ONE May morning a year after my surprising of Paragot's secret, I awoke
later than usual, the three-and-sixpenny clock on the mantelpiece
marking eleven, and huddling on my clothes in alarm I left the foul
smelling Club room, and ran upstairs to arouse my master.
To my astonishment he was not alone. A stout florid man, wearing a white
waistcoat which bellied out like the sail of a racing yacht, a frock
coat and general resplendency of garb, stood planted in the middle of
the room, while Paragot still in nightshirt but trousered, sat swinging
his leg on a corner of the deal table. I noticed the fiddle which
Paragot had evidently been playing before his visitor's arrival, lying
on the disordered bed.
"Who the devil is this?" cried the fat man angrily.
"This is Mr. Asticot, my private secretary, who cooks my herrings and
attends to my correspondence. Usually he cooks two, but if you will join
us at breakfast Mr. Hogson----"
"Pogson," bawled the fat man.
"I beg your pardon," said my master sweetly. "If you will join us at
breakfast he will cook three."
"Damn your breakfast," said Mr. Pogson.
"Only two then, Asticot. This gentleman has already breakfasted. You
will forgive us for not treating you as a stranger."
Mr. Pogson, who was in a rage, thumped the table with his hand.
"I'll give you to understand Mr. Henkendyke, that I am the proprietor of
this club. I have bought it with my money, and I'm not going to see it
go to eternal glory as it's doing under your management. I'm not like
that old ass Ballantyne. I'm a business man and I'm going to run this
club for a profit, and if you continue to be manager you'll jolly well
have to turn over a new leaf."
"My good friend," said my master, rising and thrusting his hands in his
pockets, "you have told me that about ten times; it is getting
monotonous."
"The way this place is run," continued Mr. Pogson, unheeding, "is
scandalous. Not a blessed account kept. No check on provisions or drink.
Every night your servants are drunk."
"As owls," said Paragot.
"And what the dickens do you do?"
"I give the Lotus Club the prestige of my presidency. I accept a salary
and this presidential residence as my remuneration. You do not expect a
man like me to keep ledgers and check butcher's bills like a
twopennyhalfpenny clerk in the City. It is you, my dear Mr. Pogson, who
have curious ideas of club management. You should put this sort of thing
into the hands of some arithmetical hireling. I--" he waved his long
fingers tipped with their long nails, magnificently--"am the
picturesque, the intellectual, the spiritual guide of the club."
"You are a ---- fraud," cried Mr. Pogson, using so dreadful an adjective
that I dropped the gridiron. Paragot had trained me to a distaste of
foul language. "You are a drunken incompetent thief."
Paragot took his guest's glossy silk hat and gold mounted cane from the
table and put them into his hands. He pointed to the door.
"Get out--quickly," said he.
He turned on his heel and sitting on the bed began to play the fiddle.
Mr. Pogson instead of getting out stood in front of him quivering like
an infuriated jelly, and informed him that it was his blooming club and
his blooming room, that he would choose the moment of exit most
convenient to his own blooming self; also that Paragot's speedy exit was
a matter for his decision. In a dancing fury he heaped abuse on Paragot
who played "The Last Rose of Summer," with rather more tremolo than
usual. Even I saw that he was dangerous. Mr. Pogson did not heed.
Suddenly Paragot sprang to his feet towering over the fat man and swung
his fiddle on high like Thor's hammer. With a splitting crash it came
down on Mr. Pogson's head. Then Paragot gripped him and running with him
to the door, shot him down the stairs.
"That, my little Asticot," said he, "is the present proprietor of the
Lotus Club, and this is the late manager."
I ran to the door for the purpose of locking it. Paragot smiled.
"He will not come back. When he has mended what Fluellen calls his
'ploody coxcomb,' he will take out a summons against me for assault."
He threw himself on the bed, while I, in trembling bewilderment,
prepared the breakfast. Presently he broke into a loud laugh.
"The fool! The mammonite fool, Asticot! Does he think that Mr.
Ulysses-es are picked up by the hundred among the smug young men of the
Polytechnic who add up figures, and keep books by double entry? Do you
know what double entry is?"
"No, Master," said I from my squatting seat on the floor by the gas
stove.
