I
THE BATHS OF APOLLO
On a foggy November morning of the year whose events have been
chronicled a man came out of a house in Westminster and stood for a
moment on the worn steps, supporting himself against one of the pillars
of the porch, to blink sorely at the raw day. The house he was leaving
was one of a few old buildings that still exist on the long, crooked
street whose northern frontage follows the ancient precincts of royal
abbey and palace. From its size, the graceful detail of its doorway,
the white and black squares unevenly paving its hall and the depth of
brickwork which the long recessed windows revealed, one judged at once
that this had been, in days gone by, the town mansion of a great legal
or political family, forced by its very functions to dwell at the gates
of the legislature. But whatever it had been in olden times, to-day
the great house was inexpressibly sordid and degraded. The cupids
and garlands of its doorway, blunted by two centuries of whistling
house-painters, had well-nigh disappeared once for all beneath a last
coat of coarse red-brown paint. With the same dismal tint--the old
penitential hue of the galleys--were daubed window-sashes and sills,
the panelling of the wide hall, the carved brackets that supported the
crumbling edges of its tiled roof. Within, one conjectured rightly
bare lime-washed walls--disinfection, not decoration--sodden boards
worn away round the knots. Even in the foggy half-light, so merciful
to all that has beauty of outline still to show, its crude defacement
did not escape. One felt that the pickaxe and sledge-hammer of the
house-breaker, busy in a neighboring hoarded space, spared it too long.
A thick, dun mist had been creeping up-river since dawn from the Kent
and Essex levels, gathering up on its way the filthy smoke of glue
factories and chemical works, and holding it suspended over the spires
and domes of the Imperial city. The close alleys and wynds that, like
a fungus growth upon polluted soil, cover the area once sacred to
the brothels and dog-kennels of the Plantagenet Court, seemed not so
much to be endued with smoke and grime as actually to be built up out
of compacted slabs of the sooty atmosphere. The sun was still in the
east--a red wafer stuck on a sealed sky.
For a few minutes the man stood still, as if either too tired to make
up his mind which way he should take, or as if, really paralyzed for
the moment by the equilibrium of the forces that acted on his will, he
was at the point where, vertigo having seized upon the mind and, as
it were, disorientated it, direction loses its meaning. It is almost
certain that had any passer-by--a policeman, a man bearing a burden,
even a child--jostled the man, he would have gone on in the direction
to which the collision turned him.
He wore a jacket and trousers of what had once been blue serge, faded
by exposure, by dust, by rain that soaked in the dust, and sun that
dried the rain in turn, to that color which is obtained by mixing all
the primaries upon a palette. A streak of the coat's original color
showed still under the upturned collar, and had the effect of a facing
upon a soldier's tunic. Coat and trousers were miserably frayed at the
edges, but neatly mended in more than one place. Probably from being
worn night and day upon an almost naked body, the stiff straight lines
natural to modern clothing had disappeared, and they had acquired, in
their place, an actual mould of the limbs. His shoes, spattered with
mud and grease, seemed once to have been brown. They were broken,
and the heels had been trodden down so far that the soles curled up
in front like an eastern slipper. The man was quite clean, his hair
and beard even trimly kept. His face was refined. Whatever physical
suffering he was undergoing or had undergone, it was evident he had not
yet reached the depth at which the soul contracts and shrivels once
for all, and, dropping into some inmost recess where only death shall
find it again, leaves the animal epidermis to bear the outrage of life.
Under one eye the discoloration of an old bruise showed faintly.
As he looked about him--first above his head, then mechanically to
left and right--what was almost a look of relief and peace came over
the tortured face. In this narrow drab margin twixt night and night--a
day only by the calendar and by the duties it imposed--it is possible
he felt something akin. Something of the mechanical precision of life
that was such a reproach to his own confusion would have to be relaxed.
It would be a day of late trains, of crawling, interlocked traffic, of
sudden warnings from the darkness, with the ever-present possibility
of some levelling disaster to lend a zest to the empty hours. Excluded
from human communion on the side of its pleasures, the outcast yearns
toward it all the more upon the side of its pain and mischance. What is
the savagery of revolution but a very exaltation of perverted sympathy?
"Weep with me, my brother," says the red of hand, "weep with me at
least, since I might not rejoice with you."
He had been the last to leave the common lodging-house which had given
him a night's shelter, and, as he lingered, the deputy, a big, fleshy
man in shirt-sleeves, came down the passage behind him, whistling and
sweeping before him the caked mud which forty pairs of broken shoes
had brought in during the night. At the sound of his broom against
the wainscot, the man turned sharply, with a sudden energy that was
like the release of a coiled spring, and, thrusting his hands into
his pockets, strode off to the left quickly and aimlessly as a caged
wolf. Where Great Smith Street runs into Victoria Street he turned to
his left again, and followed the main thoroughfare southward. Through
the happy accident of its deflection midway, at the point where the
colossal doorway of the Windsor Hotel confronts the Army and Navy
Stores, Victoria Street possesses, as all visitors to London with the
architectural sense must have noticed, a dignity and effectiveness
unique in the city of costly ineptitude. Approached from the river
at sunset or sunrise, or in any light low enough and dim enough to
hide the sorry detail of its lofty houses, the effect approaches the
monumental. The wanderer's eyes had been fixed on the ground; but,
possibly arriving at some spot where in former days he had been used
to watch for it, he raised his head and stood, unsteadily, for a few
seconds, intent upon the beauty with which the world is as prodigal as
it is niggardly of its substance. The sky was an orange dun, deepening
and lightening almost momentarily, as though some pigment with which
the day was to be dyed later were being prepared overhead. The long
Italianesque façade of the stores was all one blue shadow, but over
its roof, through some atmospheric freak, the campanile of the new
cathedral emerged, pale pink and cream, and in the upper windows of the
great hotel, whose pillars and helmed mask closed the prospect on the
right, a few wavering squares as of strawberry tinsel foil reflected
the foggy sun. As he watched, leaning against the railing, one might
have noticed his lips move. He took his clenched fists from his
pockets, and opened them slowly with a strange gesture of surrender. It
was as though some inward resolution, evidenced by the hasty walk, the
lowered eye, the clenched hands, yielded at its first contact with the
influence he was attempting to forswear.
A man who had been walking hastily from the opposite direction, with a
long roll of blue prints under his arm, stopped short, pulled off his
glove, and, diving into his trouser pocket, pulled out a copper and
pressed it against one of the open palms. The dreamer started, closed
his hand upon the penny convulsively, and, without a word of thanks,
gazed after the bustling figure. He opened his fingers slowly and
looked at the coin, with the same fear and repugnance that a sick man
might show who, having put his hand to his mouth, finds blood upon it.
Then, still holding it in his hand, he quickened his walk, until it was
almost a run.
In a baker's shop near the terminus he spent half the money on a
stale roll, and ate it, standing in the doorway of the Underground
Station, and using his free hand to cover his mouth, as though he
felt his voracity was indecent. A wretched little waif--a girl child,
bareheaded, in a long dress like a woman's, and with her hair done up
in a wisp--seeing him eating, approached, held out a hand scaled with
dirt like a fish's skin, and begged of those rags with the same blind
confidence with which the child in heart asks relief of a beggared
providence. He gave her the halfpenny, and as much of the bread as he
had not eaten; then, crossing the road, he shouldered his way into the
station yard.
The Continental Night Mail, more than half an hour late on account of
the fog, was just in. A long line of motor-cabs, with an occasional
four-wheeler, stood along the curb. Porters in charge of portmanteaux
and trunks were shouting and gesticulating; the air was full of grunts,
whistles, and the sudden clatter of horses' feet catching hold on the
pavement. The man paid no attention to the motor-cabs, but, slipping
behind a four-wheeler loaded with luggage and a bicycle, followed it
from the yard and into the street.
