How the Man in Grey made ready for his Going.
The eighteen months that followed—for the end came sooner than we had expected—were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother had ever known; or if happy be not altogether the right word, let me say the most beautiful, and most nearly perfect. To them it was as though God in His sweet thoughtfulness had sent death to knock lightly at the door, saying: “Not yet. You have still a little longer to be together. In a little while.” In those last days all things false and meaningless they laid aside. Nothing was of real importance to them but that they should love each other, comforting each other, learning to understand each other. Again we lived poorly; but there was now no pitiful straining to keep up appearances, no haunting terror of what the neighbours might think. The petty cares and worries concerning matters not worth a moment's thought, the mean desires and fears with which we disfigure ourselves, fell from them. There came to them broader thought, a wider charity, a deeper pity. Their love grew greater even than their needs, overflowing towards at things. Sometimes, recalling these months, it has seemed to me that we make a mistake seeking to keep Death, God's go-between, ever from our thoughts. Is it not closing the door to a friend who would help us would we let him (for who knows life so well), whispering to us: “In a little while. Only a little longer that you have to be together. Is it worth taking so much thought for self? Is it worth while being unkind?”
From them a graciousness emanated pervading all around. Even my aunt Fan decided for the second time in her career to give amiability a trial. This intention she announced publicly to my mother and myself one afternoon soon after our return from Devonshire.
“I'm a beast of an old woman,” said my aunt, suddenly.
“Don't say that, Fan,” urged my mother.
“What's the good of saying 'Don't say it' when I've just said it,” snapped back my aunt.
“It's your manner,” explained my mother; “people sometimes think you disagreeable.”
“They'd be daft if they didn't,” interrupted my aunt. “Of course you don't really mean it,” continued my mother.
“Stuff and nonsense,” snorted my aunt; “does she think I'm a fool. I like being disagreeable. I like to see 'em squirming.”
My mother laughed.
“I can be agreeable,” continued my aunt, “if I choose. Nobody more so.”
“Then why not choose?” suggested my mother. “I tried it once,” said my aunt, “and it fell flat. Nothing could have fallen flatter.”
“It may not have attracted much attention,” replied my mother, with a smile, “but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention.”
“It wasn't only that,” returned my aunt, “it was that it gave no satisfaction to anybody. It didn't suit me. A disagreeable person is at their best when they are disagreeable.”
“I can hardly agree with you there,” answered my mother.
“I could do it again,” communed my aunt to herself. There was a suggestion of vindictiveness in her tones. “It's easy enough. Look at the sort of fools that are agreeable.”
“I'm sure you could be if you tried,” urged my mother.
“Let 'em have it,” continued my aunt, still to herself; “that's the way to teach 'em sense. Let 'em have it.”
And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother altogether wrong. My father was the first to notice the change.
“Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?” he asked. It was one evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into effect. “Nothing happened, has there?”
“No,” answered my mother, “nothing that I know of.”
“Her manner is so strange,” explained my father, “so—so weird.”
My mother smiled. “Don't say anything to her. She's trying to be agreeable.”
My father laughed and then looked wistful. “I almost wish she wouldn't,” he remarked; “we were used to it, and she was rather amusing.”
