_Which has to do with the Binding of Books in Half-calf and the
Whimsies of Calf Love_
When Noll had left his baggage in a quiet hotel by the Strand, and
had refreshed his body with much splashing of himself in water and a
change of clothes, he sallied out into the streets of London in a vague
wonder and surprise as to how to begin the search for Betty, yet firmly
determined to start straightway in his quest--the Baddlesmere jaw set
firm.
The summer afternoon was closing in, and the Strand was gay with
people cheerily making their way homewards from work or amusement. But
homewards Noll did not take his steps; he felt a certain sense of shame
about going to his own people without Betty at his side--and this, too,
not on his own account, but that it seemed disloyal to Betty and likely
to make her future entrance into the family circle an embarrassment to
her--so sudden was the suddenness with which he had stepped into the
realm of his manhood!
The young fellow had been too restless to stay in the dingy mute rooms
of the hotel; he could think it out better in the open--striding to his
thinking. It was in the blood--he smiled at the restless walk of Lord
Wyntwarde up and down that library, of the strange trick that came out
in his mother at times....
Ah, London, thou queen of cities, that filchest for ever the hearts of
them that dare to love thee! Radiant in thy sunshine, fantastic in thy
murk, it is when thou puttest on the habit of thy lilac twilight that
thou showest all thy majesty--thy tiring maids, the handsomest women
of the world, helping thee to thy wondrous mantle of many hues--pale
whitenesses and opal greys, beribboned with purple and ultramarine and
the sooty tinge of dusky shadows, adorned with diamonds of a hundred
flames and wrought through and through with gold and silvery strands,
and thus and so, with smoky art, spinning thyself a mystic robe that it
is full fit only the Queen of all cities shall wear.
And what a splendid stage, thy realm, to strut it in! Thy large drama
knows no curtain, thy magnificence no boundary but man’s narrow sight.
Thy whisper and the song of thee, and thy strange melodies, no strings
of violins nor the resounding hollows of deep orchestral ’cellos
can yield. From the music of thy ways, where goes thy multitudinous
traffic with roll of many wheels, and lurches the gaudy omnibus with
reeking horses twain, and lumbers the thundering dray, and winds in
and out the teeming welter the quick black hansom seeking the hackney
fare, with jigging of horse-bells that sound a catchy measure to the
shuffle of many feet, from out thy swarming hive there comes the breath
of vigorous life and thinkingness and the atmosphere of quick wits
and alert wills that have the habit of decisive action and of dogged
enthusiasms.
And the faces that pass, with lingering glance out of the dusk, the
pale sweet faces of thy beautiful women and the handsome figures of a
vigorous race, how much larger vastnesses are in the communion of these
eyes than in wide empty spaces of unthinking continents!
The mystic dusk turns thy many habitations to a thousand shadowy
palaces, thy very vulgarities to dulcet musicalities. What comedies are
in the making in thy wide hospitable lap to-night! what tragedies! what
heroic strivings! what bemeaning indecencies! what crimes!
Thy very mud holds something of dark mysterious lustre--being that
which is trod out of thy pageant and thy history.
He only loves thee best who, being divorced from thee, comes to
thee again out of the years. He flips thy mantle with no cockney
familiarity, but hears in the hollows of his reverent ears the æolian
whisperings of thy large significance....
The sound of footsteps ceased to rouse the echoes in the empty street,
as Noll came to a halt before Netherby Gomme’s doorway. He hesitated
for a moment; ran up the steps; and rang the bell.
The smoky twilight that held the place was passing into sooty darkness,
turning the staid street of lodging-houses into a way of fairy
habitations, the lemon flames of gas-lamps showing a sweeping curve
of light down its long length to the far rumble of the city’s distant
traffic.
A key coughed in its wards as it shot back the bolts of the lock; and
the door yawned open.
Noll turned at the sound of its unlatching.
The mother of Netherby Gomme stood in the dark hollow of the doorway;
and a grim triumph lurked in her eyes.
Noll saluted her, hat in hand; and she returned his greeting with a
grave smile of surprise.
“Is Netherby at home, Mrs. Gomme?” he asked.
The grim triumph slipped back to her eyes, and came lurking into the
corners of the old mouth again:
“He came home from his honeymoon to-day, Noll,” she said--“will you go
up and see him?”
Noll walked into the house, and the door was shut behind him with
a triumphant slam. He followed the grim old lady into the little
sitting-room, and as he went the memory of the queenly figure of the
little child Betty as she walked into the dingy room and kissed the
jealousy out of this old woman’s heart, came back to him like the
fragrance of her sweetness, so that for a while he could not speak what
he would have said.
“It was only the other day,” she said, “that you were boys together....
