet, that I should stay. I know your
time at these rooms is up. But you--even you--must surely realize that
I cannot go home where a harsh and bitterly religious step-father sits
at the table.” She drooped her head: “I could not disguise my state for
a day. And they are so religious.”
She fidgeted her fingers pathetically:
“No,” she moaned--“I cannot go home--there’s no smallest mercy in them.”
The Honourable Ponsonby broke into her mood:
“But--I say, my dear gal----”
How she had grown to hate the dreadful drawl!
“Ponsonby”--she grasped his arm feverishly, trying to rouse some honour
in him--“I have no money--none. I shall soon be a mother. You have
made it impossible for me to make money in the studios. At home,” she
laughed sadly, “they think I am studying art.” She got a-brooding.
“The child will require care.... Where, in God’s name, am I to go?”
“Well--er--I don’t really know. You see I’m so bad at arranging
things.... Almost an ass in some things----”
She touched his sleeve--so pathetically:
“Let the child be born in honour--a secret marriage--anything.” She
shrank back. “It is dreadful to think of being tied to you,” she
moaned, “but--for the child’s sake--for the child’s sake you must be
made to remember your promises--you _must_ give the child honour.”
She saw his inane mouth opening to the uttering of foolishness.
She dropped at his feet, bowing her head to her shame, a wounded broken
woman--this little more than child--soon to be the mother of a child.
He fidgeted:
“Well, you see, my dear girl--it can’t be marriage,” he drawled,
“because I’m--er--morally married already--I’m almost engaged--and you
know--as a gentleman----”
She brushed her hand back over her forehead. The enormity of his
idiotcy stung her, and she groaned:
“My God!” said she--“what a bleating fool this is!”
“Oh yes, call me ridiculous names,” he complained huffily--“but I’m
really glad to see that you realize that--er--as a gentleman----”
She rose from the floor, and turned upon him:
“Then why, in the name of all’s that abominable, did you do this thing?”
He licked his lips sullenly, flinching a little before her:
“Well, don’t you see--I knew you would see reason, that you would see
that it can’t possibly be marriage. And as to providing for you, don’t
you see I have so precious little for myself--and I have such awfully
expensive tastes----”
“God!” she growled, stepping to him, with a sudden urging to strike
him--“I could kill you.” And she added hoarsely: “I almost think I
will.”
“Now, don’t be violent--I never know what to do when a woman is
violent. In my family the women are never violent.... You see,
Polly----”
“Don’t befoul my name by speaking it----”
He shrugged his shoulders:
“My _dear_ girl, this melodramatic way of life is most repulsive to
me--it makes me feel quite nervous and ill,” he added plaintively. “You
used to be such a nice girl.”
She burst into laughter, miserable laughter, and wrung her hands:
“My God, this is awful!” she said.
She fell a-brooding.
The long silence made the youth uneasy:
“Polly, don’t you see----”
“Urgh!” She swung round upon him savagely--growling as a leopard
might: “Stop that awful bleating. Your voice turns my blood acid--is
like some filthy stench to me.... If you value your life, keep that
dreadful voice still.... Let me think. In God’s name, let me think....
What to do? _that’s_ the bewildering thing. You, who make me stand
a-wonder how I suffered myself to let you touch me--you, with your
dreadful idiot’s stare and slack mouth (Mother of God, I too must
be a living idiot!)--you have robbed me for months to come even of
benefiting by the basest traffic in which a woman may barter herself.”
Of a sudden she turned to the door:
“Go,” she said hoarsely--“go away--or I shall do you an injury. Quick!
I can descend to no more foul shame than I have now known. Go--and, as
you love yourself, I say, don’t let me hear that awful bleat again.”
He walked out of the room in his weak-kneed way, huffily, and was gone.
She stood listening there, until all echo of him, dandified,
weak-kneed, had passed out of her ears.
And when the world was become wholly silent, the tense mood passed. She
sank to the seat of the sofa and bent her brows on the problem, what to
do? Before her was blackness. No writing across the sullen sky.
As she sat thus in the gloom, scowling at cruelty, a key turned in the
lock outside, there was the loud slam of the outer door, a heavy step
or so, and a man’s figure entered into the dusk of the room.
“Eustace Lovegood!” she said hoarsely. “The good God must have sent
you.”
The big man started; took off his hat:
“Bless my soul, Miss Whiffels, _you_ here! Mr. Doome has asked me to
use his rooms--for a month.... But I did not know there was anyone--I
mean, he--must have forgotten.”
“No,” she said--“I have no business here--none. Eustace, I am a
desperate woman. I don’t know--where--to go.”
“My dear lady!”
“Why should I show a modesty that I once had--a long while ago--quite
some months now----”
“My dear good----”
“Listen, Eustace. I must state the indecent thing to somebody. This man
has debauched me--body and soul----”
“Good God! Bartholomew Doome?”
“No, no. This Ffolliott person----”
“Ffolliott?” His surprise was unmitigated.
She laughed bitterly:
“Yes--that is the worst part of my shame. It bleats in my ears just
like that.”
“But----”
“Listen. He will not keep his bond--I cannot appeal to any sense of
honour. He himself does not know how to spell the word.”
“What! you are not married to him?”
She smiled grimly:
“No. My degradation has not sunk to that. He has not even the will nor
the desire to support me even for a little while--until the child is
born.”
The big man frowned:
“Oh, I do not think he is quite such an unmitigated cad as that!”
She rose from the sofa wearily and went to the fireplace:
“I should like some smallest proof,” she said--“for This is the father
of--my--child.... Give me some smallest proof, Eustace, that this man
has a shred of manhood--the least little frayed shred. I have made
every appeal--appeals for enslavement which, if granted, would have
bitten into me like the teeth of a dog. But, for the child’s sake, I
held out my hand to be bitten, bared my breast, begged him to befoul me
with his benefits!”
She uttered a little harsh laugh:
“I was saved the dog’s teeth of that ignominy,” she said.
Lovegood had stood, pondering hard; he suddenly remembered a five-pound
note which had been paid to him that day.
He coughed:
“Well, as it happens, he has given me rather an embarrassing task to
fulfil,” he said. “He sends you some money by me--I wish my friends
would not always give me their unpleasant duties to perform.”
The big man tugged the crisp banknote out of his breast-pocket, and
brought it to her.
She took it; and crumpled it in her hand:
“I will touch nothing,” she began passionately, swinging her hand to
fling the money into the fire--stopped--turned sharply and looked
keenly at Lovegood:
“Oh, Eustace--it’s clean after all! What a sweet big-hearted liar you
are!”
She went up to him, pulled down his great head, and kissed him on the
cheek.
“My God!” said she--“you make me sane.... But you are a wretched poor
hand at any deceit.... A poorer evil-doer surely was never born....
But, as a matter of fact, the very heavens are against you this
time--the bleating awful Thing has only just left the place.”
“Yes, God forgive me, I saw him. He smelt of Poudre d’Amour to the
Haymarket.”
He led her to the sofa, sat down beside her, and took her hand:
“Don’t let us pollute the air with him any more,” he said--“let us talk
about pleasant things--like _you_.”
The girl was becoming quieted.
“Yes,” she said--“I must try and keep myself from horrors--for the
sake of the little one.... Eustace, I believe you have something of
the woman in your big heart--and, thank God, you have come to me--for
this man has made it impossible for me to talk to women.... So I have
had to buy a book. It told me all about the influences upon the unborn
child.... I must get the memory of this man out of my mind--cleanse my
ears of him. You must come and see me and keep me from thinking--the
blood that ought to be leaping for delight of this little one was
being turned to poison--and, now, since big awkward you came into this
twilight, I am almost glad the little one is coming.”
The big man, elbow on knee, leaned his chin on his knuckles and looked
at her:
“Miss Polly,” said he--“I see a better way out. Suppose you let me
father the child! You might do worse. I am a lonely man.”
She shook her head sadly:
“There is no such good in store for me,” she said.
She took his face between her two slender hands and kissed him--on the
brows and cheek and lips and chin:
“I wonder how it is that no woman has loved you, Eustace.... It will
come.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
He could not trust himself to speak.
She sighed sadly:
“One day you will know why I say No,” she said. “You will know that I
loved you too well.”
“I think,” said he--“I think I know now.”
CHAPTER XVI
_Which hints at an Age of Gold_
Increasing good fortune came with sundry little successes; and
gradually the pressure of want was eased, and the attic became a place
of comfort and small luxuries.
Caroline Baddlesmere realized that for the boy the ordinary public
school life was not only beyond her means, but that it would now be a
sheer waste of time. She therefore, foreseeing that thereby as many
good mid-day meals would be assured to the big man under witness of her
own eyes, and the small fee helpful to him besides, induced Eustace
Lovegood to furbish his mathematics and give the boy a couple of hours
of them four or five mornings of the week; and Betty, taking the big
man’s hand at the conference, shyly slid into the arrangement.
Lovegood’s affection for the boy and girl gave him complete command
of their attention; and his large scrupulousness, wide humanity, and
great-heartedness had an even mightier educational force upon them
both than the clear wits he brought to bear in luring them along the
gritty path of the dry philosophy of numbers. In his hands geography
and geology became a romance--an education in themselves; and science
a glittering enchantment. He directed their reading in literature and
history and government and statesmanship and social laws, which he put
before all else for the training of the good citizen. Indeed he had
only to guide--for they were greedy readers. He laid the classics at
their feet, making them read good translations first, giving them a
clear idea of the author’s relation to the times in which he wrote,
and persuading the youngsters, after the mathematics were done in the
morning, to run through some pages of the Latin or the Greek with him
“to keep up the tune.”
The boy’s wits awoke at once, roused as they had never been roused, to
an eager curiosity about the very things that at school had but irked
him and been an unmitigated weariness to him. He now found that the
thing to be expressed was the important thing, whereas formerly, in
the schoolroom, ranged in a row of some score of indifferent yawning
others, he had been whipped into regarding the way of saying it as of
the only interest--nay, the sole interest of the schoolmaster.
To his profound astonishment, he found that these old books _meant_
something--that they were not exquisite torture-racks, appointed by
some vague, hated, and arbitrary governance over them, for the mere
racking of their wits in the cracking of the nuts of grammar--that it
was what these old fellows had seen and known and felt and thought that
was worth the thinking and the puzzling out, and _not_ the machinery of
their thought.
So that what had aforetime gone in at one ear and out at the other now
lodged in the brain and painted pictures in the imagination that none
might rub out.
The boy had groaned over his Xenophon, until “Thence he advanced
parasangs and stathmoi” had become the refrain of boredom as repulsive
as the epileptic drivel of Revelation. He now discovered that the book
contained one of the mighty adventures of the world. He stepped it
out with Xenophon and the Ten Thousand in Cyrus’s march, listened to
the camp scandals of the years ago, thrilled by the perplexities and
endurance and dangers and hair’s-breadth escapes of the questionable
undertaking; followed the great and dogged retreat; took a part in the
passing incidents, hunting the bustards, tiring them down, and finding
“the flesh of these birds very delicious.”
He dawdled before Troy with the Homeric heroes, fought with them,
listened to their gossip, bathed with them, sacrificed with them.
The Latin tongue revealed other emotions than the frenzy of doubt as to
whether Caius and Balbus should build unending walls.
To him, Roman Horace, growing fat, unwieldy, laughing at his own
disadvantages in subtle Latin verse, lolling about Mæcenas’ villa,
became a live acquaintance, as real as the people he rubbed against in
the street.
And every day the number of his acquaintance grew.
As real, more definite than the swarm of boys with whom he had played
at school, became Charlemagne and Clovis and Capet, Simon de Montfort,
and Bastard William of Normandy and the First and Third Edwards of
England, and Cromwell and Chatham and the men of the French Revolution.
The very hours of the day, seasons of the year, became frequented
with the association of the great dead, so that in the after-years of
his manhood, at the break of day it almost seemed that there stole
across the years, back over the edge of the drowsy world, out of old
pilastered Greece, the hushed image of that festival drawing to its end
when Socrates rises from the symposium, the last of his mighty boon
companions, drawing his garments about him as he passes out from them
that he has outstayed, where they lay adrowse and overcome with wine on
couch and floor--in such strange fashion giving to the decaying genius
of Greece the new ideals that were to prepare the civilized world for
the coming of its Christ--a strange uncouth figure in a wondrous mist
of dawn.
The twilight became haunted with the drowsy music of Grey’s _Elegy_,
sounding to some mystic fugue played with Handelian dignity upon the
aerial organ of the winds.
The history of the mightiest people the world has seen leaped into
life again, seen through the gossip eyes of them that had watched its
pageant pass, its comedy and its tragedy--Pepys and Boswell, and the
splendid gossips of their day--or in the mighty music of Carlyle’s
colossal and glowing imagination, of Oldmixon, of Macaulay and of Green.
In fact, the big gentle man taught the boy and girl the great aim of
education--to know; to educate themselves; to have self-reliance; to
establish a code of conduct; in a word, to form character. For, he
pointed out to them, the good of the community is the highest human
aim, and knowledge of this world the only basis on which to build
conduct towards that end.
And, the morning’s work done, he would counsel exercise, taking them
himself sometimes to Booksellers’ Row, walking beside them, with the
great black cloak and theatrical strut, striking a little out of their
way towards Soho, before they swung round into the Strand, to drag out
Netherby to their frolics; and the four of them, making down their
beloved Strand, would haunt the Row by hours, poring over the stalls of
the second-hand booksellers, garnering their rare pennies to thrilling
purchases in the glorious dingy dusty narrow old picturesque alley of
splendid treasure.
Indeed, Netherby Gomme did not lack bodily exercise in these days, for
the boy and girl considered no junket complete without him. So Noll
and Betty and he would go for walks to Chiswick, down the river to
Hampton Court, stroll the Strand and gaze into the print-shops that lay
thereabout, loiter on Westminster Bridge and wander in the Abbey; haunt
the picture-galleries and live in the pits of theatres, getting passes
at times from the kindly bohemians to dress circles--and sometimes
Julia would come, her long day’s work being done.
And there was surely no better audience than they. They had the true
theatric instinct--the right theatre spirit. They were in their seats
as soon as the opened doors would let them enter. The tuning of the
fiddles was exquisite music to their ears--an essential part of the
drama. Every moment was precious to them. They would as lief have
missed the rising of the great curtain, sweeping upwards with ecstatic
jerk into the flies, as have gone out before the last act, or worn
their hats to spoil the delight of others. For them the Theatre held
something of a sacred pleasure--the dear pleasaunce of populous cities.
Ah, the golden age! the days of the wide unquestioning delight in all
things that is the eternal theatre of the childhood of the world--for,
thank God, Fancy fills the very gutters of the street-children with
faery. There is a world of delight enwrapped about a rag doll--when the
world is young.
They were glad to be alive.
And as they took their pleasures, so they took their serious moods,
taking the best from all that came. They would dawdle into the
churches, leaving early when the parson was dry--Protestant and Papist,
High and Low. Particularly the Roman Catholic, drawn by the æsthetic
beauty of the Service, and charmed by its exquisite symbolism--for
they were children when all is said, questioning nothing that was
established, accepting everything, believing in belief. And the lank
awkward Netherby Gomme perhaps the simplest-hearted child of the three.
Alas! that there should loom ever at the end of all things the threat
of change! And that the young feet, with restless skip, should go so
eagerly to meet it!
The three went down to Burford Bridge one day--there having been much
careful garnering of sixpences to that end.
They burst into the old inn--to be rebuffed.
The jolly old landlady was gone--their friend the ostler wholly
vanished--no trace of him.
There was hint of sellings-up, and broken fortunes, and sad flitting
from the old home.
Strange faces smiled these things down upon them indifferently,
indulgently.
No, with headshakings, there were no prize-fighting ostlers that sang
like baritone gods, no heroes nor colourable imitation of heroes in
the stables--none. Nor indeed anything more romantic than racing
touts--lazy rogues that sold the hay and corn when the watchful eye was
not upon them....
OF THE BUDDING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER XVII
_Which has to do with the Awakening of Youth_
The boy and girl sprang up apace; their brains developing added
perception and quickness under Lovegood’s tuition--wits are whetted by
congenial wit.
The stripling’s voice broke, lost its treble, and for awhile was
awkward to the ear, as his lank limbs to the eye; and a-top of the
change the down came upon his lip, adding the last touch of whimsy
to youth’s ungainliness. Betty came through the awkward age less
awkwardly, showing a lithe gracefulness in her very lankness of limb.
The girl it was who began to show shy reservations.
The lad was becoming restless with--he knew not what. Coming
adolescence was setting his youngster blood a-jigging. Boyhood was
gone--youth not fully come. Romance was singing in his ears--adventure
thrumming impatient fingers on the windows of his fancy--hot instincts
leading his feet--wilfulness challenging his daring.
In all this dangerous period of his cubhood, the girl’s sweet
companionship steadied the lad--kept him from many tomfool
waywardnesses. Her fragrant hair, loose-flowing to the winds, brushed
his cheek and veiled him in from much unwholesomeness. The girl’s
slender gloved hands held the key to his nobility--opened to him only
the view of the best that was in him; whilst his protection of her, and
his frank confidence in her, filled the lad’s body with early manhood
that had otherwise been filled with indecision and with many and
uncouth vulgarities.
And just as, his voice breaking, a hoarser accent came into his speech,
so, too, a more robust accent came into his thinking. He began to
question, first of all here and there, then from roof to base, what he
had accepted with a boy’s frank acceptance.
The Why and the Whence and the Whither had begun to trouble.
He and Betty had taken to going to church of a Sunday evening. At last,
puzzled by many things, the lad went boldly and called on the vicar.
Encouraged by the well-bred courtesy of the gentle-hearted man and by
the noble simplicity and selflessness of his life, and full of eager
questionings, he had gone again a time or so; but he found his blunt
queries evaded--the deep inmost and basic meaning of life and death,
when he pressed for an answer, was at once thrust behind a screen of
God and angels, seen dimly across a gulf of heavens and hells, in the
human form and habit, and with those earthly functions of which the
disembodied spirit had no further need, and through a veil of vague
talk of the inspired word.
The inspired word!
Inspiration that could allow discrepancies in the simplest details of
the most important things--one gospel giving the Annunciation to Mary,
another to Joseph--one giving the Anointing by a woman to the beginning
of the ministry, the others to the eve of the Crucifixion--all
differing in the statement of the great and solemn act of the very
Crucifixion--one stating that the Christ bore His cross, the others
that Simon bore it--disagreeing even as to the bitter drink that
was given and when given--disagreeing as to the hour of the great
tragedy--every one of them all contradicting each other as to the
sayings on the cross--the statement by Christ in one gospel to the
repentant thief that they would that day be in Paradise denying that
the Christ really descended into Hell and rose again the third day--one
gospel contradicting the others as to the acts and sayings of these
thieves--all at variance even about the last dying words--all writing
different inscriptions over the suffering head--one stating that the
body was embalmed, another denying its embalming.
There were larger discrepancies: How could the devil tempt God? And
even so, what virtue were in so easy a triumph? Why had God, out of His
creation of all things, created the devil? How could He punish for sin
who had created sin? Why did God create a world so faultily that He
Himself condemned it? Why punish His own bungling upon His miserable
creatures? How could He set up as eternal reward the prospect of the
good being with Him in the heavens and listening to the agony of the
victims of His poor maimed handiwork in hell? What had man done more
loathsome than to create a Hell? Was this gruesome heaven of gloating
over the agony of the damned to be our Immortality? If these things had
been written to-day instead of coming out of the dim glamour of the
centuries, would they be believed?
The vicar was genuinely shocked.
He stammered of Conduct--he did not guess the extent of the boy’s
reading.
The good man had always looked upon any who questioned Christianity
as atheists and agnostics--upon atheists and agnostics as criminal
and brutish persons. He had never realized that some of the noblest,
greatest, purest and sweetest lives had been lived by these--nor that
some of the foulest, most damnable, and criminal lives had been spent
in vileness by princes of the Church.
The boy bent his brows on the old gentleman’s embarrassment....
Already bored by the vicar’s dusty sermons, and now baffled to find
that what had baffled him likewise baffled the vicar, he turned
his back on the Church of his people and went with Betty to the
pro-cathedral of Rome.
The beauty of the service, its music and its splendid symbolism,
appealed for awhile to his artistic senses; but the questionings soon
began again to unsettle the lad. For he found that he could not get to
the root of things in this exquisite place even as far as with his old
vicar. He had imagined the Roman Church as united--as agreed. He found
it racked from one end to the other by the warring pronouncements of
the Fathers. The cardinal himself it was who blew up the bridge that
spanned the road to Rome.
It was the day of a great mass at the Oratory. It had been
noised abroad that the church was to be draped red with handsome
draperies--that the cardinal was to speak, robed in his crimson
vestments. All the leaders of society that held to the Papist tradition
were to be there--and, as events turned out, there was, besides, a
large gathering of Society that owned no allegiance to Rome, yet
enjoyed a handsome pageant.
The boy and girl went--anxious to hear what message the illustrious
prince of the Church had for their hearts--what guidance for their
lives--what he had to say upon the great intellectual advancement of
the age--what upon the great questions that loomed before the puzzled
brain of man.
And he, the appointed spokesman of the infallible church, smooth-faced,
aristocratic, magnificent, arose from his seat at his ordered place
in the elaborate service, and his voice broke the musical refrain of
the splendid ceremonial with disturbing accent but to reiterate the
narrow message of his Church that only through absolute subjection of
mind and body to the forms and traditions and quaint superstitions of
that Church could man be saved from everlasting damnation; and, with
triumphant note, he revelled in the fact, and could get to little else,
that the English Church, which had persecuted Rome for generations,
had now begun to place her images upon its altars and in the emptied
niches of its portals--had indeed filched the rubric and the habits
and the symbols of his Church! And, with exultant voice, swelling to
arrogance, he, with the same lips that called his Church catholic,
whilst in the very act of narrowing it to a parochial destiny, twitted
with parochialism the land whose large religious toleration allowed his
Church to live unmolested where that same Church had made a shamble and
a stews when it was in power, debauching its once opportunity by fire
and torture, showing in such strange hellish wise its large Catholicism
to such as had differed from its narrow creed. He spoke passionately of
past persecution--he omitted to say who had taught the lesson.
But of the Why and the How and the Whence and the Whither--nothing. All
the flattest Agnosticism....
That evening the striplings, together with Netherby Gomme, wandered,
with a crowd that pressed, into the large and simple place of worship
of a well-known chapel to hear a great Protestant preacher. This
man, unaided by the gorgeous ritual of the morning that appealed to
every artistic sense, made the simple Protestant claim to individual
responsibility, to acts of life as against the ritual of churches.
He ignored all Christolatry, as a grown man sets aside the toys of
childhood, and his voice thundered that the life of the individual
would be judged solely by the part it played towards the ennobling
of the community. And he showed that just as Christianity had been
born from the Jews and the Greeks, so had Protestantism in turn
been born out of Rome; and so must the future ideals of the great
peoples, purified still more and more by rejecting the false and the
superstitious, be born again out of this same Protestantism.
It was the large, daring, and frank mind of this man that roused the
lad from the lethargic irresponsibility of his boyhood to his duty
towards life. Just as the Romanist communion by its ideal of the
salvation of the individual through and by the community has weakened
the force of the individual, so the innate difference of the Protestant
ideal, the salvation of the community by and through the individual,
strengthened the lad’s nerve and made his will resolute. He flung off
his reliance on others and faced his life and his destiny.
He roused from the drowsy contemplation and the fantastic dreads of
otherworldliness--ridiculous heavens and more ridiculous hells--and
turned to life. For awhile he was not troubled.
The genial optimism of youth came back to him.
It was soon after this stage of awakening intellectual unrest that
the lad found himself embarked on the larger tide of the literary and
intellectual unrest of the Continent.
Mixing more and more amongst the Bohemians, he found himself amongst
frank and fearless thinking; he was roused by the inquisitive genius
of France--heard the first words of the daring speculations of German
thought. He realized that religious teaching had passed from the Church
to the newspaper--to literature--and to the arts; that religion, from
being a fierce war of priests, was become a searching into the everyday
life of the community, was become a fierce desire to better that life.
The angels were flown, theology gone to dust, and man was seeking
after the godhead that is in him--he who had kissed the feet of idols,
cringing for salvation in whimsical heavens, now stood up and looked at
the meaning of manhood.
Thou Shalt Not was giving place to Thou Shalt.
CHAPTER XVIII
_Of the Coming of Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre upon the Town_
Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre had caught the ear of the town
with the brazen strains of the New Literary Movement. Fresh from
France, he had written a novel, Englished in the French idiom, and
founded on the closely detailed, elaborately seen, unselected picture
of life as it straggles by, that is called Realism--that movement
which, combined with splendid courage, had lifted Zola to the front
rank in contemporary French literature. Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty
Macloughlin Myre had all the faults without the genius of the
Frenchman; and, by consequence of these things, Mr. Myre had tasted the
sweets of his first success of scandal. People had said that his book
was indecent--and read it.
Mr. Myre had then struck one of his master-strokes, and straightway
set himself up as lawgiver and head and front of Taste by criticising
everybody and everything. And with a quick receptive mind for the
catchpennies, the slang, and the cant of the studios and of the
students’ quarter, of the stage and of the literary schools, he had
picked up the details of every movement in the restless air of Paris;
and he now proceeded to exploit them in London. That one thing flatly
contradicted another gave him no embarrassment--he was there to harass
and embarrass. Conventional critics went down before the cocksureness
which was the flashy weapon of this, to them, most original man. The
erratic amongst the journalists, they that live on the jigging foot,
quick to see the vogue of this catchpenny-monger, were soon hard at it,
too, seeking to gather in whilst the harvest was for the gathering,
rushing to nature, or what their cockney senses told them was nature,
so that when they conjured up the vision of the ploughman in the fields
one perceived the sourness of his sweat rather than the fragrance of
the earth or the mystic significance that is in the ploughing.
But Myre founded his eminence on no single dunghill. He set his
building on a more certain base--he thrust down his splay feet firm
into popular Romance, and he saw to it that the whole whispering world
should not miss it. He was living with one of the greatest French
actresses of the day--and from Marguerite Olmé it must be set down in
credit to his judgment he was catching a reflected glory that was far
greater than his own.
Given boon companions, Myre was wont to make no secret of the fact,
nay, rather a pretty confidence of it, that he was exploiting a great
passion--“taking up a great woman’s soul by the roots to examine it,”
was the florid paraphrase.
Art, said he, demanded every sacrifice.
That his extravagances were largely paid out of her bread-winnings he
did not parade--as smacking perhaps of the too sordid. Realism has
its limits. All nature is not to be crammed into an ink-pot nor three
hundred pages.
Marguerite Olmé had come to play in England for three weeks. The French
critics had set down her genius as the greatest of the age. In England,
few people understanding her, this verdict had been enthusiastically
repeated; and after a triumphant procession through the United States,
where she was understood still less, it was written down that she was
even greater than that. And indeed she was little less.
Meanwhile, Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre increased in violence
and in volume, magnified by the reflected light; and his conceit grew
ecstatic.
He made his enemies. They called him Quogge Myre, for short, or The
Brixton Celt. There was some spite in it.
This at first fretted him somewhat. He had always been distressed that
his name was only of one syllable--Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Milton,
Chaucer, Balzac were of two.
Still, there was Poe!
He tried his own name on his tongue. He wondered if it could ever sound
like the name of a man of genius.
Then there came to him a sudden glow--it was more original.
He felt that the time was come to gather in disciples; he chose a
foreign restaurant, in the French quarter where, he darkly hinted in
the press, and to all and sundry, that the wits might be seen of an
evening, glittering resplendent. It was at this time that he gave forth
the now famous essay in which he showed once for all how the home
life checked the range of genius; in which he proved how the wifely
_milieu_ stunted the view and narrowed the eagle flight of the original
intellect; that same essay in which he showed that a woman should be
well content to be simply beautiful, relying on man’s chivalry for her
sufficient empire; in which he also proved beyond shadow of doubt that
it was due to the meeting of the wits in the tavern and the resulting
whetting of the national genius that the French achievement so far
transcended the English--indeed, he pointed the moral in a florid
picture of Shakespeare glittering at the Sign of the Mermaid--he even
invented some lines for Shakespeare.
The tavern club was like to be born again.
Netherby Gomme, seeing the inquisitive mind of the lad Noll beginning
to run upon the literary warfare of the day, set Noll’s heart jigging
one evening by calling for him, together with the airy Fluffy Reubens,
and taking him out into the London night to spend an hour or two at the
great man’s tavern.
CHAPTER XIX
_Wherein a Strutting Cock comes near to Losing a Feather upon his Own
Dunghill_
At a table, with his disciples, sat Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin
Myre--a slack-headed, loose-lipped, colourless-haired, untidy-minded
fellow enough to outward seeming.
As Noll listened to his affected voice and caught the tenor of his mind
he understood why the man was known amongst the robuster wits as The
Brixton Celt.
Sitting next to him, and admiring himself in a mirror opposite, was his
friend the poet Aubrey, who, it must be acknowledged, paid but little
attention to anyone but himself. As Noll entered the place Myre’s loud
drawl was giving utterance to the innuendo that the love of woman was
only worth the seeking in order “to take her soul up by the roots and
examine it”; on which Aubrey had raised a laugh somewhat at his own
cost and yet with a certain vague undefined loss to the Quogge Myre, by
saying:
“I personally am content to take up my own soul by the roots and
examine it.”
When the ironic applause and laughter were run down, Aubrey, still
gazing at himself, said:
“That laugh is sheer affected hypocrisy. I am of the only
importance--that is the only real heart’s creed of man.” And he added
lovingly: “I thank God that I am beautiful--very beautiful.”
It was a historic night....
Quogge Myre had been irked of late by the perpetual reference to him
as the English Zola. He felt that he ought to be original. He saw that
he must again strike a new and original note. Above all he felt that
Realism was running dry--the public were grown used to it; nay, worse,
the public had accepted it at his estimate.
On this evening he had planned the surprise of a great Renunciation.
One or two sonnets had been given by poets, as was the custom in
Parisian students’ taverns, before Myre himself arose to read an essay
he had just written, and thus give to the privileged few the advantage
of the earliest communion with his latest thought.
He astounded them that were gathered about him by attacking Zola and
Realism with bitterness; and he solemnly announced his decision to
break with the movement for ever.
All these little men stared aghast--they had only just acquired the
style and method and some little vogue upon their capture of the tricks
of this very Realism. And for a few moments they were dumbfounded.
Had they not “written each other up” on their mastery of this very
craft!
Even they, like Myre, had discovered that the superficial tricks were
easily captured.
But, as Myre read, they began to glow, as though in some measure
sharing in his greatness--he put that hint to them with subtlety.
It was that famous essay in which he showed, once for all, with
aggressive air as though the prophet of the gospel, that Realism
was a Failure--that all Art must be symbolical. Though he still
maintained that the expression of it must be of the hammered and
perfect metal called Style, he had overstated the case for style--but
he did not withdraw everything. He had said that Style was the All
in All--that the matter did not matter. He renounced that position.
Style was important, but it was the symbols that were significant in
art.... Then this man, who baldly stated how he had thrust himself
upon Zola, proceeded to tell how he had tricked Zola into giving him
the advertisement of his praise, how he had lied to him, how he now
despised him, because Zola, being grown rich, wrote in a room that was
a bourgeois ideal of handsome furnishing. He employed all his sarcasm
on making ridiculous what only the genial hospitality of the kindly
Frenchman could have thrown open to his treacherous censure; and he
ended with a scalding attack on the coarseness of Zola’s work and on
the lack of its artistry. For himself--he had discovered a greater
master, whose name was Ibsen. “In so far as my work has unwittingly
been symbolical,” said he, with the majesty of a great renunciation,
“in so far has it been good. For the rest, it has been written in
vain....” To achieve the masterpiece, he was content to go to the
Greeks--to Æschylus, to Euripides, to Aristophanes, to Sophocles in
drama, to Homer in the Epic, to Phidias in art--the Greeks, he averred,
recorded only the Inevitable Thing.
As the great man sat down amidst a thunder of applause, Noll leaned
over to a pimpled disciple:
“Tell me,” said he--“what has this man done?”
The youth gazed at him:
“Oh, it isn’t that he has done anything yet,” he said. “That will come.
He has the right attitude.”
The pimply young man blew out cigarette smoke.
Netherby Gomme rose to his feet:
“I should like to ask our Master,” said he, without trace of smile on
his cadaverous face, “and I ask it because I have only read Sophocles
in the translation--to which of the plays of Sophocles did he allude
when he burst into his splendid eulogy of the Greek genius just
now--_OEdipus Tyrannus_, or _Ajax_ or _Hecuba_, or was he thinking of
the _Prometheus Bound_?”
Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre licked his puffy red lips
uncomfortably, but said nothing. He smiled cynically to cover his
hesitation--the fact was that he had never read a play by Sophocles,
even in translation. There was a long tense pause.
“Sophocles had the right attitude in _all_ his plays,” he said at
last--“what is true of one is true of all.”
Netherby sat down, and laughed loud and long:
“Spoken like a game-cock!” cried he--“if a game-cock could sing----”
Noll touched his sleeve confidentially:
“But, Netherby,” said he--“Sophocles did not write _Prometheus Bound_.
It was----”
“Hush, Noll--the ass hasn’t the smallest idea of that----”
Myre was uneasy, feeling he had not been wholly secure, when all eyes
turned upon the entry into the café of a very beautiful young woman.
She walked to a small table and sat down.
Myre at once became hysterical; and proceeded to embarrass the girl
with his vulgar eyes.
She ordered some coffee of the waiter, and, fretted by the admiring
stare of these gentlemen, soon rose from the table, shortened her
skirts above her dainty ankles, and went out into the night.
Myre, offended by the girl’s ignoring, said:
“The amateur is sapping the arts of all strength. The county gentry are
destroying painting and the drama. That woman is an exquisite stick on
the stage--she is connected with a peer.”
“Not by marriage, I suppose,” said a handsome youth flippantly; and
rising from his chair with Byronic gloom, he put on his silk hat--“I
must follow her; she is very beautiful.”
He followed her.
When he was gone, the pimply young man leaned over to Noll, and said
with hushed admiration:
“Bartholomew Doome--the wickedest man in London.”
“Indeed,” said Noll--“what does he do?”
“He has never been known to give way to a decent emotion,” said the
youth....
The next day, Mr. Myre bought a translation of the plays of Sophocles,
and armed himself against his disciples. A cold sweat broke out upon
him as he paid the price and realized how near he had come to losing
his wits on his own particular dunghill.
CHAPTER XX
_Wherein Master Devlin throws a Fierce Sidelight upon the Genius of
Poetry_
Literature might be born and die, and pass wholly away; but the
wordy warfare of the distracted parties to each quarrel roused
no such serious questioning in the most perfervid contestant’s
thinking parts as was now troubling our Noll--the down was on his
lip and chin and cheek; and the getting rid of it had mastered his
ingenuity. He was balked. The flame of a match had sent the fluff to
the ceiling in æthereal dust more than once; but now the increasing
stiffness threatened bristles. He must be driven to the razor or to
untidiness--and the eyes of young women forbad the untidiness. In
his difficulty he put the point to Netherby Gomme; and Gomme, grimly
suppressing the smile that lurked behind his serious eyes, led off
the lad forthwith to his barber. It was thus that Noll first came to
frequent the place where the wits lost whatsoever strength of hair lay
in them.
Mike Devlin was lord and leading man of action in the rooms--and it is
doubtful if he were not the leading wit--if we may judge by the relics
of it that still do duty amongst the youth of the parish. He had two
white-coated assistants in his clipping; they made the laughter to
his airinesses also, when chins were slow in the wagging, coyly and
splutteringly as they dared.
A cling of the shop’s bell.
The little cockney Irishman roused at sight of Netherby Gomme, and, at
the word, he soon had Noll swathed in cloths and bibs and towels, and
was lathering the soapsud on his face.
Devlin opened a long friendship with the youth by subtlety, shaving
deftly the while over somewhat smooth ground:
“You’re in literatoor, sorr, I’ll be thinkin’?” said he.
“H’m, h’m!” grunted the youth; and added dryly: “More or less.”
He winked to Gomme, feeling the joke was with him--and the alert
Devlin, catching the wink, saw that the boy was at ease. The first
shave, Devlin was wont to say, was as distressing to one’s egoism as
the marriage service to a maiden’s modesty.
“It won’t be po’try, will it, sorr?” asked Devlin.
Noll shook his head:
“No,” said he.
Mike Devlin smiled:
“I’m thinkin’ it’s not aisy to put poets under Mike Devlin’s hands
without me knowing the feel of them. I can just smell them. Be Joshua,
I shaved one every mornin’, when it wasn’t afternoon, for eight months
on this very floor, and I got used to the feel of them.... Ah, that
was a great poet, mind ye. Eh? I’ve clean forgot his name, but he was
a great hairy man wid a head on him like a dam besom--ye could have
swept Fleet Street wid him.... When that man walked down the street the
whole town looked at him and said That’s a blarsted poet!... Begod,
yes, that was a great poet. When he’d got the frenzy on him he hadn’t
the time to clean himself. Eh, sir? What did he write? Why, just
po’try. His shoulders was stooped with the application of him--begod,
the very trousers on him betrayed the genius in him; they had knees on
them like a horse that’s endin’ his days in the cab traffic. Oh, yes;
ye could see the great man just fretted the pantaloons off himself wid
worryin’ at the rhymes.... Po’try’s an oneasy means of livelihood,
I’m thinkin’.... And, in fact, I had a slap at it meself.... I tried
to pull off one of these pastorals, they call it, wid the cattle
goin’ down to the drink and the great dirty blacksmith leanin’ on the
anvil, takin’ a spit at his hands and makin’ the sparks fly, and the
blacksmith’s daughter wid the beauty of old Trotter’s yellow-haired
barmaid on her; but the divil a rhyme could I get to the blacksmith’s
daughter but “fills her leathern sides wid water.” Well, in comes the
poet one morning and asks me if I’ve made me will; but I told him my
paleness was due to the po’try, and that it made life too oneasy and
I was going to shake it off me heels. What’s the matter wid po’try?
says he. Wid that I discovered me tribulation to him, and he mighty
nearly got the whooping-cough--he told me I had better put aside
the seductions of the Muse, I was sufferin’ from the echoes of old
refrains. But it didn’t cost me a night’s sleep, thank God. Ye know,
after all, sir, po’try’s like the hair-cuttin’--ye’ve got to be born to
it, or ye’ve got to lave it severely alone.... Eh, sir? Ah, yes--be the
gospels, he was a great poet--ye could smell the midnight oil on him.
He just lived at the desk, gettin’ the rhymes into collusion. Genius?
he was full of it. Free love was nothin’ to that man. Aisy, sorr, or
I’ll be cuttin’ the nose off of ye! But as he said to me himself,
there’s one law for genius, Devlin, and there’s another law for the
middle classes; and it’s bad morals of the middle classes to try and
usurp the weaknesses of their betters, says he. By the book, yes; he
had the hall-mark of genius on him--he had the divil’s own contempt for
the middle classes. They were like orange-peel under the great heels
of the man.... Po’try’s a pagan callin’, says he, when all’s said--and
if ye’re goin’ to make po’try ye’ve got to live it like a pagan, says
he. And, by jewry, he did. Pagan he was--as Pompey’s pillar. Eh, sorr?
Can’t I remimber anny-thing he wrote?... God knows. They tell me it
was mostly poems; but I keep to the accidents and the police reports,
wid a dash of the politics, in the newspapers--the damned rhymes
and superfluities always take my attention from the meanin’ of the
sense--I’m that nervous all the time that the fellow will get his rhyme
nately fixed up in the next line, by the popes I always forgit what the
tune’s about.”
He stood off, and, head on one side, looked at the youth’s clean-shaven
face with the air of an artist.
“Mind ye, sorr,” said he, damping the soap off his face--“I’m not
blamin’ the poets. That’s a queer onnatural life they lead. Mr. Myre,
that was in here just now, was complainin’ to another genius of the
damn hard life of it he had, what wid the sinfulness of his natural
nature, and his emotions, and the doing of things that wasn’t expected
of him, and all the celebrated women after him--but now, _there’s_
a man that stands to his principles like a hairy Afghan to his
fowlin’-piece--he was sayin’ that an artist must have _lived_--and it
is a part of his sacrifice to himself that he should debauch himself
for the good of posterity, otherwise he only guesses at life like the
maiden aunt lookin’ furtively over the window blind at the drama of the
street. Begod, it’s the keen satirical tongue he has, Mr. Myre, when
he’s pullin’ the leg of the maiden aunt.... _And_ the self-respect av
him!”...
CHAPTER XXI
_Which discovers a Great Man in the Hour of his Triumph_
Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre stood at the windows of the
best rooms of the best hotel in London--he enjoyed the fine view, the
great reach of the Thames--the towers and ancient majestic piles and
many-windowed warehouses turning to fairy palaces in the lilac haze of
the coming twilight.
The great actress’s infatuation for him brought him his every desire in
these days; and he felt that such was as it should be--it was pathetic
to think of the number of common-minded persons who must have lived
in that room and seen no beauty in the world. Nay, it was a crime. He
sighed that Nature was so wasteful.
He stood, his hands behind his back, his colourless hair with its
untidy forelock over his paste-coloured forehead, a smirk under his
drooping, ill-kempt moustache. His sloping shoulders shrugged content:
“God!” said he--“this is my day.”
Indeed, Mr. Myre was thrilled at a far more emotional prospect than any
view of a Thames reach. For days the newspapers had been quarrelling
over him--his name was everywhere. Worry, worry, worry! and in the
midst of the din was always Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre.
He had struck a master-stroke....
Quogge Myre had become weary of his scandal. The novelty of his
relation to Marguerite Olmé was flown. He was not even barred. People
treated it as carelessly as though it had been marriage. Nay, worse;
society was grown tired of it--he was not asked out so much as he had
been.
He could see nothing more to be got out of the romantic association;
he had had a splendid flash of life with her, the glamour that still
remained was but the after-glow----
And the stage notoriously aged women!
He was no weakling to dawdle on in the twilight of a romance, kicking
his feet aimlessly through the fallen leaves of a withered passion.
He saw that he must do something original--or with an original air.
He had conceived a bold scheme for a renewal of public interest in him
and his works.
He had given to the world a recklessly daring account of his most
intimate relations with the great actress, thinly disguised as a
romance--indeed, he had forestalled all misunderstanding, had drawn
aside all shred of disguise, by inspiring preliminary paragraphs in the
press.
The result went beyond his wildest hopes; raised him beyond his fondest
conceit.
The clamour was prodigious; indeed, it did the English press credit,
for it displayed a lurking sense of decency, a hint of manhood in the
shabbiest.
The abuse brought this man to the front again; and the curiosity of
smart society was again assured towards him.
And it would do more--it would make a dramatic end to his life with the
great actress. He had revealed all the secrets of her dressing-table,
the little makeshifts of figure, the use of additions to Nature’s
artistic handicraft.
It had only been fair to himself; for she had begun to be tedious--a
bore--humiliation. To sit opposite to the same woman at table day
after day! It cramped his imagination. There were two or three other
women--it might make a difference if he were not tied to this one--he
had only made one mistake--he ought to have cleared off the whole of
his debts before he published the book--but----
His man came in.
Yes, he would dress for dinner. But he had accepted two invitations for
that night--to which of these handsome women must he send the telegram
of his inability to go?
He decided to dine with the countess.
Quogge Myre adored the “intelligent” peerage.
In her rooms in Paris sat Marguerite Olmé, reading a book.
She had been reading it all day--and the red blood burned her face with
shame. She missed no word of the brutal details of her most intimate
life with this man--there was little reservation, even by innuendo.
The elbow-nudgings and the leer at her love-ecstasies--nay, at the very
manner in which she had hidden the only small defect of her figure; the
display of all her bodily habits; the jibes at the little reliances
on the arts of her dressing-table; the sneers at the coming little
threat of wrinkles, at the grey threads of hairs amongst the glorious
nut-brown masses--tshah! She had been a mad fool to love a man twelve
years her junior! Poor fool, she blamed _herself_!
It was one of those books that are written by such men as batten,
parasitic, louse-like, upon a woman.
And this one not only battened upon her means, but upon her reputation,
her honour, her affections, her very soul.
Merely to be rich is to live in the most vulgar state of poverty.
There have been colossal sneaks in the world of letters, that have not
been without genius--Rousseau, de Musset, and the rest--though their
genius has been somewhat rotten at the core. We read every line of
Rousseau with suspicion, for is there not haunting every line he wrote,
threading in and out through all, the ignominy of the dirty little
caddish soul that slimes the pages of his _Confessions_? And what man
does not feel his sex outraged by the hermaphroditic venom of de Musset
as he sullies the frail love of George Sand?
To betray the woman whose sole folly has been that she loved you! Even
though but for a gadding while.
A woman can give a man nothing greater than the love of her life--that
is the weightiest dower. It is beyond a price. The sentences that
can only be whispered--the sentences that cannot be whispered--the
tendernesses--the surrenders--the endearments--the mystic emotions
that reach in the love of man and woman the nearest to some ecstatic
conception of the mystery of life, that are the worthy beginnings of
a new life, these things can only be lived; they cannot be spoken of
even by the most reverent tongue; but when their exposure is made the
foul weapon with which to wound the woman for her only fault in having
surrendered herself to an egregious cad, that cad is only fit to be
spat upon. The betrayal of the Christ was to this a healthy sin. Such a
dirty rogue should be blotted out. The wit of such a man must stink--if
he have wit. The art of such a man must be a foul sore. The influence
of such a man must be a filthy disease; his companionship a loathsome
suppuration; his life a paltry ignominy.
Marguerite Olmé brushed back her hair from her brow with the wondrous
hands that were as eloquent as her voice. She was stunned with shame.
She uttered a little moan, when she should have answered a light knock
at the door.
Her maid entered:
“Madame--it is time to dress for the play--it is the first night of----”
“Hush, Ernestine!” she said hoarsely; and the girl was startled at the
voice.
“Madame is ill?”
The girl ran to her as to a child.
“No----”
The wounded woman stroked the girl’s shoulders, and signed to a desk;
the maid brought her pen and ink and paper.
After she had written awhile, the great actress handed the maid a book
and a letter:
“Ernestine--this is like a play, isn’t it?” She smiled: “Burn that,”
she said--“and post this.”
Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre was released from his bondage
quite easily. He was cast off.
He read the letter, shrugged his shoulders, flung the scented
notepaper into the fire. He had promised to read her letter to his
admirers--when it came. He decided that he must invent one instead.
Yet--this one--well----
It was simple enough--quite devoid of style:
“Mr. Myre would do well to avoid Madame Olmé’s house in the future,
as the footmen have orders to flog him down the stairs.”
Mr. Myre smiled:
“The French are so melodramatic!” he said.
CHAPTER XXII
_Wherein we are obliged to Spend a Brief Moment in the Company of the
Titled Aristocracy_
Anthony Baddlesmere stood brooding in the middle of his room, his hands
behind his back, and his wits hammering in his skull.
“Tsh--sh!”
He wondered how it was that he had not seen this tangle until now.
The boy was gone; into his place had stepped a youth--Noll was on the
verge of manhood. And the lad had the firm mouth and the strong jaw of
the Baddlesmeres.
It had all flashed upon him suddenly; thus:
As he came up the steps to enter the house, the door had opened and
there had stepped thereout a very beautiful girl of near sixteen, her
skirts not quite as long as they might have been; and beside the girl
had walked a handsome youth--his son Noll.
Ought this thing to be?
This girl’s father, Modeyne, was a gentleman--as a matter of fact
of as good blood as himself, if they came to the arbitrament of the
Heralds’ Office. But he was utterly unclassed! The fellow was become
an Outsider. He was only to be seen in the city, and--pah! with
such a rank gang of vulgarians! men whose loud clothes were always
aggressively well-brushed, whose hats, worn rakishly to a side, were
aggressively shiny, whose glittering boots were always aggressively
new and suggestive of the aggressively expensive, whose aitches were
the only articles of subtlety and rarity that they paraded, whose
manners were overbearing and authoritative. God! Modeyne, even when
drunk, shone, for all his falling away, the only man of breeding in the
company.
Still--he was the falling star.
The girl had not a chance. So Anthony argued--with what is called the
world’s wisdom--and proceeded to take the most elaborate precautions
that she should not have a chance.
Noll’s calf-love for the girl must be killed. By Venus! she was
uncommon handsome--there was that excuse for the lad.
But how?
At any rate, there was no time to be lost.
This boy Noll was come within two lives of the Cavil property--there
was only one between his mother and the peerage.
He thought it would be a mistake to say anything to Caroline about it.
She might go into opposition.
He would make the journey to Cavil and see the old lord at once. It
would mean the eating of much pride; it would choke him; but----
Stay. An alienated relative makes but a treacherous ally. Yet----
Lord Wyntwarde strode up and down the great library at Cavil, where
he transacted his business, and all such other like unpleasantnesses,
amongst the books he never read, his hands in his breeches pockets;
and he laughed harshly. He was just in from riding; and his pink
hunting-coat, his breeches and long boots were splashed with mud.
Anthony, standing in a window, grimly watched him prowling.
The old lord threw back his head as he tramped the floor:
“Ho, ho!” he bawled, “friend Anthony! I spoke like the damned minor
prophets, after all, hey!... So you come to me!... By the dogs, I said
it. But you are three years before my prophecy.... You play the cat and
banjo with my dates. You make me too previous.” He turned, clinking his
spurs as he trod his heels into the thick carpets. “I saw the cub’s
birth in the papers ... seventeen years and a while ago. But, the
cast-iron joke of it! that _you_ should come to prevent a marriage with
an undesirable. Hoho--ho!... I swore it--I swore it should be so....
Gods! how the world goes round! Round and round and round. And no one
grows a peppercorn the wiser.... Not a damn peppercorn. Tshah! _I_ did
it. But then I foresaw that all the Wattleses would pour their vast
wealth into our coffers--they love to have a lord in the family down
by Birmingham. Nevertheless, _I_ married a vicar’s daughter against my
father’s will--and she brought forth Ponsonby!... Gods! have you seen
the Thing?”
Anthony said not a word.
The old lord took to his pacing again:
“By the dogs, an abortion. He cannot stay on a horse long enough for it
to kill him. A horse! Dogs, he hasn’t even the blood of the Wattleses
in him--he’d turn giddy on an office-stool unless he were strapped
to it. He is the very pick of dancing-masters--he has cast back to
the bank-manager, except that he can’t count. There he stands against
God’s heaven, a knock-kneed reproach to his Maker.... The nearest thing
he gets to a horse is to wear riding-breeches and long boots on the
parades of fashionable watering-places. But he has thrown out a virtue
we none others have had--he has not gone into opposition to the head
of his house. He will be the twenty-sixth in the title, and the other
twenty-four have pulled their fathers’ beards. He has promised never
to marry without my approval....” He tramped silently for awhile, and
burst out again: “And so you think I will refuse to have a word to
say to your cub! Well, you are mistaken. But it is on conditions--you
understand--on conditions.”
Anthony nodded:
“I must know the conditions,” he said.
“You must? Hoho! still the organizer of victory, eh!”
Anthony said nothing.
He stood and watched the striding figure before him, and bit his teeth
on all repartee. He had a dogged desire to win that which he had come
to ask; and he was not going to lose it for the sake of a score in
grooms’ badinage.
He left the waggeries to the noble lord.
“Look here, friend Anthony--your uncle sold the estates, and rotted
in Boulogne. And the county dropped him--he only had the portraits
with him when he died. Well! does the world remember that _you_ come
of the Plantagenets? does the county remember that your sires were
William of Normandy and Charlemagne and Louis Debonair? Not a whit. It
thinks you are a damned scribbling fellow; and, by the dogs, you are.
And the lordship of the manor is gone to some cheesemonger from down
South--and, hoho! I swear it, your arms are on his carriage panels, the
great damned peacock’s tail for crest, and the scarlet torteaux and
the blessed chevron. All taken over with the lordship of the manor.
Yes, by the three scarlet tortoises, their women are wonderful! brand
new popinjays on a brand new stick. Nothing old and dingy in the old
home, I can promise you--Chippendale and the eighteenth century all
thrust out o’ doors, gone to the workmen’s cottages--and the rooms
heavy with full-bellied comfortable saddle-bag lounges and the Latest
Thing. But--mine host is in Burke, and glitters in Debrett. And you?
Beelzebub! you scribble. You are gone down to the bottom of an ink-pot.
And the boy! our good Oliver--where will _he_ go? Yet, by my soul, you
did one clean thing--you called him after me--you had sufficient pride
to put aside your dirty conceit and give him the name of the house.
Wherefore, since he is an Oliver, and since he has gone into opposition
to his father, who went into opposition to me--and since two negatives
make an affirmative--therefore and whereby and notwithstanding, I’ll
help the boy; but I say it shall be on conditions.”
Anthony’s one dread was lest he should discover that Caroline was not
in the surrender.
“And the conditions?” he asked.
“Now, don’t you begin hectoring me!”
The bloodshot eyes turned glaring upon the silent figure of Anthony
that stood sullenly in the window.
Anthony laughed sadly.
“There is very little of Hector left in me,” he said. “I had hoped
to have made a decent competency for the boy--but I have failed....
Perhaps I ought to say that it was not on my own account that I came
here. I remember another and very serious reason--one that I thought
would appeal to you--and--I think it is the real reason at bottom for
your sudden burst of generosity.”
The clinking of the spurs and the striding up and down the room began
again:
“I have not forgotten that there is only Ponsonby between master
Oliver’s mother and me. I have not forgotten why you married his
mother, Master Anthony.... That was why I prophesied.... Prophecy?” He
snorted: “Prophecy be hanged! It was a jabbering of dead certainty.”
Anthony’s face flushed hotly:
“There is one thing I will not allow--though the boy rot for it--the
lie of omission,” he said.
“Who lies?”
The tramping ceased.
Anthony looked him steadily in the eyes:
“You have forgotten something, Lord Wyntwarde. There was a time when
you were not so pat with a lie.”
“I have forgotten nothing.”
“You have forgotten to add that you had four children alive--and a
brother. We scribbling folk call that the lie of omission; we consider
it the lowest of falsehoods. We even hold it a dishonour to utter it.”
The bloodshot eyes ceased their glare; and the striding began again:
“Still the damned authority on all the moralities,” said my lord.
As a fact, he was pleased at the show of fire. He had begun to think
this man had lost courage; and he would have trampled him under foot
for it. Your braggart only understands courage when it is announced by
trumpet. As it was, he remembered the ugly threat of a whip that he had
once been under from this fellow. It came to him that he had played the
bully to the limits.
He went to the bell and rang it; and got to pacing the room again,
brooding, until a footman opened the door.
“Tell Mr. Fassett I wish to see him,” said his lordship.
“Yes--my lud.”
A silent chaplain entered the room almost before the servant was gone,
and, glancing at his striding lord and his guest, he obeyed the sign
to sit down at the desk, noiselessly took his way to it, and placed
himself thereat.
“Fassett,” said Wyntwarde, prowling the while--“I want notes made upon
these points: My kinsman, Oliver Baddlesmere, a young fellow about to
go up to Oxford, is to go to Magdalen. The day he writes to me for
supplies from Magdalen he is to receive three hundred pounds--and
he is to receive it each year he goes up. Any bills in reason for
hunters, or in relation to hunting, I will pay--and all wine that shows
a gentleman’s judgment. Hatch, my wine-merchant, shall give him open
credit--and be judge between us. I expect him to live at the university
for his intellectual pleasure and in the society of gentlemen; not like
a damned curate or a schoolmaster. And the day he enters Parliament or
the Guards or some other club where gentlemen live decent unlaborious
lives, his income will be doubled, and, if need be, trebled. Otherwise
he may go to the devil--I forget how a parson puts it, Fassett--and
whistle down his nose for sixpences, or draw little pictures for the
illustrated papers, or whatever else that is the low way these sort of
people grub up a livelihood in the arts.”
He went to the bell and rang it; and turning to Anthony he added:
“There are a lot of handsome women with dull husbands staying in the
house, friend Anthony.” He laughed roughly: “But I suppose it’s no use
asking you to stay for dinner.”
He turned to the footman who appeared at the door; and, before Anthony
could answer, he said:
“This gentleman must catch the next train to town.”
He waved his hand with a curt “Good-day”; and tramped out of the room
on clanking heels.
Anthony decided, thinking it out in the train, to tell Caroline of what
had passed, and of the need for getting Noll coached at once for the
next term at Oxford.
He did not see any particular reason why the lad should go to
the university; but everyone did go--it was the thing to do. And
then--there was the girl----
He thought, all things considered, there was no need to mention Betty
Modeyne.
CHAPTER XXIII
_Wherein the Major fights a Brilliant Rearguard Action; and Beats off
a Pressing Attack_
It was the hour of social calls.
The suburban world was a-rustle in its best clothes, sallying forth in
carriage and on foot to play at being in the whirl of fashion; Major
Modeyne stood in drunken dignity on the whitewashed steps of the house,
his coat turned outside in, his shirt hanging out before and behind,
and flouted by street-boys. And the whole stucco front blushed with
shame.
Even the titter in the areas, where kitchen-maids peeped through the
railings at the rare comedy, was not without some sense of adverse
criticism.
His “friends” in the city had thought the joke a killingly funny one;
indeed, when, at the door of _The Cock and Bull_ in Fleet Street,
the Major had thanked them for the honour of their friendship, and,
with a rending hiccup, had started amidst street urchins on his
solemn homeward procession in this guise early in the afternoon, they
had clung to each other and had wept with laughter, hysteric at the
splendour of their humour. Nay, it provoked a mighty thirst and much
recounting of whimsical details in drinking shops for a long day. The
story grew.... But now that he was arrived in his own street, the
pestering swarm of street-urchins that buzzed at the Major’s straying
heels feared the joke was cracked--yet they were loath to give up the
tattered shreds of it whilst there was a guffaw left to them. The point
of honour during the journey had been to get in under the play of the
Major’s cane, and pluck a strip off his shirt-tails; it had been a
running fight as long as he tramped the streets, the victory now with
the boys, now with the Major’s lunge of cane; but the gallant officer
stood at last before his stronghold, and his back was to it. A bloody
nose or so amongst the boys showed that the old soldier had not wholly
lost the cunning of a heavy hand.
Yet he was vaguely troubled where he stood. He questioned his ability
to mount the steps unaided--and mount them he must before he could
achieve the ringing of the bell; he feared also that it would involve
the turning of his back upon the enemy. With masterly coolness of
judgment, he decided to wait until somebody came to the house, and
then to conduct his retreat, under cover of their entry, to the citadel.
A crowd collected.
It was at this dramatic pause that the landlady and her daughter,
returning from envious viewing of the Quality rolling by in the Park,
came upon the scene.
The Major, with wonted gallantry, and a somewhat wide miss or two of
his hand at the object, swept off his hat; but the effort lost him his
legs, and he suddenly sat upon the steps--the hat flinging out into the
road, where it was rushed off with a wild whoop by triumphant urchins
and became the football of a fierce game, in which many goals were
kicked over neighbouring lamp-posts.
The two women, brushing their skirts aside, passed by the fallen Major
haughtily. He made a vigorous effort to go up the steps on all fours
after the ladies; he reached the topmost as they slammed the door in
his face.
He sat on the doorstep, and shook his head sadly....
Thus Anthony Baddlesmere found him.
Anthony was slackening his pace, hesitant, wondering how to avoid the
embarrassment of getting into the house--there was the rustle of a
girl’s dress as she flipped past him, light feet ran up the steps, and
Betty, ringing the bell, stooped down, gave her father her arm, and, as
he struggled to his feet, led him into the yawning doorway.
Anthony stepped in after them; and the door was shut.
He felt a sudden sense of shame that he had allowed the girl to do
what he himself had a little feared to do; and he helped her now to
get her father up the stairs and into his room. Arrived thereat and
entering, she led the poor dazed soul to an armchair, settled him there
comfortably, with mother hands, then went to the windows and flung them
open. When she turned, it was to find two angry women in the room--the
landlady and her daughter had entered without leave or asking, and
instantly began a torrent of upbraiding.
Betty went to them:
“He cannot understand now--better come to-morrow morning,” she said
gently; and they, opening the door, conquering a stubborn desire to
stay, slowly went out.
Anthony hesitated, not quite knowing what to do.
He looked at the girl.
The firm mouth was set; but there was no sign of complaint nor of anger
upon her.
He felt a certain meanness in the object of the journey from which he
was just returned.
The poor drunken man began to upbraid himself.
“Hush, father,” said the girl----
He hiccupped:
“I am very drunk,” he said. “Why deny it?”
“Ah, father! that you should have come out into the day at last!... I
have feared this--for years.”
He tearfully protested that he never tasted any drink stronger than
coffee before the sun set--and this came of breaking his principles.
The girl laughed sadly, and went to the window.
“Betty,” said Anthony at last--“can I do nothing for you?”
She shook her head:
“Nothing,” she said. “His will is gone.”
She was acquiring knowledge of the world early, this girl--and at
first-hand.
The next morning, Major Modeyne read a letter at breakfast, and having
read it, watching Betty furtively out of the corners of his eyes,
he stealthily took advantage of her attention being fixed upon the
tea-making to put the letter into his pocket.
It was a discomforting, abusive, cruel letter, and it said that he and
his daughter received notice to vacate their rooms that day week--that
there would be a cab waiting for them and their baggage as soon as it
was dark, and that they must go, even if the law were employed to eject
them.
It stated what it had to say harshly, vulgarly, blatantly. It was not
the kind of letter that raises a man’s self-respect.
The week passed.
The Major had never been gayer, more debonair. He glittered. He was a
very sun. When he returned at night few knew. But the mornings saw him
blithe and tuneful.
The landlady and her daughter began to feel qualms. Still, they
hardened their hearts; and it was not until the morning of the last day
of the grace given him that the Major alluded to the unpleasant affair.
He sent the little maid-of-all-work to say that he wished to see the
ladies if they could spare him five minutes--it would only take three.
He was ushered into their little sitting-room with all the formalities
he himself observed with so rigid an etiquette.
“Well, Major!” The landlady broke an embarrassed silence.
“Ladies,” said he--“I received a letter a week ago for which I have
expected a formal apology. It has not been tendered.”
The ladies stiffened, ruffled.
The elder said:
“Major Modeyne, we hope you do not intend to make us use pressure to
you.”
“No lady’s pressure has ever met rebuff from me,” said the Major
gallantly. “I would meet the lady half way.”
The daughter sniffed:
“Major, you are pulling ma’s leg,” she said.
“Then, madam,” said the Major--“this is no place for her daughter.”
“You are trying to be funny, Major,” said the young woman huffily.
“Madam, most serious. For, were I to show indignation in my denial I
should cast aspersion on a handsome limb; were I to fail in denying
the soft impeachment I should entangle the limb in the moralities. You
place me in the unhappy position known as the quandary. I can only
escape from that position by saying that I have every confidence in
your mother, and that it is my habit to keep her comely figure out of
the gossip.”
“Lor, Major--I don’t know what you are getting at!”
“That I have pulled nothing,” said the Major solemnly.
“What do you want?”
“Ah, yes,” said the Major--“I came for the apology.”
“Then you don’t get it,” said the young woman tartly.
The Major bowed.
“That, madam, is a matter of taste.”
The young woman tossed her head:
“We don’t need to go to a school of manners, Major Modeyne.”
The Major bowed again:
“The letter,” said he, “is illegal.”
The women looked at each other uncomfortably.
“What?” said the daughter.
“Do not be alarmed, ladies; I did not say libellous. God forgive me, it
is not that. But it contains instructions about my daughter that cannot
hold in the law. My daughter has done nothing deserving of censure; and
it is utterly out of your power to eject her from her room. The notice
to quit rests with my daughter--and it is my intention that it shall
always so rest.”
The younger woman sniffed:
“Major,” said she, “no one wants to give Miss Betty a shade of
trouble--but _you_ must leave at dark to-night----”
“Madam, if I go, I go alone.”
She nodded:
“I’m sorry, Major; but if you don’t go, the drawing-room floor says she
will leave--and others in the house are getting restless--and we cannot
afford the loss.”
The Major pondered upon the problem long.
“Yes,” he said, “the drawing-room floor is serious--she is a woman of
weight.”
The landlady tittered.
But the daughter frowned her to order, and said, somewhat to the point:
“She pays her way handsomely.”
The Major bowed and withdrew.
He sang, _Sigh no more, ladies_, as he sallied up the stairs; and to
the profound astonishment of the two puzzled women he did not stir from
the house that day.
When it was dark, a servant was sent upstairs to the Major to tell him
that the cab stood at the door.
“All right!” bawled the Major from within.
An hour passed.
The maid was again sent upstairs to tell the Major that the cab was
waiting.
“Let it wait,” cried the Major.
Another hour passed.
The cabman became unpleasant, and uttered obscene prose.
The two ladies of the house, in support of each other, now went up the
stairs and knocked.
“Come in,” cried the Major gaily.
They went in.
He was in bed.
The younger woman burst into tears:
“There is nothing packed, ma,” she said.
“What on earth have you been doing all day, Major Modeyne?” gasped the
landlady.
“Pitying the lady who has the drawing-room,” said the Major.
“Why?”
“I don’t know what on earth she will do!” said the Major.
The younger woman bridled, sniffingly:
“She won’t do anything,” she said hotly.
“Ah,” said the Major--“just like me--just like me.”
“Is it?” she said testily. “Well, we shall see. The cab has been
waiting for you for two hours.”
“Most patient cabman!” said the Major--“and who will pay the cabman,
madam?”
“We intend to accompany you and your baggage to that cab _now_,” said
the young woman.
“That you won’t,” said the Major--“for I haven’t a stitch on me; and
here I stay in bed until your extremely tasteless letter of a week ago
is formally withdrawn.... Good-night, ladies. Allow me to open the door
for you----”
He made as though to jump out of bed.
The two women hurriedly left the room.
They went to the drawing-room, knocked and entered, sat down on chairs
and wept bitterly.
The stout lady of that realm went and held their hands; soothed them;
and heard their story out.
“Wha--what are we to do, madam?” said they.
The stout lady laughed until the tears came.
“Well, you two women can’t lead a naked man into a cab,” said she; “I
should love to see it, but I’m afraid you will never do it.”
They began to weep again.
The old lady grew impatient.
“Leave the man alone,” said she.
And she added, blowing her nose:
“I could have loved that creature.”
Indeed, Major Modeyne was always the gentleman--even at bay with the
Inevitable.
CHAPTER XXIV
_Which tells, with quite Unnecessary Frankness, of what chanced at the
Tavern of_ “The Cock and Bull” _in Fleet Street_
In the dining-room of _The Cock and Bull_ was laughter, and the clink
of glasses, and some hiccup--for the dinner was long since at an end,
and the guests held much wine--not wholly without giddiness and the
confusion of tongues. There was more than a hint of Babel.
It was the feast of Saint Valentine’s Day, and the commercial
gentlemen, fore-gathered there, made the sentiment at _The Cock and
Bull_ this night sacred to the Ladies.
Major Modeyne, being in the chair, sat at the head of the table; and
a-down it, along both sides, were city men; and at the end of all the
poetic, sallow, and vague-eyed landlord of the tavern, who, so repute
wagged a whispering tongue, had not been above taking his Double First
at Oxford--a vague prize to your ordinary mortal that savours of the
mysteries of Eleusis and a full hand of trumps at the gaming-table of
life, though ’tis said to be useless enough, being of the nature of
fireworks in the grey fastnesses of the skull. There’s something of the
awesome in big names. However that may be, our landlord was a gloomy
fellow in his cups, and ran to latinities, so that the wit came mostly
from the head, where was the Authority of the Chair--indeed, Modeyne
had repartee so long as he could keep an eyelid up, though fragments of
it had served the world of badinage before.
The debauch being dedicate to the ladies, then, our gloomy landlord
raised the glass to the respectable sentiment of _Sweethearts and
Wives_.
And, the toast being drunk, as indeed was the company, the Chair, as
an excuse to empty the glasses again, gave the toast of retort, _Other
Fellows’ Sweethearts and Wives_--the hiccup which was the full-stop
to the Major’s waggery being drowned in a shout of laughter and the
noisy drinking of the toast. Indeed, they stood up to it, one foot on
chair and one on table, giving it with musical honours, though, as the
draper, a fellow of polygamous sentiments from his own showing, said:
“This standing on chairs displayed a childlike confidence in the design
of creation and man’s destiny under all conditions to maintain the
upright position on but two legs, that would have done credit to a
Sunday-school teacher.”
He himself, reeling at his own dazzling elevation, grasped the great
lustre chandelier that depended from the ceiling, which, flaring
magnificently, gave way with him, so that he fell with it amongst the
wine-glasses; and whilst they plucked splinters of broken glass from
the lower end of him, he whimsically owned his contrition at having
tempted Providence by not sitting anchored to the good seat that
had been assigned to him. Still, said he, commerce must follow the
army; and the Major had the habit of forlorn hopes, having acquired
in youth and on the tented field the taste for “withering fires” and
“bloody engagements”--he said this with all apologies--hiccup--to any
churchwardens who might be present--hiccup--but he _meant_ bloody
engagements.
As a fact, these commercial gentlemen adored the army and navy--never
were such fire-eaters as they. A tale of carnage, as long as the
old flag came out a-top, thrilled them and roused their maddest
enthusiasms. They thundered applause upon the heels of the bloodthirsty
sentiment. They were ready to die, so they averred hiccuping, in their
very cups for the divine right of their king and the infallibility of
the upper classes. Was never such service of devotion as they swore
to the “Thin Red Line” and the “Handy Man.” Gods, it made the blood
leap to hear them--they were thirsting for self-sacrifice--each one of
them. Indeed for the dear old flag they were prepared to fling away
Christianity--riches--suburban villa--happy home--everything. The
glasses leaped to the thunder of their emotions.
Here, indeed, were they all aristocrat--hating the democracy with a
bitter hatred. The lord mayor’s coach drove at the slow trot through
all their varied ambitions, its golden caparisoned horses making it to
glitter a fixed star to their designs, a guide to their hopes--and,
from that, the ultimate step into the peerage, riches, powdered
footmen, and marble halls. It was all tucked away tight behind the
bloodshot eyes, in their secret imaginations. When they went to bed
at night, took off their trousers, and blew out the light, the dream
of these things passed in pageant along the top of their foot-rails.
To be a Nob--so they put it with vulgar lip, when confessing to their
own souls--that was the Ultimate Thing. They believed in their God--a
little hesitantly on occasions; but their belief knew no wavering in
the divine inspiration of the statesmanship of the House of Lords.
The polygamous draper but echoed the general sentiment when he
condemned the vulgarity of the masses.
The British workman had his whole contempt--(thus he delivered
himself)--the British workman did as little as he could, and got a
ridiculously high wage that was so much outside his needs that he
was always more or less drunk--hiccup--gen’rally more--hiccup--in
the public-house--hiccup hiccup--and the--gin-palace. What did these
gorgeous and brightly illuminated drinking-saloons that shone in the
darkness of the darkest street mean but the widespread overpayment
of the working-man and his consequently seeking in these costly
pleasure-houses of vice, when his so-called day’s work was done, his
illicit--hiccup--illicit joys.
Long and sustained applause.
“Hee-haw!” cooed the Major. “Too-ra-loora-lay.”
The draper turned upon him:
“Yer can’t get over it, sir--hiccup--_there_ it is.” He swept his hand
towards the landlord: “There’s your workman--hiccup--and there’s your
public-house”--he swept his hand to the Major.
The Major rapped upon the table:
“Order! order!” cried he--“the chairman is _not_ a public-house.”
He giggled, and titters turned to laughter.
The erotic draper sat down:
“The army keeps a-jumpin’ on the bloomin’ chest of commerce to-night,”
said he, “until I forget--hiccup--forget my intentions.”
The Major begged to remind the gentleman that this was not a Labour
night, but the Feast of St. Valentine, when even the greyest sparrows
skipped amorous with love’s delight along the homely necessary
waterspout.
The draper apologized handsomely; and they drank together.
The draper was now called upon, as a man of taste in the matter, to
make the speech of the evening: The Ladies--Lovely Woman.
He arose and spoke.
He apologized for having disturbed the harmony of the evening by his
earlier essay, but the British workman was the thorn in his side----
A waggish commercial person, an atheistic upholsterer and something
of a rake, called out that they had all understood that it was the
splinter of a sherry glass that had been drawn from the wound.
The Major rose and called for order--their honest draper only used
a metaphor, a So-to-Speak--besides, the splinter of glass had not
been removed from the gentleman’s side, nor by any stretch of the
imagination nor tribute to delicacy could it be called his side. The
affair of the wine-glass, and therefore all reference to it, must be
avoided--it was a painful subject, and the incident was now closed.
“Haw-haw!” guffawed the rakish upholsterer. “But the wound ain’t--it
was our honest draper that re-opened the wound.”
The Major’s eyes twinkled:
“Order, order,” cried he. “The wound, sir, and the incident are now
closed. The subject before the house is Lovely Woman.”
He sat down.
The draper licked his lips sullenly, and proceeded.
“Gentlemen,” said he, and he thrust his thumbs into the armholes of
his waistcoat, raising a drowsy eyebrow--“woman was once content to
_be_. Hiccup. To trip through the banquet of existence appealing to
man as the Beautiful; and, being beautiful, to be loved--to sit on
the knees of man and kiss him kisses. She is no longer content. Woman
has become a danger--a menace--hiccup--a pronounced menace. Damn this
hiccup! Woman, I say, has become a menace to the State. Woman is
no longer content to be beautiful--she has come out into the noisy
thoroughfare of life and demands liberty to win her own career, and to
clean up that thoroughfare. I call it unwomanly. Yet the men, like the
asses they are--hiccup--are marrying them. But, you know, I’m against
blue-stockings----”
“Order!” cried the Major--“the ladies’ underclothes are out of order.”
The draper licked his lips and blinked:
“I withdraw the stockings,” said he--“fancy, you and me, gentlemen,
mating with a female who knows as much as we do--fancy the want of
’armony there must be in the house where the lady is our equal in
intelligence and in the--all the other things that go to make up a
man’s natural superiority--hiccup.... I’m against this Pallas Athene
business myself--the woman putting on the blooming helmet and coming
out and criticising conduct. It’s indelicate. It takes the bloom off
the peach of her modesty. Not, mind you, that I’m one as plumps too
solid for modesty. Not at all. I don’t go nap on modesty. For my part,
I like a woman who can take her buss like a live thing--as women were
meant by God’s design so to do. A woman who draws the line at honest
kissing is no woman at all--and is of the nature of a public nuisance.
A woman who is cold-blooded enough to write sonnets to her love when
she might be sitting on his knees and loving her love is committing an
offence against her Original Intention--which is a sin against nature.
I ask you, then, gentlemen, to fill your glasses and drown Modesty....”
CHAPTER XXV
_Wherein the Major takes to his Bed_
The winter dawdled late in the city.
Saint Valentine went out into the darkness of the night, with silent
feet muffled in a heavy fall of snow.
And Major Modeyne went with him.
They brought him home in the early morning, dead and icy cold, and laid
him upon his bed; and when they were gone Betty sat by the still figure
and stroked the chill hand that had done intentional ill to none;
in such strange manner she tasted for the first time the bitterness
of death--in such sorry fashion the poor tattered remains of her
childhood fell from her, sitting there, listening for the deep mystic
significance of the eternal slaying that is a part of the eternal
life....
Betty, as by pronounced habit, was to suffer for it.
A jury had to sit upon the tragedy; and the coroner, embarrassedly
enough, had to rake up the details that were called the life of the
poor broken man that lay silent in death, unheeding and unprotesting
and unashamed. Modeyne’s hand had always fallen heaviest upon the small
child from whom his thin will would have the most flinched as to the
giving of pain. His death, that should have closed the book of the
record of the child’s struggles against the public washing of the linen
of his sordid details of life, was instead a new whip wherewith she
was scourged--the manner of it was the very event that compelled the
uncovering of all those little tragedies which the proud child had so
courageously hushed under the dignity of her silence.
It was made clear by the sworn evidence that the Major had wandered to
the great flight of steps on which he was found, that he had taken off
his boots to prevent the waking of his landlady, that he had climbed
a few of the steps in the darkness, and lain down, under the delusion
that he was in bed, and had slept into death, the white snow weaving
his winding-sheet.
