[In which we hear something of the Pageant at Lowestoft.]
The Grand Hotel, Cromer,
August 14th, 1905.
Dear Paddy,--The Pageant at Lowestoft came and went on Saturday
last--the occasion of its first representation--and your faithful
epistler has departed with it under circumstances which should be made
known to you. These were as ridiculous as they were inevitable; but
they have left my good cousin in a sad state of mind, and his little
wife no less agitated.
I count it nothing less than a tragedy, Paddy, that your friend, Henry
Gastonard, who would no more make love to another man’s wife than he
would steal the spoons from his table, should twice carry a firebrand
into a peaceful house and there extinguish it not at all or but
doubtfully. This, none the less, has been my undeserved fate. I
quitted Lowestoft, leaving my cousin torn by jealousy concerning
Martha and myself. His anger is as absurd as his suspicions; but of
both you shall now hear.
To begin with, let me say that I had some fine fun with him on Friday
night upon my return from Yarmouth. The talk after dinner chanced to
turn upon the ease or difficulty of making money; and, wishful to
chaff Arthur, I began to speak of my own intentions. To have heard me
you would have said that I had but to lift a finger to make ten
thousand a year. I spoke of this scheme and of that, of the financiers
I knew and the financiers who wished to know me. I mentioned young
Gould casually, and threw in Harry Vanderbilt as though he were a
paper-weight; to all of which Arthur listened entranced. His colour
alternated between that of the departing rainbow and the
newly-imported orange. There were moments when he was at a loss how to
address me at all.
“Did you say that you were venturing your own capital in these
affairs?” he asked me. The simple fellow, a child would have seen
through the question.
“Not a penny of it,” said I, filling my glass with the Marsala, old in
bottle, which he buys from a neighbouring grocer for one-and-three;
“not a penny of it, Arthur. You must understand that I am bringing the
new French motor-cab companies to London, and when the Syndicate has
put down two hundred and fifty thousand, there should be some seven or
eight for me as negotiatory vendor to begin with; and if they don’t
pay me twelve or fifteen hundred a year afterwards to look after their
interests, I’m a Dutchman. What I wanted to ask you was just this: Do
you think I am wise to take up such a thing as a motor-cab, or would
you advise me to stick to the flotation of the new submarine company,
in which you know that I have interest? You have great sagacity and
perception, and so I put the question to you frankly.”
Upon my word, Paddy, the man’s face was a study when I said this, and
it was worth anything to hear him humming and hawing in the very best
pulpit manner before he answered me.
“A clergyman knows little of financial affairs,” he remarked, coughing
slightly to cover his difficulty. “Undoubtedly, a cab is not a very
dignified conveyance, and er--hem, the future of the motor-car
is--that is--may be--a dusty one. I should consider the whole question
very closely, Henry. There are two sides to it, as to every question.”
“And to every cab, Arthur. Well, I shall take your advice, for, of
course, if I don’t do something very soon, you will be having my
little lot and driving a four-in-hand to Hurlingham. I don’t mean to
let you do that, Arthur. I shall stick to the money; though, if ever
you want fifty for parochial uses, don’t forget to tell me.”
He was visibly upset--he is not a man who can hide his feelings. I
believe that if I had said the word, he would have consented to a
compromise on the spot. But I am an obstinate fool, Paddy, and I feel
that I would sooner sleep on the Embankment without a shirt to my back
than part with one shilling to this disciple of the Law and the
Profits who would spend it so ill.
This badinage was a pretty prelude to what was to come. We were up
early next morning, and the streets all a-blowing and a-growing before
the fishing boats had come in. You do not know Lowestoft, Paddy, but
you will please to understand that there is, beneath the northern
cliff, a very pretty stretch of grass land, whereon golfers and others
disport themselves. Toward this at eleven o’clock in the morning half
the inhabitants and all the visitors wended their way; and here the
great battle between the invading Danes and the inhospitable Britons
was to take place, directed by my cousin Arthur, who carried a
megaphone and took his station upon a watch-tower. As this is not a
horsey locality, the most part of us went afoot, and a fine,
straggling show of hire-purchase assassins we must have looked to any
sane man who had happened upon us at hazard.
Just imagine the narrow, fishy street of a fishy town packed from end
to end with twentieth-century monks, romping British maidens, Druid
priests, Danes, and Norsemen. Depict a fat grocer waddling along in a
tin-pot helmet and a tunic down to his knees. Create for yourself the
image of a substantial matron in a frock that looks like a--but you
have seen the catalogues of the linen houses and will spare my
blushes. Over all wave the flags and the banners. There are a few
horsemen--six-and-six the first hour, six shillings afterwards--a
great many battle-axes, pikes, and spiked maces. The fishermen, who
stare as we pass by, laugh vulgarly. Some of the youths, who are to do
the fighting, begin already and need the police to separate them. I
observe that the girls are all in a hurry to be carried screaming to
the hills and that they rehearse their parts upon any opportunity,
even the most trifling.