To me it is only yesterday that he was a--little one--in my--arms.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “But it is all gone.... This passing of
youth is as strange as death....” And she added after awhile: “I think
he--was glad--to come back.”
Something of the light of triumph came stealing back to the old
tear-stained face.
“And Julia?” he asked.
“I’ve sent her out to get tickets for the theatre,” she said drily.
“They will want amusing badly to-night--and the tuning of the fiddles
would always rouse my Netherby.... But you’d better go up and see him,
Noll--you used to know the way.”
Noll made a pause to take breath at the top of the stairs (how he and
Betty had raced up those steps!). He pushed open the attic door.
In the midst of the smudgy dusk that filled the room, his head in his
hands, elbows on knees, sat the dim figure of Netherby Gomme, sobbing
pitifully.
Noll shut the door softly, and went up to the bowed man:
“Good God, Netherby!” said he--“what’s this?”
He gripped his hand upon the other’s shoulder, affectionately.
Gomme signed him to a seat:
“Sit down, Noll--I’ll be all right in a minute.” He blew his nose.
“No--better still, light the gas. I must stop. Tears will not bring
back one’s dead, nor grief annul the things that are done. Light up! A
man can only cry comfortably in the dark.”
Noll struck a light, turned on the tap of the wrought-iron gas-jet; and
the gas leaped into flame.
The old attic was gone.
In its place was a picturesque medieval room of quaint nooks and
demure corners, with stiff wooden settles of curving line against the
wall, and low bookshelves round the rest of the walls; and above, on a
deep coloured frieze under the low ceiling, was a long space of rigid
trees from the land of Morris, green trees that yielded vasty purple
and golden fruits on close-bunched foliage--and in the blue intervals
between the stilted trees sailed white-sailed many-coloured galleons
and purple triremes--and on the wall beneath the frieze and above
the long curves of the low bookshelves was a yellow space splashed
with huge orange-coloured dogs, with emerald eyes and scarlet mouths,
that leaped along on hind legs to the chasing of each other and an
occasional orange stag amidst mighty flowering plants that seemed
to whirl in autumn tints with cunning running lines half-flower,
half-leaf. And here and there was a knight in armour, and a hawk upon
his wrist, and clothes upon his horse, and about him was always written
_Soe sirre Gallahydde gotte hyme pryckynge to hys pilgrymmynges_; and
when the knight was faded blue the writing was russet green; but when
the knight was russet green the writing about him was faded blue. And
here and there was a lady with hair in plait, and she wove at a loom,
and sang with ruddy lips, and the writing about her was _Chaunted the
Queene ande weaved hyre tale righte Fyttyngelye_; and when the queen
was orange yellow the writing was white, and when the queen was white
the writing was orange yellow. The old bookshelves, with their gay
untidiness of many-coloured books, were gone; and in their place in
more severe order on dark oaken bookshelves of suave design were ranked
books all bound exactly alike in uniform yellow half-calf bindings. The
floor was rich-stained and polished, and in the middle of it lay a rug
of the yellow of saffron.
The old attic was now so rich of hue and yet so stiffly chaste that
Noll almost rubbed his eyes to see if he were awake.
It was indeed a handsome room; and yet----
Some faint whisper of the how and the why these things had chanced
flashed through Noll’s consciousness. Here Julia had put the savings of
her hard-won earnings. A tidy mind frets at the ordered disorder of the
workshop. She was of a precise habit that has a ruthless distaste for
chips. She had secretly consulted the old lady, who had grimly advised
her to “let the man’s room be”; but he who takes to the council of war
a decided intention is irked by opposition, and smiles away the wisdom
of older heads as the mere caution of senility. And indeed there was
something of the poetic intention behind her gentle obstinacy, as there
was behind everything she did; for (and she knew it in her secret heart
to be not wholly without a little of such jealous venom as her gentle
blood could hold) she had been passionately set upon bringing into this
man’s life a fresh influence, a fragrance that she was sure he had
not known--she was aglow with the glamour of the love-mood to be the
all-in-all in the atmosphere of her lover’s day. And as the rich crave
ever to be more rich, so she, queening it in her little parish, was
blind to the simple fact that all the subtle and gracious tenderness of
her gentle womanhood had won her a larger empire over her lover than
any she could hope to win by petty endeavour. The old lady, her wise
old eyes seeing that the other had come to consult the oracle with the
answer rather than the question, had nodded her willingness, after the
first demur, to comply with the younger woman’s whim. And the nod of
surrender once given, she had addressed herself, during their absence
on the honeymoon, to carrying out the young wife’s instructions to the
uttermost detail, even employing no small sum out of her own small
income to the perfecting of it.
