thirty became frequent. My spirit flamed into an intense and
impotent jealousy on account of this man. He would take tea with her
and stay for two hours or more. My mother took care to mention his
visits in my hearing at every opportunity. She called him Miss
Bumpus' 'fancy man,' or alluded to him archly: 'A certain person
called again to-day, Prue. When good-lookin' young men are shown in
at the door, votes flies out of the winder.' I tried to seem
indifferent but my ears and cheeks got red and hot. My jealousy was
edged with hate. I avoided seeing Miss Bumpus for weeks together. I
sought furiously for some girl, any girl, who would serve to oust her
image from my imagination."
Sarnac stopped abruptly and remained for a time staring intently into
the fire. His expression was one of amused regret. "How little and
childish it seems now!" he said; "and how bitter--oh! how bitter it
was at the time!"
"Poor little errand-boy!" said Sunray, stroking his hair. "Poor
little errand-boy in love."
"What an uncomfortable distressful world it must have been for all
young things!" said Willow.
"Uncomfortable and pitiless," said Sarnac.
§ 9
"My first employment in London was as an errand-boy--'junior porter'
was the exact phrase--to a draper's shop near Victoria Station: I
packed parcels and carried them to their destinations; my next job
was to be boy in general to a chemist named Humberg in a shop beyond
Lupus Street. A chemist then was a very different creature from the
kind of man or woman we call a chemist to-day; he was much more like
the Apothecary we find in Shakespeare's plays and such-like old
literature; he was a dealer in drugs, poisons, medicines, a few
spices, colouring matters and such-like odd commodities. I washed
endless bottles, delivered drugs and medicines, cleared up a sort of
backyard, and did anything else that there was to be done within the
measure of my capacity.
"Of all the queer shops one found in that old-world London, the
chemists' shops were, I think, the queerest. They had come almost
unchanged out of the Middle Ages, as we used to call them, when
Western Europe, superstitious, dirty, diseased and degenerate,
thrashed by the Arabs and Mongols and Turks, afraid to sail the ocean
or fight out of armour, cowered behind the walls of its towns and
castles, stole, poisoned, assassinated and tortured, and pretended to
be the Roman Empire still in being. Western Europe in those days was
ashamed of its natural varieties of speech and talked bad Latin; it
dared not look a fact in the face but nosed for knowledge among
riddles and unreadable parchments; it burnt men and women alive for
laughing at the absurdities of its Faith, and it thought the stars of
Heaven were no better than a greasy pack of cards by which fortunes
were to be told. In those days it was that the tradition of the
'Pothecary was made; you know him as he figures in _Romeo and
Juliet_; the time in which I lived this life was barely four
centuries and a half from old Shakespeare. The 'Pothecary was in a
conspiracy of pretentiousness with the almost equally ignorant
doctors of his age, and the latter wrote and he 'made up'
prescriptions in occult phrases and symbols. In our window there
were great glass bottles of red- and yellow- and blue-tinted water,
through which our gas-lamps within threw a mystical light on the
street pavement."
"Was there a stuffed alligator?" asked Firefly.
"No. We were just out of the age of stuffed alligators, but below
these coloured bottles in the window we had stupendous china jars
with gilt caps mystically inscribed--let me see! Let me think! One
was _Sem. Coriand_. Another was _Rad. Sarsap_. Then--what was the
fellow in the corner? _Marant. Ar_. And opposite him--_C.
Cincordif_. And behind the counter to look the customer in the face
were neat little drawers with golden and precious letters thereon;
_Pil. Rhubarb_, and _Pil. Antibil._ and many more bottles, _Ol.
Amyg._ and _Tinct. Iod._, rows and rows of bottles, mystic,
wonderful. I do not remember ever seeing Mr. Humberg take anything,
much less sell anything, from all this array of erudite bottles and
drawers; his normal trade was done in the bright little packets of an
altogether different character that were piled all over the counter,
bright unblushing little packets that declared themselves to be
Gummidge's Fragrant and Digestive Tooth Paste, Hooper's Corn Cure,
Luxtone's Lady's Remedy, Tinker's Pills for All Occasions, and the
like. Such things were asked for openly and loudly by customers;
they were our staple trade. But also there were many transactions
conducted in undertones which I never fully understood. I would be
sent off to the yard on some specious pretext whenever a customer was
discovered to be of the _sotto voce_ variety, and I can only suppose
that Mr. Humberg was accustomed at times to go beyond the limits of
his professional qualification and to deal out advice and instruction
that were legally the privileges of the qualified medical man. You
must remember that in those days many things that we teach plainly
and simply to every one were tabooed and made to seem occult and
mysterious and very, very shameful and dirty.
