in the ring. Half-an-hour before Harriman had said to Dick: “If you
beat him before the tenth round I will owe you another sixty thousand
dollars”; so Dick went in under the eyes of his love determined to
fight as he had never fought before, but like an old ring-general
determined, too, not to risk anything.
The first two rounds went to Dick, but the third went to Benny. He had
slipped Dick’s lead and ducked under his right arm with catlike speed,
and in infighting he was more than Dick’s match. But Dick’s stomach
muscles had become indeed bands of steel; no body punch of Benny’s
had the smallest effect on him. Again and again Benny drove in his
right like a battering pile and again and again Dick took the blow
and countered on the jaw. The third and fourth time he countered so
heavily that Benny reeled back. At once Dick was on him, raining down
a hurricane of blows, right and left, with all the power of advance
and the spring from hip and shoulder in every blow. Before the torrent
Benny went down, and though he got to his feet again before eight was
counted, it was only the gong sounding at the end of the round that
saved him from being knocked out in the third round.
The fourth and fifth rounds he fought very cautiously, avoiding
everything and ducking all Dick’s blows, waiting evidently to get
back his strength. But Dick took Patsy’s advice and crowded the
fight; he jumped in, hitting right and left with tremendous speed and
force, following his man to his corner. In the sixth round Benny was
overwhelmed. His blows had lost both speed and force, telegraphing
thereby to Dick that his opportunity had come, and he used it quite
fairly but relentlessly. Before the round was half through Benny’s
seconds threw up the sponge and the championship was won.
So perfect was Patsy’s training that Dick had scarcely a mark on him
and felt really just as well as when he entered the ring.
Mr. Woolcombe was delighted. It appeared that he was a friend and
backer of Harriman, and this time Harriman had let him in on the good
thing and he had made nearly a quarter of a million dollars betting on
Dick.
They all went back in automobiles to Mamaroneck and the Woolcombes gave
Dick a supper. After the supper the lovers stole out together and, to
Dick’s surprise and joy, Kate was incandescent, which, whether Dick
knew it or not, was full of good promise for his married happiness. She
caressed his bruised cheeks and fondled his hands with little cries
of passionate tenderness. The varied incidents of the conflict, the
dreadful risks, the alternate mad hopes and fears had whipped her blood
to flame and held her enthralled, panting with excitement, and then
the appalling swift attack, the grace, speed and strength of her lover
had swept her off her feet, flooding her with a delicious triumph and
afterwards the wild applause of the ringside and cheering of the crowd
had broken her will to resist and made of her his creature--one with
him for ever.
“Oh, Dick, Dick,” she sobbed, “you wonderful Dick,” and tears streamed
from her eyes; “but--but--” (striving to control herself) “I was sorry
for Benny; you hit him dreadfully. It’s the last fight, isn’t it, dear?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dick. “The vaudeville manager told me he would give
me fifteen hundred dollars a week, and that ought to keep us for the
next year or two. I want to read and study and become worthy of you.”
“You are worthy of any woman,” she said, looking up at him with shining
wet eyes. “Oh, Dick, the applause of the people and their cheering
will be in my ears all my life. You’re a hero, sir, to hundreds of
thousands.”
And perhaps, as heroes go, Dick Donovan deserved the title better than
most.
THE TEMPLE TO THE
FORGOTTEN DEAD
THE TEMPLE TO THE
FORGOTTEN DEAD
I suppose I had a good conceit of myself and some apparent reasons for
it. I had won a scholarship at Clifton and gone to Balliol and won
first honours in “Mods.” and “Greats” and got the Ireland scholarship,
and thought myself a wonder. It was the year after Asquith had swept
the university of prizes and, like Asquith, I, too, went to the Bar in
the Middle Temple. I swotted the first term or two and then, having
worked too hard, went for a walking tour through Surrey and Sussex.
Cæsar had kept off headaches and sickness by eating little, walking
much and living always in the open air, and I followed the same
regimen--with equally good results.
At the end of the second week of my holiday I reached the outskirts of
Brighton, feeling very fit. It was a lovely evening, bright and warm,
and I was glad to see a “pub” almost as soon as the heath died away in
the streets.
The landlord was a big man. When I asked him for a “lemon squash” he
seemed surprised, but soon put it before me. While we were talking
there issued from a neighbouring room to the left of the bar shouts of
laughter and a great noise, as of glasses being beaten on the table.
