OLD MOLE
BEING THE SURPRISING ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND OF HERBERT JOCELYN BEENHAM,
M.A., SOMETIME SIXTH-FORM MASTER AT THRIGSBY GRAMMAR SCHOOL IN THE
COUNTY OF LANCASTER
BY
GILBERT CANNAN
AUTHOR OF "ROUND THE CORNER"
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1917
Copyright, 1914. by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
TO
MY WIFE
_J'aime les fables des philosophes, je ris de celles des enfants, et je
hais celles des imposteurs._
L'INGÉNU.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. PRELUDE 3
II. MARRIAGE 99
III. INTERLUDE 147
IV. TOYS 171
V. IN THE SWIM 203
VI. OUT OF IT 289
VII. APPENDIX 347
I
PRELUDE
His star is a strange one! One that leadeth him to fortune by the path
of frowns! to greatness by the aid of thwackings!
THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT
I
PRELUDE
A SENSITIVE observer, who once spent a week in theatrical lodgings in
Thrigsby, has described the moral atmosphere of the place as "harsh
listlessness shot with humor." That is about as far as you can get in
a week. It is farther than Herbert Jocelyn Beenham, M.A. (Oxon.), got
in the twenty-five years he had given to the instruction of the youth
of Thrigsby in its Grammar School--the foundation of an Elizabethan
bishop. Ambition ever leads a man away from Thrigsby. Having none, H.
J. Beenham had stayed there, achieving the sort of distinction that
swelled Tennyson's brook. Boys and masters came and went, but "Old
Mole" still occupied the Sixth Form room in the gallery above the
glass roof of the gymnasium.
He was called Old Mole because whenever he spied a boy cribbing, or
larking, or reading a book that had no reference to the subject in
hand, or eating sweets, or passing notes, he would cry out in a voice
of thunder: "Ha! Art thou there, old mole?" Thrigsbian fathers who had
suffered at his hands would ask their sons about Old Mole, and so his
position was fortified by a sort of veneration. He was one of those
men who assume their definite shape and appearance in the early
thirties, and thereafter give no clew to their age even to the most
curious spinster's inquisitiveness. Reference to the Calendar of his
university shows that at the time of his catastrophe he cannot have
been more than forty-eight.
He was unmarried, not because he disliked women, but from indolence,
obstinacy, combativeness, and a coarse strain in him which made him
regard the female body, attire and voice as rather ridiculous. With
married women he was ceremonious and polite: with the unmarried he was
bantering. When he had been twenty years at the school he began
jocularly to speak of it as his bride, and when he came to his
twenty-fifth year he regarded it as his silver wedding. He was very
proud when his Form presented him with a smoker's cabinet and his
colleagues subscribed for a complete edition of the works of Voltaire
bound in vellum. Best of all was the fact that one of his boys, A. Z.
Panoukian, an Armenian of the second generation (and therefore a
thorough Thrigsbian), had won a scholarship at Balliol, the first
since he had had charge of the Sixth. At Speech Day, when the whole
school and their female relatives and the male parents of the
prize-winners were gathered in the John Bright Hall, the Head Master
would make a special reference to Panoukian and possibly to the happy
coincidence of his performance with the attainment of Mr. Beenham's
fourth of a century in the service of the pious and ancient
foundation. It was possible, but unlikely, for the Head Master was a
sentimentalist who made a point of presenting an arid front to the
world lest his dignity should be undermined.
It was with a glow of satisfaction that H. J. Beenham took out his
master's hood and his best mortar-board on the eve of Speech Day and
laid them out in his bedroom. This was at five o'clock in the
afternoon, for he had promised to spend the evening with the Panoukian
family at Bungsall, on the north side of the city. It was a heavy July
day and he was rather tired, for he had spent the morning in school
reading aloud from the prose works of Emerson, and the afternoon had
been free, owing to the necessity of a replay of the Final in the
inter-Form cricket championship between his boys and the Modern
Transitus. He had intended to illuminate the event with his presence,
but Thrigsby in July is not pleasant, and so he had come out by an
early train to his house at Bigley in the hills which overflow
Derbyshire into Cheshire.
He sat with a glow of satisfaction as he gazed at his hood and
mortar-board and thought of Panoukian. He was pleased with Panoukian.
He had "spotted" him in the Lower Third and rushed him up in two and a
half years to the Sixth. There had been an anxious three years during
which Panoukian had slacked, and taken to smoking, and been caught in
a café flirting (in a school cap) with a waitress, and had been
content with the superficial ease and brilliance with which he had
mastered the Greek and Latin classics and the rudiments of philosophy.