Then it came out that he had sat late at a festive orgy in the rooms
of _The Cock and Bull_ tavern in Fleet Street, and had left the place,
like most of the others, somewhat vague as to his destination.
It also came out that he was some sort of agent for the tavern, which
had wine-merchandise in its connection; but this seems to have become,
in the Major’s case, but a sleeping partnership--his chief office
having been an ornate one--to attract the city loungers to the place by
the exercise of his genial and ready fancy and his pleasant friendship,
which was wholly untainted with the ignoble thing called snobbery. The
very waiters felt in him a personal loss. Yet he had not had the means
to be prodigal of anything but his whimsical tongue.
It was also hinted that the dead man was highly connected--but the
magnificent in their high places kept a frigid silence that showed a
dogged decision to bear their loss unflinchingly.
Indeed, on the evening of the day on which the dead man was put to his
rest for the last time by the silent girl and the handsome youth who
had so often shared the task in the small hours of the morning when
the unknowing world snored and slept, it was, truth to say, a somewhat
vulgar little knot of city men that sat round the table of _The Cock
and Bull_ tavern and passed a silk hat round about to collect the
little sum that one of them was deputed to take to the girl herself
with a vote of their respect and affection for a dead friend and as
true a gentleman as any into whom the good God had put good wine.
CHAPTER XXVI
_Wherein Tom Folly blunders along in his Self-centred Gig--and drags a
Dainty Little Lady’s Skirts into the Wheel_
Anthony fretted at the death of the Major--fretted at the
publicity--fretted at the time of the man’s dying, and the manner;
for he had decided to appeal to Betty not to spoil Noll’s prospects,
now so suddenly brightening, by getting him entangled in a childish
engagement. But Modeyne’s death made it wholly indecent to approach
the already so indecent subject for some time; made it in any case
the more difficult to broach at all; made it also more urgent that it
should be approached. And, to fret the will with further indecision,
Anthony, his eyes intent upon the pale girl in the simple black gown,
and balked by the strange gravity that had settled upon the slim dainty
figure, perceived the exquisite approach, the delicate fragrance and
most subtle atmosphere of the coming of womanhood--an atmosphere which
made it doubly difficult for him to commit himself to putting into the
brutality of speech what cost him shame even in the thinking.
Had he only taken Caroline into his scheme, he would not have blundered
thus clumsily into a brutality; but he did not--and, with his fatal
capacity for not leaving well alone, fretting impatiently through the
keen bitter winds of March and the early days of April, he at last
brought himself to the pitch of seeing the girl alone and making his
appeal.
When Anthony knocked at the door and entered her room, she arose, with
a smile, to greet him; and he found himself mute.
She was so comely, this slender girl of fifteen years, so debonair--as
is meet and fit in the young of the most beautiful of all created
things. The brown hair, tied with a ribbon at the nape of the white
neck, showed the great beauty of the shapely head; and he knew that the
soul within the delicate body was the most mystically beautiful of all.
He realized that the slightest cruelty would leave harsh scars. Yet he
did not withhold himself from the brutalities.
She would have made him at ease so prettily; and he decided to be blunt
and strike at once, if he would say what he had come to say.
“Betty,” said he, “I have come to say a thing which it hurts me to the
quick to say; which of course must wound you even more. Don’t make it
an added bitterness to me by being too much your dainty self--rather be
unpleasant--if you can.”
The light went out of the trustful grey eyes; the smile flickered out
and slowly left the pure face. The slender hands trembled a little--the
large eyelids fell, and she bowed her comely head. She wondered what
new agony lay in store for her.
Thus she stood and said never a word. Just one little movement--the
interlacing of the slender fingers together before her--it hid the
trembling of the white hands--and she prepared to meet what cut of the
lash should fall, in silent dignity.
Anthony was taken up with his own difficulty,--yet, as he spoke, the
picture of the girl’s humiliation slowly bit into his imagination.
“Betty,” he said, “I do not know whether you are aware of it, but
there are only two people between Noll, through his mother, and Lord
Wyntwarde of Cavil....” The lash cut deep, but he was too engrossed
in his object to see the girl’s courage. “Lord Wyntwarde is, frankly,
somewhat of a brute--capricious, full of whims. He has, after ignoring
the boy from his birth, suddenly expressed a wish that Noll should go
to Oxford, a wish also to provide a career for him--such as--I--cannot
give him.... He has made, as one of his conditions, a most binding
proviso that Noll shall not marry without his consent, nor outside his
set----”
The girl spake no smallest word, gave no sign.
Anthony went on:
“I am going to ask you not to spoil Noll’s career----”
The words cut into the girl’s very flesh; but she said not a word.
Anthony blundered on, brutally unconscious of the simple urgent fact
that the girl had not wanted to spoil the lad’s career, that she was
in no way on her defence--that he was committing himself to the base
insolence, the most ignoble insolence of which we can be guilty, of the
lie that presumes the accusation of the innocent. It were as though
indifferent cutlery should beg tempered steel to try and be tempered
steel.
“You are very beautiful,” he said--“you probably do not realize how
beautiful. And I am going to appeal to you not to allow Noll to get
engaged to you in case he should wish it--for it would be folly in me
to pretend that I don’t see that he has a boy’s love for you, which, if
other things were different, God knows would be the happiest thing for
him.”
So he blundered on, excusing the girl from his own insolences; even
making all allowances for her out of the deeps of his self-sufficiency.
Betty’s fingers remained tight clasped before her--her head bowed
down--but she made no slightest movement, standing deathly still.
And Anthony, his false step irretrievably made, realized slowly that he
had done a brutal and foolish thing; saw perhaps even more clearly that
he had won a success; but, rebuffed by the girl’s silence at last, and
embarrassed and not without a suspicion of shame, he slowly retired
from the room.
The door closed upon him.
The girl was left utterly alone.
A hot flush had burnt into her face.
She stretched out her hand and with difficulty reached the mantel.
They had now turned even her deep love for this youth, the only being
left to her, into a thing to bring her shame. It was the whip of
scorpions.
She had stood and taken the lashes upon her slender shoulders; but at
last the hellish device that invented the punishment of the solitary
cell wrung from her lips a pathetic little moan.
CHAPTER XXVII
_Wherein a Dainty Little Lady, looking out of the Window of a Shabby
Home at a Shabbier Destiny, joins the Streaming Crowd whose Faces
pass in the Street, drifting towards the Strange Riot of Living_
For the first time, Betty reeled beneath the buffets of her
destiny--for a moment the world swung away from before her feet--she
clutched the mantel, or would have fallen.
Passing her slender hand over her head, uttering a pitiful little moan,
with the courage of her blood she stood at gaze with the cruelty--faced
it--and overcame it....
Practising her wonted and deliberate caution, she considered her next
move; before the dusk had taken possession of the town she was dressed
for walking; she went out to the shops to buy some needful frills and
stuff; she brought the package home with her, and locked herself into
her room.
It had come to her that morning, indeed she had been at work upon the
problem but a few hours before this last blow had been struck at her,
that she must still further narrow her narrow expenditure.
All that night Betty sewed, her deft fingers lengthening one of her
gowns.
When she had done, the chill dawn was stealing up the smoky heavens.
She put out the lamp, and packed.
The memories would come crowding, treading on each other’s heels
importunately. Betty remembered only the happinesses; and these,
because they made her lip tremble, she put from her with stern and
dogged fortitude, bending her wits only on the details of her coming
actions, on the things she must do; and it was thus that, when the
time came, every move she made fitted into its calculated place with
appointed precision, and she was prepared for every event before it
nudged at her attention.
The sun was well up, and yawning housemaids clumsily astir, before she
had put away her last little belongings in the big black trunk. Even
at her tender years she had learnt in the harsh school of experience
the value that the world sets upon the having of possessions, and the
credit that landlords give to such as show responsible luggage.
Wisdom is thrust upon some at sixteen.
The room looked sadly desolate when she had put away the last of her
small belongings; and it was with a strenuous effort that she sat down
before the mirror and gathered up and coiled her nut-brown hair about
her head for the first time. She stared wide-eyed at the years it added
to her age.
She dressed herself in her lengthened gown; put on her hat and jacket.
When she was finished she stood before the glass a woman--and a very
beautiful woman.
Yet her brows clouded--at the dread that she looked too young!
She wrote a short note to her landlady to say she might be away all
day; stole stealthily on to the landing to see that there was no one
about; locked her door; put the key in her pocket; ran down the stairs;
and let herself out into the street....
All day she spent in the purlieus of Soho, in the search for a room;
and it was near upon nightfall when she made a choice.
When darkness had come down upon the street, Betty drove up to the
door of her old home in a cab; she took the hungry tatterdemalion of
a cabman upstairs for her baggage; and, whilst the shabby fellow was
getting it down and on to the cab, she herself sought out the landlady
in her little office. She put the money for her rooms into the hands of
the amazed woman, tried to tell her that she was going away, and broke
down into a hoarse murmur.
“Go-ing away?” gasped the good creature.
Betty squeezed the old body’s hand. She could say nothing.
“Miss Betty,” said the other--“you mustn’t go away.... What will the
house be without you? Pay when you can, my dear----”
But the girl shook her head sadly. She was glad to find that they would
only think she had left for lack of means.
The old woman patted her shoulder, thrust back the money into her
purse, and said that nothing on God’s earth would prevail on her to
touch it. She kissed the unhappy girl; and Betty, making a stern effort
to check her sobs, stood up, kissed the old face on each cheek, stepped
out into the night, and was gone....
Noll had knocked impatiently at the locked door twice that day, and now
as the darkness fell, seeing the door open, he leaped up the stairs,
calling Betty by name; sprang through the open door; and came to a
sudden halt, bewildered to find the room deserted and dismantled.
He turned roughly to the landlady’s daughter, who stood at the window
weeping.
“Where is Miss Modeyne?” he asked hoarsely.
“Gone,” sobbed the girl.
“Where?”
She shook her head:
“No one knows, Mr. Noll.”
Noll went to the little bed, flung himself down beside it, and sobbed
like a child....
The landlady’s daughter slipped a-tiptoe from the room and brought down
the young fellow’s mother.
Caroline went and seated herself on the bed beside the lad, and stroked
the handsome head with her gentle fingers:
“Ah, Noll,” said she--“so you too are to taste the bitters of life
early!”
The young fellow stayed by the bed all night, and would not be
comforted.
And Caroline most wisely stayed with him.
CHAPTER XXVIII
_Wherein Dawning Womanhood whispers that Dolls are Dolls_
Betty, listless and lonely, and in hiding, had not been long in her
new-found attic when she won the wan smile of a little old faded lady
who lived in the room below.
They met on the stairs; and a smile bred a smile. A formal invitation
to tea from the little old faded lady followed. The little scented note
bore the signature of Flora Jennyns....
When Betty entered the room, and shut the door, she shut out half a
century.
Miss Flora Jennyns, rustling in full-skirted silks, had the atmosphere
of crinolines round and about her; the room was fresh and sweet, and
fragrantly quaint and stilted, and of the early Victorian years.
Into the armchair before the fire where she was used to sit, Betty made
the little lady now go; and the girl went and sat on a footstool by her
knees and talked to her, and entered into the dainty faded mind.
She saw, with a little smile, that Miss Flora Jennyns at once fell into
a little pose--it was the faded reflection of a portrait that hung on
the wall--the picture of a graceful simple young woman who leaned her
chin on a pretty slender hand, as she sat wrapt in dreams of sweet
sentiment; and slowly, from out the faded lines of the old face and
head and pose, there came to her the features and pose, modest and
virginal, of the portrait.
Whilst Betty made tea for her, she learnt that the little old
Catholic lady had been a literary success in her youth--a one-time
vogue, who was now fading away in the heroic pride of a gentlewoman’s
penury--uncomplaining--amidst a sordid world and harsh needs dreaming
of romance that had walked in crinolines--living in a withered garden
where were but fragrant fallen leaves....
From that day, the little Miss Flora’s smile became more frequent;
and from Betty’s attic the bleak loneliness lifted and went out; for,
though the vasty gulf of age divided them (youth and old age can only
love each other as in a dream, vaguely), the girl did not find so much
time for brooding--she had found a something to mother....
Betty, looking out of her attic window, began to notice that, as
twilight fell, a little old gentleman would slowly pace the street
opposite; and the little faded old lady, dressed for the road, would
go out and meet him, and, after old-world courtesies exchanged between
them, she would take his proffered arm and so together they would take
their little walk abroad.
Betty came to know him, with a smile, as the Man of Pallid Ideals.
He would bring Miss Flora to the door always; ring the bell for her;
and with elaborate bow and hat in hand, there take leave of her. Nearer
to the lady’s room he never ventured, neither being provided with a
chaperon....
Betty one day taxed Miss Flora with the charge that she was in
love--and loved a poet. And the little withered waxen cheeks blushed.
“You shall read his poems, my dear,” she said; and, rising, she went to
a little sandal-wood box, opened the lock with an ornate little key,
and, raising the lid, let out the scent of the lavender in which was
laid a little book of verse amidst other treasures.
Miss Flora handed the little volume to Betty; and she, begging her to
leave the box open, said she would only read the precious book in that
room.
Miss Flora kissed her, and went back to her chair.
Betty, sitting in the window in the waning light, learnt from the
precious volume that the poet’s name was Cartel de Maungy; and opening
the book she found written upon every leaf in tuneful verse the
self-revelation of the man, the poet of faded ideals, as his race
had been before him--his grandsire had gone to the guillotine for a
well-turned sonnet about something that did not matter. On every page
was the tale of his placid devotion; his adoration of his Flora--always
from a seemly distance; his vows that they should ever move in the
ideal; that the touch of his lips upon her fingers is sweet marriage
enough for him; in his measured singing of jewelled queens and sapphire
nights and pearly dusk he holds her finger-tips reverently and but
for the moment, and that only in the distant and proper measure of
the gavotte or the like stately trippings to the whispered music
of viol and lute and harpsichord--throughout was no coarse bucolic
love-embrace. Thus the slender verse sounded its tender music until
there was almost shame in the kiss that is kissed upon the mouth.
The little old faded lady was possessed of an academic and dainty
old-world Papist faith that æsthetically touched Betty’s sense of
beauty.
The child had grown up without any kind of formal religious
instruction--had picked up from the air, and from straying truths in
the air, her sweet concept of life. The pure metal of her quick, alert
and vigorous understanding required but little hammering. Only with the
lad Noll had come unrest and questioning.
Major Modeyne had drifted from his Church--indeed, Betty remembered
well a very severe fit of coughing that had overcome him in answer
to an early childish demand of hers during a thunderstorm as to
what God could find to do all day in heaven--coughing which became
almost an apoplectic fit when, being unanswered, she concluded airily
that the drab intercourse with pious people and the lack of good
wholesome entertainment excused these outbursts of anger and violence,
and no doubt led to the making of these noises and other suchlike
unpleasantnesses.
Betty, with the strange reserve that covered all her deepest thinking,
whispered no hint of her own birth in the same faith to the old lady;
she tried instead to win from the beautiful and pure and faded mind
of Miss Flora some conception of God and the mysteries--only to find
the little old lady’s concept, for all the disguises of her delicate
mind, exceedingly crude and vague--that, in fact, she had absolutely no
concept at all. She saw that it was the wide compassion of the mystic
Man of Sorrows that gave, as to most Papists, the exquisite faith in
their mysteries. Yet, like the most orthodox, she spoke of the old and
the new dispensation--God then had not known His own mind. Puzzled
with the great fact that God and Son were absolutely destructive of
each other--one the God of War, the other the God of Peace--one the
God of Vengeance, demanding Punishment, the other the God of Mercy,
offering Forgiveness; the one choosing an indifferent race as a chosen
people, the other rejecting that race; the book of the laws of the one
obliterating the book of the laws of the other--the girl had awakened
from her childhood and realized that she had eaten of the fruit of
knowledge, and that before the judgment-seat of that knowledge the
God of her childhood stood convicted of the very sins, from killing
downwards, for which that same God had condemned man to eternal
punishments; and, with the true instinct for justice and for the
humanities, she forthwith rejected the God and gave all her affection
to the Christ, who had thwarted, and by thwarting had confessed the
injustice of God.
And now, having so decided, and being in sight of a calm harbour of
refuge, she found herself baffled with the fury of the factions that
professed the Christ. The symbolism and the beauty of the Papist
section beckoned her to Rome; but the genius of the child saw all
things in the large, and was not to be led aside by details--she
was repelled by the contradictions of its belief that at one turn
appealed to reason, at the next rejected reason; repelled by its
un-Christliness, repelled by the submission of the conscience to its
priesthood, repelled by its condemnation of all outside its gates,
repelled by its preposterous claims--by its belief in the real presence
of the Christ in the wine and wafer of its sacraments.
She had only that day come upon a copy of the Cautels, and as she read
the cautions to priests, after partaking of the sacraments, that they
should not wash their mouths or spit before breaking their fast in
case of ejecting the body of Christ in their spittle or vomit, she was
stung with shame that such puerile things should be expected of her
intelligence--it were as though she had been struck across the face
with a whip. The strong blood of the master race leaped in her veins,
and she found herself unable to believe that the toys which had amused
her infancy were really alive.
To all the pettiness of the little petty quarrels that were galling
the dignity of the age, her clear intellect was too contemptuous to
give more than a passing thought. The symbols and the forms, the chief
source of the wrangles and squabblings, were no trouble to her, had
the things on which they were founded been deep and large with truth.
With the greyness of mind, that made of these things a sin, she had no
more sympathy than with the narrowness of head that made of them an
important part of life....
She had wandered one day into a Quakers’ meeting-house--had been
struck with the deep religious atmosphere, the far deeper mysticism
than that of her own Church, for all its splendid forms and ceremonial
and great beauty of service. She had not felt her reason sullied by
the interposition of any gross human body between the Christ and her
nobility. She had felt the wondrous dignity of the simple service, in
spite of the greyness.
She had read of late a novel, a vulgar stupid book, in which a child
brought up by an agnostic is made to commit suicide because it cannot
believe in a hereafter--in hell. Her reason revolted at the shabby
trick, for she saw that no child would commit suicide because there
was not a hell; but rather because there was--indeed, she herself
remembered that she had suffered torments at night and had wept until
her nerves were shaken for fear of hell, and out of compassion for
the poor lost souls--nay, had reeled before the brutality that had
created these poor souls only to fling them to such hellish predestined
doom for all eternity. This literary trash roused her to the feeble
foundations of sand on which much so-called religious life is
built--especially the religious side of women. For the book had a wide
sale.
Creeds are an affair of race. They that are of a master race will hold
a master creed--they that are of a sloven race will bow to sloven gods.
It is the attribute of a slave people to pay homage from fear. This
girl was of the master peoples. It was impossible for her to enslave
her mind or her body or her soul with the blind credulities. She was
of the mighty race that has bred the Protestors. With the passing of
her childhood she put away the toys of the childhood of the world. In
no bitter or harsh temper, but with affection and sadness she put them
away--and took a deeper breath of life.
In monastic cells and blind gropings in dark corners where life is a
denial, and in the shirking of contradictions, very God is not to be
found; but out in the free fresh air of the great world. The truth
cannot lie.
The girl roused in the dusk of the dying day and took the beautiful
image of the Mary, and went down with it to the little old faded lady’s
room, and set it upon the mantel there, that it might bring happiness
to one whose sweet mind had not passed beyond these things.
And she, little and old and faded, seated before the fire, smiled when
the girl had set above her hearth the emblem of her outworn creed.
When the tall slender girl went and sat down beside the flounced and
emaciated old knees a pathetically weary old hand was stretched out and
rested on the brown hair.
“Mother of God,” sighed the withered lips, “I am so glad not to be
alone.”
As the girl parted from her image of the Mary, she left the childhood
of her intellect behind her.
And from that day, Betty raised her frank honest eyes to the facts
and verities of the live world about her, and, as she nearest might,
fearlessly and cheerfully lived her own sweet life foot to foot and eye
to eye with the mystic realities of her appointed destiny, mistaking
guesses for truth never.
For it is through the humanities alone, be ye sure of this, that we may
touch the hem of the garment of God.
CHAPTER XXIX
_Wherein Mr. Pompey Malahide loses his Breath in the Midst of a Boast_
Mr. Pompey Malahide, man of considerable wealth as he had been for
years, was now grown so rich that he scarcely knew whether each fresh
venture in which he launched might not be doubling his income by the
end of the year.
City people said, awe-struck, that all he touched turned to gold. But
they failed to add that he touched nothing that did not hold hidden
treasure. As a fact, he ventured only in the exploitation and invention
of things of which he had himself felt the lack, which he felt were
wanted at large. His shrewd business insight led him simply to traffic
in such things as must turn to gold on their very discovery. Whilst
the unimaginative followed a garish eyesight to seek fortune at the
goldfields, he stayed at home and won wealth from richer lodes. He did
not break hard rock for gold; he made the things that the world had
need to buy.
His appetite was but whetted by success.
He was now destined to make such wealth as is only dreamed of in the
dingy city offices of imaginative Jews.
Pompey Malahide was on the eve of becoming a millionaire.
Yet was he plagued with discontent.
He was suffering discomfort. Riches alone contained nothing in
themselves. He realized that riches were only a power. He, in communion
with himself, striding his room, stood himself by the figure of young
Bartholomew Doome, his paid servant; and his vulgarly frank eyes could
not rid him of the transparent fact that this other was the master
without an effort of his own. This other was the designer--the creator.
His own the rude hand that beat out the design. Behind the dry humour
and grim smile of the young man was the master wit, a wit always
strangely kindly to him, but--tolerant. Whilst in the very act, even
whilst he puffed and blew and swaggered and strutted and boasted to the
young man of his successes and of his wealth, the warmth ran out of
his conceit--he felt that what would have impressed his city friends
was but rousing criticism behind those calm eyes that cared no jot for
elaborate wealth--eyes that looked upon riches only as a secondary
thing.
Pompey Malahide looked at the slender sinewy hands of the young man,
and forthwith hid his own short thick hands with their stunted pointed
money-getting fingers behind his back. He noticed that where they two
entered a place together, all deferred to the youth, whilst they were
as rough to himself as he to them. He noticed that Doome spoke with
deference to those below him whom he, Pompey, treated to the rougher
side of his tongue--noticed, too, that behind the youth’s courteous
manner was a note of calm authority that his own roughshod ways never
caught. He grasped the fact that money had not won him the habit of the
great; and he was determined that his girls should have what he himself
lacked--this easy and gracious bearing of the master class. His boy was
catching some hint of it at Harrow. The girls must acquire it also.
But how?
He consulted Doome.
Doome, frowning upon the difficulties of the problem, decided that
these young women must have a young gentlewoman for companion; he said
that he would try and find a girl of breeding of their own age; it was
full time; the boy Horace was springing up, and would be leaving Harrow
at the end of the term; he ought not to be brought up in a different
social atmosphere to the girls or he must of necessity drift into
another set and grow into contempt of his sisters.
Pompey Malahide nodded many nods.
He approved.
He sighed a portly sigh.
Riches were bringing perplexing burdens. The very spending was a
burden. He would have laughed at it all so short a while ago. It was
much easier to make wealth than to use it--for a man had only to make
money like a tradesman; he had to spend it--like a gentleman.
Heigho!
Pompey Malahide, approached by the leaders of the Opposition, threw in
his lot with the party, was put up for one of the city constituencies,
and, in the flood of political reaction that swept the country, was
elected to the House of Commons by a large majority.
CHAPTER XXX
_Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne posts a Letter_
Betty, to avoid meeting Noll, had taken her walks abroad in the dusk
only; but the restriction began to fret her will; and she had besides
been compelled to the conclusion that she must add a few shillings a
week to her slender means, or she would soon run through her small
capital.
She decided to take the loyal Netherby Gomme into her confidence, to
put her position before him, and to rely on him to help her in evading
Noll and the Baddlesmeres. She hoped, too, that he might get her
some post of daily governess or companion to a city family, or some
secretarial billet in a city office.
She stole out one evening, and watched the Gommes’ house until she felt
sure the place was free of visitors.
She tripped up the steps at last, plotting what she would say if, by
some chance, Noll should open the door.
When she rang the bell, she was answered by the old lady, who was
grimly rejoiced to see her.
Betty put the old lady into a smiling and important mood, almost before
the bang of the slammed door had ceased to echo in the gloomy hall, by
at once begging her to summon Netherby downstairs to assist them in
serious council on a delicate situation.
The grim old woman fussed away, important and bustling.
Netherby came with a smile on his long pale face, but the happy
glint was soon gone, its place usurped by something akin to tears in
his solemn steadfast eyes, as his melancholy features took on their
habitual lugubrious length and gloom, when he sat down to discuss the
situation--solemn promises of alliance and secrecy being sworn and
given.
He did not dare to tell Betty of the pathetic scenes that he had gone
through, in these very rooms, with the youth Noll; indeed, Betty gave
him little opportunity, for she showed no sense of grievance, and
passed, as lightly as could be, over the scene with Noll’s father;
but Netherby’s lips hardened, and showed an unwonted severity during
the reserved statement of the details which had driven the girl to
flight--he could fill in Anthony’s phrases, and build upon the skeleton
of his mind, all so unwitting of its own limitations.
But to Betty, the air of this dingy house was cheerful to
breathe--there was in its very greyness a note of remembered gaiety--it
had sounded as she entered the place, at once she had heard Noll’s feet
on the stair, in the hall--she was amongst kindly faces.
She was relieved, too, to find that Noll’s day was now very fully
occupied with work for a tutor. He was to enter at Magdalen as soon as
he could go up to Oxford.
She could now extend her hours of freedom and the range of her walks
without risk of meeting him. She knew when he would be abroad, and
where. During the old lady’s absence from the room, it was arranged
between Netherby and Betty that Julia was to come and see her in the
evenings as often as could be.
But Netherby’s keen wits were not deceived by the girl’s reservations.
He saw full well that she hungered for the slightest news of Noll--hung
upon the smallest details.
Before Betty left the house, she was the possessor of a letter of
introduction to a Mr. Pompey Malahide, in which her family and
connections were recited at a length that, had she known it, would have
embarrassed her as much as they were destined to overwhelm the great
man--a letter in which she was recommended as an excellent friend and
companion to the daughters of that rich personage. This letter that she
dropped into the post went under cover to a personal friend of Netherby
Gomme’s, and bore the address of a certain Bartholomew Doome.
CHAPTER XXXI
_Wherein a Great Financier is Satisfied with his Bargain_
Betty had dressed herself with elaborate care; yet she stood before
a large shop-window and frowned upon herself. She was fretted with a
doubt that she looked too young.
Ah, the quaint goals of the human! It is ever the itching folly of the
young to appear older; of the old to appear younger.
And the exceeding great beauty that faced the girl in the mirrored
world before her troubled her not at all. She was very, very young.
So she turned on dainty heel and called a hansom--to drive her to
the elaborate mansion of Mr. Pompey Malahide, who had his gorgeous
dwelling amidst the rich who pay extortionately for life in Park Lane.
She shrewdly paid this, to her, heavy toll upon her resources, for she
knew, her instincts revealed, what stupid people arrive at by mere
mathematics and the rebuffs of experience, that a man respects a woman
who has the air of rising, Venus-like, armed at all points from a sea
of band-boxes.
Indeed, the girl’s manner and appearance, following upon the weighty
pronouncement of Doome’s introduction, dazzled the city man, who rose
to meet her, on her announcement by the elaborate footman. Mr. Pompey
Malahide had intended to interview her seated at his desk; but a
certain distinction and that air aloof and apart and of another world
that baffled him in Doome, baffled him now. He stood up with the sudden
and unforeseen intention of trying to be a gentleman. From lack of
habit, he missed the trick, and at once fell into the first position
for taking an order, and became the deferential shopman.
And, to give him his due, his own dignities, or the crudities that
passed with him for such, were banished as at a stroke out of his
kindly bulk by the ambition which leaped within him that this winsome
young woman might transfer something of her gracious bearing and pretty
voice to his own two buxom daughters. The very hope of it set his thick
blood sounding bassoon notes of delight in his ears, and the proud
vision of it went whirling through his emotions. It were as though he
had secured an estimate, and could have the work done at a price.
From the moment the girl entered the room she was sure of the post.
To her astonishment, she found the man vulgar; yet almost his first
comment had a strange note of good-taste that as much surprised her:
“Miss Modeyne,” said he, “that Mr. Bartholomew Doome should recommend
you is alone good enough for me.... But”--he hesitated, a little
embarrassed, and added with an effort--“I’m a rough man, and I hope I
don’t make you misunderstand me, but I have two girls, and I want you
to be with them and leaven them with your pretty ways; and if you will
allow me to do it in my own way, I would rather you did not enter this
house as a companion or a governess, for the girls would--take--well,
they would take the wrong way with you. If you would enter my house as
the daughter of a friend of friends of mine, come for a long visit, I
would pay you your fees without its being known to them or anyone, and
I think you yourself would be in a better and pleasanter position.”
Betty thought over the scheme for a while; her strict code of honour
made her consider only the other value--of what she was giving in
return.
“Yes,” she said--“perhaps it would be best.... May I see the--girls,
first?”
Pompey Malahide moved eagerly towards the bell, hesitated--came back:
“I’m real glad to think it, Miss Modeyne,” said he; “but look here,
there’s another thing. I don’t want any schooling for them. They are
as old as you are, the more’s the pity--both gals have got their
hair up.... Ah,” he sighed, “you would have been the making of ’em
five years ago; you see”--he sighed again, sadly--“they’ve modelled
themselves a bit on me now.... Their mother never comes out of her
boudoir. But what I was going to say was this: you can tell ’em what’s
bad manners, and go with them to picture-galleries and show them the
good things, can’t ye? and all that!”
Betty smiled:
“I think I can do that,” she said simply.
He nodded:
“That’s right. I like to hear a gal say the name of the fellow who
did a picture without lookin’ at the catalogue. And all that sort of
thing.... Make the girls smart, and knock some sense into them....
They’re as good as gold--real warm-hearted good gals. But they want
style. And you can spare them a ton of it--if you’ll excuse a rough and
rather vulgar fellow tellin’ you so.”
Betty laughed.
“I think I should like to see the girls now,” she said, “before we
decide.”
“Come along, bless ye,” said he, bustling to the door, and walking out
first. “Judith!” he bawled--“Mary!”
A girl’s voice called back:
“Why do you bawl, father? Aren’t there servants enough?”
A door opened, and two young women entered the hall.
They were a couple of handsome girls, with a good swinging swagger of
the body, and held themselves aggressively in all the trim comeliness
of young womanhood, as though they could pay their way and expected
the men to cast a glance that same way. Their full red lips were
undisciplined; they were the outward sign of their wills, they would do
only what it pleased them to do. No young and comely thing is wholly
vulgar; and they were young and comely.
The stout man’s bloodshot eyes watched the young girl’s face keenly to
read what passed on the first impression; but Betty was not easy to
read. She turned to him--was touched with the anxious eagerness of his
attitude:
“Yes,” she said in a low voice--“I will come.”
“Girls!” bawled the millionaire--“here is Miss Betty Modeyne, whose
father was a friend of a great friend of mine--take her off with you,
and introduce her to your mother--she has come to stay for a good long
visit, if a soldier’s daughter can put up with the dull house of a city
man.”
The two girls came and kissed Betty, and, taking her by the arm, adored
her. The young love the beautiful and the young....
Nevertheless, Betty decided to keep on her little attic; and, making a
business visit the excuse, she went away for the afternoon to purchase
garments and brought back with her the black dress-basket--that was
largely filled with emptiness. But it had a lock upon its emptiness.
Late that afternoon, as the twilight fell, Mr. Pompey Malahide burst
in upon Bartholomew Doome, where he sat in the dusk of his studio; the
millionaire praised as lavishly as he spent money.
“No,” said Doome, “I have never seen her; but I know all about her....
There are so few beautiful women.”
“By the book,” said Mr. Pompey, swelling, “a marchioness, sir--a
marchioness. And a chit of a girl, too--ties her very ribbons like a
damn blue-blooded countess.... I wonder where some women get it!”
Doome rose from his chair languidly, and strolled over to the fussing
excited man:
“Lord of advertisements,” said he, tapping the chest of the
other--“there is a book you do not read--it would baffle you as
Bradshaw’s railway guide baffles me. That book is called _The Extinct
and Dormant Peerage_.”
The stout millionaire stared at him with questioning eyes:
“Well?” he asked.
“Well,” said Bartholomew Doome--“she comes out of that.”
CHAPTER XXXII
_Wherein the Gallant Major rises from the Dead_
So, for three several months, the summer shone gaily upon the town, and
passed away over the edge of the world in happy fashion enough.
And Betty grew to some affection for the kindly rough man who was the
clumsy lord of this elaborate house. And out of her liking grew an
anxious and increasing fearfulness for the girls.
The rude father, hoping to polish diamonds, had sent the two girls to
a smart school at Brighton; and they, for lack of association with
his frank honesty of act and speech at home, and rebuffed by the dull
stupidity of a dowdy mother who scarcely ever left her own room, and
finding themselves balked by the discipline of school, had fallen into
the realizing of their desires by crooked ways. Of their father’s
qualities and open candour, of his frankness of statement, they had
only kept an outward semblance that was little better than rudeness
and bad manners, but it deceived their father and his blunt honest
friends; it was thereby the more dangerous cloak for their intriguing
and questionable habits. They had gone to school vulgar and tolerably
honest; they had come back with some outward veneer of manners, with
much swaggering disdain, the aping of masterfulness, a display of the
lordly habit, and with souls utterly corrupt. They had gone to school
with rough affection for their father; they had come back filled with
critical contempt for him, ashamed of him, and at heart afraid of
him--dreading that he should discover that they _were_ afraid of him
and ashamed of him. The desires of their full red lips were without
discipline, and fretted at restraint; and they fed their desires
unstintingly and gave encouragement to every whim. They knew enough of
the world to recognise at a glance that Betty was above them by habit
and by breeding; they soon knew, by results, that her appearance with
them anywhere gave them distinction. Their utter lack of all sense of
honour embarrassed Betty at every turn. They lied like drudges; and,
with the conceit of the weak, they affected an arrogance which they
mistook for the habit of the master class, not seeing that they were
wholly devoid of the courage which makes fearlessness of the truth the
pronounced habit of the master class.
Betty, watching their father with keen eyes, saw that he, too, was
strangely baffled.
He, poor man, looking to their old glad affection for him, which
had been their girlish return for his large love of them, found
instead, upon his hearth, that there were two critical young women in
possession; realized that his rough endearments were coldly received.
He thought, as usual, that the fault was in his own manners.
The house, ordered by these girls in a spirit of lavish extravagance,
reeked of wealth.
The young women, innocent of that courtesy to servants which makes of
service an honourable act, were at constant and undignified bickering
and war with those beneath them; and as they held always the winning
card of dismissal, they never realized that the sullen obedience of
the world below stairs was as insulting as open insolence; they still
less realized that these sullen flunkies took revenge in spoliation,
and that what remained of deference was a mockery and covert contempt.
So it came about that the sneaks amongst the servants held the lower
quarters of the house in their hands.
The young women now began to have social aspirations. They had a vague
idea that there was some strange pleasure to be got in the mixing
with and being seen with those who but gave them chill encouragement
to friendship. But as it so chanced, their ambition for they knew not
quite what, was fed by the sudden eagerness of women of high social
position to trespass on the broad pages and in the social gossip of the
columns of the widely read newspaper which Pompey Malahide held at his
beck and will--a newspaper which diffused raucous opinions and created
the thoughts of millions throughout the country. The girls found
themselves courted. Their arrogance grew, and their strut and swagger
increased. Malahide dined at great houses.
With the master-will of Doome to advise him, Malahide now found his
position still further strengthened by the alliance with and friendship
of his boy Horace, who had left Harrow and was going up to Oxford.
His baffled affection for his girls turned to a passionate pride in
his handsome son; and the boy, frank, honest, golden, gay, debonair,
returned the old man’s affection, drilled him in the subtleties with
gentleness, and watched over his father like a father.
The young fellow, with an astuteness that promised well for the rise of
his house, was spending the summer with a Magdalen undergraduate, an
old Harrow schoolfellow--a young lord whose father was in the Cabinet;
in fact, Horace, with airy cheerfulness, was cementing friendships that
might be of value to his father in the political life which he was
contemplating for himself, and later on for his son.
The millionaire hungered for the lad; and, in his absence, he poured
into Betty’s ears all his hopes for him, his pride in him, his
affection for him.
And it was good to see that his pride in the lad’s aristocratic ways
was wholly undamped by any suspicion that the boy despised him--whereas
with his girls he felt their despisings at every turn.
Betty had hoped, for his father’s sake, that the youth would come home
for a few days before his term began at Oxford; but when he came she
endured her severest trial.
Horace Malahide, fresh from the society of well-bred people, at once
found himself at ease with Betty. His bright wit, his airy love of
life, his frank ways, his affection and his care for his father, his
patience and his delicacy in correcting him, won the esteem of the
girl. And she, for a day or so, not knowing the attraction of her own
beauty, enjoyed his companionship.
She realized, all at once, that he was ignoring his sisters. She
found it impossible to withdraw herself from the position. Her sudden
avoidances of him inflamed the youth’s desire for her companionship. He
became a trial to her.
Then came letters sad with sighs. How the young dogs all take to the
same water!
She found a fragment of the poetic pinned to her dressing-table,
in which fragment was much rhyming of Modeyne with “_I ween_,” and
tributes to “_dainty shoulders chill, and cruel with disdainings
keen_,” and complaints of “_ignorings of worship that any beauty who,
less proud of mien, had been, must surely needs have seen_.”
The dictionary had been ransacked for rhymes.
The lad was in the euphemistic stage of poetic debauchery; and Betty
could never abide indifferent verse. He chose the surest way to this
very desert of ignorings and shoulders chill and the like disdainings.
The devil was in it for the lad all through.
So the poetic bugling sounded the trump of his rejection.
He went up to Oxford; and for close upon three days was well-nigh
disconsolate.
The lad’s admiration, most unwitting of it, did the girl a sad
disservice.
The unspoken verdict of their modish brother, in preferring this girl’s
society to theirs, roused the ill-will of his neglected sisters;
and the two young women, whilst their full red lips kissed Betty
good-morning as sweetly as was their wont, took to tittle-tattling
against her.
The tittle-tattle bred further tittle-tattle, unloosed suggestive and
insinuating tongues, and at last Dame Gossip bumped up, giggling,
against the doors of _The Cock and Bull_ in Fleet Street.
The tavern vomited its secret.
The ghost of Major Modeyne arose from the dead and walked; and was seen
in Park Lane.
CHAPTER XXXIII
_Which has to do with one of those Emotional Crises that change the
Whole Tenor of a Man’s Political Convictions_
The millionaire was in the most hearty of good moods--could not sit
still in his office--came home and could not sit still in his home. He
tramped his house; was jocularly familiar with the servants; slapped
the housemaids on the back; gave them half-sovereigns; twitted them
about lovers; chaffed the shocked footman; dug the solemn butler
Pontefract in the waistband; punched him in the chest and wind, the
astounded servant clumsily guarding the threatened parts; and told him
crude stories.
He told every separate servant of his household, as he had told
every separate clerk in his offices on one pretext or other during
the morning, that he was to be the guest of honour at a big banquet
together with the Marquis of Malahide--“the head of our family, sir.”
Mr. Pompey Malahide had always thanked Providence for his own cunning,
for his energy, and, to a certain extent, for his luck--or for that
small portion of good chance that remained from all successes after the
results of his own keen foresight had been deducted, which, to put it
fairly, was little enough. But whilst he felt that he himself shared
with Providence not a little of his own credit, there was one thing
which he frankly set down generously and without reserve of smallest
kind to the gods--that he had been born with a name that was in the
peerage.
The father of Pompey, when he had left the ancestral calling of
rat-catcher on the Lincolnshire estates of the old Marquis of Malahide
and had come up to London town to seek his fortune, had taken the
name of the man for whom he had had the keenest admiration, whilst to
his son he had given in lieu of dedication to the saints the name of
the dog which had brought him most honour at the local tavern. And by
consequence, the son of the rat-catcher, now grown to fortune, had
always felt a kinship between himself and the living marquis, whose
bluff sailor ways and jovial bearing made him the idol of the populace.
Indeed, a print of the great man’s portrait was the most aggressive
decoration in the house--topped by a gilt coronet and flanked, as
it was, by all the prints of the great man’s ancestors that the
art-dealers could find for him or foist upon him--to which central
figure of importance he would always refer as “the head of our house,
sir!”
That night, Pompey Malahide sat at the banquet, and as he sat he
received a whispered communication from a member of the Cabinet at
his right hand that made his face to shine, gorgeous, boisterously
glorified.
And more--when the guests had risen, it made him commit the mistake
which sent titters through the city and laughter through the
fashionable clubs for many a day; and this he did from sheer joyousness
of heart, yet, so intoxicated was he with his magnificence that city
gossips were almost justified in setting it down to the full body of
the wine.
The guests being risen then, and grouping into tattling knots, our
Pompey made his way, exultant, to the group that held the jovial figure
of the sailor-marquis.
“My lord,” said he--“my name is Malahide--Pompey Malahide. My family
is--I--er--believe, in some remote way connected with your lordship’s.”
After the silence that fell, all eyes seeking the twinkling eyes of the
sailor-marquis, our Pompey received his wound.
“Likely enough!” roared the admiral, wringing the fat fingers of the
exultant Pompey in his treacherous grip--“likely enough!” And his
lordship, being mellow with wine, and in a fine rollicking humour,
had slapped him a rousing buffet upon the shoulder so that our Pompey
coughed, and with a big jolly laugh the nobleman blandly accepted the
likelihood.
“Ah, yes--likely enough!” he cried. “The old lord was a damned rogue
amongst the women!”
The Malahides were all hail-fellow thus.
The jesting answer, whilst it had tickled, had not a little shocked
some that stood near, and, perhaps not the least, the sense of delicacy
of the claimant.
A chill aloofness might have made the wounded man adore the idol more.
What tyrannies will we not suffer from the gods! But to be overwhelmed
in city humour had smitten our Pompey in his most sensitive parts.
All that night Pompey Malahide knew no sleep. And he arose in the early
morning ashamed and sorely wounded. It had been a shabby enough blow,
but he had put himself in the way of a drunken fellow’s fisticuff....
Up he got as soon as it was daylight, kicked his heels out of bed, and,
having dressed, ranged restlessly about the house; and it thus chanced
that one of his daughters, Judith, early risen, came upon him, and
twitted him with looking distressed.
In a fit of confidence, he showed the girl the wound. And she, seeing
her opportunity, petted him, and as soon as she in decency could turn
him from his distress, told him of her discovery of the Modeyne
skeleton--opened the ugly cupboard and let it tumble out.
And into the ears of the brooding man the hot red lips dropped a
poisonous suggestion of the girl’s seeking marriage with Horace.
The man was in the mood to see ghosts in every shadow. He was too much
taken up with his own affairs to smell an ugly plot amongst his own kin.
He went to the library, his fast unbroken, and with a sour mouth, and
rang the bell. He told the footman who answered his summons to send a
maid to Miss Modeyne’s room and tell her he would like to see her when
she came down.
Betty came tripping at the summons; shut the door; and stood a-wonder
before the shamed seated man.
She stepped forward anxiously:
“Mr. Malahide,” she said--“I hope you are not ill.”
He shook his head.
He saw that the white hand she put on the desk trembled. A hoarse note
came into her voice:
“I hope nothing has happened to your son--Horace----”
He shook his head.
“No, Miss Betty--but I have had information, through a friend, an old
friend of my family, this morning that I believe is a lie. I hope to
God--it is--a--lie.”
Betty suddenly understood that she was the subject of the interview,
and silence fell upon her. She drew herself up quietly and awaited the
blow.
“Miss Betty, this good lady says that your father was a quite
impossible person. She says that he was a notorious drunkard. Was he?”
Betty bowed her head.
“Yes,” she said simply.
The hope went out of the man’s eyes; he tried again, trusting to a
denial:
“She says that he was the subject of a coroner’s inquest, and that his
disreputable life was the talk of the town a while ago. Was that so?”
Betty said nothing.
“She says that he was a Papist--that you came into my house and
breathed no word of it. Is that so?”
Still no answer.
“She says that your companionship may sully the innocence of my girls;
which is a damned lie--excuse my saying so.... But she says that people
are making comments about my girls being seen with you.... I wish to
God that were a lie too.”
The brooding man put his face in his hands; and there was a long
silence.
He roused after a little while and went on again:
“She says that you, if you stay here, may win the regard of my boy
Horace--she says that it would be worse than Miss Sally Ornce.”
For a moment Betty thought wearily that he referred to the allurements
of some rival lady. It suddenly came to her that the poor fellow meant
_mésalliance_.
The clumsy man gazed miserably out of the window:
“I don’t know what in God’s wonder to do,” he said.
The girl bowed:
“I understand,” she said. “I will go.”
She went and shook hands with him; and quietly left the room....
The two ladies, straining their ears at the door that stood slightly
ajar into the next room, were edified.
They opened the door a little way and peeped in.
They would have been extremely annoyed had they known that Betty had
caught a glimpse of them--had taken in the situation at a flash.
They were surprised to hear their father sigh. When he put his head
down on the table and sobbed, they stole away.
Indeed, tittering over the details afterwards with friends, they
_declared_, if we may take the word of such as listen at doors, that
they were highly amused--that it was near as good as a play....
Betty, tipping the cabman for taking her trunk up to her attic, knocked
at Miss Flora Jennyns’ door, entered, and, running to the little old
lady’s chair, sank on the footstool at her feet and flung her arms
about her knees.
“I have come home,” she said, happy to be with the old gentlewoman
again.
Miss Flora put out her hand and stroked the girl’s brown hair; and she
smiled through tears.
“I have been very lonely,” she said.
A couple of days after Betty had gone, Mr. Pompey Malahide sat down at
his desk, a bland smile upon him, and wrote to his son:
“DEAR HORACE,
The Tory Chest has, you will perhaps have guessed, received another
twenty thousand pounds from me. But one must, as a patriot, make
sacrifices for the good of the country. You will, I feel sure, be
proud to know that the Malahides--our branch of them--are about to
take rank as Baronets.
I regret to state, however, that there has been, at the Carlton,
a distinct aloofness of the members of the Upper House towards me
personally, since we came in with so large a majority, in so much
that I feel, on entering some of these men’s houses, as if I were
breathing air that had passed over ice.
On careful consideration over my political ideals, I have lately come
to the conclusion (and I have aristocratic precedents for changing
my political opinions), that, on receiving my baronetcy, I shall
take the first dramatic and telling opportunity to embarrass the
Government and go over to the other side of the House.
Your affectionate father,
POMPEY MALAHIDE.”
To which Horace replied by return:
“DEAR OLD FATHER,
I wish you would not split your verbs so recklessly.
To resist the condescension of the new aristocracy in the way you
suggest would be, for you, utterly disastrous, both as a matter of
good taste and as a dramatic effect--to say nothing of a bid for
social distinction.
The test of good manners in the highly placed is the capacity for
the exercise of extreme insolence without offence to the estimation
of the class. What would be a vulgarity in you or me is a splendid
airiness in the Prime Minister. Your fine gentleman may seduce a
lady’s maid, but must not be seen to cheat at cards. The tears of a
seduced woman set the tables of the new nobility a-titter; but to win
a guinea by oversharp practice with trumps is to discover the moth
amongst the ermine on the cloak of honour. Your courtier’s manners
are but gaudy beads strung on a thread of menial subtleties. You have
not the practice, my dear father; and would only blunder upon the
indecencies.
The new aristocracy demands our patience--it takes three hundred
years of usage before a family becomes quite used to its own
nobility; by that time it is usually bankrupt.
It is only possible for a man of birth and unassailable breeding to
become a radical without appearing ridiculous.
Your affectionate son,
HORACE.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
_Which, to some extent, discloses the Incident of the Sentimental
Tea-cups_
Anthony, forestalling the youngster’s fretting for the girl’s
companionship, decided to send him up to Oxford at once; but with all
haste it was some months before he could go, and the lad, though he
stuck manfully to his heavy work with the tutor, became languid and
listless and vague. He fretted silently, and was filled with an ugly
distrust of those about him. It had brought to him a sudden revelation
of the need to stand alone--a revelation that is a part of the heritage
of life to all at emergence from youth, but comes to some roughly
enough.
He grimly forbore from asking questions, and fell away from his frank
boyish friendship with his own people--the cheery, intimate, and
open good-fellowship with his father and his mother gave way to a
strange aloofness, and there developed in its place a self-reliance
and a haughty desire to try the wings of his own judgment that bred
much foolishness, as well as strength. His mother sadly put down the
lad’s cubbishness to the coming of manhood, and accepted much of the
brusqueness as being a part of the inevitable period of cubhood when
the whelp is for trying its strength and for leaving the litter.
The lad’s arrival at Oxford started the man’s shadow in him to life.
He moved towards the shadow eagerly, and grasped at the reality which
cast it. Flung suddenly into a sea of youth of his own age, he was at
grips with his own strength at once--tried it, as by instinct, against
the wills of the youths about him, all of whom, also come abroad out of
their homes, were essaying their strength and affections and cunning
upon each other, straining the cords wilfully to the breaking pitch
both of the affections and of the hostilities.
It was the best thing that could have happened to the young blood; the
strain of the life kept him from the fret of the injustice that had
been put upon him, and drew his mind for awhile from brooding on the
blackness of the empty place where his natural mate had until now moved
in dainty harmony with his existence.
He was in a new world.
He suddenly found, to his surprise, that there was that which gave him
position amongst the undergraduates which had been completely ignored
amongst the intellectual Bohemians. These others had taken him on his
merits--he was now taken on the merit of his family. He found that the
important thing was not as to what he was, but as to what his father
was. He was given his place and his measure of pleasantnesses largely
in the degree of his social position. He awoke to the fact that he had
a social position--a rung on a long ladder, reaching up to dignity and
the smiles of the dignified others.
The atmosphere here was wholly different. It was less literary, more
academic; less intellectual, more scholastic; less original, more
conventional; less artistic, more grammatic--life, literature, art,
every human activity was judged, not by the standard of the emotions,
but by the restrictions of the common law, by precedents. The very
pleasures were built upon tradition; he could not amuse himself as he
willed without being looked upon askance. And all this atmosphere, odd
to say, was not created by the professors, but by the youths of his own
age, who were coming up from the great public schools.
The young fellow began at once to win the friendship of such of the
youngsters as had his own frank habits and ways; and it was at this
phase that was born his lifelong friendship with young Horace Malahide.
Everything in the relation of his fellows to him was done through an
atmosphere. His first term threw him into nodding acquaintance with
two or three young peers of his own year, and with youngsters who were
the sons of county magnates--several of them indeed county magnates
themselves. These young fellows he found to be friendly and genial to
a certain point, when suddenly they stepped into another atmosphere
from which he was subtly excluded. It was done by the most delicate of
tricks, and was chiefly made apparent by their manner towards another
in their own atmosphere as in comparison with their manner towards him.
He noticed the youngsters who had been school-friends at the great
public schools, now drifted apart, shifted their affection, stepped
quietly away from their old association and habits, and were swallowed
each into a well-defined set....
When, however, Noll returned to Oxford for his second term he found
himself in a new atmosphere. One of the young peers walked into his
rooms as an intimate friend--accosted him with the heartiness that
showed him he had passed into the set--he was the same youth--the other
was the same youth--something had chanced, and changed the attitude.
Noll bent his big brows upon it, resenting it as an impertinence. But
the others were equally urbane, friendly--yet not a word passed--there
was nothing to make the excuse for a resentment.
He only knew some while afterwards that Lord Wyntwarde had asked the
youth, meeting him in the hunting-field, if a young cousin of his, one
Noll Baddlesmere, were not up at Magdalen with him. The youth had
passed the word quite subtly. Gentlemen should never do vulgar things
vulgarly.
Noll thenceforth moved in _the_ set, and its allied sets. He breathed
_the_ atmosphere. But being an airy person, of kindly and genial
nature, he was not by way of examining into motives, nor of very
strictly carrying out the subtle hints of the others in the Atmosphere;
thus it came about that he dove-tailed several cliques that would
otherwise have practised a more rigid exclusiveness towards each other.
And he carried with him, into the most exclusive groups of young
nobles, amongst whom he was soon well-liked, his genial friend Horace
Malahide....
Noll’s career at Oxford was a short one.
He nearly got through his first year.
A certain superficial cleverness laid the gin for the lad’s fall.
His taste in literary expression had been cultivated to a brilliancy
beyond his years by association with the witty Bohemians, and by the
reading of good work; it had, above all, been developed by the artistic
guidance of Eustace Lovegood. The lad therefore now found it difficult
to wade through the cheap academic facetiousness and thin style of the
literary ventures that exploited in dullard local reviews the anæmic
wit which passed for fiery originality amongst the undergraduates, and
mistook itself for a revolutionary upheaval in their puerile and stupid
magazines.
It was natural that he should write, with an almost uncanny facility, a
sketch, daring, skilful, and precocious enough to stand out amidst this
dead level of the commonplace. He at once made a mark which exaggerated
his powers, judged only by comparison with much that was colourless and
bloodless and vapid and weak.
As a sure result, having caught the eye of the others, and hearing
himself quoted, he wrote again; and by the greatest misfortune and not
in the least realizing that he was stirring the most offensive of mud
in the otherwise healthy stream of the life of the schools, he wrote a
satiric sketch on the Greek friendship of two notorious youths, that
sent spluttering laughter through the halls and common-rooms, and
made the position of the two young nobles at the university wholly
untenable. The laughter that greeted _The Eton Marriage_ was not run
down when Horace Malahide followed with a satiric newspaper report of
the divorce of the two youths, in which dons were solemnly trotted
out as chaperons and society beauties and lawyers and officers of
the court; whilst a ridiculous series of questions and answers, in
examination and cross examination, aired the foibles and cranks and
eccentricities and confirmed waggeries of the more pronounced local
celebrities.
Written as a mere whimsical squib on the seemingly ill-assorted
friendship of a burly athletic youth for a dandified effeminate
lordling of almost womanly beauty and æsthetic pretensions, the squib
burst and discovered an awful and ugly state of affairs. To none did it
bring more startling illumination than to the makers of the squib.
Both Noll and Horace were staggered at the scandals their somewhat
tasteless fooling disclosed. There was much hushing up to be done. The
two young nobles would soon be assisting to govern the country; and
they must be saved--thus the tradition worked. They found life at the
university wholly impossible, and retired to the House of Lords--to
their peers, so runs the quaint phrase.
Noll and Horace hammered out the business, and came to the conclusion
that a certain lack of good-taste on their own part had cost their
beloved university a very ugly blow; they withdrew their names at the
hint of the solemn faces of their masters and superiors who ruled over
them, and gave their farewell reception.
They purged their contempt in tea.
Noll, in a fit of retrenchment, said it must be tea; having discovered
that he had run through his whole three years’ allowances. Horace,
always shy of displaying his wealth, on the theory that it was against
good taste in the newly enriched, supported the decision for economy
and tea--and ordered the most exquisite Limoges service for the
solemnities.
In far London, Bartholomew Doome, scenting aroma of naughtiness in the
air, hastened down to Horace and Oxford for the day, fearing to be out
of the scandal, and added his Byronic gloom and atmosphere of tragic
wickedness to the smoke-filled rooms. He made a profound impression
and many friends; indeed, it may be admitted without exaggerating his
success that he was betrayed into no slightest hint of a decent emotion.
The tea being drunk, and the kindly farewells taken, the roomful of
youths solemnly stood up, and Noll and Horace as solemnly broke their
cups that none should again drink from them or sully the memory of the
glorious days they had all spent together. The pieces were flung into
the street.
The others, each taking a cup and saucer with them, in memory of their
friendship, shook hands and filed slowly out.
As youth broke sentimental tea-cups, the Oxford tradesman who owned
the debt for them, sitting in his little counting-house, was reading a
letter from a Hebrew friend in the offices of The Tradesmen’s Defence
League in London.
This letter, after various facetious references to the tradesman’s
family, proceeds to display the very shrewdest knowledge of the details
that made up Noll’s family history--his connections, his prospects--not
wholly unmixed with some sly wit and comical allusions. The writer
thinks that Noll may be a coming man, he has done so badly at Oxford;
considers that he is not devoid of generous and honourable instincts;
is of opinion that any debt he may contract will eventually be paid;
and ends with the personal note as thus:
“I like a man as can slop the gilders about a bit, myself. And as
for academic honours, why, you and me was neither of us strong in
book-learning, but we’ve kept our noses above the water, and the
seats of our trousers off the hospitable benches, and our integrity
outside the doors of, the bankruptcy receiving-houses; and we could
teach the Government a thing or two in raising the wind and the
mysteries of profitable taxation, Samuel.... Let the young ass eat
his thistles--only see to it that you have a mortgage on the crop.
I hold out my homely fist.
REUBEN MCCUBBIE.
P.S.--This here Oliver Baddlesmere ain’t so far off the peerage as
some. I have heard it whispered that he is nearer to it than what
even you or me is.
They do say, too, that the cub has found a girl. Early marriage,
Samuel, gives hostages against the most gentlemanly blackguardism.
But I garrule.
Again I hold out the aforesaid fist.
Be good.
This letter seems to be all about money. I sometimes think I’m a
damned Jew.
Nevertheless, be good.
Bless my soul, how these boys do get through the unearned increment!”
CHAPTER XXXV
_Wherein we are bewildered by the Cooings of Chivalry_
Betty, flung back again upon her own resources, realized that, for a
woman, there were two careers elaborately ordered by the deliberate
plan of the world--marriage or vice. For the rest, to woman had been
flung the slave-callings, the menial ends of professions, the ill-paid
jobs of the commerce of life. This shabby deed of gift was leprously
covered by an hypocrisy of Chivalry--which in practice largely worked
out as the courting, when it did not interfere with other pleasures, of
the young and comely women; the seizing and exploiting of the fortunes
of the middle-aged; and the neglect of the old and the unprepossessing.
For a while Betty was at her wits’ end to know how to earn the wage
of decency, when she again decided to apply to Netherby and ask him
to get her some literary hack-work; and Netherby, entrusting her with
a review or two of books, was delighted with the result, as was also
his editor. Betty felt thankful to be doing work that did not force
upon her the wading in personal humiliations; and this her new means
of breadwinning, small though it was, helped in its very exercise to
give her facility in the craftsmanship of her art--her hand thereby
increased its cunning, and literary expression became a confirmed
habit. She soon passed from the stage of seeking a style--the careful
and laborious picking out of the notes from the music of the instrument
and the placing them in telling harmonies, to the mastery of the whole
range and gamut of the instrument, when the music came resonant and
vivid in answer to the mood of her desire.
And she practised also the inevitable typewriter, taking bouts of work
upon occasion, to win a little bread or to help Julia to the winning.
Click-click-click went the deft fingers, spelling out into print the
ill-shaped grammar of the city.
She saw much of Julia in these days; and to Julia she brought
incalculable good--her cheerfulness and the gaiety and tenderness of
her sweet young womanhood gave to the narrow-shouldered half-starved
city girl a wholesome companionship that filled out her thin life
and enlarged her cockney vision. Julia inhaled the atmosphere of
good-breeding and of uncomplaining cheerful courage which was Betty’s
very breath; and she grew to infinite riches by sharing the golden
gifts that Betty had to give her.
Slave-castes mistake womanishness for womanliness. A true woman is
neither an idiot nor a man.
The girl Julia had lived her girlhood receptively feminine--courageous
in her defensive virtues. She was now roused to the positive virtues of
womanhood.
CHAPTER XXXVI
_Which touches upon the Pains of Enjoying the Glow of Self-Abasement
whilst Maintaining a Position of Dignity_
As Noll and Horace stood on the platform of the railway-station at
Oxford, waiting for the London express to take them to town, Horace
Malahide began to feel some discomfort about the brooding mood of the
other--for the first time he was distressed with the question whether
they ought not to have remained at Oxford. He knew that Noll had but
narrow means. Guessing that Noll was in some embarrassment as to how
to explain his sudden return to his people, he, to divert him from
worrying, called his wandering attention to a newspaper criticism upon
a book which had just come out and was creating considerable stir in
the literary world.
Horace, holding up the newspaper criticism, put his finger upon the
name of Caroline Baddlesmere. Noll roused and read the notice. The
writer, Anthony Bickersteth, was proclaimed as the founder of a new
school--a new star had risen above the dead level of the commonplace
literature of the day--and all of the review that was not violent
praise of this Anthony Bickersteth was the cover for a bitter and
sneering screed against the work of Caroline Baddlesmere, who, so
it bluntly averred, had gone well-nigh to destroying English as an
artistic language. The writer’s judgment would have been of more
weight, perhaps, had his English been of more value; but even his
ill-balanced phrasing, his academic eyes, his dullard’s palate, and his
faulty ear, could not altogether damn the object of his adoration; and
Noll, struck by the beauty of phrasing in some of the quoted passages,
bought a copy of the book at the station stall as the train came
clanking in. He ran through its pages on his journey to town....
As they rattled through the outskirts of London, Horace, who had been
watching the other’s face, asked:
“Is it any good, Noll?”
Noll shut up the book, and stretched himself:
“Very good,” said he--“but I think the fellow would have shown better
taste not to hit at my mother in the Preface.”
There was a long pause.
Horace broke it:
“Noll, old boy,” said he--“shall I drive you home?”
“I’m not going home, thanks,” said Noll--and he added, seeing surprise
in the eyes of the other: “I’ve got to face old Lord Wyntwarde
first--he’s a sort of relation of mine--and has been paying for my
being at Oxford.... My own people are very badly off.... I don’t
think I ought to let the unpleasantness of the interview fall upon my
people. And I’m funking it....” And he added grimly, after a while: “I
understand why men sometimes get drunk.”
Horace laughed:
“Oh,” said he--“it’ll blow over all right.... Look here, Noll; you’d
better come to my people to-day, stay over the night, and go on
to-morrow to the eating of dirt....”
So it came that Noll spent his first evening in the Malahide household.
And the girls both vowed the next day to their separate bosom friends
that they “had met their fate.” It leaked out during the confidences of
each that Horace had discovered to them that the youth was kinsman to a
certain Lord Wyntwarde....
The hot-headed old lord stood a-straddle before his fireplace, and
smiled grimly.
How the blood of this house repeated itself!
Here was this young fellow pacing up and down the room as though he
were laying down the terms of a surrender.
By the dogs, a handsome young fellow! Like his mother--with a trick or
two of the father in him.
He himself had thus prowled this room in like disgrace with the lord of
the house years ago. What a while ago!... This lad’s father also--now
this one! By the book, wonderful!
The fact was that the old lord’s wilful admiration followed this proud
lad with a sense of affection that was strange to him--the youth
appealed to him more than did the more elaborate father. He had more of
the beauty of the old house about him.
“Noll, my lad,” said he, “I haven’t been listening over-well to what
you have been saying--I’ve been thinking hard that you ought to have
been my son.”
Noll stopped in his walk, stopped in his talk--hesitated.
He uttered an embarrassed laugh:
“I have been apologizing, sir,” he said.
“Have you?” growled Wyntwarde. “That is a relief to me--I thought you
were ordering _me_ to apologize.”
Noll shrugged his shoulders, and took to his pacing of the room again,
silenced.
The old lord watched him grimly, saying nothing.
Noll suddenly halted, swung round, and faced him:
“I am sorry, sir,” said he--“I ought to have rid you of my company
before this. But I felt bound to make you what poor reparation I could
for all your goodness to me. I did not write, because--a personal
apology is always far more punishment to me than the written word. This
has been a punishing task to me--I have dreaded it--loathed it. And
yet, I fear, it has seemed but a lame and sorry reparation to you.... I
will not fret you any longer. I am done.”
Wyntwarde laughed:
“Oho, Noll--so you are run dry at last!... Now I can get a word
in edgeways; and I, too, may cackle, though it lack your literary
finish.... You see, as we are in the confessional, I may say I have
been a bit of a dog in my day. And, by Beelzebub! the gout hasn’t
altogether driven the last spark out of me yet.... The tongues still
wag about me, I have no smallest doubt.... It isn’t for me to preach
you a sermon on your tom-follies, for they are infernally like my own.
By God, you are no curate, there’s that much against you in heaven.
Still, I will tell you bluntly, I have only had one fear for you--and
that is the dandified schoolmaster that is in the heart of your father.
The Ffolliotts never had any of the damned studious habits--we have
always been sportsmen and gentlemen. And, by my soul, I believe you are
bitten by the self-same dog.... It’s this literary business that makes
me anxious about you; but a lampoon and a sharp tongue we all of us had
the knack of using--_that_ don’t go with long hair and inky fingers and
spectacles nor a milkman’s seat on a horse. By God, you may lampoon the
Lord Chancellor, for all _I_ care--I never go to the House of Lords
except to keep the damned idiot in his place. Lords Chancellor nowadays
seem to think the Upper House is a confounded dames’ school. Damn all
Lords Chancellor, say I----”
“Yes, sir--damn all Lords Chancellor!” said Noll drily.
Wyntwarde laughed:
“Yes,” said he--“we wander.... Now, look you here, Noll--this house is
free to you as long as you keep your fingers from ink-stains and your
lips from preaching--the stables are not empty of horses. And, what’s
more, I still hold to my bond. The ’Varsity is over--down goes three
hundred a year. It would be damned bad morals to give you that again.
But you shall have a couple of hundred a year as long as rumour speaks
well of you; but the day you throw up the society of gentlemen and mix
with the inky-fingered gentry, I will not only cancel you from my will,
but, by the dogs, I stop even the allowance----”
“I do not accept benefits under threat, sir,” said Noll.
Wyntwarde stopped, scowled--burst into a laugh, and passed the matter
by:
“I would make it more,” he said; “but I suspect the ink-pot----”
“If I have a mind to spill ink I will spill it,” said the youth hotly.
The old lord chuckled:
“You are your father’s son, my boy, on occasion,” said he. “Well,
there’s nothing to attract you here just now; but you had better come
down for the hunting next winter, eh?”
Noll made a step towards him--hesitated--his mouth hardened:
“I cannot stay in a house, sir, which my mother has struck off her
visiting list,” he said sullenly.
The old lord laughed loudly and long:
“By God,” said he--“you are a man!”
He went to the youth and gripped him by the shoulders:
“No, Noll--it can’t be. Your mother would never stand the new
aristocracy--it’s so damned like the old profligacy--without the
breeding.... Good-bye, my boy; and damn all ink-stains, say I!”...
As Noll reached London he decided to go and see his mother, and make
her acquainted with his doings and his intentions. He had an uneasy
feeling that he had unjustly neglected her of late.
He was glad to find, when he arrived, that his father was away from
home.
As his mother stood there in her attic, listening to him, Noll was
filled with a glow of pride in her gentle womanly dignity and her
resourceful and uncomplaining good breeding.
The place had an air that made the word “attic” classical....
Noll, somewhat embarrassed as to how to broach the subject, had begun
by denouncing the preface to the new book which held a sneer at his
mother; and she had laughed it quietly by. Then Noll had told her of
the reviews; and ended by giving her something of a lesson in the art
of letters! He himself thought very well of this new book--and gave his
mother more than one good hint from Anthony Bickersteth.
Caroline turned to the little mirror over the mantel, as the youth
finished speaking, to hide a little dry smile that played about her
mouth. She touched her hair with handsome white hands. It was a trick
she had.
Noll saw the movement; caught the reflected smile in the mirror; and
faltered.
It came to him that he had been just a trifle patronizing to his mother
about this new book by Anthony Bickersteth--a little condescending
about her powers. He was chilled with a sudden uneasiness.
“Well, Noll?” she asked.
Noll went to the attic window and looked out:
“Mother,” said he--“I feel ashamed of these doles from Wyntwarde--I
must win a career with the pen, and be rid of them.”
“You are taking to the hardest trade in the world, Noll--and all the
harder because it looks the easiest. Still, I am wholly with you in the
sentiment. I should be sorry indeed to see you dependent on Wyntwarde.
And I am glad to have you at home--I was looking at your child toys
last night, and--I--felt--almost--as if--you were dead!”
Noll was silent for awhile:
“I find it rather hard to say what I came to say, mother, after that,”
said he.
“Ah, Noll,” she said--“it is not your fault or mine that childhood
must pass, with all its delight--we might as well try to hold the hand
of death.... Say what you came to say----”
“Well, mother--I have found a couple of rooms in New Inn, that will
just hold me; and, without Wyntwarde’s help, I ought to be able to
keep myself and get into the way of winning my own bread in a very few
months.”
Caroline Baddlesmere sighed:
“Yes, Noll--it is perhaps better that you should make your own
life--and in your own way. It is one of the agonies of motherhood that
the brood must leave the nest.”
“No, mother--it is not that.... I have to pass a room on the stairs
that--in the passing--makes my heart ache--takes the man out of me.”
His lip trembled.
“Yes, Noll; I understand. I have seen you fret at many things here--as
I myself have sometimes fretted at them.... I am able, too, to help you
a little now--I have had a little windfall----”
Noll left the window and went to his mother. He put his hands on her
shoulders:
“No, mother. I will have none of it. You ought not to be living in an
attic--and I am not going to help to keep you there. It is one of the
prospects that will make me work--that I should see you in your proper
position. Not that, God knows, this attic has ever given me a moment’s
shame; for you have made it a palace to me.”
Caroline kissed his handsome face:
“Noll,” said she--“you are something of a man.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
_Which is Uneasy with the Restlessness of Youth_
Sir Pompey Malahide came into his baronetcy on a fine summer’s day; and
Noll spent the resulting week of high festivities with Horace and the
family, and there strengthened his friendship with Bartholomew Doome,
whose unsnobbish affection and care of the rough merchant won Noll’s
regard even more than his grim humour.
Horace, his father baroneted and the feasting done, decided to go to
Paris for a change--“to get the odour of cooked bullocks from his
nostrils.” Noll saw him off at the railway-station; saw his man Jonkin,
of the ducal manner, tuck him up in his railway-carriage; watched the
train slide out of the station--and sighed to lose the light-hearted
companionship of the sunny youth.
The departing of a comrade sends a cloud across the bluest sky.
Noll, with the confidence of youth, decided to be a literary celebrity.
He felt that it would be a brilliant and fascinating position to hold;
and it required no capital. It was not to be bought. There was an air
about it.
But the having his own study and separate establishment did not raise
the masterpiece out of the deeps--nor did the world thrill at his
originality so readily as he had hoped. He did much chewing of the
quill.
Being young, he wrote for art’s sake; and it was the beginning of
several affectations in which he half believed.
His solitary hours of work, and of brooding upon work, were fretted
with other and more overwhelming dreams. The rustle of women’s
petticoats began to trouble him as he wrote. In the faces that passed
him in the street he saw beckoning eyes under many a pretty bonnet.
And the writing, dragging already for want of life and substance, now
further dragged, interrupted by the frills and figures of women.
All nature’s urging of the adolescent to part from the parent brood was
calling upon him to pair; and the mystic fascination of the fragrance
of women was enhanced by the restlessness of dawning manhood that
vexes the lustiness of youth with the blatant trumpet-call to action,
the fret to be up and about and doing.
The dainty place that Betty had held by his side was empty. And the
gentle companionship of the girl that had filled the lad’s life gave
way to a vague hunger for affection.
To him in his grey loneliness came, as fairy to brooding Cinderella,
lighting the sordid gloom of his toil, fitful flashes of the girl’s
face in his day-dreams. Betty still held vague possession of his
affections. But youth is not content to clutch at thin air.
Noll cudgelled his wits at the desk of his lonely room, in vain.
The masterpiece would not come.
Then the youth decided that he was making a mistake--he was keeping
himself too much to himself. He would go deep into the literary world.
He was convinced that a literary man can do nothing unless he be in the
Literary Swim.
A letter from Horace was his confirmation. Horace was fascinated by
the student-life of Paris--its free-handed comradeship, its gaiety,
its good-fellowship in all things, its frank acceptance of nature, its
rebellion against the rigid conventions, its freedom from cant, its
glory in the joy of life. He had decided to give up his life of wealth
at home for a few years, to be a poor student in Paris for awhile, to
put aside the boredoms of the pampered rich, and, like the strenuous
man, to live life largely.
He thought, on the whole, he would keep his valet on--but Jonkin was to
dress like himself, as a student, corduroy trousers, black coat, slouch
hat and all. There was to be no tomfoolery in it--he was going to be
the poor student right through. And the girls of the Latin quarter,
heavens! he kissed his hand to them....
Within a month, Noll was elected to a literary club--one of those
places where men turn in to wash their hands on the way to the
_Athenæum_.
At the first entry into this club, the youth felt that he was come
amongst the very wits. But the minor critic Fosse fussed about him, and
took the earliest confidential opportunity to whisper to him with wink
and nod that it was owing to _his_ interest in him that Noll had been
elected over the heads of men who had been waiting for years at the
portals in vain. The thrill trickled out of the glamour of his election
a little as each of several others confided to Noll that it was owing
to _his_ exertions and _his_ following that his election had been so
speedily secured--and that everyone else in the gathering was but
mediocre and painstaking. His conceit in his honours slowly leaked away.
Then Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre, though kind, at once
roused uneasiness and soul-searchings in the youth. He pointed out that
the man of genius was the type of his time, the outward and visible
as much as the inward and spiritual; that in our age the face of
genius wore a moustache--Bismarck and Rhodes and Whistler all wore the
moustache.
Quogge Myre himself wore a moustache....
As the glamour of initiation wore off, the youth was oppressed with the
barrenness of the land--the petty jealousies, the tittle-tattle, the
spites, the little treacheries.
He came to have an unpleasant and mean desire to sit the others out
always--he knew that the moment the door closed upon him they tore his
weaknesses to pieces, and garbled his motives.
And still the masterpiece did not come....
Netherby Gomme, lunching with him at the club, ended by walking back
with him to his rooms; and, out of the earshot of the precious company,
he warned the youth not to fling his fresh ideas to these people if he
would weave them into his own art.
“These are the jackals of the arts, Noll,” said he grimly--“they filch
the ideas of other men--they follow hot-foot on the latest success,
turning out indifferent copies of the master-wits--they will suck your
brains, vampire-like. These are they who, when a genius appears, cannot
lift their eyes to his magnificence, to the beauty of his imagination,
can but seek out the sources of his inspiration and laboriously accuse
him of the footsteps in which he had trod. Be rid of the crew. Or, keep
your quaint conceits for your workshop. Give them but the chips....
You gave those fellows this very day the scheme for a large work of
art--they have not the brains to see the potentialities that lie latent
in an idea--so some fellow of them will make a catchy magazine essay of
it--catch the newness of it and exploit it. They are as vulgar thieves
as though they stole your pence.... They are no help to you--I have
done my best work even in my small way, as many a really big man has
done his, in the back room of a dingy house, looking out upon a brick
wall. What is in you is in you--you can benefit nothing from these
others.... If you have companions, have splendid companions--the big
rich-souled man. Friendship is the top of ambition. These others will
steal your very tears.”
So the humorist with his arm in Noll’s, affectionately; and left Noll
brooding at the threshold of his simple home....
Netherby spoke prophecy.
A month or two later, an article in a leading review, signed by Mr.
Fosse, won some notice by its youthful daring, indiscretion, and
invention--Noll sighed to see his own wits could be so shabbily clothed.
Noll took up the magazine by veriest chance at the club.
He read the sorry thing, and flung it upon the table; and, as he flung
it down, Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre entered the room.
“Ah, Aubrey,” cried he to the languid poet, with loud voice that was
ever pitched to carry his carefully wrought spontaneities to the
listening world: “I am sorry to be late, but, for pleasant hours with
Lady Persimmon, I could almost be content to appear ill-bred. She moves
me--so few women move me.” He sat down beside the poet, and slapped
the poetic leg giddily: “For a handsome woman one must neglect even a
poet, eh? Ha-ha! even the handsomest and the chastest of them all love
their squeeze. Not that I--you know--eh?”
“Tsh!” muttered Aubrey, who had been vainly attempting to check the
flow of Myre’s conceit--“Baddlesmere, over there, is her cousin.”
