NEW HORIZONS
When Ishmael laid his aching head upon the pillow one night a week later
in the Tavistock Square house of Mr. Alderman Killigrew it carried
within a whirl of impressions so confused that days would have been
needed in which to sort them out. London--the London of the
'sixties--noisy with hoofs and iron-bound wheels upon its cobbles and
macadam, dark with slums that encroached upon its gayest ways,
glittering with night-houses and pleasure gardens that focussed light
till dawn, brightened as with clustered bubbles by the swelling skirts
of ladies of the whole world and the half, was, though smaller, ignorant
of electric light, and without half the broad spaces and great buildings
of the London of to-day, still more sparkling and gayer in its effect
because life was less hidden. The 'sixties were not squeamish, though
they were prudish; a man's own womenfolk were less noticeable than
to-day, not only in such minor detail as the exclusion of them from the
tops of omnibuses; but they, after all, were but a fraction of what went
to make up spectacular life. Those were the days of bloods--when an
officer and a gentleman went as a matter of course to all the cockpits
and gaming houses, the night clubs and rings sacred to the "fancy"; when
it was still the thing for a gentleman to spend his nights in drinking
champagne and playing practical jokes that were forgiven him as a
high-spirited young man who must sow his wild oats and garnish each word
of conversation with an oath. From the comparative respectability of
Cremorne and Motts, and the frankly shady precincts of the "Pie" and
the "Blue Posts" down to places considerably worse, London was an
enormous gamut of opportunities for "seeing life."
Killigrew, as a merchant's son, however well off, could not penetrate to
the most sacred precincts--Motts was more or less barred to him; but on
the other hand he was in the midst of what was always called the
"Bohemian" set--in which were many artists, both the big and the little
fry. One could "see life" there too, though, as usual, most of the
artists were very respectable people. It was a respectable art then in
vogue in England. Frith was the giant of the day, and from the wax
figures at Madame Tussaud's to pictures such as the "Rake's Progress"
the plastic arts had a moral tendency. Even the animals of Sir Edwin
Landseer were the most decorous of all four-footed creatures; Killigrew
blasphemed by calling the admired paintings still-life studies of
animals. But then Killigrew was from Paris and chanted the newer creed;
he was always comparing London unfavourably with Paris even when he was
showing it off most.
The house in Tavistock Square was grand beyond anything Ishmael had ever
imagined, if a little dismal too. It was furnished with a plethora of
red plush, polished mahogany, and alabaster vases; while terrible though
genuine curios from Mr. Killigrew's foreign agents decorated the least
likely places. You were quite likely to be greeted, on opening your
wardrobe, by a bland ostrich egg, which Mrs. Killigrew, the vaguest of
dear women, would have thrust there and forgotten. She had a
deeply-rooted conviction that there was something indecent about an
ostrich egg--probably its size, emphasising that nakedness which nothing
exhibits so triumphantly as an egg, had something to do with it.
Mrs. Killigrew was nothing if not "nice," but she was something much
better than that too. Ishmael, though he could no more help laughing at
her than could anyone else, soon felt a genuine affection for her that
he never lost. She was a little wide-eyed, wistful-looking woman, really
supremely contented with life, and, though kindness itself, quite
incapable of realising that anyone could ever really be unhappy or
wicked. "I'm sure the dear Lord knows what's best for us all," was her
comfortable creed, that in one less sweet-natured would have made for
selfishness.
"I'm sure that'll be very nice, my dears," was her invariable comment on
any programme suggested by the young men; and there was a legend in the
family that Killigrew--or Joseph, as his mother always called him in
full--had once said to her: "How would it be, mother, if I were to
murder the Guv'nor and then take you round the world with me on the
money? We could settle in the South Sea Islands, and I'd marry a darky
and you could look after the picaninny grandchildren?" To which Mrs.
Killigrew had responded: "Yes, dear, that will be very nice; and on your
way, if you're passing the fishmongers', will you tell him to alter the
salmon for this evening to cod, as your father won't be in to dinner?"