“What’s that?” I could not help asking.
“It’s a Mr. Collinson,” replied the landlord apologetically. “They have
a sort of club there, sir, twice a week, and Mr. Collinson tells ’em
stories.”
“Stories?” I repeated in a question.
“Yes, sir,” said the landlord; “and he does tell ’em surprising, sir.”
“Might I hear one?” I asked. “I love a good story.”
“This Mr. Collinson,” confided the landlord, “is some’ut out of the
common. He used to be a master, I have been told, in Dr. John’s Grammar
School, but he married an aunt of the doctor’s that had quite a bit
of money of her own and now lives with her in ‘The Grange,’ the house
standing alone on your left as you go out of the door. She was a widow
and is quite a few years older nor him; but they gets along very well,
though they do say as she wears the breeches. You know what I mean,
sir, don’t you? No offence!”
I nodded. “Are you sure the other guests wouldn’t mind my listening?” I
asked the good-humoured host.
“No, no, sir,” he replied cordially. “I often go in myself and listen
when I’ve nothing better to do. No one will object, sir, I’m sure,” and
he came round the bar as he spoke and opened the door for me.
There may have been a dozen men in the room. The story-teller, Mr.
Collinson, was in the chair at the far end of the table. He was a man
of perhaps five-and-thirty, nice-looking, with fair features, blue-grey
eyes and almost black hair, worn rather long: he would have been very
good-looking were it not for an outjutting, fleshy nose; the mouth,
too, was a little large; but at first the impression was altogether
pleasing, the eyes were so bright and quick and the smile so engaging.
“Here’s a friend,” said the landlord by way of introduction, “who would
like to hear your stories, Mr. Collinson. Your name, sir?” he added,
turning to me.
“My name is quite unknown to fame,” I replied; “it’s Clarke,” and I
spelled it out.
“Mr. Clarke,” repeated the landlord, and Collinson rose and bade me
welcome.
“Do you make up the stories?” I asked.
“Of course,” replied Collinson reproachfully.
“He tells ’em wonderfully, sir,” said one of the guests. “I never
misses a Wednesday or Saturday evening. I----” And he shut up,
apparently from excess of feeling.
“And he never tells two alike,” said another.
“What will you all drink?” I asked. “I must stand something for the
good of the house!” The proposal seemed to be acceptable, and after
everyone had a fresh drink before him Collinson wanted to know whether
I’d mind a half-religious story. Naturally I told him that I left him
the choice, and he began at once:
“This story came to me in sleep. We all know the brain often works in
sleep and solves problems even for mathematicians that puzzled them
when awake, and performs other wonders, and this dream of mine was
strangely vivid, in spite of its wild improbability. I dreamed I had
awakened on an isle in the South Pacific that was shut off by electric
clouds from all communication with the outside world. There I found
a curiously high civilisation, a society of people extraordinarily
cultivated, who had made their little island (it was barely fifty
miles round) an artistic home, where everyone worked and all enjoyed
the luxuries even of a simple life. They had a law that any stranger
reaching their land by any chance should be condemned to painless
death, and I was so sentenced, and in ignorance was walking to my doom
when I caught the eyes of an astonishingly pretty girl. I could not
but smile to her, she was so fine and seemed sad, and she turned and
took me from my attendants. I learned later that anyone who came from a
family that had been thanked by the State for services could exercise
the right of mercy at any time, and so Irene, as I called her, saved my
life.
“All this and more I learned gradually as I mastered the language, for
Irene had taken me to her home and taught me every day, though she was
the daughter of one of the governors of the island. I had been reading
a little before how Diotima, the lovely, light woman of Athens, told
Socrates all sorts of new things, and I dreamed into Irene a sort of
ideal nature, and indeed she was very fine.
“She held herself curiously erect; she had large grey eyes, with long
black lashes, and a rather rich mouth showing bluey-white teeth. There
was something challenging in her good humour and smiling superiority
of approach. Though still in the twenties she was very wise. In my
dream we were together, this Irene and myself, in a garden. I had been
impressed by her wisdom and her air of conscious superiority, and
accordingly I put forward the Sermon on the Mount as the sublimest
height of wisdom that I knew anything about. ‘The Sermon on the Mount
begins with beatitudes,’ I said, ‘or a sort of declaration of faith,’
and I recited them.