Myre turned a dirty putty colour.
Noll got up from his chair and walked out of the club....
Bartholomew Doome rose languidly from a lounge:
“It was a happy thing for your pink and white complexion, Myre, that
Noll Baddlesmere has been too absent-minded to overhear your yawing. I
do not think I have ever seen you glitter more consummately caddish.
Besides which, you lied. But that’s a detail. To lie to save a woman’s
honour has an air--to lie against her is to be banal. It has been done
before--and so often.”
He strolled towards the door.
Myre said:
“It is a happy thing for some people that the duel is dead.”
Bartholomew Doome laughed--went out laughing--laughed the length of
Piccadilly....
An urgent demand from the Secretary, asking for his subscription, Noll
sent on to Mr. Fosse, with a waggish note:
“DEAR FOSSE,
I know from your own lips that I owe my election to the club to your
kind offices; and I should be sorry indeed to think that my failure
to pay my subscription may cast a slur upon you as my sponsor. I find
that the sum that you borrowed from me when you won your success in
_The Discriminator_ fully covers my subscription, and yields you
a handsome profit, and I would beg that you take advantage of the
admirable opportunity of paying your debt to me by paying my debt to
the club; you will increase my indebtedness to you by withdrawing my
name from the books.
Yours, not wholly without admiration,
NOLL BADDLESMERE.”
Mr. Fosse, odd to say, paid the subscription.
* * * * *
When Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre called at Lady Persimmon’s
the next day he was told that her ladyship was not at home.
“But,” said my pushful gentleman--“I have just seen visitors go in.”
The footman put himself across the doorway, barring entrance: “You are
Mr. Myre, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Her ladyship has given instructions that she is never at home to
persons of the name of Myre. Go away.” He slammed the door in the great
man’s face.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
_Which has to do with the Breaking of a Pretty Lady’s Picture_
Horace at this time by letter again urges Noll to get him forthwith and
for awhile to Paris and live amongst the clouds--puts it in terms of
poetry and of romance and of pounds shillings and pence--essaying all
the temptations. His letter ends on the Horatian note: “And, my dear
old Noll, do, for the love of art, go and see my people. My old father
has urgings to speak on the Liberty of the Press--England’s great
Heritage of Freedom--the Source of her Magnificence, of her Benignant
Purity--which through Journalism has built up the Conscience of the
People--Tol-lol-der-rol-lol-der-rol-lay--and all the rest of it. You
know the thumping music of the National Organ when all the stops are
out. Now, do give Doome some aid in educating the dear old sire in
letters. Look what revolution he hath wrought in English furnishments!
The father’s name; is it not become the household word for the artistic
home? And why? Because _he discovered the Man_ who could tell him
what was good furnishment. He himself at inmost heart prefers the
cuckoo-clock.... And the girls too, thou canst widen their view,
enlarge the outlook of their narrow Putney eyes; your good-fellowship
must of a certainty mitigate their cockney ambitions. They write to me
of ‘cutting’ people--‘giving the cold shoulder’ to old friends--they
are bitten with all the smart vulgarities, for all the world like
_déclassé_ duchesses and such as are not of assured position. Get thee
to my father’s house, Noll--and bear with the overplus of marble, the
gaudy boastfulness of the too ornate enrichments. There’s a big heart
at the back of it all, and it loves thee.
HORACE.
P.S.--I never suspected Jonkin of being a prude. He makes me feel
thrillingly immoral--like a school-girl reading her first classic.”
When Noll arrived at the Malahides in the afternoon, Sir Pompey was
away from home; but the ladies of the house greeted him gladly.
He had not been long with the two young women before he was overwhelmed
with the embarrassment of their frank admiration.
The elder girl caused him no little uneasiness by her attitude towards
him; which the buxom Miss Mary further increased by very soon and most
openly expressing her design to find solace in the society of a youth
from the city who was to escort her to some shopping, adding boldly
that the figure of two had in it more likely elements of good company
than the awkward wriggle called three; and, with a suggestive laugh,
she swaggered out of the room.
Noll was never wholly at home amongst the crudities; but he shook off
embarrassment, and made an effort to entertain the comely Judith.
But ordinary converse died a natural death--Judith Malahide was in no
mood for words. She held the handsome young fellow with her handsome
eyes; she was unwontedly quiet, and, for marvellous and becoming
change, her bearing was restrained with the compelling dignity of
passion.
She came and stood by him, and Noll realized, with a catch of the
breath, that he was being drawn into the whirl of a reckless young
woman’s inordinate desire.
“Why have you been so long away, Noll?” she asked.
Noll in a careless moment answered lightly:
“How was I to know that you thought it long, Miss Judith?”
The girl’s mood took flame:
“There are things a man knows without the telling,” she said. “I would
not give a sigh for a man who----”
She turned and gazed out of the window; and added with lowered voice:
“I had better not say what I was going to say; but--your lips provoke
me--to--say things.”
Noll watched her for awhile--the exquisite skin, the undisciplined
full red mouth, the handsome head. He found a strange pleasure in the
nearness of her splendid beauty.
She turned to him suddenly; caught the lingering admiration in his eyes:
“I should like to know exactly what you were thinking,” she said,
commandingly; “do you think you dare tell me?”
“I think I _dare_,” he said lightly; and added seriously: “But I would
rather not.”
“I want to know,” she said.
“I was wondering whether a beautiful woman’s beauty is as much pleasure
to herself as it is to----”
“To whom?” She finished the broken enigma for him.
“To those who look upon it,” he evaded.
“And who was the woman, Noll?”
He smiled:
“Well, to be frank, I would rather not say--it would sound rather
fulsome.”
She laughed, and reddened:
“I think most people, men and women, think they are good-looking--I
think handsome people have pleasure in their good looks.... _I_
have.... But it does not bring me the glow that looking at you gives
me.” She put her hand upon her bosom.
“Miss Judith!”
“Any more wonders to unravel?” she asked.
“No,” he said--“I think we had better not wonder too deeply.”
She laughed sadly:
“So we are to be wise, eh?” She came close to him: “But you have not
told me how _you_ are moved by a woman’s face--so how can I tell
you--what----”
“Miss Judith, I am afraid we are playing with fire.”
She turned, frowning out of the window:
“You are right,” she said. “These things are made of fire--they are
beyond speech.” She turned and came very close to him: “But,” she added
hoarsely, “your lips could tell my lips--without--all this prattle----”
She put her warm hand upon his sleeve:
“I want to know,” she said.
“Tsh!” said he.
She turned swiftly to the window.
A servant entered the room; and the girl, standing still, steadied
herself with sudden self-command.
“Come,” she said at last--“you have not seen the new white boudoir.”
Noll roused, seizing an excuse to leave:
“I must be going,” he said.
But she would have no denial; and led him upstairs to an exquisitely
decorated white room, the beauty of which at once revealed the artistic
taste of Bartholomew Doome.
Noll saw, as the door closed upon him, that he was in the girl’s
boudoir.
She came to him, put her arms about his neck, and kissed him.
“You do not kiss me, Noll,” she complained passionately.
Noll unlocked her arms:
“Hush!” said he, and walked to the window.
She came and nestled against his shoulder.
“Noll, I can’t live this nun’s life----”
He put her gently from him:
“This is madness,” said he--“utter madness----”
He strode to the door--stopped half way:
“My God!” he said hoarsely.
She followed the gaze of his eyes to the white mantel:
“What is it, Noll?”
“There is the picture of the girl--to whom I--am--betrothed.”
She roused, and stepping, catlike, to the mantel, took down the little
portrait of Betty and flung it upon the white marble hearth. The glass
smashed, flying into a hundred tinkling pieces.
Noll watched her coldly:
“Where is Betty Modeyne?” he demanded roughly.
The girl faltered, uttered a moan, and leaning her handsome head on
the white hand that clutched the mantel, gazed down upon the shattered
thing.
“Where is Betty Modeyne?” he asked, putting his hand gently on her
shoulder.
She sighed, and said miserably:
“I’m sorry, Noll--but, thank God, I cannot tell you. She is gone.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
_Wherein, the Barber letting the Cat out of the Bag, we give Chase_
In the gathering darkness of his dingy little room over the southern
gate of New Inn sat Noll Baddlesmere in his shirt-sleeves, cudgelling
his wandering wits for epigrams and the dramatic situation; yet though
the dun walls did not distract his attention with the restlessness of
over-abundant gaieties, nor the sedate quietude nor the narrow view
from his grimy windows strain his nerves--indeed, he could scarce hear
the turmoil of the traffic in the great Strand hard by--he was unable
to settle down to hard work, nor could he rid himself of the fret of
his thoughts.
For hours he had thus striven to banish his loneliness, but our
deceptions fail at last even to deceive ourselves. His instincts were
bent on finding Betty; and the gloom of the dying day, though it
thwarted his eyesight and raised disturbing ghosts of thought, held the
whisper of the fact that he had come near to the flying glimpse of her.
It was as though her skirts had rustled across his dreams in the ornate
halls of the Malahides, flipped into a baffling doorway, and vanished
into mocking silence--yet but a door between. He fretted that he could
find no slightest trace of her.
He flung down his pen; arose from his desk in the dusky gloom; dressed
for the street; and strolled out of his rooms aimlessly into the grey
of the evening that held the old quadrangle in a smoky stillness.
In the vexed traffic of the Strand he suddenly bethought him of Devlin;
and straightway turned his steps towards the barber’s.
As he reached the corner of the street where Devlin plied the scissors,
he saw Myre hail a hansom and drive off in it.
Noll, entering the barber’s room, was greeted by the little cockney
Irishman with frantic delight; and Noll himself was glad to step back
across the threshold into his old world.
He gave up his hat to the dandified little man and sat down in the
barber’s chair before the mirror, the little man fussing about him the
while.
“Devlin,” said he, lying back in the chair, “I saw Mr. Myre leaving
this place----”
Devlin flung a large white pinafore round the youth and tied it at the
back of his neck.
“That’s so, sir,” said Devlin. He tucked some white towels under his
chin. “And faith, it’s quite the great man he is now.”
“Hoho!” said Noll--“affluent and well-to-do, eh? I suppose he has quite
divorced himself from Art, then!”
“What’s that?” screamed Devlin, stopping his lathering. “Mr. Myre
divorced from Art!” He went to the door to see that it was carefully
closed. “Whisht, sir; it’s a fine hairy libel-action ye’ll be wadin’ in
at the police courts, Mr. Noll, if ye don’t hold a restraint on ye.”
“But my good Devlin--he always swore that reward and affluence destroy
the artist!”
Devlin laughed; and got back to his lathering:
“Ah, Mr. Noll, it’s your old self, it is--findin’ flaws in the Irish
logic of him.” He chose a razor. “By the book, I remember well the day
Mr. Lovegood pulled the leg of the great man here. Ye’ll remember it,
maybe. No?” He held Noll’s chin with damp fingers and began to shave:
“Well, says Mr. Myre, says he, it’s death and to the devil with art
when the artist works for money and reward, says he. That’s so, says
Mr. Lovegood, for I always thought meself, says Lovegood, down in the
great resoundin’ belly of him, says he: I always thought meself, says
he, that Willie Shakespeare would have turned out less indifferent
poetry, says he, if he hadn’t been trying to fill the stalls in his old
Globe Theatre all the time, says he, and makin’ eight thousand a year,
present reckoning, out of the damned blank poetry of him, says he....
Mr. Myre he licked his lips, wid a black sullen look on him, like a dog
that’s been robbed of his bone. And, by the powers, the most simple law
officer of the Crown could have foretold that Mr. Myre was going to
have a sudden engagement in the city thin and there from the wan smile
that came over the head of him. But----”
He concentrated his whole attention for a while on the upper lip of
Noll, and having shaved it, he added:
“But it’s the black mental gloom that got a holt of the great man that
day.”
“Oh?” asked Noll.
“That’s so,” said the barber. “Oh, yes.... And ye didn’t hear tell of
it, sir?... Mother of God, it was the talk of the sivin continents....
Ah, begod, sure it’s a damned penny-whistle this Fame, anny way. Ah,
sir; it was a great fall that, mind ye. He took it like Julius Cæsar
with the Opposition takin’ hacks out of him under Pompey’s pillar--just
wid a wan dignified look on him.... Oh, yes; he’s a great man. If
stickin’ to it, and the divil’s own confidence in one’s own greatness,
and industry, and strong opinions and histrionic adultery can make
genius, that man’s a barrel of it----”
He was drying Noll’s face, and removing the shaving-cloths from about
his chin when the cling of the door-bell gave warning that someone had
entered the outer shop--footsteps came towards the room.
“Whisht!” said the barber, “here’s Mr. Cartel Maungy.”
“Who?”
“Whisht! I’ll tell ye when he’s gone, Mr. Noll. Sure, the paper’s lyin’
about there somewheres--and I’ll have done with the gintleman in three
minutes forty-five seconds.”
Noll nodded, and betook himself to a seat, suspecting some mystery that
the barber would divulge after his own quaint fashion, which brooked no
hurrying--to end in some fantastic nothingness or a good story.
The door opened, and there entered, sedate and old-aired, a handsome
dandified little old gentleman.
The barber, with gorgeous bow and diffident formality, relieved the
silent man of his hat and cane, and leading him to a seat, soon had
him swathed to the chin in cloths, and was shaving the soap-lathered
ascetic face that gazed at the ceiling meditatively.
The shaving being done, and the swathings of many white cloths removed
from about his chin and shoulders, the courtly figure arose from the
chair, and being given his hat and cane by the even more elaborate
barber, he withdrew from the room.
“Who’s that?” asked Noll.
“Well, sir; he’s a kind of Frenchified poet av the name of Cartel de
Maungy.... The gintlemen call him The Man of Pallid Ideals,” said the
barber. “The gintlemen were saying only last night that he’s been a bit
of a literary genius in his time in the minor poet line; but Misther
Myre he says the man’s but an Inkstain on the Carpet of Time. Oh, but
it’s a trenchant tongue Misther Myre’s got on him when he gets handlin’
the comparisons against literary reputations----”
“Yes, yes, Devlin--never mind Mr. Myre. About this man of pallid
ideals----”
The barber lowered his voice to the confidential:
“Ah, now that’s a mighty queer story, Mr. Noll. It’s the victim of the
grand passion that man is; Vanus rest his soul. Victim? begod!--he’s
the hero of a romance that’s kept a holt of him since his chin began
the need of shavin’--and that’s as long as your grandfather or mine
can remimber the seasons. That man has just played on the music of his
little love-affair until he’s clean pulled the cat-gut out of the old
fiddle--plucked at the shtrings of the old melody until he’s torn the
bowels out of the old harpsichord of Romance.... Sure, my father shaved
him before me, and remembered the day it got about that the girl’s
father swore he’d have no damned Frenchified poetaster for son-in-law.
And the little gintleman’s been lovin’ the girl ever since, until
there’s only the memory of them both left to each other. He might have
married the little lady this forty years--the divil a soul to prevent
it--but----”
He shrugged his shoulders, and gave up the tangle.
“Well?” asked Noll.
“Well, he goes and walks before her doorway every evenin’, as the
twilight falls, and sometimes they take a stroll together. And--by the
same token! she lives in the same house where Miss Betty lodges----”
Noll rose to his feet.
“Where?”
The barber was startled.
Noll strode up to him:
“Where does Miss Betty live?” he asked, hoarsely.
The little barber gazed at him:
“It isn’t ghosts ye are seeing, Mr. Noll?” he asked.
Noll put his hand on the other’s shoulder:
“Quick, man--where is the house?”
“Ah, now--Mr. Noll--ye’re pullin’ the innocent leg of me,” he said,
laughing.
Noll pulled himself together. He strode to the door.
“Quick, Devlin--for God’s sake! Which way does--the--the man of pallid
ideals usually go?” he asked roughly.
The barber followed him to the street, and standing in the lamp-lit
dusk he pointed out the way:
“Up there, till ye reach that turn by the red pillar-box, then sharp
to the right--then straight on till ye---- Begad, he’s off like a
policeman down the kitchen steps when the area belle’s a-ringing----”
He stood gaping at the vanishing figure of the youth who strode up the
street.
The little man’s jaw dropped.
“Oh, murder!”
He scratched his poll aghast:
“Mother of God!” said he--“of coorse! Victoria May Alice told
me--there’s been a misunderstandin’--or maybe even a partin’--or some
heathen tom-noddy----”
He walked into his shop soberly.
“Mike Devlin,” said he--and he rubbed his chin ruefully: “ye’ve put
your great damn foot slap into the big drum of the farcical tragedy.”
Noll strode out. In the glimmering grey of the hustling world he
tramped; but the hush was alive with whispers--and the blood was
jumping in him.
He caught sight at last of the distant back of the Man of Pallid Ideals.
He turned, after some walking, into one of those silent streets that
give off the noisy thoroughfare of the roaring city, and by the
silence he knew that he was in a street where lodgings are. At once he
slackened pace, for, a hundred strides before him, walked slowly the
slender Man of Pallid Ideals, who at last halted, stood a little while
looking up at a window across the street, sighed, and passed brooding
into the twilight beyond.
Not so Noll.
He marked the halting-place, paced the distance, and swung round
towards the house opposite.
In the topmost window was a light; and Noll knew that by that light was
Betty sitting--that the light was on her nut-brown hair--kissing her
cheek----
He strode straight across the road, and rang the bell.
When the maid opened the door, Noll said:
“I wish to see Miss Betty Modeyne at once, please--lead the way to her
rooms.”
The maid, used to the unquestioning obedience of orders, when
given with authority, led the way upstairs, regardless of all the
proprieties, careless of etiquette....
Arrived at the topmost landing, she threw open the door:
“A visitor to see you, miss,” cried she, wheezy at the high climb;
admitted the handsome youth; and forthwith took herself off, descending
to her household furbishings and area gossip.
Betty, rising from her chair, set aside some needlework, and turned to
greet. She saw the youth standing before the closed door, his back to
it.
She put her white hands upon her bosom.
“Noll!” she whispered; and a glad smile of wonder was in her eyes; and
the red blood flushed her cheek and lip.
Noll went to her and put his arms about her, and kissed her upon the
mouth. And he said never a word.
CHAPTER XL
_Which, in Somewhat Indelicate Eavesdropping Fashion, hovers about a
Trysting-Place, and Scandalously Repeats a Private Conversation_
In the wintry twilight that came hazing softly down upon the city, and
cast its dusky shadow over St. James’s Park, sat Noll on a bench, and
by his side was Betty Modeyne. He sat stooped forward, elbow on knee,
chin in hand, and gazed at the girl’s face lovingly.
“Thou dearest heart!” said he; and she reached out her dainty gloved
hand and took his within her slender fingers.
“Betty,” said he, “you have brought delight to me again--the day and
night are full of song and all the world is grown musical--you paint
the very greys of life with colour. I am glad to be alive--for you feed
my eyes with dreams of you and my senses with the fragrance of you. It
would be enough to be alive, but you have filled me with eagerness, my
bones with strength, my body with will.... I cannot sit idle longer,
nor be content with half-life.... You must marry me, dear heart; and we
will go to Paris and begin living splendidly and a-new.”
“Hush, Noll,” said she, smiling down upon him; and she stroked his
hand. “We are so young, and--I am so glad----”
He laughed for love of her:
“You would not have us grow old in pretty nothingness, thou dearest of
all born things,” he said impatiently--“like the Man of Pallid Ideals
and his little faded poetess, dreaming themselves away in a fragile
world of dreams! My Betty, it cannot be.”
She shook her head provokingly.
He pshawed:
“We do not live by denials alone, you sweet dreamer,” said he, feeding
his eyes upon her eyes--“we are here to live our life--not to shirk
the living.... Our feet are planted on the dear brown earth, and only
so may we raise our heads amongst the stars.... They prate of other
worlds who themselves after all only judge of other worlds by the
glorious life that their dullard eyes so scorn in this.... They hold
out heavens to us! but what trumpet blast of all the sepulchral souls
in heaven shall stir a man like the touch of your dear lips?”
“Sweetheart,” said she--“I did not say I did not love your lips.”
He laughed quietly, kissing her gloved fingers:
“Are not your very hands exquisitely fashioned but to steal away a
man’s heart, my Betty? Why does your white self hold me enthralled
unless it be that I may love you--not the vague image of you?”
Betty laughed happily:
“Well, Noll,” said she--“if you forget me as wholly as you have done
these two years, I can almost bear it!”
“You were becoming obliterated, sweetheart,” said he hoarsely--“yet
you were not leaving me free. Other women’s skirts were rustling in
my ears, but your fragrance came between. Now these others are all
silent--I hear only you. You must set me no dullard task of loving a
vague image of you. I love you, dear heart--and I must love you. I want
nothing more. I will have nothing less.”
He was silent for awhile; and she held his fingers lovingly.
He roused:
“They speak gravely of the vague loves of gods and angels; but what
is all their thin love to the love of a man for a woman? What do the
unbodied gods know that is half so sweet as the love of a woman for a
child?”
Betty smiled:
“Noll,” said she--“you are wasting argument upon me--I love you.”
He raised her gloved hand to his lips and kissed the warm fingers:
“I have only drifted--aimlessly,” he said. “But I am done with this
monk’s life. This day three weeks you come with me to Paris, mated to
me. And I will go through my apprenticeship to art and letters and win
a wage at the same time.”
“But--Noll! you must not throw away a certainty--you have an
allowance----”
The young fellow’s face darkened:
“I discovered from my father, only yesterday, what was the price of
Wyntwarde’s allowance to me--and I have written to my cousin that he
may keep his money--I go my own way.... He is a man that stands hotly
enough on the nobility of his blood; I asked him what was the benefit
to me of that blood if it bound me to menial practices. I told him I
would be no paid accomplice of his, or any other man’s--that I will pay
him back his services to me before I count myself a free man----”
“But, Noll----”
“I know what you are going to ask, Betty. No; my father and I did not
part on the best of terms. I did not think that my father would have
sold my freedom.”
Betty sighed.
Noll heard the sigh, and came out of his brooding fit.
He took her hand:
“Nay, Betty,” said he--“we must not fill this dear trysting-place with
glum ghosts. I love you, sweetheart--and I have no love for such as
would rob me of you.”
“But, Noll”--the tears came brimming to her eyes--“I do not want my
love to be a pain to all these others.”
“You have done nothing to give them pain, dear heart,” said he. “They
have brought their own pain.... Why did my father sell me? It is not
you that come between us, but the shabby husk of him.... The last
generation cannot wholly understand. Each new brood must live its own
experience. Why should he put the brutalities between you and me? He
is not your lover, nor can his choice of loves be mine.... There are
limits to obedience. They have nearly starved me, body and soul--they
have, by their folly, even turned my hungry eyes to the poor women
of the streets. And for so poor a reason.... But”--he looked at her
gladly--“you have won me back myself, dear heart--the world is very
sweet to me this day.”
She bent forward and put her dainty hand upon his cheek:
“I love you, Noll--but I wish we had not to steal our meetings.”
“It is not your fault, Betty--nor mine. They force us to these secret
ways.... I was glad to spend my boyhood openly by your side--I loved
you, not knowing it. And they must needs break into our pleasant garden
and put us apart--and set us brooding on the very glory they would keep
us from. And now what was a pleasant glamour, by their starving of
it, has burnt into flaming passion. I am no longer content to see you
beautiful by my side; I must kiss you. I love you, Betty--the rest is
nothing. We’ll leave the reasons and the excusings to the calculating
gods.”
He took her hand, and pressed the fingers between his own.
And she laughed happily:
“The disreputable part of it all is that I love you for it, Noll,” she
said.
He arose, and gave her his hand:
“Come, Betty, I fear you may get chilled,” he said; “you see”--he
smiled--“I can even set love’s egotism aside, when yours is the gain,
and deny myself the sweetest moments----”
She gave him her hand and arose; and they walked into the twilit city
together.
That night, by the candle-light in his narrow lodging, Noll wrote a
letter to Paris, whereby Horace was urged to bestir himself and find
rooms for a youth and his bride.
CHAPTER XLI
_Which discovers something of Despised Poetry in a Waste-paper Basket_
Noll, the door having closed on Betty’s skirts, took his way in the
darkness of the lamp-lit night towards Soho.
He turned to his most loyal and closest friend to secure him as witness
to his marriage.
As he went, the young fellow forestalled in his mind all the questions
that Gomme’s searching humour might ask. Why was he going to Paris? He
scarcely knew. He had some vague idea that he must see life before the
creative gift of artistry could be his. He had some even more vague
idea that he would see such life in Paris. His instinct told him that
life would be easier for Betty there--she would not suffer slight. He
knew that life would be gayer at a far smaller price. His young blood
was jumping for a change.
He must be moving--doing.
He roused at Gomme’s doorway, ran up the steps, and rang the bell.
The house was in gloomy darkness, and, the door being opened, there
stepped into the resulting blackness the grim grey figure of Netherby’s
mother.
“Ah, Mrs. Gomme, how are you?”
The youth hailed her, and entered the hall. And he added, as the door
was closed behind him:
“You look unhappy, Mrs. Gomme.”
The old lady sighed:
“I am feeling a little lonely, Noll.”
“Isn’t Netherby in?” he asked.
Her mouth shut firmly:
“No,” she said.
“Gone out?”
“Gone out,” she answered grimly.
“Do you know where?”
“No,” she said. “He has gone to meet some fool of a girl.”
Noll whistled:
“Oho!” said he.
“Quite so.”
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“Who?” asked Noll.
“God only knows. But come in here, Noll,” said the old lady; and
led him into her little sitting-room. She lit the gas; went to her
writing-table; took a rumpled piece of paper out of a drawer, and
handed it to Noll.
Noll smoothed out the piece of paper, glanced at the grim old face
before him from under his brows; and read:
“There’s glory in my dear love’s hair,
Sweet fragrance hath great part in it;
The threads have caught my feet in lair,
And tangled is my heart in it.
The beckoning laughter in her eyes
(With the shy look therein)
Now wins me to her, then denies
The sweet lips and the chin....”
The old lady watched the reading keenly.
When it was finished, she said:
“I found that in his waste-paper basket.”
“Oh, fie! Mrs. Gomme!”
Noll handed her back the sheet of crumpled paper.
The old lady flung it into the fire; she sat down in her armchair and
watched it burn.
Noll smiled:
“Ah, Mrs. Gomme--when a man is in love with a woman he does not write
poetry about it--he does it. When a man writes poetry about love, he is
not in love with love, but with reputation.”
The old lady shook her head grimly:
“If it began like _that_,” said she, unheeding of arguments, and
jealous, brooding still--“what must the rest have been like?”
Noll laughed, and put his hand on the old lady’s shoulder:
“Ah! Mrs. Gomme--the girl has probably followed your example--you see,
the last generation set such a bad example in these things....”
CHAPTER XLII
_Wherein we are shown an Emotional Hairdresser at Loggerheads with
Destiny_
It was close upon midnight when Noll, baffled in his attempt to find
Gomme, his feet jigging restlessly to a new music that was in his ears,
stepped it out through London town, as a man will go on the eve of
momentous decision in his life, to visit the old haunts of his boyhood.
As he came into the street where had been his old home, he wondered
whether his mother lay asleep--what she was doing--what thinking.
He saw a light in her rooms; walked across the street; halted before
the door, half inclined to take her into his delight----
In the black shadows flung by the street lamp there sat in a huddle on
the topmost doorstep the silent figure of a man.
Noll bent forward and peered at him:
“Devlin?”
The barber nodded; he was very pale.
He attempted to speak--uttered a rending hiccup--and was still.
“What are you doing here?”
Devlin hiccupped:
“Sittin’ on my--mistress’s--doorstep.”
“Why?”
“To cool the ferment of my imagination,” said the barber sadly.
Noll laughed:
“What’s the matter with your imagination?” he asked. “It looks all
right.”
“It’s torrid----”
“Oho!”
His pale face nodded:
“Quite so--quite damned torrid,” said the hairdresser, and hiccupped
fearsomely. “It ferments.”
“Rather unpleasant!” said Noll.
“On the contr’y,” said the barber--“quite pleasant.... It’s in the
morning my head will be bursting.”
“Very awkward indeed!” said Noll drily, humouring him.
“Of awkward I know nothing,” said the barber--“but it will be more than
unpleasant when the cock-y-doo’s begin their--hiccup--morning song.
Damn this hiccup!”
“Come, Devlin--wake up!”
Devlin laughed sadly:
“I wish them lamps would stop sliding down the street. Would you mind,”
said he--“I’m afraid it’s a great trouble I’m putting ye to--would you
mind givin’ me your arm?”
“Why?”
Devlin blinked:
“The man who is intoxicated with love should avoid mixing his
intoxication with spirits.... I want to take my head carefully in both
hands and put it in yon horse-trough.”
“Don’t be an ass, Devlin,” said Noll, and sat down beside him on the
step. “What’s the meaning of all this?”
The barber coughed:
“It’s anarchic I am--and filled with philosophic gloom,” he said. “It’s
rollin’ round the intestines of me----”
“Oho! This is serious indeed!”
“It is.... It’s damn terrible.... I’m all at sea--like a great bumping
motor-cart going down a great slithery waterfall.”
“Bad as that?” said Noll.
“It’s worse than that,” said Devlin, and hiccupped. “I wish I could get
rid of this damn hiccup,” he added irritably--“it nearly pushes me off
the steps each time.”
“Well, Devlin--can nothing be done for you?”
“It can. And I’m doing it.”
“What?”
“I’m face to face with my great hairy destiny, and, begod, I’ve hit it
and floored it.”
“But that is rather rough treatment of your destiny!”
“The divil take it, yes. I’ve kicked it out of my life.”
Noll put his hand on the other’s shoulder:
“Come, Devlin,” he said--“let us have good honest talk. What’s the
trouble between you and your destiny?”
Devlin coughed:
“Well, sir; it’s this way.” He tried to tell off the points under
discussion upon his fingers; but, missing his aim, he sadly gave up
gesticulation, and put his hands in his pockets. “Ye see, sir, life
is only once for the living. That’s a square fact on a fine solid
foundation. Even the Presbyterians, God forgive them, can’t get round
that with any number of testimonials--nor the Methodies can’t leap that
obstruction.... Well, that’s so anyway. That’s the sort of statement on
which all the churches meet--the sort of statement that don’t strain
the bowels of any tax-payin’ householder to grip between his two fists
and look at with the two unblinking eyes in his head.... Now, I, Mike
Devlin, said to myself--hiccup--said I--why should this whole mortal
journey of me be passed in cuttin’ the stray bits of hair off every
damned fool whose hair grows? and wid that, up gets Echo on his hind
legs in the dirty old shop and answers: why indeed?... Then, by the
holy army of martyrs, up comes the trump of doom and starts buglin’ in
me ears like the leadin’ trombone in the band of a travellin’ circus:
Mike, me boy, says the trump, there’ll be a funeral one day, and the
shabby section of the world that lives in your dirty old sooty street
will be passing by the ugly corpse of ye, one by one, and they’ll stare
at the damn comical old relics of ye, and say: And this man was contint
to crawl through life and sneak into his grave clippin’ the hair off
the head of any ass every week, rain or sunshine, for a triflin’ and
mean remuneration!... And wid that, I scratched me head, and thinks
Mike Devlin to himself, thinks he: begod, it’s a queer kind of poetry
ye’re livin’, says he; and wid that he up and kicked me destiny in the
intestines and drapped the hair-cuttin’.”
“When was that, Devlin?”
Devlin hiccupped:
“It might have been three days ago; and it might have been less; but it
seems a godlike fortnight av dreams interspersed wid hiccup and one or
two nightmares, Mr. Noll.”
“And what are you going to do, Devlin?”
“Live,” said the emotional hairdresser splendidly.
“Hoho!” said Noll.
“I mean to live--to take the stage in the drama of life,” said the
barber largely; and he swept his hand towards the pitchy reek of the
slumbering universe. “There’s a great hairy soul in me, tearin’ to get
out--and it’s above hair-cuttin’. I am moved with the spirit of art.”
He hiccupped, apologized, and went on: “I have joined me life with the
legitimate drama--I mean to dance the mighty fling of man’s destiny to
the tune of a nightly orchestra. I go out to-morrow wid a theatrical
company to play the immortal masterpieces of Mr. Sheridan, Doctor
Goldsmith, and the Swan of Avon. And, by the gospels, Victoria May
Alice goes with me.”
Noll whistled.
Devlin scowled:
“That’s so,” said he. “It’s an ignominious destiny she’s got a
holt of--cleanin’ the boots of mediocrities and lodgers.... I’ve
been christenin’ the great event all week wid the heavy man of the
company--but I lost the fellow about Tuesday----”
Noll coughed:
“And--er--is Victoria May Alice to be your lawfully wedded wife,
Devlin?”
“Well, sir--of course it would have been more dramatic not. I’ve
struggled with the damned poetry in me; but, in case of the children
comin’, I thought I’d have a commonplace corner in me destiny and the
marriage certificate.” He leaned over confidentially. “Ye see, sir--no
one in the profession need know.”
Noll nodded:
“And--er--what part are you to play, Devlin?”
“I begin as baggage man,” he said loftily--“risin’ to great parts
according to me genius.”
“And Victoria May Alice?”
“Next to being married to me,” he said with dignity--“begad it’s
wardrobe mistress she starts at--straight away--wid a chance of walkin’
on the boards as a silent duchess if the leadin’ lady’s understudy gits
the nervous prostration.... By the glory of God, as the heavy man says,
it’s a great life--wid great chances--excitin’ as a dog-fight, wid the
great passions jostlin’ each other in the seat of yer emotions, like a
blurry tom-cat knockin’ the ornamental feathers out of a barndoor fowl.”
CHAPTER XLIII
_Wherein we catch a Glimpse of the Benefits that accrue to a Sound
Commercial Education_
Sir Pompey Malahide’s old rival was in all the agony of writing a
letter, and neither Isaac Tankerton Wollup’s fat little hands with the
grasping pointed finger-tips, nor his bulky body, nor his spelling,
aided too well in the recording of his talents on paper. The company
promoter held a cigar between the forefinger and second of the hand
that held down the sheet of paper to the desk, and he blew and drew the
breath of his body whistling through a thick nose as he snored over his
labour:
“DEAR SAMUEL” (he writes to his friend the money-lender at
Oxford)--“Nephew Reuben McCubbie whispers me that the old lord has
done the handsome thing by the young Baddlesmere cub; and that is
as I said it should be. By the Christian gods, I should have been
a minor prophet in the clear air of Jerusalem, and might even have
got into the Talmud--but we live in dull days. London’s a sooty hole
when all is said--even intellect shows dimly, except on the Stock
Exchange. Greatness has to bump against the neck of the Anglo-Saxon
race before the Anglo-Saxon race sees it. Therefore I am neglected.
But I am worried just now with the details of an affair that forces
itself upon me even more prominently than my obesity.
My great illustrated paper has now been going for nigh six months.
All the little pen-and-ink gods of criticism agree that it is the
most artistic, the most brilliant, the best produced thing in the
market--all agree even more that it has shown up the tawdry vulgarity
of Pompey Malahide’s literary debauches. But--it has cost ten
thousand pun!!!!! Please note the hysterisks. It’s quite as bad as
all that. Not a one of the artists has been paid--nor not a one of
the literary gents. I was not born for nothing--nor the bankruptcy
laws made to thwart commercial genius. I got them to go in on sharing
terms for the first six months--the profit as well as the risk to be
theirs instead of going into the pockets of sordid city men. See?
I played the full brass band of self-interest to their conceit and
greed--which, Samuel, I fear is at the bottom of much human nature,
even outside Judea. Well, the trade is a-owing to the harmonious tune
of eight thousand pun. And the trade has decided to stop the concern
and divide what shilling in the poundage is owing thereto.
I am the trade. See?
The McCubbie syndicate. See?
I don’t appear. See?
So don’t you burst into tears for me. I lured the boys with dreams
beyond avarice--I showed them Pomp Malahide and the girls driving by!
They gave their genius whole--like the gentlemen they are.
Well, we have failed to elevate journalism. It must lapse back into
its old sordid channels.
Meanwhile, I am about to put in a bailiff in the name of the
McCubbie printing syndicate upon the carved oak chest in the hall of
our superior friend, Bartholomew Doome--that lordly person, being
always backed with money in some mysterious way, having confessed,
pathetic fact, that he had absolutely no settled income beyond what
he makes from year to year by the exercise of his talents. Not that
I have anything against the youth--I rather like the Nobs; but them
tapestries! real goblins, my boy! they are mine.... And the pictures!
Bouchers are running into five figures at the sale-rooms; Samuel,
they are mine. And as for the Watteau--what ho! _And_ the Adams and
Chippendale and Louis furniture and the whole splendid treasure!
You could almost kiss it, Samuel--well, I think that we are going
to get our eight thousand back, God be praised. But it will be the
Sabbath in seven minutes, so I must cease from honest labour--and I
prepare to do so in a reverent spirit, for it is one of the brightest
Friday afternoons I have spent since you and me played marbles in the
Minories.
God be merciful to you a sinner.
Yours, in the plentitude of my powers,
I. TANKERTON WOLLUP.”
When, in the early morning, Fluffy Reubens, yawning in a loose
dressing-gown as he shuffled along muttering guttural curses at the
violent ringing of the bell, opened the outer door of Doome’s studio,
and thrust out a tousled head, a melancholy man came in with the milk,
walked gloomily to the oak chest in the hall, and took possession.
Fluffy Reubens shut the door, went over to the seated man, and,
thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his dressing-gown, and
straddling out his legs, stood and gazed at him:
“Whee-hee-hewy-hewy-hewy!” whistled he.
The cadaverous sickly-looking fellow on the oak chest, watching him
suspiciously out of anxious eyes, searched in the breast pocket of his
dingy coat, and handed him a sheet of blue paper.
Fluffy Reubens kicked it out of his hand; and the sickly person ducked
his head and raised a defensive elbow:
“Chuck it, guv’nor,” he said hoarsely--and coughed.
“Don’t talk slang!” said Fluffy Reubens. “What’s your name?”
“Sickers,” said the sickly person.
“Who gave you that name?”
“What are yer gettin’ at, guv’nor?”
“Well, look here, Sick Horse----” “By thunder, sick-horse is good.” And
he added: “Who are you?”
“A bailiff, sir.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am.”
“Well?”
“I’m getting used to shame, guv’nor.” The man was seized with a fit of
coughing.
“You look beastly nervous, Sick-horse. You’d think I was going to kick
you from behind.”
Sickers sighed gloomily:
“The last gentleman did,” he said hoarsely; and added, with a dry
throat: “It’s a very assailable calling, sir.”
“Look here, Sick-horse,” said Reubens--“I want you to go out and send a
telegram for me.”
“Oh, no, you don’t, guv’nor.” The man smiled cunningly, laughing a
husky laugh.
“Why not?”
“Well--yer see, guv’nor--when I’ve got my back on a oak chest--well--I
know where I are.”
Reubens laughed loud and long:
“You ass,” roared he--“I’ve only got slippers on.”
“I’d rather not, guv’nor--if yer don’t mind.”
Fluffy Reubens gazed at him:
“Sick-horse,” said he, “don’t move. I’ll be back again in a minute.
Stay like that for awhile--you look terrific in that light--sort of
Judas Iscariot in the gloom wishing to God he hadn’t taken the money.”
He strolled off into the great studio and returned with a canvas and
painting materials, and a large yellow official paper. He put the
things on the floor, drew up a chair, and, shading his eyes with his
hand, tried several views of the uncomfortable man.
Sitting down at last, he began rapidly, with swift telling strokes of
colour, to sketch in an impression of the dejected figure before him
where he sat in the deep shadows of the ill-lit place.
“By the way, Sick-horse,” said he--“I suppose I must put you down in
the census-paper--you are going to stay the night, of course.”
“Ye--yes, sir,” said the man.
“So am I--Mr. Doome has lent me his studio, so let us begin. We’ve got
your name and your calling. Are you of unsound mind?”
The man laughed huskily:
“You needn’t put it at that, sir,” said he.
“You’ve got a fizzing fine suicidal look on you, when you don’t smile,
Sick-horse,” said Fluffy, painting away. “I’ve been pining for a good
Judas Iscariot for years.... Don’t shift more than you can help.... Oh,
about the census. Are you married?”
The pale-faced man nodded gloomily--he was.
“Tut, tut! How dreadful!” said Fluffy. “No wonder you’re ashamed of
yourself. What’s become of the wife?”
“She’s alive,” he said gloomily.
Fluffy Reubens coughed:
“No luck,” said he. “Any children?”
“Fourteen.”
“Good God!” said Fluffy Reubens.
“I don’t always think so, guv’nor,” said the melancholy figure from the
shadows.
Reubens painted in silence for a long time. At last he got up and
looked keenly at the man:
“Empty?” he asked.
The bailiff nodded--yes, he was very empty--he was always empty--he was
used to it.
“Look here, Sick-horse, you look so damn dramatic I must not put
anything into you for half an hour yet--I haven’t quite finished. But
after that we’ll have breakfast, eh?”
The man smiled.
Fluffy Reubens jumped up, upsetting his canvas:
“For God’s sake, don’t do that!” cried he anxiously; “or we’re lost....
Quick! think of something else--think the coffee’s burnt--think the
eggs are addled----”
He flung down his brush:
“Damnation! Judas Iscariot is dead,” he said.
He went to the hall-door, bawled for the woman who looked after the
house, and ordered breakfast from an eating-house close by:
“For two,” he called.
He gathered up the painting things sadly, to carry them into the great
studio.
The gloomy man on the oak chest coughed:
“I’m real sorry, guv’nor; I’ll try the God-forsaken lay again,” said
the wretched man huskily; “but I wish to God you hadn’t mentioned them
sausages.”
“No,” said Fluffy Reubens--“it would never be the same thing--and I
haven’t the heart to kick you--even if it brought back Judas Iscariot.”
Later in the morning, Fluffy Reubens wrote a telegram to Bartholomew
Doome:
“Bailiff in possession. Order a supper for about thirty here this
evening. Whisk round London in cab and make all the boys come to an
orgy. The bailiff looks ripping in that gorgeous livery out of your
property wardrobe. The shoes do not fit, but his elastic-sided boots
look stunning quaint at the end of the white stockings. Was afraid
I’d never get his feet through the legs of the red plush breeches. I
will do the rest.
FLUFFY.”
He wrote another to Rippley.
CHAPTER XLIV
_Wherein a Palace of Art disappears in the Night_
Bartholomew Doome’s great studio was in a haze with the smoking of much
tobacco; and it were almost as though the lolling figures had smoked in
church.
The tapestried walls showed sombrely rich, their glowing colour only
half revealed by the ghostly light of the huge white candles that
flamed on high, held aloft by great gilt candlesticks the heavily
wrought feet of which stood reflected on the dark-stained floor. And
the handsome sheaves of crystal lustres that hung from the ceiling
glittered and sparkled aloft like hundreds of precious gems.
The beautiful image of the Mary and the spangled ikons of the Russian
Church, which stood on the suavely carved mantel, flanked by the pastel
of a ballet-girl by Degas, and a frail nude beauty by Manet, gleamed
mysterious--religious.
Before the mantel, on huge iron dogs, was set a scarlet coffin.
On the scarlet coffin sat Bartholomew Doome.
About the room, seated at tables, young fellows were bawling a drinking
chorus.
Before Doome stood the weak-kneed figure of the bailiff, gorgeous in an
ill-fitting livery that was a world too capacious for his meagre body.
As the drunken fellow held the tankard of beer aloft he made a supreme
effort to take a last high note--his voice cracked--he spilled the
liquor on his upraised face, spluttered, coughed, tripped over his own
feet, and fell--amidst a shout of laughter and loud cries of “Encore”
from the assembled throng.
Rippley and Fluffy Reubens carried the fallen man to a sofa and laid
him upon it.
There was a lull in the riot; and in the lull there arose from his
chair, unsteadily, the figure of Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, rather
the worse for drink. Holding a glass in his hand, he straddled over to
Doome, where he sat on the scarlet coffin, and he uttered a silly laugh
as he brought his vague legs to an unsteady halt.
“Hullo, Ffolliott!” cried Doome. “What is it?”
Ffolliott blew through dry red lips:
“Civilization,” said he, with a racking hiccup--“civilization (hiccup)
has its drawbacks.”
“Yes, Ffolliott.” Doome laughed. “Civilization has its drawbacks--there
is the hand mirror.”
Ffolliott came nearer, and, disregarding the insinuation, added with
drunken confidence:
“D’you know, Doome--you don’t mind my saying so--but I believe you’re
engaged.”
“Nonsense, Ffolliott!”
Doome got up from his grim bench and slapped the weak-limbed exquisite
a sounding thump on the narrow shoulders with heavy jocular hand’s
buffet, so that he spilled the liquor down the front of him.
Ffolliott, when he had wiped himself dry with dandified handkerchief,
said:
“Oh--it’s no use your pretending to be so colossally gay, you know.
I always notice that when a fellow makes a delirious fool of himself
(hiccup) about a woman (hiccup) he becomes austere--morally austere.”
“Hiccup!” said Rippley; and there was loud applause at the tables.
Doome laughed:
“You were always a comic ass, Ffolliott,” said he--“but when did you
degenerate into a philosopher?”
“Oh, yes--get me off the rails, of course! But I always notice
that when a fellow makes a delirious fool of himself about a woman
(hiccup)--fool enough, I mean, to become engaged--he becomes mollar’ly
(hic)--mollarly austere.”
“Oh, damn!” said Doome.
Ffolliott raised drunken eyelids:
“But saying damn can go with great moral austerity.” He paused and
uttered a giggle. “That’s an epigram, I think,” he said.
“What on earth are you jabbering about, Ffolliott?”
Ffolliott stuck to his theme with drunken persistence.
“A fellow who is engaged doesn’t seem to laugh at the same places in
the _comedy of life_ that he laughs at before he is engaged.”
“Get on, Ffolliott--get on. You talk like Euclid trying to invent a
comic song.”
Ffolliott blinked:
“I’ve always noticed,” said he--“that a fellow does not become really
austere until he is engaged....” He sighed heavily. “I know such a good
chap, who’s become engaged. He used to read the _Pink Un_; but now he
reads _The Descent of Man_.”
“Shush!” said Doome impatiently.
Ffolliott giggled:
“D’you know,” said he--“I started to tell him such a comic story
to-day--by George, I’ll tell it to _you_,” he tittered. “You know how
ridiculous a woman with a pronounced nose looks in a bathing-dress!
Well. But--perhaps I’d better not tell you--I’m _sure_ you’re
engaged----”
Doome slapped the narrow shoulders again with jovial hand, and sent
more liquor flying down Ffolliott’s trousers:
“By Hermes, you are a clever fellow, Ffolliott,” said he.
“Oh, no--not always,” bleated the affected voice of Ffolliott--“I’m
rather deliriously clever at times--in a flukey sort of way. I don’t
mean to be. It’s hereditary. My mother’s uncle was a rural dean, you
know, and----”
“But why do you wear an eyeglass?”
Ffolliott simpered:
“Foljambe of Baliol was the most pronounced man at the ’varsity; he is
the most pronounced man at the bar--and Foljambe wears an eyeglass.”
“_Does_ he?”
“Rather,” bleated Ffolliott. “And though, between you and me (hiccup),
Foljambe’s a conceited ass, he is rather a remarkable ass; and I don’t
know whether you have noticed it (hiccup), but in these days it takes
rather a clever fellow to be a _remarkable_ ass.”
Doome smote Ffolliott a rollicking buffet, that sent more liquor down
his trousers:
“By the Greek gods,” cried Doome, “we are having a roaring evening, eh?
Hang me, we are only bachelors once--so we’ll make gay whilst the moon
shines. Damn it, you shall sing.”
“Oh, yes; I’ll sing. I can’t--but I will----”
Fluffy Reubens came up and pushed Ffolliott aside roughly:
“Hist!” said he--“Doome, the bailiff’s asleep....” He turned round and
called in a loud whisper: “Rippley!”
“’Ullo!”
“Have you got the furniture vans all ready?”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“In my studio,” said Rippley. “I hope to Jupiter the horses haven’t
knocked the stuffing out of my stattoos. I tipped the men to stay all
night.”
“Splendid! Get ’em round, Rip, quick--by the back way, and into the
court here--the door of the dressing-room opens into the court, and was
made for taking big pictures through. There’s not a moment to lose.”
Rippley hurried out of the room.
“Quick, boys--one of you lock the hall door after Rippley!” cried
Fluffy Reubens hoarsely; “we’ve got to pack out the whole parcel of
toys in a couple of hours.”
He flung off his coat, and began to roll up a great Persian carpet.
In the early morning, the sleeping bailiff was roused by a rude hand
upon his shoulders.
“Get up!” said a rough voice.
He sat up, untidy, frowsy, weak-eyed, snuffling and grumbling in the
ridiculous gorgeousness of the ill-fitting livery.
He rubbed his eyes:
“God!” said he hoarsely.
His jaw dropped; and he stared miserably round the room.
Before him stood the vulgar overdressed figure of Mr. Isaac Tankerton
Wollup, with his choleric eyes fixed upon him, bullock-like, bloodshot:
“You blighter!” said Mr. Isaac Tankerton Wollup.
The miserable man rubbed his drowsy eyes--he rubbed them again. His
mouth was too dry to utter speech.
He was sitting on the top of a scarlet coffin, that stood on two
chairs; and, with the solitary exception of these things, the room was
wholly empty of furnishment.
He burst into tears.
“You bleating idiot!” The vulgar dealer’s eyes snapped contempt. “The
house is empty as a money-lender’s unwritten promise. They loaded the
vans in the night; and you slept through it all!... Get your legs out
o’ the light!”
He struck the lean shins with his cane.
The poor abject fellow cried out, and, rising, like a whipped cur he
slunk across the room, buried his face in his arm, and sobbed against
the wall.
The bloodshot eyes of the company-promoter, as he stooped down putting
his thick hands on his great fat thighs, peered at the white paint on
the side of the scarlet coffin; there had been no haste, every letter
was balanced and well-drawn, and the whole phrase told decoratively on
the scarlet lacquer: _Art in England is dead_, it said. _Try France._
The little fat man laughed harshly. He shook his head:
“I don’t know how the Beelzebub I shall break this musical comedy to
Samuel.... Overreached in my own business and by a Christian!”
He walked gloomily out of the place.
* * * * *
After the irate dealer had departed, his miserable bailiff ceased his
sobbing against the wall, took off the gorgeous coat, and staunched his
tears on the sleeve of his tattered shirt. He was a broken figure of
dejection--blear-eyed, weak-kneed, ragged, snuffling.
He changed into his old clothes, went and seated himself on the scarlet
coffin, and crouched there, a woe-begone wonderer in despair.
He burst into tears.
He put his grimy hand into the side-pocket of his greasy coat for a
handkerchief--it struck against a sheet of paper.
He blew his nose on a rag, soiled to mud-colour, unfolded the paper,
and read it:
_“If you should be dismissed from employment, communicate with Sir
Pompey Malahide’s butler, who will see to it that you do not suffer.
Don’t forget to call him my lord. Ecod, you sang like a damned
canary.”_
CHAPTER XLV
_Wherein a Poet burns his Verse to keep his Feet Warm_
In the waning of a bleak March day, Betty walked briskly home to her
rooms. It was the eve of her marriage. Noll and she were to go to Paris
straight from the ceremony. Betty had the tickets for the journey in
her pocket. Horace had secured them lodgings.
When the girl had entered the house, mounting the stairs to her attic,
she felt a pang. She was going to a glorious life, and leaving the old
home to increasing dinginess--it would become shabbier and more shabby;
whilst she--stepped it blithely to the seven heavens.
And the little faded Miss Flora! Who was to tend her?...
The mirth went out of her heart.
Someone must always suffer.
She stopped at the door, and knocked.
She had some flowers at her belt--she would leave them for the little
lady--she must see her again before she went. More----
She must break the tidings.
She knocked again--the knock of indecision.
Not a sound.
She opened the door gently, and entered.
In the room, in her old-world taffeta-covered chair, before the fire,
very still, sat Miss Flora Jennyns; and the girl knew by the quick
instinct within her that Death waited at the window.
About the narrow shoulders was drawn the India shawl, the weary hand
holding the overlapping ends at the withered throat; and on the third
finger of the hand was the ring of splendid jewels that sparkled in
paint in the picture beyond her.
Here was the picture--grown old--vanishing.
And the old shoe that peeped from the crumpled threadbare skirts upon
the quaint old wool-worked footstool--ah, how shabby! worn with careful
brushings--of what gentle uncomplaining penury were these things not
sign and emblem!
So she sat, fading away in the winter’s light, her dying eyes on the
fire’s warmth, and her lips smiling on her little triumphs of long
ago--a little withered roseleaf, blown across the footlights of the
world’s rude theatre.
Betty ran to her, knelt down beside her, and touched the pale white
hand that lay upon the chair’s arm:
“Miss Flora!” she whispered in a strange wonder and alarm.
“Mother of God!” the old lady’s lips murmured--“the child is come!”
She smiled; put out her slender bloodless fingers, and placed them upon
the girl’s fresh brown hair:
“Dear sweet heart!” said she--“in my love for thee, and in thy
gentleness to me, I have known something of motherhood.... I have
not--been--wholly--barren.”
Betty took the bloodless hand between hers, kissed it and chafed it. It
was very cold. She could not speak for tears.
The old eyes smiled upon the girl. After a while the dying poetess
added:
“Nor have I been wholly alone.”
She sighed; and, with a smile, she died.
Betty, her eyes filled with tears, put out her dainty milk-white hand,
with rosy fingers, to the dead eyelids and drew down the blinds that
curtained the windows of the departed soul.
In the deepening dusk, Betty went out to find Eustace Lovegood.... She
mounted the bare creaking stairs to his lodgings, and reaching his high
attic, was glad to hear his deep-voiced growl to enter at her knocking.
The big man, in a threadbare dressing-gown, arose, with his wonted
grand manner, to welcome her; and when he saw who was his visitor his
heavy face was lighted with a smile:
“Mistress Betty!” said he--“by all that’s charming!”
He came to her and, the greetings over, with courtly etiquette led her
to his chair--it was the only one in all the bare room.
“You look serious,” he said--“sit down and tell me.”
Betty hesitated:
“There is something on fire--a smell of paper burning,” she said.
Lovegood laughed his big laugh:
“I am making coffee,” he said.
She saw that the kettle in the narrow fireplace was being heated by
burning balls of crumpled manuscript.
“But why do you heat the kettle with paper?” she asked.
He smiled drily:
“Ah, Betty--you push me to the extremity of truth. Well, it is because
I have nothing else to burn.... Only my rejected poems. And I am badly
in need of the coffee. The weather is very severe.”
Betty’s eyes filled with tears:
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Tut, tut! you mustn’t damp the spirits of the kettle, Betty--it begins
to boil.... Wonderfully heating thing--poetry!”
He went to the kettle.
“You shall have first brew,” he added--“that you may never again
despise coffee warmed by the passionate glow of verse.... There is a
dearth of cups--and my landlady has a gouty leg--and the journeyings of
the little maid-of-all-work make my heart ache--but I usurp the news.”
As the big man busied himself with his hospitalities, Betty told him of
her errand--begged him to come back with her and give his counsel and
aid.
He was for going straight away; but she insisted on sitting there until
he had drunk his coffee.
At the threshold, across the steps of the house, in the twilight of the
silent street, lay the dead body of the Man of Pallid Ideals--a nosegay
of pale flowers near his gloved hand, his white face turned upwards to
the still skies, lit by the pale light of the mystic moon.
He had seen the drawn blinds--guessed their significance--gone to her
doors, stunned with dread--fallen in the moment of his last act of
homage....
OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
CHAPTER XLVI
_Wherein the Husband of the Concierge fears that he is growing Blind_
Darkness was stealing over the city, and Paris was taking a drowsy
breath in the twilight before awakening to her evening gaiety and
frolic mood.
In her narrow old grey streets, many-shuttered, which huddle about the
broad Boule Miche that is the students’ highway on the left bank of
the river--in the time-honoured Latin quarter--over against the Ile
de la Cité, there stands a narrow way where artists do largely abide.
In the whitest house of the block, or the one that at least attempts
the nearest to approach a dingy suggestion of whiteness, where at any
rate whiteness is become less a bygone tradition than with the rest of
its fellows down the length of the alley, there stood at its topmost
window, his hands behind his back, and in pensive fashion, a handsome
young fellow in the slouched black hat and short black coat, flowing
tie, and baggy brown corduroy pantaloons of the student of Paris; but
the yellow hair was the hair of Horace Malahide.
His brooding eyes were on the end of the alley, where in the reek
of the lilac dusk Paris glittered her myriad lamps, her flaming
streets sweeping away into the shadow of the night, showing afar dim
sparks of fire that winked up the heights and were lost in the purple
firmament, where a white star trembled into liquid light above the
gaunt scaffolding of the huge basilica a-top of the distant hill of
Montmartre.
A cracked voice in the dark room asked:
“Monsieur wishes that I shall light the candle?”
Before the brooding youth at the window gave answer, a match was
struck, and discovered a little old man guarding the flame of a candle
with his hand. The old fellow set the candle on a table.
Horace turned, with a sigh, into the room, sat down on a chair, and
pushed back his hat; he came down into the world.
“Husband of concierges,” said he----
The little old man, with skull-cap a-top, coughed, held out a
protesting hand:
“Pardon, monsieur--husband of _the_ concierge!”
Horace laughed:
“Husband of the concierge of concierges,” said he--and he held out a
jewelled box of cigarettes--“we will smoke--to disinfect the room.”
The old shoulders rose in the shrug of protest:
“Good God, monsieur, the room is absolutely polished”--the shoulders
swore it--“clean as a dish--not a grain of dust. I said it should be
so. I did not trust the _femme de ménage_ alone. I did it myself.”
Shoulders and arms and hands, all bore confirmatory evidence.
Horace nodded:
“Smoke,” said he. “It is an honour to smoke with so clean a husband of
concierges.”
The old man laughed, shook his head, and shuffling to Horace’s side,
took a cigarette:
“Ah, monsieur the student he is always gay--always gay. He has always
his joke against his concierge.... I have known students for thirty
years--and who would have it otherwise? When students fall away from
joy of life they take to believing too much in themselves, and cross
the river to Montmartre, and drink absinthe, and die, and are buried.”
“Come, my husband of concierges,” cried Horace, “don’t let us weep.
Light all the candles, and let us see what the room looks like----”
“But, monsieur, not all the candles?”
“Certainly! certainly!... This is the last rehearsal, my old veteran;
they _arrive_ to-morrow.... Light up, man--light up!”
The old man shuffled about the room in his thick felt slippers, setting
candles aflame until the place was a blaze of light.
Horace’s eyes went over the details of the room.
“Those rogues sent a fresh new bed, eh? You saw to that, eh?”
“The sommier was as monsieur had ordered it--ab-so-lu-ment.” The old
man stopped in the midst of lighting a last candle to point to the
couch-ottoman that is the student’s lounge by day and bed by night.
Horace nodded:
“Good!... The rest of the furniture, though not too profuse, looks far
from too new. We showed taste in our choice, my old veteran. Now, you
will not forget your lesson? Monsieur Horace has sent what he did not
want from his own studio; but there was no stove nor towels, and you
have taken the liberty to buy a stove and a dozen towels which were a
bargain and they only cost you twelve francs! God forgive me! You have
it all in your head, all under that embroidered cap, my husband of
concierges, eh?”
The old man bowed, shrugged his shoulders, and held out his open palms
in the protest of indignation:
“Has monsieur yet known me to forget anything?”
Horace blew out a cloud of smoke, frowning at his thoughts....
He put his hand in the breast-pocket of his coat and drew out a bundle
of banknotes. He beckoned the old man to him; put five of them into his
hand, and shut the old fingers upon them:
“My friend,” said he, putting his hand on the old fellow’s
shoulder--“there will always be here, early every morning for an hour
or so, a woman, _une femme de ménage_, to make beds and brush and
sweep and keep things tidy--besides, you and madam will, I know, have
business up in this part of the house--at times that will just happen
to be useful to the young lady who is coming here. There will be water
wanted, and breakfast rolls and milk and things. And--I shall not
forget that you do not forget them.”
The old man nodded, smiled.
“I will have business on the sixth floor morning and evening,
monsieur,” he said--“and my wife also; I know of an excellent woman.”
“Good!... Now put out the lights.”
The old man shuffled round the room, and blew out the candles....
They locked the door and went down the stairs together.
Horace turned suddenly on the first landing:
“Husband of concierges--we have forgot the baths.”
“Mon Dieu, monsieur--yes.”
“They will be there to-morrow?”
“It will be there to-morrow, m’sieu.”
“They--my veteran--they! _Two_ baths.”
“They shall be there, m’sieu.”
Horace ran down the stairs; called “Good-night!” and was gone.
The old man scratched his head:
“My God!” said he; “how these English are always washing! That will be
two extra cans to carry up.”
That night as Hodendouche, the once Sergeant of cavalry, joined his
plump little mate in the bed that took up the greater part of that
small room in the gateway, on the ground floor where concierges have
their habitation, he blew out the candle.
“That is you!” said the stout little woman sleepily.
The old fellow chuckled:
“Thou didst not dream it was the President of the Republic, my Marie?”
said he, and cackled again. “If so, I like not thy complacency.”
She turned to the wall.
“Marie,” said he--“the _Petit Journal_ lies. The English are not
_canaille_.... He gave me five hundred francs.... Our little Aloysius
shall go on with his studies.... The _Petit Journal_ lies.”
“Tsh! Hodendouche! Thou art grown garrulous. Get thee into thy nightcap
and to sleep. Thou fool! he loves the woman.”
There was a long silence.
“Mon Dieu!” said the old man--“yes, indeed. My eyesight is not what it
was.”
CHAPTER XLVII
_Which introduces us to the First Lady of France_
A paddle-steamer cleared the long wooden jetties, and made Boulogne
Harbour, hooting the announcement of her coming to the echoing wharves
that flung back the chuckling hoot in answering welcome rollickingly;
and, churning with fussy thrashings of her paddle-wheels the waters of
the narrow sea-way as she settled to her moorings, she lurched against
the quay and was still.
To Betty and Noll, standing on deck with eyes bent on the swinging
prospect before them, there came the fragrance of a new world. The
tender greys, gentle blues, and silvery colours of France held out a
welcome to their ready senses, and from the many-windowed houses with
their hundred wooden shutters there drifted the pleasant odour of wood
fires.
So Betty, her happy eyes glancing at the shifting scenes that passed by
the wayside, and lolling in the grey carriage of her wedding journey,
was whirled through the pleasant garden of France.
Noll came and sat beside her.
“You’re very happy, my Betty,” said he.
She nodded--and her eyes filled with tears.
She put out her hand shyly to him, and he held it in his. He sat and
watched her. It was stupid to speak....
They swung past great sand-dunes by the sea--along the pleasant
plains with poplars all of a row--thundered over bridges that spanned
the shining river--clanked past villages--passing now and then a
picturesque château on a hilltop that stood sentry over the plains--and
always there was the sense of grey-green trees and white buildings
and tender blue skies that are the colour of France. Delicacy and
tenderness and graciousness and gentleness are written over the face of
the land, the subtle land of Corot.
And all the world was a-singing....
In the twilight the train dashed past St. Denis and the foundries of
Paris, swept under the lea of the hill where the scaffolding a-top
showed the building of the great church of Montmartre, and thundered
into the resounding grey gateway of the city that stands open to the
north--the Gare du Nord.
At the barriers they were met by a French student in black slouch
hat and great loose tie full flowing at the throat through the open
collar of his short black coat--he wore baggy corduroy pantaloons.
The golden-haired youth slapped Noll on the shoulder, pulled off his
hat, and held out a hand to Betty--welcoming them to Paris. And Horace
Malahide’s warm handshake brought a glow of happiness to them both. His
laugh sent all the strangeness flying; they were no longer alone amid
an alien people.
Horace, giving Noll a hand with the small baggage, called a porter and
told him to hail a cab. The blue-bloused fellow soon had the scanty
baggage stowed away on top. Horace smiled a little sadly at the girl’s
trunk and the narrow extent of Noll’s belongings.
As they drove off together, Horace explained:
“Now, I’ve got you a room, right at the top, in one of the most
delightful houses of the old student quarter. I have sent some of my
surplus furniture; but I had to get the concierge to buy you a stove
and one or two things.”
He laughed aside all thanks; then he coughed--a little embarrassedly:
“Of course--I told all the boys that you were coming--with a wife,
Noll. But the Frenchmen all winked at the word wife; so they’ll be
quite friendly and free.”
Horace was to show them everything and put them in the way of pleasant
economies.
In the morning he was to move down from his old studio on Montmartre to
be near them. Noll was to share his studio, when he was in the mood to
paint--Horace was at Gérôme’s atelier at the Beaux Arts.
The cab was rattling along the riverside--lurched aside and rattled
over a bridge--turned along the quays--up a narrow thoroughfare--took a
jolting turn or two--and came to a noisy standstill.
They got out, and walked through a high entrance into a cobbled
courtyard. And as they passed, to give them rude welcome, out of a
doorway that was a hole in the wall of the passage-way popped the stout
little woman who is the symbol and the tyrant and ultimate design
created by the machinery of the French constitution--the concierge.
Horace introduced them.
As they mounted the stairs to their first home, Horace discoursed on
the panting woman who led the way--in English.
The concierge, said he, is the government. The President of the
Republic is but her servant. Her newspaper has the greatest circulation
in the world--is the furthest reaching--_Le Petit Journal_. She stands
between the landlord and the tenant--that is her sole duty--and she
stands on her duty. She has usurped power as the Carlovingian mayors
of the palace plucked the sceptre from their Merovingian kings, the
Rois Fainéants of France. She is dragon over all the moralities--you
may commit any sin in France, if you do it gracefully, except shocking
the concierge. At eleven o’ the night she shuts the gates, and gets to
bed--and when you ring the bell for admittance, she pulls the bolts
by magic from that bed, scarce turning to break her snore, and you as
you pass must call your name--or you are lost. In her smile or in her
frown lies your honour, your repute, your good name.... France one
fine morning awoke, and her sunny smile died out, scared by the threat
of Revolution. Paris talked in anxious whispers. Paris frowned. For
on the walls of the Rue de Rivoli was writ _Long Live the King!_ At
mid-day Paris was laughing--the concealed troops marched out of the
courtyards and went home; the revolution was over: beneath _Long Live
the King_, a workman, mounting the shoulders of another, had writ:
“_Which?_” killing the danger with a jest.... At midnight Paris was a
riot of dancing--a third wag had written full answer to the sphinx: _Le
concierge_.
Arrived at the heights, Horace bade the lights to be lit, and when
their home was all ablaze with welcome, he handed Betty the key, wished
them happiness, and took his leave until the morning.
CHAPTER XLVIII
_Which has to do with the Motherhood of the World_
A clock struck five.
The sun rose out of the grey mists of the east and flecked with golden
light the upper stories of the white-faced city.
Betty roused at the noises of the awakening street
below--footsteps--the clink of bottles in which young women bore the
morning’s milk to the court--then low voices that gossiped drowsily.
The disturbing sense of being in a strange bed.
The distant rumble of a cart--and more footsteps and again voices, of a
pitch and accent that struck strangely upon her ear. And she knew she
was awaking in a strange land.
It came to her that she was in Paris.
Paris!
She sat up in bed.
There was a dear fellow’s head on the pillow beside her--he slept
soundly.
And she laughed low.
She put her dainty feet out of her marriage bed, slipped their
whiteness into his slippers, wrapped his warm dressing-gown about her,
and went to the window.
And as the sun rose high above the city’s edge, and smiled down
into the dew-damp streets, there came the blithe sounds of a city
awakening. The clatter of wooden shoon that entered the alley was the
sound of the great black sabots in which tramped the big powerful
woman in bunchy skirts who came sweeping the water down the gutters
with long black broom. On the heels of her noisy passing came the
rattle of a fish-barrow, pushed by a fish-girl that wailed the
melancholy street-cry of mackerel. And now the court was all alive with
sound--water-pails were clanking, and wooden shoon tapping along the
paven way; vintners were cleaning wine-casks, swinging iron chains in
the cleansing waters of the barrels; anvils rang under the swinging
stroke of the naked-armed iron-workers; hammers tapped; market women
and street-vendors joined their cries, musical and unmusical, to the
increasing din; and the clinking bell on the neck of a big leading
short-necked Flemish horse told that the great lumbering cart was come
to carry away the city’s trash. Girls selling fruit and girls selling
potatoes cried their wares; and men that mended chairs. And there was
the cling-clink-clink of the pavior who roughs with hammer and chisel
the newly mended flagstone. And from the blanchisserie the girls
thumped and ironed the white linen and sang snatches of song. And then
as the clock struck eight, there came a street-seller crying chickweed
for the little caged songsters; and all a-down the alley the birds
began to sing.
And wondrous music stirred in the girl’s heart.
For the days of her chill maidenhood were departed, fallen from her
like a white garment; and just as, passing from childhood, she had
been roused by some unseen hand and rid of physical bondage; just as
with awakening reason she had been as surely freed from intellectual
bondage; so she now stood in presence of the full majesty of her
womanhood, morally free. Her senses glowed, and her dainty being pulsed
to a music she had not till then known--and the meaning of the book of
life was laid open to her, so that with swelling throat and ecstatic
bosom she was at one with the motherhood of the world.
She had brought her little hoard of twenty-seven pounds--it was the
lucky number--three times three times three! She laughed happily. And
that handsome fellow in her bed, Noll, had his wits and some seventy
pounds a year. And they were one; and all the world lay before them....
Hardship! What was hardship? She had this handsome fellow to wrap her
maternal arms about. Mother of God! it was luxury--riches--God’s reward!
She gave herself to him with all the shy generosity of her great
integrity--of her commanding virtue....
Betty went back to the bed and nestled close to her love
“What is it, Bess?” he asked, rousing.
“I pity all mateless things,” she said.
CHAPTER XLIX
_Wherein the Rich Man’s Son seeks the Sweets of Poverty--not Wholly
without Success_
On the northern heights of Montmartre, into a paved courtyard, where
Horace Malahide had his rooms, several laughing students were carrying
forth the furnishments from one of the houses, piling them in a heap on
the cobbled ground. A divan was already in the handcart, and on top of
the divan sat a youth whom they called Gaston, who, with a great brass
French horn round about his shoulders, was solemnly sounding a faulty
rendering of a quaint old hunting call.
Out of the hurly-burly tripped into the court a pretty girl, carrying
a couple of hat-boxes and some airy feminine wearing apparel. She
halted before the handcart in evident anxiety as to a safe place for
their stowage--a perplexed frown came over her handsome face. One of
the noisy young fellows, who spoke his French with a strong American
accent, saw her bewilderment, plucked the musical Gaston by the heel,
and brought him with a clatter to the ground, where, rubbing the back
of his skull, he settled himself on a rug, and, fixing his mouth to the
horn again, took up the tune where he had left off. The young American
flung open the lid of the divan and stowed away inside it the girl’s
hat-boxes and scant wardrobe.
“That all, Babette?” he asked.
“No, mon ami--one minute!” she cried.
She skipped up the steps and disappeared into the doorway.
When she came back she was laden with linen and pillows and blankets.
She laughed merrily. The young American calmly helped her to stow the
things away in the divan; and she blithely skipped away again....
Before her doorway, at the passage leading into the court, watching
what passed with a sour scowl, stood the hard-lipped little woman
who was the concierge to the court; indeed, it was this lean woman’s
shrewish tongue that was chiefest cause for the flitting--a clacking
tongue that had wearied Horace for months. And now she had fallen foul
of the girl and had slanged her from the bottom of the court with
taunts and insinuations that Horace had felt compelled to put out of
all remotest chance of repetition--and a restless longing to be back in
the Latin quarter leaped with his desire and hastened it. The girl was
not sorry either; but she was frugally loath to forfeit the remainder
of his lease. He had taken her face between his two hands and kissed
her upon the mouth: “Babette,” he had said--“no living soul does you an
ill turn twice if I can prevent it; we leave to-morrow morning.”
The act had sobered the concierge.
She was brooding upon it now....
The students shut the lid of the divan and flung a rolled mattress on
top; the loading went apace to the rattling musketry of quip and jest
and caper.
Horace, dressed for the street, entered the courtyard and was received
with a loud shout from his noisy comrades--a prolonged blare from
Gaston Latour’s hunting-horn--and there was silence.
Horace glanced round the court, saw that all was ready, and moved
towards the concierge.
He halted before her, put his heels together, took off his hat, and
bowed solemnly. Madame, he said, he felt sure, would understand and
allow for his emotion on quitting her house. He handed the key into
her grasping outstretched fingers, that were itching for a fee, and
commended her soul to her Maker.
“He insults me!” she cried; and the students fell a-laughing.
Horace turned on his heel as the violent oaths poured from the old
shrew’s scolding lips; and the loud tan-tan-taras of the students and
the brassy blaring of the French horn drowned the torrent of abuse.
They began to sing the _Marseillaise_.
Horace walked calmly over to the handcart, took off his coat and hat,
gave them to the girl, and getting between the shafts, he slipped the
leather brace over his shoulders, and, with the help of his singing
companions, pulled the overloaded and swaying cart towards the
gateway--and lurched out into the bright March morning.
Horace made southward, the cart rattling after, down the steep streets
of Montmartre towards the merry roar of the city’s holiday-making. As
the singing, shouting young fellows, hauling and pushing the swaying
cart, rattled past the _Moulin Rouge_ into the Place Blanche, they
ran full tilt into the genial idle crowd that was out to make the
mid-Lenten fête of the Micarême. From all the windows of the great
boulevard thousands of gaily-coloured paper streamers were floating
downwards. The broad damp roadway and the footpaths were strewn with
many-tinted paper confetti that lay like a carpet, muffling the feet
of the people as they moved chatting and laughing along the wide
thoroughfare. What little wheeled traffic there was went at a foot’s
pace.
The riot of students, with Gaston Latour blaring upon the horn, plunged
into the procession.
The police made a rush towards the disturbance, but only to shrug
shoulders when they reached the lumbered swaying cart:
“It is only the students!” said they, and fell a-laughing.
When they turned into the Place St. Michel they came plunging into the
noisy crowd of holiday-makers again, and their march up the students’
beloved thoroughfare was a deafening and triumphant din.
“Orass” was evidently well known, and was greeted with the honours of a
king of Bedlam.
It was in a pause that he took, coming to a halt between the shafts,
to recover breath and give his other ear a turn of Gaston Latour’s
hunting-horn, that Horace espied Noll and Betty standing in the throng.
He called to them to come and join him.
So it came about that, with a laugh, and shyly enough, they joined the
noisiest crew in all Paris that mad March morning.
Swinging round, when they got moving again, into a by-way, they soon
came to a halt in an old courtyard not a hundred paces from Noll and
Betty’s own home amongst the stars.
Horace touched Noll on the arm:
“Take her up to the top rooms,” said he, nodding towards Betty--“they
are mine. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Betty with Noll climbed up the polished, creaking old stairway.
In the courtyard the students got to their unloading, and were soon
carrying the things upstairs.
Horace hoisted a couple of chairs under his arms, and joined the stream.
Betty and Noll landed in a spacious room at last, an airy large studio
that has been the early dwelling-place of more than one man of genius;
and Horace, arriving close on their heels, set down the chairs and
bade Betty welcome to his home. They were all to lunch together as his
guests as soon as the students had set out the place.
The great empty room was very soon an inviting-looking habitation. From
a back room Jonkin was bringing in chairs and lounges that had never
known the handcart. And the young fellows were cheerily laying rugs,
nailing up mirrors, and fixing the stove, singing and skylarking--the
walls were soon a pleasure to look upon, with a few posters of
Steinlen’s and the Beggarstaffs, and sketches, and gay odds and ends.
The young fellows worked away with a will.
The room was nearly wholly furnished, and the youngsters were beginning
to sit about, chatting and smoking, on the floor as often as not, when
the door of the little room off the studio was flung open and the girl
Babette appeared, wearing with dainty grace the delicate fineries of
fashion that a Frenchwoman knows so well how to put on.
There was a sudden silence.
The girl halted midway down the room, her eyes fixed on Betty where she
sat on a divan under the high studio window.
“Mother of God!” said the girl hoarsely--“what a beautiful woman!”