The cab rolled along through Pimlico and in the direction of the river.
Almost immediately the station was left the fog shut down and hid
the houses on either side. The driver, an old street pilot of thirty
years, kept on at a steady amble; the man behind, quite ignorant of his
destination, settled down to a steady loping run, which apparently he
was prepared to keep to between the wheels as long as the horse kept to
it between the shafts.
At a cross-traffic break he looked up, and saw he was not alone. A
short, thick-set stranger, with a bullet head and strangling, wheezy
breath, had joined him _en route_. That competition which is said
to be the soul of trade was not to be lacking.
"Ullo!" said the stertorous one, as soon as he felt himself observed.
"W'ere did _you_ come from?"
Finding he was not rebuked, he thought it safe to essay a little
further.
"You be awf and find a ---- keb for yourself. D'jeer? Follered this
from the stishun, I did."
His bearded brother in misfortune gave him such a look that he judged
it wise to defer settling the difference. The cab started again,
turned, and twisted in the maze of stucco streets, always followed by
the two men; stopped finally in a crescent that even in daylight was
secluded, but in a fog might be said to be mislaid. Bullet head, being
outside the wheel, used his tactical advantage to lay one authoritative
hand on the leather trunk and the other on the bicycle.
"It's aw ri', guv'nor," he called, reassuringly through the window
to their proprietor. Even as he spoke, he was himself deposited upon
the pavement in an efficient manner of which the tall comrade's face
had given no hint. Followed, not so much a volley of oaths, as a kind
of set-piece, a transparency of language, which hung suspended in
the shocked air of Pimlico long enough for a window or two to open,
presumably in protest. Appealed to by his fare, a literary gentleman
of peaceful habit, upon the score of age and experience, the driver
refused to be drawn into the conflict.
"Settle it between yerselves," he said complacently, sucking on a voice
lozenge and pocketing his legal fare. "Door to door, my trade is, and
don't ferget it." A woman meantime had opened the hall door, and was
scolding every one, impartially, in the dialect of Fifeshire.
Nothing goads to madness like foiled knavery. The tall man, having
already shouldered the trunk, the short one laid a violent and
ill-advised hand upon it from behind. Next moment it was set upon the
ground and with a vigorous movement of the shoulders that gave his
words authority, the dreamer spoke for the first time, in a voice whose
accent and whose idiom alike were familiar.
"See here, now! You have one minute to hit the grit. If you're not gone
then, I'll lay that mouth of yours against the sidewalk and give it the
dry cleaning it needs. Now that goes--all the way!"
"My God!" I cried, "it's Ingram!"
* * * * *
He turned to run, but I clung to him. He was a powerful man, much
stronger, even exhausted as he was, than I have been at any time, but
I am proud to think my grip upon him never once gave way. At last he
desisted, perhaps because he heard tears in my voice, and disengaged my
fingers gently.
"Ingram! Oh! in God's name what does it mean? I thought you'd gone
back--thought you were thousands of miles away."
He laughed. "Can't you see what it is, Prentice? It's the last note in
journalism. A delegate to the depths. Talks with the underworld. I'm
doing it pretty thoroughly, don't you think?"
Well, I stood there and pleaded with him. His competitor carried in the
baggage meekly, under Mrs. Mac's petrifying eye, was paid, and went his
way--the mystified Jehu cracked his whip and rumbled off into the fog
before I had exhausted half the arguments and expedients with which my
brain swarmed. I wanted him to take money, to come in and be fed and
clothed, to go back to America (assisted passage). He shook his head
at everything, and at the last suggestion set his bearded jaw hard. I
thought his objection very fanciful.
"I won't go back," he said, "to see a democracy that has had its chance
and missed it, done to death with a golden bandage over its eyes. It's
less hard to stop here among the poor devils that have never known what
economic independence meant."
He found reasons equally good or equally bad for resisting my offers
toward rehabilitation in England.
"It's no use, Prentice," he said, again and again. "Believe me, between
the very last rung of the social ladder and the depths in which I'm
swimming round and round, and waiting for the final suffocation,
there's a sheer fall that no power on earth can ever bridge again. From
where I am I can speak still, hear still, even feel. I look up and see
living men on the slope above me. Some are slipping down, some, who
have stood once on the verge and looked over, are crawling up again,
weak and half dead from terror. But I and those with me are past help.
You don't know the gulf that separates having a little money, even your
last pound, from having none at all. That's an experience as final and
irremediable as death. None can imagine it unless they have known it,
and none that have known it ever come back to tell."
Before such remorseless logic I weakened, little by little. I told
him he was ungenerous--that friendship involved debts of honor he had
never been willing to pay; finally I went into the house to make him up
a parcel of warm underclothing. I remember blubbering like a whipped
lower-form urchin as I ransacked drawers and trunks, and how the string
kept snapping as I tried to tie up the great untidy brown-paper parcel.
When I came downstairs the street was empty.
II
LIGHTNING IN THE FOG
He ran, he has told me since, like a man with a hue-and-cry in his
ears, turning left or right at random. At last his breath failed; he
remembered his rags, and noticed people looking suspiciously after him.
He came out onto the river somewhere near the Tate Gallery, by a yard
full of spray-battered old ship figureheads, and crossed the big new
bridge to the Albert Embankment. At a river sluice below an iron yard
men were unloading bundles of Belgian tees and angles from a barge.
The river was falling fast, and he got an hour's job helping them to
unload the cargo. It was on such casual labor, I suppose, that for
months he had supported life. He was paid sixpence for his hour's work,
and, seeing his strength and famished willingness, the lighter-men
overloaded him and raised a weal on his shoulder. He was still nearly
starving, but did not dare spend the money till later. By two o'clock
in the afternoon the fog was general and very thick. He was standing
in the centre of the little foot-bridge that runs under the viaduct
from Charing Cross Station. Above his head trains rumbled softly and
circumspectly. There were Pullman cars filled with sun-worshippers on
their way from the winter-smitten city to France and Italy--to ivory
villa and amethyst bay, maybe to the white sun-steeped cities upon
whose ramparts he had once stood sentry. The fog-signals went off in
his ears like cannon. On the Middlesex shore of the river was a dim
bustle, muffled tang of gongs, constant flitting of blurred lights; but
under the Surrey shore, lonely as a quicksand on the Breton coast, a
strip of mud left by the falling tide shone, a coppery red, beneath
the bulk of the big Lambeth brewery. Below his feet a squadron of
empty lorries lay moored together, four--four--and three, like a hand
of cards dealt face downward by a fortune-teller. All around him was
mewing, as from a dozen litters of kittens; the fog became thick with
the fluttering winged forms of sea birds. No one had passed him for a
long time. He stretched out his arms and spoke aloud--
"Soul! what things are these that hem us in--that compass us about this
November noontide, as we roam, stifled and uncertain, through Babylon's
foggy streets? These towers, soaring into the infinite; these palaces,
whose limits we conjecture from the dimmed overflow of light within;
these chariots, rolling one instant soundless from obscurity, next
instant engulfed by it? What things are they? Even such as to-day thou
beholdest them: shadows, phantoms, vapor, and cloud. To-morrow the wind
shall smite them, and their places know them no more; daylight seek
them, and find them gone. Oh! paradox immeasurable, that where the sun
had lied to thy senses fog should truly bespeak them!"
Solitary as he seemed, he had been observed for some time. A bulky
figure, in heavy overcoat and helmet, stepped from behind a girder and
touched him on the shoulder.
"Don't you think you'd best get to one side or the other? It's bad
loitering weather."
Ingram started at the touch, then looked over his shoulder and laughed.