There had been a devastating term when Panoukian had taken to writing
poetry, and then things had gone from bad to worse until he (Beenham)
had lighted on the truth that Panoukian was stale and needed a fresh
point of attack. Then he had Panoukian to stay with him at Bigley and
turned him loose in French literature and, as a side issue, introduced
him to Eckermann's version of Goethe's conversation. The boy was most
keenly responsive to literature, and through these outside studies it
had been possible to lead him back to the realization that Homer,
Thucydides, Plato, Virgil and company had also produced literature and
that their works had only been masquerading as text-books. . . . The
fight was won, and F. J. Tibster of Balliol had written a most
gratifying letter of commendation of Panoukian's performance in the
examination. This had yielded the greatest satisfaction to Panoukian
_père_, and he had twice given Mr. Beenham lunch in the most expensive
restaurant of Thrigsby's new mammoth hotel, and now, when Panoukian
_fils_ was to leave the wing of his preceptor, had bidden him to meet
Mrs. Panoukian--an Irishwoman--and all the Miss Panoukians. The
railway journey from Bigley would be hot and unpleasant, and to reach
Bungsall it was necessary to pass through some of the most stifling
streets in Thrigsby. After the exhaustion of the summer term and the
examinations the schoolmaster found it hard to conquer his reluctance.
Only by thinking of the cool stream in the Highlands to which it was
his habit to fly on the day after Speech Day could he stiffen himself
to the effort of donning his dress clothes. (The Panoukians dressed in
the evening since their Arthur had been embraced by Balliol and taken
to the bosom of the Lady Dervorguilla.) He had a cold bath, and more
than ever clearly he thought of the brown water of the burn foaming
into white and creamy flecks over the rocks. How thoroughly, he
thought, he had this year earned his weeks of peace and solitude.
He would catch the six-twenty-four. He had plenty of time and there
would be a good margin in Thrigsby. He could look in at the Foreign
Library, of which he was president, and give them his new selection of
books to be purchased during the vacation. On the way he met Barnett,
the captain of the Bigley Golf Club, and stayed to argue with him
about the alterations to the fourteenth green, which he considered
scandalous and incompetent. He told Barnett so with such heat and at
such length that he only just caught the six-twenty-four and had to
leap into a third-class carriage. It was empty. He opened the windows
and lay at full length on the seat facing the engine. It was more hot
and unpleasant than he had anticipated. He cursed Barnett and extended
the malediction to Panoukian. It would have been more pleasant to
spend the evening with Miss Clipton, sister and formerly housekeeper
to a deceased bishop of Thrigsby, talking about her vegetable marrows.
. . . Uncommonly hot. Deucedly hot. The train crawled so that there
was no draught. He went to sleep.
He was awakened by the roar of the wheels crossing Ockley viaduct.
Ockley sprawls up and down the steep sides of a valley. At the bottom
runs a black river. Tall chimneys rise from the hillsides. From the
viaduct you gaze down into thousands of chimneys trailing black smoke.
The smoke rises and curls and writhes upward into the black pall that
ever hangs over Ockley. This pall was gold and red and apricot yellow
with the light of the sun behind it. There were folk at Bigley who
said there was beauty in Ockley. . . . It was a frequent source of
after-dinner argument in Bigley. Beauty. For H. J. Beenham all beauty
lived away from Thrigsby and its environment. Smoke and beauty were
incompatible. Still, in his half-sleeping, half-waking condition there
was something impressive in Ockley's golden pall. He raised himself on
his elbow the better to look out, when he was shocked and startled by
hearing a sort of whimper. Opposite him, in the corner, was sitting a
girl, a very pretty girl, with a white, drawn face and her hands
pressed together, her shoulders huddled and her face averted. Her eyes
were blank and expressionless, and there was a great tear trickling
down her nose. The light from the golden pall glowed over her face but
seemed only to accentuate its misery and the utter dejection of her
attitude.
"Poor girl!" thought the schoolmaster. "Poor, poor girl!" He felt a
warm, melting sensation in the neighborhood of his breastbone; and
with an impulsiveness altogether unusual to him he leaned forward and
tried to lay his hand on her. He was still only half awake and was
wholly under the impulse to bring comfort to one so wretched. The
train lurched as it passed over a point, and, instead of her hand, he
grasped her knee. At once she sprang forward and slapped his face.
Stung, indignant, shocked, but still dominated by his impulse, urged
by it to insist on its expression, he seized her by the wrists and
tried to force her back into her seat and began to address her:
"My poor child! Something in you, in your eyes, has touched me. I do
not know if I can. . . . Please sit down and listen to me."
"Nasty old beast!" said the girl.
"I must protest," replied Old Mole, "the innocence of my motives." He
still gripped her by the wrists. "Seeing you as I did, so unnerved,
so----"
The train slowed down and stopped, but he did not notice it. He was
absolutely absorbed in his purpose--to succor this young woman in
distress and to show her the injustice of her suspicions. She by this
time was almost beside herself with anger and fright, and she had
struggled so violently--for he had no notion of the force with which
he held her--that her hair had tumbled down behind and she had torn
the seam of her sleeve and put her foot through a flounce in her
petticoat.
He was thoroughly roused now, and shouted:
"You shall listen to me----"
"Let me go! Let me go!" screamed the girl.
The train had stopped opposite a train going in the other direction.
The door of the compartment was opened suddenly, and Beenham found
himself picked up and flung into the far corner. Over him towered an
immense form clad in parson's clothes--the very type of vengeful
muscular Christianity.
In the corner the girl had subsided into hysterical sobs. The parson
questioned her.
"Do you know this man?"
"No . . . no, sir."
"Never seen him before?"
"Never, sir. He--he set on me."
"Do you prefer a charge against him?"
"Yes, sir."
Beenham could hardly hear what they said, but he was boiling with
indignation.
"I protest----" he said.