The students yelled with delight.
The girl Babette frowned impatiently, and going close to Horace, she
whispered to him, caressingly.
Horace laughed, and led her by the hand to Betty:
“Babette wants to know if she may kiss you,” he said. “She says you are
very beautiful----”
Betty laughed prettily, rose from her seat and kissed her. And, sitting
down again, she drew the other down beside her on the divan.
Gaston Latour, at a dig of the elbow and mutter from the young
American, started to blare upon the French horn--for there were tears
in the eyes of the laughter-loving frail Babette.
The conversation turned to other things.
Horace announced that they were all now his guests, and were forthwith
to have breakfast sent in from the restaurant near at hand; as he spoke
he noticed that the girl Babette had taken Betty’s left hand in hers
and was turning her wedding-ring round on her slender white finger.
Horace introduced the others to Betty and Noll:
Gaston Latour, who was essaying to bring dignity to the traditions of
painting. Jack Pettigrew, the tall Yankee, whom also they afterwards
came to know together with four other American students as one of the
Five Foolish Virgins--the English students explained, because they
were always late; but the French ones soon put the jest to roost in
their open bewilderment at their dogged belief in the monogamies. Paul
Kendrick of Boston, Massachusetts--which was the fault of Boston, and
Paul wholly without blame in the matter. Kendrick bowed. Harcourt
Phelps, another of the Five Foolish Virgins. Dick Davenant, known as
the Disturber of Funerals, being one who always laughed in the wrong
place. Dandy Donovan, the remaining Foolish Virgin. “Gobemouche” de
Morneville, who was shirking the law, and catching flies when he should
have been catching the subtleties of philosophy and the reasons for
things. He put his heels together and solemnly bowed his close-cropped
head. And half a dozen other young Frenchmen who talked the most
ridiculous Ollendorffian English with serious unwinking eyes masking
their fooling....
Jonkin and the waiters, arriving with dishes and plates, burst into the
room, ushered in by Gaston Latour, gloomily blaring fantastic joy upon
the French horn, and all further conversation was impossible until the
cloth was laid....
CHAPTER L
_Wherein the Spring comes a-frolic into the Court_
Betty’s young blood danced to the blithe promise of Spring that was in
the March winds; and her heart leaped to the quickening whisper of the
awakening world.
The winter was over. Her sweet body sang to her of the gladness of the
world. Her light step spoke of the gaiety of young womanhood; and her
laughing eyes knew no fear of destiny--her quick ears caught no echo,
no whisper of the crack of doom, and had she heard it she would still
have gone with the calm effrontery of youth to meet it. She skipped
down the highway of life, all dainty and delighted and unafraid. The
orchestral universe made music for her feet. She was alive. All nature
smiled upon her, even through tears.
The rain that pelted with sharp icy particles or chill admixture of
snow upon the window-panes, and the gusts that thundered against the
shutters and plucked at their bolts, played but the castanets for her
dancing blood, sounded but the drums for her ready feet; she took her
walks abroad in frank ecstasy of health, and lifting her dear face to
the buffeting winds she breathed into her glowing body the emotional
air that rocked the tall trees against the swinging firmament, pulsing
the sluggish life-sap to their uttermost whistling twigs.
She was become a part of the motherhood of the world.
The protecting care that she had aforetime spent upon her disreputable
old father, she now wound about this youth. Her mother-heart was no
longer starved; forgot the suffering of rebuff; flinched no longer,
scared by dread of Shame. ’Tis true, at a sudden noise she would start
fearfully still, and her heart flutter sickeningly; yet, for the love
of a youth, she would have plucked the beard of a sulphur-stinking
devil, though the splendid insolence had scorched her sweet fingers to
the bone.
Her honeymoon was fragrant with the breath of Spring.
With Noll she haunted the picture-galleries of the Luxembourg and
roamed the polished oaken floors that are the slippery footway of the
Louvre--stood with him before the Venus of Milo, where, on gazing
awhile, the wondrous marble seems to breathe and move in all the
majesty of human life--wandered before the canvases whereon the
masters have wrought colour that makes music to the eyes--and loitered
spell-bound a-top the broad flight of steps where, poised on the prow
of an ancient battleship, the winged Nike of Samothrace stands like
aerial goddess alighting from flight.
Together they trudged the smiling streets of Paris that are the
drawing-room of the world--loitered at her shop-windows--clambered up
the steeps of Montmartre to the terrace, ill-kempt and weedy, where
arose the gaunt and vasty scaffolding of the great church that the
pious of France were building to the Sacred Heart in that strange
mystic agony that would hope, by taking thought upon it and building in
stone, to blot out the sins of the people--wandered about the banks of
Seine, poring over the booksellers’ boxes that line the walls of the
quays with evergreen hope of finding some good book or print--lingered
in the high vaulted aisles of the cathedral of Notre Dame, listening to
medieval litanies--loitered about the historic purlieus of the Rue St.
Honoré and the Rue de Rivoli, and sought cheap dinners in the courts
of the old dilapidated Palais Royal, all haunted with the ghosts of
the Revolution and rustling, to quick ears, with the silk and satin
of the seventeen hundreds. Careless of the elements, they sallied out
to hang about the book-shops and rummage in the print-sellers’ trays,
coming home with rare booty bought for a franc or so, to hang upon
their walls--little masterpieces by Steinlen and others who are keeping
alive the flame of art in France whilst the State is decorating the
mediocrities; and so, roaming homewards with their prizes, they would
make for their quarters in the lilac twilight to dine in some cheap
place where students dine--or not to dine--clambering up their six
flights of stairs at the end of all with jest and laughter and muddied
boots, singing a snatch of song amidst their pleasant weariness, just
from sheer gladness to be alive.
Loneliness was wholly gone from the girl; she had with her always now,
by her side, one to whom she could chatter, one who could share her
silences.
Her letters to Netherby and Julia at this time were love-lyrics.
From her balcony, Betty saw the spring peep shyly into the court below.
The silent snow that had fallen yesterweek, swirling softly, stealthily
covering the earth, lying muffling white in deeper and deeper carpet
to the foot that trod the courtyard, showing twigs and branches,
otherwise scarce suspected, in white array, bowing down the leaves
of evergreens--all in a night in solid whiteness fell to the ground,
sliding from tree and parapet and ivied wall, and sank into the earth
below, vanished beneath the gravel, leaving the damp cobbles shining
darkly wet. In the night the rain had swept the snow from the face
of the world--the morning laughed with sunlight--vasty white clouds
swung across the blue firmament. The fat little concierge sallied out
upon the high heap of gravel that had lain all winter in a corner of
the courtyard, and with a long shovel in her sinewy arms she flung
abroad the pebbles, spreading them wide over the whole space. Swish!
she sent them flying against the box-hedge that was the ragged border
of the flower-bed along the walls--and swish! they went spirting to the
furthest corners.
This devilish spreading of gravel satisfies the æsthetic sense of
concierges; and a run of the rake keeps it easily tidy. It is like the
speech of concierges--gritty and utilitarian.
It was more. It was a grim recognition that Spring had tripped in from
the country and glanced into the court; it gave the official sanction.
And lo! in the beds, almost in a day, bare bushes were straightway
sprinkled with emeralds, the desolate laurels and evergreens roused
from their drooping and showed a lighter greenness above their sombre
steadfast habit; the tall lilacs ventured upon timid unfoldings. A
hazel dangled catkins. The ivy on the walls, washed clean, glowed
darkly green, hiding in grotesquely bulky nests the consequences of
the loves of multitudinous sparrows. The sparrow no longer sat, one of
many, a brown huddle on bare branches, a confessed beggar and one of a
gang of greedy loafers, shamelessly indigent, but was become almost a
rare sight, shooting like clay pellet from a sling across the void of
the court and flinging into the green, his egoism lost in family cares,
his life no longer the killing of dull time nor recklessly planned for
the debauching of the years.
On the bare branches of the trees the impatient buds were swelling to
the bursting. Along the brown earth showed themselves diffidently the
rare wind-flowers. In the warmer corners, amongst much green of leaves,
peeped the occasional violet. The briar came into leaf. The branches of
most trees and bushes were bare, but in the corner an almond burst into
blossom, blushing to greet the rude kisses and boisterous onset of the
spring.
Then the concierge’s tortoiseshell cat, patched yellow and black
and white, alone suspicious of the elements, walking a-tiptoe in
dandified discomfort across the puddled court, flirting the loathed
sense of dampness from disgusted paw, blinking unemotionally even at
the sparrows, would show sudden uneasiness, turned and cantered home
again to the black hollow of the concierge’s doorway--went gliding
in--disappeared. A black cloud swung up across the blue, rolled out
beyond the chimney-pots and blotted out the sun; the wind, sneering
amongst the evergreens, lost its temper, leaped forward with a roar
and a yell and smote the ruffled ivy upon the walls--bombasting round
the empty court, bursting in at the windows, sending loose shutters
a-clattering, and viciously slamming doors. Rain came spitting upon the
city--hissed the hail.
Thus sadly and somewhat sullenly the twilight would fall. But Spring,
though hesitant, left a footprint even in the stony garden of the
concierge.
April came smiling.
The buddings of March gave place to the green leaf. May had not yet put
her pied bravery on.
The concierge would stand on the gravel and hold out a hand to the
sunshine, feeling it between her fingers.
Nay, there had been even lack of rain for a couple of days or more.
The pump in the court would tell with clanking report that the sinewy
arms of the stout little concierge were at work on the iron handle,
usurping the habit of the clouds and foster-mothering the narrow
garden. Waddling, bucket-laden, to the thirsty earth, she would lean
and fling sheets of water in the face of all green things--insolently,
lest nature might deem her servile--and, the roots holding firm each
hardy plant that had withstood the harsh winter’s enmities as it reeled
from the courtesies of her rude ministry, the concierge was moved
to ambitions of gardening, digged holes in the stony beds, brought
out potted plants and set them out in rigid rows into the quickening
earth--pansy and lily and anemone and daffodil--with, drill-sergeant to
their marshalled ranks, an occasional oleander bush.
The lilac came into bloom. The naked ash still showed black buds, but
all else was sprinkled with leaves. The horse-chestnut, coquetting with
the romping winds, unfolded little fans of green. And now, in the blue
heavens above, white clouds were lightly roaming. The sun had warmth in
his breath, and across the seething face of the awakening world flung
restless shadows. On a high chimney a couple of pigeons sat cooing.
There was the blithe song of birds.
The concierge’s tortoiseshell cat would come out and sit in a
comfortable huddle of drowsiness upon the sun-warmed ground. Indeed,
there had been strange, devilish, and Wagnerian music of late at
night, and her modest eyes and demure person knew full well whose
tortoiseshell lungs had been the source and set the key. Her nod could
incriminate the black tom that sang the throaty ill-timed contralto to
her shrill love-music--indeed, he sang under the whip. Even so might a
concierge tell her love.
And there were voices within open windows--and heads thrust out,
pretty heads amongst them--and lively chatter would pass across the
court, and jests were flung from story to story, and genial sarcasms
would reach the concierge, who flung back time-honoured repartee and
time-worn ironies. There was laughter and the singing of a snatch of
song--a piano would run up the gamut of a scale. From afar the tuneful
hum of the murmurous city sounded deeper, and there was increase in
the passing clatter of the nearer traffic. The air was astir with the
sayings of many mouths, the thrill of dancing thoughts.
Through the open window the setting sun, streaming into her room, would
find Betty at work, till Noll should come for her from the studio to
take her out. He had tacked prints upon the walls above her desk, and
there were books scattered about, and a pleasant picturesqueness held
the place.
From the early morning, when she arose blithely, put out her
rosy-tipped white feet upon the floor, and got to the warming of
the coffee at the cheerful stove and set the place astir with happy
industry, making up the wonderful sommier, the bed of the students’
quarter, into a lounge for the day, and the like offices, until the
twilight, when Noll came home, and they went out to dine at some cheap
place with other students, Horace and the Five Foolish Virgins and the
rest, Babette sitting next to her--all was one long delight of living.
The mid-day meal at the restaurants had soon had to go; but she was
well content enough, for she could make her own coffee, and he is a
glutton indeed who is not content with the bread of Paris.
As the sun’s amber light passed from the court and crept up the eastern
wall, and the grey shadow of the dusk began to fall, full of chill
other shadows, that took their stealthy stand in dark corners, and made
a conspiracy of silence at the heels of the dying day, the air was
filled with a mystic sense of evensong. For, when shutters were drawn
to, by silent hands, and windows one by one were closed, and lamps
gleamed yellow through the slats of close-shut jalousies, her lover’s
feet would be leaping up the stairs, and in the deepening blue of the
heavens a myriad white stars be set aflame.
CHAPTER LI
_Wherein it is hinted that it were Best to “Touch not the Catte botte
a Glove”_
There was in and around and about the lithe beauty of the dark slender
young woman, Gabrielle Solignac, much of her own strange uncanny
poetry, with its stealthy Eastern manner--catlike when she moved,
glowing in colour as a ranging leopard, her clinging draperies loading
the air with scent of sandal-wood and the fragrance of Japan--catlike
when at rest, and warm-hued and alertly languid as the Indies, her
skin now showing saffron as dyed wood, now gleaming white as cunningly
wrought ivory. She was mystic always as some half-revealed god in the
great shadow of the deep hollows of pagan temples--silent and calm as
Egyptian Sphinx.
Her exquisite fame had passed beyond Paris, and was broadcast over
Europe; yet she was little more than girl....
She had been married to Myre a month; and as she now lay on her side
at full length along the great Eastern lounge, her dark head on her
father’s knees where he sat at the end of the lounge, there was
something of leopard grace in her attitude; and in the long half-closed
green eyes, something of leopard’s latent fire.
Solignac, his great head bowed, chin sunk on chest, lay back on the
lounge, his eyes staring out from the black shadows of their deep
hollows under the heavy brows; and he passed his shapely nervous hand
over the girl’s tawny hair.
“It only seems but yesterday,” said he hoarsely, “that he praised my
sonnets--and I brought him here.” He laughed bitterly. “I brought him
here. Think of it, my Gabrielle; had he not praised my verse I had
never----”
“Hush, father!” said she.
“It seems but yesterday that you married him--and went out and left me
alone----”
“Father,” said she, “I am so glad to be back. It was horrible--to be a
woman. I am so glad to be a child again.”
The old man laughed:
“I have gained,” he said--“and, by God, I am almost glad he is a
villain.”
She put up her arms, pulled down his great head, and kissed his cheek:
“I have done with him,” she said.
“To think that I am amongst the greatest European authorities upon
the mysteries of the East! and all to be juggled out of my wits by
the first vulgar sycophant who sings my praise!... Ye pagan gods! how
little wisdom is in books!”
She reached up her slender hand and put her fingers upon his mouth:
“Hush!” said she--“let us back to our books and rejoice in our lack of
wisdom. We were happier with our curios and the mysteries.... I am done
with him.”
And all about them the little fat Eastern idols sadly smiled and
smiled....
The poet never recovered from the blow. He felt that through his
conceit alone his girl had been bought. He would harp upon it sadly.
She laughed always her soft low laugh at all his self-blame, purring
of her love for him. But Solignac was a disillusioned man--thought the
world wagged chins at him--lost heart--stooped beneath the secret shame
of the blow. The blunder about his girl’s marriage killed him....
As he lay still and cold upon his white bed, at midnight, the great
candles flaming in their high brass candlesticks, idols of the East
gazing sadly down upon him, the girl, who had flung herself beside the
bed, her bowed head on his chill unanswering hand, of a sudden ceased
her sobbing and stood up. She bit her finger tips upon the urging of
some sudden mood, gazing stealthily about the room. She was alone.
She walked, with strange catlike tread, to an exquisite lacquer
cabinet; opened the lock, and lifting the lid, took out a red Japanese
fan.
She went to the dead man’s bookshelves and took down Solignac’s last
volume of sonnets--the pages were uncut.
She sat down at the foot of the bed. How often she had so sat as a
child! He had had such pride in her!
The high flames of the great altar candles flooding her with their
light, cast shadows down upon her where she crouched over the book.
She gripped the handle of the fan in her long supple fingers and
plucked a bright blade from out the cunningly wrought scabbard--the fan
had only been in the outward seeming, most wondrously carved.
The blade was a cruel one, and keen as pitilessness.
She cut the pages of the book with it--and as the paper hissed its
surrender to the sharp blade’s thrust she smiled. But in the smile was
little mirth.
Across the river, in the students’ quarter, brooding before a wood fire
in the rooms of his hotel, sat Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin
Myre.
He was worried.
He had written a play, choke-full of the most obvious symbolism. It
had failed. It was not even considered original--indeed, it had been
condemned as being very poor Ibsen indeed.
Nor had he won money out of the venture.
He was sadly puzzled.
Not to be original! it were not to be Quogg Myre.
He searched the history of genius to find a precedent on which to
act--to be original.
He arose on to his splay feet, and with his awkward slovenly gait paced
the room, shivered at the discomfort of his thoughts, walked to the
fireplace and stood brooding at his image in the mirror above it; his
hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. His untidy colourless hair
fell over his paste-coloured forehead--it was more untidy than usual,
more colourless. A hank of it stood out on the back of his poll like
the crest of a cockatoo. He was sickly pale. His weak puffy red lip was
limp and uneasy. His long quarrelsome chin alone held firm for bouts of
decision. It was his chin that fought the slacknesses of his body.
How had Shakespeare and these clever fellows discovered their great
art? Why should not _he_ create a school? These fellows--Shakespeare,
Dickens, Balzac, Carlyle, Meredith, Sterne, and the rest--they had been
just real live men, needing their dinner, sleeping o’ nights, fighting
their way to fame year after year, rebuffed, sneered at, ordinary human
flesh--without half his chances. What was the trick that they had
discovered?
Ay; what the key to their wizardry?
These fellows, the big ones, had never fretted their souls with all
these frets of style, of art for art’s sake, of their rating by
jabbering classifiers in the eternities. Whilst he--he had wasted the
years on such tom-follies. Nay, in expressing themselves they had
created style. They had had something deeper than style. What was it?
There was something deep down in the heart of things that made their
work live. Some mystic sense----
By heavens, it was mysticism!
He would get up mysticism--read it up at the libraries. He would write
mysticism into his work----
He shivered.
In the curio shop, a fool of a Jap had drawn a sharp dagger from its
sheath that morning--he hated knives and edged tools.
God! how cold it was!
He suddenly remembered----
Solignac lay stretched on his death-bed. He had a mind to go and see
him lying so.... This Solignac must have died enormously rich--his
collections were world-famous.
He went and put on his hat and cloak; lurched to the door----
At the door he hesitated.
Have a care!
Look to thyself, master Myre! That leopard quietude, the catlike lithe
walk, may be the watchful prowl of one that sees more than thou with
all thy blatancy and bold staring of fish-like grey eyes--perhaps, too,
fears less. Bluster thou canst outbluster--but the silences thou canst
not understand.... Wherefore thou shalt not dare that silent woman
beyond the goading point of thy vulgarity--if thou be wise. Have a care.
He shut the door--came back--took off his cloak and hat--flung them on
a chair.
He would like to have flouted this cold woman in that death-chamber; it
had never been done, it would come well in his autobiography; but----
What had this woman heard--guessed--seen--in that first month?
Damnation! He had been so careful--so circumspect. He recalled the warm
accents frozen to cold disdain almost before they had left her father’s
house. She baffled him--made him uneasy. He had scolded, supplicated,
whimpered, blustered.... What chiefly remained in the fearful hollows
of his conceit was the passionless voice in its last statement that if
he stepped across her door again she would kill him.
On his soul, he had been glad to be rid of her.
She alarmed him. He had jested about her to his fellows--but----
He shivered uncomfortably.
Yes. This woman alarmed him. He felt that his throat might be slit
as he slept.... He rather liked a wordy brawl with women--he had his
moments in drawing-room cynicism. He could brow-beat them with the
best. He had pen-courage too. With a pen and ink-pot he was absolutely
without fear. But----
With this silent woman he never could shake off the feeling of
discomfort. She baffled him. He feared her.
By God! he had it. He would write a book upon all his gadding loves
with women--she should figure there _as one of many_. She would free
him in the divorce courts.
And the scandal would float him into public notice again.
CHAPTER LII
_Wherein Yankee Doodle is bugled--with a Strong Foreign Accent_
Hearing her name called, Betty roused; and, crossing the room, went
to the balcony. Looking down into the court she saw the Five Foolish
Virgins standing there below with faces upraised. The big fellow, Dick
Davenant, called up that his cousin Molly wanted Betty to go to her
straight away--wanted her along--before her guests arrived--she was
giving a “tea”--they would meet later--when they had gotten the cakes
and looked up “the boys.” All this bawled at the top of his jolly
lungs’ strength.
Betty called down that she would go.
The young fellows waved their hats and marched out of the courtyard,
chattering.
Betty wrote upon a half-sheet of paper that she was off to Moll
Davenant’s, and pinned it on the wall where Noll must see it on
entering the room; and, quickly dressing for the street, she let
herself out of her room.
Moll Davenant was sitting on the side of her bed, seized with a harsh
attack of coughing--sitting there, clutching the bedclothes with her
long thin fingers. The perspiration came out in a heavy dew upon her
white skin. The struggle for breath was terrible, pathetic.
When she took her handkerchief from her mouth it was stained with blood.
She passed long slender hands over her damp brow and with deft fingers
made a weary effort to get order into the bedraggled disorder of her
mouse-coloured hair.
She moaned miserably, and her eyes roamed heavily over the littered
room before her--“I shall never get this place tidy,” she said.
There was a sharp brisk knock.
The door opened and Betty stepped into the room:
“Gracious, Moll!” cried she, glancing at the litter of the untidy
place, “we must be quick!”
She had shut the door behind her when she entered; she now went back
and locked it.
Moll Davenant rose from the bed with the sudden and feverish energy
of a consumptive, and ran to Betty--the shadow of death gone from her
haggard face--the hunted look departed from her great glowing eyes--a
flush of delight painting the pallid features. She flung her arms about
Betty:
“Thank Heaven, you are come, Betty--I was at my wits’ end.”
Betty gently unlocked the girl’s embrace:
“Come, Molly,” said she, taking off her gloves and jacket--“there’s no
time to lose--they’ll be here in an hour. Gracious! What confusion!”
She laughed gaily.
Moll Davenant looked about her helplessly.
Betty kissed her:
“Come along, Molly--where are the fineries? We’ll start with the
sommier.”
She tidied the bed coverings, and before the other, languidly sighing,
had brought some faded silks and embroideries from a box, Betty had
made smooth the wondrous bed of the Latin Quarter to its intention of
many-coloured lounge by day. Betty’s quick fingers were soon hiding
all signs of bed under silk and satin. She arose, flushed from the
tuckings-in, and the smoothings-out; and, taking an edge of battered
silk pillow-case in her teeth, she slipped a pillow into it, shook it
into place, and buttoned it down.
As the pillow disappeared into its crumpled once-gorgeous covering, the
last sign of bed-hood passed out of the bed, and the sommier took on
the splendour of an Eastern ottoman.
Betty laughed; sat down on the edge of the ottoman, and ran her eyes
over the room.
Moll Davenant went to her, flung herself on the floor at her feet, and
burst into tears.
Betty stroked her shoulder:
“Come, come, Molly,” said she--“we must get on. Don’t be stupid----”
The girl made a pitiful effort to stop her sobs.
Betty stood up; raised the poor girl to her feet; and led her to the
stove:
“Come, Moll--we’ll talk as soon as the room is in order....”
Wherever Betty went, order resulted. The easel was swung into position
and a sketch placed upon it--sketches were set out on a ledge that ran
along the wall. Chairs were slewed into position. And soon there was
but a little pile of stray impossible things in the middle of the room
that had no ordered place therein. Betty completed the pile with a pair
of dingy slippers.
“I think,” said she--“it is time to bury the refuse.” And the two
of them, laughing, soon had the litter thrust under the bed. A silk
hanging descended over it, and it was gone. Order was everywhere.
“I’ll finish the coffee,” said Betty--“you go and tidy yourself, Moll.”
Betty made herself tidy, and, flushed with the exertion, sat down on
the lounge:
“Heigho!” sighed she.
Moll Davenant came to her, and nestled on the rug at her knee.
“Now, Moll, what is it? But we had better unlock the door--all’s clear.”
She rose to go to the door.
Moll drew her down by the skirt:
“No, Betty--not yet.”
Betty sat down and drew the dainty head into her lap:
“What is it, Molly?”
“Betty”--she hesitated, and added miserably--“I ought never to have
come to Paris.”
“Why?”
“Because--because there is no one to look after father--and--he never
said a word to prevent me coming to Paris--he said he thought it would
be just splendid for me--but--I know now how lonely he is--he’s such a
_man_--he never said a word to hinder me leaving him all alone--never
said a word that hinted of the lonely home I left behind me--but--well,
it was the night before I left, I was lonely and got out of bed and
crept downstairs, and he was sitting at a table, a lighted candle
beside him, and he was looking at a little pair of shoes--they were the
first little shoes I ever wore----”
She fell a-sobbing:
“And now I know--I know--I know.”
Betty laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder:
“But, Moll--you are going home to America within the year!”
She shook her head sadly:
“I ought never to have come here--we are so poor--I have crippled their
means--I have crippled father--I am crippling dear old Dick--and I am
only a mediocrity after all. And now I am doomed.”
“Hush, Moll! You mustn’t say these things.”
The girl was seized with a violent attack of coughing.
“Betty--I just wanted to be a genius--to be talked about. At heart I
only wanted to be an artist in order to make a name. It was the name.
Now--I have awaked to find--I am a woman. I--have--only a little
while--a little, little life. I know it. Why fear it? Don’t shake your
head, Betty, dear heart--the doctors broke it to me this morning....
But--I would just like to have--played--with a child----”
Betty laughed softly:
“Oho! mistress Molly,” said she--“so there’s a man--at last!”
Betty turned up the girl’s face between her hands:
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Eustace Lovegood.”
Betty bent down and kissed her:
“You happy thing!” she said. “And how on earth did you come across
Eustace Lovegood?”
“We were a whole month in London before we came on here--Eustace and my
cousin Dick took to each other--and--so--everything came about.... We
knew nobody and were lonely--but Eustace made the sun shine--he helped
us to Paris--he said we could live so much cheaper here----”
“But, Moll--what became of Eustace--and--the sunshine?”
“He’s in Paris. Has been in Paris for nearly a week.”
“Oho! and you’ve been keeping the sunshine all to yourself, Moll! Tut
tut!”
Moll burst into tears.
Betty stroked her cheek:
“No, no, Moll; this will never do. Where’s the sunshine?”
“He’s gone,” she sobbed.
“Gone?”
Moll nodded through her tears:
“One of the girls at the studio said he was making me ridiculous.
And--I told Eustace. And--yesterday morning he wrote to tell me the
girl was right--and--and----”
She was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
Betty’s brows were knit:
“What did you do, Moll?”
“Nothing.”
Betty drew the dainty head within her lap:
“Thou fool!” she said in French--it seemed less harsh, whilst just as
true; and, after a while, she added in English:
“Thou poor mad fool, Moll!”
Moll was sobbing miserably.
Betty sat and soothed her, running her healing hand over the sobbing
girl’s hair, and thinking:
“Fancy!” she said at last--“fancy! Eustace Lovegood!” And she looked
down at the fragile figure at her knees. She saw that the slender
frame was grown more sadly slender--the thin hands more sadly
transparent--the fire of the strange and awful disease was eating her
blood. The girl was torn with the feverish energy of the devil of
consumption, that whispered urgingly at her elbow to live her moment at
the topmost pitch of energy or she would be too late.
Betty was roused from her brooding by the shuffle of footsteps that
ascended the stairs outside--and the sound of light-hearted laughter.
“Moll, quick! here they come!”
She bent down and kissed the girl:
“Let me think it out,” she said--“we must do something. I’ll do it. I
know Eustace Lovegood well.... Now you are hostess--stand up--and take
command of yourself.... That’s right.” She sprang to the door, unlocked
it, and skipped back to the other.
There was a loud knock.
The Five Foolish Virgins trooped in, headed by Gaston Latour, playing
on the French horn what was soon discovered to be “Yankee Doodle”--with
a strong French accent.
CHAPTER LIII
_Wherein we skip down the Highway of Youth_
Saturday night.
The Boule Miche was ablaze with light of frequent cafés; its roadway
vexed with roar of wheeled traffic; its pavements astir with shuffle of
many feet.
From the Place Saint Michel, where the black waters of the stealthy
river washed her quays in darkling passage to the far sea, the broad
thoroughfare of the Boule Miche, the students’ highway, flaring in the
black reek, swept upwards to the shadowy gardens of the Luxembourg,
topped the hill, and was lost amongst the stars. Riverwards, where
the Ile de la Cité, with sombre hint of law-courts and hospital,
arose from out the flood in the pitchy murk of the night, loomed the
dark cathedral towers of Notre Dame, gloomy with threat of eternal
punishment to transgressors--and low down and afar gleamed the weeping
lights of the Morgue, where sleep, after their last violence, the
disowned and discarded dead.
But neither above on the limitless blue, where are the stars, nor below
on the unthinking litanies of an outworn creed, nor upon the rude death
that ends alike the abstemious nun and the dizzy jig of Folly and
Crime, were bent the thoughts of the multitudinous students who ranged
the highway, making holiday--indeed, their eager eyes were wholly set
upon living the conventional unconventionalities of youth, skipping
down the highway of life with shout and laughter and song and merry
riot, arm in arm, in rollicking mood, reckless of the flitting years,
careless of the eternities.
It was midnight, and the Bal Bullier being at an end, its frantic
dancings done, and its doors closed, the youths were pouring into the
Boule Miche with much rustle of prettily dressed young women who hung
upon their arms--and were hovering about the lighted spaces where the
cafés blazed into the street.
The sombre academics enwrapped in the darkness of the alleys at either
hand, and the professors who snored in their staid beds--what mattered
they? Away with pompous thinking, when the blood’s jigging. And if they
were awake even the most learned of the old gentlemen, with fullest
sprinkling of dandruff on collar, shall he explain the thrill that is
in the kiss of a woman’s lips, or add a tittle to the glory of it in
the explaining, for all his learned researches? It is there, for the
getting, and it holds none the more magnificence for the dissecting
of it. Youth is theirs but for a fleeting too little while--and the
blood is a-jumping--and there is life--and the love of woman--and
the laughter of wine--and the joy of song--and pleasant comradeship.
Revelry if you will; but the dear earth is for the enjoying. Tush!
youth is not for the denying. And there is no time for arguments, or
the gladness of life is flown almost before the rubbing of bewildered
eyes.
God! what it is to breathe! to love God’s design by living it.
What hath philosophy done but make the world yawn, thou numbskull
dreamer of dreams that shouldst be living dreams?
This is life. The miracle is given to you. What is changing water
into wine to this? Take it in both hands. Grasp it. Live it. All the
thinking of all the academies cannot give you this. Grown old in mere
thinking upon life, you shall not call back the blithe days of your
youth. Dig your hands deep into the grave of your dead self, and you
shall not find the splendid years of the joy of life. Get you up to
the uttermost mountains’ tops, dive you to the bottom of the uttermost
deeps, you shall not find it. It was yours. Whilst you brooded
hesitant how to spend it, it hath slipped your fingers, passed like a
sunlit merriment, and become part of a sigh in the eternal mystery.
The lordship over vasty continents shall not yield you the glory of
it--neither ambition nor riches nor learning nor immortality shall
yield you a shred of that which, wholly unasked for, was yours.
God! how lavish, how wasteful, thou!
Why hug the skeleton of life? Fool! peer thou hard enough: yonder, at
the end of all, in the shadows, stands the Reaper--down the roadway
grimly smile the sombre mutes standing impatiently by a plumed hearse,
expectant of fees. Alike for saint and sinner and gay and sober they
smirk. They take your measure. ’Tis waste of time to protest with them.
The rascals have the last word.
Tush! Go hang to them!
So they sing in the tavern on youth’s highway--and toss off the
toast--and are merry.
Inside the Café Harcourt, at a table, in an angle somewhat apart from
the scintillating din, sat Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre and
the exquisite Aubrey. The Honourable Rupert Greppel also was there,
hidalgic, aloof, aristocratic; and Lord Monty Askew, leaning his chin
on the jade handle of his cane, and gloved with sleeved gloves, like
a woman’s--he, too, being aristocrat, could not live without the
attention of the crowd whom he despised in speech and verse. And as
Rupert Greppel uttered his splendid contempt of humanity, Askew would
nod, giving Greppel the polite attention of his eyes--his thoughts the
while on his own pose and poesies. Aubrey too was gazing at himself in
a mirror.
Greppel was airing his hidalgeries, regretting that all hope of
the hunting of peasants with dogs was lost in these vulgar days of
democracy.
Quogge Myre was about to yawn openly, when his roving gaze fell upon
the handsome face of Bartholomew Doome at a table near by, where, on
either side of him, there sat two of the most pronounced beauties of
the Latin Quarter. Myre caught the eyes of Horace Malahide, who with
Babette at his side also sat at Doome’s table; and he nodded and smiled
through his colourless untidy moustache at the young fellow.
The two beautiful young women were turned to Doome, gazing upon his
handsome face with hungry eyes of admiration. Gaston Latour, sitting
opposite, was leaning forward, stroking the gloved hand of one of them
where it lay upon the table, Doome listening to him with an amused
smile.
“Ah, Liane,” said Latour, “the English are good fellows, but they
cannot love.... Conjugate their verb: I lof, thou loffest, he lofs, ve
lof, you lof, zey lof--it is like coughing into a passionate woman’s
ecstatic ear--it is born of their fog--as well kiss a haddock!”
The two young women smiled away the sally pityingly, keeping their rapt
eyes on the Byronic Doome.
Gaston grinned:
“Mon Dieu!” said he, “he has not even an Englishman’s excuse for
existence--he is not even rich.”
The two women had arisen, scowling at each other’s handsome faces,
their beautiful lips set angrily, and began to quarrel about the seated
Doome, who thrust his hands into his pockets resignedly, and sat grimly
silent through it all.
Words were like to come to blows between the two women, for the
hot-blooded Liane, to reach the other, moved out to battle--the other
retired slowly up the café, her reckless rallies as she withdrew
bringing all eyes to the disturbance.
Women stood up on chairs and tables, to see the details; and the
students thundered applause, and threw in comic suggestions.
“The last word is with Liane,” shouted a great burly fellow with a big
laughing voice, an artist; and added: “Tiens! what a Juno, hein!”
Liane turned her pretty back upon them, and the wit ran down.
She came back to her seat beside Doome; sat down; and laid a hand upon
his sleeve:
“It was thy fault,” she said.
Doome looked at her grimly:
“Now call me a fool, Liane,” said he grimly.
The tears came to her eyes.
Gaston Latour went and sat down beside her, touched her hand:
“Hist!” said he--“Liane, you must not contradict him. It is the
privilege of genius to utter the truth.”
She turned to him, the tears in her eyes giving way to sad laughter.
Latour, with mock absent-mindedness, kissed her:
“Oh, pardon--I forgot,” said he; and so led back the laughter.
Doome smiled:
“You must forgive Gaston, Liane,” he said. “He forgets everything--he
even forgets himself.”
The girl leaned on Doome’s shoulder, turned to Latour:
“He says I am to forgive you, Gaston,” said she. “I love him.”
She took Doome’s hand in her lap, and stroked his fingers between her
gloved hands.
“I love the English,” she said.
Gaston looked shocked:
“Oh no--not so many as that!” said he, “it isn’t proper....”
As Betty, led by a waiter, and followed by Moll Davenant and Noll and
the Five Foolish Virgins, peering at the light, entered the flare of
the café, looking for places, unable to find seats under the awning
outside, she heard her name called, and, looking round upon the merry
crowd, she saw Babette signing to her to go to their table.
But Noll had been recognised, and there were loud shouts for him about
the café, and hands held out. His genial ways, his frank habits, his
kindly tact, had early won the hearts of the rollicking student crew,
and he had soon passed from “Monsieur” to surname, from surname to
Christian name, translated to heathen barbarianisms, to Noll, mon
vieux, old man.... Dick Davenant and the other Foolish Virgins came in
for a like ovation from “the boys.” And it was with some difficulty
that they managed to struggle through the genial riot after Betty and
join those that sat at Doome’s table. Quogge Myre and Aubrey took
advantage of the chance to join the party.
Babette held Betty’s hand now, and prattled happily. She pointed out to
Betty’s keen eyes the many beauties present, told their histories with
light touch, without malice and without exaggeration--just the simple
picturesque sketch. And always the end was the same. Suzanne yonder,
with the glorious hair like copper, she was the companion of that
artist--he would arrive--oh, yes, the world would hear of him. Suzanne
had been a model at the studios--but the hours were long--it was very
fatiguing--the walls of the studio were grey and bare--she hated dull
gowns--she went to the Bal Bullier--the next morning the studio was
very grey--she was cross and sleepy--the students were surly--it’s so
stupid to stand and be drawn--stupid and tedious and tiresome--she
would go no more--at the cafés one can do as one likes--the cafés were
gay--she had found a bourgeois--he was dull, but she had silk dresses
instead of gowns of stuff--still, he was a bore--so she left him and
came back to the cafés--the students were always gay--the café always
bright----
Ah, yes, that was Mimi--she had been a dressmaker--she too had gone to
the Bal Bullier--and had become the companion of a law student--it was
hard to keep the pot boiling, but she had been happy--then his five
years of _quartier latin_ were up, and he had gone home again and
married and become bourgeois and respectable--so she came to the café,
where the students are always gay and the lights are always bright, and
she liked to wear silks and fine linen.
Betty touched her arm:
“And after that?” she asked.
Babette shrugged her shoulders:
“Perhaps she will marry a tradesman,” she said. “Perhaps----” She gave
it up.
“And after that?”
Babette kissed Betty’s serious face:
“Thou odd inquirer,” said she. “If you ask after that and after that,
why we grow old one day--and after that die--and after that are
buried--and after that, who cares?”
She laughed, and stroked Betty’s hand:
“Ah, and that is Marcelle--she was apprentice to a sempstress--but the
work was hard, the hours long, oh so long, and the food scarce and
poor--and she has only once to live--and she has Titian red hair--she,
too, came to the cafés, where the students are always gay and the
lights are----”
There was a shout of laughter from the students.
Out of the riot the quavering voice of age rose in broken falsetto,
singing a snatch of song that was on the town in Betty’s childhood, a
soprano passage from an old Italian opera.
An old woman, with blear watery eyes, her tattered and rusty old
dress hanging in an untidy bunch about her shrunken body, a few grey
hairs straggling over her withered leaden face, was singing in the
full operatic manner. A strange pathetic sight. So an old harpsichord
sounds, awaking startled ghosts in some old-world room at the rude
touch of living hands.
The end of the broken song was received with loud laughter from the
students, who shrieked and coughed until the tears stood in their
eyes--they flung pence at the old woman’s feet. Women were standing on
tables, students were crowded in a ring about her.
“Thou hast danced with Victor Hugo, Margot, my pearl--show us how!”
cried a bearded cub from the schools.
She bowed--gathered up her seedy tattered skirts with something of
the old-world grand manner that went with the stately crinoline, and,
showing down-at-heel boots of the elastic-sided variety that are called
“jemimas,” her feet got shuffling to the steps of an old dance of the
quarter. In the sunken hollows of the wan old face hovered the ghost
of the set smile that dancers smile, baring toothless gums--the lights
flickered but feebly in her lamp of life--she skipped the steps now
right, now left, now back, now forward, with the stiff travesty of old
age--and set the tables in a roar. A grotesque attempt at high-kicking
brought down thunders of applause. The sous showered upon the floor.
She picked up the scattered money with pathetic weary old hands; bowed
to the applause, and taking her way stiffly through the café, passed
out into the night.
And to Betty it was as though the shadow of death had passed amongst
the revellers. Ay, even youth must come to that--the mockery and ghost
of its dead self.
“Ah, that is old Margot.” Babette touched Betty’s hand. “She comes out
so at night--it was here she had her triumphs fifty years ago.”
“And--the end?”
Babette shrugged:
“She is rich,” she said--“she comes out so at night--but in the day she
is rich. She has a villa in the country. Oh, but yes ... Gaston Latour
has seen it. Last year. Ah, she was so droll--she had sung a love-song
in the tenderest manner. Gaston gave her a gold piece by mistake for
silver. She was here the next night--Gaston also. He told her. “Bien!”
said old Margot, and gave him her card.... He went by rail--the villa
was on a lake--charming. He knocked. A servant opened the door. He was
shown into a salon. Madame would come in a moment. Madame Margot came.
Ah, yes, said she, the twenty-franc piece! She opened a cabinet and
gave it to him. Gaston, dumbfounded, thanked her, was retiring towards
the door thanking her, apologizing. She put her hand on his sleeve:
‘But, monsieur has forgotten the franc!’”
Betty smiled:
“Who is she?” asked she.
“The old woman once lived with a student who came to great fame,
and----”
She shrugged her shoulders. She turned suddenly and gazed hard at Betty:
“There are tears in your eyes,” she said. “What are you thinking of, my
dear?”
Betty sighed, and said hoarsely:
“The waste of women--the waste of women.”
That evening, Aubrey cast his evil eyes upon Moll Davenant.
He sat beside her, showered upon her the subtle flattery of his
whole attention, was soon in touch with her thwarted ambitions, was
sharing her dreams--and before the evening was out he had set a hedge
of confidences round about her that isolated her, with him as sole
companion, from the rest of her fellows. With all the moods of her
frail talents he was swiftly intimate; and, as he sat leaning forward,
his cheek on his hand, gazing intently at her, where she lolled back at
his side, his eyes took in every turn and line of the strange pallid
beauty of her hungry features. He put off his outward conceit and
interested her in herself--as he himself was interested----
There was a loud shout.
A number of the students and their young women rose, and each dragging
a chair behind him along the floor, they formed into line, and marched
round the café, singing a student song.
Thrice round the café, and flinging down the chairs, they streamed out
into the street....
At the door Betty kissed Babette good-night; and it was at this moment,
as their party stood about, that Betty, taking Moll Davenant’s arm,
was accosted by Quogge Myre, who at once assumed the tone towards
her that he considered so fascinating to women--a tone of chivalrous
condescension. Betty fretted under the attention of his repulsive eyes.
She did not like the man--his intent regard could not escape her. He
was asking if he might call upon her; and she was answering that she
was denying herself all social calls until she had finished a work on
which she was engaged, when he put out his hand familiarly and with his
fingers flipped the ends of the ruffle that she wore:
“You look nice and fresh,” he said.
Betty turned her back upon him. He always affected her like filth; when
he spoke it was as if filth could speak.
She slipped her hand through Molly’s arm.
Horace Malahide, who had watched the incident, laughed:
“Come, Babette!” said he--“we’ll see Noll and Betty and Moll home.”
Betty drew Moll Davenant away as Aubrey put his heels together and gave
his bow like a dancing-master.
“Come, Moll,” said she, and squeezing the girl’s arm, she added in a
laughing whisper--“and I’ll find Eustace to-morrow.”
To her surprise there was no answering smile.
As Aubrey and Myre turned out into the night together, Aubrey looked at
the other out of the corner of his eyes:
“That’s a very beautiful woman who--snubbed you--Myre,” said he.
Myre shrugged his shoulders:
“A woman should require winning,” he said. He licked his puffy underlip
sullenly.
They walked awhile in silence.
“They say that she’s Baddlesmere’s wife,” Aubrey said--“and a prude.”
Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre laughed:
“Oh, they all like their squeeze,” said he.
They walked some way down the street.
Aubrey sighed; and after awhile he said absently:
“I have never loved a consumptive woman yet. And I have found one--it
will be a strange emotional experience.”
“Oh, she’s consumptive, the faded lily, is she?” growled Myre. Aubrey
smiled:
“She is beautiful,” he said--“and she has a hectic mind.”
CHAPTER LIV
_Wherein the Widow Snacheur separates the Milk from Human Kindness_
In a large and shabby room on the ground floor of the court, a dark
blur in the gloom of the gathering dusk, crouched rather than sat the
widow Snacheur--_La bête noire_, the street urchins had it in awed
whisper, thrusting out mocking chins behind her back.
With hard old fingers she was smoothing out upon the bare table the
crumpled sheet of newspaper which she had just unfolded from a package
sent by a tradesman; the hawklike eyes strained to read the print, but
the fading daylight smudged the page.
She drew her soiled black shawl more closely about her bent shoulders:
She lifted up a reedy voice:
“Madelaine!” she cried harshly.
A door opened, and there stepped through the opened way a lean girl of
fourteen, the drudge that is called maid-of-all-work.
“Yes, madame,” said Madelaine, or what was the half-starved embodiment
of Madelaine, her long bare arms thrust out through her turned-up
sleeves, her dingy black dress a world too short for her and showing
bare legs, her stockingless feet in down-at-heels boots that had
already served another owner.
The child held herself insolently. Indeed, the old woman Snacheur had
beaten her the night before, falling upon the slender shoulders with a
stout stick; and for the first time the girl had flown at the brutality
and struck back--the old woman shuffling backwards into a corner of the
room before the onslaught, retreating in sullen surprise, wiping a long
tingling nose with the back of a sinewy hand as the pain sent the tears
trickling down the runnels of her withered cheeks. Through scowling
evil eyes she had realized that the harsh thrashings of these poor
lean shoulders were at an end--that the four years of grim domination
since she had taken this poor outcast child to be her drudge were
gone--and that whatever cruelty of starvation and neglect her miserly
wits might still impose upon her hungry years, the rod had fallen from
her gloating fingers and the blue weals upon the poor thin shoulders
were painted with the hellish brand of her cruel hand for the last
time. The child was springing up into starved youth--nay, girlhood was
almost gone--indeed, within the gaunt body lurked some strange hint of
womanhood, smiling forth even from the starved body of this hireling
thing.
“Yes, madame,” said Madelaine.
The brooding old woman came back out of the humiliating past:
“There are halfpence on the table,” she said--“go and buy milk--and see
that the thieving beast gives you full measure--there was no milk in
the neck of the bottle last night--he is a scoundrel--unless you drank
it on the way and are yourself the thief.”
Madelaine shrugged her lean shoulders, and gathered up the halfpence.
As she left the room the old woman called after her:
“And see that you are back before the darkness--there will be no light
to show you to bed.”
When the child had gone, the old woman arose and shuffled to a
cupboard. She listened to the girl fumbling at the latch of the outer
door--heard her depart--waited so until the brisk footsteps died away
into the traffic of the street. Searching in her skirts for a bunch
of keys, she glanced carefully round the darkening room, opened the
cupboard door, and took out an old tin canister. She held the canister
to the fading light of the high window, chose an end of candle from
some others, and carefully locked up the tin in the cupboard again. She
set the candle in a bottle and lit it.
Sitting down by the table again, she smoothed out the crumpled
newspaper.
It was said that the widow Snacheur was rich. She owned at any rate the
block in which she lived--from the ground floor she herself occupied up
to the top floor where Moll Davenant rendered tribute to her.
As Betty crossed the twilit court and entered the deeper gloom of the
house, she found Madelaine, a lean shadow in the dusk, fumbling with
the latch on the outer door of the widow Snacheur’s apartments.
“Is Mademoiselle the American at home, Madelaine?” she asked the girl.
Madelaine left the door, walked out into the courtyard and looked up.
“Madame, there is a candle burning on the sixth floor,” she called
across the court. She came to Betty: “And there is a shadow cast.
Mademoiselle the American must be at home,” she added; and got to
fumbling with the latch of the door again.
“Can’t you unlock it, Madelaine?” Betty asked the girl. “Shall I hold
your bottle? Your hands will be free.”
“Thank you, madame, no--you are very kind. The widow will not have the
lock mended--so I have to tie it with string from the inside--when I go
out.”
Betty stood on one side to let a young workman go by. He was a
pasty-faced slouching young fellow of powerful loose build; he had come
down the stair with curious stealthy step; and he took off his hat
clumsily as he passed.
Madelaine laughed as the awkward youth slouched out into the court:
“That dirty fool Hiéne wants to be my lover,” she said--“he pesters
me--but I am not going to love workmen--I am going to be driven in
carriages.”
“Hush, Madelaine--you must not say such things.”
Madelaine gave her good-night, laughter in her eyes, and with the
grace of coming womanhood took herself off airily towards the city’s
lights--a promise of lithe beauty in her walk for all her bedraggled
rags.
Moll Davenant had heard Betty’s light step upon the stair; she opened
the door for her to enter as Betty reached the landing. When she had
shut it, the two girls embraced each other.
“Come, Moll--and sit on the bed; and we’ll gossip.”
Moll suffered herself to be led to the sommier, and they sat down upon
the snowy whiteness of it.
Moll was watching Betty’s face hungrily.
“Moll,” said Betty--“I have been to look for Eustace Lovegood--ah, such
a mean shabby little hotel it was, poor fellow! but he was gone. The
waiter said he went back to England yesterday--after waiting restlessly
about the place for a letter that did not come.... I wish Eustace would
spend a little money on himself instead of giving it to every pitiful
person that cries out to him.”
Moll was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
She slipped on to the floor, buried her face in Betty’s lap, and sobbed
miserably.
Betty stayed with her until far into the night--until the heart-rent
girl slept peacefully upon the white bed.
She covered the poor sleeping soul with her meagre blankets....
As she rose to leave, her glance fell on a new book which lay beside
the lamp. It was a volume of erotic verse. She opened it and found an
inscription on the fly-leaf from Aubrey.
Betty sighed--put the lamp low--and slipped on tip-toe from the room.
* * * * *
In the dusk that held the city the next evening, Betty tapped at Moll’s
door; and she thought she heard a sob for answer.... She listened
awhile; but all was still. She rattled at the door and called. Only
silence.
Slowly she descended the stairs again.
At the bottom she came upon Madelaine, lean and cheery. There was some
talk.
She was just about to leave the girl when a man entered from out the
dusk of the court, passed them, and began to ascend the stair.
It was Aubrey.
She heard him climb flight after flight. He reached the top. Her eyes
were on Madelaine’s gossip, but her ears were listening for only one
sound.
A door opened and slammed.
There was silence.
CHAPTER LV
_Wherein is Some Worship of the Moon_
It was the national fête of the Republic--the Fourteenth of July.
All day, Paris had been a-rattle with tap of hammers. At every street
corner, baggy-trousered carpenters had been putting the last nails into
the pulpits of the lightly made bandstands; and now, as the flaring
sun went down in golden glory over the edge of the city, bathing the
decorated streets in amber light--the boarding of the bandstands
being covered with the gay splendour of tricolour bunting, and gaudy
coloured paper lanterns strung in gay festoons from lamp and tree and
window--Paris felt herself arrayed in all her holiday attire as she
took breath before her dancing.
At the end of the street where Noll and Betty had their lodging, the
carpenters completed their task amidst wide-eyed wonder of inquisitive
children and chatter of gossiping neighbours that stood at gaze along
the pavement. The landlord of the little restaurant opposite called to
the workmen to go and sit down at his tables and quench their thirst.
The great slouching fellows needed no second bidding--indeed, they knew
the liquor good, for the fat genial little host, Monsieur Charcot, had
been plying them with tankards throughout the day, at every hint of
heat or weariness, and the hints had not been few, urging them to push
on, that he might get up his lanterns, and cover the stand with the
red, white and blue stripes of France before darkness fell.
Beaming with hospitality, he now sallied across the road, two waiters
at his side carrying paper lanterns and bundles of the nation’s flags;
and the rickety bandstand was soon converted into as near a gorgeous
opera-box as the limitations would allow.
Madame Charcot stood near, crying orders to the waiters, which nobody
obeyed.
All the pretty _blanchisseuses_, bare-headed, were out along the curb,
adding advice and merriment. The which brought out the shop-lads. There
was kindly genial banter, and much talk and prophecy of dancing in the
evening.
The old people stood about, smiling; and were raising reminiscences
from the dead.
In the evening, Gaston Latour and Horace and the rest whooped to Noll
and Betty to come down from their high lodging; and in a jovial party
they wandered through the glowing streets of the illuminated city. All
Paris was dancing. Under the gaudy paper lanterns the citizens were
strolling, dancing, capering, laughing, singing--happy as children. And
when the students, returning from their long evening’s promenading,
came into the street where they lived, the bray and blare and shrill
music of fiddle and trombone and cornet and flute, rending the rustling
air with an old-time waltz-tune, told that the quarter was still
dancing.
The youths and maids were dancing; the middle-aged were dancing;
shop-folk and artisan; the old people were dancing.
Mine host, Monsieur Charcot, kicked a heel, blowing hard to keep the
time with a young milliner to the pace of the ill-jigging waltz--the
trombone being overfull of beer was inclined to sluggardy, whilst the
fiddle had developed ambition under the heat of the wines of Italy to
lead the music by more than an easy length. The trombone did well,
doggedly thrashing the air with overwhelming beat of time, save when he
hiccupped, when confusion would threaten. All the little sempstresses
and washer-girls were stepping it, swinging round in the whirl with
the grocer lads and the youths of the quarter, petticoats a-whirl. The
pasty-faced and sullen young workman Hiéne, in his best clothes, was
jumping through the measure with Madelaine, who had given old widow
Snacheur the slip. And now the melancholy-visaged Gaston Latour seized
the plump concierge about the height a waist had once been, and Madame
Hodendouche, but mildly protesting, found herself flung off her feet
and swept into the revolving whirl, well-pleased enough to be in the
social eddy....
All in the street danced out the night, the same tune serving more than
thrice--indeed, the call for new airs had started an unseemly brawl
between the fiddle and the trombone on the art of Wagner, which had
only been washed out in Chartreuse. So they got to jigging it again to
the old limping harmonies. They were not over-critical. They had all
grown up together, had danced out the national fête together through
the warm summer evening in the ruddy glow of the orange-paper lanterns
to the like halting music since they could well remember. Thus they
now footed it, until the white light of the coming day crept over the
eastern roofs and snuffed out the orange glow of the candles that
guttered in the lanterns’ sockets, and sent them all to their beds.
The early midsummer sun that came a-peeping into the town lit silent
thoroughfares in a drowsy city.
The arisen sun ascending into the high firmament saw the students
thronging to the railway-stations, with scanty baggage and uproarious
souls, to spend the hot days in country places or by the sea--a cheery
boisterous crew, good-tempered, chaffing, frankly jovial.
The exodus from the Latin Quarter begun, the “boys” burst in upon Noll
and Betty--Babette and Horace and the Disturber of Funerals and the
rest, and Gaston Latour. They all helped to pack, and dragged them
off to join the mighty holiday stream, going down to the outskirts of
Paris, to Enghien-les-Bains and Montmorency, by train, Gaston Latour
rending the air with devilish din of French horn, and insisting on
dancing the Arab _danse-de-ventre_ before railway officials and the
police, his melancholy face seriously unsmiling as he stepped it, the
others wailing the mournful Moorish music and beating time with tap of
canes or beat of hands.... And all too fleetly the summer days went by
in the pretty country places round about Paris.
Betty loved this summer time. Noll was with her all the day long,
blithe of heart and in good spirits, sketching with her and a dozen
others out of doors or writing by her side in their delightfully bare
room in the primitive inn. The world was fragrant with the scent of
flowers.
As the sunny daytime passed into the violet grey dusk, they would
wander arm in arm along the pretty country roads--Babette and Horace,
Noll and Betty, Gaston and the beautiful Liane, the Five Foolish
Virgins and the rest--straying through the twilight carelessly, never
wandering too far from civilization and the band and the casino’s
paper lanterns--never too far to reach the merry dinner of an evening,
lolling in pleasant fatigue round the table in the trim little bosquets
of the courtyards of inns, where they all loitered over dinner to talk
wondrous nonsense about the delights of a country life, mixed with
criticisms of art and of books and of the world. And, the dinner done,
they would stroll round the lake, and sit upon the banks, and gaze
entranced at the moonlit fairyland--the lights that danced upon the
waters and the stars that bespangled the sapphire heavens with a myriad
winking mysteries--glad to be alive where all was beautiful.
And there would be sweet idle talk of the day when they should all have
villas on the lake with lawns by the water’s edge, disdainful of the
rough struggle of the world, watching the pigeons and the peacocks in
the sun, listening to the coo of doves, and, when the day was done,
content to sit at gaze with the wizard moon and myriad stars, fretting
their souls with no stupid thought for fame or name--yet each one
knowing in his heart that in most delicious idleness would be weariness
beyond the weariness of toil.
There was one thorn only in all this summer delight--Moll Davenant,
moody, a prey to odd whims, possessed now of strange reservations and
sudden shrinkings, now frightened, now daring, now boisterous, now
brooding, lived feverishly, crowding her life into its little span,
her pathetic eyes on her doom, as one who knows how short a while she
has to live. More than once, Betty had sold some trinket of her own to
get the wherewithal to tempt the uncertain appetite; and Noll, too,
was the poorer by more than one little possession which he cheerily
said he did not want. Then the girl would disappear for days, returning
fagged and troubled, like one drugged. Her flushed colour showed that
the flames of her life were burning out the tissues of her frail body,
and a feverish desire to live the night as well as the day urged her
to frantic bursts of work and of excitement, alternating with long
hours of lassitude and a pathetic patience and humility and listless
idleness. One day she disappeared and was not heard of for a week; then
the news came from far away that she had been seen at the casino at
Dieppe with Aubrey.
* * * * *
At the doors of the Hotel Continental in Paris stood Ponsonby Wattles
Ffolliott, talking to Quogge Myre; Rupert Greppel and Lord Monty Askew
stood at either hand; they gazed superciliously at the passers-by.
Ponsonby Ffolliott, blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils, said,
drawling:
“It’s an awful bore--but Lady Boone is throwing her girl at my head--an
awfully pretty girl, she is, by Jove--but, you know, a fellow must have
his fling first--or how is a fellow to know he loves the girl--and I am
really quite too young----”
They slapped him on the back, and there was laughter.
Ponsonby Ffolliott felt the glory of a man of the world jumping in his
marrow; he kicked out his legs:
“Yes,” he said affectedly. “The old trout made me swear to go down to
Enghien-les-Bains for lunch. Such a silly hole--such a silly meal--but,
you know, a fellow isn’t bound by a promise made under compulsion, is
he?”
Ponsonby blew out smoke:
“By Jove,” he said, staring at a girl, one of a bevy that passed, who
glanced a roguish eye at him--“what a very pretty girl!”
Ponsonby kicked out his legs jauntily; and followed the girl. And, as
he walked, the long white laces of his stays hung down behind and swung
to his strutting.
CHAPTER LVI
_Wherein it is suspected that there has been Peeping through Windows_
August and September passed, and the fever went out of the hot breath
of the sun; October came into the city in cooler fashion and more
russet habit. The scent of autumn in the air brought the students
scrambling back from the country, and the Boule Miche knew their light
gait and cheery voice once more.
With the return of his boon companions to their old haunts, Noll was
out and away early and late again. The first day of October had seen
him taken off by Horace Malahide, with a set of drawings to Gérôme--had
seen him receive the letter which should admit him a _nouveau_ to the
great man’s _atelier_ in the State schools of the Beaux Arts. He had
only to wait until the fifteenth to be initiated into the riotous
mysteries of the French studio where Latour and Malahide were not the
least boisterous of its boisterous pupils.
As Noll came back, triumphant from his interview with the celebrated
painter, Horace and Latour singing him in, he flung down his drawings
upon the floor. Betty, glowing with delight at his delight, took
them up one by one, and was somewhat surprised at their technical
accomplishment. She had feared his days with Horace Malahide had
been but idle days. Yet, even with this evidence before her eyes,
she was not without shrinkings, for she knew the feverish energy
which Noll could put into any effort to gain what he wanted for the
time being--and she knew he had greatly fretted to get into Gérôme’s
_atelier_.
Beyond?
She knew his Beyond had been of the vaguest. The jovial comradeship of
the schools had roused him to effort. And even whilst she went up to
him and embraced him, she wondered whether his eyes had been fixed upon
any Beyond. She glowed to the pressure of his jovial embrace; she felt
the delight of his achievement--yet her clear-seeing eyes were afraid
for him. He was so easily successful.
They all sallied out together with Betty, roused the Five Foolish
Virgins (Moll Davenant’s door refused to open); and there was cackle
and riot as they took a restaurant by storm. The crude wine had
never seemed so mellow, the mystic dishes had not tasted finer at an
emperor’s banquet--ah! the mysteries of the cooking-pot never yield
such savour as to the palate of youth.
Early on the morning of the fifteenth, a fresh October day, Horace
Malahide and Gaston Latour came for Noll; and he, in mighty high
spirits, an easel over his shoulder and a couple of rush-bottomed
stools dangling therefrom, hugged Betty and sallied out with the others
to face the wild horseplay that greets the coming of the _nouveau_ on
the opening day in the art schools of Paris.
Betty, leaning over the balcony, kissed her hand to him as the three,
looking up, waved their hats, and departed out of the court.
She smiled as she thought of the devilments that would ensue; and she
smiled still more at the thought of Noll, returned from it all, helping
her on with her jacket and hurrying her off to dinner, telling her of
the amusing details in his rollicking humorous way, with his quaint eye
for the quips and oddities of droll situations.
But the day was heavy upon her--she could not bend her will to her
work--the hours passed with sullen tread....
As the sun set she began to listen for Noll’s footfall. The last
sunset glow of the eastern heavens passed into the grey twilight; the
chill breath of the evening warned her that her frequent roamings to
the balcony must cease; she shut the shutters and the window. But the
stairs echoed to no sound of Noll’s eager return.
It came to the girl for the first time--selfless as she was--that Noll
was finding the sufficient delights of life very well without her; and
the thought bit into her heart.
She sighed and arose wearily.
To-night she must dine alone, as she had so often dined alone of
late--yet to-night, for the first time, she resented it--was stung by
the whisper that it need not have been.
She took her way to the little street of l’Ancienne Comédie. She did
not trespass into Noll’s noisier cafés--the noise and the disturbance
and restlessness distressed her. Noll preferred “life” at the noisier
cafés--the greetings were louder.
Betty betook herself languidly now to her dinner, through the white
portals of the Café Procope. She stole into a quiet corner, where
she was used to sit and think her sweet thoughts, where the pen was
always busy. But her weary brain this night was branded with harsh
truths from which she could find no hiding-place. She wondered what the
great brooding brains that had known this ancient hostel had gnawed
upon within these very walls--what petty little insolences had been
thrust upon _them_ whilst they were “thinking in continents.” And she
felt it a relief when at last the old-world spirit of the place took
possession of her, and she found her wits roaming from herself through
the pageant of its past magnificence. The dark atmosphere of its sombre
peacefulness was lit for awhile with the glory of its ancient days; and
the dark corners of the Café Procope became haunted with the mighty
breath of its Great Dead. These had been no mediocrities, whatever
their faults and failings, but big full-blooded Men--their very sins
preposterously magnificent passports to Hell. These were not content to
play with the mere toys of life--juggling with echoes.
Fallen into the faded relic of bygone days, this peaceful place has
passed into the quietude of the neglected thoroughfare on the narrow
footway of which stand its white portals. The strenuous world goes
rattling past the end of the old road, unheeding of its one-time
magnificence; turns but seldom into its neglected way. Its noisy
history is now forgot, its splendid drama remembered by how few of them
that live in all this vast splendid city--nay, even by how few of such
as have their dingy habitation in this very street, or win the prizes
of learning in the illustrious schools of its neighbourhood!
Heretofore had been the very heart of all France--her hot blood had
leaped hottest here, sending the throb of its pulsing life to uttermost
valley and hamlet of this vast realm. In this little coffee-house, now
fallen into neglect, had met together the great wits of France, her
master-minds. Nay, rumour hath it that here indeed was very name of
coffee-house begotten, begun, made manifest; for here was first given,
to France, coffee to chase the dinner and to comfort the stomach of
France.
Hither wandering, our Orange William being just come to the throne of
England, there had entered into possession, in curly long peruke and
somewhat dandified exterior to his shrewd inner man, Master François
Procope, in that same year that the Comedy of France took possession
of the then Théâtre Français over the way; and, forthwith, glory and
fame came to his Café Procope--the wits gathering there to the sipping
of coffee and making of elaborate waggeries, not without wrangle, and
swords whipped from sullen scabbards, and the like follies manifold.
Here had descended from sedan-chair the bent lean figure of Voltaire,
his play _Irene_ being in rehearsal opposite, and sipped the cup of
coffee that was now become the mode in France, the maker of mode.
The keen eyes had roved over these panelled walls--here he had stood
sneering away the tawdry pretence of popes and kings and laughing to
death the diseased and putrid hereditary aristocracy of France. These
walls knew the lean mocker well. In yonder sombre little room you shall
see still the chair and table at which he was used to sit and write his
vitriol jibes, that were the severe medicine for the corrupt body of
the decayed nobility.
Here, in fantastic riot, had Rousseau been carried shoulder high after
a dramatic triumph; here had Condorcet, in intervals of writing upon
the Integral Calculus, been not above horseplay; here had sat Diderot,
scheming his encyclopædic schemes, talking tomfool solemn travesties of
dangerous talk with winking eye upon his fellow-wags, to lead on the
over-zealous police agents to the fussy discovery of large mares’ nests
of conspiracy.
Nor had jests and badinage been the only fare. In these ghostly dingy
mirrors had passed the faces of the great actors in the world tragedy
of France. Within these walls had intrigued the master conspirators of
the seventeen hundreds. Here had been put on the first bonnet rouge
that was symbol of the coming earthquake of Europe. Here had sat, in
yonder corner, fearless, massive great-souled Danton, shock-headed,
black haired, playing at chess with the crooked blear-eyed horse-doctor
Marat; here had stood, dark-browed, pock-marked, incontinent, bankrupt,
the great resolute sane strong man of the Revolution, Mirabeau, the
born ruler of men, destined to die of his youth’s vices at that very
moment when bewildered France was at his feet and had the sorest need
of him; here, too, that other pock-pitted fellow, the dandified sphinx
of the madness, “seagreen” Robespierre, crafty, merciless; here had
throbbed the heart of Camille Desmoulins, who lost his head in plea for
mercifulness, bearding the bloody madness of the Terror with proposal
for a Committee of Mercy that keeps his memory sweet as the mellow
syllables of his name to all eternity--here with d’Holbach he had sat
or paced, airing hot enthusiasms, plunging deeper into dangers their
clean souls scarce realized--moving forward to high dramatic destinies
none could foretell, godlike, to the guillotine and betrayal and death
and broken illusions. Here, too, forger, thief, and liar, had stood
Hébert, one of the foullest blots on the Revolution, stood at that
door upon that table of Voltaire’s, and, mouthing his Sacred Right
of Insurrection, harangued the fierce crowd that packed the narrow
thoroughfare, exciting them to the black brutalities of the Terror,
stamping his great vulgar foot in passionate frenzy of murderous
blasphemies upon the table top so that the heel of his heavy boot split
the marble across--he who most damnably lied away the fame of the
poor doomed foolish queen where she stood at trial alone amongst her
hellish enemies--he who “hated the word Mercy”--here he had sat, little
dreaming that his filthy neck should be slit in agony of craven appeal
by the very laws of his own planning.
Nay, within these very walls had been conspiracy within
conspiracy--massacres planned--the killing beginning at these demure
white doors.
Here, on that August day that the Monarchy fell, had sat Madame Roland
and Lucille Desmoulins, the sweet and beautiful and rich mate of famed
Camille, together with Madame Danton, their ears athrob with ringing of
bells and roar of cannon--the shadow of the guillotine not flung as yet
their way, unsuspected, their eyes as yet not seeing, their white necks
not feeling, that harsh doom either for themselves or their lords.
Hence one day a genial, dreamy, kindly young officer of artillery they
called Napoleon Buonaparte, that lived at a small lodging in a street
hard by, walked out bare-headed, leaving his cocked hat as security
for his reckoning, having forgotten his purse. Here, in days not so
long past, Gambetta fumed and raved and swore and dreamed and spouted,
holding the Republic together as best he could, a Republic broken with
a dozen warring internecine strifes and petty interests.
Here, the old café having fallen on more peaceful days and slow decay
in its neglected thoroughfare, the poor dirty shabby genius that was
called Paul Verlaine sat at the dead Voltaire’s table, and wrote on
scraps of paper his now world-famous lyrics.
The greatest of these had been mighty workers, men of iron toil. These
had not been content to thrum little five-fingered echoes of the great
music of the drama of life--these had created their own music, their
own methods, their own art. No man shall come to greatness through
juggling with echoes. These had made their own style to express
themselves--had no need of the elaborate polishing of the tricks and
ornaments of the mediocrities who, having nothing to express, filch
little movements and sounds from the vasty music of the masters to
cover their own little insignificance--who in toil to polish phrases
miss the statement. Nay, these men had not been content with praise of
mediocrities--had scorned even their approval.
When, an hour before midnight, Betty, going homewards, passed the house
where Moll Davenant lived, she became aware of hoarse whispers; looking
up the dark side street as she crossed the road, she saw a man standing
on another’s shoulder peering into the lighted room within--the widow
Snacheur’s room. The fellow leaped down, and the pair of them calmly
sauntered down the alley.
Betty hurried on, vaguely wondering. She reached the house where she
lodged, and found the great gates shut. It came to her that it was the
first time she had felt a certain shrinking from ringing the bell in
the concierge’s den--the first time she had felt alone; the first time
she had tried to find an excuse for being alone.
She rang--the postern opened with a clank--she stepped in, shut it,
called her name as she passed the concierge’s window, and climbed her
stairs wearily.
It was very late, yet she had no fear that Noll had returned to find no
welcome.
She laughed sadly.
It dawned upon her that it was she who had always returned unwelcomed
to the empty hearth. He was probably leading the laugh at some
fantastic tavern’s good-fellowship....
As she let herself into her room, her glance fell on a note that had
been slipped under the door. She picked it up, lit her lamp, and opened
the letter listlessly: it was from the Disturber of Funerals--her heart
warmed to the genial handwriting, at the thought of the big-hearted
kindly man. As she read, her own loneliness fell from her, her own
affairs as usual became as naught. Her eyes grew serious. Dick Davenant
was off to America, recalled by his people on urgent summons; he would
catch the Atlantic liner from England--would Betty, like the good
comrade she was, watch over Molly until he returned--she was grown full
of strange moods and kept him from her--he was at a loss....
“I will go to her at daybreak,” Betty said; and languidly she undressed.
She lay down on her bed; and the pillow that had known so many bright
dreams, ambitions, hopes, was for the first time wet with Betty’s
scalding tears.
CHAPTER LVII
_Which treats of what chanced at the Tavern of_ The Scarlet Jackass
And Noll?
It was close on midnight. In the smoke-laden air that made a blue haze
within the quaint tavern of _The Scarlet Jackass_, up and down the
narrow gangway between the crowded tables paced restlessly the nervous
figure of its artist-landlord, André Joyeux.
He wheeled round, and flung a phrase at the room; and a loud burst of
laughter greeted the sally.
At the tables, smoking, chatting, their glasses of milky absinthe
and tankards of ale before them, sat journalists, artists, poets,
poetesses, students, bohemians, women, musicians, and a soldier or so.
At one table was a group of students from Gérôme’s _atelier_, with
Horace Malahide, Gaston Latour, Noll.
Early in the evening, as they dined, André Joyeux became possessed of
all the latest news of the town--political moves, social happenings,
scandals, theatrical gossip, literary events, before these things were
yet in print, often before they were written; and as he now walked up
and down, haranguing, he made his satiric comments upon it all.
He smiled at the roar of laughter and applause. As he turned on his
heel at the end of the room, his glance fell on a wizened little old
man in gold-rimmed spectacles, who sat bent, and huddled, and drowsing,
his arms folded on the table before a glass of absinthe, a wreath of
white roses with which he had been crowned earlier in the evening
pulled slanting over one sleepy eye.
André Joyeux stopped in his stride:
“What, poet!” cried he, with a laugh, “thy wreath is awry.” He clapped
it on the back of the old man’s head. “What, thou sleepest on the
very steps of the altar of Fame! Thy brains are drowsy with the fumes
of the incense in the very temple of Wit; so Genius, hiccupping with
wine, misses his footing at the very threshold of Immortality!...
Tsha!” He turned on his heels and continued his walk, striding down the
room again. “Sleep if thou must--thou canst read during to-morrow,
twenty-four hours late, and at thy leisure on the boulevards with the
pot-bellied trader, the world’s news that will be stale here with
the snuffing of to-night’s candles; and thou wilt get thy news, too,
devoid of wit, without colour, stale and dull and flat as long-drawn
small-beer, and twisted and distorted and debauched to the uses of each
journal.”
But the vague eyes of the little old mad poet had closed, and he was
nodding over his glass. André Joyeux laughed:
“Our old singer of tuneless songs comes from the Latin Quarter, across
the river, comrades,” said he--“he has the drowsy habits of the
academies--it is always so over there--on the flats across the river,
with their vaunted universities and isms and ologies. The professors
with dandruff on collar, and the students with talk of new ideas and of
the new generation, what do they know of life?”
He flung out his arm as he strode to and fro:
“Tush! they have books down there, ridiculous printed things to _tell_
them of life! to tell them what other people think of life!... They
have museums, dry holes where bits of the dead past are stored in
glass cases. They have talk of architecture that is dead and useless
architecture--schools are endowed to teach it--nay, schools are endowed
to tell of what it used to be.... They hang up armour, and write books
about it--about armour!” He laughed loud and long. “They might as
well write about cooking-pots and discarded tin cans with holes in
them.... They will.... They talk of relics of the past--nay, they
worship them--build churches to them. They collect things--coins,
postage-stamps, what-not. They will collect spittoons next. They form
societies--learned societies to pester each other with things that
do not matter. They peer at old pictures that have lost their vital
significance, completed their function--build public galleries for
them, each room a nightmare of incongruous warring canvases, lost to
their original intention over a church’s altar or what not, wrangling
together, inadequate, foreign, out of place. As though by the looking
upon Cromwell’s bones or Napoleon’s breeches they would learn to rule
the world! Students pay to see these things--spend the precious years
of youth poring over them, even copying them! The delirious years of
youth!... They call it culture. Gods! culture!... To the Latin Quarter,
to the professors, dandruff-collared, to the gaping student, life is
this dusty dull study of what is dusty and dull and stupid and dead....
We of the Hill of Martyrs, it is we who know what is life. Stand at
your doors in our steep streets, climb you up yonder to the top of
the hill, up with you to the topmost scaffolding of the preposterous
cathedral of the Sacred Heart that is a-building, topped with cupolas
that shall stand like giant onions to acclaim the sins of garlic-eating
burgess France, and look down--condescend to Paris. Between us and the
river, with Latin Quarter beyond, glitter the lights of a different
Paris, another world--a Paris that knows as little of us of the hill
as of the professors of the Latin Quarter yonder--a Paris of the
boulevards, a Paris of the aristocrat and of the burgess--a world
that knows little of poetry or of learning, and tries to forget what
it knows; a world that despises us as we despise it; that shuns us as
we shun it. There the burgess, with sole ambition the desire to best
his neighbour, plods in glum respectability his mean inglorious day,
yet once in a blue moon struts his holiday, his limbs cramped with
lack of use to live, his only law of life a fear of his neighbour’s
opinion, his object in life to put a number of coins in a bank, to grow
full-bodied in the doing, and marry a wife and reproduce his ignoble
species. His furthest ambition to grow very old. God! what a life! Yet
is his end like ours who live one long holiday--to die and rot like any
lousy beggar, or prince, or cardinal. For the avoidance of this his
bank cannot serve--he can write no letter of credit that shall avail
him beyond his length of earth.”
“Ay, André--they exist; they do not live,” cried a young fellow of
pallid countenance, whose hand, thin, and white, and delicate as a
woman’s, shook as he raised his glass of absinthe to his lips.