"I see," he said. "But there's no fear of that," and he looked at the
river again. "You'd have come in after me, I suppose--boots, overcoat,
and all."
"I'm not saying what I'd have done," the constable answered stolidly.
"My dooty, I hope. But it's not the day I should choose to win the
Albert Medal on."
He looked at the suspect closer, and seeing a man probably as strong as
himself, his voice and manner changed. There was a new freemasonry in
it when he spoke again, and a strange curiosity, shame-faced but eager.
"Man to man, mate; is it very bad?"
Ingram turned on his heels like the soldier he had been.
"Man to man--no. I've earned sixpence this morning; that's supper and
bed. My nakedness is only an offence to the providence I've ceased to
believe in, and I've the æsthetic sense which makes a thing like that,"
and he pointed to the patch of rosy mud, "a living joy. What man who
works for bread will have more to say in two hundred years? Do you know
there are great artists who'd go a day without food to paint truly what
we've got under our feet. Not many English ones, though. I'll do them
that justice."
"I think I know wot you mean," said S. 11. "I'm fond of pitchers
myself. I suppose you know there's one of our force gets 'is pitcher
into the 'cademy reg'lar every year. But hunger's one thing and
starvation's another."
"It's not starvation, man; it's the fear of it that's putting out the
sun and stars for three quarters of the world. 'Do _my_ work or
starve! do _my_ work or starve!' that's what every factory hooter
and works bell and alarm clock is ding-donging from morning till night.
We're all too frightened to do ourselves justice. We sit down to our
desk, or stand to our bench or easel with a full belly and an icy cold
heart. So the great book never gets written, and the great picture
never gets painted, and the great wrong never gets righted, and the
soul we have no use for is passing into piston-rods and flywheels
that eat up human flesh and blood as the beasts of the field chew
grass. No thank you, constable. Didn't I tell you I'd got sixpence.
Keep it for the next woman you have to move on. _That's_ the
shame--_that's_ the unpardonable sin."
There had been no present thought of self-destruction in his mind,
but, in spite of himself, the policeman's suspicion stirred a dormant
idea that was now a comfort to him, now a terror, just so far as it
lay vague or assumed definite shape. He climbed the ascent into the
Strand, glad to be in the crowd again, and to feel himself jostled
and elbowed by its hurrying life. Amid all the human tide that, after
having turned the wheels of commerce all day, was now setting homeward,
there was probably no one who walked straighter or brisker than he.
His long steps soon carried him into a distant quarter of the city;
but as night fell he turned them toward Westminster again--back to the
house where he had slept last night and perhaps many a night before.
It was no better than others that lay to his hand, but at least its
horrors were familiar. He shrank from new initiations. Besides, it was
not seven o'clock, and eight was the earliest hour at which such places
opened. How to kill an hour?--absorbing occupation for a mind like this.
He decided to follow the Embankment again. There, if his feverish
walk outpaced the clock, he might loiter--lean upon the parapet, sit
down upon one of the seats. He would buy some liver in Lambeth and
cook it before the lodging-house fire. He was faint when he reached
Blackfriars, and not from hunger alone. Dimly he divined a crisis.
The last of a little store of illusions with which he concealed from
himself how personal and irremediable was his misery had been expended
during that wild talk with the man in blue upon the bridge. Something,
if life was to continue, must supply its place.
The work upon the widening of the bridge was still in progress.
Opposite De Keyser's Hotel a big wooden hoarding covered the pavement,
making a little niche with the low granite wall of the Embankment.
It was too early in the evening for the recess to be occupied or to
be explored by the bull's-eye lantern of law and order. He crept
within it under cover of the fog, and, resting his arms upon the wet
granite wall, relit a half-smoked cigarette. All day long, throughout
his defiant speech, his indignant bearing, his wretched assumption
of energy, he had felt himself under an observation as unfriendly
as it was thorough. Some other self, cold, critical, sneering, was
watching his struggles with amused contempt. He had felt its presence
before, but never so utterly detached, so hostile or so impatient. That
_alter se_ which education creates and easy living nourishes, and
which, deplore him as we may, is a personality to be reckoned with at
every crisis and in every action of our lives, is never long content to
outlive such an experience as his. It is only a question of time before
the rational in man wearies of prison and poor entertainment.
"_Let us go hence!_"
Ingram smoked his cigarette until it burnt his lips, leaned over the
parapet, and, as he dropped the glowing end into the river, measured
the distance to the water that was "_clop-clopping_" soupily
against the foot of the Embankment. His isolation in the heart of
London was strangely complete, for such foot-passengers as passed,
passed wide of him by a railed plank walk built outside of the great
wooden hoarding that concealed him from view. The wide roadway,
moreover, full of vague sound and motion--blast of motor-horns, rumble
of trams, quick come and go of blurred lamps, accentuated his solitude.
He waited until a heavy tread that was going westward had died away
into the fog. Then he drew up his legs, first one, then the other, upon
the parapet beside his hands.
"_Oh Gawd! oh Gawd!_" a voice groaned behind him. He checked his
sinister movement and listened intently. Some one--some fellow-creature
in torment--was cursing and sobbing on the pavement he had just left.
He got down and groped for it. A man, huddled together, and with one
leg jerking convulsively, was lying with his head against the boards.
Ingram put his arms round him and lifted him gently.
III
VALEDICTORY
Mrs. McNaughten has assured me that I stood for nearly five minutes,
the brown paper parcel under my arm, staring blankly, first in
one direction, then in another, and licking my lips. I am glad of
her evidence that a mood so abject and personal lasted no longer.
Because--alas!--what held me in a trance that temporarily lost count of
time was not that this intolerable thing had befallen Paul Ingram, dear
Paul, with whom I had sat, so many a night and on into the small hours,
holding converse, high and austere, on man's destiny through life and
beyond--no, it was that, having befallen him, it might befall any one,
and, befalling any one--let me give the full measure of my craven
heart--it might befall me. For one paralyzing instant that veil which
mercifully cloaks the extreme chances of fate had been plucked aside.
I had looked full into its malignant eyes, and, like the man in the
Greek fable, what I had seen had been enough to turn flesh to stone. In
that moment the shadowy safeguards which men erect between themselves
and the grim possibilities of destiny--knowledge of the world,
self-consciousness, confidence in untested friendships--stood revealed,
the shams they are. The security born of years--anxious, toilsome years
it is true, but during none of which, for a single day or night, bread,
clothing, or sheltered sleep had failed me--shook and fluttered darkly
like the eternal hills in an earthquake. I literally lost hold on life.
Thank God, the mood was over soon. I had time to be pitiful, to be
even angry, with an illogical but humanizing wrath that fate, taking
hourly toll of the world, had not spared one dear to me. I blamed
myself bitterly for leaving him alone those few minutes. I had wearied
of well-doing too soon. He must have yielded at last. Seated by the
familiar fireside, fed and comforted, with the pipe in his mouth that
still bore the scar of his long wolfish teeth upon its stem, a better
mood must have awakened. I say a better mood, because, at certain
depths, misfortune calls almost for the same treatment as crime,
and the kindness that seeks to save must be disciplining as well as
compassionate.
I dined at the _À-peu-près_ after my work was done, hoping against
hope there would be news of him there--some indication that might
put me on his track again. Smeaton was in the chair to-night--old
Smeaton, best and bravest knight that ever set quill in rest--with his
little restless pink face, snapping black eyes, tumbled white hair,
and bulging and disordered waistcoat. I was greeted uproariously.