"My first reaction to this chemist's shop was a violent appetite for
Latin. I succumbed to its suggestion that Latin was the key to all
knowledge, and that indeed statements did not become knowledge until
they had passed into the Latin tongue. For a few coppers I bought in
a second-hand bookshop an old and worn Latin _Principia_ written by a
namesake Smith; I attacked it with great determination and found this
redoubtable language far more understandable, reasonable and
straight-forward than the elusive irritable French and the trampling
coughing German I had hitherto attempted. This Latin was a dead
language, a skeleton language plainly articulated; it never moved
about and got away from one as a living language did. In a little
while I was able to recognize words I knew upon our bottles and
drawers and in the epitaphs upon the monuments in Westminster Abbey,
and soon I could even construe whole phrases. I dug out Latin books
from the second-hand booksellers' boxes, and some I could read and
some I could not. There was a war history of that first Cæsar,
Julius Cæsar, the adventurer who extinguished the last reek of the
decaying Roman republic, and there was a Latin New Testament; I got
along fairly well with both. But there was a Latin poet, Lucretius,
I could not construe; even with an English verse translation on the
opposite page I could not construe him. But I read that English
version with intense curiosity. It is an extraordinary thing to
note, but that same Lucretius, an old Roman poet who lived and died
two thousand years before my time, four thousand years from now, gave
an account of the universe and of man's beginnings far truer and more
intelligible than the old Semitic legends I had been taught in my
Sunday school.
"One of the queerest aspects of those days was the mingling of ideas
belonging to different ages and phases of human development due to
the irregularity and casualness of such educational organisation as
we had. In school and church alike, obstinate pedantry darkened the
minds of men. Europeans in the twentieth Christian century mixed up
the theology of the Pharaohs, the cosmogony of the priest-kings of
Sumeria, with the politics of the seventeenth century and the ethics
of the cricket-field and prize-ring, and that in a world which had
got to aeroplanes and telephones.
"My own case was typical of the limitations of the time. In that age
of ceaseless novelty there was I, trying to get back by way of Latin
to the half knowledge of the Ancients. Presently I began to struggle
with Greek also, but I never got very far with that. I found a
chance of going once a week on what was called early-closing night,
after my day's work was done, to some evening classes in chemistry.
And this chemistry I discovered had hardly anything in common with
the chemistry of a chemist's shop. The story of matter and force
that it told belonged to another and a newer age. I was fascinated
by these wider revelations of the universe I lived in, I ceased to
struggle with Greek and I no longer hunted the dingy book-boxes for
Latin classics but for modern scientific works. Lucretius I found
was hardly less out of date than Genesis. Among the books that
taught me much were one called _Physiography_ by a writer named
Gregory, Clodd's _Story of Creation_ and Lankester's _Science from an
Easy Chair_. I do not know if they were exceptionally good books;
they were the ones that happened to come to my hand and awaken my
mind. But do you realise the amazing conditions under which men were
living at that time, when a youngster had to go about as eager and
furtive as a mouse seeking food, to get even such knowledge of the
universe and himself as then existed? I still remember how I read
first of the differences and resemblances between apes and men and
speculations arising thencefrom about the nature of the sub-men who
came before man. It was in the shed in the yard that I sat and read.
Mr. Humberg was on the sofa in the parlour behind the shop sleeping
off his midday meal with one ear a-cock for the shop-bell, and I,
with one ear a-cock for the shop-bell and the other for any sounds of
movement in the parlour, read for the first time of the forces that
had made me what I was--when I ought to have been washing out bottles.
"At one point in the centre of the display behind the counter in the
shop was a row of particularly brave and important-looking glass jars
wearing about their bellies the gold promises of _Aqua Fortis_, _Amm.
Hyd._ and such-like names, and one day as I was sweeping the floor I
observed Mr. Humberg scrutinising these. He held one up to the light
and shook his head at its flocculent contents. 'Harry,' he said,
'see this row of bottles?'
"'Yessir.'
"'Pour 'em all out and put in fresh water.'
"I stared, broom in hand, aghast at the waste. 'They won't blow up
if I mix 'em?' I said.
