The characters we meet with in this world are composite, all of them—not
saint or sinner; not this or else that, but something betwixt and
between; the good in them not permanent, the bad in them not hopeless;
and Bindo’s short life had exemplified the fact with startling clearness.
From that day forward my influence over him was gone. He must have kept
studiously out of my path—an easy thing for him to do, as he knew all my
habits and places of resort. I used to try and persuade myself that I
was guiltless of the result, whatever it might be; that “unstable as
water” his character was past all guidance, and would in any case have
drifted to the end that seemed to be in view. Yet it was hard to feel
all the while that a strong, kind word from me that night might have
nerved him to fresh energy.
“And what about Bindo?” I asked of Eastonville one day.
“Going to the dogs, and pretty rapidly, too, I’m afraid. The last time I
saw him, he was with Hutchinson and all that crew. You know what comes
of mixing with loafers like that. He wouldn’t look at me, though I tried
hard to get a talk with him. He’d had more to drink, too, than a boy of
seventeen can carry. The pity of it all. What a voice he had, and what
a good fellow, too, at heart! How he nursed poor Harry! Few Samaritans
of the present day would have given up six months of their time to spend
them in a sick room. But I’m afraid it’s all up with him.”
“Can’t Thorne do anything?”
“No; Bindo fights shy of us all, and no wonder either. I am sure I
should do the same in his place. If _you_ could only have got hold of
him, and made him feel that we were rather glad than otherwise that our
useless belongings had gone towards nursing Harry, he’d have got back his
self-respect and been less shy of us. But our last hope went when _you_
failed. What the plague made you call him Eric instead of Bindo?”
“Heaven only knows,” I answered, “or its Antipodes.”
I told Thorne one day of Eastonville’s report, and asked him what he
thought of it.
“Just nothing at all,” he said. “He knows no more of what Bindo’s doing
than all the rest of us. For myself, I believe he’s got work of some
kind. I grant he’s seen sometimes at shady music halls with shady
companions; and that’s what Eastonville means. But, after all, a fellow
must have some one to speak to in the evening, especially if he’s at work
all day; and if he’s lost his old friends he must fill up their places
with the best he can. Besides, it’s quite possible that Bindo has grown
wise enough by this time to make sure they do him no harm.”
A few months later Thorne dropped in again. “Now you’ll be happy, I
suppose; at least I am. Bindo starts to-morrow for Brazil in the
_Magdalena_. We came across him to-day. He’s had work on hand all the
year, though he kept it quietly to himself; and now he’ll be quit of all
his old associations and be able to make another, and, I hope, a better
start.”
I made up my mind, of course, that I must see him before he sailed. But
how to do it? Fortunately I knew the name of the boat he was to travel
by, unless he had wilfully put Thorne off the scent. But it was too late
to get a train that night, and, as the boat I knew sailed at two o’clock,
it gave me none too much time to hunt him up at Southampton.
When a letter came to me next morning by the early post, requiring an
article at once for the afternoon papers, it was only what I expected.
Fate had come between me and Bindo every time I had wished to help him,
and she was at her old games again. So I sat down and wrote off my
article—doggedly rather than savagely—in the spirit of one who gives up
the game against chance, yet knowing, all the time I was writing, that I
was losing my train, and that it was doubtful whether the next one would
catch the _Magdalena_ at all. The official at the Dock entrance told me
that she was already throwing off from the quay wall, and it would be
quite impossible to get on board. “Far and away your best chance,” he
added, “is to run round this way to the Dock gates. You’ll be there
before she is, for it takes a lot of time to back and turn her. Then if
you want to say good-bye to anyone _very_ particularly (and he smiled),
you’ll get a word with her perhaps. For the vessel’s loaded deep, and
her portholes won’t stand very high above the quay wall. Besides, she’ll
only creep through the gates, but you’ve no time to lose.”