For nearly a month I had been away in the south of France, press
correspondent at a murder trial which had stirred all thinking Europe
by the depths it revealed of cynical depravity on the one side, and
of morbid, reiterated condonation on the other. It was by far the
biggest thing I had been given to do yet, and I hoped I had done it
well; but it was too much to hope that, in a subject coming home so
nearly to the average sensual male, the psychological conclusions I had
drawn should pass unchallenged. I sat for over an hour, besieged by
questions, pelted with authorities, shouted down, derided unexpectedly
and as unexpectedly championed. Even madame's indulgence was not proof
against such pandemonium. She pushed open the lace-curtained door, put
her hands to her pretty brown ears, and shook a reproving finger at her
unruly family.
"_Quel tapage! Mon Dieu, quel br-r-ruit!_"
"_Oui!_" cries Smeaton, pointing at her excitedly with the
nut-crackers. "_Et vous en êtes la cause!_"
"Do you remember your Yankee friend's dictum on the little point
of manners we've been discussing?" Mackworth asked me when order
was restored. He was a dark, depressed man, perhaps the richest who
dined at the _À-peu-près_ regularly, and had written the most
talked-about novel of the year before last.
"By the way," interrupted Smeaton, whose manners are bad, "who's seen
Ingram lately?"
"I saw him--to-day," I answered, balancing the spoon on my coffee-cup.
"What's he doing? I thought he'd gone back to the States."
"He followed a growler I took from Victoria and wanted to carry in my
trunk. Would have had to fight another man, too, for the sixpence."
Madame could not have desired a more complete cessation of turmoil than
followed these words of mine. In more than one pair of eyes I saw the
panic that would be my own lasting shame rise suddenly, and as suddenly
be checked. I wonder how they got it under.
"Was he very bad?" asks Smeaton, in a low voice. "Down--right down?"
I nodded.
"_Poor--devil!_ Did he know you, Prentice?"
"Not at first. It was too foggy to recognize the house."
"What did you do?"
"Grabbed him as he turned to run, and held him. He wouldn't come in,
but let me go to fetch him some clothes. When I came out, he'd bolted."
"Bravo!" said Smeaton, and clapped his pudgy little hands.
"Why do you say that?" I asked, voicing a surprise I think we all
shared.
"Because it confirms a judgment of my own upon Ingram. He was the
logical animal _par excellence_, and to take money or substance
one hasn't been allowed to earn, if it's only a penny to buy a loaf or
a rag to cover nakedness, is to sell logic as Esau sold his birthright.
If there were more like Ingram, the tangle of this filthy old
kaleidoscope we call life might straighten out. He'll die, of course,
but at least he'll die with a man's soul in him."
"Listen to Satan rebuking sin!" said Waldron of the _Hemisphere_.
Smeaton brought his fist down on the table. "Yes," he thundered. "I
know what you mean. Yes, I've given charity. I've cast bread on the
waters--to drowning men that were begging for a rope. I've helped
lame dogs--over stiles that led to nowhere. And every time I've done
it, Waldron, I've been ashamed of myself. For I know I'm helping to
protract an agony and perpetuating a state of things that ought to
have been done with twenty years ago. Literature isn't paying its way
to-day: that's the cold fact we must face. And a thing that isn't
paying its way is a sham, no matter if it's as brilliant as the last
ten years of the old French monarchy. It's falling more and more into
the hands of men and women who either eke out a little private means
by scribbling, or else eke out their hire by borrowing. Journalism's
not so rotten; but, by the Lord Harry, after a morning in Fleet Street
I sometimes think half of us are living by taking in one another's
washing."
"You're taking rather a black view," said Waldron.
"Am I? Well, compare the present day with long ago--with Grub
Street--with what Macaulay calls the darkest period of English letters.
Read Johnson's early life--Savage--all the historical instances. Look
at the sums those beggars got! Twenty-five pounds benefit from a play
that ran fourteen nights: fifty pounds for an ode to Royalty once a
year: ten pounds for translating a volume of Portuguese travels. Why,
to many a man whose name is a household word to-day these things read
like a fairy tale. They used to call on publishers with 'projects' and
have luncheon served them while he read 'em over."
"What about the novel?" says Waldron, with a half-look at Mackworth.
"In its death throes. Fifty years hence the English novel--considered
as literature, mind you--will be as dead as the epic poem. I stick to
what I've said. When a thing ceases to pay its way, it's a sign the
stage of national development that called for it is over."
"What's going to take its place?"
"Look around you. Something's begun to take its place already:
articles, books--by people who've _done_ things, not dreamed
them--written in the English any one can write who tries. 'Three
months' lion slaughter in Central Africa'; 'One degree nearer that
pole'; 'How I made my millions.' Especially the last. People never
weary of that. They don't see that the game must be up, or the secrets
wouldn't be being given away."
"Come!"--noticing a silence of dissent round the table. "Take a
concrete instance. Mackworth, there's only one opinion about 'When the
Sky Fell.'"
"You're very good."
"Simple justice, my boy. Now, take us behind the scenes a little. How
long did it take you to write it?"
"Nine or ten months."
"Say nine. Working hard?"
"All day and every day."
"How long before you found a publisher?"
"Finished in June, and it came out in the autumn season."
"That's a year. Were you paid on publication?"
"No: six months afterward."
"Eighteen months. I don't like to ask you any more."
"Oh, I don't mind telling. I've cleared a hundred and twenty pounds."
"For eighteen months' work and worry."
"It's great fun. I've nearly done another."
"Yes, but assuming, for the sake of argument----"
"----that I had to live on it, eh? Well, I'm afraid there'd have been a
third after Prentice's cab this morning."
"I think that settles it," said Smeaton, looking round. "No. The
novel's had its day. And what a day it's been! Let us think of that.
Fielding to Henry James! It's like the creation of another world. Come!
I'll give you a toast we can all drink in silence--'Speedy deliverance
to Paul Ingram!' And now let's talk of something more cheerful. Who's
been to see Fenella Barbour's Cuckoo dance at the Stadium?"
"I suppose that's really the stage of national development we've
reached," hazarded Mackworth.
"If it is, there's something to be said for it," said Smeaton, stoutly.
"She's paying _her_ way, anyhow," said some one. "Two hundred and
fifty a week ought to keep the wolf from the door."
"Oh, the wolf at the stage door is a domesticated animal. No one wants
to frighten him away."
I wasn't interested in what followed, and dropped out. Now and then a
word or two struck me: "A clog-dancer with sophistications." "Anyway,
you'll see a jolly pretty girl!" "No, not Jewish, Mackworth--Phœnician.
Mother was Cornish, and she's a throw-back more than two thousand years
straight to Carthage." "As much again for the posters. Briggses paid
her four hundred for the 'Crême de Pêche.'"
And I smoked on, thinking of Ingram's rags. As our party broke up,
I thought Smeaton made me a sign to stop on. When we were alone, he
smoked silently for a while, and then--
"This is a more than usually filthy tragedy, Prentice."
"About Ingram? Yes, it's pretty bad."
"Wasn't there some book he was going to set the Thames alight with? Has
it been published?"
"No. It had some funny adventures; but not that one."
"You read it. Was it really good? Between ourselves, you know."
"Oh, I answer for it."
"Don't be in a hurry. It's not late. You knew Ingram better than most
of us. Now, wasn't there something between him and the little girl
we've been talking of? Perhaps you guessed I didn't mention her by
accident. Didn't they come here together more than a year ago?"
I told him what I knew, including the boat-train incident.
"Isn't that Ingram all over?" he exclaimed. "If his eye or his friend
or his ladylove offended him, one felt the axe would be out in a
minute. You know what they're saying about her now?"
"About dancing the night her mother died? Why shouldn't she? If she'd
been a shop-girl or a typist, no one would have thrown stones at her
for going on with her work. They'd have thought the more of her for it."
"No, no, my dear boy. I mean the Darcher case--woman at Hampstead who
poisoned herself and the little boy, you know. There was a mysterious
lady came down in the car with Lumsden. Her name was kept out, but they
say----"
"That it was she. Oh! impossible, Smeaton! How could it be?"
