Armstrong and Paul were keeping house alone, and were playing chess
together. The big eight-day clock ticked, the cat purred noisily on
Armstrong’s shoulder, the clear burning fire made slight crisp sounds
in the grate, and now and then slack fell from the bars. The two sat in
silence, poring over the board. Paul made a move.
‘That’s vile play,’ said Armstrong. ‘Mate in four.’
‘Go on, sir,’ Paul answered.
‘Chick,’ said Armstrong.
‘But you lose your castle.’
‘Do I so? But I get a pawn for it, and chick again.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘I see.’ He turned down his king and sat absent-eyed.
‘Ye’re falling off, Paul,’ said Armstrong, ‘or else your mind’s not on
the game.’
‘To tell you the truth, sir,’ Paul returned, sitting up with a sudden
sprightliness, ‘my mind’s not on the game.’
‘Where is it, lad?’
‘Well, sir, it’s in London.’ ‘London?’
‘London, sir. I can’t stop here all my days. I want to see the world.’
Armstrong rose to light his pipe at the gas. He dropped into his seat
slowly, took the cat from his shoulder, and set it on his knees. The
purr rose louder as he stroked lingeringly.
‘Ay!’ he said after a long pause; ‘ay, ay!’
‘I was afraid you wouldn’t like it, sir,’ said Paul ‘I’m not misliking
it, lad,’ his father answered. ‘I’m not misliking it What’s your
proposition, Paul?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I’ve formed no plans. I don’t know how to go about
things. I’m stifling here.’
‘It’s natural,’ said Armstrong; ‘I’ve stifled here for twenty years,
lad. But then,’ he added, with his own dry, wistful twinkle of a
fleeting smile, ‘I was born to stifle. What’ll you do in the world,
Paul, when ye get into it, if ye’re out of it here?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I shall try to do something.’
‘Ay!’ said Armstrong again; ‘ay, ay!’
His gray-blue eyes dreamed behind his grizzled brows, and Paul sat
watching him. There was a touching something in the gray, bowed figure
and the gray patience of his face. Paul seemed to see him alone, thus
dreaming.
‘I won’t go, dad, unless you like.’
‘It’s best, Paul; it’s best.’
A knock sounded at the front-door, and Paul walked down the long narrow
passage which lay alongside the sitting-room and the shop, and admitted
the major part of the household. They had been to a tea-meeting and
concert at Ebenezer, and they all trooped chattering into the big
kitchen, bringing a smell of frost and night air in their raiment.
‘Mary,’ said Armstrong, at the first gap of silence, ‘Paul is going to
London.’
Paul’s heart swelled at this unlooked-for acceptance of his plans, but
the household stood in wonder.
‘What’s Paul got to go to London for?’ asked Mrs. Armstrong.
‘We’ve talked it over within the last few minutes,’ returned Armstrong.
‘The lad’s coming to discretion. He wants to see the world. I’ll find
something for him to do there.’
‘William,’ said his wife, ‘you’re mad.’
Armstrong lit his pipe and said nothing, but the wife uplifted her voice
and spoke.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’ve got your proper look on, as if you were half a
million miles away, and me a insect, crawling about somewhere in another
planet and not worthy of a thought I know your ways--I’ve got a right to
know ‘em after nine-and-thirty ‘ears o’ married life, I reckon. You’ve
spoke your word, and you’ll sooner die than go back on it. Another man
‘ud give some sort of a why an’ a wherefore. But you! You’re Sir Horacle,
you are. You’ve opened your lips, and other folks’ talk is just no more
than so many dogs a-chelpin’! What’s our Paul want to go to London
for? Answer me that, if you please, William Armstrong. If it was in me,
William, to be a downright vulgar woman, I’d take the poker to you.’
Armstrong looked up with his swift, dry twinkle, and she laughed.
She tried to make the laugh sound angry, but the effort was useless.
Armstrong twinkled again, and she burst into a peal.
‘Children,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the fringe of her shawl,
‘remember what I tell you. That’s the best man in the world, but I hope
to gracious goodness as none of you will ever grow up like him. He’s
enough to break the patience of a saint. If Job’d ha’ lived with him,
he’d ha’ broke his head with one of his potsherds.’
Then the household laughed at large, for of late years this was the
fashion--this, or something very like it--in which all combative
disputes had ended. It had not always been so. In the earlier years,
which Paul could well remember, before the gray little man had achieved
his triumph of speechless mastery, there had been scenes which bordered
on the terrible.
‘And now,’ said Mrs. Armstrong, ‘what’s our Paul to go to London for?’
‘He’ll finish learning his business there,’ said Armstrong. ‘In two or
three years’ time he ought to be able to come back and take charge of
the place. There’s the nucleus of a good trade here, if it had energy
and knowledge brought to bear on it.’
There was an end of spoken opposition, and the fact that Paul was going
to London was accepted. A month went by, and all arrangements were made.
The Rev. Roderic Murchison had left Barfield, and had accepted a call
from some congregation in the outskirts of the great city. He held a
salaried post as well as Metropolitan secretary to his sect, and had
become a person of importance. He was in association with a firm of
printers who worked mainly for the big Nonconformist bodies, and an
odour of sanctity was supposed, by the Armstrong household at least,
to rest upon the labours upon which Paul was about to enter in their
office. Paul had examples of the office craftsmanship set before him.
Technically they were excellent, but their literary form was not of the
highest order. He learned that a hundred and odd workmen were engaged,
and he pictured them as a set of square-toes whose talk would be guarded
and pious and narrow, for in his innocence he imagined the men who
translated good books into type were necessarily good, and the men who
translated into type the goody-goody were of that spiritual complexion.