But my aunt, being a woman of will, kept her way; and about the same time that occurred tending to confirm her in her new departure. This was the introduction into our small circle of James Wellington Gadley. Properly speaking, it should have been Wellington James, that being the order in which he had been christened in the year 1815. But in course of time, and particularly during his school career, it had been borne in upon him that Wellington is a burdensome name for a commonplace mortal to bear, and very wisely he had reversed the arrangement. He was a slightly pompous but simpleminded little old gentleman, very proud of his position as head clerk to Mr. Stillwood, the solicitor to whom my father was now assistant. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal dated back to the Georges, and was a firm bound up with the history—occasionally shady—of aristocratic England. True, in these later years its glory was dwindling. Old Mr. Stillwood, its sole surviving representative, declined to be troubled with new partners, explaining frankly, in answer to all applications, that the business was a dying one, and that attempting to work it up again would be but putting new wine into worn-out skins. But though its clientele was a yearly diminishing quantity, much business yet remained to it, and that of a good class, its name being still a synonym for solid respectability; and my father had deemed himself fortunate indeed in securing such an appointment. James Gadley had entered the firm as office boy in the days of its pride, and had never awakened to the fact that it was not still the most important legal firm within the half mile radius from Lombard Street. Nothing delighted him more than to discuss over and over again the many strange affairs in which Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal had been concerned, all of which he had at his tongue's tip. Could he find a hearer, these he would reargue interminably, but with professional reticence, personages becoming Mr. Y. and Lady X.; and places, “the capital of, let us say, a foreign country,” or “a certain town not a thousand miles from where we are now sitting.” The majority of his friends, his methods being somewhat forensic, would seek to discourage him, but my aunt was a never wearied listener, especially if the case were one involving suspicion of mystery and crime. When, during their very first conversation, he exclaimed: “Now why—why, after keeping away from his wife for nearly eighteen years, never even letting her know whether he was alive or dead, why this sudden resolve to return to her? That is what I want explained to me!” he paused, as was his wont, for sympathetic comment, my aunt, instead of answering as others, with a yawn: “Oh, I'm sure I don't know. Felt he wanted to see her, I suppose,” replied with prompt intelligence:
“To murder her—by slow poison.”
“To murder her! But why?”
“In order to marry the other woman.”
“What other woman?”
“The woman he had just met and fallen in love with. Before that it was immaterial to him what had become of his wife. This woman had said to him: 'Come back to me a free man or never see my face again.'”
“Dear me! Now that's very curious.”
“Nothing of the sort. Plain common sense.”
“I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a little later, and he did marry again.”
“Told you so,” remarked my aunt.
In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human action. Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y., for into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark criminal intent.
“I think you are a little too severe,” Mr. Gadley would now and then plead.
“We're all of us miserable sinners,” my aunt would cheerfully affirm; “only we don't all get the same chances.”
An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in “a western town once famous as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name,” my aunt was convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged another under which her children—should she ever marry and be blessed with such—would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of seven hundred pounds.
The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always fascinated Mr. Gadley.
“I have to thank you, ma'am,” he would remark on rising, “for a most delightful conversation. I may not be able to agree with your conclusions, but they afford food for reflection.”
To which my aunt would reply, “I hate talking to any one who agrees with me. It's like taking a walk to see one's own looking-glass. I'd rather talk to somebody who didn't, even if he were a fool,” which for her was gracious.
He was a stout little gentleman with a stomach that protruded about a foot in front of him, and of this he appeared to be quite unaware. Nor would it have mattered had it not been for his desire when talking to approach as close to his listener as possible. Gradually in the course of conversation, his stomach acting as a gentle battering ram, he would in this way drive you backwards round the room, sometimes, unless you were artful, pinning you hopelessly into a corner, when it would surprise him that in spite of all his efforts he never succeeded in getting any nearer to you. His first evening at our house he was talking to my aunt from the corner of his chair. As he grew more interested so he drew his chair nearer and nearer, till at length, having withdrawn inch by inch to avoid his encroachments, my aunt was sitting on the extreme edge of her own. His next move sent her on to the floor. She said nothing, which surprised me; but on the occasion of his next visit she was busy darning stockings, an unusual occupation for her. He approached nearer and nearer as before; but this time she sat her ground, and it was he who in course of time sprang back with an exclamation foreign to the subject under discussion.
Ever afterwards my aunt met him with stockings in her hand, and they talked with a space between their chairs.
Nothing further came of it, though his being a widower added to their intercourse that spice of possibility no woman is ever too old to relish; but that he admired her intellectually was evident. Once he even went so far as to exclaim: “Miss Davies, you should have been a solicitor's wife!” to his thinking the crown of feminine ambition. To which my aunt had replied: “Chances are I should have been if one had ever asked me.” And warmed by appreciation, my aunt's amiability took root and flourished, though assuming, as all growth developed late is apt to, fantastic shape.