Such was the beginning of the Pageant at Lowestoft. Never, I suppose,
was Arthur Warrington in better form; it was better than any Criterion
farce to hear him shouting the stage directions from his watch-tower.
Of course, had he been a clever man, he would have engaged some genius
from the theatres to have helped him as to the stage management; but
he is not a clever man, and chaos followed him to the battle-field.
Oh, my dear Paddy, what a joy it was when that bellicose crowd heard
him bawling: “Harps to the mound; all the lyres this side; ancient
Britons, quick march; Danes ashore!” Could energy and a shrill voice
have achieved success, Arthur assuredly would have been crowned there
and then with a laurel; but, alas, what are energy and shrillness when
your Druid priest is invariably in the refreshment tent and your Danes
upset the boat which is bringing them ashore?
You will remember that little Martha had persuaded me to play the part
of one of these Scandinavian heroes, and a veritable sea-lion she said
I looked when the costumier had finished with me. Though she herself
stood for a British matron, I observed that her dress leaned toward
the soubrette ideal, and that she proposed an early and satisfying
adjournment to the tent wherein ices and other delicacies were vended.
In this she was generally imitated. A more desultory battle, a wilder,
more nonsensical puppet show, I have never seen upon any field of
Europe. Danes playing leap-frog on the sands; Druids chasing each
other, and the ladies--with sickle and artificial mistletoe--warriors
flirting already when they should have been fighting; trumpeters
passing their trumpets round for their neighbours to “have a blow;”
monks talking politics and passing each other the morning papers; fat
men asking “Where do we go?” stout ladies no less at a loss. My dear
Paddy, the hills would have rung with your laughter and the sea given
it back to you in roaring harmonies.
I will confess that we got something like order when the battle was
done, and that some of the Druidical rites were pretty and imposing. A
dance of “early British maidens,” in the afternoon, left footprints on
the sands of time; but the attempt of a monk to join in the business
came near to ruining it. From this moment onward toward sunset the
affair showed some signs of a degeneration which boded ill for the
later hours. I found myself without part or place in a disorderly
ensemble, and I suggested to Martha that she should be carried off
incontinently to the sea; and that we would go for a little row until
the multitude had recovered its senses. To this she consented very
gracefully, and, a boat being quickly found--for many watermen had
come to the place--I put off in it and soon left the madding crowd
behind us.
You must admit, Paddy, that there was little harm in this. We rowed in
full view of the shore; as a Norseman it was my business thus to act
in the presence of a British maiden. In a less romantic mood, I
desired to have a little talk with pretty Martha--for none was
possible at her house--and to hear exactly what she thought of my own
affairs and of my cousin’s interest in them. She is a candid little
body and responded immediately to my invitation. I found her no less
merry than eloquent, and, to be honest, she was not born for a
parson’s wife.
“Arthur thinks he’ll have your fortune,” she said; “he’s buying
motor-cars already with it.”
“And you encourage him, Martha?”
“Women always encourage men when they wish to be extravagant in a
proper way. But I don’t believe you’ll part with the money--and, to be
honest, I hope you won’t.”
“Those are not Arthur’s sentiments.”
“Would they be mine if they were? No man is the better for a woman
agreeing with him. Of course, I want Arthur to do well in the world,
but that’s no reason why he should do it with your fortune, Harry. As
it is, your father left him five thousand pounds, and he ought to be
satisfied.”
“Especially in view of the simple life, and all that. Is not Arthur a
bit of a Socialist, Martha?”
“Yes, he believes in having all his neighbours’ things in common. He
preached about it several times--they don’t like it in the country,
and someone wrote to the Bishop.”
“Did he suggest that his lordship should divide also?”
“Now you’re silly, Harry. What I wanted to tell you was that you
really must begin to do something in the world.”
“I have blown a trumpet this very morning, and nearly cut off a
Saxon’s head by accident. Is not that an achievement?”
“It is the kind of achievement which sends Arthur buying
motor-cars----”
“To the glory of God, and the delight of the local repairer. Tell me,
Martha, do you think I could earn any money, if I tried? Is it quite a
mad hope?”
“You could do so, Harry--you have brains enough. Arthur admits
that--he read your article about East Anglia in the magazine, and is
quite sure you have abilities.”
“Strange term. I wonder how many men have gone to the devil because
they had abilities?”
“But you really have them, Harry. That little bust you sent me over
from Paris a year ago was beautiful.”
“Offer it to an art dealer in Piccadilly and see if he will give you
five shillings for it. That kind of talent is the ruin of most of us.
We touch the hem of Art’s garment, but she doesn’t stop to bless us.