Paul and his father travelled up to London together on a Thursday.
They found lodgings in Charterhouse Square at the house of a sprightly
black-eyed lady, whose husband, long deceased, had been a Nonconformist
minister. She was very smiling and gracious, and Paul thought her a
charming woman, but he got out of her good books very early, and never
knew how for years after.
‘Oh yes, Mr. Armstrong,’ she said at the Sunday dinner, ‘anybody would
know you were from the country.’
‘How?’ Paul asked.
‘By your hair,’ said the lady.
‘Oh, well,’ said Paul, ‘I must get it cut London fashion.’
Mrs. Bryne bit her lips and flashed a look at him. The boarders
tittered, but Paul sat unconscious. He knew that ignorant people
misplaced their aspirates at times, but Mrs. Bryne was a lady, and wore
silk dresses on week-days.
But he had sown a seed of misliking, and it had opportunity to ripen.
Armstrong the elder, with that wholesale want of worldly wisdom which
distinguished him, had arranged that Paul should have a room in Mrs.
Bryne’s house, with breakfast and supper on week-days and whole board
on Sundays, on terms which fitted accurately with his earnings. He gave
Paul a pound for pocket-money, and went away without a thought as to
what the lad was to do for his daily dinner. This admirable business
arrangement bore fruit, of course.
At eight o’clock on a February morning Paul presented himself at the
office. The day was foggy and bitter. The street-lamps were alight, and
all the shops yet open were dull yellow with gas-lamps in the fog. He
had to ask his way several times, and only one passenger in four or
five took any notice of him, but he reached his destination as some
neighbouring church clock boomed the hour out of the nowhere of the
upper air. He announced himself by name to a man in a glass-case at the
head of the stairs. The man gave him a surly side-way nod, and Paul, not
understanding, waited for something more.
‘Upstairs, ye fool!’ said the man.
‘It’s a cold mornin’,’ said Paul. That nose o’ yours looks a bit
pinched with it. I’ve half a mind to warm it for you.’
‘Well,’ said the surly man, ‘how often do you want to be spoken to?’
‘Once is enough,’ said Paul. ‘Come outside and I’ll gi’ thee a lesson in
manners.’
The surly man declined this invitation, and slid down the glass in front
of him. Paul mounted wrathfully. He was more grieved at himself than
at the other fellow, because he had made up his mind to be civil to
everybody, and above all things to put away the Barfield accent, which
he could do quite easily when he thought about it.
In the great room he entered there were rows on rows of compositors’
frames, all dimly illuminated by a single gas-jet, and the air was thick
with fog. One prematurely sharp-looking small boy was performing a sort
of rhythmic dance with a shrill whistle for accompaniment. He had a big
can of water, which he swung like a censer as he danced. The can had a
small hole pierced in the bottom, and the boy was laying the dust When
the can had yielded its last drop he took up a big broom and swept the
place rapidly, keeping up his shrill whistle meanwhile.
‘Isn’t it time somebody was here?’ Paul asked at length.
‘Manday’s a saint’s day,’ said the boy. ‘You a-comin’ to work ‘ere?’ he
asked. Paul nodded. ‘You’ll know better next taime. Why, even the “O.”
doesn’t come before naine on a Manday.’
That was the fashionable Cockney dialect of the time. It is dead, as are
the many fashions of Cockney speech which have followed it until now,
and as the present accent will be in a year or two. It tickled Paul’s
ear, and to get more of it he beguiled the boy to talk.
‘Who’s the “O.”?’ he asked
‘“O.”?’ said the boy sharply. ‘Overseer.’
‘Why are they late on Monday?’
‘I suppose,’ said the boy, ‘they stop too late at church on Sanday. They
are a pretty old ikey lot as works ‘ere, and so I tell you.’
Paul began to revise his opinion as to the probable character of his
associates. But perhaps the boy was purposely misleading him. He thought
it worth while to wait and see.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked, by way of keeping the conversation going.
‘Tom Ketling,’ said the boy, ‘but they calls me “Tat” for short, because
I used to hang about outside Tattersall’s and run errands. I picked
up most of my education there. There ain’t many of ‘em as can teach me
anything.’ He broke off short in his confidences at the sound of a heavy
shuffling footstep on the stairs. ‘Oh, my!’ he cried, ‘this is a marble,
and no error! How are you, Forty?’
‘You here?’ said the man thus hailed. ‘Why, how you _are_ reforming!’
His voice had a deep chuckling husk in it, as if he had just finished an
exhausting laugh, and his lungs still panted. His face and figure were
vague in the fog and dimness of the place, but as he rolled and chuckled
nearer Paul stared at him, not without reason. He was respectably
attired at the first glance in a heavy overcoat of milled cloth, with
facings of some sort of cheap imitation fur, and a silk-hat which,
though creased in many places, was flatteringly oiled, and shone with a
lustre to which its age bequeathed no right. He had a high collar which
rose to the cheek-bone, and was severely starched, though yellow and
serrated at the edges. His face was a flame of high colour, and his nose
was a burlesque on the nose of Bardolph. It was not merely huge; it was
portentous. It was of the size and shape of a well-grown winter pear,
and it wagged as he walked, touching now one bloated cheek and now the
other. It was garnished with many dark bosses, as if it were ornamented
by round nails of a purple tone, and when once the owner had carried
it fairly under the gas-jet it seemed as if it were the nose which
shed such light as there was to struggle with the fog. ‘You see it,’
he cried, with the same short-winded chuckle. ‘Everybody sees it
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!’ He shook his head rapidly from side to side, and the
amazing nose tapped either cheek in turn with an actual audible sound
like the faintest clapping of hands. Apart from this deformity and the
sanguine colour of his face he was a jolly-looking fellow, and his brown
eyes twinkled as if they had been transparent, with a flickering light
behind them. ‘I got that,’ he said, rubbing die nose with the palm
of one hand, ‘from my highly respectable grandfather. He was a great
landowner, so I’m told, down Guildford way, and drank more port and
brandy-punch than any man in England. This’--he fondled the nose
again--‘this skipped a generation. My highly respectable father’s
proboscis was pure Greek--Greek so pure, sir, that the late President
of the Royal Academy has been known to follow him about London in a
hansom-cab from dawn to dewy eve in the hope of catching its outline.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!’ He wagged the monstrous feature again. He stopped short
with a ludicrous solemnity. ‘Your highly respectable name is Armstrong?’
