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THE BELOVÉD VAGABOND
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM J. LOCKE
IDOLS
SEPTIMUS
DERELICTS
THE USURPER
WHERE LOVE IS
THE WHITE DOVE
SIMON THE JESTER
A STUDY IN SHADOWS
THE BELOVÉD VAGABOND
AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA
THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE
THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE
The Belovéd Vagabond
By William J. Locke
Author of
"Septimus," "Idols," Etc.
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1905
BY JOHN LANE
Copyright, 1900
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
SET UP, ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
THE PUBLISHERS PRINTING CO., NEW YORK
THE BELOVÉD VAGABOND
CHAPTER I
THIS is not a story about myself. Like Canning's organ-grinder I have
none to tell. It is the story of Paragot, the belovéd vagabond--please
pronounce his name French-fashion--and if I obtrude myself on your
notice it is because I was so much involved in the medley of farce and
tragedy which made up some years of his life, that I don't know how to
tell the story otherwise. To Paragot I owe everything. He is at once my
benefactor, my venerated master, my beloved friend, my creator. Clay in
his hands, he moulded me according to his caprice, and inspired me with
the breath of life. My existence is drenched with the colour of Paragot.
I lay claim to no personality of my own, and any _obiter dicta_ that may
fall from my pen in the course of the ensuing narrative are but
reflections of Paragot's philosophy. Men have spoken evil of him. He
snapped his fingers at calumny, but I winced, never having reached the
calm altitudes of scorn wherein his soul has its habitation. I burned to
defend him, and I burn now; and that is why I propose to write his
_apologia_, his justification.
Why he singled me out for adoption from among the unwashed urchins of
London I never could conjecture. Once I asked him.
"Because," said he, "you were ugly, dirty, ricketty, under-sized,
underfed and wholly uninteresting. Also because your mother was the very
worst washer-woman that ever breathed gin into a shirt-front."
I did not resent these charges, direct and implied, against my mother.
She did launder villainously, and she did drink gin, and of the nine
uncared-for gutter-snipes she brought into the world, I think I was the
most unkempt and neglected. I know that Sunday-school books tell you to
love your mother; but if the only maternal caresses you could remember
were administered by means of a wet pair of woollen drawers or the edge
of a hot flat-iron, you would find filial piety a virtue somewhat
abstract. Verily do earwigs care more for their progeny than did my
mother. She sold me body and soul to Paragot for half-a-crown.
It fell out thus.
One morning, laden with his--technically speaking--clean linen, I
knocked at the door of Paragot's chambers. He called them chambers, for
he was nothing if not grandiloquent, but really they consisted in an
attic in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, above the curious club over
which he presided. I knocked, then, at the door. A sonorous voice bade
me enter. Paragot lay in bed, smoking a huge pipe with a porcelain bowl
and reading a book. The fact of one individual having a room all to
himself impressed me so greatly with a sense of luxury, refinement and
power, that I neglected to observe its pitifulness and squalor. Nor of
Paragot's personal appearance was I critical. He had long black hair,
and a long black beard, and long black finger-nails. The last were so
long and commanding that I thought ashamedly of my own bitten
fingertips, and vowed that when I too became a great man, able to smoke
a porcelain pipe of mornings in my own room, my nails should equal his
in splendour.
"I have brought the washing, Sir," I announced, "and, please, Sir,
mother says I'm not to let you have it unless you settle up for the last
three weeks."
I had a transient vision of swarthy, hairy legs, as Paragot leaped out
of bed. He stood over me, man of all the luxuries that he was, in his
nightshirt. Fancy having a shirt for the day and a shirt for the night!
"Do you mean that you will dispute possession of it with me, _vi et
armis_?"
"Yes, Sir," said I, confused.
He laughed, clapped me on the shoulder, called me David, Jack the
Giant-Killer, and bade me deliver the washing-book. I fumbled in the
pocket of my torn jacket and handed him a greasy, dog's-eared mass of
paper. As soon as his eyes fell on it, I realised my mistake, and
produced the washing book from the other pocket.
"I've given you the wrong one, Sir," said I, reaching for the treasure I
had surrendered.
But he threw himself on his bed and dived his legs beneath the clothes.
"Wonderful!" he cried. "He is four foot nothing, he looks like a yard of
pack-thread, he would fight me for an ill-washed shirt and a pair of
holes with bits of sock round them, and he reads 'Paradise Lost'!"
He made a gesture of throwing the disreputable epic at my head, and I
curved my arm in an attitude only too familiarly defensive.
"I found it in a bundle of washing, Sir," I cried apologetically.
At home reading was the unforgivable sin. Had my mother discovered me
poring over the half intelligible but wholly fascinating story of Adam
and Eve and the Devil, she would have beaten me with the first implement
to her hand. I had a moment's terror lest the possession of a work of
literature should be so horrible a crime that even Paragot would
chastise me.
To my consternation he thrust the tattered thing--it was an antiquated
sixpenny edition--under my nose and commanded me to read.
