[Henry Gastonard tells of a visit to his cousin, the Rev. Arthur
Warrington, at Lowestoft.]
Hotel Metropole, Lowestoft,
July 31st, 1905.
Dear Paddy,--The late Douglas Jerrold remarked that he doted upon the
sea--from the beach. It seemed yesterday that the sea doted upon me
when it rolled me like a barrel in my bunk and moved me to appeal to
high heaven for immediate annihilation. The passage across was about
as dirty as a Channel passage can be--and that, as you know, you who
are fond of singing the glories of the deep (when you are on shore) is
a shade which blackest night cannot surpass.
I made no stay in London save to dine and to sleep at the Carlton. The
hansom which drove me across Trafalgar Square showed me no amazing
novelty, nor was I long enough in the city to find the place much
changed. It is true that there is now a fine bit of life and colour
where once the dingy old Pavilion stood--for I visited the new
building after dinner--and Leicester Square seems less shabby than
formerly; but a man who comes over from Paris is rarely amazed by
anything that London can show him, and admits her later day claims
reluctantly. In one matter alone do I find a real advance, and that is
the newer hotels, which, I venture to think, are just about as good as
any in Europe.
You did not answer my last letter--possibly because of your
indignation; it may be because of your want of interest. A man who is
playing golf by the seashore (for I am convinced you are there) cares
little for the fact that his neighbour is in a bunker, and less for
the means by which he may extract himself therefrom. Nor do I expect
the Paddy of old time to be changed very much from that Hector who has
washed his hands of me upon more than one occasion, and is quite ready
to do so again when my letters have made him angry enough. You think
that I am playing a fool’s game, Paddy, and your silence bears witness
to the fact. So be it--until we gather scalps together at Portmarnock,
and I play you for your boots, which, most likely, are unpaid for.
You should know that Jules Farman’s information sent me to London, and
from London pell-mell to the East Coast of England, where I am to find
Mimi the Simpleton among a company of clowns, and to withdraw her
immediately from that humorous if unwashed society. If Farman is to be
believed, the girl left us deliberately at Poissy, met an old comrade
of the Fêtes upon the outskirts of Paris, joined his troupe
immediately; and having acquired the distinction of dancing a Spanish
dance which is not Spanish, and of playing upon a guitar which is no
guitar at all, set out with certain vagrants of the city to amuse the
desperadoes of the outskirts and their obliging families.
This company appears to have prospered for a little while, and then to
have been drowned, partly by drink and partly by the winds of
adversity. It broke up at Rheims, sent straggling members on to
Brussels, there fell in with an Englishman of enterprise, was
re-organised by him and wafted over to our native country where upon
the sandy shore or the less accommodating shingle it amuses the
prosperous of suburbia and bears witness once more to the smallness of
this terrestrial globe and the fertile resource of its inhabitants.
Admit with me, my dear Paddy, that there is something wonderfully fine
in this superb independence. Reflect upon the homes you know, the
motherhood there, the gregarious instincts of childhood, the bonds
binding even the most wretched--do this, and then put side by side
with it the life and actions of such a child as Mimi the Simpleton.
She has not known a home these many years. She cannot have the
remotest idea of the meaning of motherhood. The streets of a city have
taught her the great lessons of self-reliance and of self-help. She is
not afraid to be alone. All the terrors which inflict the man of
substance, bills payable and bills due, the rise or fall of values,
doubts concerning the future, the perils of ambition, the bitterness
of loss, these have no meaning for Mimi the Simpleton. Let the sun
shine and she will laugh. Give her bread and coffee and she has the
riches of Crœsus. Take her to a café, where the lights dance and the
fiddles are busy, and you are opening to her the floodgates of
Paradise. Fortune is powerless against armour such as this. What
matters it if the bread be lacking to-day--will not to-morrow be more
generous? Who shall complain that the sun sets in a cloud, when he
will rise in splendour at dawn?
You may ask me, Paddy, how it comes to be, if this be Mimi’s creed of
life, that I would intrude upon it with a more exacting philosophy or
a friendship that is critical? I shall not attempt to answer these
questions. I am drawn to this child, I know not by what spell. It is
not love, as men commonly employ that word. I do not seek, be sure of
it, to put shame upon her, or to ask her to be the instrument of
passion. But she has become necessary to my life. The vagrancy of the
years has brought me to this, that there is just one other vagrant
upon the road with whom I would share the wigwam, just one other
little comrade who must help me to light the camp fire and to watch by
it when the sun has set. To this end I am pursuing Mimi upon this
Eastern strand. To this selfish purpose I am about to command that she
shall cast off the Spaniards and remember the lessons of yesterday.