"Silence!" shouted the parson. "But for my timely intervention Heaven
knows what would have happened. . . . Silence! You and men like you
are a pest to society, impervious to decency and the call of religion.
. . . Fortunately there is law in the country and you shall know it."
With that he pulled down the chain above the windows. In a moment or
two the scowling guard appeared. The parson described the horrible
scene he had witnessed from the train, that was even now moving
Londonward, his interference, and declared his intention of seeing
that the perpetrator of so vile a deed should be hounded down. He
requested the guard to telephone at the next station to the Thrigsby
police. A small crowd had collected. They hummed and buzzed with
excitement, and fifteen men clambered into the compartment to assist
the parson in his heroic defence of the young woman against the now
fully awake and furious pedagogue. He tried to speak, but was shouted
down: to move toward the parson, but was thrust back into his corner.
Every one else had a perfectly clear-cut idea of what had happened. He
himself was so busy emerging from his state of hallucination and
trying to trace back step by step everything that had happened to
produce the extraordinary eruption into what had been at Bigley an
empty, ordinary, rather stuffy compartment in a railway train, that he
could not even begin to contemplate the consequences or to think,
rather, what they might all be moving toward. It was only as the train
ran into Thrigsby, and he saw the name, that he associated it with
that other word which had been on the parson's lips:
"Police!"
There was a cold sinking in the pit of his stomach. Out of his
hallucination came the remembrance that he had, with the most kindly
and generous and spontaneously humane motives, used the girl with
violence.--Police! He was given no time for thought. There was a
policeman on the platform. A crowd gathered. It absorbed Beenham,
thrust him toward the policeman, who seized him by the arm and,
followed by the parson and the girl, they swept swiftly along the
platform, down the familiar incline, the crowd swelling as they went,
along an unknown street, squalid and vibrant with the din of iron-shod
wheels over stone setts, to the police station. There a shabby swing
door cut off the crowd, and Beenham, parson, girl and policeman stood
in the charge room waiting for the officer at the desk to look up from
his ledger.
The charge was made and entered. The girl's name was Matilda Burn, a
domestic servant. She was prompted by the parson, who swept aside her
reluctance to speak. Old Mole was asked to give his name, address and
occupation. He burst into a passionate flow of words, but was
interrupted and coldly reminded that he was only desired to give bare
information on three points, and that anything he might say would be
used against him in evidence. He explained his identity, and the
officer at the ledger looked startled, but entered the particulars in
slow writing with a scratchy pen. The parson and the girl disappeared.
The officer at the ledger cleared his throat, turned to the accused,
opened his mouth, but did not speak. He scratched his ear with his
pen, stooped and blew a fly off the page in front of him, made a
visible effort to suppress his humanity and conduct the affair in
accordance with official routine, and finally blurted out:
"Do you want bail?"
Old Mole gave the name and address of his Head Master.
"You can write if you like."
The letter was written, read by the officer, and despatched. There was
a whispered consultation behind the ledger, during which the unhappy
schoolmaster read through again and again a list of articles and dogs
missing, and then he was led to the inspector's room and given a
newspaper to read.
"Extraordinary!" he said to himself. Then he thought of the Panoukians
and began to fidget at the idea of being late. He abominated
unpunctuality. Had he not again and again had to punish young
Panoukian for indulgence in the vice? The six-twenty-four had given
him ample time. He pulled out his watch: Still twenty-five minutes,
but he must hurry. He looked round the bare, dingy room vaguely,
wonderingly. Incisively the idea of his situation bit into his brain.
He was in custody--_carcer,_ a prison. How absurd it was, rather
funny! It only needed a little quiet, level-headed explanation and he
would be free. The "chief" would confirm his story, his identity.
. . . They would laugh over it. Very funny: very funny. A wonderful
story for the club. He chuckled over it to himself until he began to
think of the outcome. More than once he had served on a Grand Jury and
had slept through the consideration of hundreds of indictments: a
depressing experience for which the judge had rewarded him with
nothing but compliments and an offer of a pass to view His Majesty's
prison. That brought him up with a jerk. He was in custody, charged
with a most serious offence, for which he would be tried at the
Assizes. It was monstrous, preposterous! It must be stopped at once.
What a grotesque mistake! What an egregious, yet what a serious
blunder! That officious idiot of a parson!
The Head Master arrived. He glowered at his colleague and seemed very
agitated. He said:
"This is very serious, most unfortunate. It is--ah--as well for the
prestige of the school that it has happened at the end of term. We
must hush it up, hush it up."
Beenham explained. He told the whole story, growing more and more
amazed and indignant as he set it forth. The Head Master only said:
"I form no opinion. We must hush it up. It must be kept out of the
papers."
Not a word more could be wrung from him. With a stiff back and pursed
lips he nodded and went away. He returned to say:
"Of course you will not appear at Speech Day. I will write to you as
soon as I have decided what had best be done."
"I shall be at Bigley," said Old Mole.
He was released on bail and told to surrender himself at the police
court when called upon.
In a dream he wandered out into the street and up into the main
thoroughfare, along which every day in term time he walked between the
station and the school. Impossible to go to the Panoukians; impossible
to return to Bigley. Suppose he had been recognized! Any number of his
acquaintances might be going out by the six-forty-nine. He must have
been seen! Bigley would be alive with it! . . . He sent two telegrams,
one to the Panoukians, the other to his housekeeper to announce that
he would not be back that night.