I hardly stopped to thank him _then_. On my way back he got, not only
thanks, but, to his great astonishment, a five-shilling piece. “Well; he
must have wanted to see her badly,” I heard him whisper to his mate.
The preliminaries of throwing off, backing, warping, were all over by the
time I reached the gates, and the big vessel was beginning to make a move
under her own steam. I looked eagerly for Bindo among the passengers.
Fate had been kind to me, and given me yet another chance. What if I
missed it like the last? But she favoured me this time. He was leaning
over the deck-rail, watching the leave-takings as the great vessel swept
slowly past the wall. His cap was thrown back and his hair blown off his
forehead. What a boy he looked to be starting a new life in a new world,
without a friend and with worse than failure for the past!
Just then he caught sight of me. For a moment he hesitated—I could _see_
him hesitate; then he left the deck and re-appeared at a port-hole in the
aft part of the ship, framed once more (and it was my last picture of
him) as the very Bindo of old. “Good-bye,” he said, “old man; it was
good of you to come, after the way I’ve treated you. Thanks again, most
faithful of friends, and good-bye. Forgive and forget. This time,
believe me, I’ll go straight. By the way,” he added, “just give this
parcel for me to Fred—naming one of his chums—I had intended it for the
pilot, but it will be safer in your hands.”
A wave of the hand, as the ship headed for the open water, was the last I
saw of Bindo. But a load was off my mind as I walked back to the
station. I could look forward hopefully now and patiently to our next
meeting.
Glancing at the parcel he had given me, I found it was addressed to
myself. It contained a small diamond ring without word or comment. At
the time when we found the jewellery at Attenborough’s, this ring had
been missing, and, as it belonged to me, I had said nothing to the others
about it. I might easily have lost it, and at any rate I gladly gave
Bindo the benefit of the doubt. He had pledged it apparently at a
different shop; perhaps because it was mine, and he did not wish it to be
discovered with the rest; perhaps to remind him more vividly of the task
he had set himself during the year to come. Till this ring could be
redeemed, he must wait and work in London, and though all his hopes were
centred in life abroad, it must not be thought of till this one act of
reparation had been done. I never saw or heard from him directly again.
Two years later he died of yellow fever in hospital at Rio; and his last
act, while he still had strength to hold a pen, was to write me a loving
letter of farewell, enclosing a cheque that covered the sums I had
expended on his account. The letter was forwarded to me by the nurse who
attended him.
“Is it well with the lad? It is well.”
* * * * *
‘Declined with Thanks’
A Postscript
“READ and rejected” would be a more satisfying formula. But the Oracle
is discreetly vague, and condescends not to particulars. Editorial
reticence is surely a queer anomaly in these days when a reason is
required for everything. When my own effusions have come back to me with
the trite ascription, I could have welcomed enthusiastically the
scantiest information, the liveliest abuse, in exchange for that
exasperating commonplace.
Sometimes even this amount of formal recognition was deferred. At first
I augured hopefully from the delay, till experience taught me otherwise.
Once, when an editor had kept my MS kicking about in this way, I actually
wrote him my mind in free and unorthodox language. “Unwise, most
unwise,” you will say. “Yes, but oh! _so_ satisfactory.” Add to which,
my letter effected its purpose. He made up his mind then and there on
the merits of my article and “declined it _with thanks_.” (The italics
are his own.)
But the mystery remains a mystery. He did not reveal it to me, in spite
of his gratitude for my contribution, and I still hold to my opinion that
such delay is discourteous to a male contributor, and ungallant to a
lady. Besides, what is the reason? Is it that the editor waits to see
what space he has got left at the finish, and then accepts an article,
not for its merits, but for its length, on much the same principle as a
lady will ask you at breakfast for _just_ the amount of bread that will
suit a remnant of butter, or _vice versa_? If so, Aristophanes had
anticipated the process, or one very nearly resembling it—“Man, man,” he
says, “they are weighing my tragedy as if it were a pound of beef!”