"Because she left the theatre with him, and happened to be in his house
when the message came through. Two o'clock in the morning! I had it
from a quarter that isn't usually wrong."
"And you believe it?"
Smeaton shrugged his shoulders. "My dear boy, I've given up guessing.
Anybody that wants it can have the benefit of the doubt, now." _Puff!
puff!_ "I often think of poor Newstead, last time I saw him, at
Guy's. They thought he was going to get well, and he was sitting up on
the pillows reading one of those blasted Sunday papers that you write
for. 'Well Newstead,' said I, as I was going, 'what am I to tell the
boys?' 'Tell them,' he says, laying his poor claw of a hand on the
paper, 'tell them I'm driven to my grave at last by the beauty and the
horror of life!'" _Puff! puff!_ "Why don't you go and see her?
You can get there easy enough. She's interviewed once a week on an
average."
"What good would it do?"
Smeaton rapped for his _addition_. "I dunno. I think if I were a
friend of Ingram's I'd take a certain amount of malicious pleasure in
letting her know what you saw to-day."
IV
SOMETHING LIKE CLOVES
As a matter of fact, I found no difficulty at all. Little Winstanley
was pleased with my murder specials, and fixed up an interview over the
'phone in no time.
"You're getting rather heavy metal for this, Prentice," he said,
puffing out his cheeks and regarding me with the benevolence a man
keeps for the work of his own hands; "but toddle along and see what you
make of her." One of Winstanley's illusions is that he has "formed" me.
Fenella had a very pretty little doll's house in the tiny square that
is tucked away near Knightsbridge Barracks, whose gardens back upon the
Park. The brickwork was very neatly pointed, and the window boxes were
full of chrysanthemums, and a red door with brass appointments flew
open to my rather timid ring with a disconcerting suddenness. But I was
not prepossessed with the stunted little maid who opened it. Neither
in manner nor appearance was she "up to" the house. There was a latent
hostility, too, in the way she scanned me.
"Noospapers?" she queried over her shoulder, as she closed the door.
I admitted it.
"Come in 'ere and wait."
I was precipitated rather than ushered into a fireless dining-room,
a little cold and uncheery for all its graceful furnishings of dark
scrolled wood and striped mulberry velvet cushions. There was a hanging
lamp over the oval table, of liver-colored bronze; mistletoe leaves
stuck over with little electric berries, which budded into light as
the girl left the room. The sideboard was covered with silver toys. I
remember a jointed crab and lobster, and a ship on wheels with all its
sails set, and a coach and six, whose driver, his calves in the air,
waved a long whiplash over six curled, trampling stallions. I know
there are more striking contrasts in the world if one goes seeking
them, but for me the injustice of life always stands pictured now by a
shelf full of useless beaten silver toys on the one hand, and on the
other by a coat buttoned across a naked throat.
I wonder would I have known my pale little girl with the frightened
eyes, whose heart I had been so strangely commissioned to break,
eighteen months ago? Then I had only been able to guess at the probable
grace of the body which a rough travelling coat so thoroughly covered,
and though, even in the strained, anxious face and disordered hair,
beauty had been apparent, it had been beauty seen through a mist of
tears, its harmonies disordered by the tortured questioning soul.
Since that time I suppose her figure had attained its full graciousness
of line and had reached the limit of development which modern standards
of bodily beauty, forced to take a fashion into consideration, would
consider compatible with elegance for a woman of her height. She was
still in half-mourning, and wore a trained dress of some soft gray
material embroidered in black on the breast and sleeves. I am a child
in such matters, but imagine her dressmaker, or the builder of garments
more intimate still, must have been something of an artist, for,
seen thus, there was absolutely nothing to recall the boyish _sans
gêne_ of figure and manner which was her great asset--her trump card
upon the stage, and which, from the moment she kissed her hands across
the footlights, never failed to bring rapturous applause about her
ears. Her dark hair, "fine as the finest silk" (after all, there is no
bettering the robust descriptiveness of fairy-tale), was dressed rather
fashionably than prettily--wide across her forehead in front, and
rather far beyond her head at the back. I thought she wore too many
rings, and diamonds glittered in the soft shadow of her throat.
She did not recognize me, but gave me her hand to shake without
condescension, which was all in her favor. I will make a further
confession: At the first frank, interested glance of her eyes I
consigned old Smeaton and his hateful friend who didn't often make
mistakes to the eternal fellowship of Ananias. The impossibility simply
began and ended with those eyes. It was not the glamour of a lovely
face and a gracious welcome, for, as I took her hand, I remember
feeling indignant that so little shadow of the wrong my friend had done
her crossed the bright well-being of her life. It was too evident that
she forgave and forgot with equal completeness. Poor, logical-minded
Paul, carrying about with him night and day the image of this lost
mistress. Did I blame him that food and raiment were hateful to him?
"Why," she said, "poor man! you're shivering. This room is a bit cold,
isn't it? I'm afraid Frances doesn't like the press. I've noticed she
always shows them into whichever room hasn't a fire in it. She's rather
a tyrant, Frances is. But it's nice isn't it, to have some one left who
cares enough for you to bully you. Druce, the housekeeper, was my nurse
once. Come across to the drawing-room. It's much prettier, and there's
a fire in it. Twenty minutes now"--lifting a warning finger--"not an
instant longer."
I followed her across the ridiculous little hall into a drawing-room
whose size surprised me. It was low but very long, and the bottom was
filled in by a curved window of leaded glass looking out over the
sodden Park, where a belated rider or two still walked a steaming
horse and probably dreamed of a hot bath and dinner. The room, with
its lacquered "dancing dado," and walls hung with Chinese silk, has
been often paragraphed. It smelt of sandalwood and roses, and had a
fire of old whale-ship logs burning in a steel casket upon the hearth,
with little spurts of flame, all manner of unexpected tints--violet
and bottle-green and strawberry red. How fond she was of color and
glitter! A frightful old bull-terrier--reared, I should say, from his
appearance, in the bosom of some knacker's family, and whose head
something, prosperity perhaps, had turned violently on one side--got
up from the hearth-rug and came limping and sniffing across the room.
Fenella got down on her knees and put her soft cheek to the repulsive
pink nose.
"Did _he_ want to be interviewed then? And so he shall. Do you
know"--looking up at me--"you're the first one that's seen _him_?
I generally show two small ones like pen-wipers; but they're away at a
show." She turned to the dog again. "Is he vezzy old then, and vezzy
blind, and vezzy much chewed and bitten, poor old man! and is the
world just one big, dark smell to him? Well if 'oo _will_ chew
my whiskers, dear, of _tourse_ 'oo'll sneeze!" She jumped up as
though some thought suddenly checked her playful mood. "Put _him_
down, please!" she said, pointing in a business-like manner to my open
note-book. "Name? Roquelaure--Rock for short. Eighteen years old--two
years less than me. Fancy _that_--younger than me! No tricks--only
habits. We were puppies together--at least, I mean--Yes, yes. Put it
down that way. It sounds rather _dear_, I think. Sit down, please.
Now, what else do you want to hear about? My dancing? Oh! I've always
danced. Used to do it instead of flying into a rage."
"Wait one minute, please," I said. "'The usefulness of dancing as an
outlet for the emotion is probably a discovery as old as the world
itself.' Um--um----When did you begin to take regular lessons, and how
far----?"
I looked up. She had recognized me. Forgetfulness? Oh! I was as bad as
the others.
"Wait a moment!" She rose, and left the room as quickly as her tight
silk underskirt would let her. She was back again in a minute, holding
my card in her hand.
"Are you _his_ Mr. Prentice?"
