William Jordan’s startling misconduct on this historic day was not
lightly passed over by that distinguished circle of which Mr. James
Dodson was the natural leader. They made rather a point of insisting
that their accomplished friend should forego the society of the culprit
for the future.
“As long as we thought he was a mere harmless lunatic, Jimmy,” said Mr.
John Dobbs, “we didn’t so much mind your taking him up, although we all
thought from the first that for a chap like you to do so was coming
down a peg. But now that we find out that he is not a harmless lunatic
at all, but a downright dangerous one, we think you owe it to yourself
that you should give him the cold shoulder altogether.”
To which expression of well-meaning wisdom Mr. Dodson rejoined
tactfully, “I dare say you may be perfectly right, John. I shall have
to think it over.”
All the same in the inscrutable recesses of Mr. Dodson’s heart there
was no clearly defined intention of acting upon this disinterested
advice. Mr. James Dodson was preeminently a man of the world, “a
two-and-two-makes-four” man, in his own phrase, yet a stealthy
feeling had already taken root within him, which somehow forbade the
philosopher to follow the dictates of pure reason with the implicit
fidelity that was his wont. He had nothing to gain by association
with such a person as William Jordan, Junior, for even his faculty
of speaking Greek like a native, had by this time become a theme for
derision among Mr. Dodson’s intimates; yet when the eminent worldling
and philosopher came closely to scrutinize his own personal dealings
with this very odd specimen of humanity, it began to appear that he was
no longer his own master.
“I feel, you know, Luney,” he confessed, in one of his moments of
expansiveness, “I am behaving like a fool in taking you up like I do. I
am acting against my own interests. You will never do anything; you are
d----d unpopular with all my pals; you are not a bit bright or clever;
you never drink or smoke or bet or make love to the ladies; you can’t
hold your own even with a chap like young Davis; even when your leg is
being pulled you haven’t got the sense to notice it; in short, Luney,
and in a word, you are just a worm; but, somehow, there is an odd sort
of something about you that I feel I can’t do without. What it is I
don’t know. If you were a girl I should say it was love; and yet, my
son, I’ll swear to you on my solemn oath that I don’t believe there is
such a thing as love. All the talk about it, all the plays and penny
novelettes about it, are the biggest bunkum imaginable.”
However, in spite of many speeches as uncompromising as this, Mr.
Dodson could not bring himself to relinquish his patronage of his
strange companion. Seldom can a more incongruous pair have walked
together along the perilous paths of the great nowhither, since the
far-off days of the Knight of La Mancha and his faithful squire. And
it chanced that on the eve of the very next Bank Holiday, which befell
on a stifling day in August, when the town lay choked in dust and
seemed to swoon with the arid air, Mr. Dodson made the proposal to his
singular friend that they should go forth on that festal day and “see a
bit of life” together.
“No more Margate, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, “never again, as long as I
live, will I go with you there. But we will spend a day at the Oval, my
boy--they are giving Joe Cox a trial for the first eleven, and we must
see what he does. Then we will get a bit of dinner somewhere, and round
up the evening at the Alcazar. You have never seen Hermione in full war
paint, have you? Off the stage she is a bit of all right, but on it, my
son, she beats anything you ever saw. When you see her she will knock
you.”
To this carefully devised programme William Jordan assented
submissively. During this phase of his existence, when every day that
he passed brought a further largesse of knowledge, the overpowering
curiosity to see, to know, to understand all things seemed to return
upon him. His mentor had taken him already into divers and strange
places. He owed it to that friendly but mysterious guidance that the
curtain was rolled back from many hidden recesses of the life about
him, which otherwise could never have been revealed.
On that burning August forenoon he mingled with the throng about the
gates of the cricket-ground, and passed through its portals and came
to stand on the parched grass under the pitiless sun. All about him
was a close-packed and vastly excited multitude. Yet to the young man,
who was sandwiched within the very heart of the perspiring crowd of
street-persons, with the skin being frizzled upon his neck, the solemn
rites, of which occasionally he caught a glimpse, had no meaning for
his eyes.