André Joyeux laughed in his stride:
“Ay, comrades,” said he--“it is we on the Hill of Martyrs who
_live_.... Climb Montmartre, and you are in a rare atmosphere--get
you up amongst the scaffolding a-top of it, and you may touch the
clouds--the air is light, vivacious, exciting as wine--solemn things
and dull talk fall away from you--you must stoop if you would kiss the
hand to Paris, stoop to hail her, stoop to see her. Here we condescend
to the world. We are amongst the clouds--breathe the air the gods have
breathed. We have here no rare inclinations to riot--here _life_ is a
riot. Down there they toil and moil all day through, all the months,
to snatch infrequent glimpses of life, that they have not the habit
to enjoy. Tush!” He laughed. “They call it a _holiday_! Ho, Ho, Ho!
a holiday!... They lie down at the ticking of a clock--sleep at the
bidding of their task-masters--awake at the striking of a clock to
work their fingers to the bone for a shabby grave. Worse still, work
others’ fingers to the bone, even the fingers of woman and child, this
pitiful scourged crew, to make rich the brutish vulgarians whom they so
fantastically serve. God! what a hell’s stew!... With the darkness they
lie down and go to sleep--to awake with the daylight to further toil
and moil again. A Russian grand-duke steals their prettiest daughter
for a week or more, then takes another. The rich, who are their idols,
misuse their beautiful women; so they look up to the rich.... But
we! we live all the while. If we’ve a mind to it, we rejoice in the
night--we sleep when we will--live whilst we may. Life’s but for a few
flitting years at best. These others are so mad they think us mad who
know them mad.... If we are mad----”
He stopped a waiter who passed with a tray of tumblers filled with
absinthe. His hand shook so that he spilled some liquor as he raised a
glass:
“If we are mad, then here’s to madness!”
They roared with laughter, banged their fists upon the board, raised
their glasses and drank with him. He emptied the glass and flung it to
a waiter.
“If theirs be sanity to huddle in foul dens, feed on the Mad Cow of
Hunger, scowl sullenly at life from work-stunned eyes, all to fill the
purse of pot-bellied tradesmen, to build with their blood and toil the
vulgar habitations of their pretentious vulgarity, then ’twere better
to be mad.... And no worse than Sanity.... We too have tasted the flesh
of the Mad Cow, but we have not sold our souls for bread, nor our lives
to be allowed to rummage on a dunghill.” He held out his hands and
grasped the air, adding with hoarse passion: “We live, I say--we live.”
He stood proudly, and gazed at the applause.
They called to him to sing; and he stood there and sang the song that
held Paris; and as he sang the refrain, they all burst into the chorus:
“Proud as kings and loud as carters,
Live we who live on the Hill of Martyrs.”
When the rousing chorus was done, amidst thunders of applause, fists
banged upon the tables, André Joyeux mounted a chair:
“Our exquisite singer and friend, Adolphe St. Pierre, is unable to keep
his engagement to-night,” said he. “But our ancient friend, Paul de
Gattepoésie, will take his place,” he added.
There was ironic applause.
The old man with wreath of roses on his head, rousing from his stupor
at the nudgings of those that sat near, arose from his chair and, with
a smile, shuffled towards the piano. He took his place in serious
conceit as the player ran through the refrain of a lilt, and, in a
broken voice, he began to utter the verse of his song. But he forgot
the words, and the piano finished without him. There was a titter.
His vague eyes lighted up again and he started to utter another mood,
and again the piano finished without him. And thus, standing there,
his straying wits roamed through the maze of the bewildering land of
the mad--inconsequently, unabashed, pathetic, unashamed.... He had
loved a maid that was red--and swore his allegiance--and she was very
beautiful--but somehow he came to love a maid that was white--but she
had a mother--and the maid that was red did not like it--so she drowned
herself in the lake, a clammy, forbidding, ill-smelling lake--but it
was the mother that, somehow, made him love a girl that was dark--but
she had a brother--and--and--the magistrate asked him why he drank
strong drinks--but he said he had but drunk the milk of the Mad Cow----
The rose garland slipped forward and came down over his eyes, when in
the midst of the buffooning laughter that greeted the accident the
doors of the tavern were flung open and several Salvation Army girls
entered the room.
The old mad poet blinked at the interruption, sighed, and shuffled back
to his seat and his absinthe.
André Joyeux rose and went forward to greet the Salvation lasses,
received them gently, and asked them if they would sing. One of the
girls nodded, ran a few notes on a droning concertina, a tambourine was
struck and chinked, and the Salvation Army lass raised her voice in
song--the strange sound of an English hymn sung in French with rough
true notes, and with passionate eagerness declaring the glory of God
and the gentleness of the Christ in this fantastic place of worn-out
moods and critical art-sense. At the next verse the chant was taken up
by the other women, to the threat of hell-fire, the dread of judgment,
the fierce revelling in the blood of Christ, the promise of eternal
life amidst the glory of the angels; the girls’ voices gave out a last
hoarse shout of praise, and the tavern rang with the riot of applause.
André Joyeux went and thanked them prettily.
When the girls had trooped out of the place he watched the door close
upon them:
“God!” said he--“what enthusiasm!... It is very dramatic.”
The company rose to go, giving André good-night as they went out, and,
it being near midnight, Noll and Horace, and the others with them
from Gérôme’s _atelier_, were about to go also and leave the regular
frequenters of the place to their intimate gossip in the closed tavern,
when André came down to them and asked them to stay. He took them
round and showed a sketch of Noll’s framed amongst the many works of
celebrities that hung upon the walls. “My friend, you are an artist,”
said he.... They went and sat down at André’s table. The others all
moved up about them. There was more beer, more absinthe. “The tavern is
now closed,” said he--“you are my guests.”
The talk became more intimate.
André Joyeux would rise from his seat between the rallies, restlessly
pacing the half-empty room, gesticulating, laughing, frowning,
droll--bending his whole wits to the point at issue. His trenchant mind
took on a lighter humour. Whatever topic came up, when he felt about it
and did not let it pass him with uncaring eyes, he would get up from
his seat and get to pacing the room again, playing with it, extolling
or condemning, criticising, turning it over and inside out, his keen
wit tearing it to shreds or weaving for it a wreath of bays--ever
and anon moistening his throat, tilting his glass of absinthe in his
shapely white hands.
An hour after midnight he was more than exhausted.
He called for supper....
He drank; none deeper. His talk was wild, his quick tongue and nimble
brain were matched against some of the keenest wits of Paris, and his
sharp satiric rallies, his rollicking and fantastic humour, never
showed to greater advantage than on that night....
Some young fellow asked why Adolphe St. Pierre had not sung this night;
it was a somewhat unhappy query, and André Joyeux’s quick ears caught
it. It set him brooding; the laughter went out of his eyes:
“His nerves have gone,” he said--“this morning at daybreak he became
violent--dangerous--about the double genitive.” He smiled sadly. “It
took four poets and a journalist to hold him down, and a musician to
pluck at the locked door and wring his hands and say how dreadful it
was.... Poor Adolphe! he is gone quite mad.”
The pale youth touched André Joyeux on the sleeve with trembling
fingers:
“Comrade,” said he--“your life is a furnace, burning night and
day--you, too, will go mad.”
He laughed a rough laugh, boisterously unmirthful; raised his glass;
tossed it off:
“That is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis,” said he
hoarsely--“that is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis.... Ah, that
was a man. He knew how to live....” He got up, his hands twitching,
and paced the room again: “It was Rodolph Salis that brought _the
wits_ to Montmartre. It was Rodolph Salis who saw that Genius would
condescend to roar at the tavern, not to snore at the academy--it was
Rodolph Salis who saw that as artist he could only be one of many, but
as tavern-keeper he might be immortal--so it came that Rodolph created
the most renowned tavern of France--so it came that Rodolph Salis
opened the tavern of _The Black Cat_; and to its artistic rooms, in the
atmosphere of masterpieces hung on the walls round about amongst its
old dark panelling, under the dim lights of its wrought-iron lamps,
the wits fore-gathered to godlike entertainment. On those walls the
pencil of Steinlen had traced a masterpiece, and Willette’s dainty
fingers drawn the nervous laughing line; there, seated before his glass
of absinthe, I have seen Paul Verlaine write the exquisite lyrics of
France; there, among the splendid riot, have sat Daudet, and Zola, and
Richepin, Meissonier and Puvis de Chavannes and the rest.... Hoho!
Salis put his waiters into the livery of the Forty Immortals, green
coats and green leaves and breeches and silk stockings and all--put
his flunkies into the habit of them that drowse at the Academy down
yonder across the river, each snoring in his seat, the fortieth part
of Immortality, sleeping away the honour of France, between bouts of
cudgelling their dullard wits to produce the printed book. Tshah!
where are the Immortals, the gods? Outside. Outside and aloof they
stand--Molière and Rabelais and Balzac, Diderot and Rousseau, Victor
Hugo and Georges Sand, Montaigne and De Musset, Zola and Verlaine,
Daudet and Flaubert and Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier.... And whilst
the Fortieth parts of Immortality each slept, smugly overfilling his
breeches’ girth, loading the Academy with dull breathing, Rodolph Salis
called the wits together: and at his call the immortals flung the
immortal phrase round about the board, tossed to and fro the splendid
jest in his tavern of _The Black Cat_. Day and night, spontaneous,
full-blooded, polished, they lived their scintillating life.... I can
see Rodolph, orange-haired, orange-bearded, pale, green-eyed, his
wondrous white hands restless with the leaping pulse and quick nerve,
as he was wont to sit at dinner with the wits. _There_ was the real
Academy of France. Ay, his waiters most fitly wore the leafed green
coats and breeches of the Fortieth part of Immortality!... Ah, how
the wine glowed!... With the dessert, Rodolph, sipping his coffee,
listened with furrowed brow to the latest news, weighing it, testing
it--the most brilliant journalists of France at his elbow. The quips,
the jests, the biting comment! It was the centre of the world!... I can
hear their literary criticism destroy a life’s work in a _mot_, fling
immortal honour in a phrase, tossed in epigram across the table, and
back again another as keen-edged--the last gossip of the stage--the
loud hilarious scandal.... I can see Rodolph, the brows wrinkled in
mighty furrows of keen attention as the poets read their lines--can
hear his bravas that made men rich and set their blood tingling--can
pluck out of the dead years the condemning thunders of his dispraise,
can catch his deft wit polishing a blundering line.... But for Rodolph
Salis many a poet, singer, artist had been this day in his garret,
unknown--trudging, down at heels, the Undiscovered Country. But the
artist in him! never forgetting his magnificence that he kept the
tavern of France.... Hoho! I can hear the jovial laugh: ‘My lords,’
he’d cry, ‘the time has come for the nobility and self-respecting
gentlemen to demand a fresh tankard of ale.’ Hoho! that was a king of
tavern lords! Then the golden ale went round--the cloudy absinthe....
And when the room began to fill and the time for shadow-shows to begin,
Salis was in full stride. Affable to his guests, always the good
host, well-bred, polished, good-humoured, giving the stranger rank of
nobility, he would show ‘monseigneur’ with pride of possession the
cats that were limned upon the walls, the sketches, the glories of his
ancient place; and lead the way to the shadow-show upstairs, sketches
of France’s genius on the stair’s walls, hanging everywhere--and he
so proud of it all! I can see him stride up and down the passage of
the shadow theatre up there, as the witty pictures fell in black
silhouette across the white sheet of the theatre’s round proscenium,
his gay laugh, his running whimsical comment on affairs, his fierce
biting denunciations, the flashing green eyes, the nervous white
hand--God! what a fire burned there!... Ah, what songs, what poesie,
what rhapsodies, what quaintly spoken words have sounded within those
walls!... At midnight when the crowd was gone, as we sit here to-night,
he was alone with the wits again--and the wine glowed, and the cloudy
absinthe went round--and there was supper that the gods had envied to
the tune of the wild badinage that was tossed about the board. And he,
Rodolph Salis, the brightest star!... How the ghosts of the Great Dead
have arisen at our summons, and walked there!... Tshah! _there_ was
the Academy of the world.... But--he--one day--found his nerves were
gone--he took to his bed.... Even amidst the rousing chorus in the wind
that passed, his quick ears had heard the Old Reaper’s whetstone upon
the sickle--he heard the whisper of Doom--and the nimble wit of Rodolph
Salis had never missed the intention of the most subtle hint. He tossed
his jibe to Death. And who with more weighty right to the insolence? He
had known life----”
André Joyeux ceased speaking; stood brooding; roused; striding to his
place, he raised a glass--his hand shook----
The room was deathly still.
“Rodolph Salis knew life,” he said hoarsely.
There was silence whilst he drank; and again he got to his restless
pacing:
“There was one man in all this wide world,” said he, “who was glad when
the sign of _The Black Cat_ was taken down--that man was Rodolph’s
brother, Gabriel Salis. They had been estranged from the time of
Gabriel’s setting up this tavern of _The Scarlet Jackass_, hating each
other’s successes, jealous that the same mother had endowed them with
equal wit, resentful of each other’s magnificence....”
He strode up and down several times in silence.
“And Rodolph being dead,” said he--“Gabriel reigned in his stead....
Here within these walls his wit flashed.”
He swept his arm proudly round the room and strode off again:
“And--because his hand shook--and--his tongue wagged feverishly,
speaking the fantastic thinkings of that teeming imagination, they
cried out that he, too, would go mad; and he, raising his glass as
Rodolph had done in trembling fingers, would laugh boisterously....
But--Gabriel, too, heard the whisper--he feared to die the death that
Rodolph died--and the tavern of _The Scarlet Jackass_ passed to André
Joyeux.”
He laughed, wheeled round, and swept his hand towards the flaring
poster at the end of the room:
“There have I drawn Gabriel on his scarlet jackass, bags of gold about
him, trotting away to the fresh air of the fields to the country house
he had bought----”
He moved down the room again, moodily:
“But he, too, took to his bed--he had lived his life--he missed his
glass, his fellows, the rousing chorus, the jovial good fellowship. He
was bored. He took to his bed----”
André Joyeux paced in moody silence a couple of turns up and down the
room, went to his place, raised a glass and drained it to the dregs:
“And now the wits feast with me.... Steinlen, and thou, Toulouse
Lautrec! ye drink in Joyeux’s tavern. And thou, Willette! though thou
didst draw that red ass there in likeness of Rodolph Salis, because
thou hadst thy quarrel with him--thou at least quarrelled with a
man.... God! I have drunk wine here with Paul Verlaine, first lyric
poet of France. Ay,” said he--“why poor Rodolph? why poor Gabriel? why
poor St. Pierre?”
And he added hoarsely:
“I tell you these men were not afraid to live. They were men. They were
not--afraid--to--live....”
In the smoky twilight that goes before the dawn, as the purple night
moved westward over the city, sweeping the world with dusky train, the
door-keeper in fantastic livery, his cocked hat on the back of his
head, yawned, as beadles yawn at sermon-time, and unlocked the door of
the tavern that is called _The Scarlet Jackass_, to let the revellers
pass out into the street, Noll and the young students along with them.
They stood on the pavement in the chill air to make an end of their
last gossip before parting on their separate ways.
Several were giddy with the haze of their potations, and, having
lurched out into the open world, more than one stood with difficulty,
though none were wanting in the desire for dignity.
All night long, Noll and Horace Malahide had been stealthily exchanging
their full glasses for the emptied glasses of beer-soaking bohemians;
but, even so, the fumes of the place were in their brains, and the
fresh air made them both for a moment light-headed. The old bibbers
of the place, stupid and smoke-stained, and sphinx-like in reserve,
stepped out of the tavern cautiously, pale, weary, and nerveless. As
the old poet, with his wreath of wilted white roses, lurched out into
the night, the door-keeper shut and locked the door from within. The
old man tripped over his own feet, stumbled, and sat down suddenly
on the footpath, whence he bade them all good-night repeatedly, and
fervently recommended them to the care of God.
The pale youth, holding Noll’s arm, which he had seized, said, with a
hiccup:
“Mon Dieu, what a night!”
“Ay,” said the frequenters, shivering with the cold, and drawing their
thin cloaks about them--“what a night!”
The pale youth burst into tears, and made as though to fling his arms
round Noll’s neck, but missed his calculation, and fell over the
wreath-crowned old Gattepoésie. He tried to pick himself up; and, as he
stood on all fours, he said, with a hiccup:
“He will go mad.”
“Ah, yes,” said an old bohemian--“they knew how to live--they knew how
to live.”
They all sighed:
“Yes,” said they--“they knew how to live.”
The bell rang and clinked and swung, hoarsely complaining, over the
bed in the little dark den of the concierge; and Madame Hodendouche,
rousing sulkily, sat up amongst her bedclothes and pulled the string
viciously that drew the bolt of the postern in the great gate outside,
muttering a snuffling curse on the lateness of the night.
“Ring--ring--ring, thou pestilence!” she scolded savagely.
The gate outside shut with a slam, feet tramped past, a voice called,
and all was silence again.
“Hodendouche,” she said sulkily to her snoring bedfellow--“the
Englishman does not give madame too much of his company in these
days--I had thought them lovers, but they are indeed married. He is
ever more late now.”
She settled her fat little body down amongst the bedclothes:
“Yes, thou mayest well snore, Hodendouche, thou lazy hog--but I kept
the Englishman ringing till he broke even thy sleep, and a good cooling
will do the fine fellow no ill. He has rung off and on this good
half-hour--I only fear he may have taken some varnish off the gate with
his pestiferous kickings and knockings....”
In the smoky twilight Noll softly entered the shadows of the room,
and as he gently closed the door, he heard Betty toss restlessly in
troubled sleep.
He went and sat down upon the side of the bed:
“Betty,” said he, taking her hand, “can’t you sleep?”
She drew his hand into the warm bed, and folded it under her warm
fingers against her breast:
“Have you had a happy day, Noll?” she asked.
Noll yawned--he was very weary....
All day he had forgotten Betty; he was now so occupied with his own
weariness that he dully failed to see there was one in his life who was
selflessly eager to hear of his doings. As he unlaced his boots and
undressed, he told her baldly of his day’s adventures, but he scarcely
troubled to recall the events--he was very sleepy, he said. Indeed, he
had been shining all day, and, however attentive this single audience,
it was not the same thing as the rousing applause that made his wits
glitter in the midst of the wild good-fellowship. His adventures,
robbed of the drolleries and stripped of the fantastic details that had
made the laughter and the interest, sounded tedious enough.
Ah, Noll, thou numbskull! hath it not dawned upon thee, then, that thou
canst kill this all so precious love for thee by these ignorings of
it--just as much by neglect of her for the goodwill of thy rollicking
so-called friends as by neglect of her for another woman? Indeed, the
difference is but a toy of hypocrisy. If thou must drift off to selfish
pursuits, what boots it that thy pursuit be this or that or the other?
If thou must needs bawl thy share of the chorus in the night-haunts
of the poetasters, why not have her dear companionship beside thee?
Does it fulfil thy manhood the more to frequent the taverns at night
in the boon fellowship of these little spendthrift intelligences? Hast
thou more of magnificence in this killing of time than in the sweet
comradeship of this one whose name is like to ring out over the four
corners of the world wheresoever thy language is spoken? In the years
to come the greatest will seek her companionship, treasure her smile;
yet she will be the same woman then, is therefore the same now--if thou
hadst but the world’s acclamation to point thee to it.
CHAPTER LVIII
_Wherein the Tears of Compassion heal the Bleeding Feet of a Straying
Woman_
Betty fell feverishly a-drowsing as the chill dawn crept stealthily
into the room. When she awoke, Noll was still sleeping.
As she sat up in bed, heavy with unfinished sleep, she remembered the
letter of the night before. She slipped out of bed and dressed.
She descended gloomy stairways that were still haunted by the lingering
shadows of the departed night.
She hurried to Moll Davenant’s quarters.
The leaves were falling from the trees, and their bitter scent filled
the air with the pungent fragrance of late autumn.
Betty had not seen Moll for some weeks now--the door had been sternly
closed to her knock. But she decided to haunt the threshold until she
got admittance.
There was little need for setting the will to a stern resolution. As
Betty reached the topmost step of the high climb she paused to take
breath; and from within the door she heard the harsh cough that told of
the girl’s struggle for life.
She knocked, and, waiting for another fit of coughing to pass, she
knocked again.
A dreary pause, and the door opened.
Babette’s face peered round it. She put her finger to her lip and came
out on to the landing, kissed Betty, tears in her eyes, and said:
“She is dying. I got admittance two days ago.”
Betty went in, and as she halted on the threshold, her heart stood
still.
Seated on the side of her bed, in her poor worn night-gown, was Moll
Davenant, struggling for breath.
Betty ran to her, knelt down beside her, and drew a blanket about the
shoulders and limbs; and, as she did so, she saw that her body was
wasted as with old age. She saw also, with the quick sight that is
given to us in emotional moments, that the place was well kept--proofs
of the care of Babette’s hands were everywhere.
Moll Davenant stopped coughing, and a smile came into her eyes. She let
Betty put her gently into the warm bed.
“Betty, dear heart,” said she--“kneel by my bed, that I
may keep my hand on your head a little while.... I am
broken--broken--wounded--dying.... But God in His mercy has sent
you--and my feet have ceased to bleed--there are no thorns upon the
road now--no roughnesses. I cease from stumbling. And there is the
light--flashing up--from afar. And the song of birds. The spring must
be coming.... I have nearly gone mad for want of you----”
“Sh-sh! Molly--I am here,” she said.
As Eustace Lovegood stepped to Molly’s bed, the others slipped quietly
from the lamp-lit room....
The big man had been seated on the side of the bed some time, with
Moll’s slender fingers in his great hand, when she awoke and found him
there.
She leaped up and clasped her arms about him, as a frightened child
runs and hides itself in its mother’s skirts.
“Molly,” said he, taking her terrified face between his hands and
holding her eyes to his until the pallid face of fear became a flush of
shyness: “Molly, you are not frightened?”
She buried her face on his neck:
“I have been a mistake--a large mistake, all through,” she said.
She was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
The big man put her gently into the bed--the air was nipping, spite of
the room’s warmth.
“No, Moll, you always overstate a case.” He smiled sadly. “You even
admire my verses.”
She laughed in spite of herself--gladly; but fear lurked in her eyes.
Her mood turned to sudden terror. She leaped up, and held him with
fearful hands--the sweat stood in cold beads upon her flesh:
“For God’s sake, Eustace; don’t go away again----”
“No, Moll--I will never go away again.”
He soothed her, racked with the torture of violent coughing, her veins
standing out like cords upon the torn meagre body; and as the struggle
ran down he set her gently back amongst the pillows and warm bedclothes.
“Molly, you must be still--Betty sent me word that you were ill--and I
have come.”
She lay, her eyes closed, her hand in the big protecting hand of the
great-hearted man who sat beside her; lay so quietly there that he
thought she slept.
After awhile she turned to him and spoke:
“I have lain here, panic-stricken, doomed, wholly terrified, alone--in
my ears the sound of the worm’s nibble eating through the dull wood of
the narrow confining coffin--I have smelt corruption--I have died many
times--discarded--a rejected thing--flung into an unwept grave----”
“Hush, Molly----”
She smiled:
“Tush,” said she, “it is finished. I do not even fear to recall it.
It’s but a ghost’s walk seen by daylight--a ridicule that in the night
was a tragedy. Now there comes to me the fragrance of flowers. I am
in the arms of the sweet brown earth. I rise through sap and root and
stem and blossom of the dear plants to become life again, and a part of
the sweet exhalation of eternity. My heart’s blood leaps within me--I
am glad.... Your voice fills my ears, dear heart--if God’s be only as
exquisite!... Yours and Betty’s and this tender Babette’s--the voices
of them that I love are the refrain of an eternal hymn to me.”
“Molly”--he knelt beside her--“I am glad then that I have come.”
She ran her slender fingers over his hands with loving touch:
“I have been polluted,” she said. “They whispered, with evil satyr
eyes upon me, of what they called Love--and I had so little a while to
live--and I went. They stripped me naked, body and soul, and took me
furtively down the mean ways of adultery.... Oh, it was such shabby,
shabby sin!”
“Hush, Molly!”
“But Betty came--and the sunlight with her--and sweetness and delight.
And this other wounded woman brought me the light--brought her to
me--led me into pleasant ways again.... And thou, dear heart, at the
end of the journeying--that I might know love before I died.”
She sat up suddenly:
“But I am wasted, shrivelled, withered like the old,” she said--“look
at me and see it.”
She watched him hungrily, with anxious eyes.
He put his arms about her and held her to him.
She flung her arms about his great head, and held his face close to her:
“It is worth dying--to have loved a _man_,” she said.
She lay back quietly for a long while, gazing at the big fellow, who
put her back so gently amongst the propping pillows, where he sat
beside her. Her eyes were rid of frown and fret, suspicion and distrust
gone wholly from her. She held his hand in pathetic transparent
fingers; and a smile played about the corners of her mouth:
“Thou art wholly mine,” she said. “They will none know thee as I know
thee, my beloved--the hearing of none will hang expectant on thy
footfall as my hearing has served thee--none will wait upon thy dear
whims as my whims have waited--the notes and shades of thy dear voice
shall arouse in none other the sweet reverberations that have echoed
in the hollows of my quick ears.... Thou wilt bury with me thy largest
self.... I die wholly rich.... The rest may have the unessential husk
of thee.... Thou hast given me the Realities.... Thou hast brought me
into Paradise....”
For near upon a month Moll Davenant lay a-dying to the sublime litany
of a great passion; and in her dying touched the hem of the garment
that veils the majesty of Life.
She died on the Day of the Dead--her slender fingers in
Betty’s--passed, with a little sigh of glad relief to be asleep, into
the eternal mystery.
Eustace Lovegood, his head buried in his arms, knelt by the bed. He was
roused to consciousness of death by a sob from Betty as she touched the
sightless eyes and drew down the blinds of the dead woman’s soul.
“Betty,” said he, a great tear trickling slowly down the gentle
fellow’s pale cheek, “she was happy, indeed, to go into the dark
holding your dear hand.”
The last leaves of the year were falling, a threadbare russet carpet to
their feet, as they bore Moll’s still white body to her grave. Babette
with Betty added the holiness of her innocent heart’s service to the
simple dignity of the slow procession.
As they turned out of the street into the Boule Miche, all wayfarers
halting and standing with heads uncovered as the poor silent body
passed to its chill resting-place--children ceasing from play,
hushedly, to pull off caps of reverence; workmen and loafers, students
and women, merchants and servants, paying homage to that strange
procession of the dead which all must one day lead--a workman turned to
another:
“Poor soul,” said he, with a great pity--“she will never walk Paris
again.”
So might that sorrowing angel have spoken as, with irrevocable clang,
he sadly shut on departing Eve the excluding gates of Paradise.
CHAPTER LIX
_Wherein it is suspect that our Betty has the Healing Touch_
Betty had early perceived, with wise foreseeing eyes, that life’s
scheme is not work nor leisure nor sleep. The human day is compact of
all that makes for happy sanity--work and rest and the decent pleasures
that are called recreation--each as important as the other, each a part
of the triple crown that tops the human day’s achievement. Every mortal
has the birthright to this splendid heritage; and where there is lack
in the three, there has been filching. There be foul rogues who ever
shirk the toil, and such must of necessity steal another’s leisure to
overfill his own measure.
Work Betty never shirked.
The work done, she would go for the bracing walk along the banks of
the Seine before the dusk fell in tender greys upon the quays of the
city. Or the Foolish Virgins, one or several, would call up into the
twilight, whooping her down from her high lodgment, and take her for a
ramble along the quays or into the elaborately planned wildness of the
city’s woods, or straight across the river into the boulevards with
their glitter and colour and the shops of fashion; or away up to the
heights of Montmartre they would step it, climbing the steep streets to
look down upon the city, and home again, loitering before print-shops
and places where they sell artistic things. And the “boys” would
always halt before the _modes_, that Betty might have a good hint of
the fashion--they were proud of her beauty, proud of her comradeship.
Babette, too, would come, and, as they went, talk her genial frank
talk, full of shrewd observation and worldly wisdom. Bartholomew Doome,
too, more than once, had been of the party--another Doome, without
a hint of sin upon his lips, a strange Doome who was without pose,
devoid of Byronic gloom, lacking as to insincerities, a Doome who spoke
tenderly of children and showed intimate and wondrous knowledge of
their ways--altogether an astounding strange Doome.
Noll, only, was now too often absent. He had other things to do--had
“something on”--urgent nothings amongst the nobodies.
It is the busy people that find time to do everything--but to be
wholly idle. The idle it is that have no leisure to be anything but
idle.
Indeed, Betty was busy enough in these days. It came as an instinct
that she should be the healer. As a wounded child, with confident
appeal, looks to the grown-up to banish pain, so such as were in
distress plucked at Betty’s sleeve asking comfort. When a student lay
dying, he would always send for Betty--when one raved in restless
delirium of fever it was Betty that sat writing by the bed and brought
gentleness into the harsh atmosphere--it was to Betty’s discreet
ears that was unfolded the long-hidden tangle of the secret man, the
struggle of the troubled soul flinching from the cowardice of its own
shabby reservations--Betty’s hands that quieted the restless brain,
and her calm command that brought back honour. Her dear ears were
shut to all strange peevishness or conceit that the unmasked egoist
unconsciously uttered. Her presence cleansed the talk, her sweet humour
raised the clean laugh, her intelligence roused the sense of dignity,
and the gaiety of her fresh young vigorous womanhood made of the
sickroom a pleasaunce, and of the world outside a garden of fragrant
blossom.
And Babette, who was fellow conspirator in her offices, and hung upon
her ordering, though she had a gossip tongue, knew no English.
CHAPTER LX
_Wherein Betty feels the Keen Breath of Winter_
Noll took it all very much for granted, this large-hearted service
of Betty to her fellows. He felt that it reflected the very greatest
credit on her womanhood. It added stature to her natural dignity.
When Betty had been away, watching over the last flickering days of
Moll Davenant, it seemed natural enough--it was perhaps a little lonely
at moments--but he arranged to pass the days pleasantly in closer
good-fellowship with rollicking companions. When Molly was gone, put
away in the obliterating earth; whilst the mystery of the corruption
of the white body (that had lived so strenuously and laughed and wept
and loved so fiercely itself and others only to end in the grave),
whilst the why and the whence and the whither of it all roused the most
profound emotions in the vibrant imagination of Betty, Noll had settled
into a very merry and slovenly way of life; and he kept up the untidy
habit.
For Betty’s entertainment he would occasionally forego some meeting
of his boon companions, and show a boisterous rally of the old
comradeship, as on Christmas Day, which was kept by them all in right
jovial English fashion.
The whole crew of them dined at a students’ restaurant, and
everything was _à l’anglais_, a fact not in the least discounted by
the strangeness of each dish to English eyes and palate. Indeed, the
plum-pudding alone awakened the familiar recognition, for it had a
piece of holly a-top, and Gaston Latour got enough delight out of
setting on fire the encircling brandy in the dish to comfort him for
the suppression of the hunting-horn by the police.
The generous humours of the occasion were only marred by a slightly too
generous flow of wine; the which had been of small moment in itself,
had it not chanced that it loosed Noll’s tongue, and he, growing
somewhat garrulous under the ruddy excitement, and feeling compelled
to shine, did not hesitate to give more than a sly cut at Betty in
the midst of the railleries, crying out in mock defence of her that
when she _did_ finish her masterpiece it might make a noise in the
world, _though it certainly took a long time in the making_! Betty
became aware at a stroke that for months he had been criticizing her,
silently fretting at her industry. It were as if he had lashed at
her with a whip. He could not leave it alone. He had another cut, a
cheerfully ironic reference to Casauban’s unfruitful pedantry in his
_Key to All the Mythologies_ that never came to anything but the threat
of its promise, the work that the prig is always _going to do_--the
jibe was intended as a veiled reference to Betty’s careful workmanship,
and to enhance the fact that he himself “knocked off” his successes
with something of the facility of a great gift.
Betty’s sensitive ear lost no slightest shade of the sneer amidst all
the jovial manner; it was not wasted upon her. It stung her to the
quick. From any other mouth it would have passed her by, a dog’s snap.
It revealed to her in one ugly moment that all the work she had done
to increase his ease for work, all her forbearing patience to his
encroachment upon her own working hours, all her care to free his hands
from drudgeries and release his wits to the full concentration on his
career, all was already largely forgotten--worse, had been scarcely
appreciated. And, somehow, the wild spirits of the evening failed to
reach her; she was in a daze, she had received a buffet full in the
face from the hand from which she had least feared it. And it was the
sign of her splendid selflessness that she was sickeningly struck with
pity that he could be guilty of this meanness--she was filled with a
strange bewildering shame, not because the blow had been delivered, not
because it had struck her, but that it had come from the one in all the
world who, more than any, fouled his hand in the act. She flinched from
that punishment as from an abyss that yawned.
CHAPTER LXI
_Wherein the Landlord of_ The Scarlet Jackass _is unable to sing his
Song_
At the tavern of _The Scarlet Jackass_ the hero of the evening was a
young poet who had that day found a publisher. The wines and ale went
round. Amidst uproar they were crowning the old mad poet Gattepoésie
with a wreath of pure white roses, where he sat blinking and smiling
in a chair upon a table, that he, having uttered a panegyric upon the
new immortal, after the manner of the Academy, might conduct him to the
chair and crown him; and it was in the midst of the resulting fooleries
that Noll, nudging Horace Malahide, noticed the absence of André
Joyeux--missing the flow of his rollicking wit and the effect of his
commanding personality.
He signed to one of the waiters, an enormous stout man, chosen by André
because he resembled Renan in his Academic uniform.
“Garçon,” said he--“where is the master?”
He was resting--upstairs--in the room just over the tavern. He was only
allowed to drink milk--he was in need of rest.
The young Englishmen said they would go up and see him, and the waiter
leading the way, the two young fellows followed him up the private
stair. At the door the waiter knocked, and left them. They entered.
On his bed lay André Joyeux, his face deathly pale, and a drawn look
about the eyes.
He received the two young fellows affectionately, held Noll’s hand,
embraced Horace.
Noll found himself mute. But the sick man saw that he was affected,
and patted him on the shoulder--it was only nerves, he said--it would
pass--he would soon be giving them
Proud as kings and loud as carters,
Live they who live on the Hill of Martyrs
--they should have the rousing chorus----
The distant sound of laughter below checked him, and brought a frown to
his knit brows.
He sank back on his pillows, shutting his eyes, wearily.
But the noise below fretted his ears, and the baffling bursts of
laughter and applause kept his mind going, seeking the cause, restless,
inquisitive.
Noll drew a chair beside his bed, he offered to come and look
after him; but André patted his hand, put his offer aside, laughed
pathetically, said he would soon be all right--they should see--they
would very soon again have
Proud as kings and loud as carters,
Live they who live on the Hill of Martyrs.
The sound of a song being sung below brought a questioning frown to the
sick man’s eyes again. Who was it playing? What was the song? He did
not recognise it!
Noll asked if he might not send them all away--he would stop the noise.
“No, no,” said André. “Let them sing their songs--it was Guitreau who
had found a publisher--he had himself discovered Guitreau--it would be
boorish to spoil his evening--no, no--let them sing their songs. We
have only once to live----”
There was loud laughter....
They had sat awhile in silence, when Noll asked if they could do
nothing.
No; he wanted for nothing. The waiters were good souls. Everyone had
been kind. No.... He thought he would now sleep.
He embraced them, and they left the room--crept from it silently, some
strange instinct and dread dictating their going a-tiptoe.
And as Noll turned to close the door, the wan-faced man in the gloom of
the ill-lit room ran his hand wearily over his brow and flung his arm
restlessly upon the coverlet.
CHAPTER LXII
_Wherein a Comely Young Woman waits at a Window all Night, watching
for Sir Tom Fool--listening for his Step_
The bleak night without was cold as God’s contempt. The March wind
shrieked shrilly about the court, swung up out of the resounding
blackness, tugged at the shutters of windows, rattled at all loose
things ill-naturedly, smote the walls in a huff, and tossed insolently
out of the court again, shrilly screaming--leaving a gloomy sullen
lull, full of dry-throated questionings.
A bride of a year--and anxious self-questionings!
Betty sat at the window, uneasy, watchful, ashamed. All evening had
she come and gone, pacing out disturbing thoughts. Many nights had she
thus watched, humiliated, alone--watching for Noll, listening for his
footfall. Once the city clocks had struck midnight, the passing of each
wheeled conveyance became a goad to her anxious hearing--a stab to
her anxiety--an added sneer at the loss of her hold upon her lover’s
affections--a muffled insult to her attractiveness.
A year ago had been a wedding-day--this morning the youth had whistled
out of the house wholly forgetful of it. A year ago this room had
been a garden of flowers scattered from a wedding-bouquet--this night
the room was wholly bare of flowers. A year ago had been wondrous
tendernesses, and watchful care over her that had been a very burden
of sweet attentions--eyes that hungered, ears that listened to her
every whisper, hands that burnt into her white flesh, caresses that
shamed her with delight--to-day was criticism, excusings of neglect,
carelessnesses.
To-morrow, perchance, Youth would cease even to excuse itself.
A year ago had seen youth and maid climb lightheartedly to the harsh
garret of the world’s toil, full of high hopes and noble purpose,
stepping it gleefully, clear-eyed, will and heart inflamed with the
Certainties. To-day the very Certainties of yesterday were crumbling
into ashen doubts.
She ate her heart out, silently, with womanhood’s uncomplaining
dignity; yet was her soul riven by this fool’s folly--his littlest
harshnesses turning to bitterness in these long night-watches. His
forgetfulnesses, his ignorings, his egotisms, his irresolutions--how
they all took shape and grew in bogey ugliness, indeed to something of
their true scarecrow ugliness, as she brooded upon them, raising the
nauseating dead out of the ashes of her experience!
Nay, so fatuous his conceit, he must needs even rob her of the dignity
of her work, sneer at the child of her imagination, leave her nothing.
But he had wasted bad manners. Genius is serene in the confidence of
its mighty Patiences. Time waits upon the great Wills.
Then she would make excuses for him. Of a truth, he had had a little
vogue--stood well with his fellows----
But he wrecked his own cause.
In a passing mood of conceit he had strutted it in the mock-modest
manner, tapping his own chest, half ashamed to drag in so modest
a fellow. But look at him--even him! and the like; and forthwith
averred that he “knocked off” more in an hour sometimes than she in a
month--the “knocking off” inferring fertility and facility of genius.
The which, whatever it lacked in the courtesies, held at least some
virtue of truth.
But Truth may walk abroad too naked.
Ah, Betty--and if thou, looking out of thy window, couldst but see with
thy clear eyes across the lamp-lit city this Noll of thine!
CHAPTER LXIII
_Wherein the Ceiling of the Tavern that is called_ The Scarlet Jackass
_is stained with Blood_
Noll was at a gathering of little men--at a students’ tavern on the
heights of Montmartre. The praises of the mediocrities flushed him. His
eyes were bright; he had glittered.
Ah, Noll; and there is one who watches for thee, sitting alone, her
handsome head bowed by the midnight lamp to give thee welcome. She
is thy one selfless friend--with brain whose verdict is worth all
the splutterings of these bedraggled talents that sit about thy
self-sufficient elbows!...
That was a rousing night at the tavern of _The Scarlet Jackass_.
The room was choked with the wild rioting bohemians.
“Waiter!”
“Waiter!”
“Waiter!”
“Yes, sir--mon Dieu!--one minute--one minute.”
The waiters rushed to and fro, perspiring, white aprons flying.
The glass went round.
So the place roared with laughter and riot and noisy good-fellowship
and song.
As the crowd began to thin out, and the place emptied of all but the
regular frequenters, the old mad poet, his chin sunk on his chest where
he snored in a chair, his wreath of roses askew over his ear, roused
and asked for André Joyeux--he regretted that he had not been there--he
missed his waggeries.
At the mention of his name they called the head-waiter, who lay
a-drouse in a corner. No, he had not seen the master since sundown.
There had been no time to go and see him--but he had only to ring his
bell should he have need of anything. He was sleeping, they trusted,
content that his tavern was filled to overflowing--he had need of
sleep--much sleep. Yes, yes; it had been a mad night indeed--a great
night. Yes; the English gentlemen might go up and see the master if
they would but go very quietly--yes, they might all go, if they would
but go very quietly, in case he slept----
Noll and Horace stumbled up the dark stair that was but half revealed
in the smoky haze of the dusk that goes before the dawn. Opening
the door stealthily, they looked in, and saw that amongst the other
departing shadows that lingered there, a dead man lay stretched upon
the floor, the scarlet brand of a bullet-wound on his pale brow.
The red blood showed on the white skin, a waxen seal upon his last
mysterious testament.
And as the others, befogged with the potations of their riot, entered
the room, close-following at their heels, they solemnly took off their
hats--the old mad poet last of all and with a mighty hiccup.
Yes, André Joyeux slept at last--and slept well. He would ring no more
for sleeping-draughts. He had no more needs. His philosophies were at
an end. In a loud burst of merriment that had echoed from below, he had
taken his life, the pistol unheard in the frantic applause.
They lifted up the poor lifeless body and placed it upon the bed--the
arms restless no longer now--the body still, in the strange silence of
death.
An old bohemian stepped forward and looked down on the pallid peaceful
face; stooped and kissed the dead man upon the cheek. He stood and
looked down upon him.
“He took me from beggary and starvation in a garret,” said he.... “Ah,
that was an artist! And--he knew how to live. He----”
CHAPTER LXIV
_Wherein the Angel of the Annunciation enters into a Garret_
As the chill grey of an April dawn crept across her silent garret,
sweeping the frayed shadow of the night aside to join other lurking
shadows in gloomy corners, Betty, in white night-robe, was awakened and
sat up in bed, all in a strange wonder and alarm.
With unuttered timorous questionings, with delicious fears, out of the
void she heard the first whisper of the annunciation of her motherhood.
As the sea-voice carols ghostly refrains of mystic adventures within
the music-haunted chambers of a sea-shell, so, to the hollows of her
subtle ears, came exquisite murmurings that to her ecstatic fancy held
the quick rhythmic breathings that are the sleep of a little child;
and, of a sudden, her white body glowed and her dear breasts swelled
at the dream-touch of infant-fingers--leaped to the greedy caress of
infant lips. Her comely limbs shivered, fearful with a thousand fears;
her whole being flushed hot--she was dumb with bewildering muteness
before the majesty of the mystery of a new life.
Her eyes filled with tears.
Across the murk of the stress of life that is the dust-storm up-blown
from the sordid details of living--across the dreary fog that is
compact of the accumulations of vain strivings and failings and
galling insolences--across the black clouds of the humiliations and
the indignities that are flung along the path of womanhood under cover
of the fulsome hypocrisies, there leaped, with rainbow brilliancy, the
bright sign that gladness is the law, the night but the shadow of the
light, that there is laughter in the firmament and gaiety and delight,
and on the earth a splendid wayfaring.
She smiled through her tears.
She arose from her bed, and stood amazed. She saw visions.
The bare garret of her motherlessness swung away from beneath her
exquisite feet, vanished in frantic vertigo from her ken. She put out
dazed hands. And lo! as her wounded feet, climbing upwards always,
topped the hill of her pilgrimage--the clouds lifted--she stepped into
the garden of her kingdom. She heard a call, and she answered the
call--stood at last at the threshold of the innermost sanctuary of the
most holy place in the magnificent palace along life’s journey--the
room where the children play. There, where were little arms held out to
her, little hands that clung to her skirts, she sank to her knees--her
ears deliriously a-riot with the patter of small feet, the prattle of
child’s gossip, the laughter of the little gladsome ones. Her eyes were
large with the vision of the coming years--bruises and small troubles
and still smaller wounds she saw brought to her knees with childlike
confidence in the certainty of balm.
She sobbed, and sank upon the bed.
Ay, thou winsome one; yet even here may be wrought scars also in thy
heart. Ah, thou most happy thou, to have a heart that may be thus
scarred!
When womanhood, idled with such fearful ecstasies, quickened with the
mystery of a new life, alarmed with chill dreads, yet pulsing to the
rhythm of an added glory, realizes her lover as greater than lover--it
is at this time of all times that he should be at her side. But Noll
was taken up with trivial things; so trivial that he thought them
serious--so far had he lost the focus of noble vision.
The garret was possessed with the gloomy announcement of a drizzling
new day when Noll opened the door and entered.
Betty, crouching on her bed, held out her arms to him:
“Noll,” she began, tears in her eyes----
Noll went to her, caressed her, and sat himself down on the side of the
bed.
He yawned.
He was very tired.
“Betty,” said he, heedless of the eagerness in her voice, deaf to
the strange thrill in her being, his eyes on his own amusements, his
thoughts on his own fatigue; “Betty, I am dog-weary--I have to be off
again at six--I must snatch a couple of hours sleep.” He flung into an
armchair, dressed as he was. “You might give me a rouse at six----”
He yawned again and was silent.
“Noll,” she said shyly--“I have felt so strange--whilst--whilst you
were away--during the night. And just as the dawn was breaking I----”
Noll moved uneasily in his chair:
“Ah, yes, Betty, dear heart,” said he drowsily, a suspicion of
compunction stirring within his gadding conscience that this girl
had been too much alone of late. He misunderstood her delicacy.
His conceit jumped to the uneasy conclusion that she was blaming
him. “You see, the whole of the last few days our fellows have been
toiling day and night at our car for the procession at the Bal des
Quatz Arts; but it--is--finished. To-day has come at last--to-day we
hold--the--orgy--of youth--to-night is the Bal des Quatz Arts....
After to-night, sweetheart, I shall be able to get home earlier....
I am afraid--I haven’t--done--my duty by you--of late....” He roused
for a moment. “By George, our studio is going to win the laurels at
the students’ ball this evening--we have been at it all night, putting
the last touches to our great plaster statue of the Goddess of War--a
huge copy of Gérôme’s Bellona--looks terrific--one of our fellows
has done a splendid frieze for the gilt chariot that is to bear her
majesty--we finished her toilette--at daybreak. And now I feel like a
lady’s-maid to a woman of fashion, waiting up all night to--take off
the garments--of--victory.”
He yawned. His eyes closed:
“But--oh--ah--I must stop cackling indifferent prose.... The massier
of our studio wants us all back at six.... We have to get Bellona to
the Moulin Rouge for this evening’s show, and she has a heavy tread--as
becomes the goddess of War. We are going to--drag her--across Paris
with--ropes--up to Montmartre.... It will be--a rollicking--march....
Our lot at Gérôme’s studio--always begin early--and--stay--late.” He
yawned heavily “Hi-yo-ho!... Yes--it will be a--rollicking----”
He relapsed into a drowse.
He started up for a moment:
“Half a hundred French students make--an--ex’lent--flea--in th’
ear--of--Paris.... An--ex’lent--flea----”
Silence took possession of the room.
“Noll----”
Noll roused:
“Oh, yes--let me see--where were we?”
He laughed embarrassedly:
“Oh, yes--we’re to march her across Paris to the tune of the
Marseillaise.... We’ve been practising the Marseillaise all night,
Gaston Latour’s hunting-horn going full blare. We’ve been raising the
ghosts--I can--promise you.... It’s a strange--thing--how few patriots
know the words of--their own--national anthem! However--tra-la-la,
sung loud enough--goes a long way--to--express a patriot’s parochial
emotion. An-extra--ordinary--long--way----”
He mumbled into a drowse.
Betty made a last effort to tell him, before he should relapse into
sleep:
“Such a strange thing has happened--to me--Noll,” she said.
“Y-e-s?” drawled he, missing the shy hint.
There was a long silence.
His heavy breathing told that he slept.
For two weary hours, Betty sat up in bed lest sleep should overcome
her, and Noll miss his rouse. And brooding there, her chin on her
knees, her sorry vigil dragged through the laggard minutes.
As the clocks struck six across the city’s roofs, she crept out of bed
and roused Noll; and he, after much rousing, got up, vague-eyed and
wit-wandering, embraced her, and, searching for his hat, put it on and
lurched out of the room in a drowsy daze.
Betty reeled from the cruelty--stumbled--and was overwhelmed with
sickness.
CHAPTER LXV
_Wherein Betty walks into the Desert_
Betty was dressed for a journey.
On the floor, near the table whereat she sat writing a letter, lay a
battered old black trunk, strapped and labelled.
The day was chilly grey without.
As she blotted the last lines, there came to her hearing, from the
thoroughfares of the Latin Quarter below, rollicking snatches of song,
and the stir of students in noisy holiday mood.
Betty brushed aside her tears, and read carefully the letter she had
just signed:
“NOLL,
A year ago I was writing you love-letters--delightful deliriousness
more full of meaning than of sense. To-day I am writing farewell.
It is the most eager desire of my life, of my whole being, that you
should be free--to be a man. I came to you, joined my life to yours,
that you should be free to realize yourself, most wholly free--in
body, in intellect, and in conscience. I now take back my life from
yours, that, having failed with me to achieve freedom for yourself or
for me, you shall be free to become free--or as near free as you may
be.
Your life is become full of little secrecies--of half-told tales--of
timid reservations--of pompously withheld mysteries--of little
excuses. I can only live, for close companionship, with a man; and a
man shall not fear himself--nor another.
You must live free from the need to hide yourself from me. Therefore,
to give you back to yourself I withdraw myself.
No man that is master of himself would live with a woman who is not
also free--the free associate only with the free--they do not consort
with curs, whether men or women. It is fools’ cant that speaks of the
woman _obeying_ the man--such a man were only fit to be the father of
a slave people.
And more--the woman in marriage must be free to live her nobility.
I am not of those puling women who, when they are flung aside or
suffer rebuff, cling to the arm of him who strikes the blow--who
whimper and cringe and are content to be content if they but have
occasional consideration. Least of all am I of those women who,
being stung with a man’s neglect and jibe and injustice, walk
through a haggard existence by the man’s shrinking side, keeping his
allegiance by the dread of her crying out upon him to the neighbours,
driving him with scowl or invective along a narrow path where his
unwilling feet are kept from straying only through fear for his petty
dignities--making him a slave to his weaknesses and hers, and herself
a hissing whip and a shame. Such women are of the slave-peoples--they
mother a race of weaklings. For fear is as much through the mother as
the father.
But, you will say, ‘Let us explain, let us make it up and kiss and be
friends, let us bury the past.’ So indeed we might sit by the wayside
of life and babble threadbare platitudes to hide our losses. Would
that be music in our ears? Would it be gain? Even if you hoodwinked
me with pathetic promises of duty and the like, is our strength
increased?
The conventions of the world might be satisfied by my meekly bowing
my head and walking primly by your side. But the past is immortal,
and rises again from the dead. We might take our walks abroad
together, but we should no longer go hand in hand--a ghost strides
between. He smells of the dead most unconscionably, this fawning
spectre of little diplomacies. Pah! how I detest the cringing flunkey
that speaks in apologies!
You would not have me walk along a way of frequent
reconciliations--each reconciliation a humiliation--each humiliation
making that uneasy ghost that stalks between us into a more
tangible figure of Hate. Reconciliations! of what? for what? You
do not think me so little free that I would stoop to call for
explanations--explanations that but explain why explanations should
not be.
What have you or I to do with the conventions of the world, when
all’s said? We are not the hirelings of the world. Are you and I the
timid servants of the gossips?
Life is an affirmation--a great Thou Shalt--not an enfeebling incubus
of belittling Thou Shalt Nots.
Love, like friendship, will not suffer catechism--does not rest on
commandments--does not increase through rebuff.
Life is not a bundle of apologies--how much less then is Love, which
is of the essence of Life! Love is a splendid comrade--not an excuse
for small disdains.
I have given you all my love. I have not bartered it. I do not
haggle over its value. Nor for my part would I hedge you about
with restrictions, nor win your smiles on conditions--for willing
comradeship sunk to dutiful loyalty is become a restriction. I ask
for no paper treaties. I will fling you no Thou Shalt Nots. The
written promise is the least part of a strong man’s honour.
If a man or woman, or the shabby travesties of these, would find
delight in adulteries, will the written bond or public proclamation
of fidelity prevent their secret treacheries?
I can no more stoop to jealousy of the world than of another woman,
even if I were possessed of the mean insanity of jealousy, which is
but a part of the village-idiot’s wits who sits in the winter and
thinks to blow dead ashes into living fire if his rude breath be but
harsh enough.
Nor can I, on the other hand, live in your house as ‘one of three.’
If you and I and Apology essayed to live together, it could not last.
I cannot embrace Apology with effusion; and I cannot brook to see
you yield yourself to shabby excuses. I am not sure that I would not
rather have you committing mean sins with a dairymaid.
The pain with which my hand writes these lines it would be wanton
cruelty to inflict upon you, Noll; yet I will tell you that since
I collected a few belongings together into my poor weather-beaten
trunk--indeed, I have never before realized how shabby a dowry I
brought to you, dear heart (I have scarred the dear walls with as
little brigandage as I might, so that they shall stare upon you with
no eyeless sockets and be the less lonely home for you when I am
gone)--since I have taken a last look round the rooms where I have
known the best days of my life, as I sit waiting for the vehicle
which is to take me out into the desert again, I find it hard to
keep back the tears from blotting out my handwriting. Scalding
tears, Noll; yet I have wept tears also that did not scald, happy
tears--indeed, I have but this moment kissed the pillows of our
marriage-bed....
But there are wheels that stop outside the courtyard gate. Just
one more round of our old home amidst the stars, to touch the dear
surrounding things I have loved so well--_we_ have loved so well--and
I am gone.
BETTY.
P.S.--Ah, Noll; there are no flowers upon the balcony now! Not even a
little one to take in remembrance that the balcony was once a garden.”
There was a rustle of skirts on the landing without--a knock at the
door.
Betty uttered no sound. She thrust the letter into an envelope and
sealed it.
There was another knock, and a panting voice cried from without:
“It is I, madame--Madelaine.”
Betty went to the door and opened it.
“Ah, Madelaine--you are back!”
Madelaine, daintily dressed, and her slim being looking charming and
refined, entered the room and shut the door.
“Madelaine!” exclaimed Betty, “what a pretty frock!”
“Ah, madame--I go to a dressmaker’s by day now--the old miser is
content to have me work for her at night.” She shrugged her slender
shoulders. “It saves her my meals.”
She had not become a dressmaker for nothing. Every stitch and flounce
told, bringing out the beauty and lithe grace of the girl.
She was panting:
“Yes, madame. But--mon Dieu, you are of a surety amongst the stars
here!” Her pretty scarlet lips smiled. “Amongst the stars--as the
angels always are. But--ah, yes--I went and put on decent clothes and
took your letter to Mademoiselle Babette, madame; but she was out--she
is preparing for the Bal des Quatz Arts to-night--has gone out with
Monsieur Horace and the others.... Mon Dieu, yes; you live amongst the
stars, madame.”
“Madelaine, have you kept the carriage waiting?”
“Yes, madame--it is below.”
Betty arose wearily from her seat:
“Will you help me to carry down my trunk?”
Madelaine looked at her sharply:
“Mon Dieu, no, madame,” said she. “_I_ will carry it. No--Hodendouche
shall carry it--he grows fat. Yes, madame; do not interfere with me--I
will call him----”
She skipped out on to the landing with swift light step, and hailed
Hodendouche from below.
She came back, her lips parted with the exertion.
“Madelaine,” said Betty--“will you come to the station and see me off?”
“Mon Dieu, yes, madame. I would have gone if I had walked--in tight new
shoes.”
Betty laughed sadly. She went to her and put her hands on the girl’s
shoulders. She held her off at arm’s length. There was a lovely glow on
the girl’s beautiful dark Southern face.
“Madelaine, you are all a-tremor! What has happened?”
Madelaine laughed gaily:
“Ah, madame; it was intoxicating,” she said. She hesitated--almost
shyly for Madelaine. “When I drove through the streets--in the
carriage--it was splendid.... All the world thought I was some man’s
mistress----”
“Oh, Madelaine!”
“Come, madame,” said Madelaine--“here’s Hodendouche.”
Hodendouche entered the room with a set smile, and took off his cap.
Madelaine turned to him:
“Ah, Hodendouche,” said she--“what a climb to reach the stars!... But
now you are here, pick up that box and take it downstairs; Madame will
follow us in a minute.”
As the grunting Hodendouche shouldered the trunk, and, followed by
Madelaine, left the room, Betty went to the bed and put the letter upon
the white coverlet; and for awhile she lingered there.
She sat down on the side of the bed.
Ah, youth’s couch! what limitless imaginings hath thy pillow known!
what vasty ambitions have burnt out upon thee! what schemings and
plannings for the payments of the bare needs of life! Tears thou hast
known, and sighs--but the stars glittered ever in the firmament even
when it was darkest; and at every rebuff Resolution reborn put out
wounded hands to the heights.
What hath he known of youth who peered through eyes so dullard that
they saw but the dingy finger-marks upon the stairways to the attics of
the palaces in the bohemia of his teens?
Who so weak of spirit that disdained to climb the stairs to the topmost
garrets when the need was! For did we not sit there under the roof,
expectant amidst the splendid galaxies whilst the workaday world did
blink its myriad utilitarian street-lamps at our feet!
Ah, those gipsy days of our wander-years, when we strolled, careless of
the infinities, along the blithe alleys of our youthful wayfarings, and
every garret was the topmost chamber of a palace, and the rough bed but
an excuse for splendid dreams!
Betty stooped and kissed the pillow where Noll would sleep.
She let herself out of the room, shut the door softly, and hurriedly
followed the others down the stairs....
The fat little concierge, as she bent over her morning coffee-making
in her dark little den by the gateway, was startled by a vision which
appeared to her, kissed her rough old cheek, slipped a gold piece into
her hand, ran out to a carriage, and was gone.
CHAPTER LXVI
_Which has to do with the Great Orgy of Youth_
“Suzanne!”
The shout rang through the great hall of the Moulin Rouge; and the
vast crowd of dancing revellers, dressed in fancy dress, stopped their
dancing and crowded towards the wide-flung doors that gave entrance
from the gardens.
The leader of the orchestra hurried the jigging mazurka to an end, and,
with blare of the crashing chords that in music stand for finality,
ceased playing the dance-music. He tapped for silence amongst the ranks
of the musicians and held out hushing hands. He stood up, turned and
glanced at the great tribune of the twelve judges, saw that, arrayed in
their splendid robes, they had taken their seats; saw, too, that the
gorgeous stream of colour and glittering armour was moving in mass of
revellers towards the great doors of the garden entrance:
“The cavalcade!” he grunted.
There was a fluttering of white sheets of paper. Settling himself in
his seat, he tapped for attention, swung his baton, and with resulting
crash the orchestra burst into the thundering music of a triumphal
march.
“Suzanne!”
The shout went up from the hoarse throats of a thousand
fantastically-robed students, sounding vibrant in the golden haze and
echoing in the blaze of light to the resounding rafters. They drew
their swords, Greek and Roman, and they of the courts of the Louis,
Crusader and Saracen, and Goth and barbarian; the flashing steel
greeted her:
“Suzanne!”
Upon a golden shield, supported high above all heads by four of the
most famous models of Paris, she came, her white body statuesque
and calm; gleaming rosy-tinted, she stood poised in all her slender
beauty--and as the shout went up she smiled.
“Suzanne!”
She knew it well. She was in all the beauty of youth--and her perfect
body not only held the glory of the ancient art of the sculpture of
Greece, but it had the exquisite mystery of life in its pleasant
surface which the art of man cannot utter.
So Suzanne led the procession round the huge hall and was borne towards
the tribune where the judges sat.
After the queen of the models came the procession of the rival studios.
From amidst the crested helms and glittering steel of Greek and Roman
soldiery arose the great figure of the war-goddess Bellona, the fury
standing a-tiptoe, sword and shield upraised, head thrust forward
snake-like, her scarlet mouth shrieking at topmost pitch the fierce
yell to war, her black brows gathered in black hate; before her feet
an angry snake, with head upraised, darted a black sullen tongue. As
the great travesty of Gérôme’s awful figure of the lust of blood moved
along, there shone from out the hollows of her staring eyes a pale
green light, cruel and livid. On her gilt chariot she passed, escorted
by her bodyguard of Greek and Roman soldiery, and gave place to the
classic float on which sat the nude young model, Marcelle, posed as
Gérôme’s exquisite statue of Tanagra. Marcelle’s slight and slender
girlish figure at this time made her a serious rival to Suzanne, and
was markedly affecting the whole ideal of womanly beauty and proportion
throughout the studios of France. As she sat, in all the simplicity of
pose of a Tanagra figure, the light making her delicate colour glow,
the cry of hoarse admiration for Bellona changed to a shout for
“Tanagra!”
And shout of Tanagra gave way to
“Marcelle!”
The swords flashed.
Gérôme’s students passed, giving place to other schools, each in its
pageant striving to express the ideals of the art which inspired
its chosen master. The rude groups of the barbaric men who wore
but the shaggy skins of animals; the wild groups of Merovingian
and Carlovingian Franks; the dandified figures of the bewigged and
heavy-booted court of the great Louis; the powdered and patched and
silken-habited gentlemen of the last Louis; the large-lapelled,
long-tail-coated and high-stocked dandies of the Revolution: they all
passed with their triumphal cars, and drew the loud acclamations of the
boisterous revellers.
The splendid procession circled round the great hall, passed the
tribune of the judges to the thrash of the martial music; round and
round again. But amidst the frantic din it was soon known that Gérôme’s
students had won the honours of the night.
As the gladiators and warriors passed the judges’ tribune the last time
before the procession broke up to join the revellers, the twelve judges
stood up in solemn silence, and saluted the goddess of war and the
exquisite figure of the young woman who sat in all the triumph of her
beauty.
They stood whilst Gérôme’s students passed. And as they so stood
in strange dignity, the emblems of imperial Rome above them, the
battle-axes bound in faggots, and the motto _Death to Tyrants_
emblazoned between, as they so stood beneath the row of heads that
dripped the blood of the dead tyrants, there floated across the ages
some whisper of the eternal struggle of life, of the survival of the
fittest, and of the crowning mystery of the incarnation of man through
the beauty of woman....
As the clocks struck three, there was a rush of revellers towards the
procession of waiters who appeared in white aprons carrying chairs and
tables and plates and glasses.
In a trice the place was a great banqueting-hall, white with the napery
of a hundred tables.
The students collected about the boards of their different studios,
thundering for supper with fist-banged poundings upon the tables, and
the singing of songs; which gave way to a roar of applause when the
army of waiters reappeared laden with wine and the dishes of the feast.
And as they ran backwards and forwards, their white aprons flying,
there was the clink of glass amid the babel of a thousand tongues, and
the clatter and roar of merry-making.
When Gérôme’s students arose from their table in a body, and the
company of gladiators and Greek and Roman soldiery moved in an orderly
array towards the judges’ tribune, they were greeted with thunders of
applause, which burst out again on their return, laden with the prize
of victory, bottles of wine.
They swept round to their tables; and, opening their ranks, took
possession of their seats. The massier rapped upon the table, and
called for silence.
Standing before them, statuesque in a splendid girdle with the
embroidered cloth hanging therefrom before and behind, stood Suzanne,
jewels glittering in her ruddy hair.
They all stood up and greeted her with a shout.
The massier filled a glass:
“To the queen--the victors!” he cried.
They all drank to her.
As they sat down, she leaped lightly upon the table; stooped down; took
up a bottle of champagne in each hand, and flinging wide the amber
wine for baptism of victory over the encircling students, she threw
the empty bottle from her. She laughed with mischievous glee, sent
the glass and china flying with sandaled foot, to clear a space upon
the table, and, raising the bottle, bathed her bare shoulders in the
foaming wine before the assembled company.
There was a call for a dance--and the orchestra striking up the quaint
pulsing music of a Moorish measure, Suzanne, her feet stepping it upon
the snow-white tablecloth, swung her graceful way through a strange
haunting dance of Arabia.
With slow step and dainty feet that never hurried, the beautiful young
woman strutted, in pride of her body’s perfection, upon the white
carpet of the tablecloth.
In the shout of applause that greeted her, she skipped deftly from the
table, flung herself upon Noll’s knees, held up his face, kissed him,
and with “Thou handsome Englishman!” she laughed, put him gaily from
her, proudly went her way, and was lost in the tumultuous throng.
Noll laughed embarrassedly.
She had set the fashion; on to the tables leaped a score of models, in
fancy dress, and danced among the glasses; the great revel proceeding
with riot and feasting and boisterous merriment.
In the midst of the whirlwind moved Gaston Latour, disguised in his
usual affectation of lugubrious and melancholy seriousness. He went
arrayed as Midnight Alarms--for trousers he wore a white shirt, his
legs solemnly thrust through the sleeves, the cuffs fastened about his
ankles with enormous brooches for gaudy sleeve-links, enormous naked
indiarubber feet strapped on for boots. This symbolism of hurried
midnight dressing was further insisted upon by the lady’s stays that
bound the shirt’s tails about his waist, his shoulders bare, save for
the great hunting-horn over his chest, and a fireman’s bucket strapped
to the top of his head. The pretty little model who was with him,
dressed solely in a pair of shoes and Gaston’s corduroy trousers, the
braces holding them up, strapped over her white shoulders, replenished
this bucket on his head during the evening with heel-taps from the
wine-glasses, so that whilst talking confidentially to anyone, Gaston
gradually lowered his head until the liquor splashed down upon their
faces and trickled down the front of them--a result greeted by Gaston
with a loud triumphant blare on the horn.
Gérôme’s students had drawn their tables into a semicircle; and before
the centre table, where the massier sat, were two young Frenchmen in
the armour of Roman lictors; they were holding up Ponsonby Wattles
Ffolliott under the armpits, whilst he, dressed as Narcissus, with a
bath towel strapped round his loins, and daffodils in his hair, was
drunkenly attempting to make a speech.
He showed signs of going to sleep, spite of the occasional shaking
up by the lictors; so, amidst loud laughter, they all held out their
hands, thumbs down, and Gaston Latour advancing from his seat with
a soup-tureen, poured a libation of soup over his hair, and as it
trickled down his stupid pallid features, clapped the tureen on his
head; the lictors carried him away and laid him upon the floor amongst
a heap of black bottles, where he settled to uneasy rest, and mumbled
into sleep....
Noll, his strong clean-cut features and his virile youth enhanced by
the severe lines of the Roman helmet with its great framing steel
cheek-pieces, and his well-set body and his shins glittering in the
steel breast-plate and greaves of a classic warrior, sat at the
outermost table of the semicircle. Beside him sat Madelaine, her white
shoulders gleaming as she nestled close to him in the low-bodiced grey
silk dress with great hooped skirt of Velasquez’s infantas. Babette,
who sat at her other hand, had seized upon her early in the evening
(taking her away without ceremony from Ffolliott, who was even then in
a fuddled state from wine-bibbing), and Babette had sternly kept the
girl by her side throughout the resulting riot. Indeed, the girl had
not needed much compulsion, for she clung to Babette anxiously, and
a little frightened. She was intoxicated with the whirl of her first
ball; and she was very weary of Ffolliott. She was a little excited
with wine, to which she was not accustomed. She was a little alarmed
about Ffolliott--she had been flattered by his attention and proud of
having caught his eyes a few days before; she had been thrilled at the
prospect of the gown and still more by the gift of the silken stuff for
its making--and, when she had stood in it before the mirror, she had
realized her wondrous beauty, which it seemed to have suddenly enhanced
and brought to view.
Noll touched her hand:
“Madelaine,” said he--“who gave you that dress?”
“That beast!”
She pointed to the drunken figure of Ffolliott, where he slumbered
amongst the bottles. “He shall have it back to-morrow--I hate him,” she
said passionately; and she leaned against Noll and nestled close to him.
Babette leant over her and whispered to Noll:
“Leave her so. When the procession forms to start for the march to
the Latin Quarter, I will take her with me,” she said. And she added
gently: “I will watch over her as Betty has watched over me.”
She sighed sadly, and putting her elbow on the table and her chin in
the pink palm of her hand, she got a-brooding.
Horace Malahide, in the midst of laughter that greeted a sally of
Gaston Latour’s, turned to her. He leaned over to her, and looked into
her eyes:
“Babette! serious! and here!”
A tear fell, and she let it fall unheeding.
Horace put his arm about her slender shoulders:
“What, Babette! Has Noll been preaching a sermon?”
She smiled sadly, stroked his cheek, and, drawing down his face to her,
she kissed him. He looked such a splendid sunny fellow in his Roman
armour:
“No, dear heart,” she whispered--“I, Babette, have been preaching the
sermon.”
Horace laughed....
Thus they feasted, danced, and sang until the golden yellow lights of
the great hall paled and became but flickering ghosts of flame as the
sapphire shadow of the night passed away in blue and purple and lilac
before the white dawn. But the students danced on into the daylight....
At last the musicians came down to the floor, and bursting into a
triumphant march, the vast crowd of revellers formed into procession,
and streamed out after the music into the fresh air of the early
morning.
In the streets the early concierges that stood yawning at their gates,
stopped their clacking tongues, cut short their scandals, and gaped
at the din; the street-sweepers rested from their sordid calling;
rag-pickers from their grimy traffic amongst the dust-bins--for an
invading army, gorgeously apparelled, was taking possession of Paris,
swarming down her thoroughfares in triumphal splendour, and Bellona,
goddess of war, thundered and rattled and swayed behind, dragged at
the tail of the frantic riot. Street after street, the sleepy city
awoke uneasily and put drowsy heads out of window, vaguely fearful of
catastrophe and dread that the devil of revolution had taken possession
of the place.
As the stream of revellers poured down the heights, they seized
all cabs, and putting their helmets on the heads of the protesting
coachmen, Greek warriors danced wildly on the tops of the cabs, adding
the rattle of wheels and the cracking of whips to the din.
With shout and yell they captured a number of great drays laden with
stone, and pulling down the drivers from their seats and dispossessing
the teamsters, Roman charioteers took the reins and sent the great
horses trotting and pounding clumsily along at the tail of the gay
procession, adding the thunder of their passage to the tumult.
With song and yell and laughter and skylarking and jovial horseplay,
they burst upon the great square of the Opera, swarmed up the broad
steps, and setting the band in their midst, they took hands and danced
in a mighty circle round and round the place....
They got moving again, in gorgeous procession, and headed towards the
Louvre, singing student songs, and cheering.
Gaston Latour curdled the blood of passing cabmen by running out into
the road and letting the wheels run over his great indiarubber feet
whilst he yelled in simulated agony. He then threw himself upon the
breast of policemen, and wept bitterly over their shoulders--whilst he
chalked innuendos across their backs.
With colours flying, band playing, and gorgeous battle-standards
swaying on high, with glint of spears and gleam of armour, the noisy
throng passed through the arches of the old-world palace of the Louvre
and surged into the courtyard, bringing back for awhile some hint of
its ancient magnificence.
The sun arose out of the morning over the edge of the city, painting
with golden glory her heights and upper places, and the great towers
of Notre Dame blushed in his dazzling magnificence, as, with song
and shout and laughter, the youths crossed the river into the Latin
Quarter; and the old quays rang to their merriment as it has echoed for
generations to the familiar riot and reckless feet of the studentry of
this most illustrious university of the world.
Up the narrow way of the road that is called Buonaparte the resounding
clamour went, until the great gates of the schools of the Beaux
Arts opened and swallowed the gay procession that trooped into its
court--the gates swung together with a loud clang, and the orgy
spent itself within the staid precincts of the old courtyard that is
set about on its several sides with classic columns and the faded
stateliness of ancient palaces.
Noll halted outside the gates, saw them shut, and took his way
homewards to his high garret; and, as he went, his dress of a Roman
soldier, that had been so appropriate a part of the night’s frolic,
suddenly became incongruous and ridiculous; and the cold clear
morning’s light brought a shrewd suspicion that of late he had been at
best somewhat of a tomfool. He mounted the steps to his garret weary of
all this riot--and there came upon him a sense of loneliness.
Ay, Noll, to what end has been all this frantic skipping?
Ah, youth! that ever plays the gadabout amidst the strenuous
tomfooleries, with eager chasing of the wild-goose, whilst through
lavish wanton fingers slip unrealized the essential things of life!
Even so did the young Adam, as gossips say, toss away the title-deeds
of Paradise that he might but take a bite at an untried apple.
CHAPTER LXVII
_Wherein Youth finds the Cap and Bells to be but a Bizarre Crown_
As Noll shut himself in, he felt a little injured that Betty was not
home to greet him. He saw her letter lying on the pillow.
He flung himself upon his bed, drew a rug over him, and slept until
nightfall....
When he awoke, heavy and stiff and chill and bewildered, he put out
his feet into the darkness, and sat for awhile on the side of the bed,
whilst his drowsy brain cleared from the fog of sleep.
He felt somewhat ridiculous in the dress of a Roman soldier.
He shivered. He felt miserable--he was overwhelmed with a sense of
loneliness. He wondered where Betty was--and what doing.
“Betty!” he called.
No answering sound. There was a ghostly stillness.
He vaguely remembered seeing a letter lying on the bed when he had
lain down to sleep. He put out his hand, and his fingers struck the
envelope. He opened the letter languidly and tried to read, but the
light was gone. He arose stiffly and took it to the window, but the
darkness wholly baffled him.
He searched about for a light, and only found a box of matches with
difficulty. When he had struck the match he realized that the girl’s
care for him was lacking--that it had never before been lacking--there
was no candle or lamp set out for him.
He felt sorry for himself, neglected, aggrieved....
He went back to the bed, sat down upon it, and struck a match; and by
the light of that match he read the opening lines of the letter. He
struck match after match, and by their light he read to the end of it.
And as his hot eyes took in the last words some of his old dignity came
back to him--he saw that he was sitting in a tomfool’s masquerading
rags reading the generous deed of gift of one who refused to be a clog
upon him to whom she had intended only to be an honour and a delight,
who asked nothing of him, who made no complaint, who simply wished that
he should be free, who would not even embarrass him with the initiative
of her dismissal--who was gone!
And in the darkness he seemed to feel cold hands grope towards him and
clasp icy fingers about his feet; and a whisper spoke in his ear:
“Thou art alone.”
CHAPTER LXVIII
_Wherein it is seen that a Man is More or Less Responsible for his
Father_
Noll, arriving on Horace’s landing, found Babette outside the door; and
she was sobbing.
“What! Babette?” said he--“and crying?”
Babette brushed her fingers across her eyes:
“No,” she said; her trembling lips giving her the lie.
“Babette, why?”
He put his hand on her shoulder kindly.
Babette stamped her foot:
“I am _not_ crying,” she said; and a large tear fell.... She made an
effort and said: “Horace is going home.... He is going--away.”
She opened the door, and they went in together.
Noll walked into the studio; but the silken rustle of Babette’s skirts
passed the door, and hurried on into the darkness of the house.
In the deep dusk of the studio sat four or five figures, smudgy dark
shadows, sprawling in armchairs.
“Is that you, Noll?” cried Horace from behind the red spark where a
cigarette glowed.
“Yes--I thought you were alone----”
“Did you want me?”
“There’s no hurry, old boy,” said Noll, and added grimly: “It can wait.”
“That’s right,” said Horace, pushing a chair towards him with his foot.
“There’s the bottle by you--and a glass--and the dried cabbage of
Egypt. Set it ablaze and talk.”
Horace struck a match on the seat of his breeches as Noll flung into
the chair, and handed the flame to him; and Noll, setting the light to
a cigarette, saw the faces of Bartholomew Doome and four of the Five
Foolish Virgins in the gloom.
The light went out.
“Your room’s all dismantled, Horace,” said he.
“Yes,” said Horace--“I’m off home. I was just sending Jonkin with a
note to tell you. I’m giving my farewell feast of departure to-morrow
night--next day I’m off.”
“Why?”
Horace shifted uneasily in his chair; and then he laughed.
“My father’s become chairman of his newspaper company; and he’s
going to give an address to a learned society on the Dignity of
Literature.... I can’t stand that.... After all, one is more or less
responsible for one’s father.... Indeed, the drawback of having a
father is that he has the right to bear the same name.”
“But----”
“Oh, yes, Noll--I know. They call him the Napoleon of the Press in the
newspapers. In his own newspapers ... yes,” said Horace drily; and
added judicially, making every allowance for the defendant: “Of course,
the old gentleman _may_ be the Napoleon of the Press--perhaps he is. I
don’t see why I should wrangle about that. And I’m bound to say that,
since they called him so, he has shaved off his city whiskers and keeps
his hand thrust into the breast of his frock-coat, and pretends to
think a lot, and isn’t so beastly familiar with millionaires. He wanted
to wear a grey overcoat last winter, but I had to draw the line. You
see, the old man has no flare for the subtleties.”
Doome coughed in the darkness:
“How did you break it to him, Horace?” he asked drily.