Mr. Killigrew was a thin, pale man, not at all the typical prosperous
merchant, with a skin like the shiny outside of a cold suet pudding, a
high wall of forehead, and the thin-lipped mouth of a lawyer. Perhaps it
was because of that mouth he was such a successful trader, while the
brow provided him with enough philosophy to bear gladly with a child so
different from himself--always a hard blow to egoism.
Mr. Killigrew approved of Ishmael; he liked his keenness on whatever
appertained to his trade as an agriculturist, and he himself being
concerned in the import of several tropical fruits and products, went
with the young man to the great Horticultural Show at South Kensington,
while the scornful Joe betook himself to the races; and Mrs. Killigrew,
though she declined both outings, was sure that they would be very nice.
They were--though Killigrew lost so much money that he was afraid to
come home and spent the night imbibing champagne and repentance at the
Hummums, and Ishmael bought Indian corn and a kind of yam which he
thought could be induced to flourish in West Penwith, which incidentally
it did so far as foliage went, though it always obstinately refused to
bear fruit. The following mid-day Joe sent for Ishmael to the Hummums,
and from that comfortable if somewhat dingy hostelry set out, in the
gayest spirits, to track down a money-lender who would oblige on no
better security than his assurance that the Guv'nor would pay up when he
had got over the shock.
Success in this put Killigrew into the wildest spirits, and he forthwith
took unto himself a young man whom he ran into as he and Ishmael were
going into the Blue Posts for a before-dinner drink. The young man was
none other than Carminow, grown very tall and melancholy-looking, with
an extravagantly high collar, much swathed with a voluminous black silk
cravat and a fancy waistcoat. Carminow, who under a manner of deepest
gloom concealed a nature as kind and as disconcertingly morbid as of
yore, was unaffectedly charmed to see his old schoolfellows, and said
so. He had better control over the letter "r" than in his boyhood, but
his employment of it was still uncertain and quite irrational. He linked
an arm in each and said gravely: "Will you come with me to see the
execution at Newgate to-mowwow morning? They are twying new experiments
with the dwop, and it should be intewesting."
"No--are you serious?" demanded Killigrew. "I say, I've half a mind
to.... It might make a jolly fine sketch, mightn't it? Kept quite rough
and suggestive, you know."
"It'd be suggestive all right," remarked Ishmael. Within him a wish to
accept warred with horror, besides which he could not quite make up his
mind whether Carminow were joking or no.
"Splendid," said Carminow; "there's just one moment, when the hangman
pulls on the legs, to make sure, you understand--and the face swells
till it looks as though it would burst the white cap pulled over it, for
all the world like a boiling pudding.... And you see the cawotid artewy
become suffused with a blue bwuise--"
"Cobalt and a touch of _garance_," threw in Killigrew.
"Shut up, Carminow," said Ishmael; "we've not had our drinks yet if you
have." He was rather proud of this, which sounded to him to have quite a
man-about-town twang, and he knew it must have been successful when he
saw his companions pass it without ribald comment.
"Let's all have dinner," said Killigrew exuberantly, "and then go on to
see the new ballet. What d'you say, Carminow?"
Carminow was quite willing, his appointment not being till early next
morning, and the three went off to the "Cheshire Cheese," where
Killigrew drew portraits of Dr. Johnson on the tablecloth and placated
the head-waiter by telling him how famous he, Killigrew, was going to be
and how valuable the tablecloth would consequently be in fifty years'
time. Ishmael enjoyed that dinner. He was unused to stimulants, but
having a naturally good head was delightfully sharpened in sense and
appreciation by them, while his stronger stomach did not pay him back
next day as Killigrew's invariably did. Carminow was full of stories,
all, needless to say, of a sanguinary nature; Killigrew capped them, or
tried to, by would-be immoral tales of Paris; and Ishmael said very
little, but, with his deadly clarity of vision for once working
beneficently, sat there aware how young and somehow rather lovable they
were through it all, while he himself, whom they were obviously
treating as so so much younger in the ways of the world, felt old
compared with them. The only thing he did not fully realise was just how
young that feeling itself was.