There came to her the idea, by no means ill-founded, that by flattery one can most readily render oneself agreeable; so conscientiously she set to work to flatter in season and out. I am sure she meant to give pleasure, but the effect produced was that of thinly veiled sarcasm.
My father would relate to us some trifling story, some incident noticed during the day that had seemed to him amusing. At once she would break out into enthusiasm, holding up her hands in astonishment.
“What a funny man he is! And to think that it comes to him naturally without an effort. What a gift it is!”
On my mother appearing in a new bonnet, or an old one retrimmed, an event not unfrequent; for in these days my mother took more thought than ever formerly for her appearance (you will understand, you women who have loved), she would step back in simulated amazement.
“Don't tell me it's a married woman with a boy getting on for fourteen. It's a girl. A saucy, tripping girl. That's what it is.”
Persons have been known, I believe, whose vanity, not checked in time, has grown into a hopeless disease. But I am inclined to think that a dose of my aunt, about this period, would have cured the most obstinate case.
So also, and solely for our benefit, she assumed a vivacity and spriteliness that ill suited her, that having regard to her age and tendency towards rheumatism must have cost her no small effort. From these experiences there remains to me the perhaps immoral opinion that Virtue, in common with all other things, is at her best when unassuming.
Occasionally the old Adam—or should one say Eve—would assert itself in my aunt, and then, still thoughtful for others, she would descend into the kitchen and be disagreeable to Amy, our new servitor, who never minded it. Amy was a philosopher who reconciled herself to all things by the reflection that there were only twenty-four hours in a day. It sounds a dismal theory, but from it Amy succeeded in extracting perpetual cheerfulness. My mother would apologise to her for my aunt's interference.
“Lord bless you, mum, it don't matter. If I wasn't listening to her something else worse might be happening. Everything's all the same when it's over.”
Amy had come to us merely as a stop gap, explaining to my mother that she was about to be married and desired only a temporary engagement to bridge over the few weeks between then and the ceremony.
“It's rather unsatisfactory,” had said my mother. “I dislike changes.”
“I can quite understand it, mum,” had replied Amy; “I dislike 'em myself. Only I heard you were in a hurry, and I thought maybe that while you were on the lookout for somebody permanent—”
So on that understanding she came. A month later my mother asked her when she thought the marriage would actually take place.
“Don't think I'm wishing you to go,” explained my mother, “indeed I'd like you to stop. I only want to know in time to make my arrangements.”
“Oh, some time in the spring, I expect,” was Amy's answer.
“Oh!” said my mother, “I understood it was coming off almost immediately.”
Amy appeared shocked.
“I must know a little bit more about him before I go as far as that,” she said.
“But I don't understand,” said my mother; “you told me when you came to me that you were going to be married in a few weeks.”
“Oh, that one!” Her tone suggested that an unfair strain was being put upon her memory. “I didn't feel I wanted him as much as I thought I did when it came to the point.”
“You had meantime met the other one?” suggested my mother, with a smile.
“Well, we can't help our feelings, can we, mum?” admitted Amy, frankly, “and what I always say is”—she spoke as one with experience even then—“better change your mind before it's too late afterwards.”
Amiable, sweet-faced, broad-hearted Amy! most faithful of friends, but oh! most faithless of lovers. Age has not withered nor custom staled her liking for infinite variety. Butchers, bakers, soldiers, sailors, Jacks of all trades! Does the sighing procession never pass before you, Amy, pointing ghostly fingers of reproach! Still Amy is engaged. To whom at the particular moment I cannot say, but I fancy to an early one who has lately become a widower. After more exact knowledge I do not care to enquire; for to confess ignorance on the subject, implying that one has treated as a triviality and has forgotten the most important detail of a matter that to her is of vital importance, is to hurt her feelings; while to angle for information is but to entangle oneself. To speak of Him as “Tom,” when Tom has belonged for weeks to the dead and buried past, to hastily correct oneself to “Dick” when there hasn't been a Dick for years, clearly not to know that he is now Harry, annoys her even more. In my mother's time we always referred to him as “Dearest.” It was the title with which she herself distinguished them all, and it avoided confusion.
