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THE CALL OF THE TOWN
The Call of the Town
A Tale of Literary Life
By
J. A. HAMMERTON
AUTHOR OF
"J. M. BARRIE AND HIS BOOKS," "LORD ROSEBERY," "TONY'S
HIGHLAND TOUR," Etc.
LONDON
R. A. EVERETT & CO.
42 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1904
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. "THE PROUD PARENT" 9
II. HENRY LEAVES HOME 22
III. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL 36
IV. MR. TREVOR SMITH, IF YOU PLEASE 53
V. IN WHICH HENRY DECIDES 61
VI. WHICH INTRODUCES AN EDITOR 70
VII. AMONG NEW FRIENDS 80
VIII. THE YOUNG JOURNALIST 91
IX. WHAT THE NECKTIE TOLD 100
X. VIOLET EYES 111
XI. ONE'S FOLLY, ANOTHER'S OPPORTUNITY 122
XII. "A JOLLY, DASHING SORT OF GIRL" 136
XIII. THE PHILANDERERS 147
XIV. FATE AND A FIDDLER 157
XV. "THE MYSTERIOUS MR. P." 164
XVI. DRIFTING 177
XVII. THE WAY OF A WOMAN 192
XVIII. IN LONDON TOWN 202
XIX. THE PEN AND THE PENCIL CLUB 214
XX. THREE LETTERS, AND SOME OTHERS 228
XXI. "THAT BOOK" 238
XXII. HOME AGAIN 244
XXIII. A TRAGIC ENDING 254
XXIV. ONE SUNDAY, AND AFTER 259
THE CALL OF THE TOWN
CHAPTER I
"THE PROUD PARENT"
IF you happen to be riding a bicycle you arrive somewhat unexpectedly in
the little Ardenshire village of Hampton Bagot, and are through it in a
flash, before you quite realise its existence. But in the unlikely event
of your having business or pleasure there, you approach the place more
leisurely in the carrier's cart from the little station which absurdly
bears the name of the village, though two miles distant.
The ancient Parish Church, with its curious old chained library and bits
of Saxon masonry, "perfectly unique," as Mr. Godfrey Needham, the vicar,
used to say, and the one wide street of quaint old houses, with their
half-timbered fronts, remain to this day much as they were, no doubt,
when good Queen Bess ruled England. But the thirsty cyclist, whose
throat may happen to be parched at this particular stage of his journey,
is a poor substitute for the old-time stage-coach which made Hampton
Bagot a place of change. Somehow, the village continues to exist, though
its few hundred people scrape their livings in ways that are not obvious
to the casual visitor. The surrounding district is richly pastoral,
plentifully sprinkled with cosy farm-houses, and here, perhaps, we have
the reason why Hampton continues under the sun.
If you wandered along the few hundred yards of street, and noted the
various substitutes for shops, in which oranges and sweets and babies'
clothing mingle familiarly with hams and shoe-laces, you would be struck
by the more pretentious exterior of one which bears in crudely-painted
letters the legend, EDWARD JOHN CHARLES, and underneath, in smaller
characters, the words POST OFFICE. The building, a two-storied one, with
the familiar blackened timbers supporting high-pitched gables, and a
bay-window of lozenged glass, was, at the time of which I write, the
place of next importance in the village to the "Wings and Spur." Behind
this window, and by peering closely, one could see dusty packets of
writing-paper and fly-blown envelopes, a few cheap books, clay and briar
pipes, tobacco, and some withered-looking cigars. Below the window,
after diligent search, a slit for the admission of letters might be
found.
But while the place itself would easily have been passed over, not so
the figure at the door; for there, most days of the week and most hours
of the day, stood the portly form of Edward John Charles himself.
It was as though the legend overhead referred to the man beneath, and
the smile usually on his face spoke of contentment with himself and the
world at large. His face was ruddy and clean-shaven, as he chose to coax
his whisker underneath his chin, where it sprouted so amply that the
need to wear a collar or a tie did not exist; certainly, was not
recognised.
Somewhat under medium height, and of more than medium girth, Edward John
Charles was by no means an unpleasant figure to the eye, and if the
commonplace caste of face and prominent ears did not suggest any marked
intellectual gifts, the net result of a casual survey was "a
good-natured sort." He had a habit of concealing his hands mysteriously
underneath his coat-tails as he stood at the door beneath the staring
sign, and his coat had absorbed something of its owner's nature, for by
the perch of the tails one could guess his mood. They were flapped
nervously when the wearer was displeased; they opened into a wide and
settled =V= inverted when he was in the full flavour of his
satisfaction; and happily that was their most common condition. Indeed,
the coat-tails of Edward John Charles were as eloquent as the stumpy
appendage of the Irish terrier usually to be seen at the door with him.
Edward John stood in his familiar place this morning, and surveyed
placidly the one and only street of Hampton Bagot.