“Surrey’s fielding,” said his mentor, in a voice that was by no means
as calm as was its wont. “See, there’s Joe standing at mid-on. Why
don’t they put him on to bowl?”
“Not his wicket,” said Mr. Dodson’s neighbour, an enthusiast in a straw
hat with a yellow ribbon, and dirty white flannel trousers.
“Then why do they play him?” demanded Mr. Dodson.
“The Committee have had private information of a thunderstorm to-morrow
night,” said Mr. Dodson’s neighbour, who appeared to be extremely
well-informed.
To Mr. William Jordan, however, these technicalities and a thousand
others, which were even more recondite, proved very baffling indeed.
“I suppose, Jimmy,” said the young man at last, in sheer desperation,
driven by the inflexible rules of politeness to speak, yet not knowing
in the least what to say, “that those street-per--those gentlemen in
the white suits are what you call Surrey?”
“You are positively brilliant this morning, Luney,” said his mentor.
“You sparkle. Upon my word, you are nearly as bright as the sun.”
After standing two hours in that broiling heat, and as he was growing
somewhat dizzy, owing to the effects of that concentrated fireball
upon the back of his neck, the players trooped off the field of play
in search of refreshment, whereupon Mr. Dodson solemnly instructed him
to sit on an adjacent mound of withered grass to await his own return,
assuring him “that he was not half smart enough to forage for himself
at the Oval on August Bank Holiday.”
In the course of half-an-hour Mr. Dodson did return, bearing two
corkless bottles covered with oozing white froth, and four substantial
and extremely indigestible-looking pork pies.
“Catch hold,” said Mr. Dodson, handing Mr. William Jordan, Junior, his
share of these delicacies.
“The pies are topping, ain’t they?” said Mr. Dodson, after his teeth
had met therein with immense satisfaction to themselves.
Mr. Dodson then applied his mouth to the neck of a bottle.
“There is nothing in this world,” said Mr. Dodson, after having sucked
an immoderate quantity of froth, “whatever there may be in the next, to
compare with a bottle of Bass.”
Mr. Dodson returned with renewed vigour to the pork pies.
“Buck up, Luney,” he said, as he masticated the last succulent morsel.
“The players will be out again in five minutes. Why, man, what the
dickens are you up to! Your Bass is all over the grass, and your pies
are underneath it. Luney, you idiot!--’pon my word, I do believe the
wretched lunatic has fainted.”
Mr. Dodson’s diagnosis of his friend’s condition proved to be a correct
one. He had to lay him upon his back and to obtain water before the
eyes could be induced to re-open, and the blood to return to the hollow
cheeks. Play had begun, Mr. Dodson was hot and irritable, and he was
vowing freely that if he valued his self-respect he must break himself
of the habit of dragging round this hopeless subject to acquaint it
with “life”; yet in spite of all this, when the young man at last
opened his eyes, his mentor said, quite kindly, “Was it the heat, old
boy?”
“Yes--the heat,” said William Jordan faintly.
Mr. Dodson conducted his friend to the shade that was afforded by
the back of an immense stand, upon which several thousands of human
beings--wedged as tightly together as dried figs in a box--braved
the broiling heat of the airless afternoon, craning and tiptoeing to
witness a trial of skill of a curiously inconsequent and macabre kind,
with whose niceties the vast majority were very imperfectly acquainted.
“You will be all right here, old boy,” said Mr. Dodson, propping up
his friend, and taking off his own coat to form a pillow for his head.
“You will be nice and cool here. Lie quite still, and I will get you a
drop of brandy.”
As Mr. Dodson made his way through the crowd to an awning, upon which
was displayed the word “Refreshments,” there was a demonstration of
approval from many thousands of pairs of hands.
“What’s up?” demanded Mr. Dodson, as he passed along. “Is Gunn out?”
“No,” said a spectator, who was perspiring freely in spite of the fact
that he wore a halo of cabbage-leaves under his straw hat. “They are
putting on young Cox.”