Horace pshawed:
“I told him he couldn’t do it--he’d be getting into a damned black
cocked hat next,” he sighed heavily: “I hate to be rude to my father,”
he said--“it always hurts me more than it does him.”
There was a long silence.
“I don’t think, Horace,” said Noll, “that you make allowances for your
father.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” said Horace. “However, we’ll allow
that the old gentleman is the Napoleon of the Press. And of course he
and the mother are in the thick of life. Indeed, the mother’s gowns are
always described in the morning paper after a big social function--and,
by St. Paquin, it’s extraordinary how well they sound in _print_;
yet--I don’t know how it is--for she is a comely woman--but when you
put a gold ornament upon my mother it looks like brass--she’s one of
those women who, when she hangs diamonds round her neck, looks like
a ball-room chandelier. She’s as sound as the apostles beneath her
stays, but she has about as much taste as a housemaid--or the House
of Brunswick. Then, the old gentleman dines with old Lord Bardolph
Nankhill--sits at meat with Cabinet Ministers--and has been seen at
Marlborough House. All that, of course, cannot do him any real harm.
But--the Dignity of Literature! and to a learned society! No ... it
can’t be done.”
“Why?” asked Doome. “Society accepts the words of an associate of
Cabinet Ministers in a Tory Government as revelation sent direct from
God.”
“Why?” scoffed Horace. “If learned societies want hints about the
commercialism of the Press, the traffic in brains, then pa’s the man
of whom to ask advice--but the Dignity of Letters! Good God!... An
English newspaper should look like a gentleman’s property. The _Times_
is a journal that ought to be in every gentleman’s waste-paper basket.
It’s always wrong--but it is magnificently wrong. It is consistent.
To vote at the polls on the advice of the _Times_ is almost to make a
virtue of vice. To vote against it is to come near to statesmanship
and is the first principle of political honour. But this newspaper of
the father’s is sometimes right, only in such bad taste. He has taken
the whole look of distinction from the daily broadsheet.... He has
vulgarized the printed page. The very print cries out against him.
He has debased the manners of journalism until they are as coarse as
the traffic in manures, as ignoble as money-lending, as truthful as
a company-promoter’s prospectus, as ponderous in wit and humour as
an American advertisement, its political, artistic, social and all
other ideals as high as the imagination of shop-walkers. He has even
vulgarized the word Empire. The people whom he employs but scrape a
living, and they therefore give of their worst--the consequence is the
employment of illiterate and unscrupulous cads in what ought to be one
of the noblest and most accomplished and most sacred of callings, the
enlightenment of the nation.... Tshah! in his hands the magazine has
become a thing of shame--filled with illustrations that are a public
misfortune.... No. My father is a millionaire. He has grown rich--that
is all. Pa is a very good fellow; but he don’t know anything about
the Dignity of Letters. I must go home. This thing cannot be done--it
cannot be done.”
Noll, finding Horace taken up with his own affairs, felt shy of telling
him his trouble; and it was borne in upon him sadly enough that his
friend was leaving him, and had to be about his own business--far away
from him at the very time he most wanted his sympathy. An overwhelming
sense of loneliness came upon him, and the silence was profound.
The melancholy sense of coming departure--of the breaking up of old
pleasant associations, of the passing out from their midst of a
congenial and blithe companion and a happy face--set them all brooding.
It was abundantly clear that Horace Malahide was being packed; for
the valet, who had always before been hidden, though never far away,
could now be heard in the next room brushing clothes and buzzing at the
business.
“Oh,” said Horace, rousing--“by the way, you fellows will want mourning
for my feast of departure to-morrow!”
He turned towards the door beneath which gleamed a yellow streak of
candle-light:
“Jonkin!” he called.
The door opened, and in the golden glory of the doorway stood the
ineffable Jonkin. He was dressed like a student, short black coat, big
black tie, velvet waistcoat, corduroy trousers and all; but the dignity
of the gentleman’s gentleman glowed within.
“Yessir!” said he.
“Bring those boxes of black kid gloves, black neckties, and the crape
for these gentlemen to choose from,” said Horace.
“Yessir!” said Jonkin.
He brought the cardboard boxes with stealthy walk, and handed them
about.
“Jonkin,” said Horace--“is everything packed?”
“The serious baggage is all ready, sir,” said Jonkin.
“I want you to take it all away the very first thing in the morning,
and get it out of sight and off to London before the men arrive to
drape the room.”
“Yessir.”
“Not a thing about the place here after to-morrow morning but what will
go into my oldest and most battered bullock-trunk and my portmanteau.”
“Yessir.”
“And you understand you are not to leave any silver-mounted things
about.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh, and Jonkin--reserve me a first-class carriage by the next
morning’s boat-train for Boulogne.”
“Yessir.”
“Be in it yourself.”
“Yessir.”
“With my dressing things.”
“Yessir.”
“And English clothes.”
“Yessir.”
“I will go as far as Amiens third class.”
“Yessir.”
“Oh--and Jonkin----”
“Yessir.”
“If there’s a beastly row in the railway-station and I’m in it, for
God’s sake don’t look anxious, or as if you belong to me.”
“No, sir,” said Jonkin.
CHAPTER LXIX
_Which treats of a Farewell Banquet to Departing Youth--whereat Gaston
Latour glitters with at Hectic Glitter_
The light of many candles set in a row along the white napery of the
table showed but dimly in the large room, for the walls were hung
with the sombre black cloth hangings that are drawn across the doors
of churches in honour of the dead. The glint on plate and china and
glass was chastened and modified by the solemn blackness of decorating
black ribbons--large black bows upon the gilt necks of black bottles
of champagne, narrow black bows upon the handles of knives and forks
and stems of drinking glasses, and round salt-cellar and mustard-pot
and cruet and centre dish. The menus were printed on large black-edged
mourning-cards. Flower-bowls had given place to the painted wreaths of
wire flowers that are placed in graveyards. The tablecloth was strewn
with dead leaves.
The black figures of the waiters, who stood in solemn row to either
side of the table, tricked out in the gloomy garb of hearse-lackeys,
melted into the darkness behind them except for their pale faces, which
caught the up-flung light from the candles that played upon chin and
nostril and eye-pits, and sent shadows up their features, pronouncing
the frown of expectancy with which they waited for the belated guests.
There was a loud blare; a hunting-horn without began to bray the Dead
March in _Saul_.
“Mon Dieu!” said a waiter.
“Silence!” growled the head waiter.
The door was flung open, and Horace entered in black, wearing black
kid gloves, and followed by Gaston Latour, also in mourning and black
kid gloves, blowing all the emotion of which he was master into the
resounding brass of the great wind instrument that encircled his chest.
And as the guests trooped in after them, all in black and wearing black
kid gloves, students and their young womenfolk all taking their seats
at the table with a titter, Gaston Latour solemnly tramped round the
room behind the waiters in slow step, blaring the march of the dead,
taking his lips from the brass mouthpiece only to imitate the roll of
the kettle-drums and to give the big drum’s solemn announcement of
doom with a loud “boom!”
When Horace had seen them all seated, he sat down.
But, in spite of the vigorous lead given by Gaston Latour, the jests
did not come tripping to the call; laughter lost something of its
hilarity; tongues that were wont to wag with airy wit were barren of
banter; voices had a tendency to huskiness; quip and crank gave way
to tales of the days that were gone--so they feasted for awhile with
something of the fever gone out of their riot, and until the coffee
came they sat unwontedly staid and hushed, and in reminiscence and
story lived again their insolences and their rebuffs, their darings
and their hesitations, their enthusiasms and their hardships, their
glorious comradeships, their hero-worship, and their fantastic
revelries....
It was near midnight when a skull was passed round filled with little
folded papers, and they cast lots for Horace’s corduroy trousers.
Gaston won the breeches, and had to deliver the funeral oration.
He stood up, pulled on his black kid gloves, and blew his nose
strenuously, taking a long-sustained and melancholy note that sent a
titter round the solemn row of waiters:
“Friends of my youth, companions of my unmitigated follies! the ancient
figure that sits at the head of this table was once young--the years
cannot rob him of that. And it is because he has not been ashamed to
share his youngness with the lion and the ass that I rise to-night to
bid you drink to the Passing of Youth in the mirth-provoking wines of
France. This is the last mad moment of his splendid years; to-night
his heroic follies are done; this room, where have been revelry and
dance and song and wit and laughter and boon companionship, will know
him no more. He is called home--across the sea-sick channel. He goes
to shiver forlorn amidst the gloomy fogs of respectability. He will
marry a staid wife and beget staid children and dine with lord mayors
and wear white waistcoats over a self-conscious stomach. With the
corduroy breeches of his studentship he has no more to do. Whither he
goes there are no gay cafés--no riotous junketings. He will dance down
the streets no more--shout no more--to the stars no more. Whither he
goes the people are glum, grey-minded, commonplace--he must not sing,
except out of tune, or monotonously, for fear of sin in the music--he
must not dance, except with pre-arranged precision and with demure one,
two, three to tunes that are piously bereft of all ecstasy. Revelry
he will pass by with averted glance and eyes downcast. And yet, as
he sits at his plethoric ease before the fire, after a full dinner,
prosperous, rotund, bourgeois, he will nod, and nodding sleep--and in
the freedom of dreams his ranging memory, rid for awhile of its crude
discipline, will flit here, back to the old room, back to the bare
walls--he will live again the blithe days of his fantastic youth; he
will hear the echo of old laughter as his old jests set the ghosts
of his old companions in a roar about the table; at break of day, as
the mists rise from the river, he will skip down the Boule Miche,
the highway of youth; he will caper through the dawn to blow out the
stars above Montparnasse; he will recall with a glow and a bracing of
the nerves that he was acquainted with hardship and scarce knew it,
for the streets were paved with gladness, and kind eyes made stars in
his firmament on the blackest of nights, and he lodged amongst the
skies--and in Paris.... Fill your glasses, comrades, and drink.”
They all rose to their feet.
Latour raised his glass:
“Old man!” said he, with meaning accent on the threadbare words; and
“Old man!” cried they all, laughing, with a sob in the laugh.
Horace rose, when they sat down, telling them that he could not trust
himself to speak otherwise than to say that it warmed his heart as
it grieved his heart that he found himself seated amongst his dear
companions for the last time in his old room. He raised his glass to
Youth, to the comrades of youth, to the students’ quarter, to the
university, to the Boule Miche which was the highway of youth, to the
great dead, to Paris, to France.
They all stood up and drank the toast in solemn silence; and Horace
standing there at the head of his table, they each passed by, handing
him a keepsake for remembrance, grasped his hand, and after a husky
greeting, strode out of the room.
Babette was the last to go. She went up to Horace, drew down his face
between her white hands, and kissed him upon the mouth. He stroked her
head; they spake never a word. Her eyes filled with tears, and she
hastily followed the others out of the room.
Horace was left alone with the solemn waiters.
He stood for awhile, too much touched to speak.
He roused himself at last with an effort.
“Jean!” he said.
The old head waiter came to him.
Horace held out his hand and grasped the shy hand of the other.
“Jean,” said Horace--“you are an artist.”
The man’s face flushed with pleasure.
Horace took a banknote from his pocket and flung it on the table:
“Divide that amongst the waiters,” he said; “and, Jean, give this to
your good wife--it will help little Marie to her dowry.” He handed the
man a crisp banknote; and the old fellow’s eyes filled with tears....
As the door closed on Horace, one of them laughed:
“Ah, mon Dieu!” said he drily--“that they should ever grow wise!”
“Silence!” roared the old waiter.
Horace, as he passed through the doorway, was greeted by Gaston Latour:
“You must skip down the highway of youth for the last time, Horace,”
said he. “You must once again eat the dawn on the Boule Miche. Forward,
comrades!”
They, all hatted and cloaked, flung his cloak over his shoulders, set
his black slouch hat upon his head, and together tramped down the
stairs and out into the street; and, linking arms, the students and
their young women strolled along the roadway and made for the Boule
Miche, singing a rousing student song--the dark and deserted street
echoing to the racket.
They came out on the Place St. Michel, took hands, and in the dim
moonlight they danced in a wide ring before the fountain in the wall
where in his niche the bronze saint slays the dragon at the threshold
of the student’s world.
Out of breath, they went and leaned over the parapet of the bridge of
St. Michel, and then one sighed, and silence fell upon them all.
Out of the flood loomed the great towers of the Cathedral of Notre
Dame, and low down and beyond twinkled the lights of the Morgue; and,
beyond all, the waters of the river swirled into the mists sweeping on
to the restless sea--out into the night and the eternal mystery.
Gaston Latour leading, they clambered down to the river’s edge; and
they sprinkled Horace with the waters of the Seine, and made him for
ever a citizen of Paris.
Up they all clambered again, scaled the parapet, and joining hands,
along the Boule Miche they went, singing--now forming a ring to
dance round embarrassed policemen, now pounding shutters with their
fists, greeting with a cheer the sleepy heads that were thrust out
of open windows, blinking anxiously down into the night; and with
these and the like tomfooleries, saluting the closed cafés where they
had held their many light-hearted revels, they reached the garden of
the Luxembourg--stood before the Pantheon--in the paling night they
uncovered to the great dead. Thus silent, Horace stood for the last
time as a student on the heights of Montparnasse. The immensity of
the night was passing in purple majesty into the western heavens; and
beyond, where the students’ highway topped the hill, in the smoky
twilight glittered the morning star.
CHAPTER LXX
_Wherein a Comely Young Woman broods upon the Years_
Horace shook hands with them all amidst their hearty promises to come
and see him off, bade them good-night, and climbed the dark stairs to
his rooms.
He pushed open the door of his studio to find the room possessed by the
sombre twilight of the dawn. The heavy curtains that had hung across
the great windows had been flung open, and the beginnings of light
showed the deserted banquet, discovering a young woman who sat at the
table, her face buried in her arms.
Horace shut the door gently and went and sat down beside her; took off
his black hat; flung it on the table; and, leaning towards her, his
golden hair touching her dark masses, he put his hand upon her pretty
head:
“Babette,” said he.
She raised her head wearily, and leaning her elbow on the table, she
set her dainty chin in her hand, and wiped the tears hurriedly from her
eyes. She gazed moodily before her.
Horace took her hand:
“What are you thinking of, Babette?”
She sighed.
“Why should I fill your heart with my sadness, Horace?”
“Come, Babette.”
“I have been thinking of the days that are gone, Horace--you have
always been very gentle with me.... And--I have been thinking of the
days that are to come----”
Her lips trembled; and a tear stole down her cheek.
Horace nodded:
“Yes, Babette--and of the days to come!”
She sighed:
“I have been wondering whether you will think of me, Horace--as the
days pass. I have been wondering--wondering--wondering----”
“Yes, Babette?”
“But why should I tell you?”
“Tell me, Babette,” he said; and he stroked her hair, gazing at her
hungrily.
She uttered a little sob.
“Hush, Babette,” said he. “Tell me everything.”
She waited a little while:
“I have loved thee for love, Horace.” She smiled sadly and stroked
his hand. “Must I love now for livelihood?... To me the moonlight
nights by lake and river can never be the nights they have been with
thee. And he who walks beside me must needs feel it so.... You go
home, Horace, to life--I go on here, growing old, year by year. I
have been sitting here in the dark, peering at the years. One day the
gaiety will go out of my heart, the freshness out of my looks, the
colour out of my face, the light out of my eyes. Men turn and look at
me now--their eyes smile at me. The time will come when men’s eyes
will pass me by. Students in the Boule Miche will say, ‘She was some
clever fellow’s mistress--once.’ And there will be laughter. So, one
day I shall sit at the tables--alone; my only prospect--the grave.
Yet--with some--memories.... My haggard eyes have been staring at these
things all through the long night, and the disillusioning dawn has
but confirmed the nightmare.... Yet, Horace, dear heart, I have done
nothing to deserve it--except in loving thee ... except in loving thee,
dear heart.”
The tears brimmed over her eyelids, and her voice was stayed in a sob.
Horace took her tear-wet face between his hands and kissed her upon the
eyes and mouth:
“Listen, Babette,” said he hoarsely--“thou hast wept thy last and thy
only tears for any harshness from me. Dost thou think, dear heart, that
I who have never found thee guilty of the smallest meanness will leave
thee alone because, forsooth, thou hast loved me well! Dost thou think
that thy dear hands and thy sight and thy breath and thy hearing and
thy sweet bosom are not become a part of me! Tush! we have been married
these many months. In a month from now thou must go through the law’s
farce with me--but thou art my very wife--thou canst be no more to me
than that, nor I to thee----”
“No, Horace--thou hadst better leave me. It would be a jibe against
thee----”
“Tush!” He laughed huskily. “Thy train and steamboat passage are bought
hours ago--there is a room preparing for thee in my father’s house....
Thou canst surely bear to be a maid again for thirty days!”
She laughed, and flung her arms about him and kissed his hair:
“I love thee, fool,” she said; “and will share thy folly....”
“Look,” said Horace--“the room is full of light--the sun will soon be
peeping over the roofs. We must be packing. I have kept my best trunk
for thy belongings, Babette.”
She laughed:
“It will take no time--I have as little wardrobe as dowry to bring
thee, Horace.”
“You always look so well, Babette,” said he--“I had not realized thou
hadst not even a trunk till the night before last.... Thou must be at
the Louvre as early as the big shops open this morning, and buy all
thou canst buy of gowns and kickshaws in an hour.... It will save thee
from fretting upon the hardship of thy life with me, Babette, until we
leave. Where is thy purse?”
She laughed and handed him her light purse.
He bulged it out with banknotes.
“Thou must spend all this in gowns,” he said.
She took the notes and unfolded them upon the table:
“But--but, Horace, this will buy me many silk gowns--we must not
waste----”
He kissed her, and laughed:
“I forgot to tell thee about the insignificant things--we are rich,
Babette.”
The tears came into her eyes:
“But--but--I shall shame thee, Horace----”
He kissed her quivering lips to silence her:
“Then God send me shame, Babette,” he said; and he added, with a
twinkle in his laughing eyes: “My sisters will judge thee largely by
thy clothes, so buy for thyself as thou wouldst buy for my honour and
my credit.”
She laughed gaily; then a frown knit the handsome brows.
“What is it, Babette?”
“Only an hour to buy a trousseau!” she sighed. “An hour is such a
little while.”
He laughed loud and long; and she laughed at his laughter.
“No, Babette,” said he--“no, no, not thy wedding-dresses. Buy just
thy few gowns to fill my trunk. Thou wouldst not rob my sisters of a
month’s shopping, thou selfish egoist. They are rich--and must have
employment.”
“I may not find gowns that will fit me,” she said.
“Thy needle will do the fitting.”
She sat, the happy tears in her handsome eyes, her hand in his, and
gazed at the coming day.
“What!” said he--“thou wouldst weep!”
She kissed his fingers, put her dainty palm on his lips:
“Supposing thy sisters----”
She hesitated.
“I am taking thee home, Babette, to teach my sisters manners,” he said.
She laughed:
“And thy father, Horace?”
He put his hands on her slender shoulders:
“Babette,” said he--“I have told my father you are of the De la Rues of
Paris.”
She laughed gaily.
He frowned at her in mock solemnity:
“Thou must not laugh at that jest before my father,” he said. “My
father believes in the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Nobility and
Me. It’s his only creed. Thou must never shake a man’s religious faith,
my Babette. And he will love thee, with his rough love--for thou art
very beautiful--and--thou lovest me.”
She slipped her hand through his arm, and nestled her face close to his:
“Horace,” she said simply--“I will tell thee now what I had intended to
tell thee never: there is a little one coming--a little child----”
He was filled with a great silence and wonder.
He sat holding her slender fingers and gazing at her shy eyes. He put
out his hand and placed it upon her breasts:
“And what if it usurp my place and oust me from thy fragrant bosom?” he
said.
She laughed a low happy laugh:
“Ah, Horace; that would be fearful,” she said in gay raillery, “for
thou mightest then treat the little one as harshly as thou hast used
me....”
Thus they thou’d and thee’d and kissed and kissed again, until the sun
peeped in over the eastern window’s ledge, and touched the young man’s
hair.
She put her hand upon his head:
“Thou art pure gold,” she said.
CHAPTER LXXI
_Which treats of a Harmless Riot amongst such as Dwell on Mount
Parnassus_
Horace descended from Mount Parnassus in a whirlwind. Indeed, he had a
keen sense for the becomingness of things. He was the poor student to
the end. He departed from Bohemia in the tattered habit of Bohemia and
after the fashion of Bohemia--indeed, it was splendid poverty.
The courtyard swarmed with students, and Gaston Latour stood solemnly
directing the devilries, his pale face more than usually tricked with
gloom, his dreamy poetic eyes dark with melancholy, his lips sounding
blood-curdling ear-splitting blares upon his hunting-horn, regardless
of all the municipal laws against the use of the same except at public
festivals. The place was astir with chatter and laughter and fool’s
play and the coming and going of feet.
In the midst of the ferment, Horace and others were securing his
baggage to a handcart, the embarrassed porter standing to one side, his
hands itching to do the roping.
A loud blare from Latour’s hunting-horn--and there was silence.
Horace strode up to the fat concierge, who stood on the steps with her
three small children, the better to see the sights. He lifted each of
the little ones, gave them a hug, and setting them down on the steps
again, slipped a large silver piece into the small fingers. He took
off his hat, and kissed the jolly old woman upon the cheek before them
all, and slipped a hundred-franc note into her rough toil-worn hand.
The little ones began to cry, and the concierge, the tears in her eyes,
told them not to be stupid.
Horace patted them on the head:
“I’m coming back to play with you, you lazy little rascals,” said he;
and putting on his hat, he pulled it well over his eyes.
He strode over to the handcart, and at a sign from him, they seized
the porter and hove his expostulating bulk a-top of the baggage, where
he was compelled to sit for the remainder of the journey across Paris
to the railway-station of the north, in embarrassed discomfort; and
Horace getting between the shafts, a bevy of students set the light
rattling affair moving on clattering wheels, and the noisy party,
pushing, pulling, and hauling and bawling, marched out of the courtyard
in escort amidst the waving of handkerchiefs from windows and the last
farewells.
A fussy burgess, put to the wall with some indignity by the stream of
careless students, went up to a group of police and reminded them that
the hunting-horn was not allowed to be blown in Paris except on certain
high festivals.
His venom was wasted.
The police shrugged amused shoulders:
“It is true,” said they--“but it is only the students....”
As they came into the Boule Miche, singing the National Anthem, the
landlords of the taverns and cafés and the white-aproned waiters came
out to their doors, and greeted the noisy crew--indeed, Horace was well
known, and his genial ways and amiable personality robbed him of all
enemies.
Horace, amid handshakings down the street, foreseeing that the catching
of the train was becoming a nice question and thinking Babette looked
pale, took advantage of a moment’s breathing-space to whisper to the
girl that she had better drive off to warn his man Jonkin that they
might be late; and Babette was glad to get into a passing fiacre and
slip away. Her heart was too full for jesting that had tears in the
jest.
The noisy crew got the handcart on the run as soon as they crossed the
river, the jolted porter a-top, but rattled up the Rue la Fayette in
none too good time; as they dashed into the great station the bustle of
departure that comes before the leaving of the boat-train was at its
noisy height.
The officials were quite unable to cope with the students, who,
chaffing them, rushed and swarmed over the barriers and took possession
of the platform.
The man at the barrier laughed, shrugged shoulders:
“It is only the students,” he said.
Gaston Latour, gloomily dancing the _danse de ventre_ on the platform,
was assailed by a pompous fussy little man in uniformed authority, who
alone displayed sufficient lack of tact to interfere with the young
bloods. Gaston stooped down; solemnly stroked the official protruding
paunch, and putting his ear thereto, said “Cough!”
The sulky fellow growled threats:
“My God,” said Gaston--“he is wasting away!”
The surly fellow made as if to go.
Gaston Latour grabbed him and listened at his stomach again:
“He has a bad heart,” he said; flung his arms round his neck, and
crying over his shoulder hysterically, he wailed melancholy sobs down
the great hunting-horn. He had a grotesque mind....
And thus, amidst frantic foolings and warm hand-grippings and promises
of early return, the train steamed slowly out of the huge station,
taking Horace away from the days of his youth--for he had realized
during the night that was gone that manhood was come upon him.
CHAPTER LXXII
_Wherein our Hero is ill at ease with his own Shadow_
The train being gone, and Horace borne away, Noll drew aside from the
noisy crowd of departing students that strolled chattering and jocular
from the scene of their leave-taking. He walked home alone.
When he climbed to his room, the loneliness yawned at him out of the
void of the empty place. Every shadow, every chair, the bed, the whole
deserted place, whispered that Betty was gone.
He moved restlessly about his rooms all day, chafed and fretted, and,
when the twilight fell, he as aimlessly fidgeted out into the dusk and
betook himself to the streets of Paris.
And as he strode moodily along, nagging whispers went with
him--unpleasant questionings nudged at his elbow--irking discomfort
plucked at his sleeve.
He had very clearly realized during the last few days that, good
fellows as they were, Horace and his companions were all taken up with
their own affairs--that they were really only genially interested
in him in relation to themselves--that he was interested in them in
relation to himself. Not a soul had asked a word about Betty. He
resented it--yet he knew that his neglect of her alone had been the
beginning of her being set aside from their ken. If he felt so of a
sudden about their neglect of her, what must she have felt about his
neglect of her? God, how he had let her drop out of everything!
He knew now that his one selfless friend had been this girl--this
handsome dainty woman. And he had let her go out into the dusk,
alone--leaving him alone.
And for what?
He laughed bitterly.
It came to him now, a whisper in his ear, that her brain was worth
all the wits of all these others put together. It was revealed to him
that most of the keenly observant, large, and humane phrases that had
sounded the music of well-spoken insight to his understanding had been
hers.
Of a sudden he realized what an appalling obstacle his indifference to
her confidences about her work must have been! Indifference? Nay, he
had shown a harsher snarl than that. What a chill to her enthusiasms
and to the practice of her craft must have been all his silent
discouragement--or lack of encouragement.... Stay--had it even been
silent? There had been his ill-concealed impatience with the patience
of her building. Had there not indeed been hints without disguise about
her work being long enough in the doing? He could have cut out his
tongue for its jeer about priggish dilatoriness and Casauban’s _Key to
all the Mythologies_. His ill-manners and his neglect struck him in the
face, and he shrank from it now with a burning sense of shame--his face
scalded. What would he not have given to recall the shabby jibe!
He turned into a café and was greeted with a shout. And in the
resulting rolic, for several hours, he forgot his self-recriminations.
But in the black night, taking himself homewards, it struck him like a
buffet upon the mouth delivered out of the surrounding darkness. He had
lacked manhood.
Reaching his rooms, a dozen petty discomforts assailed him to remind
him of the mother-care and gentle hands that no longer showed their
tenderness--on striking a light, the stealthy shadows stole away
skulkingly into the corners, mocking at his loneliness, nudging elbows
at him.
He lit a candle, and sat down on the side of his bed.
It was borne in upon him, sitting there in solitary communion with his
own unmitigated selfishness, that the man alone is not a human entity.
Ay, Noll; thou art not the only numbskull--the very nations share thy
cap and bells. Man is indeed incomplete without the woman. Any scheme
of life that eliminates the woman is a futile scheme of life. The human
animal is not one, but two--man without woman is wholly incomplete, a
crudity, inadequate, a fatuity, and hence a thing of shame.
Nay, the lad had glimmerings into depths deeper than that; gazing
at the naked truth of things, it came to him that any scheme of
life wherein the woman is made inferior degrades the man with her
degradation, since she is a part of him--and a part of a man in a state
of humiliation humiliates the whole of him.
He wondered what she was doing; whether they were being kind to the
sensitive, large-hearted, dainty Betty.
A sob caught at his throat. He knew--with a hot flush he knew--it was
the first generous thought that had moved him these many days. He had
been pitying himself like a whipped cur, the which never yet brought a
man honour or comfort or dignity.
Wo-hee-ho-ho! moaned the scoffing wind without.
What was she doing--out there--in the dark?
Ah, Noll--what, indeed?
The very shadows bent to hear.
But, Ho-ho-hey! scoffed the mocking wind.
CHAPTER LXXIII
_Wherein our Hero dabbles his Hands in the Turgid Waters of
Philosophy, and brings up Some Grains of Truth from a Pebbly Bottom.
A Chapter that the Frivolous would do well to skip--the Ironies
being infrequent, if not wholly wanting; and the Humours lacking in
the Comic Interest_
For days Noll fretted restlessly about his room and the streets of the
city.
He went back to his old haunts--to the practice of his assiduous
idlenesses. But the fever had gone out of his pleasant habits; and the
talk of his fellows was become stale.
He lingered on--lonesomely but doggedly.
So the days passed into weeks; the weeks stole away the months.
Noll could not shake off a strange sense of humiliation. Shrug his
shoulders as he might at the pathetic silence that had taken the place
of Betty’s mellow voice, humiliation nudged elbows with him, peered
into his frowning eyes, was not to be rebuffed by his sullen face. He
was a prey to self-contempt. The devil of regret takes hard snubbing.
And no man lies intelligently to his own conscience.
He took refuge in letters.
This galling humiliation had set him soul-searching.... Rudderless,
aimless, floating on the sea of pleasant tides, he now gazed in
tribulation at gulfs that yawned before him and about him and
beyond--the Whence and the Why and the Whither of this Present
Seeming. And as the learning of old spent itself in the search for
the Philosopher’s Stone, so the virile imagination of youth, steeping
itself in written wisdom, went a-questing for the secret of life.
Everywhere, where men thought at all and were not content with
hereditary thinking, the whole concept of life was being shaken to its
base. The barbaric Eastern statement of an all-powerful, all-seeing,
all-creating, all-wise God as a huge blundering image of man, taken
up with the essaying of experiments, was a fatuous contradiction that
mocked at the majesty of the secret of life. Inspiration that cannot
face the truth is not saved thereby, but wholly inadequate; indeed, the
first aim of a lie is to evade the truth.
Rejecting the crude and garish guesses, the untenable dogma, the
juggling conventions of theology, the young fellow had, with the
confidence of youth, relied on the intellect for the solution of the
problem of life. Indeed, it is abundantly clear that out of the base
metal of untruth, at any rate, the key to the great mysteries of life
shall not be forged. So, rightly looking to knowledge as an essential
element in the search for the key to the secret of life, the youth
had gone further and looked to the intellect to be that key--only
to find himself in a blind alley with museums at end. The intellect
but labelled and pigeon-holed the facts of life in this museum of
consciousness. But he had stumbled in solemn company enough--a goodly
bevy of the world’s philosophers stood bewildered in the same chill
marble place--the labels were all strictly accurate, but the specimens
were dead.
Whatever the answer to the riddle of the world, man’s only key is
through the doors of the intellect and of the senses. Suspicious of the
senses, the youth had relied implicitly on the intellect. It came to
him now that the uttermost truth, the secret of life, was beyond man’s
reason.
Indeed, the priest who thunders the loudest against agnosticism is the
greatest agnostic of them all--who, asked for the absolute details
that lie beyond the grave, must give for answer, robbed of all vague
talk of God and devil and heavens and hells, “I know not.” Nay, when
reason outsteps his theologic acceptances, is he not first to stab at
reason? The theologian clamours for the law; but his statements of the
law are the veriest guesses. The solemn law of one generation may be
the laughing-stock of the next--the crimes of the further next. The
idols of one church are the derision of another. Men have been burnt
for cast-iron gods by others whose sole claim to godliness was in the
lacking humour to laugh at cast-iron gods.
If there be a God, His majesty shall not be sought in a noisy and
blundering travesty of Man. Good Master Paley touched the sublime
humour when he made the world designed for man--wholly forgetting even
the fleas.
Indeed, the veriest savage can show the titles to his most brutal
savageries in guesses, when all’s said.
And this very solid world that wounds the stumbling foot, is it not but
an idea to each? the solid reality dying for us in our dying--to the
flab jelly-fish this splendid wayfaring being even in the living not
wholly of the same seeming as to you and me and the other.
Yet wholly and absolutely sure are we that all is. Whatever madness
possess us, we know the Achievement. For he who splits hairs with his
reason, and affirms that nothing exists, except in our imagination, is
like to him who thrusts his head against a stone wall; and will find
that the wall and his thinking-machinery are, but do not matter. There
is no gain in juggling with facts. Matter is matter, and life is life,
and denial but denial.
Knowledge of the intellect has in it no creative power, no vitalizing
essence--cannot give life. The meaning of life must be lived. Nay,
knowledge of the intellect is not even the incentive to life--not so
much as instigator of our most paltry acts. The instincts and the
emotions and intuition are the more vigorous masters and compellers of
our living--are outside knowledge--independent of it--often opposed to
it, overwhelming it, setting it aside at slightest desire carelessly,
contemptuously, passionately.
And then----
The brutes of the field have not reason; yet are they moved by this
same mystery of life; their flame goes out in the same strange mystery
of death! That which is the secret of life in man must also be the
secret of life in all else....
The youth had been overwhelmed in the darkness that had shown beyond
the impotence of the intellect. He was aroused by the literature of
Romanticism. He opened the book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer; it led
to the page of life to which he had now turned. The German pointed a
guiding finger.
Even if the brain’s ken were not limited, it is impotent. But,
fortunately, there is a secret stair to the mystery of life. Not by
way of the intellect, but by way of the emotions may we pierce to the
secret of existence. Life expresses itself through the senses. The
emotions hold more of the ultimate mystery than all the vapour-filled
brains of philosophers, be they priest or schoolmaster----
The youth thought he had discovered the answer to the riddle of life.
Searching deep down into his own being, frankly, with the unembarrassed
gaze of himself for sole company, fearlessly, candidly, and in the
decent silence, peering for the innermost essence of existence, he
perceived throughout all seeming incongruities and inconsistencies
and warnings, a strange all-compelling energy which this snarling
Schopenhauer called the Will to Live--a blind, never-resting,
never-satisfied want--a fierce desire for life.
He saw that the body is but the earthly habitation for the use of this
mystic breath of life whereby alone may life achieve its compelling
urging for the fulness of experience. The intellect was wonderful,
as were all the body’s functions; heart and belly and the rest; but
it and they were only the instruments by which the inspiration of
life protected itself from destruction, guiding itself through the
dangers that beset it in the substantial world or threatened its
continuance--through pain shrinking from the dangers of destruction;
through pleasure moving forward eagerly towards a fuller experience;
through hope which encourages, and fear which makes to hesitate;
through love which draws it to its fellows and its mate, and hate
which warns it of its enemies--for in marriage is continuance and
evolving, in hate is denying. Thus fares the sensate vehicle of the
body, enabling life to destroy its foes, above all to realize manifold
emotions, and to hand itself on with an added heritage of experience to
a higher wayfaring.
Everywhere was absolute confirmation. Science, all that was known
of the solid world, confirmed it. Experience confirmed it. History
confirmed it. The senses confirmed it. Instinct confirmed it.
Everywhere, in all, common to man and brute, was this overwhelming,
fierce, all-compelling urging to live the fulness of experience.
The key unlocked the secret of the very mountains and the waters. Out
of the vasty space this mighty urging of life creating itself into the
vehicles of worlds, creating itself from worlds into more emotional
creatures upon the world, gathers into forms, attracts, repels,
coheres into shapes, reaches to the mystery of crystals. Baffled
by the rigidity of the rocks, dissipated in the elusiveness of the
waters, the mystic life gropes its way towards subtler channels of
embodiment. On through the flowers of the field this urging to fuller
life gropes towards emotion--and, freed from its root’s anchorage to
the rigid soil, behold, out of the yeasty ooze it realizes itself
through fish and reptile and bird into beast. On, through the brute,
increasing by rebirth, at first blindly seeking to fulness in the
humblest sensations, working up from stage to stage, struggling and
striving always to feel the fullest emotions, developing for itself
bodily organs which shall nourish it and do it service, that it may
most fully achieve itself--it essays to fullest experience through
brute force and reaches by struggle of the physically fittest to the
body of the lion and the tiger and monster--retires baffled from mere
bodily force, and, essaying through the cunning of the brain its fuller
fulfilment, forms for its embodiment the nimble ape. For its protection
and aggrandisement the brain’s cunning gives craft to the hands and
sets them to the making of tools, and lo! at a stroke the rushlight of
early reason thrusts the savage above the brute. It steps down from the
trees, and Man, finding his hands’ use, and straddling on two legs,
stands upright and a-wonder. The miracle has happened. Life has become
conscious of itself.
And, God! what a seething hell of misery it looks upon!
The youth shut the second book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer, his
brows set, and gazed with sad eyes at the Tragedy of Existence. He was
overwhelmed with the sorrow of the world.
This untameable never-satisfied urging to fulness of life that stirs at
the heart of all things, what had it wrought? Seen glumly through the
spectacles of Pessimism the light went out of the heavens. The youth
flinched from the welter of the universe.
What a welter it was! what a shambles!
The hawk preying on the exquisite design that is the body of the small
feathered songster--the tiger slaying for daily food the timid deer
that is innocent of malignity to him--the wolf flying at the throat
of the lamb--the rabbit taking fearfully to the earth to be cruelly
slain in his hiding-place by the ferret. Everywhere life taking life.
No refuge from the brutal struggle. Man battening on his fellow-man.
The cruel and the unscrupulous, in war, in commerce, in Church and
State, treading under foot their gentler companions--self-interest the
one god. Man going to church of a Sunday to listen with bowed head to
a plan of life which it is his sole aim to evade for the rest of the
week--and, as crown to his hypocrisies, marching to battle with songs
of the Prince of Peace to slay his fellows.
Tssh! the brutality of it! the cursed cruelty of it! the bestiality of
it!
Success in life! what was it but the record of other hearts broken,
other spirits crushed, other homes rendered desolate?
Everywhere was aggression, pursuit, sorrow, suffering. The rich
trampling down the poor. The beautiful body built only to decay. The
love of life given, to be baffled by death. At the end of all our hopes
and strivings and ambitions yawns the grave.
Everywhere sorrow and pain.
We remember pain. The agonies cling in the recollection--the joys
are forgot. Health is not realized until it is gone--nor youth--nor
liberty. Yet these are amongst the greatest good. Even enjoyment
is damped by habit. Opposition and disappointment were sure--and
always--and everywhere.
This very intellect, that raised man above the brute, and gave the
fuller powers in the struggle for life--what happiness did it bring? It
dangled hopes and ambitions and joys before the eyes, simply to deceive
the passionate urging of life to fiercer struggle for life.
The intellect! man’s boast over the brute--it was the crown of thorns.
Intellect! which was given as the last plague--the brutes had been
spared _that_. Thought warring with impulse; the love of beauty and of
justice fighting the appetites and the body’s yearnings which impel
our actions to the brutal struggle for life; contemplation upon the
ignobleness of these appetites and base injustices and greeds impotent
before the overwhelming lusts and impulses and emotions of the body.
Imagination!--to shrink from the seething dunghill of the world.
Was there any deliverance from this miserable tyranny of life? Only by
boldly standing across the path of life and refusing to share in it.
He opened the third book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer, and he found
the two means that Pessimism has found, by denial, to accept life in
full--art for art’s sake, and the asceticism of religion.
By steeping self in the contemplation of the beauty of works of
art, outside and aloof from self, in the contemplative pleasure of
craftsmanship and artistry we may escape for awhile from the brutal
urgings of our life, forget for awhile the brutal struggle for
existence round about and at every hand, ignore the cruelty of the
world. In the subtle pleasure that comes from a work of art can we
alone be purely contemplative----
Yes--this Schopenhauer fellow had wisdom.
The Youth put his hand upon the book, and by the gods he swore it,
he would follow art for art’s sake. He would seek salvation from the
tyranny of living in the contemplation of the beautiful.
CHAPTER LXXIV
_Which sees the Day break in the Tavern of_ The Golden Sun
A misty dark night. The drizzle that slowly drenched the town met with
but damp welcome the students and revellers as they poured out of the
Bal Bullier at midnight; it sent them swarming into the genial warmth
and cheery glitter of the cafés on the Boule Miche.
And the inhospitable rain, having emptied the streets, slyly took
itself off into the outer darkness and passed out of the city, leaving
the trees weeping in the blackness.
Noll, wearied by the frantic toolings of the students’ Bal Bullier, put
up the collar of his coat, and finding that the drizzle no more wet
his face, he strolled down the Boule Miche, struck across the cobbles
of the riverside quays, and striding into the murk that hung about the
river, he found himself on the bridge. He stood and leaned over the
parapet, peering into the blackness of the foggy depths that swirled in
pitchy fumes below.
The yeasty stillness yielded a sob.
A young woman’s voice near at hand spoke low.
Aubrey’s voice answered her, impatiently. The fog carried every
inflection of his drawling irritation and peevish insolence. He pshawed:
“Women take love so seriously,” he said--“it is women who spoil it....
Love is the pastime of life, the gaiety of days, a thing to enrich the
senses, to give man his recreation--and women filch it of the very
essence of its charm by making it the sordid business of life. Robbed
of its delicate mysteries, of its butterfly flitting from flower to
flower, it becomes--marriage--and the begetting of children--and the
clamour of household needs--and milk-bottles--and soiled linen....
Why are you not content to love many men, Hélène, as I have found the
rhapsody of life in loving many women?... It is the spiritual----”
“The spiritual!”
She laughed a little harsh laugh; and added sharply:
“Come, master Aubrey--we know each other too well to make it worth
while to lie--it deceives neither ourselves nor the other; wherefore
then the intention of it?... I would only ask you not to love the other
woman _before_ me----”
She was seized with a violent fit of coughing.
“Come,” she said hoarsely, “this air is killing me--I must have
warmth--I am starving, body and soul.”
“The tavern of _The Golden Sun_ does not close till daybreak,” he said
sullenly.
She laughed sadly:
“Yes,” she said--“they turn life upside down--the artists--like the
religious....” She sighed consent. “All right. We will go there.”
They passed Noll, where he leaned against the parapet of the bridge,
almost touching him.
He roused moodily and followed the sound of their footsteps in the
pitchy murk.
He, too, would go to the tavern of _The Golden Sun_.
He turned to his left as he stepped off the bridge, and kept by the
river-wall.
There came to him now and then through the clammy darkness ahead the
sound of the girl’s coughing. This woman was Hélène, the fragile beauty
whom Aubrey had filched from her easy-going husband, a young doctor of
the commercial quarter across the river. In the letter she had written
to bid the honest commonplace fellow farewell (Aubrey had told it at
a tavern merry-making amidst the sly laughter of his fellows) she had
complained that he had no romance, that the very soles of his thick
and clumsy boots were like his own solid soul, an offence to her sense
of the subtleties--that she must out into the world to seek romance
and the colour of life. The blow had fallen out of a serene day in
the face of the poor fellow, and it was matter of common report that
he had reeled from it--he, being unpoetical and unappreciative of the
picturesque glamour of wickedness, had not even appreciated that he was
party to a romance--had taken instead to avoiding his fellows and was
walking with Shame--furtively, unheroically. Paris had laughed. And the
girl----
She was getting her fill of crude adventure now....
Out of the reek there came again to Noll the pitiful cough. The
footsteps stopped for awhile. A quickly suppressed sob. Again footsteps.
In the sombre gliding river below, the green lights of vaguely looming
blacknesses that were canal-boats, splashed emerald flames in the
inky flood. Loomed now across the waters the massive solidity of the
twin-towered cathedral, black against the black night; and beyond and
low down upon the pitchy tide the pale lights that burn all night in
the house of the dishonoured dead gleamed through the window-slats of
the Morgue.
Noll, hearing the cough again, roused to the sound that the others had
left the riverside. He crossed the drenched quays, and leaving the
river behind him, struck into a narrow street that was possessed by the
spectral wraithes flung down the grimy old walls by the ghostly lamps
that hung thereon. Along the gloomy thoroughfare the chill airs, from
the river hard by, set the lamp’s flame flickering, and sent dusky
shadows moving stealthily out of dingy doorways and black corners,
shadows that stealthily stole back again. And amidst the silent
spectres, flecked by the down-flung light of the creaking wall-lamps,
flitted the figures of the man and woman; and back from amongst the
ghostly wraithes came the pitiful harsh cough.
Their shadowy figures turned into the squalid street that is called the
Rue Galande; and Noll closely followed them, they came to a halt before
the low arch of a doorway and stepped out of sight.
When Noll reached the arch, the red maw of which yawned into the sordid
street, he saw by the legend written upon the glass of the battered
gas-lamp which hung awry overhead that he was at the threshold of the
tavern of _The Golden Sun_. Across the dark stretch of rudely paved
courtyard beyond, the two figures were passing blackly under the yellow
flood of a gas-lamp, the restless flame of which showed a flight of
steps leading underground. The twain descended into the gloom of the
passage and were swallowed in the cellars from which came a gust of
song and the sound of music as the doors opened and shut upon them.
Noll descended the steps, pushed open the doors at the bottom, and
stepped into the tavern of _The Golden Sun_.
He blinked at the lighted room, dim as it was. The heavy air, laden
with the fumes of beer, and hazy with the clouds of tobacco-smoke, met
him with a pleasant warmth of welcome.
Through the haze he saw that the people sat, silently giving their
whole attention to a slender youth who stood at the far end of the room
declaiming verse, leaning upon a piano--a grey-haired musician touching
mellow chords gently and running a light accompaniment of music atune
with the speaker’s fine voice.
Noll was little in need of the superfluous pantomime of a burly
thick-set waiter who made melodramatic signs to him to stand still--to
make no sound.
As he stood there, listening to the telling accents of the young poet,
his eyes ranged over the strange gathering of bohemians who sat about
the little round tables. They were shabby enough, some of them, to have
been the denizens of a thieves’ kitchen; but there was an atmosphere of
culture abroad that took all incongruity from the noble sentiments and
subtlety of accent that fell from the lips of the poet in that dingy
place.
The women who sat at the tables were not the gay butterflies that
flitted in silk and satin about the glittering cafés of the Boule
Miche. Their picturesqueness was of a more subtle kind, and its
daintiness shone through the pitiful simplicity of meagre apparel.
Here were no rollicking students; here was no frantic fooling; here was
a note in the air that Noll had not yet heard sounding in gatherings
that laid more strenuous claims to the pursuit of art.
His eyes ranging, caught signs from Aubrey to go and sit beside him;
and, the poem ending in a dulcet pathetic sigh for the eternal tragedy
of life, Noll took advantage of the resulting bravos and applause to
make his way to Aubrey’s table. The quick-eyed waiter was there as
soon as he, and bawled Noll’s order for three bocks of beer to the
patroness, who shrilly echoed it.
Aubrey was frankly glad to see him; and it was soon abundantly clear
to Noll that he was as frankly glad to be relieved from the sole
entertainment of the pallid woman beside him. Hélène, too, roused to
interest in the fine young Englishman--the frown left her handsome
brows.
The grey-haired musician ran his slender fingers over the keys of
the piano; and there stepped on to the little platform on which it
stood the only man who seemed out of place in that strange company of
dreamers. Burly, powerful, big-headed, with cunning eyes that count
profits, slits above baggy underlids, he was of the blonde breed that
plans and orders--full-bellied, calculating, of those whose fat hands
get money, and, with short grasping pointed fingers, hold it when got.
He rang a little bell, and silence followed its tinklings.
Hélène leaned over to Noll:
“He is _The Golden Sun_,” she whispered, and laughed low.
He had the honour to announce that Madame Hélène would declaim an
apostrophe from her last written work.
The young woman arose simply, smiled to Noll, and making her way to
the piano, took her place before it amidst a salvo of applause; and
with a strange thrill in her husky voice, she spoke of the cruelty of
Nature, the eyes glowing in the deep shadows of her fine brows that
gleamed white amidst the masses of her tawny hair, where she stood
below the light, gracefully poised against the piano. She uttered the
exquisitely phrased sentences in a well modulated low voice that was
vibrant with suppressed passion, without trick, without gesture....
The warfare of life was unceasing, unmerciful. Race struck at race,
man lay in wait for man--on the mart, on the field of battle, in love,
robbed the one the other of the simplest needs of life.... Everywhere
was struggle--everywhere was strenuous rivalry--at the end of all,
the grave.... The caged bird, what a thing of pity! Denied the range
of life, destitute of its mate, its wings cramped, its functions
atrophied--yet--open the door of its narrow prison, let it but fly
across the sweet-scented meadows, and a hawk swings out of the heavens,
falls from the splendid blue, and strikes with rending claws, and tears
out with cruel well-contrived beak the little life from the delicately
designed beauty of the songster.... Why flutter against the encaging
bars? why struggle ever to be in the winds and the free airs? Tush!
wherein was freedom but to flee from death? The little fragile thing
had the gift of song; let it be glad that it had the gift of song.
She uttered the pity of it in the most caressing tongue that the
nations have wrought; and when she had spoken the last word, she bowed
to the thunder of applause, came back to the table, and seated herself
by Noll with a freedom from conceit that touched him.
They came and clasped her hand, and gave her ungrudging praise, with
all the airs and kindly dignity of France. And Noll noticed that Aubrey
was gone....
The room was gay with banter and laughter, glasses clinked, the waiter
sped about busily, bawling orders, and the smoke of cigarettes clouded
the ceiling.
And, of a truth, the atmosphere of the place had a strange fascination
for Noll.
Here were no longer the crude essayings, and the more crude aims of
fledgling studenthood. He was weary of the fierce partisanship, the
shifting foundations, the tentative idols of their passing frenzies,
this taking of sides about things that did not matter.
These people were out of the years of their apprenticeship to the arts.
Here, on the other hand, was no posing at all costs for outrageous
originality, no seeking for the eccentric aspect of things, none of the
fantastic extravagances that marked the revels of the sordid gatherings
in the taverns of Montmartre--for these people had no desire to the
breaking of idols, the outraging of the decencies, the mocking at
ideals.
Art, to these people, was the one serious aim of life.
There was scarce a line uttered this night, whether of recited poem or
song or criticism, which was not perfect in the expression, exquisite
and subtle in the phrasing. There was that air of tactful restraint and
of rightness of statement which in manners are called good breeding.
And if the emotions uttered were somewhat thin or exaggeratedly sad or
tinged overmuch and disproportionately with the grey half-tones of the
pathos of life, if vigour and the strenuous music of the bright days
and the gaiety of life were almost wholly absent, there was at any rate
a feeling for beauty and a sobbing appeal to the pity of the world for
such as are overwhelmed by the destiny of tragedy that held something
of nobility.
These men and women were content, if a neglectful world so ordered it,
to live here in obscurity and poverty, their sole incentive to life
the worship of beauty. Upon the workaday world they turned careless
shoulders--and for them the workaday world, in grim retort, had no
uses, no honours. The worst sin to them was to be Philistine. Here
they met together at a time when drowsy citizens were getting into
their unthinking beds--here they were happy in the companionship of
their fellows throughout the long night, exchanging their ideas of the
beautiful, their polished gentle wit, their praises--here, shrugging
contemptuous shoulders at the conventions of the world, men and women
lived and loved as they listed.
If the world should one day awaken to the works of their genius, so
much the better for the world--if it should clamour for their poesy,
their song, their works of art, well and good. They would be glad that
the world had taste enough to give them fame. But the world must come
to them.... It would make life easier--their clothes would be less
shabby--hunger less biting, less insistent. But what had the world to
give them better than the love of beauty or more pleasant than the
comradeship of them that knew beauty when they saw it? The generations
perhaps would greedily seek the work of their brains; fame would come
if it came.
So said they, gentle-mannered, shabbily attired, simple-hearted,
warming their starved blood with brandy and bocks of beer and accursed
brain-stealing absinthe, living on each other’s kindliness and praise
and genial comradeship, living in dreams, walking on air, wayfarers
in cloudland, scorning all meannesses, garnering with difficulty the
poorest sustenance for daily bread, cheerful though the frost bit and
the hunger thinned their already lean ribs, and penurious want made
their blankets few--proud in their dignity, pitiful to every suffering
thing.
Why heed the sensational events of the day? what mattered that a
Minister had fallen? what did it matter that a scandal was washing
dirty linen in the streets? Such things were dead and buried and
forgot in nine days--but art and music and poetry remained, beauty was
eternal. Why compete in the sordid money-grubbing race for wealth? We
must all die. Why this strenuous hurrying to the open grave?
So they reasoned. And they brought to their meeting no sign or word of
their hard struggle for daily bread. They brought to their comradeship
only laughter and wit and gentle faces and smiles....
The small hours of the night passed.
It was nearing five o’clock, and the room began to thin of its
frequenters. Noll called the waiter and paid the reckoning of saucers
for himself and Hélène. She arose with him to go; and as they opened
the doors and stepped out of the heavy air of the room, the grey dawn
had broken and the dingy lamp of _The Golden Sun_ was paling into
insignificance in the chill day.
As they reached the river, they found, swathed in multitudinous wraps,
a stout woman who was selling hot milk and rolls. Noll did not ask the
girl, but ordered a couple of bowls of the comforting stuff and a roll.
The girl drank the milk gladly; and of the roll she was very careful
not to lose the crumbs.
Noll took her to her poor room on the fifth story where was her
threadbare home.
At the threshold she asked him in.
He smiled.
He took her pathetic face between his two hands, and kissed her upon
the wan cheek:
“No, Hélène,” he said--“I love another woman.”
She turned and went into her room.
As he descended the stair she came out to him again:
“Will you be at _The Golden Sun_ to-night?” she asked--her lips a
little anxious and apart--beautiful lips.
He hesitated--pondered--smiled:
“Yes,” he said.
As Noll crossed the Boule Miche a white mist hung over the river; at
the far end of the students’ highway the heavens were chilly grey; all
the stars were burnt out of the drab firmament.
CHAPTER LXXV
_Wherein our Hero goes out into the Night_
Noll slept till late into the afternoon, awoke heavy, and loafed
aimlessly about his room, hoping to do some work before the dusk fell;
but ideas were shy of him, and, as the afternoon wore on, he grew ever
more restless. Flinging into an armchair, he opened the book of the
wisdom of Schopenhauer which tells of the Refuge from the brutalities
of Life in Works of Art--in the contemplation of the Beautiful. And he
steeped himself in the pessimistic writings until the light failed. At
the coming of the darkness he roused, made himself some coffee, lit the
lamp, and getting back to his easy-chair he pored over the gospel of
Art for Art’s sake until midnight.
At midnight he stretched, yawned, and, putting on his cloak and hat,
turned out the light, and drifted to the streets again and so to the
tavern of _The Golden Sun_.
Hélène was there, at a table, watching the door for his coming. A
pretty flush warmed her pale cheeks as she saw him enter and scan the
place for sign of her. She beckoned him to the empty chair beside
her--and he went.
The handsome young Englishman, virile, frank, gentle in his strength,
fascinated her. His attitude towards her interested her, a little
piqued her, flattered her, baffled her. All the shafts of her country’s
wit against the amourousless habits of his people tickled her to
the smiling point; yet she suspected that behind the self-confident
eyes strong passions lurked.... She herself thrilled at his touch,
would have flung herself upon him, clung to him--would gladly have
yielded body or soul to him--yet she saw that he was in no mood for
her surrender. She was burnt, fevered, with the eagerness of reckless
passion. Yet his frank liking for her, his friendliness, his charming
desire to hear always her criticism of life and of art and of things,
his pretty homage and deference to her intellectual point of view, won
her to him in a pleasant comradeship that gave new life to her. She had
heard of these friendships with men--but Paris had never before offered
her such sweets. She would watch him with curious eyes that were lit
with a smile when he turned to look upon her.
So it came that Noll drifted away from the boisterous community of
the students and their nightly riot, and took to haunting the tavern
of _The Golden Sun_--drifted from his blithe companions in all their
irresponsible rollicking gaiety of youth and fell into the drab habits
of these shiftless folk who put artistry and the beautiful before life.
By day he slept; and when he did not sleep he pored over this
Schopenhauer’s scheme of evading all thought of the misery of living in
the contemplation of the Beautiful--at night he lived it.
Time passed.
The first freshness wore off.
Youth became restless.
The contemplation of the beautiful, in works of art, was no deliverance
from the striving of the desire to live. Even in enjoying the beauty of
craftsmanship the struggle for life and the cruel facts of life could
only be put out of one’s thoughts but for a very little while; nay,
art even pointed to life; nay, more, this very art is in its essence
the emotional statement of nature and of life!... Fool! Life that was
beautiful to contemplate in its parts could not be wholly ugly in the
living.
Youth rubbed awakening eyes.
Art as a refuge from life was a failure.
He looked round at these faded wits about him.
This devotion to beauty of craftsmanship, to mere letters, to paint,
to music, to technical achievement--it could only bring passing
consolation of delight. It did not, it could not bring perfect
rest--absolute contentment. Sordid hours had still to be lived--and,
God! what sordid hours!
Even whilst they spoke the half-truth that Craft must and should always
be beautiful, must aim at perfection of statement, be pleasant, give
delight--poor souls--their wan eyes could not wholly put from them
that Craft is but the tool of Art; and Art is the expression of all
the emotions and sensations--ranges the whole gamut of life, good and
bad, ugly and beautiful, tragedy and comedy. Art therefore inspires
or it debases; and thus and so stimulates life to fulfil itself--or
not to fulfil. Art is good or it is bad--is as powerful for bad as
for good--good when it enlarges life; bad when it narrows life. The
emotions discover for us far more vasty continents than the eyes of
voyagers shall ever behold.
Youth awoke.
These people about him were Failures--the pallid ghosts of men and
women.
They were taken up with the shadow.
Could this delight in the mere craftsmanship of art be enough? Was
this sufficient end? Was it for this the world had been evolved, to
this that was set the vast music of the spheres? To this end--to be
set down beautifully in man’s handwriting--that the thunders brought
the lightnings to the riven oak, that the wondrous mystic seasons took
their courses, that the waters leaped hissing to the tornado’s smite,
that the angry majesty of the resounding heavens gave place to exultant
sunshine and serenest peace! Were these things so, but to be set down
in man’s scrap-albums?
Was delight in craftsmanship enough to live for?
Tush! this was absolute, if subtle, suicide--self-killing of the body
and intellect and conscience and will and energy. This sipping at the
mere pleasantnesses of life--it was emaciating them in mind, body,
will, senses.
Their very loves were a dandified make-believe. The kiss of a woman’s
mouth was become but a passing pleasure. All these shabby little
adulteries were without desire for the child beyond--the child when it
came was an unlooked-for inconsequence, a burden, a thing of shame. The
sweetest thing in life an affair of accident--to be feared--flinched
from!
Life might be a tragedy. These were making of it a melancholy and a
ghastly farce.
Noll got up from his place and slipped from the smoke-befogged room
amidst the clamorous din of applause that greeted the recital of an Ode
in Envy of One who had died Young.
He went out into the night.
And as he stepped out into the darkness the bitter cold gripped him
by the throat and cut into his lungs. He drew his collar about his
neck, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tramped down dingy
streets that echoed his footfall along their haunted ways--he thought
with a pang of the threadbare coats of these pallid revellers in the
beautiful. It was the black hour that goes before the coming of the
daybreak; and blacker than the blackness of the night loomed the great
bulk of the cathedral of Notre Dame, its towers lost in the reek of
the bleak heavens above--there were lights that showed low down and
beyond--the lights of the Morgue were not yet burnt out.
The youth stood on the bridge and peered at the sighing sound that told
of the river below; but his brows were knit upon the destiny of these
kindly gentle people he had left behind him.
Where was this sorry tragedy of art for art’s sake hurrying these
sinking wits?
Those dark shadows that slept under the bridges, were they the husks
of such human things? Was that the end? To share the dank shelter with
the rats that made their litter there! Or perhaps in the black waters
icy oblivion would solve their sorry problem of evading the tragedy of
living! The Morgue.
Nay, how they clung to this despised life, for all its sordidness, for
all its misery--even the Failures!
CHAPTER LXXVI
_Wherein our Hero sets Foot upon the Road to Rome_
Midnight did not see Noll at the tavern of _The Golden Sun_.
He had failed to find deliverance from the tyranny of living in the
contemplation of the Beautiful--in Art for Art’s sake.
Still obsessed with the misery and cruelty of the world, he sat beside
his lamp and opened the fourth book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer,
whose fearless brain had compelled upon him the tragedy of existence;
had promised to show him the way out--two ways. One had failed.
He now turned eagerly to the other and the steeper road. He climbed the
rugged path of Asceticism.
The will urged always to Life, but----
Life was a sordid tragedy.
Why consent to take part in it?
Why indeed? asked scowling Schopenhauer. No man who has seen through
the torment of existence, who has grasped the fact of the eternal
unsatisfied Want, who has realized the brutalities and the cruelties
that are the very conditions of Life, can desire anything but
Quiescence--and complete quiescence only comes with Death. The Buddhist
and the primitive Christian had done right--both of them. The Buddhist
had looked to Nirvana, a state of Nothingness, of eternal calm--the
primitive Christian, with the lure of a vague future bliss before his
eyes, finding life on earth a designed brutality, had looked on the
life of this world as a pitiful thing, and fixed his hopes on the
gateway of Death to bring him into the garden of eternal peace. The
pessimism of the East had had the seeing eye.
Death is the eternal sleep. And it may be met half way, in bouts of
contemplation upon Art. But--better--it may be met almost the whole
way. Until the will wholly cease in death, its eager impulses, its
insistent urgings to self-preservation, self-aggrandisement, may
be baulked and rendered futile by deliberately opposing them. In
asceticism the eager desires of life could be almost wholly baulked.
Through asceticism alone could one refuse to be an accomplice in this
designed crime of living--this preying of life upon life. No wonder the
medieval churches had gripped the imagination of man! The child need
not be born to continue the brutal struggle for life. The ascetic monk
and virginal nun sternly refuse to hand on this miserable heritage to
further generations. Across the design of life stood the monk and nun;
their stern order--thou shalt not.
Through a great and profound pity for the suffering and the weak and
the losers in the brutal struggle for life, one could oppose one’s self
to the cruel order of things. In this sympathy and pity alone could
we raise a foundation of ethics that could demand justice against the
design--which opposed itself to the triumphant brutality of the life’s
struggle. In this great human pity for the down-trodden could one not
only find alleviation for the misery of the world, but in it also could
we find some balm for the criminal fact of our very existence.
The road came out upon the pilgrim’s way. The pessimistic conception of
life led to the very gates of Rome.
For days Noll haunted the great aisles of the cathedral of Notre
Dame--sat within the beautiful interiors of the old medieval churches
of Paris--dreamed--brooded over the problem of the Refuge from
Life--was thrilled with the thought that the lowly and the meek should
inherit the earth....
Amidst the fragrant scent of the swinging incense, to the pathetic sob
of the haunting chant, in the emotional atmosphere of prayer, the great
pity for all created things welled in his heart and roused in him a
passionate desire to be at grips with the cruelty of life.
The mystic rites, the emblems, the symbolism of every act of this
splendid church--these things held the youth fascinated, drew him,
called to him.
That a vague, all-seeing, all-creating, all-powerful God, sitting apart
somewhere in the blue, had created the worlds out of His omnipotence,
had designed this scheme of life that the religious condemned, had
designed it from the beginning, and was carrying out phase by phase
every detail of it, and was angry with much of the result of His
own handiwork--all this was thoroughly atune with the pessimistic
conception of things. All these brutalities, were they of God’s
deliberate design? Well, there they were. If there had been design,
then they were a part.
And this being so, the churches had done right to set aside the wrath
of this Being, and, instead, to appeal to a redeemer--one who had put
himself against the brutalities of this design--who had flung down
his life to mitigate the brutalities. It was clear that the salvation
from such life was thus to oppose that life--was to be found only in
asceticism.
The big-browed scowling German had led the brooding youth into the
great mysterious precincts of the medieval church, and left him
there--it was his last word. And the youth, his ears ecstatically
alert to catch the whispers in the reverberant gloom of its sonorous
architecture, was overwhelmed with the majesty of the great denial that
is the heart of this ancient church.
And everything in his temperament urged thereto.
Art moved him thitherwards--what he conceived to be art.
The Papist faith is that subtlest, most fascinating form of art
for art’s sake--religion for religion’s sake. From the years it
has taken boldly all symbolism that rouses the emotions of its own
significance--from its pagan altars to the saying of prayers by rote.
Whatever of outward pomp and majesty all other worship has known,
whatever of mysticism and of craftsmanship and of artistry all other
worship has known, this splendid church has taken into itself. It had
seized the great pessimistic solace that is a passing refuge from life
in the contemplation of works of art. And now, here, too, was a church
built to its foundations on the rock of asceticism--on the bold denial
of the majesty of life--on the pessimistic, final, and only refuge from
the desire for that fulness of experience, from that life that its God
had thrust upon it.
And it was so well-bred--everything in its place--everything foreseen.
It had an air. The music was sonorous, significant, eloquent, mystic.
The arts had given of their best. The pathos of the voices that chanted
the sad litanies that condemned life filled him with a sense of the
sorrow of the world. He lingered in this atmosphere until he was worn
out--he came home late at night, weary and famished with his ecstatic
fastings, and, having eaten the meanest food, he would seat himself by
the lamp and pore over the mystic volumes. He steeped himself in the
books of Saint Teresa and others to which he had heard reference made.
Slowly the monastic spell cast its glamour over his intellect. Once
he had accepted the world as a place of suffering and a punishment,
the ascetics filled his imagination--the nuns and priests “athirst for
sorrow, drunk with self-sacrifice,” who bury themselves in cloisters
or go into life-banishment beyond the outermost pales of civilization.
His great pity for the suffering of the world drew his bowed regard
to the cloistered orders, the Carmelites and the poor Clares who are
chosen by the Christ as victims of expiation, who unite together and
gladly accept for their agony the expiation of the temptations of the
world outside--who go to the deepest suffering, the prevention of
sin by “substitution,” taking the place of them that are too weak to
withstand the passions, and taking that place only by going through the
full urgings of such passions. Saint Teresa who took the temptations of
the soul of a priest who had not the strength to endure them; Sister
Catherine Emmerich who took the bodily pains of the sick; Ludwine who
“lusted for bodily suffering and was greedy for wounds,” the “reaper of
punishments,” he brooded with envy upon the self-inflicted tortures of
the Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament, their austere day, their
rising at two in the night to chant, summer and winter, their turns
before the tapers of reparation and the altar. He thought of all these
orders vowed to obedience, absolute and without reserve--the complete
surrender to the superior, of their life, their movements, their
actions, their will, their judgment, their bodies, their instincts,
their emotions. And when he dwelt upon the contemplative orders, buried
alive in their monasteries and convents, he was overwhelmed. These
people had mastered the whole gamut of the conquest over the desires of
life....
The monastic orders passed before him in sombre pageant. The black
robe of Saint Benedict--had not his order kept learning alive? until
learning was become dangerous. These men, clad in sombre sable,
had been amongst the gentlemen of the world--and its scholars.
The contemplative Carthusian, the ascetic Cistercian, the gentle
Franciscan. The Jesuit, byword of subtlety and finesse and trickery--it
is true he had walked in crooked ways to his goal, but he had had this
wondrous church for goal.... The Dominican--no, he shrank back from
the accursed white robe of him that had stood before the inquisitorial
fires and the like tortures of his hellish devising, holding the
sullied crucifix of the great-souled Christ to the agonized eyes of
the writhing victims of his foul lust for cruelties. To save from the
brutalities of life by inflicting harsher brutalities--this had been to
plumb the criminal deeps of filthiness....
Yes, he had his hesitations, the youth.
His mind misgave him a little at the conceits and fooleries and the
indifferent yawnings of the choristers, at the absent-minded recital
of prayers uttered by the often weary priesthood, at the beadles’
sharp eye on the fees. It misgave him still more when he thought upon
the death in life which the nuns of the contemplative orders set
themselves--when he learnt that the age of twenty-nine was a terrible
period for the young woman to pass, that their worst punishment was
endured in those hours of agony in the passionate regret for maternity
when the barren womb revolts--when he learnt that some nuns, killed
by the torpor of the cloisters, languish and die suddenly like the
flames of candles blown out by the wind. Nay, he clutched his throat
in sudden loathing and disgust and anger as he read Saint Teresa’s
order in her _Way of Perfection_, that the nun who shall be guilty of
insubordination should at once and for life be imprisoned in her cell.
Yet----
Contemplation, prayer, pity, self-repression, asceticism! The strenuous
urging of life did not find a loophole there through which to enter in,
with disturbing energetic breath and organic instincts and the jumping
blood of adventure. And if these things secured the refuge from the
cruel struggle of living, why not accept the whole of the rest, the
formalities, the etiquette, the infallibility of its pontiffs, the
real presence in the wafer in the priest’s mouth, the confession to
the priesthood, the surrender of the body and of the intellect and of
the will and the conscience to the Church that “orders the body to be
silent and the soul to suffer,” and holds that “true life begins not at
birth but at death”?
CHAPTER LXXVII
_Wherein Foul Things are Plotted with some Glamour of Romance_
It was in this mental ferment that, one day, idly seating himself at
the table where Betty had wrought, and brooding there, Noll put out his
hand to one of the small brass knobs of the writing-table, and opened
a little drawer. It was fragrant with the atmosphere of freshness and
life and sweetness which was a part of her winsome being. It brought
the witchery of her brown hair to him, her dainty ways, the beautiful
firm gentle hands, the white skin that flushed so easily, the eager
loyal lips, the courageous will, the happy eyes, the cheerfulness and
gaiety of her glad young womanhood.
In the opened drawer lay what looked like the final proofs of the
chapter of a book--or had she torn the pages from some magazine?
He read the Fragment from The Masterfolk: which ran:
“_Rid thyself of the pessimistic error that confuses Life with Lust.
The duel between the lust of the emotions and the contemplation of
Reason is but in the seeming, as the right hand is against the left.
The emotions and the reason but hedge in the highway of thy wayfaring
to guide the instincts of life along the way to the highest fulfilment.
Joy urges life forward to the achieving; pain turns aside from danger;
and the reason is the eye of the emotions. Bereft of reason, the
emotions are blind; and the blind in soul are not of the Masterfolk._
_Good and evil are not at duel; these twain are not rigid and separate
realities taking sides in a quarrel of the universe; good is the way by
which life travels to the achieving of the highest experience; evil is
that way by which life falls away from the achieving._
_There is no other good nor evil...._”
When Noll laid down the Fragment of The Masterfolk, the evening was
well spent.
He went to the window and gazed down through the damp night upon the
smoke and flare of Paris that steamed in the reek. His mind turned to
the busy world at his feet....
As he pulled on his coat, he noticed that there were two volumes in
the pockets. He laughed. They were the wisdom of Schopenhauer--of the
refuge from life in art and of the refuge from life in asceticism.
He left them there.
“Tush!” said he--“as if life were given to be evaded!”
He put on his cloak and hat, and walked down into the streets.
As he turned into the great boulevards, the people were swarming out of
the theatres, their eyes still smiling at the comedies. There was the
shuffle of feet, and hum of conversation, and laughter that punctuated
genial waggeries. Bright cafés were crowded inside and out with the
ranks and array of chattering people.
He went under an awning and seated himself in a back row; the waiter
at his call brought him a foaming tankard of beer. And he sat and
sipped and brooded there alone in the midst of the buzzing of the
pleasure-hive.
Paris flashed and flamed in the night--that brightly lighted Paris
of many lamps that lies between the crazy heights of Montmartre
to the north and the students’ quarter beyond the river to the
south--the great central world of Paris, that is the ordinary workaday
pleasure-seeking-at-the-end-o’-the-day’s-work world that knows little
and cares less for the fantastic aspirations and the mockeries of the
hill of martyrs, or the artistic aims of the left bank. Here stepped
the good citizen of the gayest when not saddest people of the world,
in the streets that are his public drawing-room, smiling at life,
strutting with wife or mistress his evening stroll, before getting off
to his virtuous or unvirtuous bed, living his life by habit and rote,
taking it as it comes, turning reflective eyes upon it never. In the
highways the great painted omnibuses rumbled past, taking up swarms of
home-going folk from their sauntering evening pleasures of the town.
The white-hatted and black-hatted hackney coachmen cracked loud whips
and urged their nags to the winning of their last fares for the night.
Here strolled the sturdy everyday folk, respectable and commonplace and
prolific and jovial, who went to their churches of a Sunday or did not
go, as their forefathers before them, and for much the same reason of
confirmed habit, asked no questions, but came into their religion or
lack of it, and of their concept of life, by heredity; even as their
hair grew, and they waked and sleeped. Here were no brows troubled
with nerve-racking introspection. Anxieties were on far other scores.
The women, with skirts held up, frankly showed ankles that were not
aimlessly stockinged, and dressed their shapely bodies frankly trusting
the men liked it so; here the men turned and as frankly admired
them.... Here the world passed and repassed, gaily and genially human.
Most had never heard of Shakespeare, few had read him; to nearly all,
Homer was as dead as higher mathematics; to most, Dante would have been
an intolerable bore; to many, Milton a giver of sleep. Nay, Molière
was known to these as master of dull French, that had wearied their
school-day youth.... Here were soldiers that slammed steel scabbards
upon the flags, and police that yawned because the world must be
respectable.
A stout burgess, his plump wife upon his arm, came and took seats at
the little table beside Noll.
“Jean has the commercial flare,” said he, blowing mightily and mopping
a perspiring forehead with florid handkerchief. “He has won marbles on
a system.”
There was raising of admiring hands at the child’s promise. Madame
sighed--to think the boy springing up.... There was a pause, and
memories of the child’s arms about her neck--her eyes filled with
tears--and she spoke of the cares so happily borne--the days that were
gone came back to her.
“Yvonne had fancied a piece of lace to go with her white gown and veil
for her confirmation.” The good dame laughed lightly. “Ah, she herself
had worn it--mon Dieu! how many years ago?”
He pinched her ear.
She bore her old age well, he said; still, he himself was absolutely
ancient--nearly forty!
And they both laughed.
The good man smoked a cigarette; she flipped through an illustrated
paper; they sipped liqueurs; called the waiter at last; paid the
reckoning; exchanged a jest or so, and departed, he lifting his hat to
the house.
Others came and went.
Noll brooded on.
What had been all the frantic ecstasy of art for art’s sake to the
world at large? An absolute nothing. And what was this ascetic hatred
of life?
The aim of life is not to live in poet’s rhyme--nor does our neighbour
pass feverish nights fearful of losing immortality. The poet may be
shaken with such fears for his verse; the ambitious may see in dreams
their names writ in flashing jewels on the face of time, glittering
like stars beyond their daily lusting; but the man of the street
scratches his poll to no such questionings. He has to live. He asks,
and he has the right to ask, that he may live his life in hope and
happiness and all becoming jollity. There will be rough stones enough
beneath his feet, walk he ever so nicely. Why be jealous of worldly
fame? The names and fames of the ancient masters of the world, king and
conqueror, are vanished--their very gods have taken wing. There are
some chipped relics--the rest is in the spindrift of time....
What was all this abstract pity of the world? what did it affect? What
was it but the conceit of sheer egoism?
In the darkness beyond the flare of the café, on the benches that
skirted the roadway, sat several shabby fellows--frayed, down-at-heels,
haggard. Their pale faces stared out of the darkness at the festive
loungers along the café’s front. Out of the gloom their hungry eyes
sullenly followed the shifting figures that passed to and fro across
the golden flare of the brightly lighted place. The younger ones
scowled, brooding pensively--one now and then muttering a rough jest
to the others. But they were mostly silent. The elder, dirtier, and
more ragged, with hands deep-thrust into pockets of filthy trousers,
shrugged stooped shoulders, and watched the shifting comedy that passed
unwittingly before their eyes. A tattered fellow from amongst them
would rise and pick up a cigarette-end that fell upon the pavement from
light discarding fingers.
The ranks of chairs along the café’s front began to empty.
Noll roused, called to the waiter, paid him, and strolled into the
night....
The waiters came out and cleared away the tables and chairs and put up
the shutters.
The lights went out.
The faces that had stared out of the night sank on to drowsy chests,
and the wastrels of the boulevards fell asleep on their hard benches.
One fellow amongst them arose, yawned, and drowsily shuffled down the
road to a bench that was not so crowded; he lay down upon it, and fell
asleep.
He had scarcely fallen into a drowse when a dim slouching figure came
out of the black drizzle that was setting in, and, hesitating near him,
peered into his face--put out his hand and touched the sleeping man
upon the shoulder:
“Comrade,” said he, “it’s going to be a wet night. This is wretched
shelter for a master mind.”