After dinner they went, as Killigrew had suggested, to the theatre--a
shabby little place to look at, though the resort of all the bloods, who
crowded stalls and stage door. Killigrew laughingly informed Carminow
that Ishmael had never met an actress in his life, and in reply to
Carminow's half-mocking commiseration, Ishmael answered gaily that he
had never even been to the theatre, except to a penny gaff that once
visited Penzance. It was indeed with a secret tingling that he now found
himself seated in a box. He brought to the theatre the freshness of the
child who goes to his first pantomime, and was unashamedly aware of the
fact. The smell of the place, the heat--for the gas made the air
vibrant--the very tawdriness of the hangings and gilding, all thrilled
him, because they were, as Killigrew would have said, so "in the
picture." When the curtain went up he settled himself to enjoyment.
Killigrew, more interested by the performers than what they represented,
leant back in the box and kept up a running commentary in a low voice.
"There never was a more Oriental thing invented than the crinoline," he
observed, nodding towards a group of dancers blowing as lightly as balls
of thistledown over the stage, slim ankles twinkling below their
inflated skirts of misty whiteness; "I'm not trying to be epigrammatic,
I mean it. Watch those girls there ... did you ever see such sway, such
slope--I can't find the exact word for it? Each little movement--a
raised eyebrow seems almost enough--and the crinoline sways this way and
that, divinely true at the waist alone.... But it's not just their
grace; it's what they suggest. That feeling of a cage, of something
protective, which is what I mean by Oriental. So defined down to the
waist, and then this thing that makes a parade of not following
nature.... D'you know, I never watch a pretty woman in a crinoline but
the thought doesn't strike me?"
"It's the sort of thought that would, my son," opined Carminow.
"But you can't deny I'm right. No clinging drapery has ever been so
suggestive, so much the refinement of sensuality, as the crinoline."
Ishmael said nothing; but inwardly he too felt what Killigrew meant,
which he would not have done a week earlier. As he sat there, warm and
pleasantly stung by the wine he had drunk, the brightness of the scene
and the colour of the music and the thoughts they conjured up, as well
as the gowns and head-dresses of the pretty women, all awaked in him the
glow a child feels at its first pantomime. The dancers were to him not
flesh-and-blood women, but magical creatures, and yet he was stirred to
a new excitement too. As he sat there all the sense of poise with which
he usually so confidently faced the affairs of life, and which, far from
failing him, generally served him only too well, began to sway and grow
many-coloured.
When they went out into the street again he agreed with Carminow that
the night was yet too young to abandon it in mid-air. He did not,
however, feel like more drinks; the exhilaration of the play, of his own
youth, now for the first time tingling unrestrainedly in his veins, the
glamour of the gaily-lit night--they had wandered as far as the
Haymarket, which was ablaze till dawn--were all enough for him, and he
felt that anything more would have blurred their keenness. Suddenly
Carminow had an inspiration.
"Come back with me, you two," he suggested. "I've got quite decent digs
in Cecil Stweet, off the Stwand. And I've a little collection that
might intewest you...."
"I know, monstrosities in bottles and side elevations of premature
babies," surmised Killigrew; "you're a foul old thing! But we'll come
and have a yarn over 'em anyway. I'm not in a hurry to face my revered
parents and I daren't take this good little boy to some places you and I
know of. I'm responsible for him."
Carminow turned a pessimistic eye on Ishmael. "Are you still pure?" he
shot at him in his deepest bass. "I see you are; your look answers for
you." And he strode on again. He turned to add over his shoulder: "I
cannot in the intewests of my pwofession emulate you; it is incumbent on
me to know first hand all that is possible, but I consider it an
excellent thing for the layman. Keep it up. Don't let Killigrew, who is
a commonplace sinner, laugh you out of it."
Ishmael forced himself to reply that he did not intend to forego his own
ideas on the subject for Killigrew or anyone else; and, indeed, he was
not so outraged by anything Carminow had said as by Killigrew's
whispered communication that for his part he believed Carminow was
boasting.... "Don't believe he knows the way," added Killigrew, "or only
theoretically. He's like a lot of doctors--all theories and no
practice." He was so pleased with this joke he had to repeat it aloud to
Carminow, who bore it quite unruffled.