"'Blow up!' said Mr. Humberg. 'It's only stale water. There's been
nothing else in these bottles for a score of years. Stuff I want is
behind the dispensary partition--and it's different stuff nowadays.
Wash 'em out--and then we'll put in some water from the pump. We
just have 'em for the look of 'em. The old women wouldn't be happy
if we hadn't got 'em there."
PART II
The Loves and Death of Harry Mortimer Smith
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
FANNY DISCOVERS HERSELF
§ 1
"And now," said Sarnac, "I can draw near to the essentials of life
and tell you the sort of thing love was in that crowded, dingy,
fear-ruled world of the London fogs and the amber London sunshine.
It was a slender, wild-eyed, scared and daring emotion in a dark
forest of cruelties and repressions. It soon grew old and crippled,
bitter-spirited and black-hearted, but as it happened, death came
early enough for me to die with a living love still in my heart...."
"To live again," said Sunray very softly.
"And love again," said Sarnac, patting her knee. "Let me see----...."
He took a stake that had fallen from the fire and thrust it into the
bright glow at the centre and watched it burst into a sierra of
flames.
"I think that the first person I was in love with was my sister
Fanny. When I was a boy of eleven or twelve I was really in love
with her. But somehow about that time I was also in love with an
undraped plaster nymph who sat very bravely on a spouting dolphin in
some public gardens near the middle of Cliffstone. She lifted her
chin and smiled and waved one hand and she had the sweetest smile and
the dearest little body imaginable. I loved her back particularly,
and there was a point where you looked at her from behind and just
caught the soft curve of her smiling cheek and her jolly little
nose-tip and chin and the soft swell of her breast under her lifted
arm. I would sneak round her furtively towards this particular
view-point, having been too well soaked in shame about all such
lovely things to look openly. But I never seemed to look my fill.
"One day as I was worshipping her in this fashion, half-turned to her
and half-turned to a bed of flowers and looking at her askance, I
became aware of an oldish man with a large white face, seated on a
garden seat and leaning forward and regarding me with an expression
of oafish cunning as if he had found me out and knew my secret. He
looked like the spirit of lewdness incarnate. Suddenly panic
overwhelmed me and I made off--and never went near that garden again.
Angels with flaming shames prevented me. Of a terror of again
meeting that horrible old man....
"Then with my coming to London Miss Beatrice Bumpus took control of
my imagination and was Venus and all the goddesses, and this
increased rather than diminished after she had gone away. For she
went away and, I gather, married the young man I hated; she went away
and gave up her work for the Vote and was no doubt welcomed back by
those Warwickshire Bumpuses (who hunted) with the slaughter of a
fatted fox and every sort of rejoicing. But her jolly frank and
boyish face was the heroine's in a thousand dreams. I saved her life
in adventures in all parts of the world and sometimes she saved mine;
we clung together over the edges of terrific precipices until I went
to sleep, and when I was the conquering Muhammad after a battle, she
stood out among the captive women and answered back when I said I
would never love her, with two jets of cigarette smoke and the one
word, 'Liar!'
"I met no girls of my own age at all while I was errand-boy to Mr.
Humberg, my evening classes and my reading kept me away from the
facile encounters of the streets. Sometimes, however, when I could
not fix my attention upon my books, I would slip off to Wilton Street
and Victoria Street where there was a nocturnal promenade under the
electric lamps. There schoolgirls and little drabs and errand-boys
and soldiers prowled and accosted one another. But though I was
attracted to some of the girlish figures that flitted by me I was
also shy and fastidious. I was drawn by an overpowering desire for
something intense and beautiful that vanished whenever I drew near to
reality."
§ 2
"Before a year was over there were several changes in the Pimlico
boarding-house. The poor old Moggeridges caught influenza, a
variable prevalent epidemic of the time, and succumbed to
inflammation of the lungs following the fever. They died within
three days of each other, and my mother and Prue were the only
mourners at their dingy little funeral. Frau Buchholz fades out of
my story; I do not remember clearly when she left the house nor who
succeeded her. Miss Beatrice Bumpus abandoned the cause of woman's
suffrage and departed, and the second floor was taken by an extremely
intermittent couple who roused my mother's worst suspicions and led
to serious differences of opinion between her and Matilda Good.