"'Of Man's first disobedience'--Go on. If you can read it intelligently
I'll pay your mother. If you can't I'll write to her politely to say
that I resent having my washing sent home by persons of no education."
I began in great fear, but having, I suppose, an instinctive
appreciation of letters, I mouthed the rolling lines not too brokenly.
"What's a Heavenly Muse?" asked Paragot, as soon as I paused. I had not
the faintest idea.
"Do you think it's a Paradisiacal back yard where they keep the Horse of
the Apocalypse?"
I caught a twinkle in the blue eyes which he bent fiercely upon me.
"If you please, Sir," said I, "I think it is the Bird of Paradise."
Then we both laughed; and Paragot bidding me sit on the wreck of a
cane-bottomed chair, gave me my first lesson in Greek Mythology. He
talked for nearly an hour, and I, ragged urchin of the London streets,
my wits sharpened by hunger and ill-usage, sat spell-bound on my
comfortless perch, while he unfolded the tale of Gods and Goddesses, and
unveiled Olympus before my enraptured vision.
"Boy," said he suddenly, "can you cook a herring?"
I came down to earth with a bang. Stunned I stared at him. I distinctly
remember wondering where I was.
"Can you cook a herring?" he shouted.
"Yes, Sir," I cried, jumping to my feet.
"Then cook two--one for you and one for me. You'll find them somewhere
about the room, also tea and bread and butter and a gas-stove, and when
all is ready let me know."
He settled himself comfortably in bed and went on reading his book. It
was Hegel's Philosophy of History. I tried to read it afterwards and
found that it passed my understanding.
In a confused dream of gods and herrings, I set about my task. Heaven
only knows how I managed to succeed. In my childish imagination Jupiter
was clothed in the hirsute majesty of Paragot.
And I was to breakfast with him!
The herrings and a half-smoked pipe shared a plate on the top of the
ricketty chest of drawers. I had to blow the ash off the fish. A paper
of tea and a loaf of bread I found in a higgledy-piggledy mixture of
clothes, books and papers. My godlike friend had carelessly put his
hair-brush into the butter. The condition of the sole cooking utensil
warred even against my sense of the fitness of gridirons, and I cleansed
it with his towel.
Since then I have breakfasted in the houses of the wealthy, I have
lunched at the Café Anglais, I have dined at the Savoy but never have I
eaten, never till they give me a welcoming banquet in the Elysian fields,
shall I eat so ambrosial a meal as that first herring with Paragot.
When I had set it on the little deal table, he deigned to remember my
existence, and closing his book, rose, donned a pair of trousers and sat
down. He gave me my first lesson in table-manners.
"Boy," said he, "if you wish to adorn the high social spheres for which
you are destined, you must learn the value of convention. Bread and
cheese-straws and asparagus and the leaves of an artichoke are eaten
with the fingers; but not herrings or sweetbreads or ice cream. As
regards the last you are doubtless in the habit of extracting it from a
disappointing wine-glass with your tongue. This in _notre monde_ is
regarded as bad form. '_Notre Monde_' is French, a language which you
will have to learn. Its great use is in talking to English people when
you don't want them to understand what you say. They pretend they do,
for they are too vain to admit their ignorance. The wise man profits by
the vanity of his fellow-creatures. If I were not wise after this
manner, should I be here eating herrings in Tavistock Street, Covent
Garden?"
I was too full of food and adoration to reply. I gazed at him dumbly
worshipping and choked over a cup of tea. When I recovered he questioned
me as to my home life, my schooling, my ideas of a future state and my
notions of a career in this world. The height of my then ambition was to
keep a fried-fish shop. The restaurateur with whom my good mother dealt
used to sit for hours in his doorway in Drury Lane reading a book, and I
considered this a most dignified and scholarly avocation. When I made
this naïve avowal to Paragot, he looked at me with a queer pity in his
eyes, and muttered an exclamation in a foreign tongue. I have never met
anyone so full of strange oaths as Paragot. As to my religious
convictions, they were chiefly limited to a terrifying conception of the
hell to which my mother daily consigned me. In devils, fires, chains and
pitchforks its establishment was as complete as any _inferno_ depicted
by Orcagna. I used to wake up of nights in a cold sweat through dreaming
of it.
"My son," said Paragot, "the most eminent divines of the Church of
England will tell you that a material hell with consuming flames is an
exploded fallacy. I can tell you the same without being an eminent
divine. The wicked carry their own hell about with them during
life--here, somewhere between the gullet and the pit of the stomach, and
it prevents their enjoyment of herrings which smell vilely of gas."
"There ain't no devils, then?" I asked.
"_Sacré mille diables_, No!" he shouted. "Haven't I been exhausting
myself with telling you so?"
I said little, but to this day I remember the thrilling sense of
deliverance from a horror which had gone far to crush the little
childish joy allowed me by circumstance. There was no fiery hell, no
red-hot pincers, no eternal frizzling and sizzling of the flesh, like
unto that of the fish in Mr. Samuel's fish-shop. Paragot had transformed
me by a word into a happy young pagan. My eyes swam as I swallowed my
last bit of bread and butter.