She may refuse or she may consent--but I shall pursue the issue if
necessary through the years.
Accompany me, then, to this “gay” resort; follow me to the sandy shore
of Lowestoft; but particularly, my dear Paddy, to the temporary home
of my cousin, Arthur Warrington, who is here as a _locum tenens_, and
has already fascinated a large number of females and a smaller (a much
smaller) number of pious males. Arthur, I must admit, was not as
pleased as he might have been to see me. The exclamation that he
uttered was not altogether ecclesiastical, nor do I choose to remember
it; but it did not imply welcome, not as you and I understand the
word. When he had recovered the shock, he confessed to me that he
believed me to be dying in Paris, and was naturally much relieved to
find that his alarms were groundless.
“I think you wrote me to that effect, Arthur,” said I. “If I did not
reply to your letter, pray forgive me.”
“Oh,” says he, blushing to the roots of his beautiful auburn hair, “I
do not think that I wrote, Henry--I had not your address--but we were
both distressed, greatly distressed, I will say.”
“Well,” said I, “you seem to have been worrying, Arthur--but say no
more about it; for here I am as sound as a smacksman and as hungry.
What’s more, I have come to stop with you for a week or two if you
will have me, which, if I remember your invitations correctly, is a
pleasure you have been looking forward to for a long time. Now, isn’t
it, Arthur? or am I mistaken?”
Well, he stammered and stuttered again, and was in the middle of a
parable about the green room and the pink room, when in comes cousin
Martha, who is one of the jolliest little women in Suffolk and as
clever a flirt as ever was yoked to a parson’s cassock. Be sure Martha
had her lord and master down in a minute and was trampling upon him in
two. What! to turn their own flesh and blood into the streets--who
ever heard of such a thing! Of course I must stay with them. And
wouldn’t I be useful, too! She thought of that in a minute.
“Don’t you know we’re to have a Pageant here,” says she, “of course
you paj, Henry?”
“Of course,” said I, “anything that you tell me to do is done
immediately, Martha. Shall we paj now or await a more solitary
occasion?”
She expressed some confusion at this, and hastened to explain that
they were about to have a Pageant at Lowestoft in which they would
celebrate the early arrival of the Danes in England and the glorious
victories of Queen Boadicea. There were to be real Norsemen and real
ships--to say nothing of bloody fights on the foreshore and the
gathering of the clans upon such heights as this land of marsh and
marigolds can command.
“Arthur is to be a monk,” says she. “Of course he will be a Protestant
monk, but he will wear sandals and shave his hair. I am to play a
British maiden, Harry. I shall wear a bearskin upon my shoulders and
dye my hair red--now don’t you think it will look beautiful?”
I assured her that nothing could be finer; and “as for the reputation
of the late Mrs. Astley of glorious memory, whose hair was to be
wrapped about her feet whenever she stooped to the earth to do it,
that,” said I, “is already perished.”
This flattery was by no means unwelcome to cousin Martha. She told me
that they were having great trouble with the townsfolk, who had
entered into the fray almost with too much spirit--especially a local
vendor of wines, who wanted to play a modern monk Roger and to roll
kegs of beer down the hills to the sea. There were many candidates, I
discovered, for the maidens’ parts, especially such maidens as were to
be carried in the arms of the barbarians. Not less popular was the
office of Druid, who would cut the mistletoe provided by the Army and
Navy Stores and generally conduct the sacred rites as tradition and
Christmas have sanctioned them.
“And what do you do, Arthur?” I asked the parson, “and what, if you
please, is a Protestant monk? Forgive the ignorance which remembers so
little history. Of course it is a showy part, or they would not have
asked you to play it. You were always a bit of an actor, weren’t you,
cousin? Don’t you remember when you came out to us at Bordeaux, that
little Mademoiselle Charcot who----”
He exclaimed, “Hush, hush!”--it is astonishing how rarely a cleric is
tolerant of reminiscences--and when my cousin little Martha implored
me to tell her the whole story, Arthur silenced her immediately by an
answer to my previous question.
“A Protestant monk is one who carried the evangels before the days of
the Papacy----”
“Then against what did he protest, Arthur?”
“Against the pagan intolerance of his day--just as we protest in our
own time against the pagan intolerance of the social world. I intend
to show the people that their vices are not changed from those of
fifteen hundred years ago----”
“What a lively business. Do you have a band?”