"You see these new-comers never settled in with any grave and sober
luggage; they would come and stay for a day or so and then not
reappear for a week or more, and they rarely arrived or departed
together. This roused my mother's moral observation, and she began
hinting that perhaps they were not properly married after all. She
forbade Prue ever to go to the drawing-room floor, and this
precipitated a conflict with Matilda. 'What's this about Prue and
the drawing-room?' Matilda asked. 'You're putting ideas into the
girl's head.'
"'I'm trying to keep them from 'er,' said my mother. 'She's got
eyes.'
"'_And_ fingers,' said Matilda with dark allusiveness. 'What's Prue
been seeing now?'
"'Marks,' said my mother.
"'What marks?' said Matilda.
"'Marks enough,' said my mother. '_'Is_ things are marked one name
and _'Er's_ another, and neither of them Milton, which is the name
they've given us. And the way that woman speaks to you, as though
she felt you might notice sumpthing--friendly like and a bit afraid
of you. And that ain't all! By no means all! I'm not blind and
Prue isn't blind. There's kissing and making love going on at all
times in the day! Directly they've got 'ere sometimes. Hardly
waiting for one to get out of the room. I'm not a perfect fool,
Matilda. I been married.'
"'What's that got to do with us? We're a lodging-'ouse, not a set of
Nosey Parkers. If Mr. and Mrs. Milton like to have their linen
marked a hundred different names, what's that to us? Their book's
always marked _paid in advance with thanks, Matilda Good_, and that's
married enough for me. See? You're an uneasy woman to have in a
lodging-house, Martha, an uneasy woman. There's no give and take
about you. No save your fare. There was that trouble you made about
the boy and Miss Bumpus--ridiculous it was--and now seemingly there's
going to be more trouble about Prue and Mrs. Milton--who's a lady,
mind you, say what you like, and--what's more--a gentlewoman. I wish
you'd mind your own business a bit more, Martha, and let Mr. and Mrs.
Milton mind theirs. If they aren't properly married it's they've got
to answer for it in the long run, not you. You'll get even with them
all right in the Last Great Day. Meanwhile do they do 'arm to
anyone? A quieter couple and less trouble to look after I've never
had in all my lodging-house days.'
"My mother made no answer.
"'Well?' challenged Matilda.
"'It's hard to be waiting on a shameless woman,' said my mother,
obstinate and white-lipped.
"'It's harder still to be called a shameless woman because you've
still got your maiden name on some of your things,' said Matilda
Good. 'Don't talk such Rubbish, Martha.'
"'I don't see why _'E_ should 'ave a maiden name too--on _'is_
pyjamas,' said my mother, rallying after a moment.
"'You don't know Anything, Martha,' said Matilda, fixing her with one
eye of extreme animosity and regarding the question in the abstract
with the other. 'I've often thought it of you and now I say it to
you. You don't know Anything. I'm going to keep Mr. and Mrs. Milton
as long as I can, and if you're too pernikkety to wait on them,
there's those who will. I won't have my lodgers insulted. I won't
have their underclothes dragged up against them. Why! Come to think
of it! Of course! He _borrowed_ those pyjamas of 'is! Or they was
given him by a gentleman friend they didn't fit. Or he's been left
money and had to change his name sudden like. It often happens.
Often. You see it in the papers. And things get mixed in the wash.
Some laundries, they're regular Exchanges. Mr. Plaice, he once had a
collar with _Fortescue_ on it. Brought it back after his summer
holiday. Fortescue! There's evidence for you. You aren't going to
bring up something against Mr. Plaice on account of that, Martha?
You aren't going to say he's been living a double life and isn't
properly a bachelor. Do think a little clearer, Martha. And don't
think so much evil. There's a hundred ways round before you think
evil. But you _like_ to think evil, Martha. I've noticed it times
and oft. You fairly wallow in it. You haven't the beginnings of a
germ of Christian charity.'
"'One can't help seeing things,' said my mother rather shattered.
"'_You_ can't,' said Matilda Good. 'There's those who can't see an
inch beyond their noses, and yet they see too much. And the more I
see of you the more I'm inclined to think you're one of that sort.
Anyhow, Mr. and Mrs. Milton stay here--whoever else goes. Whoever
else goes. That's plain, I hope, Martha.'
"My mother was stricken speechless. She bridled and subsided and
then, except for necessary and unavoidable purposes, remained hurt
and silent for some days, speaking only when she was spoken to.
Matilda did not seem to mind. But I noticed that when presently
Matilda sent Prue upstairs with the Miltons' tea my mother's
stiffness grew stiffer, but she made no open protest."