He forgot to eat, and roamed through the streets of Thrigsby, finding
relief from the strain of his fear and his tormented thoughts in
observation. Dimly, hardly at all consciously, he began to perceive
countless existences all apparently indifferent to his own. Little
boys jeered at him occasionally, but the men and women took no notice
of him. Streets of warehouses he passed through, streets of little
blackened houses, under railway arches, under tall chimneys, past
shops and theaters and music-halls, and waste grounds, and grounds
covered with scaffolding and fenced in with pictured hoardings: an
immense energy, the center of which was, surprisingly, not the school.
He walked and thought and observed until he sank into exhaustion and
confusion. In the evening, when the lamps were lit, the main streets
were thronged with men and women idly strolling, for it was too hot
for purpose or deliberate amusement.
Late, about eleven o'clock, he walked into his club. The porter
saluted. In the smoke room two or three of his acquaintances nodded.
No one spoke to him. In a corner was a little group who kept looking
in his direction, so that after a time he began to feel that they were
talking about him. He became acutely conscious of his position. There
were muttering and whispering in the corner, and then one man, a tall,
pale-faced man, whom he had known slightly for many years, arose from
the group and came heavily toward him.
"I want to speak to you a moment," said the man.
"Certainly. Certainly."
They went outside.
"Er--of course," said the man, "we are awfully sorry, but we can't
help feeling that it was a mistake for you to come here to-night. You
must give us time, you know."
Beenham looked the man up and down.
"Time for what?" he replied acidly.
"To put it bluntly," came the answer, "Harbutt says he won't stay in
the club if you stay."
Beenham turned on his heel and went downstairs. At the door he met the
Head Master coming in, who sourly expressed pleasure in the meeting.
"I shall never enter the club again," said Beenham.
The Head Master paid no attention to the remark, took him by the arm
and led him into the street. There they paced up and down while it was
explained that the Chief Constable had been approached and was willing
to suspend proceedings until a full inquiry had been made, if Beenham
were willing to face an inquiry; or, in the alternative, would allow
him twenty-four hours in which to disappear from Thrigsby. The Lord
Mayor and three other governors of the school had been seen, and they
were all agreed that such an end to Mr. Beenham's long and honorable
connection with the foundation was deplorable.
"End!" gasped Beenham.
"The governors all expressed----" began the Head Master, when his
colleague interrupted him with:
"What is your own opinion?"
"I--I----"
"What is your own feeling?"
"I am thinking of the school."
"Then I am to suffer under an unjust and unfounded accusation?"
"The school----"
"Ach!----"
Impossible to describe the wonderful guttural sound that the unhappy
man wrenched out of himself. He stood still and his brain began to
work very clearly and he saw that the scandal had already begun to
move so that if he accepted either of his chief's alternatives and had
the matter hushed up, or he vanished away within twenty-four hours, it
would solidify, crystallize into conical form, descend and extinguish
them. If, on the other hand, he insisted on a public inquiry, there
would be a conflagration in which, though he might leave the court
without a stain on his reputation--was not that the formula?--yet his
worldly position would be consumed with possible damage to the
institution to which he had given so many years of his life. His first
impulse was to save his honor without regard to the cost or damage to
others: but then he remembered the attitude of the men in the club,
fathers of families with God knows what other claims to righteousness,
and he saw that, though he might be innocent as a lamb, yet he had to
face public opinion excited by prejudice, which, if he dared to combat
it, he would only have enflamed. He was not fully aware of the crisis
to which he had come, but his emotion at the idea of severing his
connection with the place that had been the central point of his
existence spurred him to an instinctive effort in which he began to
perceive larger vistas of life. Against them as background everything
that was and had been was reduced in size so that he could see it
clearly and bioscopically. He knew, too, that he was seeing it
differently from the Head Master, from Harbutt, from all the other men
who would shrink away from the supposedly contagious danger of his
situation, and he admitted his own helplessness. With that his
immediate indignation at the conduct of individuals died away and he
was left with an almost hysterical sense of the preposterousness of
the world in which out of nothing, a misconstruction, a whole mental
fabric could be builded beneath the weight of which a normal,
ordinary, respectable, hard-working, conscientious man could be
crushed. And yet he did not feel at all crushed, but only rather
excited and uplifted with, from some mysterious source, a new
accretion of strength.
"I see the force of your argument," he said to his chief. "I see the
inevitability of the course you have taken. The story, even with my
innocence, is too amusing for the dignity of an ancient foundation and
our honorable profession of pedagogy."--He enjoyed this use of
rhetoric as a relief to his feelings, for he was torn between tragedy
and comedy, tears and laughter--"To oblige the Lord Mayor, the
governors, and yourself, I will accept the generous offer of the Chief
Constable. Good-bye. I hope you will not forget to mention Panoukian
tomorrow."
The Head Master pondered this for some moments and then held out his
hand. Old Mole looked through him and walked on. He had not gone
twenty yards when he began to chuckle, to gulp, to blink, and then to
laugh. He laughed out loud, went on laughing, thumped in the air with
his fist. Suddenly the laughter died in him and he thought:
"Twenty-five years! That's a large slice out of a man's life.
