THERE was one merit (if merit it was) of my mother's establishment. No
skeletons lurked in cupboards. They flaunted their grimness all over the
place. Such letters as she received trailed about the kitchen, for all
who chose to read, until they were caught up to cleanse a frying-pan. As
she possessed no private papers their sanctity was never inculcated; and
I could have rummaged, had I so desired, in every drawer or box in the
house without fear of correction. When I took up my abode with Paragot,
he laid no embargo on any of his belongings. The attic, except for
sleeping purposes, was as much mine as his, and it did not occur to me
that anything it contained could not be at my disposal.
This must be my apologia for reading, in all innocence, but with much
enjoyment, some documents of a private nature which I discovered one
day, about a year after I had entered Paragot's service, stuffed by way
of keeping them together in an old woollen stocking. They have been put
into my possession now for the purpose of writing this narrative, so my
original offence having been purged, I need offer no apology for
referring to them. There was no sort of order in the bundle of
documents; you might as well look for the quality of humour in a
dromedary, or of mercy in a pianist, as that of method in Paragot. I
managed however to disentangle two main sets, one a series of love
letters and the other disconnected notes of travel. In both was I
mightily interested.
The love-letters, some of which were written in English and some in
French, were addressed to a beautiful lady named Joanna. I knew she was
beautiful because Paragot himself said so. "_Pure et ravissante comme
une aube d'avril_," "My dear dream of English loveliness," "the fair
flower of my life" and remarks such as these were proof positive. The
odd part of it was that they seemed not to have been posted. He wrote:
"not till my arms are again around you will your beloved eyes behold
these outpourings of my heart." The paper heading bore the word "Paris."
Allusions to a great artistic project on which he was working baffled my
young and ignorant curiosity. "I have Love, Youth, Genius, Beauty on my
side," he wrote, "and I shall conquer. We shall be irresistible. Fame
will attend my genius, homage your Beauty; we shall walk on roses and
dwell in the Palaces of the Earth." My heart thrilled when I read these
lines. _I knew_ that Paragot was a great man. Here, again, was proof. I
did not reflect that this vision splendid of earth's palaces had faded
into the twilight of the Tavistock Street garret. Thank heaven we have
had years of remembered life before we learned to reason.
I had many pictures of my hero in those strange letter days, so remote
to my childish mind. He crosses the Channel in December, just to skulk
for one dark night against the railings of the London Square where she
dwelt, in the hope of seeing her shadow on the blind. For some reason
which I could not comprehend, the lovers were forbidden to meet. It
rains, he sees nothing, but he returns to Paris with contentment in his
heart and a terrible cold in his head. But, "I have seen the doorstep,"
he writes, "_qu'effleurent tous les jours ces petits pieds si adorés_."
I hate your modern manner of wooing. A few weeks ago a young woman in
need of my elderly counsel showed me a letter from her betrothed. He had
been educated at Oxford University and possessed a motor-car, and yet he
addressed her as "old girl" and alluded to "the regular beanfeast" they
would have when they were married; and the damsel not only found nothing
wanting in the missive, but treasured it as if it had been an
impapyrated kiss. "_Joie de mon âme_," wrote Paragot, "I have seen the
doorstep which your little feet so adored touch lightly every day." I
like that better. But this is the opinion of the Asticot of a hundred
and fifty. The Asticot of fourteen could not contrast: for him sufficed
the Absolute of the romance of Paragot's love-making. Yet I did have a
standard of comparison--Ferdinand, whom till then I had regarded as the
Prince of Lovers. But he paled into the most prosaic young man before
the newly illuminated Paragot, and as for Miranda I sent her packing
from her throne in my heart and Joanna reigned in her stead. Little
idiot that I was, I set to dreaming of Joanna. You may not like the
name, but to me it held and still holds unspeakable music.
The other papers, as I have said, were records of travel, and I
instinctively recognized that they referred to subsequent Joanna-less
days. They were written on the backs of bills in outlandish languages,
leaves torn from greasy note-books, waste stuff exhaling exotic odours,
and odds and scraps of paper indescribable. In after years in Paris I
besought Paragot, almost on my knees, to write an account of the years
of vagabondage to which these papers refer. It would make, I told him, a
_picaresque_ romance compared with which that of Gil Bias de Santillane
were the tale of wanderings round a village pump. Such, said I, is given
to few men to produce. But Paragot only smiled, and sipped his absinthe.
It was against his principles, he said. The world would be a gentler
habitat if there had never been written or graven record of a human
action, and he refused to pander to the obscene curiosity of the
multitude as to the thoughts and doings of an entire stranger. Besides,
literary composition was beset with too many difficulties. One's method
of expression had always to be in evening dress which he abhorred, and
he could not abide the violet ink and pin-pointed pens supplied in cafés
and places where one writes. So the world has lost a new Odyssey.
