Description of the injuries sustained by my father. A supremely
difficult medical problem. Legal assistance of Mr. Balfour Whey.
Infamous decisions and public comments. A quiet church and obliging
clergy. Surprising character-growth of Ezekiel. A distasteful
proposition generously put forward. Disgusting behaviour of a
show-room manager.
SUCH then was the incident that not only, as I have said, finally
destroyed my father’s health, but was also destined, after several weeks
of the profoundest physical inconvenience, and almost as many months of
the acutest legal anxiety, to deprive him (and ultimately myself) of the
greater portion of his savings. For it was obvious from the outset that
the matter had to be challenged—and indeed we had so pledged ourselves
before the ambulance bore him from the vestry—at whatever cost to
ourselves and our friends, and before as many tribunals as might prove
necessary; and it has often seemed to me that it was only this sacred
obligation that preserved my father from immediate extinction. For not
only was it discovered by the three doctors, who were immediately
summoned to attend upon him, that his right knee was displaying
evidences of incipient synovitis, but the three falls, to which he had
been subjected between the lectern and the vestry, had resulted in
extremely severe contusions of both his larger gluteal muscles.
The problem before the physicians was thus an exceptionally difficult
one. For while the condition of his knee demanded that he should lie
upon his back, that of his gluteal muscles was even more imperative in
demanding a position precisely opposed to this. After a considerable
argument, therefore, it was finally decided that for the first week or
ten days the position to be assumed should be a face-downwards one, with
a protective cage over the contused muscles. By this means any painful
pressure that might have been exerted by the bedclothes was avoided—an
additional protection being afforded by two discs of lint, previously
spread with a cooling ointment. For the purposes of nourishment, which
was to be ample and sustaining, my father was then to be drawn towards
the end of the bed, his head being allowed to project to a sufficient
distance to permit of nutriment being inserted from below. Owing to his
weight, this, of course, necessitated the erection of a pulley with
straps passing under his arm-pits, a return pulley with straps passing
round his ankles coming into play at the end of each meal. Even with
such assistance, however, my poor father’s plight remained an
exceedingly deplorable one; and it is scarcely to be wondered at that,
from time to time, he betrayed a marked irritability.
Prostrate as he was, however, and already conscious that his career as a
sidesman was definitely over, he flung himself almost immediately, and
with all the energy left to him, into the necessary preliminaries of the
approaching litigation. Day after day, even while still lying on his
abdomen, he held prolonged interviews with Mr. Balfour Whey, who most
considerately lay beneath my father’s bed, parallel with the sufferer
and looking up into his face. Whether, in the world’s history, an action
of such importance—for it was fully reported in most of the daily
newspapers—was ever arranged in similar circumstances I do not know,
although I doubt it. But I have certainly never seen a spectacle more
solemn and pathetic than that of these two earnest and horizontal men
vertically discussing, across the end of the bedstead, the possible
methods of legal procedure.
Nor was either to blame for the iniquitous judgments, into the details
of which I do not propose to enter, but which had the effect, as I have
already stated, of seriously impoverishing my poor father. For from the
outset Mr. Balfour Whey, although sharing to the full in my father’s
indignation, was explicit as to the difficulty that would certainly
accrue in translating this into a legal victory. Indeed the only vehicle
under which proceedings could possibly be instituted was the original
and extremely crude Employers’ Liability Act,[10] and this upon the
doubtful assumption of the applicability of Sub-section (I) of Section
I, and subject to the further acceptance of the Carkeek lectern as a
portion of the plant of St. James-the-Least-of-All. Under this earlier
Act, too, the status of the vicar as employer and that of his sidesmen
as employés was far less substantiable in law that it would have been
under the Workmen’s Compensation Act; and deeply as I have always
regretted, on general grounds, the inclusion of this latter measure in
our legal machinery, I have equally deplored that it was not then
available to assist my poor father in his heroic crusade.
Footnote 10:
43 and 44 Vic. cap 42 (1880).