Ended--in what? Begun--in what? To show--what is there? Ended in one
sleepy, generous impulse leading to disaster. Twenty-five years,
slumbered away, in an ancient and honorable profession, in teaching
awkward, conceited, and, for the most part, grubby little boys things
which they looked forward to forgetting as soon as they passed out
into the world." And he had taken pride in it, pride in a possession
which chance and the muddle-headed excitability of men could in a
short space of time demolish, pride in the thought that he was half
remembered by some hundreds of the citizens of that huge, roaring city
from whose turmoil and gross energy he had lived secluded. He looked
back, and the years stretched before him tranquil and monotonous and
foolish. He totted up the amount of money that he had drawn out of
Thrigsby during those years and set against it what he had given--the
use of himself, the unintelligent, mechanical use of himself. He
turned from this unpleasant contemplation to the future. That was even
more appalling. Within twenty-four hours he had to perform the
definite act of disappearing from the scene. Beyond that lay nothing.
To what place in the world could he disappear? He had one brother, a
Chancery barrister and a pompous ass. They dined together once a year
and quarreled. . . . His only sister was married to a curate, had an
enormous family and small means. All his relations lived in a church
atmosphere--his father had been a parson in Lincolnshire--and they
distrusted him because of his avowed love for Lucretius and Voltaire.
Certainly they would be no sort of help in time of trouble. . . . As
for friends, he had none. His work, his days spent with crowds of
homunculi had given him a taste for solitude and the habit of it. He
had prided himself on being a clubbable man and he had had many
acquaintances, but not, in his life, one single human being to whom in
his distress he wished to turn. He had liked the crowds through which
he had wandered. They had given him the most comforting kind of
solitude. He was distressed now that the streets were so empty; shops,
public-houses, theaters were closed. How dreary the streets were! How
aimless, haphazard and sprawling was the town! How aimless, haphazard
and sprawling his own life in it had been!
A woman passed him and breathed a hurried salute. He surveyed her with
a detached, though warmly humorous, interest. She was, like himself,
outcast, though she had found her feet and her own way of living. With
the next woman he shook hands. She laughed at him. He raised his hat
to the third. She stopped and stared at him, open-mouthed. As amazed,
he stared at her. It was the young woman of the train.
He could find nothing to say, nor she; neither could move. Feeling the
necessity of a salute, he removed his hat, bowed, and, finding a
direct approach impossible, shot off obliquely and absurdly.
"I had once a German colleague who was a lavish and indiscriminate
patron of the ladies of a certain profession. He resigned. I also have
resigned."
She said:
"I'm sorry," and, having found her tongue, added:
"Can you tell me the way to the Flat Iron Market. My aunt won't take
me in."
"Are you also in disgrace?"
"Yes, sir. I was in service. It was the young master. I did love him,
I did really."
"You had been dismissed when I met you in the train?"
"Yes, sir. They gave me a quarter of an hour to go, without wages, and
they are sending on my box. My aunt won't take me in."
Again in her eyes was the expression of helplessness and impotence in
the face of distress that had so moved him, and once again he melted.
He forgot his own situation and was only concerned to see that she
should not come to harm or be thrown destitute upon a cold, a busy,
harsh, and indifferent world. Upon his inquiry as to the state of her
purse, she told him she had only a shilling, and he pressed half a
sovereign into her hand. Then he asked her why she wished to find the
Flat Iron Market, and she informed him she had an uncle, Mr. Copas,
who was there. She had only seen him twice, but he had been kind to
her mother when she was alive, although he was not respectable.
They were directed by a policeman, and as they walked Beenham gave her
the story of his experience at the police station and how he had
accepted the Chief Constable's ultimatum. And he employed the
opportunity to complete his explanation of his extraordinary lapse
from decorum.
"You can do silly things when you're half awake," said Matilda. "It's
like being in love, isn't it?"
"I have never been in love."
She shot a quick, darting glance at him and he blinked.
Flat Iron Market is a piece of waste land over against a railway arch.
Here on Saturdays and holidays is held a traffic in old metal, cheap
laces and trinkets, sweets and patent medicines, and in one corner are
set up booths, merry-go-rounds, swing boats, cocoanut shies, and
sometimes a penny gaff. In the evening, under the flare and flicker of
naphtha lamps, the place is thronged with artisans and their wives and
little dirty wizened children, and young men and maidens seeking the
excitement of each other's jostling neighborhood.
Now, as Beenham and Matilda came to it, it was dark and deserted; the
wooden houses were shrouded, and the awnings of the little booths and
the screens of the cocoanut shies flapped in the night wind. They
passed a caravan with a fat woman and two young men sitting on the
steps, and they yawped at the sight of Beenham's white shirtfront.
"Does Mr. Copas live in a caravan?" asked Beenham.
"It's the theayter," replied Matilda.
Picking their way over the shafts of carts and empty wooden boxes,
they came to a red and gilt fronted building adorned with mirrors and
knobs and scrolls, above the portico of which was written: "Copases
Theater Royal," in large swollen letters. At either end of this
inscription was a portrait, one of Mrs. Siddons in tragedy, the other
of J. L. Toole in comedy. Toole had been only recently painted and had
been given bright red hair. Mrs. Siddons, but for her label, would
only have been recognizable by her nose.