The notes formed reading as disconnected as a dictionary. They were so
abrupt. Incidents were noted which stimulated my young imagination like
stinging-nettles; and then nothing more.
"As soon as Hedwige had taught me German, she grew sick and tired of me;
and when she wanted to marry an under-officer of cavalry with moustaches
reaching to the top of his _Pikelhaube_, who tried to run me through the
body when he saw such a scarecrow walking out with her, I left Cassel."
And that was all I learned with regard to Cassel, Hedwige, (save from
two other notes) or his learning the German tongue.
The following note is the only one he thought worth while to make of a
journey through Russia.
"Novotorshakaya is a beastly hole (_un trou infect_). The bugs are the
most companionable creatures in it, and they are the cleanest."
"At Prague," he scribbles on a sheet of paper stained with coffee-cup
rings, "I made the acquaintance of a polite burglar, who introduced me
to his lady wife, and to other courteous criminals, their spouses and
families. My slight knowledge of Czech, which I had by this time
acquired, enabled me to take vast pleasure in their society. Granted
their sociological premises, based on Proudhon, they are too logical.
The lack of imaginative power to break away from convention, _their
convention_, is a serious defect in their character. They take their
gospel of _tuum est meum_ too seriously. I do not inordinately
sympathise with people who get themselves hanged for a principle. And
that is what my friend Mysdrizin did. An old lady of Prague, obstinate
as the old sometimes are, on whom he called professionally, disputed his
theories; whereupon, instead of smiling with the indulgence of one who
knows the art of living, and letting her have her own way, he convinced
her with a life-preserver. His widow, like her predecessor of Ephesus,
desiring speedy consolation, I fled the city. My Epicureanism and her
iron-bound individualism would have clashed. I had played the Battle of
Prague _à quatre mains_ sufficiently in my tender childhood. I had no
wild yearning to recommence."
Here is another:
"Verona----"
There is no date. None of these jottings bear a date, and when I last
saw Paragot he had not the patience to arrange these far off memories.
Verona! To me the word recalls immemorable associations--vistas of
narrow old streets redolent of the Renaissance, echoing still with brawl
and clash of arms, and haunted by the general stock in trade of the
artist's historical fancy. But did Verona appeal to Paragot's romantic
sense? Not a bit of it.
"At Verona," runs the jotting, "I lodged with the cheeriest little
undertaker in the world, who had a capital low-class practice. His wife,
four children, and whoever happened to be the lodger, were all pressed
into the merry service. We sang _Funiculi funiculà_ as we drove in the
nails. When I make coffins again I shall sing that refrain. It has an
unisonal value that is positively captivating. Had it not been that a
diet of spaghetti and anæmic wine, a _tord-boyau_ (intestine-twister) of
unparalleled virulence undermined my constitution, and that the four
children, whose bedroom I shared, all took whooping-cough at once and
thus robbed me of sleep, I might have been coffin-making to the tune of
_Funiculi, Funiculà_ to the present day."
Here and there were jottings of figures. I know now they refer to
Paragot's tiny patrimony on which he--and I, in after years--subsisted.
It was so small that no wonder he worked now and then for a living wage.
I also see now, as of course I could not be expected to see then, that
Paragot, being a creature of extremes, would either have the highest or
the lowest. In these travel-sketches, as he cannot go to Grand Hotels, I
find him avoiding like lazar-houses the commercial or family hostelries
where he will foregather with the half-educated, the half-bred, the
half-souled; the offence of them is too rank for his spirit. The
pretending simian class, aping the vices of the rich and instinct with
the vices of the low, and frank in neither, moves the man's furious
scorn. He will have realities at any cost. All said and done, the bugs
of Novortovshakaya did not masquerade as hummingbirds, nor merry
Giuseppi Sacconi of Verona as a critic of Girolami dai Libri.
"I don't mind," he writes on a loose sheet, apropos of nothing, "the
frank dunghill outside a German peasant's kitchen window. It is a matter
of family pride. The higher it can be piled the greater his
consideration. But what I loathe and abominate is the dungheap hidden
beneath Hedwige's draper papa's parlour floor."
When I came to this in my wrongful search through Paragot's papers, I
felt greatly relieved. I thought Hedwige had seduced him from his
allegiance to Joanna, and that he was sorry she had married the sergeant
with moustaches reaching to his _Pikelhaube_, though what part of his
person his _Pikelhaube_ was, I could not for the life of me imagine. I
pictured Hedwige as a gigantic awe-compelling lady. The name somehow
conveyed the idea to me. It was peculiarly comforting to learn that she
was a horrid girl whose papa had a draper's shop over a dunghill. I no
longer bothered my head concerning her, for soon I came across a
reference to Joanna.