"Thank the gods for your ignorance. It is a nescience whereby human
aspirations are cribbed within ruled lines and made to balance on the
opposite side. Would you like to see me obey Mr. Mammon's behest and
crib my aspirations within ruled lines?"
"No, Master," said I.
"The gods have given you understanding," said he, "which is better than
book-keeping by double entry."
At the time I thought my master's attitude magnificent and I despised
Mr. Pogson from the bottom of my heart. But since then I have wondered
how the deuce the Lotus Club survived a month of Paragot's management.
In after years when I questioned him, he said airily that he left all
financial questions to Ballantyne, the old actor proprietor, who had
grown infirm, and that he was president and not manager. Yet to my
certain knowledge he paid wages to Mrs. Housekeeper, Cherubino and
myself, and as for tradesmen's bills they were strewn about Paragot's
bedchamber like the autumn leaves of Vallombrosa, in greater numbers
than the articles of his attire. On the other hand, I have no
recollection of moneys coming in. There must have been some loose
unbusinesslike arrangement between Ballantyne and himself which most
justifiably shocked the business instincts of Mr. Pogson. There I
sympathise with the latter. But I must admit that he showed a want of
tact in dealing with Paragot.
My master was in gay spirits during breakfast. When he had finished, he
declared the meal to be the most enjoyable he had eaten in Tavistock
Street. My insensate conceit regarded the statement as a tribute to my
culinary skill and I glowed with pride. I informed him that my herring
cookery was nothing to what I could do with sprats.
"My little Asticot," said he, filling his porcelain pipe, "I have to
offer you my joint congratulation and commiseration. I congratulate you
on your being no longer a scullion. I commiserate with you on the loss
of your salary of eighteen pence a week. Your sensitive spirit would
revolt against taking service under anyone of Mr. Mammon's myrmidons,
and even if it didn't, I am sure he would not employ you. Like Caliban
no longer will you 'scrape trencher nor wash dish'--at least in the
Lotus Club--for from this hour I dismiss you from its service."
He smoked silently in his wicker chair, giving me time to realise the
sudden change in my fortunes. Then only did I understand. I saw myself
for a desolate moment, cast motherless, rudderless on the wide world
where art and scholarship met with contumely and undergrown youth was
buffeted and despised. My gorgeous dreams were at an end. The blighting
commonplace overspread my soul.
"What would you like to do, my little Asticot?" he asked.
I pulled myself together and looked at him heroically.
"I could be a butcher's boy."
The corners of my mouth twitched. It was a shuddersome avocation, and
the prospect of the companionship of other butcher boys who could not
draw, did not know French, and had never heard of Joanna filled me with
a horrible sense of doom.
Suddenly Paragot leaped up in his wild way to his feet and clapped me so
heartily on the shoulder that I staggered.
"My son," cried he, "I have an inspiration. It is spring, and the
hedgerows are greener than the pavement, and the high roads of Europe
are wider than Tavistock Street. We will seek them to-day, Asticot _de
mon coeur_; I'll be Don Quixote and you'll be my Sancho, and we'll go
again in quest of adventures." He laughed aloud, and shook me like a
little rat. "_Cela te tape dans l'oeil, mon petit Asticot?_"
Without waiting for me to reply, he rushed to the ricketty washstand,
poured out water from the broken ewer, and after washing, began to dress
in feverish haste, talking all the time. Used as I was to his suddenness
my wits could not move fast enough to follow him.
"Then I needn't be a butcher's boy?" I said at last.
He paused in the act of drawing on a boot.
"Butcher's boy? Do you want to be a butcher's boy?"
"No, Master," said I fervently.
"Then what are you talking of?" He had evidently not heard my answer to
his question. "I am going to educate you in the High School of the
Earth, the University of the Universe, and to-morrow you shall see a cow
and a dandelion. And before then you will be disastrously seasick."
"The sea!" I cried in delirious amazement. "We are going on the sea?
Where are we going?"
"To France, _petit imbécile_," he cried. "Why are you not getting ready
to go there?"
I might have answered that I had no personal preparations to make; but
feeling rebuked for idleness while he was so busy, I began to clear away
the breakfast things. He stopped me.
"_Nom de Dieu_, we are not going to travel with cups and saucers!"