By the way, why shouldn’t the editorial chair be thrown open to
competition? It is thus we elect our Professors, or some of them, at
Cambridge. Let a candidate for the office be required to compose an
“Exercise”—say a complete story for the magazine he aspires to conduct.
So should we respect an editor more, or (possibly) fear him less. At any
rate, no order of men, least of all one which examines others, should be
debarred now-a-days from the privilege of being examined in its turn.
The fear is that, if my suggestion were acted upon, it would empty the
Universities of their Professors. Who could resist the attraction of a
post which limits the bulk of its correspondence to one conventional
formula? Besides, to a tired Tripos examiner, the duty of looking over a
few hundred magazine articles per month would be a frolic—a light and
airy holiday task. But he’d think the rules of the competition a trifle
rough on the candidates, and might be tempted to violate decorum by an
occasional word of encouragement and help.
Apart from the suspense they inflicted upon me, due no doubt to the care
they bestowed on the investigation, I think the editors were not far out
in their judgment of my work. It always looked so heavy, even to a
partial critic like myself, on the morning after I had written it. Once,
in despair, I showed an article to a great novelist, who is happily also
a great friend. “What _is_ the reason,” I asked him, “that it always
looks so lumpy and devoid of wit and smartness?”
I wonder he had patience to read it through. Perhaps it was my presence
that inspired him. Then he said, “Not so bad in sense, but, as you say,
terribly cumbrous in form. Let’s see what’s the matter with it. Why,
it’s description, description, description, instead of action, action,
action, as Demosthenes recommended in a kindred art. It’s an essay—good
enough so far as the matter goes—but wearisome and heavy almost beyond
_my_ endurance.”
“Well, what’s to be done with it?”
“Break it up,” was the reply, “and make them talk. See, here’s a man
called Fred. Make him talk to the first woman he meets—Susan, I see,
you’ve called her—let him ask her how she is, and where she’s going, and
whether it’s a fine day. Do this with every proper name you can find,
and you’ll soon see the mass disintegrate and look promising for the
printer’s hands.”
I followed his advice, and (triumph of triumphs) the article was
accepted. But I felt unhappy and disquieted even in my hour of success.
The fact is, the plot of my story was a dream. Yes; it came straight to
me at midnight from the god Oneiros himself, complete to the very
smallest detail, and where was I to look for another? I very seldom
dream at all, and never, before or afterwards, a complete story; and, as
I can never originate a plot, my chances for the future are the reverse
of promising. Yet I labour on with a persistency beyond all praise, and
always during the night—a detrimental practice, involving great
expenditure of candles and tissue. By daylight my ideas entirely
evaporate, and I have abandoned the attempt as hopeless. The sight, too,
of a fair blank sheet of paper makes my thoughts take wing on the
instant. They can only be arrested on scraps of waste paper or (best of
all) on the pages of a novel.
It is said that the criticisms on Corelli are literally “given to the
dogs.” But my revenge upon a dull novel is, I flatter myself, more
recondite still. I punish a poor story by using it as the palimpsest for
a poorer one. Hence the highest tribute I can pay to my heroes in
literature is an unspoken (I mean an unwritten) one. I leave their pages
immaculate. My mind might be teeming at midnight with the noblest of
thoughts, yet I could not bring myself to record them, even in thought,
upon the pages of “Quentin Durward,” “Esmond,” “Silas Marner,” the
“Return of the Native,” or “Wuthering Heights.”
Judging it for power alone—power that never flags from the first page to
the last—I know of nothing that approaches “Wuthering Heights,” except
the preface Charlotte Bronte wrote for it. Yet I never read the book
without compassionating the authoress. The creation of a character like
Heathcliff must have been one long struggle against herself, to be faced
without flinching, as one of the penalties of genius. What her own
choice would have been is shown by the relief with which she flings
behind her the nightmare of the past to picture the hope and happiness of
Earnshaw’s love. Her second book, if she had lived to write it, would
certainly have been more genial; it could scarcely have been so great.
* * * * *