Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle. The lights were low and the house only half full when we reached them.
“It seems very orderly and – and respectable,” whispered my mother. There seemed a touch of disappointment in her tone.
“We are rather early,” replied Barbara; “it will be livelier when the band comes in and they turn up the gas.”
But even when this happened my mother was not content. “There is so little room for the actors,” she complained.
It was explained to her that the green curtain would go up, that the stage lay behind.
So we waited, my mother sitting stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat, holding me tightly by the hand; I believe with some vague idea of flight, should out of that vault-scented gloom the devil suddenly appear to claim us for his own. But before the curtain was quite up she had forgotten him.
You poor folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps oftener, what do you know of plays? You see no drama, you see but middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly pretending to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the Chemist, making believe to be a haughty Princess. How can you, a grown man, waste money on a seat to witness such tomfoolery! What we saw was something very different. A young and beautiful girl – true, not a lady by birth, being merely the daughter of an honest yeoman, but one equal in all the essentials of womanhood to the noblest in the land – suffered before our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had one not seen it for oneself, one would never have believed Fate could have accumulated upon the head of any single individual. Beside her woes our own poor troubles sank into insignificance. We had used to grieve, as my mother in a whisper reminded my father, if now and again we had not been able to afford meat for dinner. This poor creature, driven even from her wretched attic, compelled to wander through the snow without so much as an umbrella to protect her, had not even a crust to eat; and yet never lost her faith in Providence. It was a lesson, as my mother remarked afterwards, that she should never forget. And virtue had been triumphant, let shallow cynics say what they will. Had we not proved it with our own senses? The villain – I think his Christian name, if one can apply the word “Christian” in connection with such a fiend, was Jasper – had never really loved the heroine. He was incapable of love. My mother had felt this before he had been on the stage five minutes, and my father – in spite of protests from callous people behind who appeared to be utterly indifferent to what was going on under their very noses – had agreed with her. What he was in love with was her fortune – the fortune that had been left to her by her uncle in Australia, but about which nobody but the villain knew anything. Had she swerved a hair’s breadth from the course of almost supernatural rectitude, had her love for the hero ever weakened, her belief in him – in spite of damning evidence to the contrary – for a moment wavered, then wickedness might have triumphed. How at times, knowing all the facts but helpless to interfere, we trembled, lest deceived by the cruel lies the villain told her; she should yield to importunity. How we thrilled when, in language eloquent though rude, she flung his false love back into his teeth. Yet still we feared. We knew well that it was not the hero who had done the murder. “Poor dear,” as Amy would have called him, he was quite incapable of doing anything requiring one-half as much smartness. We knew that it was not he, poor innocent lamb! who had betrayed the lady with the French accent; we had heard her on the subject and had formed a very shrewd conjecture. But appearances, we could not help admitting, were terribly to his disfavour. The circumstantial evidence against him would have hanged an Archbishop. Could she in face of it still retain her faith? There were moments when my mother restrained with difficulty her desire to rise and explain.
Between the acts Barbara would whisper to her that she was not to mind, because it was only a play, and that everything would be sure to come right in the end.
“I know, my dear,” my mother would answer, laughing, “it is very foolish of me; I forget. Paul, when you see me getting excited, you must remind me.”
But of what use was I in such case! I, who only by holding on to the arms of my seat could keep myself from swarming down on to the stage to fling myself between this noble damsel and her persecutor – this fair-haired, creamy angel in whose presence for the time being I had forgotten even Barbara.
The end came at last. The uncle from Australia was not dead. The villain – bungler as well as knave – had killed the wrong man, somebody of no importance whatever. As a matter of fact, the comic man himself was the uncle from Australia – had been so all along. My mother had had a suspicion of this from the very first. She told us so three times, to make up, I suppose, for not having mentioned it before. How we cheered and laughed, in spite of the tears in our eyes.
By pure accident it happened to be the first night of the piece, and the author, in response to much shouting and whistling, came before the curtain. He was fat and looked commonplace; but I deemed him a genius, and my mother said he had a good face, and waved her handkerchief wildly; while my father shouted “Bravo!” long after everybody else had finished; and people round about muttered “packed house,” which I didn’t understand at the time, but came to later.
And stranger still, it happened to be before that very same curtain that many years later I myself stepped forth to make my first bow as a playwright. I saw the house but dimly, for on such occasion one’s vision is apt to be clouded. All that I saw clearly was in the front row of the second circle – a sweet face laughing though the tears were in her eyes; and she waved to me a handkerchief. And on one side of her stood a gallant gentleman with merry eyes who shouted “Bravo!” and on the other a dreamy-looking lad; but he appeared disappointed, having expected better work from me. And the fourth face I could not see, for it was turned away from me.