The street does not belong to Hampton at all, but is only so many yards
of a great highway to London. If you asked a Hampton man where it led
to, he would say to Stratford, as that is the end of his world. That he
is spending his life on a main-travelled road that goes on and on until
it is lost in the multitudinous streets of modern Babylon has never
occurred to him. Stratford is his _ultima thule_, the objective of his
longest travels.
But Edward John was no ordinary man, despite his common exterior, and it
was in the list of his distinctions that he had in his early manhood
spent two days in London. To him, the road on which he looked out for so
many hours each day was one of the tentacles thrown out by the mighty
City to drag the sons of Nature into its gluttonous maw.
"It ain't got me, 'owever," he reflected, as he contentedly wagged his
tails; "but as for 'Enry, why, 'oo knows?"
And really, what London would have done with Edward John we cannot
guess, nor have we at present any idea of what it will do with 'Enry.
At this particular moment you would scarcely have credited the
postmaster-bookseller-tobacconist with such philosophic reflections; for
he seemed to be chiefly interested in watching with a critical eye a
dawdling creature by the name of Miffin, the inefficient tailor across
the way.
Edward John pursed his lips and flapped his coat-tails in stern
disapproval of that sluggard's method of removing the single shutter
which covered his window as a protection from the sun's rays, rather
than a barrier to thieves, the latter being unknown in Hampton. Miffin
made the mere act of withdrawing a bolt a function of five or ten
minutes' duration, exchanging courtesies with every possible creature in
the neighbourhood, from schoolboys to cats, while engaged in the
operation. He would even call across to Edward John on the state of the
day, and secretly wonder when the postmaster ever did a stroke of work,
while in the mind of the latter certain wise maxims about ants and
sluggards from the Book of Proverbs were suggesting themselves as
peculiarly applicable to Mr. Miffin.
Presently, as Edward John turned his glance along the village street
towards the Parish Church, which sat on a leafy knoll to the west, with
a reproving eye on all Hampton, he saw the Rev. Godfrey Needham
hastening eastward at a brisk pace.
The sight was no unusual one. Mr. Needham never moved unless in a whirl,
the looseness of his clerical garb helping him to create quite a little
gust of energy as he hurried by with his good-hearted greetings to his
admiring parishioners. Such haste in a man of sixty was unaccountable,
especially when one was fully alive to his appearance. He looked as if
he had suddenly awakened after going to sleep a century before, and was
in a hurry to make up lost time. Thin-faced, with prominent nose, and
eyes red at the rims, blinking behind spectacles; he wore a rusty
clerical hat and clothes of ancient cut and material, his trousers
terminating a good three inches above his low shoes and disclosing
socks, formerly white. The fact that his legs remotely suggested a pair
of calipers added to the quaintness of the figure he presented while in
full stride down the village street.
The moment Mr. Needham swung into view, the coat-tails of the postmaster
were violently agitated, and his face broadened into a smile as he
turned quickly into the doorway and called:
"'Enry, 'ere quick. 'Ere's the passon!"
Back in the shade and coolness of the shop the person thus addressed had
been eagerly engaged in dipping into several volumes just brought that
morning by the carrier from Birmingham, for it was Mr. Edward John
Charles's great privilege to be the medium of obtaining books for
several of the county gentry in the neighbourhood of Hampton, and these
were always feverishly fingered by his son Henry before being despatched
to their purchasers.
This same Henry was esteemed by his fond parent a perfect marvel of
learning, and nothing delighted more the postmaster than to present him
on all available occasions for the vicar's admiration.
In response to the summons, Henry issued into the sunlight of the open
door, and craning his neck beyond the projecting window, beheld the
advancing figure of the vicar. But the vicar, rusty and time-soiled
though he seemed, was still well-oiled mentally, and had taken in at a
glance the manoeuvres at the Post Office door. Knowing that he would
have to fight his way past, he slowed down and approached with a
pleasant "Good-morning" to Edward John and a bright smile for Henry, who
was his favourite among the lads of the village.
"Well, Henry," he said, as if opening fire, "how do the studies
progress?"
"'Enry," returned the postmaster, before the lad had time to answer, "is
making wonnerful progress, simply wonnerful. I reckon all the prizes at
the school this term are as good as 'is," and the coat-tails opened
into a particularly expanded =V=. "And as for Latin, vicar," he
continued, "I shouldn't be surprised if 'e was soon upsides with
yourself! 'E's at it every night. Oh, 'e do study, I can tell you."
Mr. Needham smiled at this parental puffery, and answered somewhat
timidly:
"Ah, my dear Mr. Charles, I am afraid I have credit for more Latin than
I possess. Nothing is so hard for a scholar as to live up to his
reputation."
He even glanced furtively down the street, debating whether he should
clap on full sail forthwith, and resume his voyage before the
postmaster's prodigy could gratify Edward John by giving him a Latin
poser. Only for a moment did he hesitate, however, and recovering his
self-confidence, Mr. Needham continued brazenly:
"But, after all, one does not master Latin so soon as that. Henry, I am
afraid, will still have much to learn of the classic tongue."