And, be it remembered, for her the doing had been no light ordering--it
was a flagellation of her own nakedness with cruel whips; for, as each
change obliterated a footprint of the past, the atmosphere in which the
boy and man had wrought their career swiftly vanished--the very hint of
an early struggle had departed from the place.
Noll felt how the room must have struck Netherby in the face as he
leaped up the stair and flung open the door to be welcomed to its
old genial comradeship after his journey and absence from his beloved
things.
Noll’s eyes came back from his thoughts to rest on the bent shoulders
of the disconsolate man; and Netherby realized that the other had
digested the situation.
He sighed sadly, his head in his hands:
“Poor Julia!” he said--“ she must never know. She has done this during
our absence--as a surprise. And,” he added grimly: “it was!”
Noll smiled:
“But, Netherby, my dear old boy; you must not fret. You are famous,
man----”
“Oh yes--quite. A duchess has asked me to dinner--without my wife.”
Noll put out the light:
“Let us sit in the dusk for awhile, Netherby, as we have sat many a day
and settled the affairs of the state. We have laughed at care here;
and kicked the world about like a football, and striven to dig up the
roots of the Universe--the Why and the Wherefore and the Whence and the
Whither.”
Netherby sighed:
“Ah, Noll, the old room is gone. I have to begin all over again. These
stiff prude seats compel me to order--tell me harshly that I must not
be dreaming overmuch, nor thinking--which is next door to dreaming--but
nag me to be up and doing, boiling pots or eggs or hitting something
or pushing at things. I don’t seem to fit in anywhere. The medieval
rigours warn me to be done with visions and the reading of the visions
of others; and their hard oaken seats rise up and assault me where I
would sit upon them.... But that is nothing. They have left me not even
my books. I am bewildered--bewildered--wholly bewildered.”
He sighed sadly, and went on:
“Ah, Noll, he only knows the whole delight of having possessed a
child who has lost it.... Books are one’s most intimate friends--they
never change--never play us a shabby trick. How they eat into one’s
friendship, each dressed in his individual habit! the very ugliness
of some a reason for seeking to win their confidence; perhaps a
reason for an easy familiarity--we dog-ear them the more--mark them
the more--love them the more. Put them in handsome ranks uniform, and
their individuality is gone--like sisters that are primly arrayed to
the same pattern to simper through a tedious garden-party. We begin to
find faults where was once only affection; and their outward seeming
being now alike, like critics we seek to taste not the delights
within, but carp because this has not Shakespeare’s wit nor that the
thunders and the music of Carlyle. These that were once our closest,
most garrulous, most intimate friends have gone to join the silent
ranks of library editions that no one reads. These stiff and formal
backs, these ornamental edges, these dandified and dyed airs, repel me
from my ancient friendships. The intimacy of years is broken--frozen.
They open no longer eagerly at the old accustomed places, stained
with frequent thumbings, where my own hand cut the dear intimate
leaves--they are deckle-edged and bedamned and horrible which were wont
to be delightfully impertinent. I cannot find my way in the old garden
that I loved--the old dog-ears are smoothed out, gone--my pencillings
erased, their whisperings mute, they nudge my elbow no more. These, my
one-time boon companions snub me; give me but the flabby handshake of
necessity. They open their houses to me mincingly, and yawn affected
utterance. They no longer tickle me in the ribs, touching me on the
sleeve, nor beckon; they do not chuckle familiarly--nor brood with
me upon the roll and march of the great significancies. Their new
clothes are insistent--upon them as upon me. They smell of the oil of
respectability like gagged Sunday-school children. We know each other
no longer--except with formal bow and elaborate etiquette--as when a
royal person enters the room of entertainment and puts good-fellowship
to the rout.”
He made a pause, and, passing his gaunt hand over his brow, he added
sadly:
“I have come home to find myself in a strange land.... Shining-faced
respectability has usurped my chair.... My kingdom has slipped from
me.... The flowers in my garden are dead.”
Noll patted him on the back:
“Tut, tut, man--you have come into a new kingdom.”
He heard Julia’s voice upon the stair; and he saw that the other had
heard it, for he stood up and forced a smile upon his long sad face.
Noll went close to him hurriedly:
“One word, Netherby--quick, before she comes--do you know where Betty
is?” he asked hoarsely.
Netherby smiled a sad smile:
“Ah, Noll, that _you_ should have to ask _me_ that!”
Noll passed Julia at the stair-head and left them together.
As he stepped across the hall he hesitated, turned, and went into the
old lady’s room. She was sitting in the window, looking out; and she
turned at his footfall.
Noll bent down and kissed the old face; and he saw that the harsh light
had gone out of her eyes:
“Won’t you be a little lonely here to-night?” Noll asked her.
“No,” she said--“she has taken seats for all three of us.”