“Time they did,” said Mr. Dodson.
For a moment a Titanic struggle was waged in the bosom of the
philosopher. He could not forbear to pause a moment to watch how his
friend Joe Cox fared in his hour of trial, yet even before he beheld
him deliver his first ball, he bent his neck again to the stern yoke of
duty. Hurriedly he went on his way for the brandy.
As he returned bearing this stimulant, he stayed again for an instant
to inquire of his informant of the cabbage-leaves, how young Cox was
bowling?
“Can’t bowl for nuts,” said the gentleman of the cabbage-leaves. “Gunn
has just hit him out of the ground. I could bowl better myself.”
It was with a sinking heart that the philosopher handed the brandy to
William Jordan, who, however, could not be induced to taste it.
“How are you feeling, old boy?” said Mr. Dodson; and he added eagerly,
“Joe Cox is bowling. I wish he would get a wicket.”
“M-my m-mind is now quite clear,” said his strange companion. “P-please
l-leave me to lie here. I would have you join your friends who are
so--so active and powerful and high-hearted. Go to look at--at the
cricket game, I entreat you. Whenever we go forth together I make you
unhappy. I--I spoil your day. I would have you leave me altogether,
kind and honest friend; I am no fit comrade for such as you. I--I begin
to understand that I am one of other clay.”
After Mr. James Dodson had turned away his face in order that he might
register the enigmatic aside, “I am afraid it is quite true that the
poor cove is absolutely balmy,” he said to the pallid figure in a voice
of cheerful kindness, “Rot! Rubbish! You are talking through your hat.
It is only in fun that I call you Luney. I tell you candidly, my son,
that if I could speak Greek like a native, the same as you do, I would
see a chap like James Dodson d----d before I would even nod to him in
the street.”
“You cannot deceive me, Jimmy,” said William Jordan, with a forlorn
smile. “Fate has not made me the equal of you and your friends. I--I
b-begin now to understand that I am one of other mould and texture. All
these myriads of street-persons whose loud voices are all around me,
whose seed is as profuse as the leaves of the forest, have received
some high gift from Fate which has been withheld from me. I entreat you
to leave me, good friend; such as I can only make you contemptuous; I
would have you consort with your kind.”
It was not, however, at the behest of William Jordan that his mentor
left him, but in obedience to a mighty roar that arose from twenty
thousand parched throats.
“It is a wicket, I’m certain,” cried the philosopher, with an
excitement of which few would have suspected him to be capable.
“Who’s out?” he demanded, of the nearest group of spectators.
“Gunn.”
“How?”
“Caught at the wicket.”
“Bowler?”
“Young Cox.”
The philosopher returned to the pallid figure upon the grass, with
a demeanour that was curiously out of key with the dignity of his
natural character.
“Luney, old boy!” he cried, flinging his hat in the air, “Joe Cox has
got out the great Gunn.”
Although this thrilling announcement had no significance for him whose
head was propped upon a coat against a brick wall, a gentle smile crept
across the gaunt features.
“I am sure that must be--must be very nice, Jimmy,” he said, “very nice
indeed.”
“Nice!” exclaimed the philosopher, almost fiercely, “what a word to
use! To say, Luney, that you set up to be a scholar you do use the
rummest lingo. Joe Cox gets out the great Gunn, and you call it ‘nice’!
James Dodson don’t pretend to be a scholar, my son, but he knows better
than to call Homer ‘nice’!”
William Jordan suffered this rebuke in a melancholy silence. He seemed
to understand how thoroughly it was merited.
He lay for the better part of that stifling August afternoon propped up
within the shade of the brick wall. In spite of his earnest entreaties
Jimmy Dodson could not be induced to forsake him. His mentor would
climb up on to one of the neighbouring coigns of vantage, and standing
on tiptoe would snatch a few brief, but inexpressibly sweet glimpses
of the solemn ceremonial that was being enacted. But ever and anon he
would return to see how his stricken companion was getting on.