he said with a voice and attitude of courtesy. ‘I judged so. You are a
turnover apprentice from the establishment of your highly respectable
father in the country? Exactly. My highly respectable name is Warr, sir.
I am sometimes known as Forty in recognition of a little feat of mine,
in respect of which “let other lips,” et cetera. I suppose that I have
never told you----’ He was in an attitude of extremest confidence, but
he changed it with a flourish, ‘I was told, sir, to be here to meet
you. It is mine to initiate you into the highly respectable mysteries. I
suppose I never told you ‘--the air of confidence was back again--‘that
I am the owner of an heirloom?’
‘I don’t remember that you ever did,’ Paul answered.
‘An heirloom,’ the man with the nose exclaimed, ‘an heirloom which--in
short, a highly respectable heirloom--a work of art. This is varnishing
day. Would you like to see the work of art varnished? Then come with
me.’ He laid aside the burlesque air, and said seriously: ‘There will be
nothing done here for an hour.’
Paul followed him down the stairs and into the street, where the fog
seemed thicker than before.
‘Is it often like this in the City?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said his companion; ‘I regret to say it isn’t We get very little
open weather in the City at this time of year. As a rule, in February
you find the City clouded.’
‘This is quite clouded enough for my taste,’ said Paul, coughing and
weeping.
‘My dear sir,’ said Mr. Warr, ‘this is merely Italian! Ah! I forgot You
are fresh from the country. You think this foggy! Well, perhaps it is
not quite so bright as we get it some days. But a real fog in London is
a very different thing from this. In ‘the great fog of January, ‘68,
it happened very fortunately for me that the partner of my
highly-respectable joys and sorrows had asked me to purchase a meat-axe.
I hewed my way home by its aid, sir. When I reached London Bridge I was
so fatigued that I was compelled to sit down, and to beguile the time I
cut a portion of the fog in strips, and modelled the strips into a
very handsome set of hat-pegs. They would have made a highly superior
souvenir of an interesting occasion, but they were, unfortunately,
stolen. By the way, if you happen to have sixpence about you I needn’t
ask for credit for the varnish. I hate debt as I hate the devil. Thank
you, sir. This way.’ He rolled into a gin-shop, and called for ‘a
quartern and two outs,’ tendering Paul’s coin in payment.
Paul declined any share in the liquor. He was watchful, and as full of
interest as a child. The battered pewter counter, with little pools of
dirty liquid in its hollows; the green-painted, flat-bellied barrels
with bands of faded gilding; the moist and filthy sawdust on the floor,
with last week’s odours in it and a mere sprinkling of clean sawdust
on top, offering its hint of the timber-stacks in the yard next door
to home; the winking gas with the fog-halo round it; the shirt-sleeved
barman; the female habitual drunkard here for a dram thus early, and
holding her glass in both shaking palms as if she warmed her hands at
it; the ceiling, cobwebbed and clouded with gas-smoke; the gaping door,
like a dead jaw that would have dropped but for the straps that held
it--all these things beat themselves in on his intelligence as if they
would make an eternal pressure there. It was as if the place had a moral
physiognomy of its own, and as if through countless details he absorbed
an instinct as to its daily life.
‘I suppose,’ said Paul, ‘you varnish that work of art pretty often?’
‘As often as I can,’ Mr. Warr responded. ‘But the varnish is costly,
my credit is nowhere worth a tinker’s damn, and I live in a chronic
impecuniosity.’
He varnished the work of art with a genuine relish, and, the process
being over, he and Paul returned to the office, where signs of life were
beginning to show themselves. The flare of some thirty or forty lighted
gas-brackets made an inroad on the fog, and knots of men were laughing
and talking. It very soon became clear to Paul’s intelligence that the
daily work and conversation of his new companions were not in any marked
degree ruled or moulded by the influence of that religious literature
with which they helped to furnish the world. They were neither better
nor worse than the average British workman; but they certainly cursed
a good deal, and a stiffish breeze of indecency blew through all their
speech.
In ten minutes every man was at his case, and silence reigned. The
overseer--a dyspeptic, long-haired man, who looked like a dejected
tragedian--interviewed the new-comer, supplied him with a certain amount
of ‘copy,’ and left him to his devices. Mr. Warr worked by his side.
That gentleman without the silk-hat came out bald, and without the
fur-trimmed overcoat came out shabby, in a very threadbare old black
rock. He wore a portentous pair of cuffs to match the antiquated
collar, and these being slipped off and the coat-sleeves turned up
for convenience in working, Paul wondered if any shirt or other
under-garment kept them company. Any doubt he may have had on that point
was dissipated early in the day, for Mr. Warr chancing to stoop with
his head towards Paul, gave the young man a clear view of his bare
back, between which and the world at large there was nothing but the
threadbare coat.