I bowed my head, and laid note-book and pencil aside. What a fool I had
been to come!
"Where is he? Do you see him? Oh, _how_ I've tried and tried to
remember your name!"
"I don't know where he is."
"But you've seen him? I know you have. Answer, please. Why do you look
so queer?"
"I saw him last week."
"Was he well? Was he happy?"
"He was--starving, I think."
"_O-oh!_" I had seen tragedy in the girl's face, now I saw it in
the woman's. I told her as much as I dared. I hope I was merciful.
"Why didn't you hold him?" she cried, at one point of the story. "Oh,
my God! Why did you let him go? Don't you know the sort of man he is?"
"I thought I was doing my best. I had only gone to get him some warm
clothes. It was such a raw, foggy morning. That seemed the first thing."
"Some warm clothes!" she repeated, under her breath, looking round
at the silk and silver and roses. Then she broke down, and cried and
cried. Poor soul! I had to stop her at last. I was afraid she'd be ill.
She was very docile, dried her eyes, and begged my pardon for what
she'd just said.
"You're his friend, aren't you?" she pleaded, "his real, true friend?
You won't give him up?"
"What can I do? I'd even bear it for him if I could."
"No you couldn't," she said, tightening her lips and shaking her head
decisively. "Nobody can bear anything for him. Do you think I didn't
try?"
She rolled her handkerchief up into a ball, and tucked it away, with a
resolute little gesture.
"I'm not going to despair," she said bravely, with a kind of gulp and
a tremor of her throat that set the diamonds streaming blue fire. "I
think things will come all right. I've had a kind of a--kind of sign.
Shall I tell you?"--timidly.
I'm foolishly impulsive, and I kissed her hand. After all, the dog does
it.
"Listen, then! Thursday week"--I started, but she didn't notice
it--"Thursday week I was feeling simply _awful_ all day. I can't
explain it. Imagine some one you love is being tried for something
that means death--or more awful still, if it goes against him. It got
worse and worse. I've never missed a night I was billed for, but I
shouldn't have been able to go on as I was. Still, I went down to the
theatre--just on chance, you know. It was half-past seven or quarter
to eight. I had an hour, but I dressed early to be safe. Suddenly
something seemed to say inside of me, 'Now! now! down on your knees,
quick. This is the dangerous time.' My dresser had gone out. I locked
the door, and fell on my knees in a kind of faint. I prayed, and prayed
as well as I could. I don't remember much what. I think I asked God, if
Paul was never, never to be happy again, to take him the best way to
some place where nothing could hurt him any more, and where he would
see me and know what I was feeling for him. And then, Mr. Prentice--and
then----Oh! it was wonderful. Something all warm and comfortable,
like--oh! like _cloves_--why do you laugh? I'm trying to tell you
the best way I can--seemed to come round my heart. I got up from my
knees. It was eight-fifteen, and my dresser was banging on the door and
asking if I was ill. I opened it and hugged her. She must have thought
me crazy. All the sadness was gone--every bit. I knew they'd done
trying him, and he--and he----" She struggled with her emotion, and,
then, covering her face with her hands, rocked backward and forward,
moaning and sobbing--"he's Not Guilty. No! my love's Not Guilty."
There was a knock at the door. She turned her head quickly into the
shadow.
"Come in!"
"It's Sir Bryan, madam."
"Tell him to wait in the dining-room.... Now, Mr. Prentice, we must
try again. What are the best papers to advertise in? Papers that--that
quite poor people read most?"
I gave two or three an unsolicited testimonial.
"Write your address--your private address--on this card. I'll put
an advert."--she said it this way--"in three for a year. Just your
initial. The moment you hear, telegraph--no, telephone me! I'll say
you're to be always given my address. I don't go to New York for nearly
a year. Good-bye. I'll send you something for your paper to-night."
I did not see the sporting baronet, but I smelt his cigar in the hall,
and I saw his damned motor-car outside the door. And as I walked out of
the little square, I wondered whether perhaps it wouldn't be to every
one's advantage, and his own, if Paul Ingram should never be heard of
on this earth again.
V
A VERY VULGAR CHAPTER
"Ingram, Paul. Will Paul Ingram communicate at once with 'P.,' 15,
Darlaston Crescent? The matter is urgent, and concerns the future
happiness of another."
Some day, when Paul Ingram is already a legend, the dipper into musty
records who stumbles upon this heartrending appeal in issue after
issue will imagine he has made a rare find. Always supposing another
eventuality, which I sometimes seem to foresee, has not supervened, and
that a reformed society, for security's sake, and as an earnest of its
reformation, does not make a bonfire once for all of the records of its
past depravity and madness.
Nothing, to me, affords fruit for such sad thought as to see unworldly
folk taking advantage of the machinery of a world that is organized
to crush them and their like out of existence. That Oxford graduate
who seeks "congenial employment as amanuensis or secretary," the
gentlewoman "thrown suddenly upon her own resources through financial
loss" who is anxious for a post as nursery governess, as companion, as
anything that will allay the fright and loneliness at her heart--("fond
of children," she adds. Poor soul, one sees her casting a wistful
glance into passing perambulators.) Do not the very compositors, I
wonder, laugh as they set up such type? I was sorry indeed for that
"other" whose happiness depended upon Ingram's resurrection.
Meantime I had given my word, and I was not idle. Every good
journalist is a bit of a detective at heart, and I discovered a
mournful zest in following Paul's calvary, step by step, from one
lodging to another. Everywhere I found help and sympathy, and conceived
a new regard for the maligned race of landladies. (Mrs. McNaughten, of
course, is _hors concours_.)
"Ah! poor gentleman," said one grimy soul. "Well I remember the
night he come. I knocked at the door to arst 'im if 'e wouldn't take
somethin' 'eartenin' with 'is tea--a bloater, or a rasher--and there
'e wos, settin' with 'is 'ead down on the table. Money? Oh, a trifle
of rent, sir. Wanted to leave 'is trunk be'ind; but there, live and
let live's my motter. It went to my 'eart to 'ave 'im go--wanted care,
'e did--but you see, sir, me bein' only a workin' woman, and 'avin' a
'usband at 'ome with bronickal trouble----Thank you kindly, sir, sence
you orfer it. You won't think no worst of me for takin' it, will you?"
At the very next stopping place--I had almost said stumbling place--the
trunk came to hand. Strangely enough, he owed nothing here. I suppose
at a certain point in misfortune a man flings his possessions from him
as a swimmer flings his clothes.
"Took 'is things away in a bundle, wot there wos," said the mistress of
this house, who was nursing and rocking a child as she spoke. "I ain't
techt nothink," with a slight shiver. "If so be you're a friend of the
party, you'd prabst better open it. The keys is upstairs. No: nothin'
owin,' but I wasn't sorry w'en 'e went. Too strange in 'is manner. It
goes agenst a 'ouse w'en things--you know wot I mean--'appens in it."
To Mrs. Purvis's secret disappointment, I believe, there was nothing
in the trunk but a mass of torn paper and a queer brown-paper parcel
that I seemed to recognize. It was addressed to the house near Golden
Square, and the label was headed with the name of some legal firm in
the West End. It was the manuscript of "Sad Company."
For a long while after Mrs. Purvis had left me to attend to the
shrill wants of some of her elder children, I sat with it in my lap,
looking out of the rain-spotted window upon the mouldering back gardens
beneath, where string after string of intimate household linen dried or
stiffened in the sooty air. I thought of the tender, mournful wisdom,
the sad insight into life which that despised bundle contained, bought
with the blood and sweat, and tears maybe, of thirty years: jotted
down--for I knew its history--in cattle camps, by Algerian bivouac
fires, in hotel lobbies of roaring Western cities. And I thought of the
little luxurious house beside the Park, filled with all that ministers
to the lust of the eye and the pride of life. A pretty face and figure,
an aptitude for bodily movement, a few shallow tricks of manner, had
earned that in a year for a woman whom I had already occasion to know
couldn't spell. Well, the world knows what it wants. The world had
chosen. Was there to be no appeal? Is failure here failure forever? Or
is there, beyond this world, with its stark denials of justice, another
where such things count still, and where the reward so insolently and
capriciously withheld shall be bestowed, the hungerer after justice,
even artistic justice, have his fill? Sad questions that no religion
cares to answer.