Rest, and the mellower influences of the late afternoon served to place
William Jordan on his legs once more; and although his brain roared as
though it contained the waves of the sea, and his limbs ached, and his
whole frame shook so violently that it was as if he had been smitten
with a palsy, he declined to admit that he was other than restored
completely to health and vigour. He was fearful lest he should wreck
the plans of his mentor more completely than he had already done;
therefore summoning every spark of resolution to his aid, he vowed,
even if he were to perish in the effort, that he would accompany his
kind friend to the restaurant; and thereafter to the Alcazar Theatre.
He dined in state at a gorgeous house of polite eating, yet it
was scant justice he did to the sumptuous fare. Mr. James Dodson
was frankly disappointed at this further manifestation of his
companion’s shortcomings, yet he dissembled his feelings in an elegant
preoccupation with six courses. To the repeated inquiries as to how he
felt, Mr. William Jordan returned assurances which, if allowed to pass
muster, could not in any sense be said to carry conviction. And at last
Mr. Dodson was fain to exclaim, “Look here, my son, if you don’t eat
something soon, you can’t possibly go to the Alcazar.” And although Mr.
Jordan was not in the least desirous of going to the Alcazar, he made
quite suddenly a superhuman attack on a banana in order to save himself
the humiliation of being a source of further disappointment to his
mentor.
The young man felt himself to be a little more resolute, and a trifle
more composed by the time he found himself seated in a balcony of the
Alcazar Theatre. In spite of the circumstance that the great garish
building was thronged with many hundreds of street-persons, the
majority of whom appeared to be emitting most acrid and penetrating
fumes from their mouths, the air was much cooler there than it had been
anywhere else that day.
The curtain was up, the band was playing, the stage was a blaze of
light, and a lady of Amazonian proportions was singing a song, not a
word of which was intelligible to William Jordan. But as he lay back in
the purple velvet cushion of his fauteuil, reclining almost pleasantly,
and looking up at the ceiling, upon which, in crude tints, somewhat
obscured by the all-pervading fumes of tobacco, was a not particularly
reticent presentment of the Muses. In a circle round these was painted
in large and unmistakable letters the following names: Shakespeare,
Jonson, Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Tupper, Wordsworth, Macready.
“We can hardly see John Dobbs from here,” said Mr. James Dodson, who
reclined by the young man’s side. “He is the third chap playing the
fiddle down there in the well, but I can only just catch the top of his
head.”
William Jordan continued to recline in reasonable surcease from bodily
pangs for several hours. Further, he was able to evade Mr. Dodson’s
repeated and pressing invitations to accompany him to the refreshment
buffet. And at last, towards the hour of ten, the chief event of
the evening, the War and Peace Ballet, was heralded by a fanfare of
trumpets and loud crashings of music.
“Now then, my son, sit tight,” said Mr. Dodson. “We are going to see
Hermione.”
The curtain rose slowly to reveal Hera, the white-armed goddess.
She was clad in dazzling robes of mail and a massive helmet, with
ear-pieces dangling about her golden locks. William Jordan gave a gasp
of bewilderment; pain and pleasure contending for mastery swelled his
veins with intolerable pangs. This was the goddess, this was she. His
eerie pilgrimage to the evening party flooded back into his thoughts.
Yes, this was the goddess whose hand he had touched. And now, as she
stood clothed in her robes of mail and bearing her sceptre, with
wonderful lights playing around her majestical calm, she appeared to
the young man’s rapt gaze the first of the goddesses, and, therefore,
the most beautiful, the most chaste, the most exalted creature, of
which fact or fable was cognizant.
“Ain’t she a stunner!” said the voice of Mr. Dodson, breaking upon his
reverie. “If I hadn’t decided that all women are alike, as far as a
rising man is concerned, I’m hanged if I wouldn’t have a cut at her
myself. She is a bit of all right though, Luney. I think we’ll trot
round to the stage-door and see her after the show.”
Such words as these, however, were unintelligible to William Jordan.