About half-past twelve o’clock the small boy whom Paul had encountered
on his arrival began to move about from man to man with a strip of
paper. Each man looked at the paper and spoke a single word. Then the
boy invariably pronounced a word which sounded like ‘vedge,’ and the
man either shook his head or nodded. Paul wondered what this might
mean, until his turn came, when he found a choice of viands written in a
scrawling hand upon the scrap of paper:
‘Boiled beef and carrots.
‘Boiled pork and pease-pudding.’
‘It’s sixpence-halfpenny if you have it here, sixpence if you go out for
it.’
Paul made his choice, and the boy said ‘Vedge?’ in an accent of inquiry.
‘What’s “vedge”?’
The boy looked up in a momentary wonder, and then grinned knowingly, and
shook his head.
‘What do you mean by “vedge”?’
‘Ah!’ said the boy, ‘you don’t get over me.’
‘I’m not trying to get over you. I want to know what you mean.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the boy; ‘of course you do! They don’t eat greens and
taters where you come from! Oh dear no; not at all!’
‘That’s it, is it? Then, I take vedge.’
‘If s an extra penny, mind you. You pays on Saturday.’
The boy turned to Mr. Warr, who made his choice also.
A little later a voice said ‘Halt!’ and there was a clatter of
composing-sticks laid smartly down on the cases. Almost at the same
instant the small boy came in with a pyramid of plates with flat tin
covers. ‘Beef and vedge,’ shrilled the boy, and, setting down his
burden, charged out again, returning instantly with another cry of
‘Beef, no vedge.’ He was out and in again with a cry of ‘Pork and
vedge,’ and out and in again with a cry of ‘Pork, no vedge.’ Then a
shock-headed youth appeared with a basket foil of tin measures and a
big can of black beer. He was met with an instant storm of chaff, and
allusions of a Rabelaisian sort were made to one Mary for whom he would
seem to have had a kindness. He departing, the men set themselves to the
serious business of dinner, and, the meal being over, they gathered into
groups, and smoked and talked, whilst the small boy cleared away.
An aproned man in a very old skull cap of black silk, and a shabby
frock-coat like Mr. Warr’s, approached Paul and announced himself as
‘the Father of the Chapel.’ He welcomed the young man with a curious
formal courtesy, and aired scraps of Latin with which Paul was familiar
from many years of study of the specimen-books of the type-founders,
who used to exhibit the most exquisite specimens of the printers’ art in
quotations from Cicero. Mr. Warr borrowed sixpence on the plea of sudden
and severe internal pains, and went out to varnish the work of art. He
returned with a moist eye, and in the course of the afternoon twice or
thrice dipped his bulbous nose into the letter ‘e’ box, and snored for a
minute at a time among the types.
Day followed day, and one day was like another. Saturday came, and Paul
received his wages. He paid his first weekly bill at his boarding-house
by aid of the remnant of the sovereign left for pocket-money. Next week
saw him in debt. The third week saw him dinnerless. He knew the mistake
his father had made, but it did not occur to him to take any active
steps to remedy it Any lad of his years with a farthing’s-worth of
business faculty would have written home to explain his case, and would
have gone into cheaper lodgings. Paul chose to do nothing, but to wander
hungrily and vacantly through the city in the dinner-hour. He found
no more varnish for the work of art, and his working comrade was less
amiable than he had been. The week’s end found him a little further
in debt, in spite of abstention. His landlady, who thought he had been
impertinent in that unconscious matter of the aspirate, was not disposed
to be friendly.
‘I can tell by your looks,’ she said, ‘that you have been dissipating,
and I know that you are wasting your money. I shall write and tell your
father so.’
‘Very well,’ said Paul.
He was voracious at the supper-table, and that made the landlady no
kinder to him. He ate like a wolf at every meal on Sunday, and his
fellow-boarders chaffed him; but the lady of the house looked as if she
would fain have poisoned him.
She asked Paul into her private sitting-room after supper, and he
accepted her invitation.
‘I shall expect a satisfactory settlement at the end of this week, Mr.
Armstrong,’ she said icily. ‘Unless I get it from you I shall write to
your home for it, and in any case I shall be obliged if you will leave.’
‘Very well,’ said Paul.
He thought all this rather unprosperous for a beginning of a free life,
but he cared astonishingly little. If he had looked at the prospect, he
might have begun to think it in a small way very serious. Recalling
the time as he sat in his mountain eyrie, he found in it the first
indication of his own irresponsibility, a knack of blinding himself to
consequences.
Monday came, and he dined. It did not seem worth while to deny himself
any further. Tuesday came, and in the middle of the morning’s work a
man rapped on his case with a composing-stick, and said aloud, ‘I call
a Chapel.’ Mr. Warr turned on Paul, and told him he must go outside and
wait until such time as the meeting thus summoned was over. He and three
apprentices clustered on the landing. The doors were closed, and they
waited for half an hour.
At the end of that time they were re-admitted, and Paul was solemnly
escorted to the old man with the skull-cap.
‘I have a question to ask you, Mr. Armstrong,’ the old gentleman began.
‘Were you properly indentured to this business.’
‘No,’ said Paul. ‘I picked up what I know about it in my father’s
office.’
‘You were never bound apprentice?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, that will do.’
Paul went back to his case, and fell to work there, not caring to
speculate much as to what had happened. The Father of the Chapel,
accompanied by two or three of his companions, left the composing-room,
were absent for some twenty minutes, and then filed solemnly back again.
Shortly afterwards a clerk came in, with a pen behind his ear. He stood
by Paul’s side, and pronounced his name in a tone of question.
