THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS SENDS PAUL A RING.
It took me three years to win that handshake. For the first six months I
remained in Deptford. There was excellent material to be found there
for humorous articles, essays, stories; likewise for stories tragic
and pathetic. But I owed a hundred and fifty pounds--a little over
two hundred it reached to, I found, when I came to add up the actual
figures. So I paid strict attention to business, left the tears to be
garnered by others--better fitted maybe for the task; kept to my own
patch, reaped and took to market only the laughter.
At the beginning I sent each manuscript to Norah; she had it copied out,
debited me with the cost received payment, and sent me the balance. At
first my earnings were small; but Norah was an excellent agent; rapidly
they increased. Dan grew quite cross with her, wrote in pained surprise
at her greed. The “matter” was fair, but in no way remarkable. Any
friend of hers, of course, he was anxious to assist; but business was
business. In justice to his proprietors, he could not and would not pay
more than the market value. Miss Deleglise, replying curtly in the third
person, found herself in perfect accord with Mr. Brian as to business
being business. If Mr. Brian could not afford to pay her price for
material so excellent, other editors with whom Miss Deleglise was
equally well acquainted could and would. Answer by return would greatly
oblige, pending which the manuscript then in her hands she retained. Mr.
Brian, understanding he had found his match, grumbled but paid. Whether
he had any suspicion who “Jack Homer” might be, he never confessed; but
he would have played the game, pulled his end of the rope, in either
case. Nor was he allowed to decide the question for himself. Competition
was introduced into the argument. Of purpose a certain proportion of
my work my agent sent elsewhere. “Jack Homer” grew to be a commodity
in demand. For, seated at my rickety table, I laughed as I wrote, the
fourth wall of the dismal room fading before my eyes revealing vistas
beyond.
Still, it was slow work. Humour is not an industrious maid; declines to
be bustled, will work only when she feels inclined--does not often feel
inclined; gives herself a good many unnecessary airs; if worried, packs
up and goes off, Heaven knows where! comes back when she thinks she
will: a somewhat unreliable young person. To my literary labours I found
it necessary to add journalism. I lacked Dan's magnificent assurance.
Fate never befriends the nervous. Had I burst into the editorial
sanctum, the editor most surely would have been out; if in, would have
been a man of short ways, would have seen to it that I went out quickly.
But the idea was not to be thought of; Robert Macaire himself in my one
coat would have been diffident, apologetic. I joined the ranks of the
penny-a-liners--to be literally exact, three halfpence a liners. In
company with half a dozen other shabby outsiders--some of them young men
like myself seeking to climb; others, older men who had sunk--I attended
inquests, police courts; flew after fire engines; rejoiced in street
accidents; yearned for murders. Somewhat vulture-like we lived
precariously upon the misfortunes of others. We made occasional half
crowns by providing the public with scandal, occasional crowns by
keeping our information to ourselves.
“I think, gentlemen,” would explain our spokesman in a hoarse whisper,
on returning to the table, “I think the corpse's brother-in-law is
anxious that the affair, if possible, should be kept out of the papers.”
The closeness and attention with which we would follow that particular
case, the fulness and completeness of our notes, would be quite
remarkable. Our spokesman would rise, drift carelessly away, to return
five minutes later, wiping his mouth.
“Not a very interesting case, gentlemen, I don't think. Shall we say
five shillings apiece?” Sometimes a sense of the dignity of our calling
would induce us to stand out for ten.
And here also my sense of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an
undue advantage over my competitors. Twelve good men and true had been
asked to say how a Lascar sailor had met his death. It was perfectly
clear how he had met his death. A plumber, working on the roof of a
small two-storeyed house, had slipped and fallen on him. The plumber had
escaped with a few bruises; the unfortunate sailor had been picked
up dead. Some blame attached to the plumber. His mate, an excellent
witness, told us the whole story.
“I was fixing a gas-pipe on the first floor,” said the man. “The
prisoner was on the roof.”
“We won't call him 'the prisoner,'” interrupted the coroner, “at least,
not yet. Refer to him, if you please, as the 'last witness.'”
“The last witness,” corrected himself the man. “He shouts down the
chimney to know if I was ready for him.”
“'Ready and waiting,' I says.
“'Right,' he says; 'I'm coming in through the window.'
“'Wait a bit,' I says; 'I'll go down and move the ladder for you.
“'It's all right,' he says; 'I can reach it.'
“'No, you can't,' I says. 'It's the other side of the chimney.'
“'I can get round,' he says.
“Well, before I knew what had happened, I hears him go, smack! I rushes
to the window and looks out: I see him on the pavement, sitting up like.
“'Hullo, Jim,' I says. 'Have you hurt yourself?'