"What is your name?" asked Paragot.
"Augustus, Sir."
"Augustus, what?"
"Smith," I murmured. "Same as mother's."
"I was forgetting," said he. "Now if there is one name I dislike more
than Smith it is Augustus. I have been thinking of a very nice name for
you. It is Asticot. It expresses you better than Augustus Smith."
"It is a very good name, Sir," said I politely.
I learned soon after that it is a French word meaning the little grey
worms which fishermen call "gentles," and that it was not such a
complimentary appellation as I had imagined; but Asticot I became, and
Asticot I remained for many a year.
"Wash up the things, my little Asticot," said he, "and afterwards we
will discuss future arrangements."
According to his directions I took the tray down to a kind of scullery
on the floor below. The wet plates and cups I dried on a greasy rag
which I found lying on the sink; and this seemed to me a refinement of
luxurious living; for at home, when we did wash plates, we merely held
them under the tap till the remains of food ran off, and we never
thought of drying them. When I returned to the bedroom Paragot was
dressed for the day. His long lean wrists and hands protruded far
through the sleeves of an old brown jacket. He wore a grey flannel shirt
and an old bit of black ribbon done up in a bow by way of a tie; his
slouch hat, once black, was now green with age, and his boots were
innocent of blacking. But my eyes were dazzled by a heavy gold watch
chain across his waistcoat and I thought him the most glorious of
betailored beings.
"My little Asticot," said he, "would you like to forsake your gentle
mother's wash-tub and your dreams of a fried-fish shop and enter my
service? I, the heir of all the ages, am driven by Destiny to running
The Lotus Club downstairs. We call it 'Lotus' because we eat tripe to
banish memory. The members meet together in order to eat tripe, drink
beer and hear me talk. You can eat tripe and hear me talk too, and that
will improve both your mind and your body. While Cherubino, the waiter,
teaches you how to be a scullion, I will instruct you in philosophy. The
sofa in the Club will make an excellent bed for you, and your wages will
be eighteen pence a week."
He thrust his hands in his trouser pockets, and rattling his money
looked at me with an enquiring air. I returned his gaze for a while,
lost in a delirious wonder. I tried to speak. Something stuck in my
throat. I broke into a blubber and dried my eyes with my knuckles.
It was an intoxicated little Asticot that trotted by his side to my
mother's residence. There over gin-and-water the bargain was struck. My
mother pocketed half-a-crown and with shaky unaccustomed fingers signed
her name across a penny-stamp at the foot of a document which Paragot
had drawn up. I believe each of them was convinced that they had
executed a legal deed. My mother after inspecting me critically for a
moment wiped my nose with the piece of sacking that served as her apron
and handed me over to Paragot, who marched away with his purchase as
proud as if I had been a piece of second-hand furniture picked up cheap.
I may as well remark here that Paragot was not his real name; neither
was Josiah Henkendyke by which he was then known to me. He had a
harmless mania for names, and I have known him use half a dozen. But
that of Paragot which he assumed later as his final alias is the one
with which he is most associated in my mind, and to avoid confusion I
must call him that from the start. Indeed, looking backward down the
years, I wonder how he could ever have been anything else than Paragot.
That Phoebus Apollo could once have borne the name of John Jones is
unimaginable.
"Boy," said he, as we retraced our steps to Tavistock Street, "you are
my thing, my chattel, my _famulus_. No slave of old belonged more
completely to a free-born citizen. You will address me as 'master'!"
"Yes, Sir," said I.
"Master!" he shouted. "_Master_ or _maître_ or _maestro_ or _magister_
according to the language you are speaking. Now do you understand?"
"Yes, Master," said I.
He nodded approval. At the corner of a by-street he stopped short and
held me at arm's length.
"You are a horrible object, my little Asticot," said he. "I must clothe
you in a manner befitting the Lotus Club."
He ran me into a slop-dealer's and fitted me out in sundry garments in
which, although they were several sizes too large for me, I felt myself
clad like Solomon in all his glory. Then we went home. On the way up to
his room he paused at the scullery. A dishevelled woman was tidying up.
"Mrs. Housekeeper," said he, "allow me to present you our new scullion
pupil. Kindly instruct him in his duties, feed him and wash his head.
Also please remember that he answers to the name of Asticot."
He swung on his heel and went downstairs humming a tune. I remained with
Mrs. Housekeeper who carried out his instructions zealously. I can feel
the soreness on my scalp to this day.
Thus it fell out that I quitted the maternal roof and entered the
service of Paragot. I never saw my mother again, as she died soon
afterwards; and as my brood of brothers and sisters vanished down the
diverse gutters of London, I found myself with Paragot for all my
family; and now that I have arrived at an age when a man can look back
dispassionately on his past, it is my pride that I can lay my hand on my
heart and avow him to be the best family that boy ever had.