In front of this erection was a narrow platform, on which stood a
small automatic musical machine surmounted with tubular bells played
by two little wooden figures, a man and a woman in Tyrolian costume,
who moved along a semi-circular cavity. In the middle of the façade
was an aperture closed in with striped canvas curtains. This aperture
was approached from the ground by a flight of wooden steps through the
platform.
"Please," said Beenham, "please give my name as Mr. Mole."
Matilda nodded and ran up the wooden steps and through the aperture.
She called:
"It's dark."
When Mr. Mole followed her he found himself standing on the top of
another flight of steps leading down into impenetrable gloom. He
struck a light and peered into an auditorium of rough benches, the
last few rows of which were raised above the rest. Matilda looked up
at him, and he was struck by the beauty of the line of her cheek from
the brow down into the neck. She smiled and her teeth flashed white.
Then the match went out.
He lit another, and they moved toward the stage, through the curtains
of which came a smell of onions and cheese, rather offensive on such a
hot night. For the first time Beenham began to feel a qualm as to the
adventure. The second match went out, and he felt Matilda place her
hand on his arm, and she led him toward the stage, told him to duck
his head, and they passed through into a narrow space, lit by a light
through another curtain, and filled, so far as he could see, with
scenery and properties.
"Have you been here before?" he said.
"When I was a little girl. I think it's this way."
He stumbled and brought a great pole and a mass of dusty canvas
crashing down. At once there was the battering of feet on boards, the
din of voices male and female, and above them all a huge booming bass
roaring:
"In Hell's name, what's that?"
Matilda giggled.
A curtain was torn aside, and the light filled the place where they
were. Against it they could see silhouetted the shape of a diminutive
man craning forward and peering. He had a great stick in his hand, and
he bellowed:
"Come out o' that! It's not the first time I've leathered a man, and
it won't be the last. This 'ere's a theater, my theater. It ain't a
doss house. Come out o' that."
"It's me," said Matilda.
"Gorm, it's a woman!"
"It's me, uncle."
"Eh?"
"It's me, Matilda Burn."
"What? Jenny's girl?"
"Yes, uncle."
"Well, I never! Who's your fancy?"
"It's Mr. Mole."
The figure turned and vanished, and the curtain swung to again. They
heard whisperings and exclamations of surprise, and in a moment Mr.
Copas returned with a short ladder which he thrust down into their
darkness. They ascended it and found themselves on the stage. Matilda
was warmly embraced, while her companion stood shyly by and gazed
round him at the shabby scenery and the footlights and the hanging
lamps over his head. He found it oddly exciting to be standing in such
a place, and he said to himself: "This is the stage," as in Rome one
might stand and say: "This is the Forum." This excitement and romantic
fervor carried with it a certain helplessness, as though he had been
plunged into a foreign land that before he had only dimly realized.
"This is the stage! This is the theater!"
It was a strange sensation of being detached and remote, of having
passed out of ordinary existence into a region not directly concerned
with it and subject to other laws. He felt entirely foreign to it, but
then, also, under its influence, he felt foreign to his own existence
which had cast him high and dry and ebbed away from him. It was like
one of those dreams in which one startlingly leaves the earth and, as
startlingly, finds security in the thin air through which, bodiless,
one soars. There was something buoyant in the atmosphere, a
zestfulness, and at the same time an oppressiveness, against which
rather feebly he struggled, while at the same time he wondered whether
it came from the place or from the people. Mr. Copas, the large
golden-haired lady, the thin, hungry-looking young man, the drabbish
young woman, the wrinkled, ruddy, beaming old woman, the loutish
giant, the elderly, seedy individual, the little girl with her hair
hanging in rat's tails, who clustered round Matilda and smiled at her
and glowered at her and kissed her and fondled her.
To all these personages he was presented as "Mr. Mole." When at length
Mr. Copas and his niece had come to an end of their exchange of family
reminiscence, the men shook hands with him and the women bowed and
curtsied with varying degrees of ceremony, after which he was bidden
to supper and found himself squatting in a circle with them round a
disordered collection of plates and dishes, bottles, and enameled iron
cups, all set down among papers and costumes and half-finished
properties.
"Sit down, Mr. Mole," said Mr. Copas. "Any friend of any member of my
family is my friend. I'm not particular noble in my sentiments, but
plain and straightforward. I'm an Englishman, and I say: 'My country
right or wrong.' I'm a family man and I say: 'My niece is my niece,
right or wrong.' Them's my sentiments, and I drink toward you."
When Mr. Copas spoke there was silence. When he had finished then all
the rest spoke at once, as though such moments were too rare to be
wasted. Matilda and Mr. Copas engaged in an earnest conversation and
the clatter of tongues went on, giving Mr. Mole the opportunity to
still his now raging hunger and slake the tormenting thirst that had
taken possession of him. Silence came again and he found himself being
addressed by Mr. Copas.
"Trouble is trouble, I say, and comes to all of us. For your kindness
to my niece, much thanks. She will come along of us and welcome. And
if you, being a friend of hers, feel so disposed, you can come along,
too. It's a come-day-go-day kind of life, here to-day and gone
to-morrow, but there's glory in it. It means work and plenty of it,
but no one's ever the worse for that."