He dragged from the top of the cupboard an incredibly dirty carpet bag
of huge dimensions and decayed antiquity, and bade me pack therein our
belongings. The process was not a lengthy one; we had so few. When we
had little more than half filled the bag with articles of attire and the
toilette stuffed in pell-mell, we looked around for ballast.
"The books, Master," said I.
"We will take the immortal works of Maître François Rabelais, and the
dirty little edition of 'David Copperfield.' The remainder of the
library we will sell in Holywell Street."
"And the violin?"
He picked up the maimed instrument and, after looking at it critically,
threw it into a corner.
"For Pogson," said he.
When we had tied up the books with a piece of stout string
providentially lying at the bottom of the cupboard, our preparations
were complete. Paragot donned his cap and a storm-stained Inverness
cape, grasped the carpet bag and looked round the room.
"_En route_," said he, and I followed with the books. We gained the
street and left the Lotus Club behind us for ever.
What Mrs. Housekeeper said, what Cherubino said, what the members said
when they found no Mr. Ulysses presiding at the supper table that
evening, what Mr. Pogson said when he learned that his assailant had
shaken the dust of the Lotus Club from off his feet and strolled into
the wide world without giving him the opportunity of serving a summons
for assault, I have never been able to discover. Nor have I learned who
succeeded Paragot as president and occupied the palatial chamber of all
the harmonies that was Paragot's squalid attic. When, in after years, I
returned to London the Lotus Club had passed from human memory, and at
the present day a perky set of office premises stands on its site. The
morality of Paragot's precipitate exodus I am not in a position to
discuss. From his point of view the fact of having disliked the new
proprietor from their first interview, and broken a fiddle over his
head, rendered his position as president untenable. Paragot walked out.
After having sold the books for a few shillings in Holywell Street, we
marched up Fleet Street into the City, and entered a stupendous,
unimagined building which Paragot informed me was his bank. Elegant
gentlemen behind the counter shovelled gold to and fro with the same
casual indifference as I had seen grocers' assistants shovel tea. One of
them, a gorgeous fellow wearing a white piqué tie and a horse-shoe pin,
paid such deference to Paragot that I went out prodigiously impressed by
my master's importance. I was convinced that he owned the establishment,
and during the next quarter of an hour I could not speak to him for awe.
It was about two o'clock when we reached Victoria Station. There Paragot
discovered, for the first time, that there was not a train till nine in
the evening. It had not occurred to him that trains did not start for
Paris at quarter of an hour intervals during the day.
"My son," said he, "now is the time to make practical use of our
philosophy. Instead of heaping vain maledictions on the Railway Company,
let us deposit our luggage in the cloak room and take a walk on the
Thames Embankment."
We walked thither and sat on a vacant bench beside the Cleopatra's
Needle. It was a warm May afternoon. My young mind and body fired by the
excitements of the day found rest in the sunny idleness. It was
delicious to be here, instead of washing up plates and dishes with Mrs.
Housekeeper. Paragot took off his old slouch hat, stretched himself
easefully and sighed.
"I am anxious to get to Paris to consult Henri Quatre."
"Who is Henri Quatre, Master?" I asked.
"Henri Quatre is on the Pont Neuf. That is a French saying which means
that Queen Anne is dead. He was a great King of France and his statue on
horseback is in the middle of a great bridge across the Seine called the
Pont Neuf. He is a great friend of mine. I will tell you a story. Once
upon a time there lived in Paris a magnificent young man who thought
himself a genius. He _was_ a genius, my little Asticot. A genius is a
man who writes immortal books, paints immortal pictures, rears immortal
buildings and commits immortal follies. Don't be a genius, my son, it
isn't good for anybody. Well, this young man was clad in purple and fine
linen and fared sumptuously every day. He also had valuable furniture.
One evening something happened to annoy him."
Paragot paused.
"What annoyed him?" I asked.
"A flaw in what he had conceived to be the scheme of the universe,"
replied my master. "It annoys many people. The young man being annoyed,
cast the fruits of his genius into the fire, tore up his purple and fine
linen and smashed his furniture with a Crusader's mace which happened to
be hanging by way of an ornament on the wall. It's made of steel with a
knob full of spikes, and weighs about nine pounds. I know nothing like
it for destroying a Louis Quinze table, or for knocking the works out of
a clock. If you're good, my son, you shall have one when you grow up."