“It is not seemly to jest upon such a subject, Henry.”
“Oh, I know it--pray forgive me. Of course you are quite right. The
old gods are far from done with yet. Venus, I think, still gets an
engagement occasionally, and Janus is often looked in the face by the
morning papers. I admit that there is still something to be said for
bearskins, while caves should be a godsend to the man who has just
come down from Carey-street. Why don’t some of you parsons set us an
example? Sell that thou hast--especially your brewery shares,
Arthur--and live in a cave. I’ll bet you what you like that cousin
Martha in a bearskin would fill your church every Sunday though half
the bishops in England were at the shop opposite.”
“The shop, Henry! Has Paris taught you to call a church a shop?”
“In Paris, my dear Arthur, there are no monks. The Government has done
the protesting.”
“For the good of France, undoubtedly. The pure religion.”
“Your religion, Arthur--but look here, I’m not out for a theological
argument. Let us talk of the Pageant. What does Martha suggest that I
should play?”
“Would you like to be a knight in armour, Harry, and buy your own
armour?”
“That’s a generous proposal, Martha. Did knights in armour come over
with the Danes?”
“Oh, dear, no--I had forgotten that. Suppose you were a Norseman with
beautiful long hair----”
“To match yours, Martha? Arthur wouldn’t like that.”
“But a Norseman was such a splendid creature. You would have to speak
in a guttural voice, Harry, and carry a scimitar.”
“It sounds well, Martha; but I should prefer the cellarer’s part. I
could look after the wine vats very well. If that’s not it, how would
you like me to play Henry the Eighth on the Field of the Cloth of
Gold? I could get the costumes from Fox’s; and I tell you what, if you
want any humour, I’ll drive on to the course in my motor car.”
Arthur raised his eyes to heaven at this, while Martha seemed not a
little affronted. They were both very serious about this business,
poor dears, and not a little concerned for its success. To pacify
them, I fell in with the Norseman idea, and then sat down to tea.
You can have no idea, Paddy, of the meaning of these pageants to
country towns, or of the enthusiasm they excite. People are in and out
of this house every ten minutes to consult the “Master.” Young girls,
who would have blushed to show their ankles yesterday, are popping
themselves in skins and sandals with the glee of children. There is an
eloquent Free Church Minister staying here who preaches twice every
quarter against the theatre, and is now about to appear as a Druid
priest with a sickle. He rehearses his part like any actor at the
Haymarket. Frivolity is immediately resented. When I suggested that a
fleet of motor-boats should bring the Norseman to the shore, just to
contrast the old ideas with the new, shocked looks met me, and an open
protest. The most trivial mistake costs its maker a reproof. I have
just heard Arthur deliver a sound rating to a wretched tailor who
thought that a Dane might very well carry a musket, and produced one
left to him by his great-grandfather. The majesty of the Pageant
brooks no levity.
It will be apparent to you that I had little opportunity for any
really private talk with my beloved cousin during these first days of
my arrival, nor does there appear any possibility of my finding one
until this mummery is over. For that matter, I am very doubtful of the
utility of such a proceeding, nor do I think that I shall profit by
it. A sportsman would consent to my plan immediately; but Arthur is
not a sportsman. I shall propose to him that we divide the
inheritance, and have done with it; but I know from the outset he will
find some shifty plea upon which he may excuse himself. If he does, I
am what the world calls a ruined man--which is to say, Paddy, that I
must work for my bread like any other decent fellow, and not complain
if the loaf is yesterday’s.
Sometimes I admit that the change will be stupendous. I have wanted
for nothing, as you know, since I was a little child. My poor father
indulged me in every way, so that now, at the mature age of
twenty-four, I am as blasé as many a man of forty. All that any sane
bachelor can need is to be purchased by seven thousand pounds a year.
I can run a motor-car, keep a small sailing yacht, hire a shoot,
travel. I need no house, for the finest hotels are open to me, with
all their luxuries. From that to abject poverty is to be a swift
descent. Paddy, I shall have a subsistence, but nothing more. The rest
will go to dear cousin Arthur--to the glory of God and the purchase of
a manor-house he has his eye upon.
Meanwhile, there is always Mimi. Would she come to me, I wonder, if I
were poor? It might be so; in which case one of the Beatitudes would
again be justified, and Harry Gastonard awakened in an instant from
his lethargy. I shall ask her this question when I find her--to-night
or to-morrow, as the case may be, Paddy.
Meanwhile, waft me your blessing across the emerald seas, and find me,
as always, Your friend,
Harry Gastonard.