“Well, and how's Dearest?” my mother would enquire, opening the door to Amy on the Sunday evening.
“Oh, very well indeed, mum, thank you, and he sends you his respects,” or, “Well, not so nicely as I could wish. I'm a little anxious about him, poor dear!”
“When you are married you will be able to take good care of him.”
“That's really what he wants—some one to take care of him. It's what they all want, the poor dears.”
“And when is it coming off?”
“In the spring, mum.” She always chose the spring when possible.
Amy was nice to all men, and to Amy all men were nice. Could she have married a dozen, she might have settled down, with only occasional regrets concerning those left without in the cold. But to ask her to select only one out of so many “poor dears” was to suggest shameful waste of affection.
We had meant to keep our grim secret to ourselves; but to hide one's troubles long from Amy was like keeping cold hands from the fire. Very soon she knew everything that was to be known, drawing it all from my mother as from some overburdened child. Then she put my mother down into a chair and stood over her.
“Now you leave the house and everything connected with it to me, mum,” commanded Amy; “you've got something else to do.”
And from that day we were in the hands of Amy, and had nothing else to do but praise the Lord for His goodness.
Barbara also found out (from Washburn, I expect), though she said nothing, but came often. Old Hasluck would have come himself, I am sure, had he thought he would be welcome. As it was, he always sent kind messages and presents of fruit and flowers by Barbara, and always welcomed me most heartily whenever she allowed me to see her home.
She brought, as ever, sunshine with her, making all trouble seem far off and shadowy. My mother tended to the fire of love, but Barbara lit the cheerful lamp of laughter.
And with the lessening days my father seemed to grow younger, life lying lighter on him.
One summer's night he and I were walking with Barbara to Poplar station, for sometimes, when he was not looking tired, she would order him to fetch his hat and stick, explaining to him with a caress, “I like them tall and slight and full grown. The young ones, they don't know how to flirt! We will take the boy with us as gooseberry;” and he, pretending to be anxious that my mother did not see, would kiss her hand, and slip out quietly with her arm linked under his. It was admirable the way he would enter into the spirit of the thing.
The last cloud faded from before the moon as we turned the corner, and even the East India Dock Road lay restful in front of us.
“I have always regarded myself,” said my father, “as a failure in life, and it has troubled me.” I felt him pulled the slightest little bit away from me, as though Barbara, who held his other arm, had drawn him towards her with a swift pressure. “But do you know the idea that has come to me within the last few months? That on the whole I have been successful. I am like a man,” continued my father, “who in some deep wood has been frightened, thinking he has lost his way, and suddenly coming to the end of it, finds that by some lucky chance he has been guided to the right point after all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me.”
“What is the right point?” asked Barbara.
“Ah, that I cannot tell you,” answered my father, with a laugh. “I only know that for me it is here where I am. All the time I thought I was wandering away from it I was drawing nearer to it. It is very wonderful. I am just where I ought to be. If I had only known I never need have worried.”
Whether it would have troubled either him or my mother very much even had it been otherwise I cannot say, for Life, so small a thing when looked at beside Death, seemed to have lost all terror for them; but be that as it may, I like to remember that Fortune at the last was kind to my father, prospering his adventures, not to the extent his sanguine nature had dreamt, but sufficiently: so that no fear for our future marred the peaceful passing of his tender spirit.
Or should I award thanks not to Fate, but rather to sweet Barbara, and behind her do I not detect shameless old Hasluck, grinning good-naturedly in the background?
