He is the fourth in three years.
My big wolf!
Do not say that, my small rabbit.
She doesn’t look it.
It is open to any one to assert that such phrases have no significance,
or that, if they have significance, their significance must necessarily
be hidden from the casual observer. But to me they are like the finest
lines in the tragedies of John Ford.
Marlow was at his best in the pentameter, but Ford usually got his
thrill in a chipped line of about three words--three words which, while
they mean nothing, mean everything. All depends on what you “read into”
them. And the true impassioned student of human nature will read into
the overheard exclamations of the street a whole revealing philosophy.
What! Two temperaments are separately born, by the agency of chance
or the equally puzzling agency of design, they one day collide, become
intimate, and run parallel for a space. You perceive them darkly afar
off; they approach you; you are in utter ignorance of them; and then in
the instant of passing you receive a blinding flash of illumination, and
the next instant they are eternally hidden from you again. That blinding
flash of illumination may consist of “My big wolf!” or it may consist of
“It is solely a question of the cache-corset.” But in any case it is and
must be profoundly significant. In any case it is a gleam of light on
a mysterious place. Even the matter of the height of the floor on which
she lived is charged with an overwhelming effect for one who loves his
fellow-man. And lives there the being stupid or audacious enough to
maintain that the French national character does not emerge charmingly
and with a curious coherence from the fragments of soul-communication
which I have set down?
*****
On New Year’s Eve I was watching the phenomena of the universal scheme
of things in Putney High-street. A man and a girl came down the footpath
locked in the most intimate conversation. I could see that they were
perfectly absorbed in each other. And I heard the man say:--
“Yes, Charlie is a very good judge of beer--Charlie is!”
And then they were out of hearing, vanished from the realm of my senses
for ever more. And yet people complain that the suburbs are dull! As for
me, when I grasped the fact that Charlie was a good judge of beer I
knew for certain that I was back in England, the foundation of whose
greatness we all know. I walked on a little farther and overtook two
men, silently smoking pipes. The companionship seemed to be a taciturn
communion of spirits, such as Carlyle and Tennyson are said to have
enjoyed on a certain historic evening. But I was destined to hear
strange messages that night. As I forged ahead of them, one murmured:--
“I done him down a fair treat!”
No more! I loitered to steal the other’s answer. But there was no
answer. Two intelligences that exist from everlasting to everlasting had
momentarily joined the path of my intelligence, and the unique message
was that some one had been done down a fair treat. They disappeared into
the unknown of Werter-road, and I was left meditating upon the queer
coincidence of the word “beer” preceding the word “treat.” A
disturbing coincidence, a caprice of hazard! And my mind flew back to a
smoking-concert of my later youth, in which “Beer, beer, glorious beer”
was followed, on the programme, by Handel’s Largo.
*****
In the early brightness of yesterday morning fate led me to
Downing-street, which is assuredly the oddest street in the world
(except Bow-street). Everything in Downing-street is significant, save
the official residence of the Prime Minister, which, with its three
electric bells and its absurdly inadequate area steps, is merely comic.
The way in which the vast pile of the Home Office frowns down upon that
devoted comic house is symbolic of the empire of the permanent official
over the elected of the people. It might be thought that from his
second-floor window the Prime Minister would keep a stern eye on the
trembling permanent official. But experienced haunters of Downing-street
know that the Hessian boot is on the other leg. Why does that dark
and grim tunnel run from the side of No. 10, Downing-street, into the
spacious trackless freedom of the Horse Guards Parade, if it is not to
facilitate the escape of Prime Ministers fleeing from the chicane of
conspiracies? And how is it that if you slip out of No. 10 in your
slippers of a morning, and toddle across to the foot of the steps
leading to St. James’s Park, you have instantly a view (a) of Carlton
House Terrace and (b) of the sinister inviting water of St. James’s Park
pond? I say that the mute significance of things is unsettling, in the
highest degree. That morning a motor-brougham was seeking repose in
Downing-street. By the motorbrougham stood a chauffeur, and by the
chauffeur stood a girl under a feathered hat. They were exchanging
confidences, these two. I strolled nonchalantly past. The girl was
saying:--
“Look at this skirt as I’ve got on now. Me and her went ’alves in it.
She was to have it one Sunday, and me the other. But do you suppose as
I could get it when it come to my turn? Not me! Whenever I called for it
she was always--” I heard no more. I could not decently wait. But I was
glad the wearer had ultimately got the skirt. The fact was immensely
significant.