Who shall say to what magic clime his thoughts had been transported!
It had been given to him to touch the hand of this divinity, to hear
the words that fell from her lips. The subsequent clashings of the loud
music, the feasts of garish colour, the undulations of the swaying
forms, the bursts of applause, the laughter and gaiety, excited the
young man to a fierce happiness that was almost intolerable.
He seemed to lie in a swoon of pleasure on the purple cushions in that
vast music-hall. For one brief but enchanted hour he knew strange joys
that he had not thought the great world out of doors could offer.
There had been a time when he had almost ventured to despise the
dreary existences these street-persons led, which he conceived to be
so remote from the life of heroic freedom as depicted in the pages
of the ancient authors. But how great had been his ignorance! These
street-persons, who spoke such a curious language, who ate such queer
foods, who performed such odd acts, how reticent they were in regard to
those incomparable pleasures to which they could always turn, and how
chastely they enjoyed them!
These street-persons, whom he had almost ventured to despise, could
go to the sea in the course of an hour, that sea which in its noble
reality so far transcended the most wonderful descriptions in the pages
of the ancient authors. They had their exquisite landscapes, whose
sweet yet accessible grandeur almost made Virgil seem harsh and lacking
in dignity; they had their goddesses who walked their streets in a
frank admission of their kinship, who rejoiced with them, who sat with
them at meat. Yet all these things which were so much rarer, so much
holier, so much more explicit than all the wonders the ancient authors
could contrive, how calmly they took them! To them they seemed the
commonplaces of every-day life.
He had never realized so clearly as now that he lay in these delectable
cushions feasting his intense imagination on the peerless and
chaste beauty that made his eyes grow dark, that these millions of
street-persons, whom, in his incomprehensible blindness, he had come
so nearly to despise, were the true Olympians. And he himself, he whom
he had presumed to identify with the proudest name in Elysium, was the
common and spurious clay who had walked the bountiful earth with a
closed heart, a veritable groveller in the gross mud of the dreadful
chimera-city, which was no more than the embodiment of his craven
fears. He had not understood that the fair mountains, the multitudinous
seas, the divine heroes, the ravishing goddesses were all about him;
he had not understood that their presence was a fact so common to the
experience of all these millions upon millions of true Olympians who
were their peers, that they were received without comment and even made
to serve their needs.
When the curtain descended again and the great audience began to
disperse, and that incomparable hour of existence was at an end,
he said as he moved through the doors with his mentor, “I--I am
marvelling, Jimmy, how w-wonderfully you have kept the secret of my
birth.”
“The secret of your birth, my son,” said Jimmy Dodson, “the secret
of your birth! Why, you cuckoo, it is you, not I, who have kept the
secret. You never told me, you know, although I think you ought,
because my old aunt Tabitha is always questioning me about you every
time I see her. The old girl declares you come of a county family.”
“No no, Jimmy,” said the young man, “you must have known from the first
that I was not--not of the blood royal.”
“Not of the blood royal, my son!” said Mr. Dodson, with frank
astonishment. “Not of the blood royal! Why, what will you be saying
next? I don’t mind telling you I should have been mighty surprised had
I known you were. I don’t think Octavius would have had you long on
that stool, wielding that pot of paste. At the very least he would have
had you under a glass case in his private room.”
“I mean, Jimmy,” said the young man, “of the same blood royal
as yourself, and all these happy and vigorous and beautiful
street-persons--I see now, Jimmy, that they are all beautiful--who are
walking forth into their native air.”
“I give you up, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, with an indulgence born of
three whiskies and sodas. “I can only say one thing, and that is that
a mere vulgar commoner, like James Dodson, is simply incapable of
following you at even a respectful distance.”
“But you are not of the vulgar at all, Jimmy; it is I, William Jordan,
who have considered myself to be of the kin of heroes, who am the
plebeian.”
“Have it as you please, my son,” said the eminent philosopher. “You are
altogether beyond me to-night, you are altogether over my head.”