“Now, Uncle Luke, I want your advice. Dad's given me this cheque as a birthday present. I don't want to spend it. How shall I invest it?”
“My dear, why not consult your father?”
“Now, Uncle Luke, dad's a dear, especially after dinner, but you and I know him. Giving me a present is one thing, doing business for me is another. He'd unload on me. He'd never be able to resist the temptation.”
My father would suggest, and Barbara would thank him. But a minute later would murmur: “You don't know anything about Argentinos.”
My father did not, but Barbara did; to quite a remarkable extent for a young girl.
“That child has insisted on leaving this cheque with me and I have advised her to buy Argentinos,” my father would observe after she was gone. “I am going to put a few hundreds into them myself. I hope they will turn out all right, if only for her sake. I have a presentiment somehow that they will.”
A month later Barbara would greet him with: “Isn't it lucky we bought Argentinos!”
“Yes; they haven't turned out badly, have they? I had a feeling, you know, for Argentinos.”
“You're a genius, Uncle Luke. And now we will sell out and buy Calcuttas, won't we?”
“Sell out? But why?”
“You said so. You said, 'We will sell out in about a month and be quite safe.'”
“My dear, I've no recollection of it.”
But Barbara had, and before she had done with him, so had he. And the next day Argentinos would be sold—not any too soon—and Calcuttas bought.
Could money so gained bring a blessing with it? The question would plague my father.
“It's very much like gambling,” he would mutter uneasily to himself at each success, “uncommonly like gambling.”
“It is for your mother,” he would impress upon me. “When she is gone, Paul, put it aside, Keep it for doing good; that may make it clean. Start your own life without any help from it.”
He need not have troubled. It went the road that all luck derived however indirectly from old Hasluck ever went. Yet it served good purpose on its way.
But the most marvellous feat, to my thinking, ever accomplished by Barbara was the bearing off of my father and mother to witness “A Voice from the Grave, or the Power of Love, New and Original Drama in five acts and thirteen tableaux.”
They had been bred in a narrow creed, both my father and my mother. That Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has drowned much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from hearsay do foolishly to speak but ill of it. If ever earnest times should come again, not how to enjoy but how to live being the question, Fate demanding of us to show not what we have but what we are, we may regret that they are fewer among us than formerly, those who trained themselves to despise all pleasure, because in pleasure they saw the subtlest foe to principle and duty. No graceful growth, this Puritanism, for its roots are in the hard, stern facts of life; but it is strong, and from it has sprung all that is worth preserving in the Anglo-Saxon character. Its men feared and its women loved God, and if their words were harsh their hearts were tender. If they shut out the sunshine from their lives it was that their eyes might see better the glory lying beyond; and if their view be correct, that earth's threescore years and ten are but as preparation for eternity, then who shall call them even foolish for turning away their thoughts from its allurements.
“Still, I think I should like to have a look at one, just to see what it is like,” argued my father; “one cannot judge of a thing that one knows nothing about.”
I imagine it was his first argument rather than his second that convinced my mother.
“That is true,” she answered. “I remember how shocked my poor father was when he found me one night at the bedroom window reading Sir Walter Scott by the light of the moon.”
“What about the boy?” said my father, for I had been included in the invitation.
“We will all be wicked together,” said my mother.
So an evening or two later the four of us stood at the corner of Pigott Street waiting for the 'bus.
“It is a close evening,” said my father; “let's go the whole hog and ride outside.”
In those days for a lady to ride outside a 'bus was as in these days for a lady to smoke in public. Surely my mother's guardian angel must have betaken himself off in a huff.
“Will you keep close behind and see to my skirt?” answered my mother, commencing preparations. If you will remember that these were the days of crinolines, that the “knife-boards” of omnibuses were then approached by a perpendicular ladder, the rungs two feet apart, you will understand the necessity for such precaution.