And here my search ended. He had left no address: no letters had
followed him. I took the manuscript away with me and locked it into a
drawer. I was not sure yet what I would do with it. Show the world what
manner of man it had despised, perhaps. Or perhaps tie a stone around
it and sink it in mid-channel. I must think which Paul would have
chosen.
Nearly six months afterward in late summer, I was sitting at my desk
and beginning to think of turning in, when Mrs. McNaughten rapped at
the door. A "vairy rough body" was asking for me. Should she show him
up or bid him state the natur-re of his business?
"Doesn't he say what he wants?"
"He'll say nothing but that he wants Mister-r-r P. He says ye'll
understand fine. _Mister 'P.'_ I think the body's daft."
The advertisement. My heart jumped. "Show him up, please. At once!"
A short thick-set man in soiled working clothes and with a colored
handkerchief round his neck came in, tossed a cap on the table with a
gesture full of natural grace, stretched his neck two or three times,
as if to intimate that he was ready for any manner of reception, and
began to beat a limy dust with the back of his hand out of as much of
his corduroys as was within easy reach.
"Nime of Palamount," he said, oracularly and rather hoarsely.
"Builder's mite, my tride is."
I indicated a chair. "And what can I do for you, Mr. Palamount? I am
not contemplating any repairs or additions to my quarters at present."
All this time the man had kept one hand in his pocket. He drew it out,
holding a newspaper, folded very small and very tight.
"In conneckshun wiv two advertysements," said he. "Fifteen Darlaston
Crescent is the address wot's on one. 'Ere y'are. Marked in blue it is.
Initial of 'P.'"
He unfolded the journal and handed it to me. It was the paragraph which
heads this chapter, and which, having been paid for a year in advance,
would reiterate its useless appeal for another six months to come
unless----Somehow Mr. Palamount did not impress me as a bearer of glad
tidings.
"Well," I asked, without much hope. "What news can you give?"
"'Old 'ard," said my visitor, who was feeling through various pockets,
as if in search of fresh documents.
"You needn't bother," I said, irritably. "I know it's in more than one."
The horny-handed one smiled, a powdery and superior smile, as of
foresight justified.
"Ah!" said he. "That's wot I thought you'd be in the dark abaht. Two
parties there is. Complickitions--that's wot I calls it. 'Ere y'are.
Sund'y _'Erald_. Twenty-first July. 'Work'ahse Marster, depitties
_and_ uvvers.'"
I snatched the paper from his hand and devoured the salient paragraph.
It was a very superior article; far more calculated to strike a
reader's imagination than the feeble little effort we had concocted
between us. I read it aloud.
"£200 Reward. To workhouse masters, lodging-house deputies and
others....
"The above reward will be paid for information that shall lead to the
discovery or certify the death of PAUL INGRAM, native of
Lilburn, Massachusetts, U. S. A. He was discharged from the French
Foreign Legion in March 19--. Was subsequently correspondent in Morocco
for the Federated Press, and is known to have been living in London in
very reduced circumstances as recently as last September.
"Communications are to be made to the American Consulate, St. Helens
Place, Bishopsgate, or to Messrs. Pollexfen, Allport and Pollexfen,
Solicitors, 52a, Bedford Row, W. C."
A description of my hapless friend followed, remarkable, or perhaps not
remarkable, for conveying the very haziest notion of his appearance.
Mr. Palamount was regarding my amazed face meanwhile with excited
relish, somewhat tempered by his surroundings which were ill adapted to
its natural relief by expectoration.
"Wotcher mike of it?"
I stared helplessly. "It's--money, I suppose."
The builder of houses was now approaching his supreme effect. He half
rose from his chair, made an ineffectual attempt to rid his voice of
cobwebs, and pointed an accusing finger, about the shape and size of a
banana, at the two papers in my lap. At last he spoke.
"'Ue and cry: that's wot that is."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Wot I ses. 'Ue and cry. There's lot of blokes, mind you as won't tike
blood-money as'll give evidence of w'ereabahts if they thinks it's
all stright. Money? yus--I _don't_ fink. Certify 'is deaf? It'll
be certified all right if 'e puts 'is nose inter that loryer's orfice
or if any bloomin' copper's nark as knows 'im gets 'is eyes on that
parrygraft. Tike it aht, guv'nor. Git 'im aw'y somew're w'ere there
ain't no extry-edition treaties. Shive 'is beard, too, 'e'd better,
less 'e growed it since."
To say that I was dazed by Mr. Palamount's mental processes is to state
bare truth.
"You think he's done something, then, and is in hiding?"
"Yus. Cut a bloke in hot blood, I fink."
"And that my advertisement will help put the police on his track?"
"Yus," said Mr. Palamount succinctly and without any implied respect
for my superior lucidity. "Watch the 'ahse, they will, and pinch 'im
w'en 'e calls."
"But--my dear obfuscated friend----"
"'Ere, guv'nor; no langwidge please."
"Well, my dear friend, Paul Ingram's an old friend of mine. He's a
highly respectable citizen. It's true he's got no money, but you and I
know that isn't a crime. One advertisement is put in by his friends who
want to help him, and as for the other--it's too late to-night, but I
shall find out all about it first thing to-morrow."
My new friend made a repressive gesture. "'Ere guv'nor--none o' that.
I seen it fust. If it's all right, them two 'undred quids is prop'ly
mine."
"Well, do you know where he is?"
"I know w'ere 'e wos a week ago. To fink," catching up his cap and
dashing it to the ground, "to fink as I showed 'im that one o' yours
four munfs ago."
"You'd better tell me all you know," I said, losing patience. "Will you
have some beer first?" The cobwebs were getting on my nerves.
"Beer!" echoed my visitor. He had, indeed, a generally unslaked
appearance that rendered the question an impertinence. "Beer!" he said
again, giving the word this time its full diapason or organ sound. The
rest was vigorous action.
Unfortunately he had not an equal talent for connected narrative, and I
was too anxious about Paul to welcome the light upon dark places which
his discursiveness incidentally threw. One day, late in the previous
autumn, I made out, his own trade being slack, he was working on the
tramway extension to one of the northern suburbs. About midday the fog
came on so thickly that the road-making gang were laid off for the
day, and wended their way home after the riotously sociable manner of
their class, with frequent calls at favored houses of refreshment. When
evening fell, he was drinking in a bar the other side of Blackfriars
with a neighbor and fellow-workman, whose patronymic of Barker had
been long abandoned in familiar discourse for the more recondite one
of "Flying Fox." ("Put two tanners on the 'orse 'e did, at odds on,
an' won fruppence.") The backer of certainties had only been taken on
that morning by the foreman after a week's waiting, and was probably
in ill-humor at his enforced leisure. Either for this reason or some
other a dispute arose in the bar of the George and Cushion, which was
ended by Mr. Barker's shouldering his way out, with the expressed
intention of pursuing his homeward way unaccompanied by any "bleedin'
skrim-shanker." Mr. Palamount was eager to detail the misunderstanding
that had led to this cruel charge, but I checked him, and from this
point the story took quite a leap forward.