The other roused, uttered an oath, laughed grimly:
“What is it?” he asked.
“Gavroche,” said the stooping man in a hoarse whisper--“the mists are
rising from the river.” He looked up and down the road cautiously:
“There’s a drunken carter has lost his way and is wandering on the
quays. Perhaps he would have fallen into the river anyway.”
Gavroche roused and sat up:
“Ay,” said he, “he has been paid his wage or would not be drunk....
And he is near the river.... What a death, my comrade, to go out of the
world with a full skin!... Some rogues have all the luck.... Come.”
CHAPTER LXXVIII
_Wherein our Hero scatters some Pages of the Indifferent Wisdom of the
Ages to the even more Indifferent Gulls_
In the black night, Noll stood on the bridge at the end of the Boule
Miche. The cathedral loomed sombrely amid the darkness.
But the darkness was resonant with the promise of a mighty music.
The youth had awakened.
A load was fallen from him.
The mists were rising from his soul. He stooped in his eagerness and
peered at the years.
He began to see the Reality of things. He was filled with a strange
excitement. He went back in fancy, and picked up the thread of the
unravelling of life where it had dropped from his fingers in his
eagerness to follow Schopenhauer’s inert nerveless guidance.
The scowling genius of the German had nearly found the truth--that a
mighty desire for life was at the core of all existence. And here had
slipped the mighty intellect; and the crabbed hands, groping in the
half-darkness, missing the little, had missed the all, since that which
stirs at the heart of all things is not a will to live, but life--life
with an overwhelming urging to fulfil its fullest self. Nay, urging so
overwhelming that, to know the fullest life, it lightly takes the risks
of death in the achieving.
The bitter lips, not given to understatements, had yet understated
the whole case. He of the surly shoulders had gone before the youth,
beckoning him, until they were stepping along the hard stony ways of
unhandsome half-truths that wounded the feet, and straying in the
dirty alleys where the refuse is shot, their attention fixed on the
cruelties, seeing only the shabby side of life. And, for solace, the
worthy German could point but to two ways out of the shabbiness of his
destiny--art and asceticism.
But this was not life at all.
The youth awaked to find the highway of life to be clean and healthy
and glorious and beautiful. He stepped back upon it. Up aloft and afar
and hard by, the world sang with the joy of life; and the motherhood of
the world held out immaculate arms to him. He stood at gaze with life,
and he saw that it was not misery; nay, so far from being compact of
misery, life lay before him unutterably sweet, thrillingly magnificent;
so pleasant that we do not notice the delight of sheer living until
misery knocks at our doors to say the order of our career is broken.
Life is to be lived, not baulked--otherwise we give the godhood within
us the lie.
There is no virtue in a doleful countenance, nor aught more sacred in
solemnity than in delight.
For Joy is serious as sorrow; comedy serious as Tragedy; life serious
as Death.
It came to the youth, standing there in the reek of the night, that he
was on the brink of manhood; he faced the prospect; and the whisper of
the Masterfolk came to him where he stood.
His intellect and his emotions were in a strange thrill--leaping with a
new and pulsing energy. Dawning manhood plucked at his sleeve, pointing
to life, staring inquisitive glances, rousing him with restless
innuendo--took him by the shoulder and said: “Awake, thou hast done
with drifting, thou must live, and guide thy life, and choose thy ways.”
He began to regard life as a drama in which he was now a player, an
important player. He was no longer of the audience--he was compelled
on to the stage. He suddenly became aware of this. No matter how
ill-dressed for the part, no matter how slip-shod, no matter how
stammering his tongue, how dull his art, how ill-prepared to speak his
lines, he must answer the call, must play that part. He roused to the
fear that he did not know his part--did not know his cues, did not know
even what was expected of him. He must search out the book of the play.
What a strange tragi-comedy it was!
Tshah! pessimism’s refuges from life were but coward’s shrinkings from
the exultant thunders of the universe.
Life is life, whether it be lived in the full, with the full breath
of the heavens in the nostrils, and facing the dangers foot to foot
and striving and overcoming, or whether its energy be spent in a vast
labour to avoid it through exquisite evasions. Life cannot be avoided,
whether a man take all the risks and fall in the risk, or, like the
contemplative Grey, stand midst the whispering grasses of a graveyard
and sigh the years away.
The august and splendid old cathedral loomed out of the murk.
And yonder towers that thus rose above the flood! The medieval church
that builded them had founded itself on this pessimistic denial of
the fulness of life: contemning, spurning the present; yearning for a
vague, fantastic immortality. Its litanies, its prayers, its services
sounded the misery of life. To the medieval churches this strenuous
world was to produce for its highest ideal the barren man and woman,
scowling on life in a narrow cell, shutting out the splendour of
living, denying it wholly, apologizing to its God that others dared to
live the life He had given, praying passionately that the sin of this
life that God had given might be taken upon their own poor shoulders!
The free air of heaven, and love, and the joy of life, were things to
be looked upon askance and with caution, as a part of God’s bungling;
yet so vast their faith they chanted their misereres all unwitting of
the thing they said, all unwitting of the fear lest the future life,
to which yearned their distorted hopes, might not be as sorry a world
of blunders as that which they branded with their disapproval as God’s
failure in this present seeming!
And where does the medieval church stand?
The master peoples pass its gates.
They preached the humble and the lowly; they preached the prince of
peace--their hands, their doors, their traditions, their magnificent
altars are bespattered with blood. With sonorous chant and opulent
prayer and incense and significant symbolism of the worship of
non-resistance, they blest the standards of battle. They tortured kings
of thought, banned the demi-gods of the imagination, robbing woman
of her parallel dignity with man, benumbing her wits, sapping her
vitality, stultifying her will, made her a gaping hypocrisy--such women
cannot be the mothers of the Masterfolk.
Pah! these very stones reeked with the blood of that Eve of St.
Bartholomew. The doors of this church were scarlet with crime. Up
yonder in the haze across the river hung the bell that had sounded in
Christ’s name the cut-throat command to slay all such as worshipped not
after her fashion.
Asceticism is like the will of one who, fearful of the dangers of the
sea, fearful to go out on horseback to his wayfarings in the adventures
of living, fearful of tragedies that may lurk in every thicket, became
so fearful of the accidents that beset life in the living that he
shut himself up in a strong castle, its rigid walls hewn from hardest
stone--feared even to marry a wife lest she, wearying for another
less fearful than he, should put poison in his cup. And the ship went
sailing over the sea, and the horseman went riding over the hills, and
the woman married her lover and knew life and became a laughing mother
of babes, and--the castle fell into the earthquake’s maw....
To such like strange music jig they who suffer the itch of Asceticism’s
distorted ideals--hermaphroditic, nay, wholly neuter. Virginity, the
fantastic virtue of virtues! They come to find life’s glorification in
the supreme denial of life--the chaste nun, she who stands with frantic
eyes at issue with her godhood that says to her: “This is the sure and
exquisite music of thy lifesong; this is thy office this; for this thy
sweet body, thy fragrant breasts; thy every urging is touched with the
finger of delicious shame that thou shouldst know with no common thrill
the majesty of thy overwhelming significance--Be thou the mother of
children.”
Nay, does not the Ascetic even approve the ridiculous lie called
Illegitimacy? As though a child shall be illegitimate! As though a
woman shall find shame in realizing her godhood! They that strive to be
barren, alone, are the illegitimate.
Nay, had not the ancient churches even raised to solemn dignity of
sainthood one Anthony, whose ridiculous virtue was the dread of the
love of woman! for which the high God within him had chiefly builded
him.
Wiser far, for all their grey and vasty faults, had been the sturdy old
Protesters, rude, clumsy, bungling enough though they were--those wise
rough men who had emptied abbey and priory of hermaphroditic ideals so
that the monkish cell had given place to the family hearth, and the
clatter and whisper of inordinate litanies to the laughter and shout of
little children.
For the Masterfolk have no fear--neither of birth, nor of life, nor of
death.
Noll took the books of the wisdom of Schopenhauer out of his pockets,
and flung them from him into the river below--the pages fluttered,
beating the air, and the books that tell of the Refuge from life in the
contemplation of the Beautiful and in Asceticism, fell upon the messy
flood and were borne along on the polluted waters of the city that
went, bubbling filth, to cleanse themselves in the immensity of the
mighty deep.
And as the books fell, they struck the body of a dead carter that
passed in the darkness upon the tide.
There was law--how otherwise the evolving of the Masterfolk? There were
the heights. How to reach them?
The grey towers of the cathedral took solid shape; and, beyond and
low down, the coming dawn flushed up from afar, and the smoky heavens
lifted and grew light; the vague world arose into palpable form; and
the day gained possession of the steamy city.
There was a footfall on the dank quays. The bohemians were creeping
home to their dingy beds to sleep away the day, turning life upside
down, making day into night, night into day--drab symbol of their
misconception of the realities.
CHAPTER LXXIX
_Wherein the Honourable Rupert Greppel shows Hidalgic_
In a large shed in the workmen’s quarter, on a platform, under
the flare of gas-jets high hung in the dim rafters of the great
place, there sat three men at a table; and before them, languid and
self-possessed, his frock-coat close-buttoned and his scented being
attired in the general air and pose of the dandy, stood a man of pale
countenance, who, with the calm measured accents that are the habit of
self-possession, spoke to the upturned faces of a dark mass of men that
swept in a vast attentive hush from before his feet.
He spoke with facile precision of thought and accent, holding himself
easily, airily, and with picturesque insolence. There was in the air
with which he spoke a quiet indifference as to whether he pleased his
hearers or not which had something of that strange distinction that
marked everything this man did or said--for Rupert Greppel, whatever
his faults, had a conspicuous and sincere belief in his own dignity. He
stood there calmly hidalgic, swaggering, self-reliant. He never forgot,
nor allowed others to forget, that his mother was a French countess,
and of the oldest of the old noblesse.
He was speaking the last words of an academic appeal to aristocratic
anarchy as the solution of the great human problem. He treated with
contempt the aspirations and the beliefs in all socialistic ideals,
laughed at the good of the largest number. The masses did not even
believe in themselves, said he. The strong man, strong in himself and
of the breed of those that had belief in themselves through the habit
of generations of tyranny and of rule, was alone fit to govern----
“Down with all aristocrats!” cried an ugly-looking fellow at the back
of the great seething mass of listening humanity.
Rupert Greppel never so much as frowned. A little smile played
about his eye-pits and lips. And he was greeted with a storm of
counter-cheers from a group of students and friends, amongst whom sat
Myre and Noll and others.
“You cannot put out the aristocrat with the breath of a mere shout,”
said he calmly. “What does the State know of justice or of equity?
There is one law for the strong and one for the weak--and there always
will be.”
There was some laughter; and again counter-cheers.
“The State is the triumph of the individual over his fellows, rank by
rank, until the poorer spirits labour for the free spirits. Tush! when
you have a strike in this so-called Republic, the troops are used for
those that are in the right, hein?” He laughed. “I tell you they are
drawn up to strike for those that are in power. And they are right. The
commonweal demands the public good. I am not for it. I demand rather
to play gaily with this life that is mine, as if it were mine, not
this one’s, nor another’s--I demand to play it like a gentleman, with
dignity, elegantly, artistically, free to serve my own sweet will,
lusting when I will, with whom I will, reading pleasant literature when
I would rest my body, sleeping when I would, strutting it abroad with
my clothes well-fitting, enjoying life, and looking well-dressed for
the part--I am aristocrat. As for the people let them be as happy as
they may, consistently with toil--let them have bread and amusement
on occasion--let them prate of the humanities--but do not rack their
grey minds with books. Shut the muddling schools to them. Do not
harass their vague minds and make them pale with thinking. We can do
all that for them. Let them be industrious and well-behaved. Thought
and the riot of living are only for the aristocrat. These things but
give the people a gross headache. The peasant has stolen our acres;
the burgess has bought our strongholds. And is the world gayer? Is
it cleaner in conduct? Is it stronger in men? I say the world is for
the aristocrat--and the aristocrat has fallen from the days when, the
stag being long in the finding, we hunted a lean peasant instead. The
aristocrat being dethroned, the Jew holds all France in his fat and
grubbing hands. Is France more splendid than it was? But one thing
they have not been able to buy--our countenance. They still have our
contempt. And we yet hold the reins of the glorious lordship of war. We
still know how to die. And until we die, when we walk abroad let the
people see to it that they give us the cleanest place if we condescend
to walk the same pavement.... But the dirty rogues encroach. The dirty
rabble ape our very vices. The people to-day have even the impertinence
to be bored--boredom is the privilege of the aristocrat. They would
leave us nothing.”
Amidst the laughter and the applause that rose above the swell of the
ugly growl which was the sullen voice of the great crowd before him, he
descended from the platform.
A restless silence fell upon the place.
But the massed crowd burst into a roar as a man leaped on to the
platform and stepped forward before the people--a rough workman,
energetic, vigorous, alert, dirty. This was one of those half-educated
men of action, bred by the academic unrest of the literary
anarchists--bred by the egoists, Nietzsche and other dainty-fingered
gentlemanly persons enough, who would have been alarmed to think that
their theories were breeding such volcanoes. Into his blood had eaten
their academic trifling with extreme individualism--his fanatic eyes
glowed at the very thought of his fingers about the throat of the
rich--and, innately criminal by every instinct, his nerves leaped
at the murderous impulse when he found logic was with him in his
histrionic dreams of killing.
The picture-loving eyes of the world are caught by the theatric glamour
of the unflinching courage that sent out the debonnair and scented
gentlemen of Versailles, beribboned and careless, to face, with clouded
canes for sole weapon, the blood-dripping and weaponed mob of the
Revolution--the romantic pulse of the grey world is thrilled at the
grim tale of the exquisites who continued their games of cards and
dice, regardless of the interruption of rude history and with all the
elaborate etiquette and fantastic ceremony of their accustomed habit,
until the command came from rough lips that it was the turn of each
to step into the jolting tumbrils that lumbered to the scaffold and
the guillotine. And indeed theirs was a splendid feminine defensive
courage, that dreaded only the indecencies. But courage is not the
privilege of a class--the sombre garb of the workman holds often enough
habitual acts of courage, persistent and grim as that which on occasion
sets the poets rhyming if it be shown by a prince of the blood; and
it covers thereby a more virile danger, if roused to it, of turning
aggressive hands to the rectifying of its grievances, injustices, and
years of sullenly borne insolences. And if the rousing be done by
a master wit, what vast significance may be there? or what ghastly
catastrophe?
This fellow swung back his head to speak--and a shout greeted him from
the back of the great hall, where some ugly-looking fellows stood:
“Gavroche!” cried they--“silence for Gavroche!”
The greeting touched the man’s conceit, and he smiled. He laughed:
“That scented fellow is not without eyes,” said he; and a shout of
laughter greeted him.
His eyes settled on his theme; and when the silence came he burst
roughly into his harangue:
“Nietzsche has spoken the last word,” said he. “Man has arrived
above the world’s shambles by struggle alone--he is the fittest to
survive. There is no other law. The strongest shall succeed. Existence
is an anarchy; and they alone have rights who make them. Yet man,
forsooth, arriving at the top of things by mastery, decides Nature to
be brutal, forgets that he is where he is by the ruthless selection of
the fittest, and being arrived at supremacy in Nature, he thinks to
hold Nature back by overthrowing her supreme law--he refuses to let
the weak go to the wall, refuses to leave the sick to die, hangs the
strong man who slays the weakling, and flouts the very nature which
put him a-top of the brutalities to bestride the world! But Nature is
not to be flouted. She proceeds, with contempt of all opposition, to
evolve the ultimate over-man, the Beyond-Man--the healthy, strong,
ruthless, vigorous overlord. Man is the most splendid brute--at the
base of him is the scarlet lust of war. The cultured and the effete
and the timid quake, frightened at the vision of the Beyond-Man, not
daring to acknowledge that the ruthless survive. And to what do they
appeal? to art and civilization and religion. Well! these be pleasant
toys--but in what manner have these things been of use to make man
stronger, better equipped for the ruthless struggle for mastery, and
to produce a more ruthless breed? The day and life of the whole modern
state is a lie--it swarms with churches, mouths its creed of loving
your neighbour as yourself. But what are its _acts_? I tell you it
is moved by an aristocratic morality--a code which has no slightest
intention of loving his neighbour. There is no democracy--men are not
equal, but wholly unequal. But there is cheer for you, my comrades of
the corduroy breeches--you of the hard hands and the vigorous life. The
Beyond-Man is not of the nerveless race of puppet kings, indeed what
hath a king to-day but his robes and his fal-lals and his fineries? The
Beyond-Man is not of the enervated crowd of hereditary nobles--like
that scented apparition that has just spoken. He is not the fat-bellied
flabby burgess, grown soft behind a counter. He is of the master-wits
amongst the workers--men whose bodies are hardened by toil, whose
vigour is a live thing from the habit of a strenuous life. It is our
turn.” He paused, and added hoarsely: “Up, then, and change the face
of the world! Up and seize the good things the gods dangle before your
eyes for the seizing. Take them as these others have taken them--by
sinew and strength of arm. Pluck from kings their magnificence--not
to give it to the aristocracy whom feudalism created lords paramount
to usurp kingship--not to the smug burgess whom you enfranchised with
your blood at the Revolution--nay, the nobles were more picturesque and
not a whit more brutal than the trader, for the sweating-dens are many
and each hath a thousand victims for one that knew the rack, each den
more populous than the Bastille! Pluck their riches from the burgess
and hang him where he hanged the nobles--the lamp-post is still an
emblem of civilization. And if you fail a time or so, do the prison
and the frozen road of winter leave your belly more empty than the
humanitarian State? Has the felon’s cell a harder task than such as
many a worker lives in the _free air_--God help us--the free air of
this Rien-publique! Danger is the strong man’s plaything--the whetstone
of mastery. Vive l’Anarchie!”
He stepped forward as he ended his fierce apostrophe, and shouted it
hoarsely:
“Vive l’Anarchie!”
The great throats of the workmen flung back the cry with a mighty
shout; and the students cried applause, setting their canes rapping
upon the floor.
The cheers set Gavroche’s conceit jigging. He stood, his heavy face
glowing in the down-flung light. The shadows played about his eye-pits
and high cheek-bones and broad nostrils and heavy chin, and ran down
the deep throat; and the light revealed the strong jaw of the man who
carries out his contentions.
But even as he stood, a big man arose in the midst of the bohemians and
students, and said in loud clear accents:
“Thou fool!”
The students shouted with laughter; and the mood of the workmen
changed, as a Frenchman’s quick subtle mind will change at a ridiculous
situation. The vast crowd burst into merriment.
Gavroche came down the platform, and suddenly lost the command of
himself that had given him a strange dignity during his oration--he
gave way to wild gesticulation and his voice rose to a shrill scream,
and at once became as the ravings of a maniac to the judgment of the
vast multitude. Loss of temper lost him the ear of the house.
The big man, Eustace Lovegood, remained standing in calm
self-reliance--a dignity that appeals always to the essential dignity
that lies beneath the wits of all workers.
One of the solemn Three at the table leaned forward, rang a bell, and
asked the pleasure of the house; and when the din had ceased he called
out to the big man to go up and speak--Gavroche, said he, had had his
say and must go down.
Gavroche, recovering his calm, shrugged his shoulders and descending
from the platform made his way to a group of workmen at the back of the
hall--as Lovegood worked his way up to the tribune....
“Come, comrades,” growled Gavroche to his fellows--“pass the word--this
fellow will speak for a full hour--he is like to be on the side of the
moralities--and they require some explaining. We can be back here soon
after. Slip away and meet by the broken river-lamp. The watchword is
_Rien-publique_--and the countersign _Beyond-man_.”
As Lovegood made his huge way to the platform, there also left the hall
the engrossed figure of Quogge Myre. A great idea had come to him.
CHAPTER LXXX
_Which treats of the Masterfolk_
The big man faced the people, and squaring his great shoulders he threw
back his cloak and gazed solemnly down upon them:
“That is a fool,” he said, “yet he spoke much truth.”
There was a shout of laughter, and some mock cries of “Vive l’Anarchie!”
“It is perfectly true that they, who are the fittest, survive in the
mighty struggle for life. The supreme law of life is the Survival of
the Best. The best are the fittest. But mark the law: it is not the
individual that survives, but the race. Thus, hadst thou been the most
exclusive aristocrat of apes, tracing thy lineage to thy uttermost
jibbering beginnings in the ooze, thou hadst still gone under the heel
of the most bucolic community of men, though, ape to man thou hadst had
the greater body’s strength, the deeper egoism, the harder wish to slay.
Dominion goes to the race; it is mightier to be of the commonweal
of the Masterfolk than to hold the king’s baubles over weaklings.
To be sure, he that is king of a little people is a king--of an
Insignificance. But they that are the companions of the Masterfolk are
lords of a commonwealth that hath set its heel upon the neck of him who
rules so small a parish.
The Masterfolk have not their eyes upon whence they came, but on
whither they go.
This Gavroche fellow speaks of strength as if there were only brute
strength.
The Masterfolk must be free to live the fullest life.
To be free, the Masterfolk must be strong of thew. But this is not
enough. If strength of body made the overlord, then the lion had been
overlord to man, and the negro overborne the white man. But man’s brain
wrought the knit brotherhood of the clan and weapons and wondrous
defence and the science of war. So the brain’s strength came to be
above the body’s strength.
The Masterfolk, to be free, must be free in their thinking. Yet it is
not enough. For the strong man may have in body a giant’s strength,
and in thinking a giant’s strength, but, foot to foot with them that
are of his own strength, he goes down before the overlordship of them
that are strong in conduct; for he that hath not self-discipline,
who debaucheth his powers and maketh license of his body’s gifts and
loosely scattereth his brain’s will, falls to disease of his faculties,
and his nerve grows weak, and the will, which is the centre of life,
grows enfeebled and melts to water, so that he arouses ill-will and
contempt amongst his companions; and the enmity of his fellows blotteth
him out, and his body rots. Nature, the silent judge, sets the seal of
her obliteration upon them that she hath rejected, so that they shall
not further increase in power.
The Masterfolk to be free must be strong in conduct. Yet again this
is not enough. For the strong man to be free must be strong of will.
Yet even this is not enough; for the will that acteth against the
conscience becomes a bully’s strength and will reel before it finish.
Through the conscience shall each man receive purification in his
search, which has been the eternal search, for the godhead within him
that leads to the fullest life. Therefore the Masterfolk to be free
must be strong in conscience--for instinct is at the mystic centre of
life. Yet even to be spiritually free is not enough.
For the spirit cannot live but through the body. Therefore the
Masterfolk must be strong alike in all the freedoms--for in each is the
foundation of the other, and in the failure of each is the obliteration
of the other. Strong and alert in body, and in thinking, and in will,
and in conduct, and in conscience.
That man cannot be wholly free who shall ignore any of these
freedoms.”...
CHAPTER LXXXI
_Wherein the Widow Snacheur comes into her Fortune_
The chill murk that swept up the narrow cobbled street in the pitchy
night, swishing long wreathes of fog across the rare lamp-light, told
that the river lay close at hand.
It was a bitter night; and the winds buffeted out of unseen blacknesses
and squealed in a riot of unkindnesses, smiting the face of things and
falling away sullenly to smite again; the dingy alley creaked with the
complainings of shutters and lamps that strained and jolted in their
rusty hinges and grumbled in their iron sockets.
A group of ill-looking fellows that whispered on the kerb under a
wall-lamp showed shadowy dark and nearly as intangible and dim in the
murky gloom as the ghostly shadows that the few flickering lamps sent
stealthily creeping across the narrow cobbled way to join other shadows
where lurked the vindictive gusts about the edges of the moaning
blackness.
A lilt of song and the clack of brisk footsteps came down the alley.
The muttering group under the lamp turned towards the sound; their
anxious ears caught the refrain of one of Aristide Bruant’s obscene
prison songs; relief showed on the coarse faces.
“Here comes Gavroche,” said one.
And Gavroche came.
He glanced sharply at them all.
His was the master spirit; yet none of these men were easily given to
obedience.
He laughed:
“It is as I thought,” said he. “Comrade Hiéne is pale--his hand
perspires--hold out your hand, Hiéne.”
The sullen young giant put out his great hand, palm upwards, and it
smoked in the keen air of the night.
They all turned and stared at the tall lank youth, and his sullen face
had an ugly look, though it was of the pallor of death.
“I have drawn the lot to strike,” he said, scowling. “I have never
killed--and I do not like it----”
Gavroche laughed:
“Afraid to kill--even an old woman!” he sneered.
A dark look came to Hiéne’s sombre eyes:
“And yet not afraid,” said he. “But ashamed--to kill an old woman....
There is a scoundrel I know that I am not afraid to kill.”
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders:
“And this for an Overman!... Tshah!” He turned to the others: “I had
foreseen this,” he said. “I will do the masterwork.” And he added with
contempt: “He shall stand at the door where the girl sleeps--for the
old fool locks up the girl at night--but the moment we leave, this
fellow that fears to kill a woman must unlock the door. Suspicion will
fall on the girl.” He turned again to the scowling Hiéne. “Hast thou
the courage to throw suspicion, comrade?” he sneered.
The sullen young workman made no sign.
One of the others moved uneasily:
“Good comrades must not quarrel,” said he.
Gavroche laughed:
“We must forestall danger,” he said.
Gavroche turned to the pale young giant:
“Mark you, comrade,” said he--“if the girl rouse, thou must into the
room and--kill.”... He smiled evilly. “It is all we ask of thee.”
Suddenly he stepped close up to him:
“By thunder!” said he--“I think this fellow is too weak a fool for
men’s work. We had best leave him out.”
The huge young fellow met his regard unflinching, with pale set face:
“Where Gavroche goes to-night I go,” said he--“if he and I hang for it.
But I do no killing.”
There was a long silence between the two men.
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders; turned on his heels: “We need have no
fear, comrades; the Republic will slit his neck otherwise,” said he.
“Come.”
The widow Snacheur rose from her chair, looked stealthily about her,
lit a second candle-end, and went a-tiptoe to the door of the girl’s
room. She listened, cautiously turned the handle of the door to see
that the lock held, and returned to her table.
She changed her seat so that she could see, from where she sat, the
door into the maid’s room.
She brought out a bag of loose silver from a pocket in her petticoat,
poured the contents upon a piece of felt to prevent its making a noise,
and counting it into tens she made the money up into rolls with some
scraps of newspaper.
There was a strange look upon her withered wizened features in the
doing--it might once have been a smile, it was now something between
suspicion and greed and satisfaction. The gaunt fingers counted the
rolls.
Thou poor fool! what avails thee now, or has ever availed, or shall
ever avail to thy life’s enrichment, this avid culture of thy sordid
isolated self? Hast thou found life in gathering gold, or in thy
wilful cruelties to the weak, or in hate as a carpet to thy mean
wayfaring, or in the lip’s protruded contempt upon thee in thy walks
abroad? God! to spend thy nine and seventy years upon _this_ journey
and upon _this_ travail!
Hearest thou no stealthy fumblings at the locks of thy outer door?
Thy gold then hath not kept thee the alert hearing in thy ears, nor
won thee the willing service of the hearing of others! And that poor
half-famished slave-girl of thine, with her fifteen years crying out
for bread, she, whom thou didst sting with thy bitter coward tongue but
this morning--she sleeps in her chill room, heavy with the fatigue of
thy overtaxings put upon a frail ill-nourished body; she lies mute with
the numbing weariness of hunger--how shall _she_ serve thee with the
watch-dog ear of affection to guard thee from harm?
There is a stealthy hand at thy door, and the latchet turns slowly
within the wards of thy locks.
A messenger stands without, and his summons none may question--thou
must needs make thy further journeyings without thy dingy hoard,
without purse or scrip, by thy lank lean shivering self--alone.
Ay, at last thy ears warn!
For a moment the old woman turned, and gazed with eyes of terror at
the coming of sudden death--and her tongue went dry in her mouth--no
sound. At the next there fell the weighted sand-bag swung by Gavroche’s
skilled hand of villainy, aimed by his murderous eyes, and struck the
ancient skull, sending the old woman’s life jigging into the shabby
room and out into the void; and at the stroke the body, half-risen from
the chair, fell across the table amongst her moneys, sprawled ungainly
midst the coins before it further fell, and sideways lurched in a dead
huddle upon the floor.
To the door of the sleeping girl stepped Hiéne, and stood, tall,
slouching, pallid of countenance. And he so stood whilst they all
searched stealthily every nook and cranny of the room.
Gavroche rose from his stooping survey of the fallen woman, and glanced
at a little mirror he held in his hand. There was no damp of breath
upon it.
“That is the end of _her_ romance,” said he.
He laughed low. He was a man that loved his joke.
He signed to the others to bring their plunder; and as they came
empty-handed except for papers, he uttered a harsh dog’s laugh that
showed embarrassment.
Save for the silver that lay about, the rest was the scrip of the
widow’s investments! Of considerable value, but--useless--dangerous to
them.
“Curse it!” said Gavroche. “She had a banking account.”
There was a low whistle from the fellow who barred the entrance at the
outer door.
“Quick!” said Gavroche. “Pocket what there is of money, and we will
divide later.”
He turned to Hiéne, where he stood before the door of the sleeping girl:
“And you,” said he--“unlock that door, carefully.”
Hiéne scowled sullenly, standing pale in the candle’s guttering light;
and they saw that he held a revolver in his hand:
“Comrades,” said he--“I am the last to go--and this door remains
locked.”
Gavroche shrugged his shoulders:
“It does not matter overmuch,” he said.
Hiéne smiled grimly.
Gavroche moved towards the open door:
“Come, comrades,” he said airily, putting aside a scowl that had
threatened--“we must be going. That jabbering moralist over the water
must be nearing the end of his garrulous harangue. We had better all be
seen there.”
When they had all gone, Hiéne let himself out of the door into the
courtyard, and stealthily closed the gate into the street.
The door into the girl’s room remained locked....
And it was so found in the early morning when the police broke into the
place, led by the curious concierge, and roused the sleeping girl.
CHAPTER LXXXII
_Wherein Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre struts airily towards
the Goal of Freedom_
Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre climbed the stairs to his
rooms at midnight; and all that night he wrote.
When the grey of the dawn put out his lamp’s light, that wondrous
misspending energy of his had finished the essay that brought him such
an uproar of notoriety and made him for awhile again the pet of London
drawing-rooms.
It was a master-stroke.
It accounted æsthetically, the Nietzschian note, for his past infamies;
it gave the philosophic standpoint to the latest and shabbiest infamy
he was about to commit--for the first bound copy of his new book lay
upon the table, fresh from the publisher. He smiled as he thought of
the green eyes of Gabrielle Solignac reading this book, reclining in
her catlike grace amongst her little smiling Eastern gods.
It was scarce a couple of months since he had read a volume of
Nietzsche. It had set his brain on fire. It was a revelation--of his
own possibilities. Here suddenly was revelation that his instincts
had been masterly--that he had no need for shame. With his accustomed
industry, he had forthwith mastered the whole of Nietzsche’s published
work--our Quogge was a gluttonous reader.
Here was a philosophy that overthrew the whole of the accepted ethics
and morals of society--overturned the whole conception of conduct. It
made of Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre a splendid hero--whom
himself in his inner man even he had more than suspected to be a rather
scurvy fellow. His conceit and his egoism jumped with this gospel. He
foresaw that the vogue of this aristocratic anarchism must soon spread
into England--the decaying hereditary aristocracy would leap at any
straw, and here for place of straw was a glittering argosy laden with
thrones of gold and purple, and carrying a gaudy diadem for them all.
It had begun to thrill the youth of Germany and France. He decided to
forestall it in England.
His great chance had come.
There must be no moment’s delay.
That night he had heard a French workman spout it. A workman!
There was indeed no time to be lost.
His book would be in the hands of the reviewers to-day--it would be
publicly sold in a fortnight’s time. This new philosophy robbed its
publication of all baseness. It would read as if he had had the courage
of his outlook upon life.
He rubbed his cold hands together....
He brushed his untidy colourless hair off his forehead and read the
clean copy of his essay carefully through--altered a line or two--and
folded it with a covering letter to his friend Harry Pollis, the
egregious editor of a great London Review, begging urgent publication.
There was just time to catch the post. He arose, went out into the
early morning, and posted it. Myre’s feet never lagged in his duty to
his only god.
When he returned to his room he looked at himself in the great mirror
over the low mantel, rubbed his hands, and smiled.
These two things would make a sensation!
He stood and gazed at himself. He took a hand-mirror and looked at
himself from every point of view.
He wondered if a head like his could not be the front of one as great
as Shakespeare--he wondered whether he looked like a man who could top
the world.
It worried him.
He posed so as to see the back of his head and the side-face, to see
which of the great men of the past he might be most like.... He could
find no sign to guide his destiny. But his gloom was suddenly relieved.
His conceit saved him.
He smiled a large smile.
It came to him with a rush that he was wholly original.
He lit a cigarette, posed himself in his gorgeous dressing-gown before
the mirror again, and smirked upon a pleasant prospect.
He dreamed of exquisite sensations.
He saw himself sitting in the smartest drawing-rooms, holding himself
with delightful insolence, giving voice to anarchistic destruction
of all the moralities. Art for art’s sake would be nothing to this.
He had once thought of going over to Rome--but every mediocrity went
over to Rome nowadays; it had become positively banal--the extremity
of commonplace. The very suburbs did it! People were not even barred
for it. You went as to a dentist.... God! how he would frighten the
editors--and the women!
It was time, too, that he was done with France. Indeed, Mr. Quogge
Myre, who had so sworn by the French intellect and French art, who
had so flouted the vulgarity of the English nation of shopkeepers,
found that there were now so many crossing the Channel to Paris that
he realized they were discovering and exploiting the sources of his
originality.
He looked in the mirror. There was no slightest doubt about it, he was
becoming puffy, middle-aged, just a _leetle_ bourgeois! He wondered
if he had always looked rather a common fellow. Tush! he had been
surrendering to the bourgeois ideals--he had married!
Well, the last Clatter about him had run down. He must start another.
Yes, he must strike quickly in England--or they would be discovering
this Nietzsche for themselves.
Some days after Mr. Myre’s notorious book appeared, he walked into a
café frequented by literary men; and he saw that his coming produced a
sensation.
He went up to a table where Aubrey sat with Noll and Rupert Greppel
and Lord Montagu Askew and others; and putting his hand on Aubrey’s
shoulder he said airily:
“This book will give my lady her freedom.”
He flung the volume upon the table, and called for a bock of beer with
carefully rehearsed calm.
Noll took up the book, _She Whom I Once Loved_, and skimmed through the
recital, shamelessly and brutally detailed, of this conceited fellow’s
relations with women. They were of every class....
“Rather vivid!” said Noll, after Myre had yawed away an hour of time.
And he added drily: “Yes; you’ll get your divorce.”
“It’s rather daring, I flatter myself,” said Mr. Myre. “We lack an
English Casanova.”
Noll rose from his seat; flung down the volume:
“Faugh!” said he; and kicked it into the street, took up his cigarette
from the table, flicked the ash from it, and left the place.
Myre’s face was livid with anger.
The Honourable Rupert Greppel said:
“There’ll be blood spilt over this.”
Gaston Latour, who sat at a table near by, laughed immoderately.
The proceedings for divorce were begun in the French Courts that day.
The silent woman with the green eyes was swift when she decided.
She took her freedom.
The book had a considerable vogue.
CHAPTER LXXXIII
_Which Essays the High Epic Note_
The day on which Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre got his
freedom in the divorce-courts of France, he received a challenge from a
hot young blood called Solignac, first cousin to Gabrielle.
Gaston Latour entered the room, grimly solemn in the conventional
frock-coat and trim dress of the man of fashion, and holding a shining
silk hat in his hand. He was very careful of the silk hat--he had
borrowed it. It had the flattest brim he could find in Paris.
He was followed by another solemn youth. They marched in, clicked
their heels together, bowed, and presented the letter that held the
invitation to face death at daybreak. It was all done with a charm of
manner devoid of all offence, and a desire to be referred to two of Mr.
Myre’s “friends.”
Mr. Myre read the letter; and, as he read, his face became more like
the hue of badly-made paste.
He was a long time reading it, Gaston Latour’s sleepy eyes never
leaving him.
He burst into a harsh laugh, and flung the letter into the air:
“A challenge, eh? ... ha-ha! ho-ho-ho!... Tell your cousin, Monsieur
Latour, that the duel is relegated to the limbo of opera-bouffe.
Ho-ho-ho! We do not do these things in England.”
He prepared himself for a flight of oratory.
Gaston Latour nudged the other youth--they bowed solemnly and withdrew.
“Ho-ho! ha-ha-ha!” laughed Quogge Myre.
The following morning Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre’s name
was posted in every club in Paris, and struck from the list of those to
which he had belonged; so it came about that he had to live his day at
cafés.
And it was as he stood at a table, giving authoritative utterance with
loud yawing voice to a group of youths that sat about him, vowing that
he had determined to shake the dust of Paris from off his splay feet
and to start a great renaissance of the English drama, when a handsome
young woman, sister to Gaston Latour, entered the place, walked
straight up to Mr. Myre, and struck him a sounding buffet on the ear
that sent his hat flying from his head.
Quilliam O’Flaherty stooping down in confusion to search for the hat,
she kicked him violently behind.
There was a roar of laughter from the students seated round about, and
they tapped the handles of their knives upon the tables, singing:
“Opera-bouffe, bouffe, bouffe! Opera-bouffe, bouffe, bouffe!
Hey-hey-hey! bouffe-bouffe-bouffe!”
Then the girl flogged Quilliam with a horse-whip, thrice:
Once for France.
Once for womanhood.
And once because she liked it.
The whip whistled.
It was said that he had been seen to strike at her--but she parried the
blow with her left, and countered between his eyes with the butt-end of
the whip--which was loaded.
He fell.
It was homeric.
It was at this stage, so the scandal went, that he scrambled under a
table; but she lugged at his collar to get him out; and as he clung
to the leg of the table she gripped him by the moustache so that she
pulled off one side of it.
But she herself owned this to be as inartistic as it was unintentional,
stamping her foot with annoyance at the mischance. Indeed, she
apologized most handsomely; for, said she, pathetically, when she had
got it she did not know what to do with it.
It was an anticlimax.
She threw down the whip and said he might now go home.
He now went home.
There is little reason to doubt that the horsewhipping by Gaston
Latour’s sister hastened Mr. Myre’s desire to start the great
renaissance of the English drama.
As he stood before the mirror in his rooms at his hotel and shaved
off the remains of his drooping moustache by the candle’s light, and
soothed the aching bumps that were risen upon his face, he sniffed
loudly through a swollen nose--he had very tender places--and decided
to go to Rouen until the hair grew.
CHAPTER LXXXIV
_Which has to do with Blue Blood and a Jade-handled Cane_
The duel got upon the town.
Rupert Greppel, strutting with hidalgic air, was concerned in bringing
about several affairs. No one was hurt. There was much braying of asses.
The Lord Montagu Askew, dainty, foppish, in the mode, and the
Honourable Rupert Greppel, hidalgic, head in air, stood before a shop
window in the Rue de la Paix and gazed at their splendid reflections;
whilst past them moved on the pavement or whirled by in barouches
the great world of Paris--_hig-lif_ sunning its butterfly wings,
honey-questing, sipping at any dew that the gods left lying abroad.
Montagu Askew held his jade-handled cane mincingly, and he glowed with
a gentleman-like glow, for his dove-coloured little book of poems
tinted all the bookstalls.
More than one woman of high rank this morning had stopped her carriage
to congratulate him on the exquisite lyric wherein the vast firmament
at break of dawn was likened to the grey of a woman’s glove--indeed, it
became the vogue of the drawing-rooms--people sang it.
As a fact, Montagu Askew was acknowledged lord of chamber music.
Indeed, in his slender careful verse was no rude hint of the
full-blooded Rabelaisian love of life; it was innocent of the
suggestion of a large emotion; he played upon the accepted measures and
the well-authenticated rhyme; he startled with no surprises; he sounded
no new note--Montagu never forgot he was a gentleman. Not for him the
uncouthness to fling open loud-clanging gates to a new world. He was
pretty and serenely mannered before everything, disdainful of them that
skipped a foot to the hot jigging blood, or such as showed a strong
disdain; nor was he wanting in contempt for the natural emotions.
When he condescended to so low an act as to seek nature, he walked
through the well-groomed spaces of the world, well-trimmed parks at the
outside, where an elaborate etiquette had made the rules even for the
trees to grow in seemliness with a most gentlemanly existence. For him
were no disturbing peerings into human destiny--he raised no rough
alarms by strenuous aims and vigorous thinking. Pretty, dandified,
he--always. Sinning easily enough, but always like a gentleman. Never
a crudity. As a perfumed fan fluttered by jewelled slender fingers,
blowing cool fragrant airs that kiss the painted cheek of some
frail beauty, he uttered his lines--obscene often, but by the most
gentlemanly of innuendoes. The unmannerly thing was the only sin. The
display of a profound emotion was the depth of ill-breeding. So sang
he, tunefully always, guiltless of all rough accent of originality;
sang of peacocks and green carnations and blue roses, of butterflies
and pools and dragonflies and souls, of ivory and silver, and of
dawn and dusk and dew, and white shoulders sweet, beauties who moved
languidly with rustle of silk--so wafted he to you nothing more vibrant
than whisper of women and scent of perfumed chambers and flowers and
bowers and rose and amarynth and asphodel and daffodil, of moonlight
and music and kiss and gavotte and little tiny things--and always in
the most gentlemanly manner. He milked the unicorn. Always a would-be
suggestion of mysterious deep-hid symbolism that ended where it began,
and at most only the dark hint of well-bred tragedy.
He moved impatiently now, as impatiently as he might, complaining that
the shop-window into which he deigned to cast his reflection was tinted
with amethyst.
“Come, Greppel,” said he--“let us gaze at ourselves in another
window--this is an ageing colour.”
Then came the terrible tragedy of a fire at a charity bazaar; a most
patrician function with much upper clergy in it was smitten with sudden
and awful death. Montagu Askew was in the business. He was one of the
few that came out alive.
In the rush of the distraught ladies, princesses, duchesses, maids, to
the sole outlet of the seething hell, Montagu Askew got caught near the
door--frantic hands of terrified women clutched at him for help--he was
almost within reach of the free air--could see the sunlight a few paces
before him--a frightened girl clung to his arm in the awful crush, then
another--women’s skirts got under foot as they made for the door, and
they went down. He tried to shake himself clear of the two girls, he
was a little slender man.... The heat was hellish.... One of the girls
tripped on her skirt and fell, clinging to him. He beat her down with
the jade-handled cane--fought his way blindly through the rush of women
for the door--stood at last out in the sunlight.
Some coachmen were dashing into the fiery furnace, lifting up and
bringing out fainting women, whose muslin skirts were in flames.
But Monty Askew was frightened.
He smoothed his ruffled dress and went home.
Montagu Askew, entering a café with Rupert Greppel one evening, saluted
Noll Baddlesmere, where he stood amongst a group of students; and a
silence fell upon the place.
Noll nodded:
“That’s a handsome cane, Askew,” said he--“though they tell me the
women have a poor opinion of it.”
Askew’s little gloved hands trembled, and he turned white with
anger--as pale as Montagu Askew allowed himself to turn:
“It has belonged to my forefathers for seven generations,” he
said--“and every man of them backed his acts with his sword.”
Noll laughed; shrugged his shoulders:
“If your acts are hereditary, it is an excuse for you,” he said.
The following morning, Rupert Greppel and a French cousin called upon
Noll; and Rupert stiffly asked if he could refer him to two friends.
“No,” said Noll--Doome was with him--“no--I do not associate with men
who associate with Lord Montagu Askew.”
Rupert Greppel paused, dumbfounded:
“I do not think you understand,” he said. “Lord Montagu Askew
challenges you to fight him.”
“Tell Lord Montagu Askew from me,” said Noll, “that I only brawl with
men. Good-morning.”
The whisperings at the clubs are said to have hit Lord Montagu Askew
harder than a pistol-bullet; but Lord Montagu, from lack of experience,
is not an authority on being hit with pistol-bullets. He never takes
part in ungentlemanly encounters where people are hit. Indeed, he
maintains a wondrous silence, except that he challenged Noll; and the
jade-handled cane has joined the ancestors.
CHAPTER LXXXV
_Wherein a Man of the World commits the Indiscretion of putting his
Experiences into Writing_
“Dear Noll,” writes Horace Malahide about this time, “I have a son.
He speaks English as yet with a strong foreign accent--but lack of
experience may have more than something to do with it. If you come,
I’ll let you play with him.
I live in a whirl of tangled emotions in these days.
T’other evening I went home, to my father’s marble halls, to seek
the old gentleman on an affair of hot urgency. It was in the long
hours. I lost some temper--the butler being a sphinx of ducal
know-nothingness--so I rang up the housekeeper. Yes, she knew where a
telegram would find Sir Pompey if I would leave it with her.
I!
Leave it!
Gods! said I, am I utterly disinherit?
Forthwith the heir of this branch of the Malahides demanded the address.
It lay at St. John’s Wood!
I nodded ‘That will do’ to the twain, and dismissed them; and, they
being dismissed, I whistled long.
Naughty old gentleman!...
The next morning Pa did not return. Mid-day passed. Evening stole
on.... The dusk saw me descend at the doors of the address in St.
John’s Wood from mine hansom cab.
I must preach the decencies; thus I, strengthening the intention as I
rang.
‘Sir Pompey Malahide is here,’ said I sternly to the smart maid that
opened the door.
‘Yes, sir,’ said she.
‘I desire to see my father,’ said I, and marched boldly towards the
furious racket that filled the room near at hand--the paternal roar
distinctly discernible, bassoonlike as though he cried small coal.
I flung open the door--burst upon the riot----
On the floor lay the Byronic Bartholomew Doome with three children
rolling over him--three, no less!--another in his arms--Sir Pompey
Malahide, my father, on all fours, pretending to be a she-bear, his
coat-tails over his head, shaking a footstool in his teeth, and
growling like an ass in pain--and seated on the immaculate waistcoat of
the dark mysterious Bartholomew the most beautiful young woman I have
ever seen. The din infernal--and Pa the worst part of the din.
‘What does this mean, Pa?’ cried I.
They gathered themselves up, shamelessly--laughed--ye gods, twittingly,
at _me_! Wholly unabashed, Pa, shaking himself into comfort in his
clothes, slapped me upon the back:
‘Horace, my son----’
‘Don’t be familiar, Sir Pompey,’ said I. ‘You are speaking to the heir
to a baronetcy.’
The baronet laughed vulgarly:
‘Mrs. Bartholomew Doome,’ he said--‘allow me to introduce to you
Horace, my son--at least, my reputed son.’
Bows, chassées, and greetings.
‘Horace--the Misses Doome, Master Horace Doome, and Master Oliver
Doome----’
The old gentleman slapped me upon the back again with mighty hand that
near drove me down amongst the fire-irons.
He dug me in the ribs:
‘The rogue’s been married this seven years,’ cried he; ‘and now he’s
signed the deeds as partner in Malahide and Son, and you’re just in
the nick of time, the fool of a lawyer is upstairs--only--look here,
Horace, you must, like Doome, sign a bond not to touch the business
arrangements--you and he would wreck the counting-house in six
months....’
Doome took an early opportunity to draw me aside and to whisper to me
the grave disappointment it must be to all who respected him if they
should discover the real Don Juan, begged me not to expose him, and
pointed out the serious loss of prestige he must suffer in the eyes of
the British Public; so we sat down together on a sofa and pitied him
for his decencies.
Luddy, luddy! how the homely virtues will persist!
The idol of our youth, the dark, mysteriously wicked man--with feet of
honest clay and a clean simple heart after all! Even prolific, and----
Well, damn romance, say I....
Oh, and more!
Even the gods fall out--drift apart.
Aubrey and the O’Myre go different ways--Aubrey in pain that O’Myre
has now discovered that there is no great work of art without a moral
purpose--Aubrey holding that Aubrey himself is sufficient purpose. He,
Aubrey, avers that he has found himself--nothing matters after that.
He must back to Paris. There the women have secular lips and voices
of brocade and understand being loved. Tiens! He will in future give
his splendid talents to attack the Philistinic brutality of strength
and the barbarity of the over-rated glory in mere outdoor delight
that to-day holds England in poisonous embrace; in all the pride of
effeminacy he withdraws into the palace of his Egoism, where he is
lord--back to Paris--_there_ are mirrors, where he may reflect upon
himself, take himself up by the roots and dwell upon his own image!
I expect he will come back to us occasionally to see what he looks like.
The egregious O’Myre also hath descended on London town--stays,
however, but a little while----
Yet a wondrous thing of a man, the O’Myre--the most consistent surely
of all created things--always wrong. He and _The Times_. He must have
been suckled on half-truths, and nurtured on the Irish Bull; he now
browses on false conclusions. But with what an air! Nevertheless, he
has it all on the most philosophic basis--has for ever been blaming
something for his lack of greatness. It now appears the English drama
is dead. The O’Myre will breathe new life into it.
Meanwhile, he has laid it down, like a minor god with a throaty tenor
voice, that scenery destroys the illusion of the drama--therefore it
comes about to-day that if you would be in the vogue with the ladies
you must go in state not to the play, but to the dress rehearsal--the
bare theatre and the dinginess being alone at back, the low tone
and the cobwebs and the like giving mystery to the spoken word that
requires for enunciation but beautiful lips. God! how the ducks quack!
Thus mews he much monstrous wisdom, sitting like a pale emotional
maggot upon the apple of discord that is called the modern drama.”...
The rest of the letter is a matter of affection and goodwill. A man
is always ridiculous about his first-born--exaggerative, egotistical.
As though he had invented the business. Whereas, like heredity,
immortality, and the latest fashion, it is thrust upon us.
CHAPTER LXXXVI
_Wherein our Hero, and Another, go Home_
The sunlight that had painted the white face of Paris with a hundred
hues all day had given place to a gentle drizzle as the twilight fell;
and the steady downpour had driven Noll into a restaurant which he was
not in the habit of frequenting; it had kept him there in its bright
rooms until he knew every face and every trick of gesture of the people
who sat about him.
The night was well advanced when he sallied out into the light rain;
turning up his collar, he strode homewards.
He paid small heed to the rain; and as he turned out of the well-washed
street into the courtyard where he had his lodging, and climbed the
stairs to his room, he scarcely noticed that he was wet.
The rustle of women’s petticoats was in his ears, and when he walked
abroad in these days he was aglow with the sense of the warm regard
of women’s eyes, that glanced upon him from the dark shadows of
rakish hats; the walk and movement of women found a rhythmic echo in
his thinking. The warmth of the coming summer was in his blood. His
instincts were jigging to the dancing measure of the season.
As he flung off his wet clothes he was seized with a whim to go to the
tavern of _The Golden Sun_; and he decided to humour the whim.
He lit a candle and flipped through a book until it was close on
midnight. But he was restless--and he arose eagerly when it was time to
go....
As Noll, reaching the bottom step, fumbled at the door that led into
the tavern of _The Golden Sun_, a young woman in black came languidly
down the stairs, and he held the door open for her to pass in.
The light fell on the delicate features of Madelaine. She smiled with
pleasure, seeing him.
They entered and stood together--a song was being sung--and as the last
chords were struck, she slipped her hand within his arm; and he left
it there. She shared the cordial greeting that Noll received from the
faded poets and frequenters of the place. She was very beautiful--but
her face pathetically pale. Noll noticed a dizzy tendency to cling to
his arm, as though she feared to fall. He found a table, and made her
sit down beside him.
“Madelaine,” said he--“you look as if you wanted food.”
She sighed sadly:
“Ah, yes--for years,” she said.
He called for a drink and some biscuits for her; and whilst they were
being brought, he asked her:
“What became of you, Madelaine--after the old widow Snacheur was
killed?”
She sighed sadly:
“I went to work in a millinery shop.” She shrugged her slender
shoulders. “They starved me too,” she said--“just like the widow
Snacheur. So----”
She slipped her hand through his arm, laid her head against his
shoulder, and smiled:
“But do not let us think of these things--it is so warm here.”
The touch of the affectionate hands, the childlike caress of the girl,
the confidence and the clinging of her warm body to him, thrilled him.
She was in all the fresh beauty of her young womanhood; and the simple
black gown, threadbare and worn as it was, only enhanced the beauty of
her skin and pronounced the delicacy of her colour and the richness of
her splendid hair.
The girl increased the restlessness that had possessed the youth all
day. She brought to him the sweet whiteness and the subtle grace of
Betty--filled his senses with the atmosphere of the handsome girl who
had filled all his dreams from boyhood. It brought to him the most
importunate craving of man, the love of woman.
Noll sat brooding for awhile. Yet even in the vigorous lust of life
that held his young years, even as he sat there in the thrill of his
sweetest memories, he vaguely felt the gentle presence of these simple
faded artistic folk about him; and he realized how indelibly the word
Failure was written across them all. The coats were, if anything, more
faded; the shoes more worn; the eyes alone lit up with the wonted glow
of delight in art. A little praise was their rich barmecidal feast.
The greybeards, and the youths, and those between, they were all still
hoping to create the masterpiece--there was not, amongst them all,
energy enough to create more than the delicate measure of a gust of
chamber-music.
A burst of applause followed the recital of a poem.
Noll roused with a start:
“Come, Madelaine,” said he--“this heavy air is making you faint. Come
with me and we’ll have some supper.”
She gathered her skirts with wonted grace of gesture and took his arm;
and they made their way out of the room almost unnoticed.
As the doors closed on them, she turned in the dim ill-lit passage,
drew down his face to her between her two hands, and kissed him.
She clung to him:
“Thou must give me a bed too,” she whispered hoarsely; “I have no bed.”
She was trembling.
“You are tired, Madelaine,” he said.
She nodded:
“I have had no sleep for three nights.”
“What have you been doing?” he asked.
“I walked about the streets,” she answered simply.
“Come,” he said, “we must first sup.”
She gathered up her skirts, and slipped her hand through his arm. They
climbed up to the courtyard, and so into the street, and out into the
night.
Madelaine sat on the side of the bed and undressed.
It was a sadly simple undressing.
She was languid with sleep.
Noll went and looked out of the window, where Paris lay below him,
blinking her thousand eyes....
He roused and went to the bed.
The dark head on the pillow lay very still. The girl was fast asleep.
Noll went back to the window--it was the window from which Horace had
gazed down upon the world the night before Noll and Betty had come to
Paris.
And as Noll so stood, his brows hard knit upon the problems of his
life, the night slowly passed.
The rustle of a woman’s skirt had been in his ears all day--in his
blood. This girl had brought back to him, of a sudden, the fragrance of
his marriage.
And this beautiful winsome girl--what was to be the end?
The very question sobered him.
Suddenly it was as though he had left the din of the noisy thoroughfare
of life and had entered the majestic silence of a mighty cathedral;
and from the great mysterious deeps a whisper came to his ears, each
syllable roundly phrased, clear, unhesitating, a chapter of this
strange book of life that he had so lately read--the book that had
fired his blood and aroused his energy. The breath of these pages
seemed to give him decision and free air, where before he had been
drifting aimlessly, going he knew not whither, caring not overmuch.
This book had braced him--it was a call to battle. He had had enough of
beds of roses and daffodils and idyllic trances. The phrasing of _The
Masterfolk_ came to him now:
“Nature has ordered that certain things shall be; and to him who
disobeys her ordering she is cruelly merciless. She has decreed that
he shall be most dominant, shall breed the fittest race, shall know
the fullest life, shall achieve the highest destiny, who abides
by the woman he loves. And him who is unclean she flings upon the
dunghill--him and his seed for ever. Of the love of man for woman,
Nature has spoken with no uncertain voice; and Nature’s judgment is
final. He that fears to love a woman sets himself against the supreme
law of life; he ends in unnatural vice; he is against the design of
life; celibacy Nature will none of--for celibacy stultifies life and
ends the race. Promiscuous love she condemns utterly and punishes
heavily with loathsome disease and with foul decay; the races of
promiscuous love are become of the scum of the earth, and are dying
out. Against the love of many women also, once and for all, she
has spoken. The peoples of many wives Nature is sweeping into the
waste corners of the world. Nature is her own jury--Nature alone her
own judge. She hath not said the Masterfolk cannot break from her
ordering, but that they shall not. On every breach of her vigorous laws
Nature waits with weaponed hand. At the elbow of every vice stands
foul-breathed disease.
There is no sin in the love of man and woman. The woman has committed
no sin in loving--she has but accepted the overwhelming urging of life.
It is her chiefest glory. Man has committed no sin in loving; his life
has ordered it; and the Masterfolk obey life. It is his chiefest glory.
Who so glum a dullard but smiles to see lovers meeting! But he sins
foully who is guilty of the repudiation--foully against the woman,
criminally against his race, blasphemously against his godhood, and
damnably against his manhood. Such are not of the Masterfolk.
They of the inferior manhood, lacking in the force of character
necessary to the full acceptance of the duties of the Masterfolk in
love, have not the virile force to abide by a woman of the Masterfolk;
and these come out when the lamps are lit and there are shadows in the
land, and skulk about the by-lanes, and commit mean adulteries with
frail women, and have the habit of repudiating debt. Such cannot breed
the Masterfolk. They shall not. For these cower from the strengthening
risks that dog a strenuous life; they would have the delight of
marriage without the courage....”
Noll opened the window.
There came from the street below the hoarse cry of a prostitute.
He went into the room, lit a candle, and sat down at his desk.
Everything in the place whispered of Betty this night.
He wrote a letter:
“DEAR MADELAINE,
I am called home.
I leave my rooms and all in them to your care, knowing that they will
be in good hands. I leave you also all the money I can spare, to keep
you in decency and comfort until I return.
I shall send, early in the day, for the large leather bag which you
will find labelled and ready by the door.
NOLL.”
And when he had sealed this letter he wrote another:
“DEAR BABETTE,
I hear that you arrived in Paris with Horace yesterday. By the time
you get this letter I shall have left my house in the clouds. Last
night I found Madelaine at _The Golden Sun_. She was without home,
without means, except the sweating pay of mean industries on which
no honest woman can live; she was without a bed. But her blood is
dancing with life--not with a desire to cower in sweating-dens.
She was drifting. I gave her all these things that I might, last
night--and she is now asleep here.
Come to her as soon as you get this, and let her feel that she is not
alone. She will babble all her news to you--it will be better for her
than babbling it to me.
Tell Horace not to go back to the haunts of his youth. The wine is
not nearly so good as we thought it. The illusion is the sweet thing.
Don’t break the butterfly.
Tell him also that both of you have much of my heart.
Yours,
NOLL.
P.S.--I am tired of myself. I am off to find Betty.”
Noll sealed the letter and wrote a third--to the concierge:
“MADAME,
I am called away to England. Mademoiselle Madelaine Le Trouvé has
been good enough to take charge of the rooms until madame and
myself return. Pray give the enclosed to your little ones ‘from the
Englishman who knows how to laugh.’
Agréez, etc.,
OLIVER BADDLESMERE.”
He stole to where Madelaine slept, and on the chair by her bed he put
her letter and some banknotes.
He collected clothes from about the room, packed them into his large
leather kit-bag, and carried it to where the candle gave light. From
the walls he took down the portraits of Betty and one or two trinkets,
and very carefully wrapped them up. They too went into the bag.
He was near singing more than once. The place was astir with the sound
of Betty’s skirts, the echo of her gaiety, the sound of her light
footstep. The air was sweet with the breath of her uncomplaining
good-nature.
He shut up the bag, tied a label upon it, put on his cloak and hat,
blew out the candle, and softly let himself out of the room.
In the darkness Noll stood upon the bridge at the end of the Boule
Miche, the pleasant highway of youth. But he now knew no indecisions.
He realized that his mere intellect had led him into the veriest
pedantries--had nearly led him into irretrievable blunders. He saw that
man’s highest was rooted in the body, that heaven was no fantastic
dream, but here and now for the winning on this healthy brown earth.
He had been letting it slip by him, whilst he dreamed of pasteboard
nothingnesses.
He realized that the emotion felt was nearer to the centre of life than
all thought. He cast from him the devil of mere intellect, and it went
out of him demurely into the darkness, like some poor thin-souled nun,
who crushes down into barrenness the splendid emotions of the life
within her which are her very godhood, in fantastic hope to win an
eternity of vague bliss, she who by the very act shows her inability
to enjoy bliss--for, heaven and hell and all the eternities shall
yield her no such bliss as the dear human loves may do--the æons of
immortality shall never bring her the delight that she might know in an
hour of a lover’s embrace or the dear touch of a nestling child at her
lean breasts.
As the awakened youth stood there, the black night passed over the edge
of the populous city, and its smoky shadow slowly followed it. The
lights of the lamps paled in the dawn; the stars went out; and out of
the daffodil east the day came up--and there was light in the world.
Before the day was well begun, Noll went home.
* * * * *
In the still grey dawn, in dripping drizzle, Gavroche the anarchist
slouched forth from prison-cell to his harsh doom.
He was dejected.
He missed the band, the public eye, the shouts of the comrades.
What, Gavroche! this is thy dramatic moment--thou hast the stage all to
thy sole swaggering self--and though thou roused at daybreak from thy
broodings to lilt a braggart song with all thy best intent to play the
reckless swashbuckler, the florid eager pressman can only report that
thou didst sing “somewhat palsily.”
Tush, man! Is it thus thou goest to thy end? Hath thy desire to be
Ruthless Overman brought only this about--that thou art to become no
better than manure? Where is now thy dream of Ruthless Overman? Nay,
what avails at all now thy Overmanhood, Gavroche? does not thy neck
feel rather with unpleasant shiver of discomfort the overlordship
of the Commonweal? The aristocrat despised it yesterday, and thou
to-day. Hast thou, even thus late, a glimmering that thy vaunted
Ruthless Brutality is to be snipped by the might of this Commonweal,
thy unspeakable windpipe slit at a stroke of the ordered shear that
falls on the bidding of that overwhelming force which is the public
good--the power of that sneered-at race that is to thy silly little
individual hand’s strength as the might of the sea to the spite of some
flab stinging medusa!
Yet, if the insignificance of thy little petty self irk thy conceit
at this moment, what of the scented, gloved, and dandified gentlemen
who write the anarchic words that have led thy conceit to seek some
shabby fame in flinging a bomb amongst innocent people! What of them
whose lyric pens have pointed the way to the Uselessness of the old
and sick and far-too-many and superfluous ones! What of them that go
scot-free--whose philosophies led thee to kill the old miser-woman and
to slay the drunken carter to thine own Egoism’s enrichment? Tsh! thou
wert but a tool after all, thou with all thy strange gabble of Ruthless
Overman, putting to the touch of practice what the gloved gentlemen
were content to prate of--Might being Right and the rest.
Well, thou goest to thy dunghill alone--they to their social triumphs.
And, when all’s said, the aristocratic ideal has brought rich harvests
as well as the shearing of necks to its idolaters--and they have had
their emotional moments in intervals of starving the race and filching
from the poor and from the widow and the fatherless.
Nay, doth not Europe, bereft of protestations, bow, hat in hand, to
the Almanach de Gotha? And the fine gentry therein, weak-knee’d and
inbred and ridiculous, do they not claim divine rights and special
places reserved in church and the tribute of the Formalities all set
and square to their comical little greatnesses? And multitude of
lackeys!... Gods! are they not even Envied!
Verily, Gavroche, thou hast been lacking in the diplomacies. It is that
which has been thy chief offence against thyself. These others bray as
loudly--but the accent is more tuneful.
So, the same dawn, the self-same lamp of day, sees us all going each on
our so different way.
OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF LIFE
CHAPTER LXXXVII
_Which has to do with the Binding of Books in Half-calf and the
Whimsies of Calf Love_
When Noll had left his baggage in a quiet hotel by the Strand, and
had refreshed his body with much splashing of himself in water and a
change of clothes, he sallied out into the streets of London in a vague
wonder and surprise as to how to begin the search for Betty, yet firmly
determined to start straightway in his quest--the Baddlesmere jaw set
firm.
The summer afternoon was closing in, and the Strand was gay with
people cheerily making their way homewards from work or amusement. But
homewards Noll did not take his steps; he felt a certain sense of shame
about going to his own people without Betty at his side--and this, too,
not on his own account, but that it seemed disloyal to Betty and likely
to make her future entrance into the family circle an embarrassment to
her--so sudden was the suddenness with which he had stepped into the
realm of his manhood!
The young fellow had been too restless to stay in the dingy mute rooms
of the hotel; he could think it out better in the open--striding to his
thinking. It was in the blood--he smiled at the restless walk of Lord
Wyntwarde up and down that library, of the strange trick that came out
in his mother at times....
Ah, London, thou queen of cities, that filchest for ever the hearts of
them that dare to love thee! Radiant in thy sunshine, fantastic in thy
murk, it is when thou puttest on the habit of thy lilac twilight that
thou showest all thy majesty--thy tiring maids, the handsomest women
of the world, helping thee to thy wondrous mantle of many hues--pale
whitenesses and opal greys, beribboned with purple and ultramarine and
the sooty tinge of dusky shadows, adorned with diamonds of a hundred
flames and wrought through and through with gold and silvery strands,
and thus and so, with smoky art, spinning thyself a mystic robe that it
is full fit only the Queen of all cities shall wear.
And what a splendid stage, thy realm, to strut it in! Thy large drama
knows no curtain, thy magnificence no boundary but man’s narrow sight.
Thy whisper and the song of thee, and thy strange melodies, no strings
of violins nor the resounding hollows of deep orchestral ’cellos
can yield. From the music of thy ways, where goes thy multitudinous
traffic with roll of many wheels, and lurches the gaudy omnibus with
reeking horses twain, and lumbers the thundering dray, and winds in
and out the teeming welter the quick black hansom seeking the hackney
fare, with jigging of horse-bells that sound a catchy measure to the
shuffle of many feet, from out thy swarming hive there comes the breath
of vigorous life and thinkingness and the atmosphere of quick wits
and alert wills that have the habit of decisive action and of dogged
enthusiasms.
And the faces that pass, with lingering glance out of the dusk, the
pale sweet faces of thy beautiful women and the handsome figures of a
vigorous race, how much larger vastnesses are in the communion of these
eyes than in wide empty spaces of unthinking continents!
The mystic dusk turns thy many habitations to a thousand shadowy
palaces, thy very vulgarities to dulcet musicalities. What comedies are
in the making in thy wide hospitable lap to-night! what tragedies! what
heroic strivings! what bemeaning indecencies! what crimes!
Thy very mud holds something of dark mysterious lustre--being that
which is trod out of thy pageant and thy history.
He only loves thee best who, being divorced from thee, comes to
thee again out of the years. He flips thy mantle with no cockney
familiarity, but hears in the hollows of his reverent ears the æolian
whisperings of thy large significance....
The sound of footsteps ceased to rouse the echoes in the empty street,
as Noll came to a halt before Netherby Gomme’s doorway. He hesitated
for a moment; ran up the steps; and rang the bell.
The smoky twilight that held the place was passing into sooty darkness,
turning the staid street of lodging-houses into a way of fairy
habitations, the lemon flames of gas-lamps showing a sweeping curve
of light down its long length to the far rumble of the city’s distant
traffic.
A key coughed in its wards as it shot back the bolts of the lock; and
the door yawned open.
Noll turned at the sound of its unlatching.
The mother of Netherby Gomme stood in the dark hollow of the doorway;
and a grim triumph lurked in her eyes.
Noll saluted her, hat in hand; and she returned his greeting with a
grave smile of surprise.
“Is Netherby at home, Mrs. Gomme?” he asked.
The grim triumph slipped back to her eyes, and came lurking into the
corners of the old mouth again:
“He came home from his honeymoon to-day, Noll,” she said--“will you go
up and see him?”
Noll walked into the house, and the door was shut behind him with
a triumphant slam. He followed the grim old lady into the little
sitting-room, and as he went the memory of the queenly figure of the
little child Betty as she walked into the dingy room and kissed the
jealousy out of this old woman’s heart, came back to him like the
fragrance of her sweetness, so that for a while he could not speak what
he would have said.
“It was only the other day,” she said, “that you were boys together....
To me it is only yesterday that he was a--little one--in my--arms.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “But it is all gone.... This passing of
youth is as strange as death....” And she added after awhile: “I think
he--was glad--to come back.”
Something of the light of triumph came stealing back to the old
tear-stained face.
“And Julia?” he asked.
“I’ve sent her out to get tickets for the theatre,” she said drily.
“They will want amusing badly to-night--and the tuning of the fiddles
would always rouse my Netherby.... But you’d better go up and see him,
Noll--you used to know the way.”
Noll made a pause to take breath at the top of the stairs (how he and
Betty had raced up those steps!). He pushed open the attic door.
In the midst of the smudgy dusk that filled the room, his head in his
hands, elbows on knees, sat the dim figure of Netherby Gomme, sobbing
pitifully.
Noll shut the door softly, and went up to the bowed man:
“Good God, Netherby!” said he--“what’s this?”
He gripped his hand upon the other’s shoulder, affectionately.
Gomme signed him to a seat:
“Sit down, Noll--I’ll be all right in a minute.” He blew his nose.
“No--better still, light the gas. I must stop. Tears will not bring
back one’s dead, nor grief annul the things that are done. Light up! A
man can only cry comfortably in the dark.”
Noll struck a light, turned on the tap of the wrought-iron gas-jet; and
the gas leaped into flame.
The old attic was gone.
In its place was a picturesque medieval room of quaint nooks and
demure corners, with stiff wooden settles of curving line against the
wall, and low bookshelves round the rest of the walls; and above, on a
deep coloured frieze under the low ceiling, was a long space of rigid
trees from the land of Morris, green trees that yielded vasty purple
and golden fruits on close-bunched foliage--and in the blue intervals
between the stilted trees sailed white-sailed many-coloured galleons
and purple triremes--and on the wall beneath the frieze and above
the long curves of the low bookshelves was a yellow space splashed
with huge orange-coloured dogs, with emerald eyes and scarlet mouths,
that leaped along on hind legs to the chasing of each other and an
occasional orange stag amidst mighty flowering plants that seemed
to whirl in autumn tints with cunning running lines half-flower,
half-leaf. And here and there was a knight in armour, and a hawk upon
his wrist, and clothes upon his horse, and about him was always written
_Soe sirre Gallahydde gotte hyme pryckynge to hys pilgrymmynges_; and
when the knight was faded blue the writing was russet green; but when
the knight was russet green the writing about him was faded blue. And
here and there was a lady with hair in plait, and she wove at a loom,
and sang with ruddy lips, and the writing about her was _Chaunted the
Queene ande weaved hyre tale righte Fyttyngelye_; and when the queen
was orange yellow the writing was white, and when the queen was white
the writing was orange yellow. The old bookshelves, with their gay
untidiness of many-coloured books, were gone; and in their place in
more severe order on dark oaken bookshelves of suave design were ranked
books all bound exactly alike in uniform yellow half-calf bindings. The
floor was rich-stained and polished, and in the middle of it lay a rug
of the yellow of saffron.
The old attic was now so rich of hue and yet so stiffly chaste that
Noll almost rubbed his eyes to see if he were awake.
It was indeed a handsome room; and yet----
Some faint whisper of the how and the why these things had chanced
flashed through Noll’s consciousness. Here Julia had put the savings of
her hard-won earnings. A tidy mind frets at the ordered disorder of the
workshop. She was of a precise habit that has a ruthless distaste for
chips. She had secretly consulted the old lady, who had grimly advised
her to “let the man’s room be”; but he who takes to the council of war
a decided intention is irked by opposition, and smiles away the wisdom
of older heads as the mere caution of senility. And indeed there was
something of the poetic intention behind her gentle obstinacy, as there
was behind everything she did; for (and she knew it in her secret heart
to be not wholly without a little of such jealous venom as her gentle
blood could hold) she had been passionately set upon bringing into this
man’s life a fresh influence, a fragrance that she was sure he had
not known--she was aglow with the glamour of the love-mood to be the
all-in-all in the atmosphere of her lover’s day. And as the rich crave
ever to be more rich, so she, queening it in her little parish, was
blind to the simple fact that all the subtle and gracious tenderness of
her gentle womanhood had won her a larger empire over her lover than
any she could hope to win by petty endeavour. The old lady, her wise
old eyes seeing that the other had come to consult the oracle with the
answer rather than the question, had nodded her willingness, after the
first demur, to comply with the younger woman’s whim. And the nod of
surrender once given, she had addressed herself, during their absence
on the honeymoon, to carrying out the young wife’s instructions to the
uttermost detail, even employing no small sum out of her own small
income to the perfecting of it.
And, be it remembered, for her the doing had been no light ordering--it
was a flagellation of her own nakedness with cruel whips; for, as each
change obliterated a footprint of the past, the atmosphere in which the
boy and man had wrought their career swiftly vanished--the very hint of
an early struggle had departed from the place.
Noll felt how the room must have struck Netherby in the face as he
leaped up the stair and flung open the door to be welcomed to its
old genial comradeship after his journey and absence from his beloved
things.
Noll’s eyes came back from his thoughts to rest on the bent shoulders
of the disconsolate man; and Netherby realized that the other had
digested the situation.
He sighed sadly, his head in his hands:
“Poor Julia!” he said--“ she must never know. She has done this during
our absence--as a surprise. And,” he added grimly: “it was!”
Noll smiled:
“But, Netherby, my dear old boy; you must not fret. You are famous,
man----”
“Oh yes--quite. A duchess has asked me to dinner--without my wife.”
Noll put out the light:
“Let us sit in the dusk for awhile, Netherby, as we have sat many a day
and settled the affairs of the state. We have laughed at care here;
and kicked the world about like a football, and striven to dig up the
roots of the Universe--the Why and the Wherefore and the Whence and the
Whither.”
Netherby sighed:
“Ah, Noll, the old room is gone. I have to begin all over again. These
stiff prude seats compel me to order--tell me harshly that I must not
be dreaming overmuch, nor thinking--which is next door to dreaming--but
nag me to be up and doing, boiling pots or eggs or hitting something
or pushing at things. I don’t seem to fit in anywhere. The medieval
rigours warn me to be done with visions and the reading of the visions
of others; and their hard oaken seats rise up and assault me where I
would sit upon them.... But that is nothing. They have left me not even
my books. I am bewildered--bewildered--wholly bewildered.”
He sighed sadly, and went on:
“Ah, Noll, he only knows the whole delight of having possessed a
child who has lost it.... Books are one’s most intimate friends--they
never change--never play us a shabby trick. How they eat into one’s
friendship, each dressed in his individual habit! the very ugliness
of some a reason for seeking to win their confidence; perhaps a
reason for an easy familiarity--we dog-ear them the more--mark them
the more--love them the more. Put them in handsome ranks uniform, and
their individuality is gone--like sisters that are primly arrayed to
the same pattern to simper through a tedious garden-party. We begin to
find faults where was once only affection; and their outward seeming
being now alike, like critics we seek to taste not the delights
within, but carp because this has not Shakespeare’s wit nor that the
thunders and the music of Carlyle. These that were once our closest,
most garrulous, most intimate friends have gone to join the silent
ranks of library editions that no one reads. These stiff and formal
backs, these ornamental edges, these dandified and dyed airs, repel me
from my ancient friendships. The intimacy of years is broken--frozen.
They open no longer eagerly at the old accustomed places, stained
with frequent thumbings, where my own hand cut the dear intimate
leaves--they are deckle-edged and bedamned and horrible which were wont
to be delightfully impertinent. I cannot find my way in the old garden
that I loved--the old dog-ears are smoothed out, gone--my pencillings
erased, their whisperings mute, they nudge my elbow no more. These, my
one-time boon companions snub me; give me but the flabby handshake of
necessity. They open their houses to me mincingly, and yawn affected
utterance. They no longer tickle me in the ribs, touching me on the
sleeve, nor beckon; they do not chuckle familiarly--nor brood with
me upon the roll and march of the great significancies. Their new
clothes are insistent--upon them as upon me. They smell of the oil of
respectability like gagged Sunday-school children. We know each other
no longer--except with formal bow and elaborate etiquette--as when a
royal person enters the room of entertainment and puts good-fellowship
to the rout.”