If I had been born a Portuguese Jew, and educated in the Ghetto, I
might begin to speak of abilities. There are few left in the ordinary
way.”
“But, at least, you might work, Harry.”
“What man who is in love works?”
“You! In love! Now, do tell me. Is it true--you aren’t joking, Harry?”
“I am not joking, Martha. Look at me and see. I am in love with a
little French lady who is dancing on Yarmouth beach. It was she who
kept me away from you last night.”
“Now, that’s nonsense, and I shall not listen to you.”
“I beg your pardon--you will listen as long as I go on talking. No
woman shuts her ears to a man’s love story--she couldn’t if she
tried.”
“But--it--it would be disgraceful, Harry!”
“Most of the pleasant things in life are disgraceful--from a narrow
point of view. I think you used to dance before you married Arthur.”
“Oh, I only waltzed--that’s not the kind of dancing I mean.”
“Let me suggest to you, Martha, that you have not seen the Señorita
Alphonsine. It would be fair to postpone a decision.”
“Harry, I shall not believe it any more than I believed the story of
the married woman for whom you fought a duel.”
“That’s kind of you, Martha. A woman who does not believe a story
about another woman is a treasure. She usually knows it is true
because she has seen it with her own ears----”
“Eyes, Harry----”
“No, I mean ears. She sees it because she hears it.”
“Are you going to marry this dancer?”
“Ah, that’s what I don’t know. She also objected to Madame Lea, and
her ideas about marriage are of the East, eastward. It is a subject
you do not hear much about in a French atelier.”
“Arthur says that he does not think any Frenchman can be saved--he
read somewhere that even the married men hardly remember the names of
their own wives--that is, in the society of which you speak.”
“An embarrassing circumstance. He was once in Paris for three days, I
think.”
“Yes, we had cheap tickets, and saw the Louvre and the Madeleine----”
“I wonder he did not bring an accent home--and pay duty on it at
Charing Cross.”
“But he is quite a French scholar, you know. He has read Lafontaine,
and he says that French people can never be as religious as we are,
because the Bible isn’t the same thing when it’s translated.”
“A fine thought. But tell me, Martha, will you be my best woman if I
marry Mimi?”
“Mimi--is that her name?”
“Yes, and a pretty name, too--don’t you think so?”
“What is the best woman at a wedding, Harry?”
“The woman who doesn’t run the bride down. Mimi hasn’t a friend in
England and hasn’t a rag to her back. If she will marry me--and God
alone knows whether she will or no--I want to see that she is all
right and wants for nothing.”
“I’ll do that with pleasure if Arthur will let me.”
“Oh, Arthur be hanged. If this boat continues to carry us out to sea,
as it is doing, we shall never see Arthur again.”
“But, Harry--oh, my dear cousin, where are we going?”
“That’s just what I want to know, Martha. Apparently we are on the way
to the Hook of Holland. Do you know the Dutchmen? A charming people
and some fine old cities.”
I spoke at random, but, to tell you the truth, Paddy, I never was in
such a stew in my life. There is a tremendous current running down
this narrow strait, and we had been talking so heedlessly that it had
carried us far out to sea before I had thought anything about a course
at all. When the danger became apparent, we must have been a good mile
from the shore, drifting apparently toward the southeast and carried
almost as swiftly as a stick upon a river. And, as if this were not
enough, what should happen but that my right scull, refusing to
respond to my herculean efforts, broke off short at the thowl and left
me with but a stump in my hand. Then, in truth, the lid was off the
casket--then, indeed, I foresaw what was to come, both the peril and
the folly of it.
Poor little Martha! What a face she wore, and what a devil of a mess
we seemed to be in! We had set off late in the afternoon, and it was
now about the hour of sunset. I looked about me and saw a great watery
plain glowing toward the west with a sheen of melting light; but, cold
and grey as unburnished silver elsewhere. By here and there, a herring
boat worked seaward beyond the banks; there were steamers upon the
horizon, and one which had just passed us making northward, as it
were, to Shields or the Humber. But, of help to be had for the crying,
I saw positively none. As for the town of Lowestoft, it was now but a
fringe of houses above a shimmering horizon. I could not even espy the
masqueraders upon the beach, though there came to us from time to time
a murmur of distant music, and, as it were, the ghost of a human
voice. At last we passed away even from these--the sun sank; the
waters began to beat about us a little ominously and the wind to utter
a warning.
Now, Paddy, you may imagine how little I liked this situation and how
careful I was that my real opinion concerning it should be kept from
the frightened little woman at the tiller. A sailor, I suppose, would
have made light of the whole affair, arguing that the set of the tide
would change anon and that the same boat which was now being carried
out to sea would presently be carried home again. So plain a fact did
not occur to me even while I had a pair of sculls in my hand; but with
one scull overboard and no particular use for the other I fear it
entered but little into my calculations. At the best I hoped that some
passing ship might pick us up--at the worst that we might drift right
across in safety and take an early boat to Harwich and our homes. But
the latter was a wild dream, as you may suppose--and I had all my work
to do to comfort little Martha and to applaud her bravery.