“‘I see, I see,’ said Irene, smiling, ‘the sort of thing a young man
gets off to convince himself of his own originality.’
“I was struck by the truth of her remark, but went on reciting. When I
came to the verses:
“‘Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with
him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the
judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
“‘Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till
thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.’
* * * * *
--Irene was indignant. ‘I never heard worse morality,’ she cried. ‘Am
I to make it up with an enemy merely for fear of the consequences? It’s
degrading.’
“‘Listen,’ I said, and went on to the end of the chapter, and when
I had finished this was Irene’s criticism--and I think it worth
remembering:
“‘At first I thought it all bad,’ she began, ‘because of the judge
and prison business, but soon I came to see that the whole sermon is
a medley of thoughts put together at different times and representing
very different stages of growth. The morality of the judge and prison
is childish. If Jesus ever used the incident it must have been as a
boyish memory; for it is expressly contradicted later when He teaches
you to forgive your enemies and those who would despitefully use you
and persecute you, ending with the noble words: “Be ye perfect, even
as your Father, which is in heaven, is perfect.” That’s far enough
away from the making up with your enemy for fear of consequences, far
away, too, from the youthful, prig beatitudes. To be perfect is the
real goal, but I don’t care for the tag, “As your Father in heaven
is perfect,” for I see no striving after perfection in any part of
creation.’
“When I asked Irene about her religion she told me that the popular
religion of her people was as high, she thought, as the Christianity
of the Sermon on the Mount, but very different; and one day, when I
pressed her, she took me in her airplane to their Sacred City.
“It was a great wooded hill laid out in gardens and groves, and here
and there were temples scattered about; she took me into one of the
first of these and made me observe that there were realistic busts of
men on all sides, with a kindred air of boldness and resolution.
“‘This temple is dedicated to courage,’ she began, ‘the youngest of all
religions or, if you will, the oldest. Most of the worshippers here are
boys and young men, and courage is commended to them as a sacred duty,
and they are advised to imitate the courageous men whose busts are
collected here.
“‘On the other side of the main road there’s a Temple to Pity, and
that’s frequented by young girls and is to them the most appealing of
all the creeds and the highest.’
“‘I see, I see,’ I exclaimed; ‘all the base of the hill is taken up
with temples dedicated to various virtues.’
“‘And the preachers,’ she nodded, ‘are all picked because of the proofs
they have given of preeminence in this or that quality that they talk
about.’
“Slowly we made our way up to the top of the hill, to find it crowned
by great colonnades interspersed with statues of every kind.
“Suddenly I cried: ‘All these statues lack something. See, that one is
without hands and that there is eyeless. What does it all mean?’
“‘This,’ said Irene, ‘is the obverse of what you’ve already seen.
Some of us worship in that temple at the foot of the hill, and some
in another; but we all worship here, for this is “The Temple to the
Forgotten Dead.”
“‘Who was the first to invent the _wheel_ and so reduce the work of man
by one-tenth? No one knows. Who was the first to make a screw? These
are the Unknown Benefactors of Humanity, to whom we are all indebted
and whose very names are lost in the whelming flood of oblivion. And
our wisest suppose that these heroes and seers are forgotten because
they lacked this quality or that, and so these statues prefiguring them
all lack something, now an eye, now a hand.
“‘In my opinion they were content to give of their best and pass into
the shrouding darkness without a word----’
“‘Wonderful,’ I broke in. ‘I shall not soon forget the Temple to the
Forgotten Dead; but is that all there is in this Holy City?’
“‘One thing more,’ said Irene, ‘and perhaps the chief thing,’ and
silently she led the way through the colonnade into a large grove of
flowering, perfume-ladened trees.
“In the middle there was an open space and in it a great statue of a
woman with both hands uplifted. I noticed, too, that her eyes were
sightless.
“‘What does that prefigure?’ I asked.
“‘Our Rulers,’ replied Irene, ‘have given us that as the very soul of
religion; they wish to tell us that woman is nearer the heart of things
than man, and her hands are uplifted, as you see, in yearning desire,
but her eyes are sightless, for she knows not whither she goes or to
what bourne. Her aspiration is without a goal----’
“‘A lame and impotent conclusion,’ I cried, and Irene, agreeing with
me, hastened to add:
“‘I told you I would show you our popular religion. I did not say
it was perfect. The real religion of the best among us is made of
two parts: the first is our duty to ourselves and is summed up in
complete self-development; the second is all in the duty we owe to
others, to help everyone born and especially the best to the utmost of
our ability. We mortals don’t know much, do we?’ She broke off, with
brooding, sad eyes.”