It was a moment or two before Beenham realized that he was being
offered a position in the troupe. He took a long draught of beer and
looked round at the circle of faces. They were all friendly and
smiling, and Matilda's eyes were dancing with excitement. He met her
gaze and she nodded, and he lost all sense of incongruity and said
that he would come, adding, in the most courteous and elegant
phrasing, that he was deeply sensible of the privilege extended to
him, but that he must return to his house that night and set his
affairs in order, whereafter he would with the greatest pleasure
renounce his old life and enter upon the new. He was doubtful (he
said) of his usefulness, but he would do his best and endeavor not to
be an encumbrance.
"If you gave me the Lord Mayor of Thrigsby," said Mr. Copas, "I would
turn him, if not into a real actor, at least into something so like
one that only myself and one other man in England could tell the
difference."
Mr. Mole found that he had just time to catch the last train home,
and, after arranging for his return on the following day, he exchanged
courtesies all round, was shown out by a little door at the back of
the stage, and walked away through the now empty streets. He was
greatly excited and uplifted, and it was not until he reached the
incline of the station that memory reasserted itself and brought with
it the old habit of prudence, discretion, and common sense. He was
able to go far enough back to see the little dusty theater and the
queer characters in it as fantastic and antipodean, but when he came
to the events of that evening the contrast was blurred and the world
of settled habit and conviction was merged into the unfamiliarity of
the stage and became one with it in absurdity. The thought of stepping
back from his late experience into ordinary existence filled him with
anger and hot resentment: the passage from the scene at the club and
the interview with his chief to Mr. Copas's company was an easy and
natural transition, or so it seemed when he thought of Matilda.
He felt very defiant when he reached Bigley and half hoped that he
might meet some of his acquaintances. They would go on catching the
early train in the morning and the through train in the evening, while
he would be away and free. Some such feeling he had always had in July
of superiority over the commercial men who had but three weeks'
holiday in the year, while he had eight weeks at a stretch. Now he was
to go away forever, and Bigley would talk for a little and then forget
and go on cluttering about its families and its ailments and its
inheritances and its church affairs and its golf course and the
squabbles with the Lord of the Manor. He met no one and found his
house shut up, and it took him fully half an hour to rouse his man. By
that time he had lost his temper and had no desire save to bully the
fellow. Everything else was wiped out, and he wanted only to assert
himself in bluster. In this way he avoided any awkward wondering
whether the man knew, got out the information that he was going away,
probably leaving Bigley, selling the house and furniture, and would
write further instructions when he had settled down. He ordered and
counter-ordered and ordered breakfast until he had fixed it at ten,
and at last, after a round volley of oaths because the man turned to
him with a question in his eyes, went upstairs to his room, rolled
into bed, and slept as deeply as an enchanted knight beneath the
castle of a fairy princess.
The next morning he went through his accounts, found that his capital
amounted to nearly four thousand pounds, had his large suitcase packed
with a careful selection of clothes and books, told his man he was
going abroad, paid him three months' wages in advance, apologized for
his violence overnight, shook hands, went round the garden to say
good-bye to his vegetable marrows and sweet peas, and then departed.
In Thrigsby he saw his solicitor (an old pupil), who was
professionally sympathetic, but took his instructions for the sale of
his house and furniture gravely and promised to keep his whereabouts
and all communications secret.
"It is a most serious calamity," said the solicitor.
"Damn it all," rejoined Old Mole, "I like it." And he visited his
bank. The manager had always thought Beenham "queer," and received his
rather unusual instructions without astonishment.
"You are leaving Thrigsby?"
"For good. Can't think why I've stayed here so long."
He drew a large sum of money in notes and gold and dined well and
expensively at a musty, heavily carpeted commercial hotel. When the
porter had placed his bag in a cab and turned for his instructions he
gaped in surprise on being told to drive to the Flat Iron Market. Even
more surprised were the frequenters of that resort when the cab drew
up by the pavement and a well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman with gold
spectacles descended and pushed his way through the crowd jostling and
chattering under the blare and din of the mechanical organs and the
flicker and flare of the naphtha lamps to the back of Copas's Theater
Royal, which he entered by the stage door. It was whispered that he
was a detective, and he was followed by a buzzing train of men and
women. Disappointed of the looked-for sensation, they soon dispersed
and were swallowed up in the shifting crowd.
Groping through the darkness, he came to the greenroom--Mr. Copas's
word for it--and deposited his bag. On the stage, through a canvas
curtain, he could hear the thudding of feet and the bellowing of a
great voice broken every now and then with cheers at regular intervals
and applause from the auditorium. In a corner on a basket sat Matilda.
She was wearing a pasteboard crown and gazing at herself in a mirror.
As he dropped his bag she looked up and grinned.
"So you've come back? I didn't think you would."
"Yes, I've come back. The school has broken up."
She removed her crown.
"Like to see the show? Uncle's got 'em tonight."
"Got? What has he got?"
"The audience."
She led him to the front of the house, where they were compelled to
stand, for all the benches were full, packed with sweating, zestful
men and women who had paid for enjoyment and were receiving it in full
measure.