He linked his arm through that of his excited companion.
“Come on, old boy,” he said, “round to the stage-door. We might be able
to get a word with Hermione Leigh.”
“Y-you m-mean Hera, the white-armed goddess.”
“Yes, my son, I mean Hera--or Diana--or Joan of Arc--or Jane
Cakebread--or Mother Hubbard, or any other bit of skirt.”
“Yes, he is a true Olympian,” muttered the young man, “he is so
imperturbable. And I--and I, who would run and shout with the fever in
my veins, O pious gods, what misbegotten carrion am I?”
“I never saw the poor chap so absolutely balmy as he is to-night,” said
Mr. Dodson, also speaking his thoughts aloud. “The poor cove is not
used to a day in the sun.”
At the stage-door they waited patiently for the apparition of the
goddess. Various divinities, whose immortal qualities were effectually
dissembled by straw hats and tailor-made costumes, came forth and went
their way. Some of these had a nod for Mr. Dodson, whose finished
manner, general air of friendliness, and openhanded liberality “when
he was in brass,” made him a welcome addition to any society which he
chose to enter.
“Did you notice the fairy who nodded, my son?” said Mr. Dodson, with
an air of pride, which his companion felt to be natural. “That was Vi
Nicholson. A bit of mustard is Violet. She will be on at the Hilarity
soon.”
“You mean Briseis?”
“Yes, my son, I mean Briseis--or Mother Brownrigg--or Lady Jane Grey.
Hullo, here’s Hermione.”
As the divinity approached, with her straw hat tilted with serene
indifference over her eyes, and her skirt sweeping the dust of the
narrow alley which led to the stage-door, William Jordan clutched the
arm of his mentor fiercely. He felt his excitement to be overcoming him.
“Hullo, Jimmy,” said the divinity, with the particular wave of the hand
that then happened to be fashionable.
“Is the Bart about?” inquired Mr. Dodson.
“No,” said the divinity. “He has gone to Cowes with his ma.”
“Well, I can’t spring more than stout and oysters,” said Mr. Dodson.
“Don’t get many winners these times. Are you taking any?”
“Don’t mind,” said the goddess, with easy condescension.
“Come on then, round the corner.”
“Why,” said the goddess, “if that ain’t our poet, our own live little,
tame little pet poet. What will mother say that her boy has been out so
late? Been to a naughty place, too.”
“How--how--how do you do?” stammered William Jordan hoarsely, as he
removed his hat and bowed low.
“Oh, chuck it!” said the goddess, “or the crowd will think you are
doing it for money.”
As they entered the saloon, in which they proposed to partake of
supper, Mr. Dodson said to the goddess, “Kid, I’ll lay you a shilling
you can’t make the poet tackle stout and oysters.”
“A bet,” said that good-natured divinity.
On the appearance of these robust delicacies, Mr. Dodson laid a dozen
oysters, a pint of stout, and a plate of brown bread-and-butter before
Mr. William Jordan.
“Now then, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, with a wink at the goddess, “show
Hera what you can do.”
A shudder of horror invaded the young man’s frame as he cast a glance
of appeal at that stern deity.
“Not a bit of use, Mr. Tennyson,” said the relentless one, “you don’t
leave this table until you have taken your whack.”
Although unable to comprehend the precise terms in which the goddess
embodied her mandate, the despairing young man understood its
purport only too well. In spite, however, of a sustained effort that
approximated to real heroism, he had only swallowed half an oyster,
two pieces of bread-and-butter, and sipped a small quantity of an
ink-coloured beverage, of which the goddess availed herself freely, by
the time Mr. James Dodson and the white-armed Hera had concluded their
own exertions, which had appeared to afford them immense satisfaction.
Thereupon the goddess conceived it to be her duty to hold each oyster
in its turn on a fork and compel, by the exercise of her own imperious
will, “the poet” to swallow these delicacies. When this task had been
fulfilled she said, “Now, Alfred, set about that stout as if you meant
it, and then I’ll touch Jimmy for a bob.”