Barbara, determined on completeness, insisted upon supper. In those days respectability fed at home; but one resort possible there was, an eating-house with some pretence to gaiety behind St. Clement Danes, and to that she led us. It was a long, narrow room, divided into wooden compartments, after the old coffee-house plan, a gangway down the centre. Now we should call it a dismal hole, and closing the door hasten away. But to Adam, Eve in her Sunday fig-leaves was a stylishly dressed woman; and to my eyes, with its gilded mirrors and its flaring gas, the place seemed a palace.
Barbara ordered oysters, a fish that familiarity with its empty shell had made me curious concerning. Truly no spot on the globe is so rich in oyster shells as the East End of London. A stranger might be led to the impression (erroneous) that the customary lunch of the East End labourer consists of oysters. How they collect there in such quantities is a mystery, though Washburn, to whom I once presented the problem, found no difficulty in solving it to his own satisfaction: “To the rich man the oyster; to the poor man the shell; thus are the Creator’s gifts divided among all His creatures; none being sent empty away.” For drink the others had stout and I had ginger beer. The waiter, who called me “Sir,” advised against this mixture; but among us all the dominating sentiment by this time was that nothing really mattered very much. Afterwards my father called for a cigar and boldly lighted it, though my mother looked anxious; and fortunately perhaps it would not draw. And then it came out that he himself had once written a play.
“You never told me of that,” complained my mother.
“It was a long while ago,” replied my father; “nothing came of it.”
“It might have been a success,” said my mother; “you always had a gift for writing.”
“I must look it over again,” said my father; “I had quite forgotten it. I have an impression it wasn’t at all bad.”
“It can be of much help,” said my mother, “a good play. It makes one think.”
We put Barbara into a cab and rode home ourselves inside a ‘bus. My mother was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her to lean against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. A coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man’s arm round her likewise, and she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his coat.
“They can do with a bit of nursing, can’t they?” said the man with a grin to the conductor.
“Ah, they’re just kids,” agreed the conductor, sympathetically, “that’s what they are, all of ‘em, just kids.”
So the day ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it! – no comic uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life! Even my mother at moments was quite irritable.
We were much together again, my father and I, about this time. Often, making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him, he leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm. To this day I can always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road. And on Saturday afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb the hill and sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together, watching the dim vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.
At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying. The “year to two” of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I know it was his great heart rising to his need.
The comprehension came to me suddenly. It was one afternoon in early spring. I was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always much disorganised. The ‘bus on which I was riding became entangled in a block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of physical pain. I jumped from the ‘bus and began to run, and the terror and the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might be dead before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a smile as usual, and I flung myself sobbing into his arms.
I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had had a fear something had happened to him, for from that time forward he dropped all reserve with me, and talked openly of our approaching parting.
“It might have come to us earlier, my dear boy,” he would say with his arm round me, “or it might have been a little later. A year or so one way or the other, what does it matter? And it is only for a little while, Paul. We shall meet again.”
But I could not answer him, for clutch them to me as I would, all my beliefs – the beliefs in which I had been bred, the beliefs that until then I had never doubted, in that hour of their first trial, were falling from me. I could not even pray. If I could have prayed for anything, it would have been for my father’s life. But if prayer were all powerful, as they said, would our loved ones ever die? Man has not faith enough, they would explain; if he had there would be no parting. So the Lord jests with His creatures, offering with the one hand to snatch back with the other. I flung the mockery from me. There was no firm foothold anywhere. What were all the religions of the word but narcotics with which Humanity seeks to dull its pain, drugs in which it drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble that death pricks.
I do not mean my thoughts took this form. I was little more than a lad, and to the young all thought is dumb, speaking only with a cry. But they were there, vague, inarticulate. Thoughts do not come to us as we grow older. They are with us all our lives. We learn their language, that is all.
One fair still evening it burst from me. We had lingered in the Park longer than usual, slowly pacing the broad avenue leading from the Observatory to the Heath. I poured forth all my doubts and fears – that he was leaving me for ever, that I should never see him again, I could not believe. What could I do to believe?
“I am glad you have spoken, Paul,” he said, “it would have been sad had we parted not understanding each other. It has been my fault. I did not know you had these doubts. They come to all of us sooner or later. But we hide them from one another. It is foolish.”
“But tell me,” I cried, “what can I do? How can I make myself believe?”
“My dear lad,” answered my father, “how can it matter what we believe or disbelieve? It will not alter God’s facts. Would you liken Him to some irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?”