In the "Tales out of School," published after H. J. Beenham's death by
one of the many pupils who became grateful on his achieving celebrity,
there is an admirable account of his first impression of the theater
which can only refer to the performance of Mr. Copas in the Flat Iron
Market. Till then he says he had always regarded the theater as one of
those pleasures without which life would be more tolerable, one of
those pleasures to face which it is necessary to eat and drink too
much. The two respectable theaters in Thrigsby were maintained by
annual pantomimes and kept open from week to week by the visits of
companies presenting replicas of alleged successful London plays. He
had never attended either theater unless some one else paid. . . .
Here now in this ramshackle Theater Royal, half tent, half booth, his
sensations were very mixed. At first the shabby scenery, the poverty
of the stage furniture, the tawdriness of the costumes of the players,
filled him with a pitying sense of the ludicrous. The program was
generous, opening with "Robert Macaire," passing on to "Mary Queen of
Scots," and ending with a farce called "Trouble in the Home," while
between the pieces there would be song and dance by Mr. Fitter, the
celebrated comedian. All this was announced on a placard hanging from
the proscenium. . . . Mary Queen of Scots was sitting, crowned, on a
Windsor chair at the back of the stage, surrounded with three
courtiers. As Darnley (or it might be Bothwell), Mr. Copas was
delivering himself of an impassioned if halting narration, addressed
to the hapless Queen through the audience. He was certainly a very bad
actor, so Beenham thought until he had listened to him for nearly five
minutes, at the end of which a change took place in his mind and he
found himself forced to accept Mr. Copas's own view of the traffic of
the stage. It was impossible to make rhyme or reason of the play,
which showed the most superb disregard for history and sense. Apart
from Mr. Copas it did not exist. He was its center and its
circumference. It began and ended in him, moved through him from its
beginning to its end. The rest of the characters were his puppets.
When he came to an end of a period Mary Queen of Scots would turn on
one of three moods--the tearful, the regal, the noisily defiant; or a
page would say, "Me Lord! Me Lord!"; or the lugubrious young man,
dressed in priestly black, would borrow from another play and in a
sepulchral voice declaim, "Beware the Ides of March." The performance
was an improvisation and in that art only Mr. Copas had any skill,
unless he had deliberately so subdued the rest that he was left with
his own passionate belief in himself and acting as acting to clothe
the naked and deformed skeleton with flesh. Whatever the process of
his mind he did succeed in hypnotizing himself and his audience,
including Mr. Mole and Matilda, and worked up to a certain height and
ended in shocking bathos so suddenly as to create surprise rather than
derision. He believed in it all and made everybody else believe.
Matilda gave a sigh as the curtains were drawn and Mr. Copas appeared,
bowing and bowing again, using his domination over his audience to
squeeze more and more applause out of them.
"Ain't it lovely?" said Matilda.
"It is certainly remarkable," replied Mr. Mole.
"You'd never think he had a floating kidney, would you?"
"I would not."
"It's that makes him a little quick in his temper."
From the audience arose a smell of oranges, beer and peppermint, and
there were much talk and laughter, giggling and round resounding
kissing. No change of scene was considered necessary for the song and
dance of Mr. Fitter, who turned out to be the lugubrious young man. He
had no humor, but he worked very hard and created some amusement. Mr.
Copas did not appear in the farce, which was deplorable and made Mr.
Mole feel depressed and ashamed, so that for a moment his old point of
view reasserted itself and he felt aghast at the undertaking upon
which he was embarked. A moment or two before he had been telling
himself that this was "life"--the talk and the laughter and the
kissing; now he felt only disgust at its coarseness and commonness. He
was dejected and miserable, stripped even of the intellectual interest
roused by Mr. Copas. The loutish buffoons on the stage with their
brutal humors filled him with resentment at their degradation. Only
his obstinacy saved him from yielding to the impulse to escape. . . .
Matilda had grown tired of standing and had taken his arm. She laughed
at nearly all the jokes. Her laughter was shrill and immoderate. He
called himself fool, but he stayed.
He was warmly welcomed by Mr. Copas after the performance. His
congratulations and praise were accepted with proper modesty.
"Acting," said Mr. Copas, "is a nart. There's some as thinks it's a
trick, like performing dogs, but it's a nart. What did you think of
Mrs. Copas?"
The question was embarrassing. Fortunately no answer was expected.
"I've taught her everything she knows. She's not very good at queens,
but her mad scenes can't be beat, can't be beat. My line's tragedy by
nature, but a nartist has to be everything. . . . What's your line,
Mr. Mole?"
"I don't know that I have a line."
Mr. Copas rubbed his chin.
"Of course. You _look_ like a comic, but we'll see, we'll see. You
couldn't write plays, I suppose? Not that there's much writing to be
done when you give three plays a night, and a different program every
night. Just the plot's all we want. Are you good at plots?"
"I've read a good deal."
"Ah! I was never a reader myself. . . . Of course, I can't pay you
anything until I know whether you're useful or not."
"I've plenty of money, thanks."
Mr. Copas eyed his guest shrewdly.
"Of course," he said, "of course, if you were really keen I could take
you in as a sort of partner."
"I don't know that I----"
"Ten pounds would do it."