"I was lounging one day in the Puerta del Sol, that swarming central
parallelogram of Madrid, and musing on the possibilities of progress in
a nation which contents itself with ox-transport in the heart of its
capital, when a carriage drove past me in which I can almost still swear
I saw Joanna. It entered the Calle de San Hieronimo. I started in racing
pursuit and fell into the arms of a green-gloved soldier. To avoid
arrest as a madman or a murderer, for no sane man runs in Spain, I
leaped into a fiacre and gave such chase as tomorrow's victim of the
bull-ring would allow. We came up with the carriage on the Prado, just
in time to see the skirts of a lady vanish through the door of a house.
I dismissed my cab and waited. I waited two solid hours. That attracted
no attention. Everyone waits in Spain. To stand interminably at a
street corner is to take out a patent of respectability. But my
confounded heart beat wildly. I had an _agonized desire_ to see her
again. I addressed the liveried coachman in my best Spanish, taking off
my hat and bowing low.
"'Señor, will you have the great goodness to tell me who is that lady?'
"'Señor,' he replied with equal urbanity, 'it is not correct for
coachmen to give rapscallions information as to their employers.'
"'When your Señora bids the rapscallion sit beside her in the carriage
and orders you to drive, you will regret your insolence,' said I.
"I turned a haughty back on him; but I felt his lackey's eye fixed
disapprovingly on my rags.
"'I will hear the sound,' said I to myself, 'of her silvery English
voice, or I will die.'
"Then the door opened, and the beautiful lady entered the carriage; _and
it was not Joanna_.
"The gods were without bowels of compassion for me that day."
Another scrap contains the following:
"Thus have I come to the end of a five years' vagabondage. I started out
as a Pilgrim to the Inner Shrine of Truth which I have sought from St.
Petersburg to Lisbon, from Taormina to Christiania. I have lived in a
spiritual shadowland, dreaming elusive dreams, my better part stayed by
the fitful vision of things unseen. Such an exquisite wild-goose-chase
has never man undertaken before or since the dear Knight of La Mancha.
And now I come to think of it, I don't know what the deuce I have been
after, save that instead of pursuing I have all the time been running
away.
"In my next quest I must not proclaim my Dulcinea too loudly. When
Hedwige's little sister came to me with a doll into which Hedwige had
savagely run hatpins so that the stuffing came out, I consoled the
weeping infant with a new doll and the assurance that Hedwige was the
spitefullest cat as yet evolved from a feline sex. I had no notion at
the time of the reason for Hedwige's viciousness. But now I fancy she
must have acted according to mediæval superstition and used the doll as
Joanna's hated effigy. I remember that the next time I saw her I
criticised her straight Teutonic fringe and fanfaronaded on the
captivating frizziness of Joanna's hair. The wonder is that Hedwige did
not run hatpins into _me_. The murderer's widow of Prague was built of
sterner stuff; she cared not a hempen strand for Joanna, a pale
consumptive doxy, according to her picturing, who had jilted me for an
eminent swell-mobsman in London."
I spent many happy hours over these scraps, building up the fantastic
fairy tale of Paragot's antecedents, and should have gone on reading
them for an indefinite time had not Paragot one day discovered me. It
was then that I learned the sacrosanctity of private papers.
"I thought, my little Asticot," said he, bending his blue eyes on me, "I
thought you were a gentleman."
Only Paragot could have had so crazy a thought. I could not be a
gentleman, I reflected, till I had a gold watch-chain. However Paragot
expected me to be one without the seal and token of outward adornments,
and I promised faithfully to mould myself according to his
expectations.
"How much of this nightmare farrago have you read?"
"I know it all by heart, Master," said I.
He took off his old hat and threw it on the bed, and ran his fingers
through his hair perplexedly.
"My son," said he at last, "if you were just a common boy I should make
you go on your bended knees and lift up your hand and swear that you
would not reveal to a living soul the mysteries which these papers
contain, and then I should send you to dwell for ever among the
tripe-plates. But I see before me a gentleman, a scholar and an artist
and I will not submit him to such an indignity."
He put his hand on my head and looked at me in kind irony.
"I will never tell no one, Master," I promised.
"Anyone," he corrected.
"Anyone, Master," I repeated meekly.
"You will wipe it all out of your memory."
I was habitually truthful with Paragot, because he never gave me cause
to lie.
"I can't, Master," said I, thinking of my dreams of Joanna.
The seriousness of my tone amused him.
"What has made such an indelible impression on your mind?"
"I can't forget----" I blurted out, moved both by reluctance to yield
over my dreams of Joanna and by a desire to show off my familiarity with
French, "I can't forget about _ces petits pieds si adorés_."
The smile died from his face, which assumed a queer, scared expression.
He went to the window and stood there so long, that I, in my turn grew
scared. I realised dimly what I had done, and I could have bitten my
tongue out. I drew near him.
"Master," said I timidly.
He did not seem to hear; presently he picked up his hat from the bed and
walked out without taking any notice of me.
We did not refer to the papers again until long afterwards, and though
they lay unguarded as before in the old stocking, never till this
present day have I set my eyes on them.