‘Here,’ said Paul, looking round at him.
‘Just give your hands a bit of a rinse,’ said the clerk, ‘and put on
your things and come down into the manager’s office, will you?’
Paul nodded, and went off to the sink and the jack-towel, wondering a
little. When in due time he presented himself before the manager he was
at once enlightened.
‘That is your week’s money, Armstrong, and your services will not be
required here further.’
‘Why not?’ Paul asked.
‘No fault of yours,’ the manager answered; ‘but we find that you have
not been regularly apprenticed to the trade. This is a Union house, and
we are under Union rules.’ Paul took up the half-sovereign and the small
mound of silver the manager pushed towards him, and dropped it into
his pocket coin by coin. ‘I don’t know your circumstances,’ the manager
continued, ‘but if you’re in want of work, I can put you in the way of
it at once. There’s a non-Union house close by, where I happen to know
they’re short of hands. I have written the address in case you care to
try there. You needn’t make it known to any of our men that I sent you
there. Good-morning.’
‘I’m not going home,’ said Paul to himself, as he walked into the street
‘I’m not going home, whatever happens.’
He consulted the address he held in his hand, and walked towards it.
His dinnerless wanderings of last week had taught him something of the
intricacies of the City, if not much, and he chanced to know his way.
The place he sought was high up at the top of a ramshackle old house in
a narrow court, and a score of dispirited-looking men and youths were
at work there. A tired dyspeptic, with a dusty patch of hair and rabbit
teeth, approached him when he entered.
‘Yes,’ he said, when Paul had explained his business; ‘you can start in
at once, and if you’re any good you’re safe for a month or two. I hope
you’re a steady worker,’ he went on despondingly, as if he were quite
hopeless. ‘They’re not a dependable lot here--not a dependable lot at
all.’
Paul took his place amongst the depressed little crowd at two o’clock
that afternoon, and worked away among them until two o’clock on the
following Saturday. A little before that hour it became evident that
something was wrong. An excited little man ran into the dingy room, and
began a whispered conversation with the tired dyspeptic.
‘But, my God!’ said the latter, in a tearful voice; ‘I _must_ have it
I’ve got my men to pay.’
At this everybody pricked an ear.
‘It’s all right, old man,’ said the other. ‘Here’s the cheque, and it’s
as good as the Bank of England. But I’ve only just this minute got it.
It’s after one o’clock, and it’s Saturday, and the Bank’s closed. What
am I to do?
‘I don’t care what you do. Get somebody to cash it for you, I suppose.
I’ve got to have the money. Here’s all the bills made out, and in ten
minutes the men’ll be waiting.’
‘Well,’ said the man, I’ll try. It ain’t my fault, Johnny.’
He ran out as excitedly as he had entered, and the men stopped work by
common consent, and struggled into their coats.
‘It’s bad enough,’ said one of them, ‘to work for two-thirds money even
when you get it.’
Nobody else said anything. The dyspeptic foreman drew a case out of
a rack near the wall, and sat down upon it. The rest hung about
dispiritedly, and waited for what might transpire.
Two or three gathered round the imposing-surface.
‘Have a jeff?’ said one.
‘If you like,’ said another.
‘Come along,’ said a third, turning up the sleeves of his coat
Paul drew near, moved by curiosity.
One of the men picked up three em quadrats from a case near at hand.
An em quadrat is an elongated cube of type-metal, on which three of
the elongated surfaces are plain, whilst the fourth bears grooved marks
which indicate the fount of type to which it belongs. The cubes were
used as dice. The men started with a halfpenny pool, and the first
thrower cast three plain surfaces. He paid in three-halfpence. The
second man threw with equal effect, and put in three-pence. The third
man threw three nicked surfaces, and took the pool.
Two or three more of the men who were waiting for the messenger’s return
rose and drew near. Then others came, and, at last, all but Paul were
playing. The rules were simple enough: Any man who turned up three
blanks paid the whole of the pool. One nicked surface took a third, two
nicked surfaces two-thirds, three nicked surfaces the whole. Somebody
cleared the whole, and the game started afresh. Paul threw down a
halfpenny and joined in. As last comer he was last to play. The
first throw cleared the pool. It was renewed, and the next throw took
fourpence. Twopence remained. Three blanks doubled it--fourpence.
Three blanks doubled it again--eightpence. Again three blanks doubled
it--sixteenpence. A throw of one by common consent took sixpence. Three
blanks made the shilling two. Three more blanks made two shillings four.
Three more made it eight, and three more sixteen. Faces began to pale
and hands to tremble. A single took six shillings after a good deal of
wrangling, and ten shillings were left Paul threw for the ten shillings
and swept the pool In all his life he had never known such a sensation,
though the money as yet was mainly of paper slips.
The cashier had negotiated his cheque somehow and somewhere, and was
busy with the money. The men received their meagre wages, debts were
paid, and the game went on. The stakes never again rose so high as at
the first round in which Paul found himself engaged, but he still won
heavily in proportion to the game, and continued to win until the end.
He was then the only winner, and one of the losers asked him to pay for
drinks. Paul, with a certain feeling of splendour and magnanimity, threw
down half a sovereign.
‘Take it out of that,’ he said.
One of the despoiled poor devils clutched it, and they all went off
together, leaving Paul to struggle into his overcoat and follow, if he
pleased.
‘You made a pretty good thing out of that,’ said the pockmarked cashier,
swinging the key with which he waited to lock the door.
‘I’ll see,’ Paul answered.
He emptied his pockets on the imposing-surface, and counted the pile. He
had some fifty shillings over and above the week’s wages.