§ 3
"And then suddenly Fanny reappeared in my world.
"It was a mere chance that restored Fanny to me. All our links had
been severed when we removed from Cliffstone to London. My brother
Ernest was her herald.
"We were at supper in the basement room and supper was usually a
pleasant meal. Matilda Good would make it attractive with potatoes
roasted in their jackets, or what she called a 'frying-pan' of
potatoes and other vegetables in dripping or such-like heartening
addition to cold bacon and bread and cheese and small beer. And she
would read bits out of the newspaper to us and discuss them, having a
really very lively intelligence, or she would draw me out to talk of
the books I'd been reading. She took a great interest in murders and
such-like cases, and we all became great judges of motive and
evidence under her stimulation. 'You may say it's morbid, Martha, if
you like,' she said; 'but there never was a murder yet that wasn't
brimful of humanity. Brimful. I doubt sometimes if we know what
anyone's capable of until they've committed a murder or two.'
"My mother rarely failed to rise to her bait. 'I can't think 'ow you
can say such things, Matilda,' she would say....
"We heard the sound of a motor-car in the street above. Brother
Ernest descended by the area steps and my sister Prue let him in. He
appeared in his chauffeur's uniform, cap in hand, leather jacket and
gaiters.
"'Got a night off?' asked Matilda.
"'Court Theatre at eleven,' said Ernest. 'So I thought I'd come in
for a bit of a warm and a chat.'
"'Have a snack?' said Matilda. 'Prue, get him a plate and a knife
and fork and a glass. One glass of _this_ beer won't hurt your
driving. Why! we haven't seen you for ages!'
"'Thank you, Miss Good,' said Ernest, who was always very polite to
her, 'I _will_ 'ave a snack. I bin' here, there and everywhere, but
it isn't that I haven't wanted to call on you.'
"Refreshment was administered and conversation hung fire for awhile.
One or two starts were made and came to an early end. Ernest's
manner suggested preoccupation and Matilda regarded him keenly. 'And
what have you got to tell us, Ernie?' she said suddenly.
"'We-el,' said Ernest, 'it's a curious thing you should say that,
Miss Good, for I _'ave_ got something to tell you. Something--well,
I don't know 'ow to put it--curious like."
"Matilda refilled his glass.
"'I seen Fanny," said Ernest, coming to it with violent abruptness.
"'_No!_' gasped my mother, and for a moment no one else spoke.
"'So!' said Matilda, putting her arms on the table and billowing
forward, 'you've seen Fanny! Pretty little Fanny that I used to
know. And where did you see her, Ernie?'
"Ernest had some difficulty in shaping out his story. 'It was a week
last Tuesday,' he said after a pause.
"'She wasn't--not one of Them--about Victoria Station?' panted my
mother.
"'Did you see her first or did she see you?' asked Matilda.
"'A week ago last Tuesday,' my brother repeated.
"'And did you speak to her?'
"'Not at the time I didn't. No.'
"'Did she speak to you?'
"'No.'
"'Then 'ow d'you know it was our Fanny?' asked Prue, who had been
listening intently.
"'I thought she'd gone to 'er fate in some foreign country--being so
near Boulogne,' my mother said. 'I thought them White Slave Traders
'ad the decency to carry a girl off right away from 'er 'ome....
Fanny! On the streets of London! Near 'ere. I told 'er what it
would come to. Time and again I told 'er. Merry an 'onest man I
said, but she was greedy and 'eadstrong.... 'Eadstrong and vain....
She didn't try to follow you, Ernie, to find out where we were or
anything like that?'
"My brother Ernest's face displayed his profound perplexity. 'It
wasn't at all like that, mother,' he said. 'It wasn't--that sort of
thing. You see----'
"He began a struggle with the breast pocket of his very tightly
fitting leather jacket and at last produced a rather soiled letter.
He held it in his hand, neither attempting to read it nor offering it
to us. But holding it in his hand seemed to crystallise his very
rudimentary narrative powers. 'I better tell you right from the
beginning,' he said. 'It isn't at all what you'd suppose. Tuesday
week it was; last Tuesday week.'
"Matilda Good laid a restraining hand on my mother's arm. 'In the
evening I suppose?' she helped.
"'It was a dinner and fetch,' said my brother. 'Of course you
understand I 'adn't set eyes on Fanny for pretty near six years. It
was 'er knew me.'
"'You had to take these people to a dinner and fetch them back
again?' said Matilda.