Which of us was the most excited throughout that long ride it would be difficult to say. Barbara, feeling keenly her responsibility as prompter and leader of the dread enterprise, sat anxious, as she explained to us afterwards, hoping there would be nothing shocking in the play, nothing to belie its innocent title; pleased with her success so far, yet still fearful of failure, doubtful till the last moment lest we should suddenly repent, and stopping the 'bus, flee from the wrath to come. My father was the youngest of us all. Compared with him I was sober and contained. He fidgeted: people remarked upon it. He hummed. But for the stern eye of a thin young man sitting next to him trying to read a paper, I believe he would have broken out into song. Every minute he would lean across to enquire of my mother: “How are you feeling—all right?” To which my mother would reply with a nod and a smile, She sat very silent herself, clasping and unclasping her hands. As for myself, I remember feeling so sorry for the crowds that passed us on their way home. It was sad to think of the long dull evening that lay before them. I wondered how they could face it.
Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle. The lights were low and the house only half full when we reached them.
“It seems very orderly and—and respectable,” whispered my mother. There seemed a touch of disappointment in her tone.
“We are rather early,” replied Barbara; “it will be livelier when the band comes in and they turn up the gas.”
But even when this happened my mother was not content. “There is so little room for the actors,” she complained.
It was explained to her that the green curtain would go up, that the stage lay behind.
So we waited, my mother sitting stiffly on the extreme edge of her seat, holding me tightly by the hand; I believe with some vague idea of flight, should out of that vault-scented gloom the devil suddenly appear to claim us for his own. But before the curtain was quite up she had forgotten him.
You poor folk that go to the theatre a dozen times a year, perhaps oftener, what do you know of plays? You see no drama, you see but middle-aged Mr. Brown, churchwarden, payer of taxes, foolishly pretending to be a brigand; Miss Jones, daughter of old Jones the Chemist, making believe to be a haughty Princess. How can you, a grown man, waste money on a seat to witness such tomfoolery! What we saw was something very different. A young and beautiful girl—true, not a lady by birth, being merely the daughter of an honest yeoman, but one equal in all the essentials of womanhood to the noblest in the land—suffered before our very eyes an amount of misfortune that, had one not seen it for oneself, one would never have believed Fate could have accumulated upon the head of any single individual. Beside her woes our own poor troubles sank into insignificance. We had used to grieve, as my mother in a whisper reminded my father, if now and again we had not been able to afford meat for dinner. This poor creature, driven even from her wretched attic, compelled to wander through the snow without so much as an umbrella to protect her, had not even a crust to eat; and yet never lost her faith in Providence. It was a lesson, as my mother remarked afterwards, that she should never forget. And virtue had been triumphant, let shallow cynics say what they will. Had we not proved it with our own senses? The villain—I think his Christian name, if one can apply the word “Christian” in connection with such a fiend, was Jasper—had never really loved the heroine. He was incapable of love. My mother had felt this before he had been on the stage five minutes, and my father—in spite of protests from callous people behind who appeared to be utterly indifferent to what was going on under their very noses—had agreed with her. What he was in love with was her fortune—the fortune that had been left to her by her uncle in Australia, but about which nobody but the villain knew anything. Had she swerved a hair's breadth from the course of almost supernatural rectitude, had her love for the hero ever weakened, her belief in him—in spite of damning evidence to the contrary—for a moment wavered, then wickedness might have triumphed. How at times, knowing all the facts but helpless to interfere, we trembled, lest deceived by the cruel lies the villain told her; she should yield to importunity. How we thrilled when, in language eloquent though rude, she flung his false love back into his teeth. Yet still we feared. We knew well that it was not the hero who had done the murder. “Poor dear,” as Amy would have called him, he was quite incapable of doing anything requiring one-half as much smartness. We knew that it was not he, poor innocent lamb! who had betrayed the lady with the French accent; we had heard her on the subject and had formed a very shrewd conjecture. But appearances, we could not help admitting, were terribly to his disfavour. The circumstantial evidence against him would have hanged an Archbishop. Could she in face of it still retain her faith? There were moments when my mother restrained with difficulty her desire to rise and explain.