Collinson’s voice ceased.
“So that’s the end?” I half asked, and Collinson answered a little
defiantly, I thought:
“That’s the end in one mood; but, fortunately, we men are allowed to
have contradictory moods.”
* * * * *
I’m quite aware that I’ve told the story badly. To hear such a story in
a common public-house almost took my breath away. And then Collinson
told it inimitably. He made you feel that Irene was at once an English
girl in looks and wiser than Diotima in reality; the bounds of the
possible fell away as he talked. The myriad inflections of his voice,
his dramatic pauses, the abrupt changes of tone, all were used to make
the extraordinary probable and of everyday occurrence.
I hardly knew what to think and was very eager indeed to know what
another first-rate mind would think of this story-teller.
I thanked Collinson warmly and promised to come on the next Saturday
evening and bring a friend, an Oxford professor of rare talent,
York Fowell, who would be infinitely pleased to applaud so gifted a
story-teller. Fowell was already in Brighton, and I intended to see a
good deal of him. Collinson smiled pleasantly, told me he’d be glad to
meet any friend of mine, was very amiable; but he seemed just a little
tired, as if telling the story had exhausted him somewhat. Thinking it
over afterwards I began to realise that he was not very strong.
Well, the Saturday came in due course and I brought York Fowell to
the public-house and introduced him to Collinson. After the usual
courtesies and fresh drinks I asked Collinson would he tell us another
story like “The Temple to the Forgotten Dead.” He immediately wanted to
know whether we would mind a story of Art-life in Chelsea. Of course we
told him at once to go ahead, and without more ado he began:
“This story is about the artistic life in Chelsea. I call it
‘THE STRAIT-WAISTCOAT’
“I don’t know that I ought to tell this story. I don’t even know that I
can tell it, though I lived cheek-by-jowl with it for years and know
intimate sides of it that are now completely forgotten.
“Everyone has heard of John Craven, the Royal Academician who made a
great name for himself early in life as an artist.
“He was a very agreeable man. I had to interview him once or twice for
_The Daily Herald_ just after he did his famous picture of _The Cup-Day
at Ascot_. It was very realistic and astonishingly effective; all the
leading figures of the day and society queens were in the picture, and
so it made a huge sensation. Crowds thronged to see it as they never
throng to a masterpiece.
“Craven took it all as a matter of course, but Mrs. Craven was
delighted with the notoriety. She was a very pretty woman, Mrs. Craven,
perhaps at this time about thirty years of age. The Cravens had no
children, but she was very, very sympathetic, and Lord Leith’s brother,
Eric Falconer, evidently thought her the Queen of Fairies.
“I wrote about the picture and Mrs. Craven enthusiastically, and she
asked me to dinner at ‘The Red House’ in Chelsea, which was very
wonderfully furnished; in fact everything in it was very well done.
“In time I got to know the Cravens well. I must say I had no inkling at
first of any disagreement between Mr. and Mrs. Craven.
“The garden at the back part of the ‘Red House’ had a big studio in it,
where Craven used to work. And one day whom should I meet at the door
but Miss Stannard, a famous model and extremely pretty girl in whom I
was very much interested.
“‘Fancy you here, Leslie,’ I cried. ‘What are you up to now?’
“‘Mr. Craven wants me for his next picture. You know what a success
_Ascot_ has been!’
“‘They had to rail it off,’ I agreed, ‘but it is a poor picture, I
think.’
“‘Rotten,’ she replied. ‘Everyone who knows what pictures are, thinks
it worthless. John August says it’s only a coloured photograph, and bad
at that.’
“‘He may be a little jealous,’ I suggested.
“‘No, no,’ she exclaimed, ‘he knows.’
“‘Don’t forget it was put on the line in the chief room by painters,
Royal Academicians,’ said a voice close to us, and out of the studio,
in front of which we had been talking, stepped Mr. Craven. Naturally
we both backed down at once. Leslie said August was very young and of
course mistaken. She was an awfully kind sort, was Leslie. But she
did not think much of Craven’s painting. She had been knocking about
studios for years and she knew pretty well who were the good painters
and who the bad. I always thought Daisy Raffles had taught her a great
deal, and everyone knows that Daisy Raffles is a genius as a critic!