From the beginning, therefore, it was an unequal contest, with the dice
of evasion loaded against my father, and all the forces of idolatry,
spite, and ambition arrayed to defeat the course of justice. Thus,
despite the arguments—and I have never listened to longer or more
powerful ones—of the celebrated counsel that my father employed; despite
the photographs—and I have never seen any more heart-rending—of the
contused areas of my father’s person; and despite the irrepressible
applause from Simeon and myself that greeted his every reply in the
witness-box, the case was not only decided against him with costs, on a
series of the most palpable legal quibbles, but an appeal to a higher
court met with a similarly scandalous and financially devastating
result. Obviously primed, too, by the Carkeeks—although our detectives
were unable to prove this—the verdict in each case became the subject of
a malicious article in the _Camberwell Observer_, my father once more
having to bear the total costs of the prosecutions that immediately
ensued.
Nor did a printed appeal to the congregation of St.
James-the-Least-of-All bring my poor father more than eight shillings,
although the cost of its printing and subsequent postage had amounted to
no less than three pounds. Moreover—and even now the pen shakes in my
hand as I force it to write the shameful words—not only was the lectern
retained in the church (where it may probably be seen at this moment),
but within less than a year Cosmo and Corkran Carkeek were the sons of
the vicar’s churchwarden. It was perhaps the bitterest stab of the whole
squalid conspiracy. But my father was then too enfeebled for active
resistance.
“Let it be enough,” he wrote to Alexander Carkeek, “until at a Greater
Bar you shall stand condemned, that you know, and I know, and so does
your vicar, that you have committed simony in your heart.”
So ended an episode with which I have dealt thus fully—at what a cost
can well be imagined—partly because, as I have said, the contemporary
newspaper accounts of it were either misleading or deliberately
spiteful, but chiefly because it was the means adopted by Providence of
uniting us still more closely with the Stools. That this was an end
possible of achievement otherwise, I have never disguised my private
opinion. But since it was to lead to my own ultimate matrimony, I have
always considered it best to suspend judgment; and I cannot but feel
convinced that my readers will share the relief with which I now begin
to approach this distant event.
For it was still distant. Let there be no mistake about that. And in the
particular form in which it was about to be adumbrated, I ought not to
conceal, perhaps, that for several years I found it extremely
distasteful. Nevertheless it came about, and even when Ezekiel first
suggested it, deeply repugnant though the idea seemed to me, I could not
help recognizing and suitably acknowledging the generosity with which it
had been put forward.
“Dear Augustus,” he said, “each of my sisters will receive an equal
portion of my father’s estate, and if it would be any help to you, I
should be only too glad to give you one of them in marriage.”
This was on the Sunday evening, I remember, the sixth after we had lost
our action against the _Camberwell Observer_, and the seventeenth after
my father had been mulcted in costs by the infamous judgment of the
Court of Appeal—upon which we had decided, after careful investigation,
to transfer our worship to St. Nicholas, Newington Butts. A quiet
edifice, devoid of a lectern, yet within a few yards of the tram-lines,
it had seemed to us both, although it had various drawbacks, as suitable
a receptacle as we should be likely to find for the very modified degree
of worship of which my father now remained capable.
“After what has happened,” he said, “it is of course a subject in which
I can scarcely be expected to take much further interest. But the church
appears clean and its clergy seem obliging, if not particularly
intelligent.”
Making it quite clear, therefore, that he would be entirely unable to
accept any position of responsibility, and that his attendances, even as
an ordinary worshipper, would almost certainly be precarious, my father
had added his name to its list of clients, to which I had been very
happy to subscribe my own. This we had done verbally, at the close of
the morning service, to the obvious satisfaction of the vicar and his
curate, Ezekiel having been absent, as his sisters had informed me,
owing to a mild attack of gastro-enteritis. At the evening service,
however, he was present as usual, and it was upon our way home together
after its close that I told him of the decision to which my father and I
had come, and of which we had already apprised the clergy. Transported
with delight, he shook me by the hand, the hairs upon his face sparkling
with happy tears, and I shall never forget the emotion with which he
expressed his hope that this would complete the intimacy between us.