‘You’ve been up their shirts to the tune of about six bob a man,’ said
the cashier. ‘They’ll be sorry before the week’s out.’
The winner was not affected by any consideration of that sort. He
pouched the money, and took his way with a farewell nod. He had tasted
a novel excitement, and the thrill was still in his blood He walked
rapidly through the winter air towards his lodgings, dressed there in
his best, and sallied out again, making straight for the Cock tavern.
What suggested the idea to him he never knew, but he meant to take a
pint of port with Will Waterproof at that famous hostel, which then
stood on its own classic ground. The old Cock was not a palatial house,
but it was splendid to the raw country lad, and he was half afraid to
enter. He strode in looking as mannish and as townlike as he could, and
seated himself in one of the boxes alone. A waiter approached him, a
rotund man, in gouty-looking slippers, with a napkin across his arm.
Was this, he wondered, the steward of the can, ‘a shade more plump than
common ‘?
‘Give me a chop,’ said Paul, ‘and a pint of port’
‘Chop, sir,’ said the waiter; ‘yes, sir. And a pint of----’
‘Port,’ said Paul, and, being ignorant of the ways of such places,
pulled out a handful of silver and asked ‘How much?’
‘Bring the bill in due course, sir,’ said the water gravely, and moving
away, called the order for the chop up the chimney, as it seemed to the
visitor, and then rolled off stealthily in the gouty slippers in search
of the port. He brought it in a small decanter, which he polished
assiduously as he walked along. Paul thought it looked very little for
a pint, but made no comment. The waiter poured out a glass and retired.
The experimenter had tasted elderberry once, but he knew no more of
wine. The draught had relish fiery new, and it seemed to warm him
everywhere at once. His mind grew exquisitely bright, and his thoughts
were astonishingly vivid. He began to improvise verses, and they came
with an ease which was quite startling. They seemed to unroll themselves
before him, to reveal themselves line by line as if they had been in
existence long ago, and some spell had suddenly made them visible to his
intelligence. It was a moment of singular triumph, and it lasted until
the grave waiter laid his chop before him. He ate keenly, and finished
his pint of port A sort of beatific indolence was upon him, and he had
no wish to move, but he thought the waiter looked at him, and he was
uncertain as to whether he had a right to stay. He summoned the man and
paid him, and gave him sixpence for himself. Then he walked into the
street, but the exercise was not like walking. His step was quite firm
and steady, but his whole frame felt light, as if he could have spurned
the pavement with a foot, and have leaped the roadway at an easy bound.
He thought of young Hotspur, and ‘methinks it were an easy leap to pluck
bright honour from the pale-faced moon.’ He walked erect with his chin
in the air, and regarded the men and women who passed him with a strange
sense of being able to understand them all. There seemed to be a story
in every face, and he felt vaguely and yet positively that he could read
it if he chose. He found himself for the first time in Oxford Street
without knowing either by what route he had reached it or what was the
name of the thoroughfare. The crowds, the lights, the movement and the
din of traffic were in themselves an intoxication. It gave him a sense
of strength to be alone among them. Then all his thoughts trembled into
a sudden swimming laxity, and his mood changed to one of deep sadness.
He set himself to analyse an inward dumb reproach which filled him--to
ask a reason for it--to trace it to some source. It seemed to form
itself definitely on a sudden, and his winnings began to gall him
bitterly. He had never gambled before, and now he felt the passion of
greed into which he had been betrayed disgusting. He was ashamed of
having played at all, and still more ashamed of the callousness of
triumph in which he had walked away with his gains. He had pitied his
associates. He had seen the misery of their estate quite clearly. And
yet he had stooped to profit by their folly, and slattern wives and
dirty little neglected children would be cold and hungry because of
him before a week was over. He would return the money on Monday, every
penny. He might have to pinch himself for a week or two, but he would do
it.
His mood sank lower and lower, and self-reproach grew at once more
insistent and more urgent He felt homesick, and the populous street was
like a desert. All the people who had seemed so warmly near to him were
aloof and cold. He would have welcomed any companionship. The ebbing
forces of the wine left him comfortless.
In his complete ignorance and inexperience he supposed the pint of port
to have had no effect on him. This up-and-down play of the emotions
was not what he had read of as the result of wine on an unaccustomed
drinker. His step was steady, his eye was clear, there was no confusion
in his thoughts. It would be a perfectly safe thing to have another
glass of wine and then go home. If he had been asked why he wished for
more, he could not have given a reason. It was enough for the moment
that he desired it.
He found himself outside a flaring house, with the words ‘Wine Shades
‘in a blaze of wind-fluttered gas above the door, and painted placards
in the window: ‘Wines from the Wood. Fine old Sherry, 10d., 8d., and 6d.
per dock glass.’ He had never tasted sherry. Sherry surely was the
drink of many heroes. Shakespeare and Jonson drank it at the Mermaid.
He entered the place, called for his wine--‘Your best,’ he said, as he
threw his shilling on the counter--and sat down on a high stool to drink
it. Before his glass was empty he had flashed back into high spirits
again. He resumed his walk in a new exultation, and this time he knew
enough to attribute it to the wine. What a superb boon it conferred upon
the mind! How easy it seemed to soar out of sadness and loneliness into
these exalted regions of friendship with all created things. He walked
through the winter night with no knowledge of the route he took and with
no care. He could ask his way home at any time.