“To begin with,” I put it to her, “we cannot go far in these parts and
not spy out a herring-boat. The herring is a homely fish, Martha, and
will naturally suggest Arthur and the fireside.”
“He will never forgive me,” she said, “never--never--you don’t know
him, Harry. I shall hear of this to my dying day.”
“Of course you will. He will tell it proudly. An idiot of a man broke
an oar out at sea and was only saved from a watery grave by the pluck
and the resource of a brave woman--isn’t that what Arthur will say?”
“Think of the scandal in the parish, all the tongues that will be
wagging--think of that!”
“It will be finer talk than the Pageant. Please write it down Martha,
it may come in useful if I should perpetrate a book.”
“Don’t, don’t,” she cried, “don’t say it, Harry. I am afraid, horribly
afraid.”
“Now, that you are not, or you would not confess it, Martha. It is I
who am in a panic. I never was brave in the dark, and this particular
kind of darkness is my abhorrence. I wonder if I flared a box of
matches would it be any good, Martha. Do you think a fishing smack
would understand it?”
She made some evasive answer--the poor little body, I don’t wonder
that the situation scared her. There we were out in the gathering
darkness, not a light in sight save at distant Lowestoft, the wind
blowing cold as a blast from the hills, the sun gone down in a cloud,
and the sea rising with a mournful cry which would have shamed the
spirits of desolation. What to do, how to act even an old sailor might
have been puzzled to say. My primitive maritime knowledge, obtained
upon the yachts at Trouville, suggested an attempt to keep the head of
the boat towards the swelling breakers and her bows above the crests
of the increasing waves. I sat by Martha’s side, and, employing the
remaining scull as a paddle, tried to achieve so desirable an end. But
not without many a weird evolution which came near to costing us our
lives.
To be candid, I was within an ace of drowning my cousin’s pretty wife,
and that’s the whole truth of it. If you would give me ten thousand
pounds upon the table, I would not again encounter those grim hours of
helpless battling with monstrous waves and increasing winds blowing
upon us out of the void of the night.
Such a sense of loneliness and despair I have never experienced. We
seemed to have left the world of men far behind us. Great hollows
opened and threatened to engulf us. We mounted to crests and beheld a
grey horizon capped by mountainous clouds with the moon struggling to
break a golden way amid them. I knew then that long hours had passed;
I doubted that we should ever see the shore again.
And what does a woman do in moments like these. Well, if little Martha
may speak for her sex, she cries a little, laughs for contrast,
shivers when the cold can no longer be denied, and grows hot with hope
upon the slightest word of encouragement. When I told her that I
espied the light of a fishing-boat, she put both her arms about my
neck and kissed me--when I had to admit that it was sailing away to
the northward she just cried like a child who has met with
disappointment. Nor was that poor creature, her husband, often out of
her thoughts. A woman’s devotion to the man she has married may be
diverted by his own follies, but the right kind of woman goes back
upon it in the hour of danger. So with pretty Martha to-night. She
wept not for herself but for the man’s sorrow--and there I could not
comfort her at all.
It would have been nearly four o’clock of the morning and full light
when the boat they had sent out from Lowestoft found us at last. We
both got wet to the skin going aboard her, and were wrapped up in
blankets when we arrived at the Vicarage. Shall I say that Arthur
received us with a tragic air? Nothing of the kind; he just blubbered
like a schoolgirl and was down on his marrow-bones--for which I
honoured him--there and then. His demand for explanations came
afterwards. Those were tragic, indeed. “There must be a public account
of this,” he said. I told him not to be a fool, and he retorted by
asking me to leave his house.
“I do not say,” he was good enough to remark, “that you can command
the elements. Such was the power of the men of old. But at least you
should know better than to leave the beach in full view of the people,
with my wife as your companion, in so mad a folly. For that I shall
never forgive you.”
“Then you won’t continue to say the Lord’s prayer,” was my retort--and
I left him to think upon it.
But, naturally, I couldn’t stay here, Paddy--so where should I go but
to Cromer, where “The Chimes” are playing. Be sure that the palms of
these worthies were greased long ago, that the gentleman known as Jack
Bendall has bought a new overcoat, that the lady at the piano is
resplendent in a wonderful gown of satin, and that aromatic cigars of
a Belgian brand are freely smoked by the company.
Mimi is now a queen among them.
But I am daring to hope that her sovereignty will be transferred
elsewhere very soon--and that my daring plan will be rewarded by that
success which you, my dear Paddy, would be the first to wish me. So in
high hope find me,
Your friend,
Harry Gastonard.