“Drawn together,” he said, “in the _A.D.S.U._ and by your memorable
salvation of me on the fifth of November, and further united in the
misfortunes that have befallen the fathers of us both, surely this must
be the link that shall finally unite us in a firm and irrevocable
friendship.”
Deeply moved, I was unable to reply for a moment. But presently, in a
response of some duration, I contrived to signify my general agreement
with the aspirations that he had enunciated. He then invited me to share
a second evening meal with himself, his mother and his five sisters, and
it was during the progress of this that I first became aware of a new
development of his character. Hitherto, as I have said, of an extremely
gentle and even yielding disposition, he had now assumed, with a dignity
and completeness that both surprised and delighted me, not only the
headship of the table but the full direction of the household. Thus when
Faith ventured upon a remark that, on a week-day, might have been
considered humorous, he at once reminded her that it was the Sabbath and
gently but firmly demanded an apology; while a look from his eye was
sufficient to quell Hope who inadvertently “hiccuped” during the
pronouncement of grace. I was glad to observe, too, that these facially
unattractive girls all remained seated until he had indicated that they
might rise, and that together with their mother they instantly left the
room when he inclined his head toward the door.
So effective, indeed, was his assumption of his father’s duties that I
could not refrain from congratulating him, and it was during the
conversation that naturally followed that he supplied me with details of
the family finances. Thus I learned from him that, prior to his
admission to the Home of Rest in which he was now detained, his father
had been persuaded by his legal advisers to retire from the management
of the Adult Gripe Water; and that the right to manufacture this,
together with the existing plant, had then been sold to a limited
company. As the sole proprietor, Mr. Abraham Stool had received a
considerable sum of money, half of this having been paid to him in cash
and the remainder in shares of the new company. The cash had then been
invested, upon his solicitor’s advice, in colonial and Government
securities, and a will drawn up of which Ezekiel was kind enough to give
me the exact particulars. Then he paused for a moment, and it was then,
leaning towards me with the utmost affection, that he uttered the words
of which, as I have already recorded, I could not but recognize the good
feeling.
“And so you see, dear Augustus, each of my sisters will receive an equal
portion of my father’s estate, and if it would be any help to you, I
should be only too glad to give you one of them in marriage.”
Admirably meant, however, as was this offer, and obviously one of
considerable value, few could have blamed me, I think, for the
instinctive shudder with which I was obliged at first to postpone an
answer. Nor was he one of them.
“In fact I never supposed,” he said, “that you could immediately bring
yourself to accept. And I fully appreciate that, had I been in your
position, my gesture of repulsion would have been equally violent. But
at the same time I thought it might be useful to you to know that they
would be there to fall back upon.”
I stared at him.
“To fall back upon?” I asked.
Colouring deeply, he held out his hand.
“I was speaking metaphorically,” he said. “I beg your pardon.”
“Conceded,” I replied. “But it was an unpleasant idea.”
“And an ill-chosen phrase,” he said. “All that I meant was that they
would be there for you to select from.”
“Do you mean all of them?” I asked.
He signified his assent.
“Subject to the Great Reaper,” he said, “I think that I can promise
that.”
Then for five minutes we sat in silence, and then, extending my hand to
him, I rose to my feet.
[Illustration:
_Ezekiel Stool, drawn from a portrait once in the possession of the
A.D.S.U._
]
“Ezekiel,” I said, “I am not unobliged to you, and although I could
never view such a marriage with enthusiasm, yet I can conceive
circumstances in which, as a last resort, it might be my duty to
consider it.”
“Precisely,” he said, “and it is for such a contingency that I shall be
only too glad, as I have said, to reserve them.”
Then we parted, Ezekiel, as he afterwards told me, to the happy
contemplation of our closer friendship, and myself, as I walked home, to
the sombre consideration of the possibilities with which I had been
presented. I had scarcely been so occupied, however, for ten minutes
when I suddenly became aware of the odour of alcohol, and to my infinite
horror found myself being embraced by the show-room manager from
Paternoster Row.
“Why, ShAugustus,” he said. “Fansheen you.”
Involuntarily I recoiled from him, but he came after me.
“Fansheen you,” he repeated. “Hahu?”
And having kissed me, he sat down on the pavement.
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