"But won't you try me, sir?" blurted out the youthful subject of
discussion. "I should really like to be tested."
"Come now, do, Mr. Needham," urged the postmaster teasingly, his face
shining with pleasure in delighted anticipation of the coming battle of
wits. "Tackle 'im on Virgil; tackle 'im on Virgil. Put 'im through 'is
paces, do, and let's see what's in the led."
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Mr. Charles; but I am pressed
this morning, and must not delay further. Some other day, perhaps, I
shall see how he stands in the classics, but really I must be off. Good
morning, Mr. Charles; good morning, Henry!"
So saying, the vicar beat a retreat, and as Edward John watched the
breeze-blown frock-coat and the twinkling calipers disappear eastward,
he cherished the suspicion that the Rev. Godfrey Needham really did not
know so much of Latin after all. Nor did the shrewd Mr. Charles arrive
at a wrong conclusion. The dear old vicar's reputation as a Latinist
rested almost entirely on the fact that it was his custom when showing a
visitor through the Parish Church of Hampton Bagot to point to several
memorials in the chancel, and after asking if the visitor knew Latin, to
glibly recite the inscriptions in that tongue, and follow this up by
condescending to give their English equivalents. It was a harmless
vanity, and was typical of many little corners in the quaint character
of this good man.
Miffin had now accomplished the elaborate ceremony of opening his
inefficient shop, and sniffing contemptuously as he retired indoors at
the presumptuous Mr. Charles, whose encounter with the vicar he had
carefully overheard, he had the satisfaction of seeing the portly form
of Edward John disappear inside the Post Office, presumably for the
purpose of doing a little business.
"And now, 'Enry," said the proud parent, still chuckling at the obvious
retreat of the vicar, "it is time for school, my boy. Remember, _tempus
fugits_. Yes, my word, _tempus_ do _fugit_."
Thus admonished, the rising hope of the postmaster shouldered his
satchel and set out schoolward.
Henry Charles was in almost every sense a direct contrast to his father.
Taller than the latter already, although not yet sixteen years of age,
he was lean and sallow of appearance, with long, narrow, ungainly
features, redeemed from plainness only by the intensity of his glowing
brown eyes. By several years the oldest lad at the church school, where
Mr. Arnold Page retailed his somewhat limited store of learning to some
forty scholars, Henry was the scandal of the village. To the good folk
of Hampton it seemed almost a temptation of Providence to keep a lad at
school after he was twelve years of age, and to them Henry was a byword
for laziness and the possibilities of a shameful end. Often would the
postmaster's cronies assure him that he could hope for no good to come
of such conduct. At the "Wings and Spur" almost any evening "that long,
lanky, lumbering lout of a good-for-nothing, 'Enry Charles," was quoted
in conversation as an example of the follies a man could commit who had
once gone so far out of his natural station as to visit London and
admire "book-larnin'."
"It's downright sinful, I calls it, to keep a led at school arter twelve
years of age, when 'e moite be earnin' three shillin' a week a-doin' of
some honest werk."
This was the opinion enunciated more than once by Mr. Miffin in the
taproom of the inn, and always assented to with acclamation by the
company.
But Henry was sublimely unconscious of the interest he created, and his
father was stoutly determined in the course he would pursue. So the
youth continued to read all the books that came his way, to dream dreams
of lands that lay beyond eye-scope of Hampton Bagot. If the main road
through the village went to Stratford-on-Avon, it did not stay there for
Henry, and when it did go there it carried his thoughts to the home of
his favourite author.
It was, perhaps, the very fact of Hampton's nearness to the shrine of
Shakespeare that set the postmaster's boy thinking of books and the
life of letters. Already he dwelt in an enchanted land whither none else
in Hampton had ever wandered, and from the printed page he had built up
for himself a city of his own--a city with the familiar name of London.
There, as his father had told him--for had not Edward John trod its
streets for two whole days?--lived the great men of letters, their busy
pens plying on countless sheets of paper, and, like the touch of magic
wands, conjuring up for their holders fame and fortune.
Edward John Charles was truly a phenomenon--a bookseller in the tiniest
way, who had become imbued with some idea of the dignity of literature,
and esteemed its exponents in inverse ratio to his own unlettered
condition; thought of his scanty schooling being the one shadow which
ever darkened his brow.
To this fairy London, this home of learning, this emporium of all the
graces, Henry Charles looked forward in his day-dreams, while his
neighbours lamented his father's folly in not setting him to hoe
potatoes, or at least to sell ounces of shag.
"The led is struck on books; it's books with 'im mornin', noon, an'
night, and I ain't the man to stand in 'is way," quoth Edward John, in
expostulation with a friendly neighbour who advised him to put Henry to
work. "I don't know what 'e's going to be, or what's in 'im; but
whatever it is, the led shall 'ave his chance."
And when Edward John Charles said a thing he meant it.