I looked gratefully at him. Not content with his kindness to me then, he
would be my benefactor still when I reached manhood.
"The young man then packed a valise full of necessaries and went out
into the street. It was a rainy November evening. He walked along the
quays through the lamp-lit drizzle till he came to the statue of Henri
Quatre. The Pont Neuf was alive with traffic and the swiftly passing
lights of vehicles threw conflicting gleams over the wet statue. The
gas-lamps flickered in the wind." Paragot flickered his long fingers
dramatically, to illustrate the gas-lamps. "On all sides rose vague
masses of building--the Louvre away beyond the bridge, the frowning mass
of the Conciergerie--the towering turrets of Notre Dame--swelling like
billows against the sky. Pale reflections came from the river. Do you
see the picture, my little Asticot? And the young man clutched the
railings that surround the plinth of the statue, and caught sight of the
face of Henri Quatre, and Henri Quatre looked at him so kindly that he
said: '_Mon bon roi_, you are of the South like myself: I am leaving
Paris to go into the wide world, but I don't know where in the wide
world to go to.' _And the King nodded his head and pointed to the Gare
de Lyon._ And the young man took off his hat and said, '_Mon bon roi_, I
thank you!' He went to the Gare de Lyon and found a train just starting
for Italy. So he went to Italy. I have a great respect for Henri
Quatre."
"And what happened to him then, Master?" I asked, after a breathless
pause.
"He became a vagabond philosopher," replied Paragot, refilling his
porcelain pipe.
No argument has ever been able to convince Paragot that the statue did
not nod its head and point the way to Italy. For some years I myself
believed it; but at last it became obvious that the flashing gleams of
light over the wet statue had made him the victim of a trick of the
eyes. I think the only serious offence I ever gave Paragot was when I
presented to him this solution of the mystery.
Varied discourse and a meal in a Strand eating-house filled up the hours
till nine o'clock. And then I started for Wonderland with Paragot.
* * * * *
We stayed in Paris but two days. When I asked my master why our sojourn
was not longer, he said something about the "bitter-sweet" of it, which
I could not understand. I have only two clear memories of Paris. He took
me to see Henri Quatre, and explained how the statue nodded and how the
hand which held the reins lifted and pointed to the Gare de Lyon. What
more conclusive proof of his veracity need I have than actual
confrontation with Henri Quatre? The other scene fixed on my mind is a
narrow dark street with tall houses on either side; an awning outside a
humble café; a little table beneath it at which Paragot and myself were
seated. I sipped luxuriously a celestial liquor which I have since
learned was grenadine syrup and water; in front of Paragot was a curious
opalescent milky fluid of which he drank great quantities during those
two days and ever afterwards.
"The time has come," said he, rolling his eyes at me with an awful
solemnity and speaking in a thick voice, "the time has come to talk of
affairs. First let me impress on you that Henkendyke is an appellation
offensive to French ears. Henceforward my name is Pradel--Polydore
Pradel. And as it is necessary for you to have an _état civil_, I hereby
adopt you as my son. Your name is therefore Asticot Pradel. I hope you
like it. You have never known what it is to have a father. Now the
possession of a father is a privilege to which every human being has a
right. I, Polydore Pradel, confer on you that privilege. My son--"
He raised his glass, clinked it against mine and pledged me.
"Henceforward," said Paragot, "what is good enough for me will I hope
not be good enough for you, and what is too bad for me shall never be
your portion. I swear it by the devil that dwells in this entrancing but
execrated form of alcohol."
He finished his drink and called for another. As soon as the absinthe
had curdled with the dropping water, he filled up the glass and drank it
off. Then he sat for a long time in bemused silence, while I, perched on
my chair, reflected on his great goodness and wondered how I should help
him up the darksome stairs of our hotel without the aid of Cherubino.