Between the acts Barbara would whisper to her that she was not to mind, because it was only a play, and that everything would be sure to come right in the end.
“I know, my dear,” my mother would answer, laughing, “it is very foolish of me; I forget. Paul, when you see me getting excited, you must remind me.”
But of what use was I in such case! I, who only by holding on to the arms of my seat could keep myself from swarming down on to the stage to fling myself between this noble damsel and her persecutor—this fair-haired, creamy angel in whose presence for the time being I had forgotten even Barbara.
The end came at last. The uncle from Australia was not dead. The villain—bungler as well as knave—had killed the wrong man, somebody of no importance whatever. As a matter of fact, the comic man himself was the uncle from Australia—had been so all along. My mother had had a suspicion of this from the very first. She told us so three times, to make up, I suppose, for not having mentioned it before. How we cheered and laughed, in spite of the tears in our eyes.
By pure accident it happened to be the first night of the piece, and the author, in response to much shouting and whistling, came before the curtain. He was fat and looked commonplace; but I deemed him a genius, and my mother said he had a good face, and waved her handkerchief wildly; while my father shouted “Bravo!” long after everybody else had finished; and people round about muttered “packed house,” which I didn't understand at the time, but came to later.
And stranger still, it happened to be before that very same curtain that many years later I myself stepped forth to make my first bow as a playwright. I saw the house but dimly, for on such occasion one's vision is apt to be clouded. All that I saw clearly was in the front row of the second circle—a sweet face laughing though the tears were in her eyes; and she waved to me a handkerchief. And on one side of her stood a gallant gentleman with merry eyes who shouted “Bravo!” and on the other a dreamy-looking lad; but he appeared disappointed, having expected better work from me. And the fourth face I could not see, for it was turned away from me.
Barbara, determined on completeness, insisted upon supper. In those days respectability fed at home; but one resort possible there was, an eating-house with some pretence to gaiety behind St. Clement Danes, and to that she led us. It was a long, narrow room, divided into wooden compartments, after the old coffee-house plan, a gangway down the centre. Now we should call it a dismal hole, and closing the door hasten away. But to Adam, Eve in her Sunday fig-leaves was a stylishly dressed woman; and to my eyes, with its gilded mirrors and its flaring gas, the place seemed a palace.
Barbara ordered oysters, a fish that familiarity with its empty shell had made me curious concerning. Truly no spot on the globe is so rich in oyster shells as the East End of London. A stranger might be led to the impression (erroneous) that the customary lunch of the East End labourer consists of oysters. How they collect there in such quantities is a mystery, though Washburn, to whom I once presented the problem, found no difficulty in solving it to his own satisfaction: “To the rich man the oyster; to the poor man the shell; thus are the Creator's gifts divided among all His creatures; none being sent empty away.” For drink the others had stout and I had ginger beer. The waiter, who called me “Sir,” advised against this mixture; but among us all the dominating sentiment by this time was that nothing really mattered very much. Afterwards my father called for a cigar and boldly lighted it, though my mother looked anxious; and fortunately perhaps it would not draw. And then it came out that he himself had once written a play.
“You never told me of that,” complained my mother.
“It was a long while ago,” replied my father; “nothing came of it.”
“It might have been a success,” said my mother; “you always had a gift for writing.”
“I must look it over again,” said my father; “I had quite forgotten it. I have an impression it wasn't at all bad.”
“It can be of much help,” said my mother, “a good play. It makes one think.”
We put Barbara into a cab and rode home ourselves inside a 'bus. My mother was tired, so my father slipped his arm round her, telling her to lean against him, and soon she fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. A coarse-looking wench sat opposite, her man's arm round her likewise, and she also fell asleep, her powdered face against his coat.
“They can do with a bit of nursing, can't they?” said the man with a grin to the conductor.
“Ah, they're just kids,” agreed the conductor, sympathetically, “that's what they are, all of 'em, just kids.”