“What do you believe,” I asked, “father, really I mean.”
The night had fallen. My father put his arm round me and drew me to him.
“That we are God’s children, little brother,” he answered, “that what He wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be best. I cannot think that He will let us die: that were to think of Him as without purpose. But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him. ‘Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.’”
We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.
“‘Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity’ – you remember the verse – Faith in God’s goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may be fulfiled. But these concern but ourselves – the greatest of all is Charity.”
Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and there a point of light.
“Be kind, that is all it means,” continued my father. “Often we do what we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We cannot understand – maybe the old laws we have misread. But the new Law, that we love one another – all creatures He has made; that is so clear. And if it be that we are here together only for a little while, Paul, the future dark, how much the greater need have we of one another.”
I looked up into my father’s face, and the peace that shone from it slid into my soul and gave me strength.
CHAPTER IX.
OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL
Loves of my youth, whither are ye vanished? Tubby of the golden locks; Langley of the dented nose; Shamus stout of heart but faint of limb, easy enough to “down,” but utterly impossible to make to cry: “I give you best;” Neal the thin; and Dicky, “dicky Dick” the fat; Ballett of the weeping eye; Beau Bunnie lord of many ties, who always fought in black kid gloves; all ye others, ye whose names I cannot recollect, though I well remember ye were very dear to me, whither are ye vanished, where haunt your creeping ghosts? Had one told me then there would come a day I should never see again your merry faces, never hear your wild, shrill whoop of greeting, never feel again the warm clasp of your inky fingers, never fight again nor quarrel with you, never hate you, never love you, could I then have borne the thought, I wonder?
Once, methinks, not long ago, I saw you, Tubby, you with whom so often I discovered the North Pole, probed the problem of the sources of the Nile, (Have you forgotten, Tubby, our secret camping ground beside the lonely waters of the Regent’s Park canal, where discussing our frugal meal of toasted elephant’s tongue – by the uninitiated mistakable for jumbles – there would break upon our trained hunters’ ear the hungry lion or tiger’s distant roar, mingled with the melancholy, long-drawn growling of the Polar Bear, growing ever in volume and impatience until half-past four precisely; and we would snatch our rifles, and with stealthy tread and every sense alert make our way through the jungle – until stopped by the spiked fencing round the Zoological Gardens?) I feel sure it was you, in spite of your side whiskers and the greyness and the thinness of your once clustering golden locks. You were hurrying down Throgmorton Street chained to a small black bag. I should have stopped you, but that I had no time to spare, having to catch a train at Liverpool Street and to get shaved on the way. I wonder if you recognised me: you looked at me a little hard, I thought. Gallant, kindly hearted Shamus, you who fought once for half an hour to save a frog from being skinned; they tell me you are now an Income Tax assessor; a man, it is reported, with power of disbelief unusual among even Inland Revenue circles; of little faith, lacking in the charity that thinketh no evil. May Providence direct you to other districts than to mine.
So Time, Nature’s handy-man, bustles to and fro about the many rooms, making all things tidy, covers with sweet earth the burnt volcanoes, turns to use the debris of the ages, smoothes again the ground above the dead, heals again the beech bark marred by lovers.
In the beginning I was far from being a favourite with my schoolmates, and this was the first time trouble came to dwell with me. Later, we men and women generally succeed in convincing ourselves that whatever else we may have missed in life, popularity in a greater or less degree we have at all events secured, for without it altogether few of us, I think, would care to face existence. But where the child suffers keener than the man is in finding himself exposed to the cold truth without the protecting clothes of self-deception. My ostracism was painfully plain to me, and, as was my nature, I brooded upon it in silence.
“Can you run?” asked of me one day a most important personage whose name I have forgotten. He was head of the Lower Fourth, a tall youth with a nose like a beak, and the manner of one born to authority. He was the son of a draper in the Edgware Road, and his father failing, he had to be content for a niche in life with a lower clerkship in the Civil Service. But to us youngsters he always appeared a Duke of Wellington in embryo, and under other circumstances might, perhaps, have become one.
“Yes,” I answered. As a matter of fact it was my one accomplishment, and rumour of it maybe had reached him.
“Run round the playground twice at your fastest,” he commanded; “let me see you.”
I clinched my fists and charged off. How grateful I was to him for having spoken to me, the outcast of the class, thus publicly, I could only show by my exertions to please him. When I drew up before him I was panting hard, but I could see that he was satisfied.
“Why don’t the fellows like you?” he asked bluntly.