“'I think I'm all right,' he says, 'as far as I can tell. But I wish
you'd come down. This bloke I've fallen on looks a bit sick.'”
The others headed their flimsy “Sad Accident,” a title truthful but not
alluring. I altered mine to “Plumber in a Hurry--Fatal Result.” Saying
as little as possible about the unfortunate sailor, I called the
attention of plumbers generally to the coroner's very just remarks upon
the folly of undue haste; pointed out to them, as a body, the trouble
that would arise if somehow they could not cure themselves of this
tendency to rush through their work without a moment's loss of time.
It established for me a useful reputation. The sub-editor of one evening
paper condescended so far as to come out in his shirt-sleeves and shake
hands with me.
“That's the sort of thing we want,” he told me; “a light touch, a bit of
humour.”
I snatched fun from fires (I sincerely trust the insurance premiums were
not overdue); culled quaintness from street rows; extracted merriment
from catastrophes the most painful, and prospered.
Though often within a stone's throw of the street, I unremittingly
avoided the old house at Poplar. I was suffering inconvenience at this
period by reason of finding myself two distinct individuals, contending
with each other. My object was to encourage the new Paul--the sensible,
practical, pushful Paul, whose career began to look promising; to
drive away from interfering with me his strangely unlike twin--the old
childish Paul of the sad, far-seeing eyes. Sometimes out of the cracked
looking-glass his wistful, yearning face would plead to me; but I would
sternly shake my head. I knew well his cunning. Had I let him have his
way, he would have led me through the maze of streets he knew so well,
past the broken railings (outside which he would have left my body
standing), along the weedy pathway, through the cracked and dented door,
up the creaking staircase to the dismal little chamber where we once--he
and I together--had sat dreaming foolish dreams.
“Come,” he would whisper; “it is so near. Let us push aside the chest
of drawers very quietly, softly raise the broken sash, prop it open with
the Latin dictionary, lean our elbows on the sill, listen to the voices
of the weary city, voices calling to us from the darkness.”
But I was too wary to be caught. “Later on,” I would reply to him; “when
I have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your wheedling. Then
I will go with you, if you are still in existence, my sentimental little
friend. We will dream again the old impractical, foolish dreams--and
laugh at them.”
So he would fade away, and in his place would nod to me approvingly a
businesslike-looking, wide-awake young fellow.
But to one sentimental temptation I succumbed. My position was by
now assured; there was no longer any reason for my hiding myself. I
determined to move westward. I had not intended to soar so high, but
passing through Guildford Street one day, the creeper-covered corner
house that my father had once thought of taking recalled itself to me.
A card was in the fanlight. I knocked and made enquiries. A
bed-sitting-room upon the third floor was vacant. I remembered it well
the moment the loquacious landlady opened its door.
“This shall be your room, Paul,” said my father. So clearly his voice
sounded behind me that I turned, forgetting for the moment it was but
a memory. “You will be quiet here, and we can shut out the bed and
washstand with a screen.”
So my father had his way. It was a pleasant, sunny little room,
overlooking the gardens of the hospital. I followed my father's
suggestion, shut out the bed and washstand with a screen. And sometimes
of an evening it would amuse me to hear my father turn the handle of the
door.
“How are you getting on--all right?”
“Famously.”
Often there came back to me the words he had once used. “You must be the
practical man, Paul, and get on. Myself, I have always been somewhat of
a dreamer. I meant to do such great things in the world, and somehow I
suppose I aimed too high. I wasn't--practical.”
“But ought not one to aim high?” I had asked.
My father had fidgeted in his chair. “It is very difficult to say. It
is all so--so very ununderstandable. You aim high and you don't hit
anything--at least, it seems as if you didn't. Perhaps, after all, it
is better to aim at something low, and--and hit it. Yet it seems a
pity--one's ideals, all the best part of one--I don't know why it is.
Perhaps we do not understand.”
For some months I had been writing over my own name. One day a letter
was forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed. It
was a short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to
the wedding of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had
almost forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not
unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I
judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished
me to be witness of the fact that my desertion had not left her
disconsolate. So much gratification I felt I owed her, and accordingly,
purchasing a present as expensive as my means would permit, I made
my way on the following Thursday, clad in frock coat and light grey
trousers, to Kennington Church.
The ceremony was already in progress. Creeping on tiptoe up the aisle,
I was about to slip into an empty pew, when a hand was laid upon my
sleeve.
“We're all here,” whispered the O'Kelly; “just room for ye.”
Squeezing his hand as I passed, I sat down between the Signora and Mrs.