He made a pause, and, passing his gaunt hand over his brow, he added
sadly:
“I have come home to find myself in a strange land.... Shining-faced
respectability has usurped my chair.... My kingdom has slipped from
me.... The flowers in my garden are dead.”
Noll patted him on the back:
“Tut, tut, man--you have come into a new kingdom.”
He heard Julia’s voice upon the stair; and he saw that the other had
heard it, for he stood up and forced a smile upon his long sad face.
Noll went close to him hurriedly:
“One word, Netherby--quick, before she comes--do you know where Betty
is?” he asked hoarsely.
Netherby smiled a sad smile:
“Ah, Noll, that _you_ should have to ask _me_ that!”
Noll passed Julia at the stair-head and left them together.
As he stepped across the hall he hesitated, turned, and went into the
old lady’s room. She was sitting in the window, looking out; and she
turned at his footfall.
Noll bent down and kissed the old face; and he saw that the harsh light
had gone out of her eyes:
“Won’t you be a little lonely here to-night?” Noll asked her.
“No,” she said--“she has taken seats for all three of us.”
CHAPTER LXXXVIII
_Wherein it is suspected that, on Occasion, the Trumpet of Fame is not
Wholly Immaculate of the Hiccup_
Pangbutt’s handsome studio had been cleared for a reception; and the
deliberate old butler, throwing open the great folding-doors, walked
stiffly into the room and glanced an orderly eye round the brilliantly
lighted details in a last complacent survey before the near arrival of
the guests.
He started at a loud peal of the door-bell, and pulled out his watch:
“I hope they are arriving early enough!” said he. “It comes of arsking
these here artists to the house.... They’re always hungry and they’re
always noisy, and they’re always thirsty. Even if I suffered from these
here afflictions I’d have the manners not to show it.” He shrugged his
shoulders. “I call it letting ourselves down. They don’t even know how
to put on their clothes like Christians.”
He straddled stiffly out of the room, grumbling and mumbling.
“Leastwise not like Christians of the Established Church,” he
growled....
He returned after awhile through the great hollow of the handsome
doorway, ushering in four guests.
When they had entered, he said stiffly:
“Mr. Pangbutt, I fear, will not be down for several minutes, gentlemen;
he has only just come in to dress.”
He drew out his watch from his pocket, and glanced at it aggressively.
Robbins laughed gently, and winked to the others:
“We _are_ a trifle early, Dukes, I am afraid,” said he, going up to the
dignified old man--“but if Mr. Rippley _will_ insist on sitting between
the reins on the top of the hansom, the cabby drives hard to escape the
inquisitive attention of the police--a body of men, Dukes, that live
feverishly anxious to catch something and are bored with the greyness
of the popular virtue.”
He tapped the old man on the shirt-front.
The butler bowed stiffly, and withdrew.
Fluffy Reubens strode airily into the middle of the room and surveyed
it:
“I say,” said he--“portrait painting seems to pay, eh?”
Lovegood coughed:
“H’m--n’yes,” he grunted; and added tragically: “When you can paint
portraits.”
“Get out!” said Fluffy, and flung himself into an easy-chair.
Rippley strolled round the room and tested the electric lights; his
hands itching to be at any devilment:
“Oho!” said he--“so the curtain is to go up to-night and discover the
real Anthony Bickersteth--the man of mystery--the writer of _the_
book!... I suppose it ain’t Pangbutt himself!”
Aubrey at the mantelpiece, gazing at himself in the mirror, said simply:
“Bosh!”
“Rather a dramatic situation when you come to think of it, eh?” said
Fluffy Reubens, lolling his full length in the easy-chair.
Rippley, his hands in his trousers pockets, considered the situation
with reflective eye fixed on the carpet:
“And a rippin’ dramatic emotion, eh! To feel one’s self being wrangled
about from one end of the country to the other----”
Aubrey turned languidly from the mirror:
“Ah!” said he, “and then to listen to it all, robed in the delightful
invisible cloak of pseudonymity!”
Rippley laughed drily:
“No, no, Aubrey, old man--that wouldn’t have suited you at all. You
wouldn’t have lasted at it for a fortnight.”
Lovegood smiled:
“We need not get into the quarrelsome stage about it yet,” he said in
his big deep voice: “We shall be tearing him to pieces in magazine
articles to-morrow and flinging him to the dogs of the lower journalism
to snarl at before the year is out.... The failures are always
suspicious of popularity.”
Aubrey turned to the mirror again, and said “Bosh!”
Fluffy Reubens winked at the others:
“I don’t see that this chap Anthony Bickersteth’s work is a snap better
than Caroline Baddlesmere’s; and he’s prigged a lot of her ideas----”
Aubrey turned round to the room, took up a picturesque literary
attitude, elbow on mantel, his cheek leaning on his long fingers,
legs crossed, essaying to realize the portraits of the thirties, and,
rousing from his adoration of himself, he said petulantly:
“My dear fluffsome Robbins, I have repeatedly told you that Caroline
Baddlesmere lacks breadth of view and a man’s humour--to say nothing of
that certain something of subtle atmosphere that is called genius....
You really ought not to give me the trouble of reiterating these simple
truths.... You compel me to feel as blatantly insistent as a bookmaker
on a race-course----”
He was interrupted by the entrance of the old butler, ushering in
Bartholomew Doome and Andrew Blotte--Andrew in very much crushed and
wrinkled evening dress, and looking unutterably shabby, Doome well
groomed.
Bartholomew Doome laughed:
“Yes,” said he, “yes, yes--I heard what Aubrey was saying; but Aubrey
is a poet, not a critic.”
Lovegood laughed a funny deep nasal laugh.
But Rippley had turned to the strange figure of Andrew Blotte. He smote
him on the shoulder with strong genial hand:
“Cheer up, Andrew,” he cried.
Blotte smiled wearily; he roused from his brooding; he was very pale:
“Where’s the bar?” he asked gloomily.
Rippley laughed:
“Vanity Fair has not opened her drinking-saloons yet,” he said. “We’re
all before our welcome.”
Blotte sighed, and said absently:
“I have come to tell Pangbutt I cannot sup with him to-night.” He
smiled a pale sad smile; and, rousing, added moodily: “I came into my
Irish estates last night--took over the keys of my castle in Spain....
Last night I slept under the blue quilt, and filled my belly with the
north wind. And,” he added hoarsely, “to-night I sup with the gods.”
Rippley shook the moody man by the shoulders, and gripping them in his
big kind hands, he said:
“Shut up, Blotte; you’ve got to sup with _us_ to-night--gods are a
large order, even Aubrey is not yet translated.”
Blotte roused; laughed; strode into the middle of the great room. He
turned gloomily:
“No--I go to a mighty banquet, old friend. I go to sup with the gods
to-night.”
“Now, now,” said Fluffy Reubens, sprawling in two chairs. “Chuck it,
Blotte--you make me feel as cold as a dead undertaker.... Lor!” he
yawned, “this is precious slow.” He yawned again: “Paul Pangbutt’s a
confounded long time, ain’t he? Scenting his beard, I suspect!”
Andrew Blotte roused from his mood, and he began to pace up and down
the room as before: “No more Italian waiters for me--with cursèd oily
locks,” he cried--“no more grease-spots on dingy grey tablecloths that
hide their offences under smiling napkins!... To-night I shall be
waited upon by the gods.... Never again the boiled potato; never again
the homely bun, damn them!... This is the night of life--a night for
music and gaiety and minstrelsy.... Hunger shall cease, and pain----”
Rippley went up to him and took him by the shoulder, kindly:
“Stop it, Blotte. Aren’t you well, old man?”
Blotte laughed:
“Well?... Psha! I am like a boy. The new genius arrives to-night. And I
go off--to sup with the gods.... The world has forgotten Andrew Blotte.”
Rippley turned, a twinkle in his eye, to the others:
“I say, boys,” said he--“as it’s to be a unique night, and Blotte
about to be translated, and may be in the papers in the morning----”
Blotte laughed grimly, where he paced:
“Oh, yes,” he growled--“I shall be in the papers to-morrow. Have no
fear of it.”
Rippley slapped him on the shoulder:
“Then,” said he, “we ought to give Pangbutt’s house an air. There
is a lack of the grand manner here. One man-servant is ridiculously
inadequate. At least three of us ought to assist to wait on the guests.
Doome and Fluffy and I and--and you, Blotte--would make a ripping lot
of waiters, and it wouldn’t be half so slow as talking art and rot
to people who don’t know.... Genius shall serve the mob. This night
must never be forgotten. By Macready, yes--Pangbutt used to play at
play-acting! But where are his properties?”
Blotte was striding the room; he laughed:
“Ay, ay--the gala-night of life should be gay and joyous,” cried
he--“all the candles lit, as for a bridal.” He came to a halt, scowled
at the dark hollow of the great doorway, and strode thither.
The old butler was lurking suspiciously outside.
Blotte grabbed him by his coat lapel, and drew him into the light:
“Hireling fellow,” said he, “bring more lights. This place is like a
damned omnibus.”
The old butler held out an expostulant palm in dignified remonstrance:
“Gentlemen, gentlemen--the guests will be arriving in a few minutes----”
Rippley went up to him, and gripping his fingers in the old servant’s
waistcoat, pulled him into the room.
“Don’t talk like an unfrocked bishop, Dukes--it’s most irreligious,”
said he. “Look here”--he slapped the old man’s chest jocosely--“your
master and the amateur aristocracy used to have private theatricals
here. Where are his wigs and make-up things? Where does he keep them?
Quick!”
The old butler promptly began to retire backwards upon a handsome
cabinet:
“Gentlemen, gentlemen; surely I have no need to remind you that Mr.
Pangbutt’s wigs are his private property,” said the shocked, anxious
old man. “I haven’t Mr. Pangbutt’s permission----”
Rippley followed him up, grimly smiling:
“Get out, you old panjandrum!” said he. “You’ve shown the hiding-place,
you naughty old deceiver. Go away!”
He pushed the expostulating old man from the cabinet, and, throwing
open the drawers, proceeded to ransack them.
“Hullo!” he cried--“splendid!”
He struck a match:
“Spirit lamp--everything. Ginger! Here’s a glorious short beard affair
that goes down the middle of the chin and all along the throat.”
He put it on.
“By Clarkson, makes me look like a ducal butler--I’ll be butler.”
He flung off his coat, and his deft fingers began to fix the disguise
on his chin.
The butler touched him upon his shirt-sleeve in dignified despair:
“Gentlemen,” said he--“this is not decent. I repeat--it is not honest.”
“Go hon!” said Rippley, punching the old man in the ribs with his
elbow, and working away at the fixing of his throat-beard. “Look here,
Fluffy,” he called hurriedly--“you and Doome _must_ run this pompous
old dolt downstairs and shoot him into the cellar--and lock him in.
Quick! or the people will be arriving.... I hear carriage-wheels.”
Robbins and Doome seized the shocked old man and hurried his protesting
stiff being out of the room and down the stairs.
Rippley followed them to the top of the stairs, making up his disguise
as he went:
“Look here, boys,” he called down in a hoarse whisper--“if the old
fool will swear not to move away from the hall door until we release
him you needn’t put him in the cellar.... What?... Eh?... He says he
surrenders? That’s all right then. Now back with you--quick! or the
guests will be here--or Pangbutt himself.”
There was a loud ring at the door-bell.
Rippley skipped back to the cabinet: and from the cabinet he ran to
Andrew Blotte:
“Blotte, old boy,” said he, pulling a red wig over the gloomy man’s
head and combing the lank red hair down the sides of his pale
face--“you must look after the cloak-room and change the tickets and
mix the hats.... Ha-ha!” He laughed mock-tragically. “This night must
never be forgotten!”
“It never will,” said Blotte; and laughing grimly he got striding again
in the red wig, as Fluffy Reubens and Doome burst into the room.
“Here, Fluffy,” said Rippley, “quick, man! put on this yellow wig, and
comb it well over your eyes. There isn’t a moment to be lost; Doome,
here’s a black moustache and a greyish wig--this is the way to stick it
on--see? Splendid! Makes you look like a broken-down Italian tenor.”
He searched about in the cabinet and found a stubbly black wig which he
pulled over his own hair, and was at once a son of France:
“Look here, boys, I’m head-waiter, see! And when I bow, you bow: and
when I rub my hands, you rub your hands; and don’t forget the foreign
accent--try to talk English as you used to talk French.... Doome, you
stand at the landing below, and see that old Dukes don’t stir a step
from the door--and bawl up the names from him. And you, Fluffy, play
the general ass. I’ll stick to the door here.... Are we all right
now?... No, Blotte’s not enough disguised. Here, Doome, fasten this
fierce moustache on his lip, whilst I shut up.... O lor! here they
come!”
Rippley had scarcely hurried into his coat when there entered and
halted in the great doorway a hesitating figure in the white satin
dress of a courtier of Charles the First, lace frills at his weak
knees, white stockings, white shoes, and holding a plumed hat in his
hand.
His eyeglass dropped out of his eye, and he stood there stuttering and
aghast.
There was a titter.
“Sharles ze Foorst--risen from ze dead!” announced Rippley.
“I say”--the affected drawl discovered Ffolliott. “Rippley told me it
was a--fancy-dress--affair,” he said plaintively. “And to come early.”
There was a wild shout of laughter.
Ffolliott looked round nervously at the strange faces, and recognising
Aubrey at last, by the mirror, he said peevishly:
“I am exceedingly displeased with Rippley--he--he chose my dress.”
Rippley wiped the tears from his eyes:
“Well--don’t you see we are nearly all in disguise? ... except Aubrey,
who thinks that because he looks like an ass no one will know him.” He
turned to the others: “I say, boys,” he added, chuckling, “things are
beginning to move at last. This _is_ going to be a unique night.”
“Hush!”
They had all turned to Blotte, and a strange silence fell upon the room.
Andrew Blotte stood listening, as to some strange sounds. He roused:
“Ay, I sup with the gods to-night.... And I can hear the guests
arriving--all the clever fellows that have made the world a
delight--and with them come the dear dead companions that worked with
us, and sang with us, and drank with us--in Paris.... I know them--they
talk such damned bad French.”
Rippley went and touched him on the shoulder:
“Blotte, old boy; you’re very queer to-night,” he said. “You make me
feel as blue as a newly-clipped hearse-horse.”
Blotte roused, and moved towards the door; halted; turned to them all:
“I say I sup with the gods to-night--and mix the hats--and set the
table in a roar.... I must hasten away.... I hear them call.... God
bless you, dear boys! we shall meet in sunshine----”
Rippley stepped to the door:
“Quick!” said he in a hushed whisper, “make a line, quick there,
you Fluffy, Doome, Blotte, to my left here at the door. Here comes
Pangbutt.... He blows his nose like the old nobility.... Come along.
Blotte--don’t look like a broken-down anarchist in an advanced stage
of pip. You must affect the smiling, friendly, neapolitan manner,
expectant of a fee.”
As Blotte’s pale face took on a deathly smile, Rippley bowed, and there
stepped into the open doorway the well-groomed figure of their host.
Pangbutt halted, perplexed.
He gazed in vague consternation at the Vandyke travesty in white silks
before him--turned to the solemn countenances of the four waiters:
“May I ask what, in the name of Beelzebub, is happening in this house?”
he asked.
Rippley clasped his hands together unctuously, bowed, smiled a large
Italian smile. He advanced a step, and said with a strong foreign
accent, picking his words with slow deliberation:
“Sir Pangboot--it has arrive to ze domestic bootler that he is
indispose sudden-ment. I am he’s friend that he have ask to take he’s
place, vis my asseestants.... Your house shall have ze much honour in
my hands--we have the habit to attend ze best families----”
There was a loud ringing of the door-bell.
Pangbutt put his hand over his eyes:
“I must be going mad,” he said.
Rippley bowed:
“Sir Pangboot--me and me friends, we speak not very well ze
Engleesh--but we much understand it well--and----”
“Yes, yes.” Pangbutt dismissed them impatiently. “Get to your
business.... Curse it! I wonder what on earth ails Dukes.”
As the four comic-looking foreign waiters left the room, he hesitated,
bewildered. And Rippley, as they passed out, nearly burst a bloodvessel
as the tragic Blotte’s moustache fell off. But Pangbutt had suddenly
remembered that he was host; and advancing into the room he turned to
the others:
“I beg your pardon, I am late I fear.”
He shook hands with Lovegood and Aubrey; and, turning to Ffolliott, a
faint smile flickered over his worried face:
“Ffolliott!... Sorry to be late, but there have been domestic
difficulties--my butler has gone sick.”
The guests were arriving fast.
“Mistair Maupassant Fosse!” bawled Rippley at the door.
The little man glared at the servant, fussed into the room, and tripped
across to his host.
“A nickname they have for me,” he said--“a nickname....”
Rippley watched Blotte solemnly tramp down the stairs, his wig on one
side; heard him announce to a lady, just arrived, that he was going to
sup with the gods; and he was gone.
Groups of guests came swarming up the stairs and passed into the studio.
Rippley, glancing into the studio, saw the white satin dress of
Ffolliott move uneasily amongst the arriving guests; and he heard his
thin, affected drawl as he explained to his host:
“D’you know--I feel such an ass----”
Pangbutt patted him upon the shoulder:
“Never mind,” said he absently--“it can’t be helped. Make the best of
it.”
“Oh, but I assure you--they told me it was to be a fancy-dress affair.”
Rippley bawled at the door:
“Sir Gilders Cinnamon!”
Sir Gilders Persimmon shuffled into the room; and Pangbutt went to meet
the old baronet.
“Lady Persimmon coming to-night, Sir Gilders?” he shouted into his ear;
the old man shook his head.
“Sorry,” bawled Pangbutt into his ear; “Sir Gilders, allow me to
introduce Mr. Fosse, who, I need not tell you, is the well-known
critic. He has written a eulogy of Anthony Bickersteth that is to
appear in a few days--you must win his favour to your poems.”
The old baronet cackled with senile laughter.
Fosse threw up his head. He glowed. He felt that all eyes were upon him.
“Yes,” he said--“my eulogy appears to-morrow.” He forgot to bawl.
Sir Gilders put his hand to his ear: the entrance and stir of the
arriving guests and their announcement and greetings perplexed his weak
hearing:
“Eh?” said he--“borrow? Why borrow?”
“No, Sir Gilders,” cried Fosse, getting very hot--“I did not say
borrow--I said my eulogy appears to-morrow.”
“Why?” asked the old man.
There was a titter....
Ffolliott, thinking he saw someone he knew, went up to Lovegood and
slapped the big man on the back:
“Hullo, old chap!” cried he.
Blank consternation came upon him as Lovegood slowly turned and
solemnly faced him. The weak-knee’d, foolish Ffolliott faltered
nervously:
“Oh, er--er--I thought you were someone else,” he drawled.
Lovegood nodded gloomily.
“I am,” he said sepulchrally.
Ffolliott tittered confusedly:
“Ye-yes--indeed,” he said, twisting his fingers and fidgeting. “D’you
know, I feel such an awful ass----”
Lovegood coughed:
“But that is no excuse for your being in the other ass’s skin!” he
growled.
“Oh, but don’t you see--that’s just it! They told me it was a
fancy-dress affair....”
“Eh?” bawled Sir Gilders Persimmon.
All eyes turned from Ffolliott to the perspiring Fosse. The little man
shifted uneasily under the fire of many amused critical eyes.
“I was saying,” shrilled the minor critic in his thin jerky voice,
“that the man who does not play whist is laying up a sad old age for
himself.”
The old baronet shook his head:
“The man who what?”
Fosse licked his lips sullenly:
“The man who doesn’t play whist,” shrieked Fosse, reddening miserably.
“What about him?” asked Sir Gilders peremptorily.
“Lays up a sad old age for himself,” screamed the miserable little man.
The old gentleman knit his brows:
“A reformed rake?” he asked testily....
But attention was diverted from the fussy little minor critic’s despair
by the murmur of admiration which greeted the entrance into the room
of a beautiful woman to whom Quogge Myre was paying aggressively
marked court as the announcement of her name called the regard of
the assembled guests to her arrival. Myre was ever for stealing the
lime-light. He was a born filcher of honour. But the beauty’s calm
dismissal of him, as she swept towards her host, gave Myre a sudden
hysteric desire to talk loudly and hide his chagrin; and he turned at
the sound of Fosse’s voice, raised in argument, as hyena goes to offal.
Fosse in his despair had turned from Sir Gilders, and launched into the
discussion round about him:
“In the arts,” he was saying, “woman does not, cannot, shine. She only
exists--on sufferance. A woman’s province----”
Myre had strolled towards the voice:
“I am flattered to find,” said he, “that Mr. Fosse has been reading me.
He is right. A woman’s province is to be beautiful; and if she write
at all she may write of the nursery--of the domesticities. A woman
has not the experiences of life--she writes only from intuition. She
cannot experience the emotions of a man--cannot describe all shades of
life--is too careful of her skirts to have been on the heights and in
the gutters----”
Lovegood coughed:
“Never,” said he, with big deliberate voice--“never shall I again
approach a municipal sewer without an ecstatic thrill.”
Quogge Myre took no notice of the shaft:
“A woman,” said he, “cannot be in the thrash and fume of life. She only
peeps out fearfully over the window-blind at the doings of the world.
She has not physical strength----”
Somebody coughed:
“Tra-la-lee!” said he--“opera--bouffe--bouffe--bouffe.”
Myre went suddenly dumb....
Sir Gilders Persimmon had shuffled over to Fosse, who was wetting his
lips, eager to leap into the debate, when Myre’s yawing should give
opportunity, and, button-holing the fussy little man, the deaf old
gentleman asked him:
“You said, sir, that the reformed rake did what?”
“No, Sir Gilders--I said that the man who does not play whist is laying
up a sad old age----”
The old gentleman poked him slyly in the lean ribs:
“Makes the best husband, eh! Indeed, yes--very likely--very likely. But
it’s dangerous doctrine--it’s----”
“No, Sir Gilders,” shrieked the perspiring little man--“I say the man
who does not play _whist_.” He coughed--his voice breaking. “Oh, damn
this old gentleman!” he added, moving irritably away from him....
Quogge Myre turned to Pangbutt:
“Now, Pangbutt, mind you, I don’t say that this Anthony Bickersteth is
a Balzac; but he has the true genius for literature. How can you define
these things? It is there, or it is not there!”
Fosse skipped up to the group:
“What _I_ say--what _I_ say----”
Quogge Myre stared at his little disciple with contempt; a sneer played
about his puffy lip--became too tense for silence:
“This man repeats what I say--what I _used_ to say--like flattery,” he
said.
Lovegood smiled grimly:
“Oh,” said he--“_he_ stays in Paris sometimes now. And there are the
French newspapers.”
Myre shrugged his shoulders:
“I have changed all my ideas on these subjects----”
But the ridiculous figure of Ffolliott strolled nervously up to the
group, and interrupting the critical vapourings of Quogge Myre, he said
with affected drawl:
“D’you know, I feel such an awful ass--and I don’t get used to it.”
Lovegood gazed at him solemnly:
“Young fellow,” said he--“you must not be egotistical--it’s bad for the
morals. Try and forget yourself in that disguise.”
“I can’t,” drawled Ffolliott miserably--“I am quite angry with
Rippley--he told me it was a fancy-dress affair--and----”
Fosse turned his back upon him impatiently:
“I repeat,” said he--“and I have a signed article in _The
Discriminator_ to prove it--a genius has arrived.”
“By Pegasus?” sneered Aubrey, raising ironic eyebrows.
Lovegood laughed:
“No--by omnibus,” said he. “Let us all be winged asses to-night. Fosse
has not secured a government monopoly.”...
From the great doorway:
“Mistair and Mrs. Nezzerbie Gomme!” announced Rippley; and as the pair
were greeted by all near them, Rippley stepped to the head of the great
stairs, and going up to a pompous man as that worthy set foot on the
topmost step, he said to him confidentially:
“I say, mister, would you mind running down the stairs and telling the
fellar with the red hair that I want him?”
Sir Tankerton Wollup swelled slowly:
“Pooh--pooh!” said he, drawing himself up; and he strutted to the door.
“Poof--poof!” said Rippley. “Giddy old thing!”
He glanced over the balustrade down to the next landing, and caught
Doome’s eye:
“Beelzebub!” he growled--“the whole town’s coming to this silly
theatrical affair.... I say, we ought to go and see that Andrew
Blotte’s mixing the hats thoroughly. Hullo! There’s Anthony Baddlesmere
just arrived. Wait, I’ll come down. I want to see him.”
He made his way down through an ascending stream of newly-arrived
guests, with some difficulty, just as Ffolliott, seeing Sir Tankerton
Wollup hesitate at the door, went up to the great man mincingly, and
said affectedly:
“Oh, I say, Sir Tankerton--d’you know, I feel such an awful ass--but
they told me it was a fancy-dress affair.”
Sir Tankerton, staring with bloodshot eyes of ruffled dignity at the
thing before him, sniffed.
“Go away!” he said testily.
Ffolliott went away.
As the pompous millionaire stood irresolute at the doorway, an
absent-minded snuffy little old gentleman shuffled up to his elbow,
followed at a couple of paces by a little faded old lady of withered
prehistoric design, and, touching him on the sleeve inquiringly, said:
“My good man--before you announce our names, will you tell me which is
the host? I have never seen my host before--in fact----”
“Poof--poof!” squealed Sir Tankerton Wollup, and strutted into the room.
“Dear me!” The little old gentleman turned to his little old lady; and
added in a confidential undertone:
“A most extraordinary person--a most extraordinary _house_!... But I
have always heard, my dear, that Bohemia was a strange country.... In
fact, Charlotte, it’s _rather_ thrilling, is it not?”
The little withered lady, all pleased excitement, said: “_Quite_
thrilling, James!”
Pangbutt seeing awkwardness at the door, and missing the loud
announcement of names, went a few paces closer to it to meet his
newly-arrived guests.
The little old gentleman entered the room vaguely, the dandruff of
the philosophic habit upon his coat-collar, and his wig full of
reasons--very markedly a professor. He had the air of cataloguing
ideas. The little old lady, a couple of paces behind him, followed him.
Pangbutt exchanged greetings with him.
Said the professor:
“Good-evening, sir; my sister’s husband’s brother-in-law, Sir Gilders
Persimmon, was good enough to say that you would allow me to meet
Mr. Anthony Bickersteth here.... I am writing a work to disprove
the insanity of genius.... It is a part of my theory that the human
personality cannot be hidden by artifice--that the strong temperament
shows itself in the vigorous growth of the hair--and so on.... I
am, sir, I may have forgotten to say, Professor Curtis.... I am an
inveterate novel-reader.... My wife keeps a diary.... Where are you,
Charlotte? Ah, yes. But, fervently as I admire Mr. Bickersteth’s prose,
I should like to suggest to him that in his next work he might make
more of that unworked mine, the folk-lore of the London coster--or
greengrocer.... I am most anxious that Mr. Bickersteth should be a
virile person whose moustache springs out strongly from under the
nostrils, with a tendency towards ruddiness in the colouring.... But
I fear that on this--what I may call his--er,” he tittered--“his
unveiling, I am too thrilled.”
He kept button-holing Pangbutt:
“Too thrilled to--er--I am thrilled, sir, thrilled, as indeed is
Charlotte--oh, ah, yes--Charlotte!” He searched about behind him for
the little old lady, who moved up to his side. “Oh, ah, yes--there
you are, Charlotte! Allow me to introduce Mr. Pangbutt, our host.
May I ask, sir, if Mr. Anthony Bickersteth has yet arrived? No?...
How fortunate! How very fortunate!... Charlotte, I am becoming quite
excited.”
Pangbutt led them to chairs.
Two richly-dressed ladies of an age that discovers as much as is
concealed by considerable dressing, hesitated at the door; and one,
taking a last amused glance over her shoulder at some incident that
passed upon the stairs below, tittered, and, turning, swept the room
with keen regard through her raised lorgnettes.
“How amusin’! how absolutely amusin’!” she crooned. “I like literary
and artistic people _so_ much.”
“Yes,” said the other, “they are _so_ different to one’s own class....
And actresses _dress_ so well!”
She flung back an elaborate head of jewels, and whispered something to
the lady of the lorgnettes.
The lady of the lorgnettes laughed:
“Really?” said she
“H’m, h’m!--yes. Pills.”
“Mr. Pangbutt’s father?”
“H’m, h’m! Yes. I assure you.”
“Dear me! And he has such a very distinguished manner!”
“And--d’you know?”
She whispered.
“Lady Persimmon? Indeed?”
The lady of the lorgnettes nodded mysteriously. The withered eyes
expressed shocked surprise. She gave a funny little laugh. The
lorgnettes were raised again, and she said, surveying the assembled
guests critically through the glasses:
“I absolutely _adore_ literary people--and artists--and actors--and
those sort of persons. It is so strange to think they have all slept
in attics. And really, it’s quite the _fashion_ to go on the stage
now.... Who’s the fright in the post-office red?... Oh! is it?... Lady
Margaret’s son has gone on the stage.... Gerty, do you know who that
dark creature is? with the Italian-looking person.... Oh, yes; and the
young fellow is getting on wonderfully. You see, they like to have
a gentleman on the stage--besides, he acts in the most gentlemanly
manner--quite unlike a professional actor. And then, of course, his
manager is rather exclusive--he called the company together the other
day, and told them that he did not expect them to recognise him in
the street. It’s so nice for the young fellow to be with such a
_gentleman_.”
“Yes. Our gardener’s son has joined a circus too. Such an amusin’ boy,
he was.”
“It brings it all so home to one, doesn’t it!”
“Doesn’t it, indeed! But I confess I have always been fascinated by the
stage. There’s somethin’ so very romantic about livin’ in green-rooms
and paintin’ your face, and--pretendin’ to be someone else.”
The other whispered in her ear.
The lorgnettes were flicked open again, and glittered upon Sir Gilders
Persimmon.
“Indeed! But he is so very old--and she--but there is such a difference
of social rank between a baronet’s wife and a mere painter--surely!
Still, he _is_ very old. Almost permissible sin, Gerty.”
They both tittered.
“My dear,” said the other, “you are really quite naughty.”
Sir Gilders pounced upon Fosse, whom he had followed round the room,
put up a hand to aid his dull hearing, and said:
“You were speaking of dotage----”
Fosse winced uneasily:
“No, sir,” he shrieked--“I was _not_ talking of dotage. I say that the
man who does not play whist lays up a sad old age for himself.” And,
turning on his heel impatiently, “The devil take the man!” said he, and
walked away.
Ffolliott espying the two newly-arrived ladies across the room, made
his way to them:
“Do you know, Miss Foljambe Pfinch,” he said--“I feel such an ass; they
told me it was a--fancy--dress--affair.”
The lorgnettes were turned upon him:
“It’s that ridiculous Mr. Ffolliott,” said she; and laughed
immoderately.
Ffolliott sighed, and turned away:
“Everybody seems to think I am an ass to-night,” he said wearily. “Oh,
there’s Fosse. I don’t like Fosse--but I’ll talk to _him_. No--he’s
talking to another man. I think I’ll go home. No, I won’t, I’ll sit
down.”
He sat down.
“Every fellow does something idiotic in his life,” he said.
He watched Fosse button-hole Gomme; and he saw Gomme’s lips smile
amusedly as he gazed at the floor, listening to him.
He bent all his attention to hear what passed between the two.
“Now, you know, Mr. Gomme,” said the fussy little man--“in
confidence, all these fellows take themselves too seriously to-day.
Look at Rippley! he’s utterly uncultured--he hasn’t an aitch in his
composition.”
Gomme nodded:
“But there isn’t an aitch in composition,” he said demurely.
“N-no.” Fosse stammered, becoming nervous. “But he can’t even pronounce
the names of the ancients whose gods he models!”
Gomme smiled:
“No--but he can model ’em.”
Fosse was puzzled for an answer:
“N’yes, that’s true perhaps. But there’s Aubrey--look at his legs, his
knees, his hair, his airs, his ties! He is for ever publishing volumes
of poems which no one reads.”
“Yes,” said Gomme. “But the publishers must have their luxuries.”
“Then there is Blotte. You know he has never produced a complete work
yet.”
“Maybe. But supposing one day he writes lines that, like some of his
handsome acts, shall never fade!”
“Oh, you think that!” said Fosse, licking his lips. “Well now, there’s
Lovegood. You know, he never says a really exquisite thing--he is
always ponderous--and rather obvious. He has not made his mark.”
Gomme sighed:
“Supposing he has done acts that will live in the memory of his
friends, Mr. Fosse! And--perhaps--when he has been dead a hundred
years----” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh--er--you really think so.” The foxy little eyes of Mr. Fosse were
searching the humorist’s features keenly.
Netherby Gomme took Fosse’s arm:
“And, Mr. Fosse, there’s this Netherby Gomme, the over-rated rogue,”
said he, with a whimsical twinkle in the eyes; “you know, he never
really says a humorous thing.”
Fosse sighed:
“But he can write them,” he said.
Gomme laughed, and gripping the little man’s thin shoulder, said he:
“Fosse, you are sometimes inspired.... You are inspired to-night.... I
have never known you so inspired.”
Fosse smirked:
“Well, anyway,” he said--and he grew taller as he said it--“I
think that to-morrow I shall have convinced many that, to create a
masterpiece, requires a man’s powers and a man’s wit and----”
“Mr. Anthony Bickersteth!”
The old butler stood at the door and sang out the name, making the
announcement in a loud clear voice.
A sudden hush fell upon the assembled guests. There was a craning
towards the great open doors.
A rustle of silk, and Caroline Baddlesmere stepped into their sight.
The silence was broken by a hoarse utterance from Fosse:
“My God!” said he; and was dumb.
There was a loud shout from the bohemians, who rushed to greet
Caroline; but the smile that had flickered about her lips went out.
Anthony Baddlesmere had entered the room.
“Caroline,” said he--“quick, for God’s sake, where is Paul?”
She signed towards him where he stood near at hand by the door.
“Why?” she asked.
“Kate Ormsby has been found--it’s too horrible,” he said.
He glanced round the room, and hurriedly made for his host:
“Paul,” he said hoarsely--“get rid of these people.”
Pangbutt raised surprised eyes:
“Get rid?” he stammered. “Why?”
Anthony Baddlesmere made an impatient gesture:
“Tell them they must go. Send them down to supper--no, he’s lying
on the supper table. Let the butler tell them there’s death in the
house----”
“Death?”
“Anything, Paul--get rid of them.”
Pangbutt’s eyes were a blank bewildered surprise:
“But--but----”
Anthony touched his arm:
“For God’s sake, Paul--give the order.”
“But why?”
Pangbutt wet his dogged lips sullenly.
Anthony took hold of his shoulder:
“Andrew Blotte has hanged himself in your cellars. I was just too late.”
“My God!”
Pangbutt’s voice was a shadow of a whisper. The floor swung up to
strike him--swung away from his feet so that he nearly fell. He reeled
a step, and sank into the gilt armchair that was the splendid seat for
his painting-throne.
The whisper spread; and the guests stole quietly from the place.
CHAPTER LXXXIX
_Wherein Andrew Blotte draws aside the Arras that hangs Across the
Unknown and joins the Company at a Larger Banquet_
They left their host alone with Anthony Baddlesmere.
The wretched man, sunk in a dazed huddle in the midst of his splendid
home, sat crouched in the gilt chair, bewildered, as one struck down by
a sudden blow. Slowly his wits came back and traced a miserable picture
of bygone fatuities and a black knavery into the elaborate design of
the rich carpet at his feet.
His lips moved with guttural complaint:
“God! what an awakening! what an awakening!... What strange destiny
arranges it all?... The coming of this thing has haunted me for
nights.... There seems to come into our lives a day when we awake of a
sudden from the aimless inconsequences of years--to the aimlessness.
But--God! what an awakening!”
Anthony Baddlesmere went to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder:
“It is something to have awakened, Paul.”
There was a long silence. The miserable man, his face between his
hands, thus crouching there, elbows on knees, gazed at the strange
things that wove themselves into the pattern at his feet.
He roused again:
“There will always be this dead man in my house,” he said hoarsely.
Baddlesmere sighed sadly:
“I fear it,” said he.
Paul Pangbutt was silent for awhile.
“Anthony,” he said at last--“why did the man do this thing?”
“He put his bed in pawn three days ago--for the little singing
woman--Kate Ormsby. But she has utterly gone under--since--Paris.” He
hesitated.... “I found her this morning.... He was with her.... She
had taken her life with her own hand, at daybreak. You remember how
she used to air her pathetic little ambitions about Fame and Name!
Well, Death has fanned up her little flame of Notoriety for nine days
at last. Her name will be in large letters on all the newspaper bills
to-night. And”--he smiled sadly--“she will not see it!”
“But why did he do this thing, man?” The miserable voice was a
dry-throated whisper. “Why did he do--this--awful--thing?”
“He must have been starving--starving--for days. He had promised to
come to me if he needed help.... His pockets were empty--except for
pawnbrokers’ tickets--he had even hired his clothes for to-night.
I came away as--they--were--searching him--downstairs--on the
supper-table.”
The other sat brooding for awhile:
“I might have helped--I did not know.”
“Ah, Paul--we _could_ have helped--we _ought_ to have known.”
Pangbutt buried his face in his hands:
“This is horrible,” he said.
“Paul,” said Baddlesmere--“I had better go and see what is being done.”
The other nodded.
The old butler hobbled into the room, as Baddlesmere went out. He
carried a letter on a silver salver:
“This letter, sir, was found in Mr. Blotte’s breast-pocket,” he said,
standing beside the crouching figure of his master.
He coughed.
“It is addressed to you, sir,” he said.
Pangbutt did not move.
The old servant coughed again:
“And, beg pardon, sir----”
Pangbutt made a gesture of impatience:
“Yes, yes, Dukes,” he said wearily, “give me the letter.”
He put out his hand and took it from the salver, dazedly. He tore open
the cover, listlessly. As he unfolded the sheet of paper, a bundle of
dingy pawnbrokers’ tickets fell out of a piece of paper that fluttered
to the floor. The old butler stooped stiffly, and handed them to him.
Pangbutt read:
“PAUL PANGBUTT,
I am claiming your hospitality to-night--indeed, I have nowhere
else to go. It is the last night of my winter--the last hour of my
insignificance. To-morrow I shall have drifted into fame on the tide
of a passing scandal. My last poem will have a fictitious money-value
out of all proportion to its intrinsic literary merits. Here you have
it--my trust to you.
It is a crude rattle-pot affair enough, but the ink is near done;
the rhymes jostle each other, for my last candle is burnt low;
and, like school-girls and professors of letters, your editor has
the delusion, like them that make laws for our art and decide as
to our magnificence, that rhymes are the essentials of the poetic.
Therefore, so that it may pass for poetry, I have flung you a rhyme
or so--literature to come to birth in these days must satisfy the
newspaper offices.
Take this, then, to one of these procurers of letters, and offer it
for sale. Let him bid high, remembering the value of the scandal;
and, with the monies, I charge you redeem my pledges and distribute
my few personal knick-knacks where they shall cease to be scored with
the scratchings of pawnbrokers, amongst my dear old friends--for, God
granted me that splendid largess, spite of all my sins.
There will fall a tear for Andrew Blotte; but there will be more of
shrugging of respectable shoulders.
To-morrow will whisper that I was mad.
Tush! what is madness? To half the world, madness is but the
rejection of the commonplace. The sanest sit in the centre of the
whirligig of life, self-satisfied with their sanity and hugging
it, but if they wait long enough, even to them old age will bring
prattling wits, and the giggle of foolishness. The bee in the bonnet
is an affair of a few years. Who shall escape the passing delirium,
wrap he his grey habit about him ever so closely and sit he ever so
still for fear of coming to light-headedness by walking amongst the
heights and taking the risks of great adventure? We must needs wear
the straws in our hair, even though it be in some corner, furtively,
hoping others think us wise--if we but wait long enough. I’m for your
summer madness--and to-night I go to make revel with the gods.
What more mad than to live alone! how worse than mad to have wrought
loneliness to others! What more cracked-brained dolt than he who
grinds to dust his grubbing years, thinking to find happiness in
large figures of gold when his hair is grown grey within the four
walls of a counting-house--whilst slip past him, unknown, unfelt,
with the clock’s every tick, the little joys that build a splendid
experience. They that grub for wealth as an end are like mad hogs
that bury their eyes in noisome swill, unsuspecting that life is a
glorious pageant, and goes by.
Mad? Who so mad as they who rush through their years to vague ends
and sordid aims? These flip through the pages of the book of life,
missing the sweetness of its wide romance, that they may but know the
end of the tale. And whither leads this frantic skipping? To old age,
and withering, and decay, and the grave.
Tush! Life’s a Jest. Even Unconscious Humour grinds the Unconscious
Joke. We make a fuss of all we do, though it end in Smoke.... A
little skip upon this little earth, maybe in tinsel of the Great--the
years skip also, and we find ourselves without Heaven’s Gate, naked
of all we had, save the Habit of Kind Things we did and Spoke.
Philosophy, with critic eyes, examines our Emotions; his sight grows
dim, his heart runs dry, in analyzing Notions; his brains are sear
with brow-knit peer at Things that Do Not Matter--of a sudden he
learns that Acts are Life, Theories but Ink or Chatter; he awakes to
find Life is left behind, his eyes Lone Age in the Mirror meet--the
Old Man with the Scythe goes by and sweeps him from his feet.
Why burn the Fire of life to questionable Idols? or seek the useless
things we may not know? Religion is not in our solemn Goings to
Church, but in the sweet things that we do between, in these our
little wanderings to and fro--the giving of a part of our success, a
tithe or so, to help our fellows with a hand unseen. Therefore, so
let us live that whilst we live we each the other profit, and walk
our little moment in nice ways, and talk not of it.
How pompous are we in the contemplation of our little selves! The
narrow vision of each one of us sees in the broad fertile world but
the carpet for our individual feet. But, hist! in the middle of our
strut a something snaps--we pass, with scarce a sigh, into an eternal
mystery.... So it comes that a still white figure lies a-bed, for
once in some becoming stiffness of the thing called dignity--and in
the room and all about, they that walk, walk hushedly, sobbing that
one is dead. And for a night they weep. But at the daybreak of the
morrow the mourners, wearied with weeping, raise half-forgetting eyes
window-wards, and peep out through the streak of daylight by the
blind, where poised in swinging skies the exultant lark hails the
gladdening sun that comes on swift obliterating feet to paint with
gaudy colours a new world. So they that weep arise, and sigh, and
dry their eyes, and bury their dead; and, the dear dead departed,
draw their blinds--and lo! in the garden where we laughed in pleasant
toil, another digs and delves.
So falls God’s blot on
ANDREW BLOTTE.”
The paper fluttered and fell from Pangbutt’s fingers.
The old man-servant coughed:
“I ’ope, sir, that I did right; but I gave the two models, that got
here first with the good news, a sovereign apiece. Mr. Rippley he said
it was a dead-heat between them----”
“Sovereigns? models?”
Pangbutt’s brows contracted painfully:
The old man servant started at the hoarse whisper:
“Yes, sir--it’s election night, sir--at the Royal Academy, sir. And Mr.
Rippley has been elected for sculpture, and yourself for painting.”
Pangbutt burst into a horrible fit of loud laughter, and shook his
head, and laughed and laughed again.
He stopped and looked at the old servant; and again he burst into his
horrible laugh.
“Gord!” said the old butler.
The old man, looking down upon the huddled figure that laughed, saw
that his wits had snapped.
CHAPTER XC
_Wherein Hereditary Greatness fails to Glitter Hidalgic_
In Mr. Sim Crittenden, the music-hall star, the adored comedian of
London’s masses, what remained of the old prize-fighting ostler of
Burford was severely disguised under the pose of the baritone god--the
maker of the horse-laugh of the multitude. But to the credit of the
tailor, be it said, it was impossible to cover all sign of the huge
shoulders, the great chest; and the gloves he wore only exaggerated the
weight of the hard-hitting hands.
Mr. Sim Crittenden, arrayed in an elaborately loud attempt to be
strikingly quiet in hue, and aspiring to the latest severity of mode,
to catch as it were the careful carelessness of the young blood at
the seaside, sat on a bench on Hampstead Heath beside the light and
befrilled figure of Miss Polly Whiffles, temporarily Ffolliott; she
drew patterns of embarrassment in the gravel whilst he held her in
earnest conversation.
“Now, look here, Polly,” said Sim Crittenden--“I’m a rough man.... I
know you are a lady and ought to marry a curate, and I’m no account,
and all that. But I think I can get it to you if you’ll be patient....
I’m on the music-halls, I’m makin’ eighty gold pieces every week. It’s
no good being modest about it, and I’m not--that’s God’s truth put
into the naked vernacular. It may sound vulgar, but it’s so.... Now,
ye know, I don’t know what to do with it--that’s the fact. I could buy
fancy rabbits or a talkin’ canary and all that--or I could chuck it
about on the turf at race-meetin’s--but unfortunately God did not make
me in the image of a jackass, and I’m not going against the works of
God. I’m modest.... I could start a girl and a brougham, but I’m tired
of prize-fighting.... Now, what I say is this: if I had your dainty
little person a-sittin’ at the end of my table every day, it might make
me look less of a blamey athlete and more of a man of fashion, see! Eh?”
The girl hesitated.
Mr. Sim Crittenden touched her arm anxiously:
“Besides, Whiffles isn’t much of a name; no woman could be called
Whiffles and remain virtuous.”
The girl smiled sadly:
“No, Sim--you don’t understand. I’ve sat as a model.”
“I’m not to be blamed for falling in love with a good figure, am I?”
said Mr. Sim Crittenden laconically.
She smiled away a tear:
“There’s the boy,” she said--“my Ponsonby has no father.”
Mr. Sim Crittenden pushed his hat back on his head:
“That’s all tommy nonsense,” said he. “If I ain’t strong enough to
be his father, good God, what’s the use of giving me eighty pounds
a week, eh?... What?... Born out o’ wedlock? Blame me, so was I....
Now, come--drop this nonsense; let me hug you well--though it is a
blamed nervous job with me always--you’re as delicate as a confounded
caramel--though I must say I like it when I get there--and----”
Now it so chanced that as the Honourable Rupert Greppel, strolling
hidalgic beside his nervous little aristocratic friend, Lord Monty
Askew, took a short cut down a dirty side-alley off Booksellers’
Row--Monty complaining the while that they should have allowed the
smells of so unusual a proceeding to come between them and their
nobility--Mr. Sim Crittenden came down the other end of the same
high-smelling by-way, his pretty Polly at his side, with intent to get
her some dinner at a restaurant he knew of, before the dusk grew to
darkness and he had to answer his call “to play the giddy goat for a
consideration” at one of those places called music-halls.
There were but few of its dirty inhabitants in the dirty street, when
Rupert Greppel took the wall of the pretty lady and her escort on the
narrow footway and put her out into the dirty gutter of the dirtier
street; but when Sim Crittenden, having dropped behind the girl,
following her to let the others pass the more easily, put himself
before the great man, and Rupert Greppel cried “Out of the way,
fellow!” and Sim Crittenden mocked him, the street began to fill.
It was a deadlock.
Mr. Sim Crittenden took off his hat:
“Sir,” said he--“I am in the illegitimate drama, wherein to bray like
an ass is the soul of comedy. I am a student of bad manners. Would you
mind doing it again?”
Rupert Greppel struck him with his cane.
Sim Crittenden hit him violently in the mouth, so that Rupert fell; and
as Rupert gathered himself and his dazed wits together, Sim Crittenden
took off his straw hat and his coat and handed them sadly to Polly,
and, expressing his muttered regret that he was making a beastly
scene and was to baptize his betrothal in claret, he squared his huge
shoulders for the fray.
Rupert Greppel arose and made an ugly rush at him, and after some
fencing, to allow of the crowd’s whimsical twitting of the big man,
Sim Crittenden gripped his lips tight and struck out, hitting the
hidalgic Rupert heavily on the jaw. Rupert answered the helm and sat
down--violently.
Sim Crittenden stooped over him:
“Look here, guv’nor,” said he, “this ain’t no match. It’s a comedy
scene for me, but it’s a nasty chunk of tragedy for you. You’d better
go home.”
Rupert Greppel slowly rose, his face was very pale, and, pulling
himself together, he went pell-mell, legs and arms, at the past-master
of the craft; and Sim Crittenden, seeing he was beyond argument,
punished him severely, then held him off with a couple of buffets in
the face, and struck him over the heart with a blow that would have
cracked a door.
Rupert’s heels clattered on the pavement, and he again sat down heavily.
“Take yer seats for Westminister Abbey,” said a wag; and there was
laughter.
Lord Montagu Askew now complained that Mr. Crittenden’s acts were
illegal and in bad taste.
Sim Crittenden walked up to the dandified figure of Monty Askew and
gave him a sounding slap on the side of the head that knocked his silk
hat into the gutter.
Monty went and picked up his hat amidst peals of laughter, and, holding
out one expostulant gloved hand, he wiped his bleeding nose on a fine
cambric handkerchief.
“You’re a most vulgar fellow,” he said--“a most vulgar fellow.”
The crowd cooed with merriment.
Crittenden went up to him and slapped his face with great strong hands.
Monty Askew sat down on a doorstep and wept bitterly:
“The injustice of it!” he sobbed--“the injustice of it!”
Thus Montagu Askew, blaming the high gods. Thus, as always, dragging
the innocent into his quarrels.
As Sim Crittenden walked into the lamp-lit dusk with Polly, he said,
punching the palm of his left with the great fist of the right:
“I’m so happy, Polly, old girl--I have been dying to hit something all
this afternoon.”
CHAPTER XCI
_Wherein the Heir of the Ffolliotts falls the Victim to a Limited
Badinage_
It was the First-Night of an historic Shakespeare revival; and the
theatre of the Lyceum was emptying its fashionable crowd of richly
dressed women and men into the garrulous murk of the noisy night. The
upturned faces of the gaping crowd, that stood along the great portico
in the yellow haze of the street, gazed with serious admiration at the
glowing splendour that enveloped the fashionable and the rich--the
solemn intentness of their unspoken admiration rippling now and again
into a good-natured grin upon some street-wag’s sally at the wrinkles
of a lean dowager or the comic aspect of an over-plump matron or plain
daughter or inane youth or the dozen and one whimsical aspects of
things that catch the rambling humour of the people.
Across their gaze swept out of the bawling tumult of the night sundry
wreaths of fog, torn from the mists that rose from the river hard by.
On the steps, under the classic portals, stood Ponsonby Wattles
Ffolliott, with Quogge Myre and another; and, blowing the cigarette
smoke through his nose, where he stood magnificent above the people,
Ffolliott was in a stream of languid babble upon the strange fancy
that took people to sit through the gloom of a tragedy at considerable
personal discomfort and expense “sitting in a dull hole of a place,
watching people pretendin’ to be dead and that sort of rot,” when gayer
wits were being fascinated by the movements of women’s legs in a good
break-down at a musical comedy, or “havin’ a good hearty laugh” at the
comicalities of the latest comic craze at the music-halls. Thus P. W.
Ffolliott--when his eyes were caught by the bold inviting eyes of a
handsome young woman that passed.
“Damned pretty woman!” he drawled--“I’m off. Ta-ta, Myre! I suppose
you’ll want me to meet you at that other dead-house to-morrow, eh? All
right. I’ll be there. Good-night.”
He waved a gay salute, and was gone, disappearing into the bustling
throng of the street.
The girl pretended to hurry, but Ffolliott, elbowing his way through
the moving crowd, soon overtook her. She was pleased to be seen
with a gentleman of fashion. She was also a little frightened at the
insistence of his admiration.
She lifted her skirts above her ankles and picked her way daintily
across the Strand, through the riot of passing vehicles and bawling
cads, walking serenely amidst the roar of the bewildering traffic.
He kept by her side.
She reached the pavement, and turned towards Charing Cross.
“By jove,” said he--“you are a stunning pretty girl.”
She laughed airily.
“That ain’t my fault,” said she.
“But you are.”
“Well, you know”--she spoke with a marked cockney accent that strangely
sullied the handsome red lips--“my looking-glass tells me that--more
than once a day.”
“Yes--ha, yes; of course,” he drawled, gazing at her admiringly--“of
course it does. How stupid of me--how immaculately stupid! But we had
better get into a hansom and have some supper somewhere, eh! Rather
strenuous idea that--eh!” He haw-hawed.
She laughed, tossed her head--stopped abruptly. And he, looking at her,
saw that her face was deathly white. She grasped his arm suddenly:
“Come down here,” she said hoarsely--“quick!”
She turned into the foggy blackness of a dingy street that descended to
the river, walking hurriedly--and he, expostulant, followed her:
“By George--a very pretty figure,” said he. “But look here,” he added
plaintively, “where are we going?... It’s getting so damned foggy I
shall lose you if you hurry so, don’t you know.”
She came to a halt under a dingy gas-lamp, and faced him; and he saw
that she was very beautiful. The colour had left her face. She was
white as marble.
“I saw a man--I was once engaged to him--see?” she said.... “He is a
dangerous man. Wait here a bit--he’ll miss us in the fog.... My Gord!”
she added hoarsely, “he has followed us!”
The great wreaths of mist swept by them and filled the black hollows
of the narrow way with yellow smoke; and into the sombre gleam of the
lamp-light, from out the black murk, came the pallid faces of three
dark figures--rough-looking fellows that strode down upon them.
One, more genial than the others, cried:
“Chi-hike! that you, Em’ly?”
They halted before the lamp-post.
The girl stood rigid; and faced the three men with contempt.
The wag of the party grinned:
“Engaged, Em’ly?” he asked.
He was set aside by an evil-looking ruffian:
“By God, Em’ly; two years has made a lady of you--don’t you make any
mistake about it.”
She, handsome in her sudden dignity, stood facing the men calmly:
“I ain’t chi-hiked by cab-runners,” she said; “and I ain’t
Emily--except to my friends.”
The man laughed roughly. He jerked a thumb at Ffolliott:
“This--one of your friends?” he asked with a sneering raw mouth.
“Yes,” she said--“you leave him alone--or----”
“Yuss?” he jeered, inquiringly.
“I’ll put my bonnet-pin in your face,” she said calmly.
“You make your friendship pretty prompt, Em’ly,” said he; and added
with a mirthless laugh: “I saw your bleery aristocrat follow you from
the bleery the-ayter--I saw the whole bleery scandal. Yer see, I’ve
been sleepin’ out under the blue a night or two, and lookin’ slippy
for a light job, so I have my two eyes about me when I fall up against
a the-ayter door at closin’ time and the audience is a-gettin’ the
chuck-out. See?”
The girl put her hand before her mouth:
“Excuse me yawnin’,” she said, “but you make me sleepy.”
“Yer ain’t goin’ to sleep too much to-night,” he said, scowling upon
her.
“I don’t see where I come in,” she said, carelessly shrugging her
shoulders; and she stooped and gathered up her skirts in her gloved
hand as though to be moving again.
“Well, yer see,” said he--“it seems to me as you’re what the poet bloke
calls the Juliet of a Night--and I’m goin’ to be your bloomin’ Romeo,
see?”... He stepped nearer to her.... “Hold up yer bloomin’ mouth, and
let’s kiss yer head.”
Ffolliott put out his hand:
“Go away, you vulgar fellow,” said he--“you smell.”
He was hustled from behind and tripped across the kerb-stone--threw up
his hands--lurched forward and fell across the footway. As he fell he
rolled over, showing a white face that gleamed death-like under the dim
light of the gas-lamp. He lay very still.
The girl whimpered, pulled herself together, and fixed her eyes sternly
on the scowling fellow before her, his hands thrust in his coat pockets:
“I saw you do it,” she said.
“And after that?” he asked with a sneer, his chin thrust out at her.
“When twelve men talk about these kind of accidents,” she said with
biting precision and level voice, “I’ve heard them call it murder; and
the judge----”
She shrugged her shoulders.
The wag of the party, he whom they called Charlie, interfered:
“Look here, Henery,” said he--“you’ll be ’ittin’ a bloke harder
nor what yer wish for, one evenin’, and meetin’ yer Gawd without a
cellar-flap to dance your bloomin’ double-shuffle on, see? The girl’s
right, see?”
The scowling fellow stooped down, emptied the money out of the pockets
of the fallen man, the gold from one trouser pocket, the silver from
the other, and banknotes from the breast-pocket of the coat. He put
back a few shillings in silver, and growled at one of the others to let
the watch be and keep his dirty hands from messing the toff’s clothes.
“Mates,” said he, “rub your hands clean on the seats of yer trouseys,
and help me lift the aristocracy on to the road, so’s the dint in his
head fits the curb, see!”
They lifted him amongst them.
“Steady. Now over ’ere a bit. That’s it. The curb just about fits
where the bloomin’ lead hit his skull.... What a lovely accident he
looks to be sure!... Charlie,” he winked at the others, “yer hit him
harder than there was need for--he’s got a hole in his thinking-box
yer could put a good character into.... Steady. That’s it, leave
him alone, can’t yer!... Now, mates, shall we go and make ourselves
conspicuous a-helpin’ the aristocracy to find their cabs--or shall we
call the police?... On the whole, I’m for helpin’ the aristocracy. The
police might think the lady had led the gent down here--for reasons.
Good-night, lady.”
He took off his hat with mock solemnity.
Charlie gave a warning whistle:
“I hear a friend of mine coming down the road,” he said. “Scatter.”
They strode off into the darkness.
The girl stooped down and looked at the fallen man.
“My God!” said she, brushing tears from her eyes--“yes. They might
think I had--lured the poor fool--to it!”
She stepped into the fog and followed the sound of the retreating
footsteps up the street to the hurly-burly of the town.
CHAPTER XCII
_Wherein it is seen that the Blood of the Oldest Families may run to
Inconsequence and Mere Vulgar Stains_
Lord Wyntwarde, his face purple with anger and his mouth uttering vile
oaths that roused ugly echoes in the ruddy old Elizabethan alleys,
strode up and down the flagged walk of the ancient cobbled courtyard
before his stables; and the family lawyer walked beside him anxiously,
with “Tut, tut!” and “Listen to me--_one_ moment,” and “Be reasonable,
Lord Wyntwarde!” whilst the wrathful lord, with much insistence of
reiteration, roundly wished him on a far and hot journey, being free
from all diffidence in naming the climate.
The coachman’s small children stood shrinking from the fury of his
lordship’s wrath, clinging to each other at the door of their home,
peeping coyly over timid little shoulders with large eyes of awe at
the cursing tyrant who strode before them. They were dressed for
travel--being tied up in large woollen mufflers that seem to be
the peculiar badge of the children of cottagers when packed for a
journey. Their tearful mother kept bringing down hastily-made parcels
and placing them about the door. In the minds of the little ones,
behind their wondering eyes, was the picture of their father, the old
coachman, sitting in the midst of his dismantled home upstairs, crying
like a child.
“Lord Wyntwarde,” said the lawyer, “you must pull yourself together
and----”
“Oh, go to----”
“Hush--you must pull yourself together and listen to me----”
“Oh, go to the devil----”
“If you will not come indoors, then I must say it here, within earshot
of these people.”
“I tell you I stand over these hounds until they have packed out of
the place--do you hear me!” roared the stout old lord of the place.
“Damn it, Overshaw, do you only understand lawyers’ swindling English?
God in heaven, is my talk too cursedly effeminate for you that I must
supply you with a glossary at the end of it? I have sworn it, by the
living God, that these people leave my land before the sun sets--or,”
he added hoarsely, “I go to hell for it.... Put that into your damned
attorney’s gabble if you will--and I’ll sign it.”
He turned about as he walked and continued his striding. The lawyer
turned and walked with him:
“Lord Wyntwarde, I will not remind you of a wise old saying that the
sun should not go down upon our wrath.”
“Oh, damn your figurative landscapes,” said my lord.
“I do not ask you to save yourself from an injustice--I am only asking
you to save yourself from an indignity--worse--from utter shame----”
“What have I to do with shame?”
“What indeed, my lord?”
The other laughed:
“By God,” said he--“you’re a wit.”
“T ask you to give me ten minutes’ close attention----”
“I will not give it.”
The old lawyer shrugged his shoulders:
“That is flat.... Then I must say it now and here. Your coachman yonder
does not even suspect the truth. He has served you loyally through rain
and sunshine and cold and heat for twenty and nine years. His loyalty
blinds him to all but shame for the master of his house----”
The master of the house laughed roughly:
“Go on, Overshaw, go on--take sides with my grooms--go on. By the
splendour of God, a most wondrous coachman!”
“But he will know it within twenty-four hours after leaving this place.
God forgive me, he ought to know it now--from my lips. My loyalty to
your house brings me near to compounding a felony.”
“For God’s sake, talk sense, Overshaw! What is the plain English for
all this?”
“Listen: your son Ponsonby has seduced this man’s daughter--which is
bad enough. But the girl is only fifteen--the which is a felony.”
The old lord burst into a storm of oaths:
“Damn it, Overshaw; don’t I tell you I was for ever drumming it into
the lad’s ears that there were enough married women of his own class
in the county for any sane man’s pleasure--and he has descended to my
coachman’s wenches! It’s the filthy vulgarity of the fellow----”
He stopped--his bloodshot eyes catching the sneer upon the old lawyer’s
lips:
“What d’ye say?” he bawled.
The lawyer put his hand on the arm of the other:
“Lord Wyntwarde, you do not understand--the girl is fifteen--this is a
common felony--if the young fellow does not marry the girl, he may have
to go to gaol--to the common gaol----”
“I am not his keeper--curse him!”
“No,” said the old lawyer drily--“but do you want the criminal law to
usurp your duties?... There is a child coming. Even if this youth put
aside common honour, common justice, as he has done before, it cannot
now save him. All depends on how you treat the girl’s father.”
A groom, on a big bay hunter, came clattering into the courtyard,
started at the sight that met him there, leaped off his horse, and
walking up to the lawyer, touched his hat and held out a yellow
envelope:
“Telegram--for you, sir.”
The old gentleman’s hands shook as he tore open the cover.
He read it; and, as he read, his face went deathly pale:
“Good God!” said he.
He glanced at the striding figure of the lord of this splendid place,
who paced up and down the courtyard.
“That will do, my man,” said he. “There is no answer.... Stay! keep
that horse saddled--I may want you--and before long.”
The groom saluted and went and stood by the horse.
The lawyer gazed under his brows at the striding lord; watched him take
a couple of turns; went at last and set himself across his path. The
other halted when he came to him.
“Lord Wyntwarde,” said the old lawyer hoarsely--“I must go back to town
at once. Our arguments are at an end--the reason for them is at an
end.... Your son is beyond the reach of penalty.” The old man took off
his hat. “He must plead before a more august judge than his own father.”
The other, his face scarlet, stared at him with bloodshot eyes of
irritable inquiry. He struck his boot with his whip, savagely, once,
twice, thrice:
“Well--what’s the cursed melodrama now?”
“Your son has been found, early this morning. He has fallen--it is
thought--he was killed in a street brawl--last night--and has lain
where he fell till this morning. It is suspected that there has been
foul play.” The old lawyer’s chin dropped on his chest: “God forgive
the poor boy his many sins and weaknesses!”
When the old gentleman roused from his mood and put on his hat, the
red anger of his lord had slowly turned to black hate; and the lawyer
waited in a strange wonder--a wonder as to what could be passing
through this harsh old brain at such a moment----
The black mood found tongue at last:
“By God,” said Lord Wyntwarde hoarsely, and struck the air with his
clenched hand, “Caroline and her cub get the estates after all!” He
laughed bitterly. “The devil has cheated me--Death plays with loaded
dice.... No, by God, I have it”--he laughed loud--“I’ll baulk them
yet--I’ll marry this fifteen-year-old she-dog myself. By the splendour
of God, my coachman shall give her ladyship away, and yonder groom
shall be my best man.”
He burst into a loud roar of coarse laughter--suddenly
gasped--struggled for air--reeled--put out his hands as though
blindness had come upon him--uttered a foul curse, lurched forward, and
fell upon his face.
They lifted him up....
Lord Wyntewarde’s life had been one long implied boast of blood.
Indeed, he had never realized that he had had too much. The blood of
the family had always gone to the head....
The grooms being fore-gathered in the harness-room that night plumbed
the deeps of the dead man:
“That was a noisy Bulgarian,” said one--“but he had a fine seat on a
horse.”
The vicar of Cavil had long owed a grudge against the castle for the
evil things that therein were done, or said to be done--indeed, it had
caused much sly winking and nodding amongst the bucolic wits. But, for
his dignity’s sake and the sake of the soil that had bred him, his
sermon left the dead lord severely alone; however, he improved the
occasion of the young man’s death to point out the evils that come of
the pursuit of art by a youth who should have been devoting himself to
a gentleman’s life; and in particular he laid it down that had this
youth not been leaving the immoral precincts of a London theatre on the
night on which he met his violent death, he would not have met that
death.
Which, of a truth, was as it might have been.
CHAPTER XCIII
_Wherein our Hero comes into a Wide Heritage_
The sunny morning was well spent, but Noll was pacing restlessly up and
down his little bedroom at the hotel. His breakfast, scarce tasted, lay
on a tray at the foot of his bed. His design of finding Betty before
he discovered himself to his own people threatened to be baulked; and
defeat fretted his impatient will. So he paced--leopard-like--when
there came a tap at his door, and the maid screamed through the panels
that a gentleman waited upon him below.
When Noll, descending the stairs, entered the dingy sitting-room of the
little hotel, an old gentleman rose to meet him; and Noll found himself
in the presence of the best and most loyal friend his house knew, or
was destined to know--the head of the legal firm of Overshaw.
“You must be Oliver Baddlesmere,” said the old lawyer--“you are so like
your mother;” and the courtesies passed.
“I am the family lawyer,” said he simply. “Your mother told me you were
in Paris--but in Paris I was given your address at Mr. Netherby Gomme’s
here in town. I gathered therefore that you had reasons for your family
not knowing your address.”
“Yes,” said Noll.
“I trust you have no engagements to-day, Mr. Noll.”
“I have a serious business, but it must wait a day if you can show
me the reason for urgency,” said Noll. “For I am baffled, and have
found no clue. I am baffled in a search. I have lost my wife,” he said
simply--“and must find her.”
The old eyes grew serious, then twinkled.
“That is the first time I have heard a sentiment of duty from a
Ffolliott--from the head of your house,” he said.... “And I am an old
man.”
Noll went and looked out of the window:
“Why drag in the Ffolliotts?” he asked wearily.
“Your mother came into the title and estates three days ago,” said the
lawyer.
There was a long pause.
At last Noll said hoarsely:
“I must find Betty.”
The old lawyer smiled inwardly.
Noll brooded for awhile:
“I shall suffocate in this dingy place,” said he. “Let us go out to St.
James’s Park--we can talk there in the fresh air--and I love the place.”
They walked by Charing Cross and Pall Mall to St. James’s Park, and
thus, and amidst the laughter of children, Noll heard that he had come
near to the great responsibilities of his manhood.
The grassy place about him teemed with sweet associations of Betty;
and his mind kept straying away from the recital of his fortune and
the duties that had come to him to the rustle of sweet-scented ghostly
skirts that swept the grass and the fragrance of a girl’s dainty being.
And the old lawyer, shrewd man of the world, suspected it, and was glad
of it....
The old gentleman arose, and put his last questions:
“Oh, another point, before we part--your cousin wronged a young
girl--indeed, he wronged several--and deserted them. What do you wish
to be done?”
He looked keenly at the young fellow before him.
“I, as my mother will do, accept the burdens of my heritage with the
honours,” said the young fellow--“the debts with the credit.” He smiled
faintly. “I am afraid I am not a man of fashion.”
“You wish the girl provided for?”
Noll nodded:
“It is only in common honour,” he said. “I wish I could wholly blot out
the damage. My--wife--would have had it so.”
The old gentleman put his hand on the young fellow’s shoulder:
“Oliver,” said he--“you are bringing more to your house than it is
bringing to you.... Good-bye!”
CHAPTER XCIV
_Wherein it is suspected that the Garden of Eden was Well Lost_
Noll, restless, his brain teeming with the things that had befallen him
this day, fretted with the baffling dilemma of finding Betty, and alone
with his conflicting moods, paced his little room until long after the
darkness came into it, when he roused, famished but unhungry, flung
out of the hotel, and turned aimlessly northwards, pacing beside the
sounding traffic into the darkness of the night, that hung upon the
more quiet ways where law students have their dingy habitations.
He wandered towards the old quarters where he had strolled the
pavements gaily, a handsome youth, with a handsome girl by his
side--every flagstone was familiar to him--every dingiest street-corner
held a wan smile beneath its soot.
As he turned into the quaint old street where Betty had lodged, he was
startled to see her figure flitting in front of him.
He thought for a moment that he must be suffering from faintness--it
came to him that he had not broken his fast since morning. But the
sound of her well-known step, the light poise of her lithe figure,
left no doubt; and he cautiously followed her, hanging back, afraid to
startle her.
She turned of a sudden, with that forthright aimful intent that
directed all her acts; ran up some steps; set a key in the lock of the
door-latch; and, the door yawning open, she stepped into the blackness
and passed out of the night.
The thud of the slammed door came muffled on the night; and Noll,
striding out, crossed the street and arrived opposite the house
where he had spent many a happy tryst. It was the last place in the
world whither he would have expected Betty to go into hiding--and he
realized, with a whimsical smile, Betty’s keen sense of humour and her
shrewd capacity, in boldly deciding to hide herself away in her old
haunts.
The house was wholly in darkness. Not a soul was astir.
Noll brooded upon it....
At last came a light into a window.
Betty had mounted to her room.
It was the topmost attic of the house--where servants sleep.
Suddenly the singing at his heart ceased, Noll bent brooding wits on
the question as to what grinding toil kept Betty’s dainty fingers at
work at midnight to the winning of bread.
He crossed the road, walked up the steps, and rang the bell; and, as he
did so, a light came into the fan-shaped window over the door where he
stood.
There was a drawing of bolts, a key grated in the lock, and the door
swung open.
Before him, lit by the candle that she held high above her head, stood
a pretty little woman, much overdressed above the extreme height of the
fashion with the curious picturesque exaggeration that is the pretty
habit of London theatrical folk--yet, for all her charming attire, a
daughter of the people. She was in her hat still, as though not long
come in.
“Victoria May Alice!” he exclaimed.
She nodded pertly:
“God forgive me, that’s me,” she said.
She shaded the light from her eyes with one hand, and stared at the
youth:
“Well, translate me to uttermost leading parts at the West End Theatres
if it ain’t Mister Noll!... You ain’t forgotten Victoria May Alice,
anyhow--there’s no error in _that_ contract.”
Noll stepped into the house, shut the door behind him with his heel,
and took her hand:
“Victoria May Alice, I could almost kiss you,” said he, wringing her
fingers. “I’m so glad to know you are staying here--with her.”
She laughed:
“Stayin’, Mr. Noll?... I own the whole bloomin’ palace,” said she.
“When I’m not at the theatre I am running _this_ show. I go behind the
scenes for sordid tragedy; and I listen to lodgers’ complaints for
roaring comedy--see? And when you’ve done that often enough, one week
with another, you’ve eaten a pretty thick slice of life, I can warn
you.... But, you know, you ain’t listenin’ to a word I’m sayin’.”
He laughed embarrassedly:
“Betty is upstairs,” he said.
She nodded:
“H’m, h’m--yes,” she said. “You know such a lot you’d almost think you
were her husband, Mr. Noll.”
He let the thrust pass him.
“Victoria,” said he--“why does she work so late?”
“Work?”
“Yes--there’s a light in her room.”
Victoria May Alice looked at him whimsically:
“Lord,” said she, “you men are mostly only fit for comic opera....
Well, if you want to know within an acre or two of the truth, call
again when the cats are coming home.”
“What? Till daylight?” he gasped.
“So help me Henery Irving,” she nodded. “You’d see that light burning
still when the cockydoos are crowing in the lemon of the morning.”
“Good God!” said Noll hoarsely.
“That’s right. Put it on to God,” she said. “It’s so like a man.”
She looked at him, and added drily:
“But, of course, Mr. Noll, you don’t know.... How should you? You’re
her husband.... I think you’d better go up and pull her nut-brown
hair about the waste of candles, myself, eh! What’s the good of being
married to a woman if you can’t order her about?”
Noll nodded, smiling sadly:
“Yes, I must see her--at once.”
“Come along then,” said she, leading the way upstairs. She put her
fingers on her lips as sign for silence, and after that she spoke never
a word until she reached the topmost landing, knocked at the attic
door, flung it open; and, as Noll stepped into the room, shut it again
softly, and crept gently down the stairs....
Before the snowy bed stood Betty in her white night-gown and in her
arms she held a little child, crooning to it a low-voiced lullaby.
She looked up as the door opened:
“Noll!”
Noll strode over to her, dumb with an overwhelming passion for her, his
heart leaping with a great surprise, walked as in a dream, knelt down
at her feet, put his arms about her limbs and buried his face in the
thin fabric of her nightdress.
“Betty,” he said hoarsely--“why did you not tell me this?”
She laughed sadly:
“I tried to tell you--so many times, Noll--but--you would not
listen----”
“Ah me,” said he, holding her close (how he loved the musical
voice!)--“I have been such a fool--such--a fool! But I have found you,
dear heart, at last--and in finding you I have found all.” And he
added: “I have suffered, Betty.”
She laid her slender fingers upon his head.
He was shaken with a sob.
She stroked his hair:
“I have so longed for you, Noll--it has been very lonely. The little
one----”
Noll was sobbing like a child.
She bent down with the babe, lifted Noll’s face in her hand and kissed
him:
“Hush, Noll, dear heart,” she said--“you mustn’t do that. This is no
time for tears. We have come into our kingdom.” She laughed with tears
in the laugh. “And it is so near the stars.”
“I am glad to be home,” he said. And he added with a sad laugh: “It
does not make me giddy being near the stars, sweetheart--I have lived
up there before--with you.”
She stroked his hair:
“Come,” she said--“she is fast asleep.”
She led him to a small bed. She bent over it to turn down the blankets
and sheets and tucked the little one away, her red-brown hair falling
about the sleeping child.
He knelt down by the little white cot, a strange singing at his heart,
his limbs all a-tremble, and, putting out his hand, touched the tiny
hand of the sleeping child, who opened small warm fingers and clasped
his thumb.
His eyes watched the little one hungrily.
Betty sat down sideways on the cot and gazed at them.
“I wonder what you think of her, Noll,” she said.
“She is very beautiful,” he said.
Betty laughed gently:
“You wouldn’t think it, Noll; but she has her faults,” she said. “It’s
no use disguising these things, you are bound to discover them--she is
self-willed, tyrannical, unscrupulous--ah, how she tramples one’s heart
under her woolly little shoes!--she is greedy, frets under opposition,
is ridiculously conceited about her mother, I am afraid will be as
arrogant about her father as he is about himself, and altogether
displays a lack of modesty and of ladylike reserve that causes me the
gravest anxiety about her moral attributes.... You would never be able
to disown her, Noll--she has all your vices.”
Noll smiled as the tears trickled down his face:
“I am afraid, Betty,” said he--“that a mother’s disparagements are but
veiled praise.”
He held her hand in his.
They sat so for a long while.
As he gazed down upon the little one, it came to him that his mother
had so looked down upon him, with a mighty hunger at her heart--that
his every pain had been a pain to her--his every smile a smile in her
heart. And what had he given in return? He felt now the desolation
it must have wrought in the silent mother’s heart when he eagerly
left the house and sallied forth to his cubhood, unrealizing that his
empty place echoed with the sound of a dead child’s laughter and the
merriment of the days of his innocence.
Would this little one so discard him--and Betty?
Thus, in this cradle was the beginning of that open confidence between
him and his mother that lit their love from that time. The grandchild
leads the wandering feet home again.
The tears welled into Noll’s eyes, and his lip trembled.
Betty stroked his hand:
“Hush, Noll--I have wanted you. That is enough, isn’t it?” He bowed his
head.
“Noll,” said Betty--“thou wilt be kind to her.... If she lose me she
has only you.” And she added after awhile: “The child whose spirit is
broken cannot be of the Masterfolk.”
Noll lifted her fingers to his lips.
Betty bent forward and kissed him; she laughed happily:
“Noll,” said she--“Eve did well when she flung away Paradise to know
the love of a little child.”
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
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