The next day we started on our pilgrimage. Why we went in one direction
more than another, why we went to one place rather than to another,
neither he nor I could tell. I never questioned. Sometimes we wandered
for days on foot, sleeping in village inns or farm-houses--occasionally
under a hedge when the nights were warm. Sometimes we spent two or three
days in an old world town, and Paragot would show me cathedrals and
churches and lecture me on the history of the place, and set me to
sketch bits of the picturesque that took his fancy. In the cool,
exquisite cloister of the Chateau of Jacques Coeur at Bourges I
learned more of the history of Charles VII than any English boy of my
generation. In the Chateau of Blois, the salamanders of François
Premier, the statue of Diane de Poictiers, the poison cabinet of
Catherine de Medici, the dungeons of the Cardinal de Lorraine, became
living testimonies of the past under Paragot's imaginative teaching. He
had set his heart on educating me; suddenly as the original impulse had
seized him, yet it lasted strong and became the object of his disordered
and otherwise aimless life. Books we always had in plenty. Tattered
classics are cheap enough in France, and what mattered it if pages were
missing? When done with we threw them away. We might have been tracked
through the country, like the hares in a paper chase, by the trail of
literature we left behind us.
In spite of his unmethodical temperament Paragot made one fixed rule for
my habits. In towns and larger villages, I went to bed at nine o'clock.
What he did with himself by way of amusement in the evenings I never
knew. Nor did it occur to me to conjecture. Healthily tired after a
happy day I was only too glad to crawl to whatever queer resting place
chance provided, and to sleep the sound sleep of boyhood. To be for ever
moving amid a fairyland of novelty, to have no care for the morrow, to
have no tasks save those that were a delight, to be under the protecting
guidance of a godlike being whose very reproofs were couched in terms of
humorous kindness, to eat strange unexpected things, to fraternise in a
new tongue, which daily grew more familiar, with any urchin on the
high-road or city byway, to pass wondering days among country sights
and country sounds--to be in short the perfect vagabond, could boy dream
of a more glorious life?
Now and again a whimsy seized my master and he declared that we must
work and earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brows. At a farm near
Chartres we hired ourselves out to an elderly couple, Monsieur and
Madame Dubosc, and spent toilsome but healthy days carting manure.
Although Paragot wrought miracles with his pitchfork, I don't think
Monsieur Dubosc took him seriously. Peasant shrewdness penetrated to the
gentleman beneath Paragot's blouse, and peasant ignorance attributed to
him the riches which he did not possess. They became great friends,
however, and before we left he succeeded in establishing himself as a
kind of oracle by curing a pig of some mysterious disease by means of a
remedy which he said he had learned in Dalmatia. Old Madame Dubosc shed
tears when we left La Haye.
Sometimes Paragot grew tired of tramping, and we travelled by rail, in
the wooden third class compartments of omnibus trains that stopped at
every station. Now and then pure chance took us to any particular town.
It was at Nancy that Paragot went to the ticket office and said with the
utmost politeness:--
"Monsieur, will you have the kindness to give me a ticket?"
"To what destination?" asked the clerk peering through his pigeon hole.
"_Parbleu_," said Paragot, "to any destination you like provided it is
not too expensive."
The clerk called him a _farceur_ and would have nothing to do with him,
but Paragot protested.
"Pardon, Monsieur, I have but one wish, to get away from Nancy. I have
seen the Episcopal Palace on the Place Stanislas, the Cathedral, and I
have viewed but I have not read the seventy-five thousand volumes in the
University Library. You know the places one gets to from Nancy, which I
do not. I am a stranger, in your hands. If you could suggest to me a
town about 100 kilometres distant----"
"There is Longwy," said the haughty official.
"Then have the kindness to give me two third class tickets to Longwy,"
said Paragot.
And to Longwy we went. Paragot contemplated the lack of interest in the
smug little town.
"To hold out Longwy as a goal to the enthusiastic Pilgrim to the Shrine
of Truth," said he, "could only enter the timber-built mind of a French
railway official."
The record of our wanderings would mark the stages of my own
development, but would be of little count as a history of Paragot. We
tramped and trained south through Italy and spent the winter in Rome.
Then it entered his head to obtain employment for both of us, as workman
and boy, on the excavations of the Forum. We lived in the slums with our
brother excavators, and were completely happy. So happy that though we
wandered the next year over France and part of Germany the winter again
found us working in Rome. In the following Spring we set our faces
northward, and in July Destiny overtook us in Savoy.