Peedles. Both ladies were weeping; the Signora silently, one tear at a
time clinging fondly to her pretty face as though loath to fall from
it; Mrs. Peedles copiously, with explosive gurgles, as of water from a
bottle.
“It is such a beautiful service,” murmured the Signora, pressing my hand
as I settled myself down. “I should so--so love to be married.”
“Me darling,” whispered the O'Kelly, seizing her other hand and kissing
it covertly behind his open Prayer Book, “perhaps ye will be--one day.”
The Signora through her tears smiled at him, but with a sigh shook her
head.
Mrs. Peedles, clad, so far as the dim November light enabled me to
judge, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth--nothing regal; the sort of
thing one might assume to have been Her Majesty's second best, say third
best, frock--explained that weddings always reminded her how fleeting a
thing was love.
“The poor dears!” she sobbed. “But there, there's no telling. Perhaps
they'll be happy. I'm sure I hope they may be. He looks harmless.”
Jarman, stretching out a hand to me from the other side of Mrs. Peedles,
urged me to cheer up. “Don't wear your 'eart upon your sleeve,” he
advised. “Try and smile.”
In the vestry I met old friends. The maternal Sellars, stouter than
ever, had been accommodated with a chair--at least, I assumed so, she
being in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence. She
greeted me with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after
my health with pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that,
until the explanation broke upon me, somewhat puzzled me.
Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much
impressed, I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good
fortune. He expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me,
shook me heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.
“Won't be my fault if we're not,” he added. “Come and see us whenever
you like.” He repeated this three times. I gathered the general
sentiment to be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of
generosity.
Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received
my salute to a subdued murmur of applause. She looked to my eyes
handsomer than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing
less exacting. She also trusted she might always regard me as a friend.
I replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour; whereupon she
kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother, shed some tears,
explaining the reason to be that everybody was so good to her.
Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of enormous
white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register, whispering
to me sympathetically: “Better luck next time, old cock.”
The fat young lady--or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter,
I cannot say for certain--who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I
assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her
opinion, I was worth all the others put together.
“And so I told her,” added the fat young lady--or the lean one grown
stouter, “a dozen times if I told her once. But there!”
I murmured my obligations.
Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of
his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.
“You take my tip,” advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, “and keep
out of it.”
“You speak from experience?” I suggested.
“I'm as fond of a joke,” said the watery-eyed Joseph, “as any man. But
when it comes to buckets of water--”
A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered
for eleven o'clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph's
revelations.
“See you again, perhaps,” he murmured, and pushed past me.
What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold
col-la-shon had been arranged for at a restaurant near by. I walked
there in company with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I particularly
desired their companionship, but because Uncle Gutton, seizing me by the
arm, left me no alternative.
“Now then, young man,” commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously
so soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the
others, “if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away. I shan't mind,
and maybe it'll do you good.”
I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.
“Oh, all right,” returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed. “If
you're willing to forgive and forget, so am I. I never liked you, as
I daresay you saw, and so I told Rosie. 'He may be cleverer than he
looks,' I says, 'or he may be a bigger fool than I think him, though
that's hardly likely. You take my advice and get a full-grown article,
then you'll know what you're doing.'”
I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.
“I'm glad you think so,” he returned, somewhat puzzled; “though if you
wanted to call me names I shouldn't have blamed you. Anyhow, you've took
it like a sensible chap. You've got over it, as I always told her you
would. Young men out of story-books don't die of broken hearts, even
if for a month or two they do feel like standing on their head in the
water-butt.”
“Why, I was in love myself three times,” explained Uncle Gutton, “before
I married the old woman.”
Aunt Gutton sighed and said she was afraid gentlemen didn't feel these
things as much as they ought to.
“They've got their living to earn,” retorted Uncle Gutton.
I agreed with Uncle Gutton that life could not be wasted in vain regret.
“As for the rest,” admitted Uncle Gutton, handsomely, “I was wrong.
You've turned out better than I expected you would.”
I thanked him for his improved opinion, and as we entered the restaurant
we shook hands.
Minikin we found there waiting for us. He explained that having been
able to obtain only limited leave of absence from business, he had
concluded the time would be better employed at the restaurant than at
the church. Others were there also with whom I was unacquainted, young
sparks, admirers, I presume, of the Lady 'Ortensia in her professional
capacity, fellow-clerks of Mr. Clapper, who was something in the City.
Altogether we must have numbered a score.
Breakfast was laid in a large room on the first floor. The wedding
presents stood displayed upon a side-table. My own, with my card
attached, had not been seen by Mrs. Clapper till that moment. She and
her mother lingered, examining it.
“Real silver!” I heard the maternal Sellars whisper, “Must have paid a
ten pound note for it.”