He came to the Metropolitan Music Hall in the Edgware Road, and suffered
himself to be borne in by the crowd at the doors. The place and its
like were strange to him. The performance seemed wholly contemptible
and absurd. Men and women screamed with laughter and roared applause at
jests which were either inane or hateful. A noisy man in a long-waisted
overcoat, whose skirts swept the stage, a blonde wig, flying yellow
whiskers, and a white hat at a raking angle, sang an idiotic song with
patter interspersed between the verses. He described a visit received
from Lord Off-his-Chump, Lady Off-her-Chump, and all the honourable
Misses Off-their-Chumps. The witticisms convulsed Paul’s neighbours and
left him saturnine. He conceived a loathing and despite for the creature
on the stage which he had never felt before for any living thing. The
popular laughter and applause fed his personal hatred and disdain. He
made an involuntary sound of contempt as the ‘lion comique’ went off.
‘Ah!’ said a voice beside him. ‘You don’t like that?’ Paul turned and
looked at the man who had accosted him. He was evidently a foreigner,
and his complexion was so jaundiced that he was the colour of a guinea.
What should have been the whites of his eyes were of a deep yellow.
His nose had a hook, high up, right between the eyes, and his lofty
forehead, narrowing to a peak, was ridged like a ploughed field. His
hair and beard and moustache were all crisp and curling, and their
blackness was faintly streaked with gray.
‘You don’t like that?’ said the stranger again. ‘No,’ said Paul. I
don’t.’
‘The cruel thing about it,’ said the stranger, ‘is that other people
do.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul; ‘that is the cruel thing about it.’
He had the suspicion of strangers which is natural to most rustic folk
in London, and his manner was purposely dry.
‘It strikes me,’ said the yellow man, ‘that you and I are about the only
sensible people here. Come and have a drink.’
‘Thank you,’ Paul returned, ‘I don’t drink with strangers.’
‘Oh, well,’ said the other, ‘that’s a wise thing, too. Have a cigar?’
‘I don’t smoke, thank you.’
‘And that again is a very sensible thing,’ said the stranger, laughing.
‘I am a slave to tobacco. Smoking has ceased to be a pleasure since it
became a necessity.’
The man’s speech had a faintly foreign sound, but his English was
faultless. The very slight peculiarity which marked it was rather a
level flatness in the tone than an accent It suggested a time when it
had cost him an effort to speak the language, though the time had long
passed away. The good-nature with which he accepted Paul’s rebuff lulled
the youngster’s suspicions, and lulled it the more completely that the
man turned away with a smiling nod and made no further attempt to enter
into conversation.
The lion comique was followed by a juggler, who appeared in the guise
of a hotel waiter, and laid a table as if for breakfast. The table
arranged, he began to perform the most extraordinary tricks with
the things he had placed upon it Eggs, egg-cups, teapot, cream-jug,
sugar-basin, breakfast bacon, loaf, bread-trencher, table-napkins,
plates, knives, forks, and spoons spouted in a fountain from his hands.
They seemed to be thrown into the air at random, and the man darted
hither and thither about the stage to catch them. Then he was back at
the table again amidst a storm of crockeryware, cutlery, and provisions,
and each article as it descended was caught with an astonishing
dexterity and set in its proper place with a swift exactness which
looked like magic. The artist had a perfect aplomb, and he put off
the catching of each article till the last fraction of the inevitable
second, so that he seemed secure in perfect triumph and yet on the edge
of instant failure. The house howled with excited laughter and applause,
and Paul roared as loud as any. He was as sober as a judge so far as
balance of body and clearness of speech and thought were concerned, but
the wine was in his blood. He stamped, clapped hands, and shouted until
the performer left the stage, and had twice returned and bowed He felt
that the applause would not cease until he ceased to lead it.
‘That’s better, eh?’ said the man at Paul’s side when the tumult was
over.
‘Yes, by Jingo!’ said Paul ‘It _was_ better. Look here, I’m afraid I was
rather rude to you a little while ago. Come and have a drink with me.’
‘With all the pleasure in life,’ the stranger answered.
They rose and pushed their way to the bar together. The stranger would
like a brandy-and-soda. Paul would take a brandy-and-soda. They talked,
and Paul thought his chance-found companion a remarkably agreeable
fellow. He seemed to have been everywhere. He spoke familiarly of many
European countries and of the United States. But somehow he faded away
in a sort of mist, and Paul’s last remembrance of him was that he was
laughingly pulling at his arm and advising him to go home. He seemed to
be blotted out suddenly in that very act.
The Exile flashed back from his memories to himself, and awoke with a
faint, gasping cry, for his mind had led him to the hour of the lost
innocence. There are thousands on thousands of men who have lived purer
lives than he who would yet deride the shaft which struck him, and laugh
to think of its poignant power to wound. For the pure soul in the frail
body, for the high hope and the will of burned cord, for the passion
which hurries the senses and has no power to blind the conscience, there
is a lasting purgatory open. How many a time since that hour of loss he
had groaned in the silence of the night to think of it, and had taken
his pillow in his teeth! To live the purer for the shame which bit so
deep and keen? Ah, no; to overlay it with new shames, to groan over in
new vigils.
Easy for the callous good, who know neither sin nor virtue in extremes,
who live somewhere about the level of a passable rectitude, and neither
sink nor soar far from it--easy for them to dismiss this bitter truth
for a mere sentimentalism; but there _is_ a virginity of the soul which
evil custom cannot deflower. Woe to him who knows it, the chaste in wish
and the unchaste in act, the rogue who values honour, the poltroon who
would fain be brave! Ah, the goat-hoofed Satyr dancing there, drunk and
leering, goatish in odour, unwashed and foul! Is it I? Is it I? And the
anguished angel who weeps to look upon him. Is it I? Woe, woe is me, for
I am each and both of these!