If only I could have stepped out of my shyness, spoken my real thoughts! “O Lord of the Lower Fourth! You upon whom success – the only success in life worth having – has fallen as from the laps of the gods! You to whom all Lower Fourth hearts turn! tell me the secret of this popularity. How may I acquire it? No price can be too great for me to pay for it. Vain little egoist that I am, it is the sum of my desires, and will be till the long years have taught me wisdom. The want of it embitters all my days. Why does silence fall upon their chattering groups when I draw near? Why do they drive me from their games? What is it shuts me out from them, repels them from me? I creep into the corners and shed scalding tears of shame. I watch with envious eyes and ears all you to whom the wondrous gift is given. What is your secret? Is it Tommy’s swagger? Then I will swagger, too, with anxious heart, with mingled fear and hope. But why – why, seeing that in Tommy they admire it, do they wait for me with imitations of cock-a-doodle-do, strut beside me mimicking a pouter pigeon? Is it Dicky’s playfulness? – Dicky, who runs away with their balls, snatches their caps from off their heads, springs upon their backs when they are least expecting it?
“Why should Dicky’s reward be laughter, and mine a bloody nose and a widened, deepened circle of dislike? I am no heavier than Dicky; if anything a pound or two lighter. Is it Billy’s friendliness? I too would fling my arms about their necks; but from me they angrily wrench themselves free. Is indifference the best plan? I walk apart with step I try so hard to render careless; but none follows, no little friendly arm is slipped through mine. Should one seek to win one’s way by kind offices? Ah, if one could! How I would fag for them. I could do their sums for them – I am good at sums – write their impositions for them, gladly take upon myself their punishments, would they but return my service with a little love and – more important still – a little admiration.”
But all I could find to say was, sulkily: “They do like me, some of them.” I dared not, aloud, acknowledge the truth.
“Don’t tell lies,” he answered; “you know they don’t – none of them.” And I hung my head.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he continued in his lordly way; “I’ll give you a chance. We’re starting hare and hounds next Saturday; you can be a hare. You needn’t tell anybody. Just turn up on Saturday and I’ll see to it. Mind, you’ll have to run like the devil.”
He walked away without waiting for my answer, leaving me to meet Joy running towards me with outstretched hands. The great moment comes to all of us; to the politician, when the Party whip slips from confabulation with the Front Bench to congratulate him, smiling, on his really admirable little speech; to the youthful dramatist, reading in his bed-sitting-room the managerial note asking him to call that morning at eleven; to the subaltern, beckoned to the stirrup of his chief – the moment when the sun breaks through the morning mists, and the world lies stretched before us, our way clear.
Obeying orders, I gave no hint in school of the great fortune that had come to me; but hurrying home, I exploded in the passage before the front door could be closed behind me.
“I am to be a hare because I run so fast. Anybody can be a hound, but there’s only two hares, and they all want me. And can I have a jersey? We begin next Saturday. He saw me run. I ran twice round the playground. He said I was splendid! Of course, it’s a great honour to be a hare. We start from Hampstead Heath. And may I have a pair of shoes?”
The jersey and the shoes my mother and I purchased that very day, for the fear was upon me that unless we hastened, the last blue and white striped jersey in London might be sold, and the market be empty of running shoes. That evening, before getting into bed, I dressed myself in full costume to admire myself before the glass; and from then till the end of the week, to the terror of my mother, I practised leaping over chairs, and my method of descending stairs was perilous and roundabout. But, as I explained to them, the credit of the Lower Fourth was at stake, and banisters and legs equally of small account as compared with fame and honour; and my father, nodding his head, supported me with manly argument; but my mother added to her prayers another line.
Saturday came. The members of the hunt were mostly boys who lived in the neighbourhood; so the arrangement was that at half-past two we should meet at the turnpike gate outside the Spaniards. I brought my lunch with me and ate it in Regent’s Park, and then took the ‘bus to the Heath. One by one the others came up. Beyond mere glances, none of them took any notice of me. I was wearing my ordinary clothes over my jersey. I knew they thought I had come merely to see them start, and I hugged to myself the dream of the surprise that was in store for them, and of which I should be the hero. He came, one of the last, our leader and chief, and I sidled up behind him and waited, while he busied himself organising and constructing.
“But we’ve only got one hare,” cried one of them. “We ought to have two, you know, in case one gets blown.”
“We’ve got two,” answered the Duke. “Think I don’t know what I’m about? Young Kelver’s going to be the other one.”
Silence fell upon the meet.
“Oh, I say, we don’t want him,” at last broke in a voice. “He’s a muff.”
“He can run,” explained the Duke.
“Let him run home,” came another voice, which was greeted with laughter.