“I think Craven’s change of attitude came from this picture, _Ascot_,
and from Daisy Raffles. It all happened strangely enough. One day a
whole party accompanied the Cravens to the Royal Academy Show to see
his picture--the picture of the year. While he was standing in front of
it two students passed, Walter Rainforth and James Simson. Rainforth
said: ‘Don’t look at that botch!’ Simson replied: ‘It’s pretty tawdry,
but I have always thought he might be a painter some day.’ They went
on, but Craven had heard them.
“A little while later he had taken Daisy Raffles as a model. He told
Daisy what the students had said and she told him they were quite
right--dotted the ‘i’s’ and crossed the ‘t’s’ for him. She really knew
and had any amount of cheek.
“Daisy was a curious product of the studios: an orphan brought up by
an aunt and sent out at twelve as a model. She always said it was her
youth that saved her. By the time she was a woman she had not only
learned all the painters’ slang, but also their morals, or rather their
amorality, and this knowledge, reinforcing a natural fastidiousness,
kept her straight. She was nearer thirty than twenty when she became
interested in Craven; she saw at once that he could both draw and
paint, and bit by bit she developed in him a new mentality. I can’t
explain how she did it, but she certainly did draw him out in the most
astonishing way. And women, as a rule, I’ve noticed, are apt to like
those whom they can help and who are dependent on them--the mother
instinct in them, I suppose. But there was nothing more than friendship
between her and Craven for a long time--indeed until his wife threw him
over and took sides against him.
“As soon as he took Daisy on as a model Craven began to paint in a
new way. In the first year he had no success at all--in fact I don’t
think he showed a picture. But a year or so afterwards he exhibited his
model, Daisy Raffles, painted ‘in the altogether’; she had evidently by
this time got into his blood.
“Nearly everyone thought the picture ugly; nobody wanted it, but
painters said it was surprising; it had quality in it. From that time
on Craven’s downfall began. He painted pictures that nobody wanted;
they were not even pretty; and gradually, bit by bit, he lost his money
and began to be hard up.
“This much of his private history everyone knew. His wife tried again
and again to get him to paint in the old way, but he wouldn’t, or
perhaps couldn’t.
“According to Daisy Raffles his wife had always been in love with Eric
Falconer, and certainly they were now very thick. When a woman of
thirty or thirty-five falls in love she takes it badly, and Mrs. Craven
took it worse than most. She was with Falconer or Falconer was with her
morning, noon and night; their names began to be coupled together, and
everyone knew it except Craven.
“I always wondered how the _exposé_ came.
“Daisy Raffles said that it came about money, that Mrs. Craven got it
into her head that Craven was mad. And indeed there was a good deal to
be said for that theory. He had made thousands and thousands of pounds
by his early pictures, then suddenly he began painting pictures that
nobody wanted and no one would buy.
“One day I met Leslie Stannard with Daisy Raffles and had new light on
the subject.
“Daisy Raffles swore that Craven was doing very interesting work; told
us that his wife was a fool, and the sooner she got a divorce and
married Eric Falconer the better. Daisy was quite pretty when she got
excited and everyone knew she had the prettiest girl’s figure in London.
“Craven, she declared, was going to be one of the great painters. ‘You
will see,’ she said: ‘the studies he has made of me will be worth a
fortune yet’; and I remembered that Simson had said that he had the
painter’s hand if not his head.
“In some way or other Daisy had given Craven a new view of art and
life. Before he met her he was a photographer, so to speak; she made
him an artist--taught him that it was not the object in itself, but the
impression the object made upon him that was important. His portrait
of Daisy as Salome was a masterpiece; it gave the essence of her: the
sensuous, slim body and the supersensuous soul, like a flame triumphing
over Death; there was something unearthly in the spirit-beauty of it.
She believed, with Nietzsche, that all great art is produced in a sort
of ecstasy, an intoxicated heightening of all the faculties.
“I was very interested in the whole thing. I never liked Eric Falconer
and Mrs. Craven had always seemed to me rather pretentious.
“The catastrophe came suddenly. Falconer laid the trap, I am sure, and
Craven fell into it.