So the day ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!—no comic uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life! Even my mother at moments was quite irritable.
We were much together again, my father and I, about this time. Often, making my way from school into the City, I would walk home with him, he leaning on each occasion a little heavier upon my arm. To this day I can always meet and walk with him down the Commercial Road. And on Saturday afternoons, crossing the river to Greenwich, we would climb the hill and sit there talking, or sometimes merely thinking together, watching the dim vast city so strangely still and silent at our feet.
At first I did not grasp the fact that he was dying. The “year to two” of life that Washburn had allowed to him had somehow become converted in my mind to vague years, a fate with no immediate meaning; the meanwhile he himself appeared to grow from day to day in buoyancy. How could I know it was his great heart rising to his need.
The comprehension came to me suddenly. It was one afternoon in early spring. I was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror and the hurt of it grew with every step. I ran as if I feared he might be dead before I could reach the office. He was waiting for me with a smile as usual, and I flung myself sobbing into his arms.
I think he understood, though I could explain nothing, but that I had had a fear something had happened to him, for from that time forward he dropped all reserve with me, and talked openly of our approaching parting.
“It might have come to us earlier, my dear boy,” he would say with his arm round me, “or it might have been a little later. A year or so one way or the other, what does it matter? And it is only for a little while, Paul. We shall meet again.”
But I could not answer him, for clutch them to me as I would, all my beliefs—the beliefs in which I had been bred, the beliefs that until then I had never doubted, in that hour of their first trial, were falling from me. I could not even pray. If I could have prayed for anything, it would have been for my father's life. But if prayer were all powerful, as they said, would our loved ones ever die? Man has not faith enough, they would explain; if he had there would be no parting. So the Lord jests with His creatures, offering with the one hand to snatch back with the other. I flung the mockery from me. There was no firm foothold anywhere. What were all the religions of the word but narcotics with which Humanity seeks to dull its pain, drugs in which it drowns its terrors, faith but a bubble that death pricks.
I do not mean my thoughts took this form. I was little more than a lad, and to the young all thought is dumb, speaking only with a cry. But they were there, vague, inarticulate. Thoughts do not come to us as we grow older. They are with us all our lives. We learn their language, that is all.
One fair still evening it burst from me. We had lingered in the Park longer than usual, slowly pacing the broad avenue leading from the Observatory to the Heath. I poured forth all my doubts and fears—that he was leaving me for ever, that I should never see him again, I could not believe. What could I do to believe?
“I am glad you have spoken, Paul,” he said, “it would have been sad had we parted not understanding each other. It has been my fault. I did not know you had these doubts. They come to all of us sooner or later. But we hide them from one another. It is foolish.”
“But tell me,” I cried, “what can I do? How can I make myself believe?”
“My dear lad,” answered my father, “how can it matter what we believe or disbelieve? It will not alter God's facts. Would you liken Him to some irritable schoolmaster, angry because you cannot understand him?”
“What do you believe,” I asked, “father, really I mean.”
The night had fallen. My father put his arm round me and drew me to him.
“That we are God's children, little brother,” he answered, “that what He wills for us is best. It may be life, it may be sleep; it will be best. I cannot think that He will let us die: that were to think of Him as without purpose. But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him. 'Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him.'”
We walked awhile in silence before my father spoke again.
“'Now abideth these three, Faith, Hope and Charity'—you remember the verse—Faith in God's goodness to us, Hope that our dreams may be fulfiled. But these concern but ourselves—the greatest of all is Charity.”
Out of the night-shrouded human hive beneath our feet shone here and there a point of light.
“Be kind, that is all it means,” continued my father. “Often we do what we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We cannot understand—maybe the old laws we have misread. But the new Law, that we love one another—all creatures He has made; that is so clear. And if it be that we are here together only for a little while, Paul, the future dark, how much the greater need have we of one another.”
I looked up into my father's face, and the peace that shone from it slid into my soul and gave me strength.