"Parsin' Thomases 'Orsepittel, I see'd a crahd rahnd the cas'alty door,
an' arst 'oo was 'urt. 'Bloke on the Embankmint,' they ses, 'knocked
over by a motor-keb near Blackfriars: come aht of the fog like a
cannon-ball,' they ses. I arst the nime, 'cos I was feelin' anxious
'baht Foxie; not drunk 'e wasn't, but I give you my word 'e'd 'ad
some, and 'e wasn't a man as could 'old the booze. 'That's 'im, they
ses--'that's the party. Ginger-'aired wiv freckles; arnswers to nime
of Barker.' 'I'm a pal,' I ses, ''oo's in wiv 'im?' 'Man that fahnd
'im,' they ses--'eddigicated bloke: give 'im fust ide, and 'eld 'is
'ead in 'is lap in the tramcar.'
"They let me in w'en they 'eard I was a friend of the party wot was
'urt. Big room wiv benches: young tawfs in long w'ite coats--sawboneses
I calls 'em--nurses too (my word, not 'alf givin' 'em the tale): blue
jars, an' a smell wot mikes yer fice crack. 'Wotcher want?' the mitron
ses to me. 'I fink I can identify the party, sister,' I ses, 'I'm a
nighbor.' 'Wite 'ere,' she ses. 'They'll be bringin' 'im through in a
minute.' So I sets dahn. A tall furrin' lookin' bloke was a settin' on
a bench nigh me, wiv a beard. Werry thin an' fierce 'e wos and eyes a
blazin' like coals. 'Crool business over there,' I ses, pointin' to the
screen. 'Wife near 'er time, four nippers, an' only took on yesterday.
Fust job since the spring.' 'I know abaht it,' 'e ses. I was a-goin'
to arst 'im ow 'e knew, w'en the row begins from be'ind the screen.
Just told 'im they 'ad as 'e was a free munfs' kise. 'I carn't do wiv
it. I carn't do wiv it,' 'e was 'ollerin' over and over ag'in as they
carries 'im through. 'My wife's near 'er time, and there ain't five
shillin's in the 'ouse.' Tryin' to git up 'e was, and arstin' Gawd to
strike 'im dead. ''Oo knows this man?' ses one of the doctors as was
'olding 'is arms. I was a-goin' to speak w'en the tall bloke jumps up
and goin' over to the stretcher, bends dahn and w'ispers somethin'
quick. Foxie stops strugglin' an' looks rahnd at 'im. ''Ow will yer?'
'e ses, and looks rahnd at 'im. 'Never you mind' ses the man. 'I didn't
promust without knowin' 'ow. You wite,' 'e ses, 'and there'll be good
news termorrer.' I fink Foxie was stunned like and let 'em carry 'im
aw'y quiet. I was a wonderin' too w'ile they filled up 'is card for 'is
missus, 'cos I never see destitootion so pline as on 'im.
"W'en we was ahtside: 'Nah then,' he ses, and 'e couldn't 'ave spoke
brisker not if 'ed bin one of the doctors. 'Somethin's got to be
done.' 'Yus,' I ses, lookin' at 'im 'ard. '_Done_' I ses, like
that. 'Tike me to 'is 'ome fust of all,' 'e ses. 'You know the w'y.'
I'd mide up me mind be now as 'e was balmy, and I was a bit ashimed
of 'im on the tram. But 'e pide 'is own fare and 'eld 'is jor. On'y
w'en we wos gittin' near Camberwell: 'Wot sort of woman is this Mrs.
Barker?' 'e arst me. 'I don't know much of 'er,' I told 'im. 'Keeps
'erself to 'erself she does. But sence she's bin doin' laundery work,
my missus looks in and gives the kids their meals and a bit of a
wash. Gimekeeper's daughter, she wos, in the country.' 'E looks dahn
on to the Walworth Road w'ere some gels was a-dancin' to a organ.
'Gimekeeper's daughter!' 'e ses. 'In the country! My Gawd! 'Ow many
kids?' 'Four,' I ses. 'Eldest is a van-boy earnin' five bob a week.
T'other three's little gels. Don't see 'em in the street much. Mother
keeps 'em indoors. Un'ealthy, I calls it.'
"Mrs. Barker must 'ave been listenin' for 'er man, 'cos she comes
aht 'fore we'd got to the landin'. Tall, dark, 'an'some woman, wiv a
diffrunt voice to most of the wimmin' dahn our w'y. Not so 'igh. 'Oh,
Jim,' she ses. 'Wot mikes you so lite. 'Ave you forgot--?' and then
stops short, seein' us two. 'You tell 'er,' I ses, keeping aht o' sight
and nudgin' 'im. 'That's wot I come for,' 'e ses, and goes in and shets
the door in me fice. I listened, expectin' to 'ear screaming, but there
wos only talkin'--fust 'im very low, then 'er, and then more talkin',
like prayin'. 'You can come in now,' 'e ses, throwin' open the door.
She was settin' by the fire, cryin' to 'erself and young Ern, in 'is
blue coat and brass buttons, blubbering into 'is coker, and two plites
under the 'arth, one on top of the other, and grivy bubbling between
the edges. The little gels wos in bed. On'y one room they 'ad.
"'Wot was Barker's job,' 'e asks. 'Road-making gang.' 'My old job,' 'e
ses wiv a larf. 'Yus, I don't fink,' I ses, with a sidewise look at
'im. 'That'd be a better tale, matey, if there was a little more meat
on your ribs.' 'I've mide roads,' 'e ses, 'under a sun as'd melt you
like a taller candle.' 'Wot kinder roads?' 'Millitery roads.' 'Oh,' I
ses. 'You bin a soljer?' 'Yus,' 'e ses, 'the only real sort as is left.
I never enlisted at eighteen to 'ave my 'ealth built up wiv 'ealthy
food an' Swedish gymnastics, so be the time I was twenty I c'd go to
Injer and sit in a verander durin' the 'eat of the d'y, flappin' the
flies awf me fice w'ile a brown bag o 'bones shined me buttons and kep'
me rifle clean. I never bin a luxury seven years and a problem all the
rest of me life. Gimme that poker!'
"Young Ern giv it 'im, staring like 'is eyes would drop aht. 'E took it
up be the two ends and bent it double, then 'anded it to me. 'Staighten
it out,' 'e ses, wipin' 'is forehead. 'It's a knack,' I ses. 'E took it
agen' and laid it out true, wiv a kind of a 'eave of 'is chest an' a
groan. Next thing 'e did wos to put 'is 'ands over 'is fice and tumble
in a 'eap on the floor.
"Wot a ter-do there was! Missis Barker bithing 'is 'ead wiv cold
water, old Mrs. Conder from the nex' room tryin' to pour gin down 'is
teef--'See wot it is,' she ses, 'to never be wivout a bottle'--young
Ern 'ollering out to loosen 'is neck w'en there wasn't nothin' to
loosen. 'Oh! is 'e dying?' ses Mrs. Barker to me. 'Dyin'!' I ses; 'not
'im. Acceleration is wot's the matter with 'im and nothing else.' "
Here my curiosity got the better of my anxiety. "What do you mean by
acceleration?"
He shifted uneasily in his chair. "Well, guv'nor, it's a word us
people has got. 'Aven't you read in the pipers w'ere it ses, 'Vital
Statistics. In London ten persons was found dead of starvition during
the past year?' That's ten w'ere the coroner couldn't think o' nothin'
else. All the others is only 'acceleration.' Pneumonia accelerated be
insufficient nourishment, brownchitis accelerated, 'ousemaid's knee,
tennis elber--wotcher like, so long as it's on'y accelerated. Looks
better and keeps the charitable people comfortabler in their minds.
'Acceleration,' I ses to 'er; 'and that's the meddicine 'e wants,'
pointing to the plites under the fire. 'And, 'e wants it sharp.'