They had now reached the house, one of the many little lodging-houses
that stood where the Hotel Cecil is to-day, and Carminow let himself in
with a large key and, turning up the gas, revealed the usual
lodging-house hall that is and was and always shall be eternally the
same as long as lodgings and landladies exist. It had a yellowish paper
blotted with large blurred flowers of a reddish hue, a steel engraving
of the "Derby Day" hung by the hat-stand, and the woodwork was of bright
yellow graining.
Carminow's rooms were on the second floor; after the first landing had
been passed the stairs suddenly altered in character, and from being
carpeted and fairly wide took onto themselves linoleum and a steep
straightness that said plainly: "Up to here two guineas a week; above
here only thirty shillings, with half-a-crown for extras." Higher still
bare boards advertised the fact that only "bed-sitters" or even plain
bedrooms were to be found.
Carminow's rooms ran the depth of the house, the front one, his
sitting-room, being separated from the bedroom by folding doors of the
same bright yellow as the doors in the hall. Into the sitting-room he
ushered his guests, and they knocked helplessly up against sharp angles
while Carminow pawed and patted round the room for matches, obstinately
refusing the offers of their boxes because he said he was trying to
train his landlady to keep his in the same place. Killigrew,
uninterested in the education of landladies, finally insisted on
striking one of his own, and uttered a shriek of joy when the faint
gleam revealed a glass jar in which a greenish-white fragment of a body
floated forlornly. Finally the gas was lit, the table cleared of papers
and books, and bottles of beer placed upon it instead. They had just
settled down to villainously strong cigars and the beer when a sound
very unexpected to two of them floated out upon the air--the sound of a
girl singing. The voice was a rather deep mezzo; it was singing very
softly an old ballad, to the accompaniment of a few notes very gently
struck now and again on a piano.
Carminow said nothing, but lay back in his chair and puffed out clouds
of smoke over his face. Killigrew looked at him and whistled.
"I say ..." he said.... "Own up, Carminow! Who is it?"
"If you mean who is the lady singing," said Carminow with sudden
stiffness, "she is Miss Grey, who has the room above this. She is a
young lady about whom I think even you would not make your obscene jokes
if you knew her."
"Sits the wind in that quarter?..." thought Killigrew, highly amused.
"I'll roast him...." Aloud he said: "And may I not know her, then,
Carminow? If Miss Grey is a friend of yours, perhaps--"
"I am vewy particular about whom I intwoduce to Miss Grey," said
Carminow unflatteringly; "that is to say, I should first have to find
out whether she wished it. She is quite alone, poor girl."
"Dear me! How is that? Is she some romantic governess out of a place or
a lady who through no fault of her own has come down in the world?"
"Miss Grey is on the stage."
Killigrew roared with laughter. "You hear, Ishmael; here's your chance.
You were saying you didn't know any actresses, and now here's Carminow
with one up his sleeve all ready for you. Tell us all about it, old
chap!"
"I will, if only to stop your stupid little mind from wunning along its
accustomed dirty gwoove," answered Carminow sententiously. "Miss Grey is
the daughter of a clergyman--"
"They all are."
"She is an orphan, that is to say, as good as one, for her mother is
dead and her father too poor to support her. She works very hard when
she can get any work, which I am sowwy to say is not often, and she is
as good as she is clever. I should be vewy glad if I could put her in
the way of more work when the play she is in is taken off, and I thought
you, Killigrew, who know so many people--"
"Artful old bird! So that's what you'd got in your mind, is it? Well I
can't do anything till I've seen the lady, can I? Even an angel in a
poke--"
The singing had ceased, and in the little silence there came a knock at
the sitting-room door. Carminow had called out "Come in" automatically
before a sudden idea sent him to his feet. He was too late; the door had
opened and a young lady in grey stood hesitating on the threshold.