“You’ll run home in a minute yourself,” threatened the Duke, “if I have any of your cheek. Who’s captain here – you or me? Now, young ‘un, are you ready?”
I had commenced unbuttoning my jacket, but my hands fell to my side. “I don’t want to come,” I answered, “if they don’t want me.”
“He’ll get his feet wet,” suggested the boy who had spoken first. “Don’t spoil him, he’s his mother’s pet.”
“Are you coming or are you not?” shouted the Duke, seeing me still motionless. But the tears were coming into my eyes and would not go back. I turned my face away without speaking.
“All right, stop then,” cried the Duke, who, like all authoritative people, was impatient above all things of hesitation. “Here, Keefe, you take the bag and be off. It’ll be dark before we start.”
My substitute snatched eagerly at the chance, and away went the hares, while I, still keeping my face hid, moved slowly off.
“Cry-baby!” shouted a sharp-eyed youngster.
“Let him alone,” growled the Duke; and I went on to where the cedars grew.
I heard them start off a few minutes later with a whoop. How could I go home, confess my disappointment, my shame? My father would be expecting me with many questions, my mother waiting for me with hot water and blankets. What explanation could I give that would not betray my miserable secret?
It was a chill, dismal afternoon, the Heath deserted, a thin rain commencing. I slipped off my shirt and jacket, and rolling them under my arm, trotted off alone, hare and hounds combined in one small carcass, to chase myself sadly by myself.
I see it still, that pathetically ridiculous little figure, jogging doggedly over the dank fields. Mile after mile it runs, the little idiot; jumping – sometimes falling into the muddy ditches: it seems anxious rather than otherwise to get itself into a mess; scrambling through the dripping hedges; swarming over tarry fence and slimy paling. On, on it pants – through Bishop’s Wood, by tangled Churchyard Bottom, where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At intervals it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy little rag of a handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its chief anxiety to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge farmhouses, to dart across highroads when nobody is looking. And so tear-smeared and mud-bespattered up the long rise of darkening Crouch End Lane, where to-night the electric light blazes from a hundred shops, and dead beat into the Seven Sisters Road station, there to tear off its soaked jersey; and then home to Poplar, with shameless account of the jolly afternoon that it has spent, of the admiration and the praise that it has won.
You poor, pitiful little brat! Popularity? it is a shadow. Turn your eyes towards it, and it shall ever run before you, escaping you. Turn your back upon it, walk joyously towards the living sun, and it shall follow you. Am I not right? Why, then, do you look at me, your little face twisted into that quizzical grin?
When one takes service with Deceit, one signs a contract that one may not break but under penalty. Maybe it was good for my health, those lonely runs; but oh, they were dreary! By a process of argument not uncommon I persuaded myself that truth was a matter of mere words, that so long as I had actually gone over the ground I described I was not lying. To further satisfy my conscience, I bought a big satchel and scattered from it torn-up paper as I ran.
“And they never catch you?” asked my mother.
“Oh, no, never; they never even get within sight of me.”
“Be careful, dear,” would advise my mother; “don’t overstrain yourself.” But I could see that she was proud of me.
And after awhile imagination came to my help, so that often I could hear behind me the sound of pursuing feet, catch through gaps in the trees a sight of a merry, host upon my trail, and would redouble my speed.
Thus, but for Dan, my loneliness would have been unbearable. His friendship was always there for me to creep to, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. To this day one may always know Dan’s politics: they are those of the Party out of power. Always without question one may know the cause that he will champion, the unpopular cause; the man he will defend, the man who is down.
“You are such an un-understandable chap,” complained a fellow Clubman to him once in my hearing. “I sometimes ask myself if you have any opinions at all.”
“I hate a crowd,” was Dan’s only confession of faith.
He never claimed anything from me in return for his affection; he was there for me to hold to when I wanted him. When, baffled in all my attempts to win the affections of others, I returned to him for comfort, he gave it me, without even relieving himself of friendly advice. When at length childish success came to me and I needed him less, he was neither hurt nor surprised. Other people – their thoughts, their actions, even when these concerned himself – never troubled him. He loved to bestow, but as to response was strangely indifferent; indeed, if anything, it bored him. His nature appeared to be that of the fountain, which fulfils itself by giving, but is unable to receive.
My popularity came to me unexpectedly after I had given up hoping for it; surprising me, annoying me. Gradually it dawned upon me that my company was being sought.
“Come along, Kelver,” would say the spokesman of one group; “we’re going part of your way home. You can walk with us.”
Maybe I would go with them, but more often, before we reached the gate, the delight of my society would be claimed by a rival troop.
“He’s coming with us this afternoon. He promised.”
“No, he didn’t.”