Oh, goat-hoofed devil in man, and buffeted aspirant soul! Oh, divine
God-man, who art myself, and whom I with my own hands do hourly crucify,
whom I do scourge and crown with thorns and spit upon!
Shall a man think thus but once only--shall he feed this burning iron
in his breast but one sole time, and then go gaily afield in search
of fresh agonies? Even so, and not once again only, but his lifetime
through. This is why it is written that though you bray a fool in a
mortar among bruised wheat with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart
from him.
Bowed earthward, with garments that stink of rain-soaked dye drying
in the sunshine, with swollen features and boots that suck at the
flagstones, bristled and bloated and bleared, I go by you. Had I never
a concupiscence for honour? Is there no Christ-half that walks within me
towards the place of rottenness and dead men’s bones?
Back to the vision again, not merely remembering, but living it all.
Sick nausea, rising faintly yet heavily on the senses, swimming upward,
as it were, along with a half-drowned rebeginning of life and the
cognizance of things; deep loathing, and eyes like new-cast musket-balls
for heat and weight; a frowsy air; a mouth like burned leather lined
with vile odours. Forget it all in a mere instinct of distaste. Sink
down with the sick wave. Swim down the sick wave in floating circles.
Sway here and swing there at the bottom of the whirlpool, and up again
towards the light which heaves slowly on the eye as it used to do at
the upward turn after a dive, when the sunlight shone through the yellow
water of the lock. Then on a sudden--daylight; and then, like a bursting
shell on the brain, the truth.
No use for the incredulous oath that the truth is false.
‘My God! it isn’t--it can’t be!’
It can be--and it is. It _has_ been, and no mere episode of an eternity
will wipe it out or can undo it There is the dirty blind torn away from
one corner of the roller; there is the peeling paper on the wall, and
the wall leprous where the paper has fallen away from it. Here, under
his cheek, is the yellow malodorous pillow.
The sick brain cannot think; the foul mouth seems to taste of his own
soiled soul.
And the woman, when he turns his leaden head, lying there, flushed--a
girl of the bestial-handsome sort, with a smear of wet black hair on her
brow, and a sensuous mouth, spurting breath like the lips of a swimmer
half under water.
Out of this--anywhere. Feverish haste in dressing. Robbed,
too--penniless.
What does that matter?
It matters greatly, it would seem, for here is a hulking, pock-marked
villain demanding money, and a shrieking, night-gowned virago hauling
the fugitive back up the stairs with obscenities which match the place
and himself and her.
Then a flash in the heart, as if Hell’s flame of shame and Heaven’s
lightning of righteous wrath lit it together. The pock-marked rascal is
lying quiet on the ruddled bricks at the foot of the stairs. The woman’s
Voice curses until the corner is turned. A door slams. He is hatless and
unwashed and dishevelled, standing in the Blackfriars Road.
Never to be forgotten the taste of the morning river air; never to be
forgotten the grain of the stone on which his elbows leaned, or the
tawny coil of the waters below him; never to be forgotten the purple
dome and dark cross of Paul’s, with its edge of gold on one side and the
rosy east away and away beyond it.
His thoughts were the gasps of a devil’s agony. He felt in gushes, like
the welling of heart’s blood. His soul clamoured ‘Beast, beast, beast!’
at him; ‘how dare you foul my dwelling-place!’
A warm trickle on his left hand, which had some dim associations of
physical pain, bade him look at it; there was a yellow splinter of tooth
sticking there. He warmed to think he had struck home, and then chilled
as he asked: ‘Wasn’t the poor devil at his proper trade?’ He pulled out
the jagged splinter, and bound the wound with his handkerchief.
To be twenty hours younger! To be only ten hours younger!
Ting, ting, clang, clang ‘Ting, ting, dang, clang! Ting, ting, clang,
clang! Ting, ting, clang, clang! The bells of the clock-tower at
Westminster. He made a fool’s rhyme to them:
‘Down--In--my--home--‘neath---the--clear--sky--No--thing--they--know
--and--naught--care--I.’
The big bell said ‘Doom ‘eight times.
‘Doom’ the big bell seemed to say a ninth time, sweet and far. The
Dreamer started, awoke, and knew his surroundings again. The ninth sound
was the deep call of an engine whistle, rolled on river and rock and
forest, and mellowed on many miles of smoky air. He sat with his chin on
his hands, his heart yet tingling.
‘Was that how it happened, Paul?
In his soul the question sounded, not in his ear. He answered the voice
with a sighing ‘Yes,’ and then looked up and wondered.
‘Dad,’ he said aloud, ‘am I making confession? Do you follow these
memories? Have I only to glass things in my mind for you to see them?’
He waited in a sudden awe. He would make no answer of his own; he would
lend the aid of no obscure mechanism of the brain to any tricking of
himself. No answer came, and he sat disheartened, staring at the one
visible hill which peered like a shadow from the other shadows in the
midst of which he dwelt.
A minute later he was ten years forward. He was seated in the
smoking-room of the Victoria Hotel at Euston, and he and Ralston were
alone. Ralston was talking.
‘The soul,’ he said, ‘makes experiments. It writes its notes on the
body, and, having learned its own lesson, it throws the paper away. We
lose to learn value. We shall know better next time. We have to sample
our cargo, and we waste most of it, but we shall be refound for the next
voayge. Bless God for an open-air penitence, but let us have no foul air
of the cloister to turn repentance sour. So big a thing as the soul can
afford to forgive so small a thing as the body.’
‘After divorce, perhaps,’ said Paul; and fell to his dream again.