“I hope you'll find it useful,” I said.
The maternal Sellars, drifting away, joined the others gathered together
at the opposite end of the room.
“I suppose you think I set my cap at you merely because you were a
gentleman,” said the Lady 'Ortensia.
“Don't let's talk about it,” I answered. “We were both foolish.”
“I don't want you to think it was merely that,” continued the Lady
'Ortensia. “I did like you. And I wouldn't have disgraced you--at least,
I'd have tried not to. We women are quick to learn. You never gave me
time.”
“Believe me, things are much better as they are,” I said.
“I suppose so,” she answered. “I was a fool.” She glanced round; we
still had the corner to ourselves. “I told a rare pack of lies,” she
said; “I didn't seem able to help it; I was feeling sore all over. But
I have always been ashamed of myself. I'll tell them the truth, if you
like.”
I thought I saw a way of making her mind easy. “My dear girl,” I said,
“you have taken the blame upon yourself, and let me go scot-free. It was
generous of you.”
“You mean that?” she asked.
“The truth,” I answered, “would shift all the shame on to me. It was I
who broke my word, acted shabbily from beginning to end.”
“I hadn't looked at it in that light,” she replied. “Very well, I'll
hold my tongue.”
My place at breakfast was to the left of the maternal Sellars, the
Signora next to me, and the O'Kelly opposite. Uncle Gutton faced the
bride and bridegroom. The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by
flowers, so that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my ears,
embellished with the mysterious significance of the unseen oracle.
For the first quarter of an hour or so the meal proceeded almost in
silence. The maternal Sellars when not engaged in whispered argument
with the perspiring waiter, was furtively occupied in working sums upon
the table-cloth by aid of a blunt pencil. The Signora, strangely unlike
her usual self, was not in talkative mood.
“It was so kind of them to invite me,” said the Signora, speaking low.
“But I feel I ought not to have come.
“Why not?” I asked
“I'm not fit to be here,” murmured the Signora in a broken voice. “What
right have I at wedding breakfasts? Of course, for dear Willie it is
different. He has been married.”
The O'Kelly, who never when the Signora was present seemed to care much
for conversation in which she was unable to participate, took advantage
of his neighbour's being somewhat deaf to lapse into abstraction. Jarman
essayed a few witticisms of a general character, of which nobody took
any notice. The professional admirers of the Lady 'Ortensia, seated
together at a corner of the table, appeared to be enjoying a small
joke among themselves. Occasionally, one or another of them would laugh
nervously. But for the most part the only sounds to be heard were the
clatter of the knives and forks, the energetic shuffling of the waiter,
and a curious hissing noise as of escaping gas, caused by Uncle Gutton
drinking champagne.
With the cutting, or, rather, the smashing into a hundred fragments,
of the wedding cake--a work that taxed the united strength of bride
and bridegroom to the utmost--the atmosphere lost something of its
sombreness. The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of being
nearly done, commenced to simmer. The maternal Sellars, putting away
with her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced the
table with a smile.
“But it is a sad thing,” sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment,
with a shake of her huge head, “when your daughter marries, and goes
away and leaves you.”
“Damned sight sadder,” commented Uncle Gutton, “when she don't go off,
but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her.”
I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive
benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre
that lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly
girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be
Miss Gutton.
“It doesn't seem to me,” said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the
table, “that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to
be.”
“Got to know a bit about it, I expect,” sounded the small, shrill voice
of the unseen Joseph.
“To my thinking,” exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, “one of the evils
crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly
needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings.” He spoke rapidly
and with warmth. “Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man's
luxury.”
Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the
occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.
“The plain fact of the matter is,” said Jarman, “girls have gone up in
value. Time was, so I've heard, when they used to be given away with
a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays--well,
it's only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a
really first-class article.”
Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional
brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have
envied him: the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a
laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.
“Give and take,” observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper's
roar had died away; “that's what you've got to do when you're married.”
“Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don't
want--that sums it up,” came the bitter voice of the unseen.
“Oh, do be quiet, Joe,” advised the stout young lady, from which I
concluded she had once been the lean young lady. “You talk enough for a
man.”
“Can't I open my mouth?” demanded the indignant oracle.
“You look less foolish when you keep it shut,” returned the stout young
lady.
“We'll show them how to get on,” observed the Lady 'Ortensia to her
bridegroom, with a smile.
Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.
“When me and the old girl there fixed things up,” said Uncle Gutton, “we
didn't talk no nonsense, and we didn't start with no misunderstandings.
'I'm not a duke,' I says--”
“Had she been mistaking you for one?” enquired Minikin.
Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh. I
feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton's little eyes should leave his
head.
“Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool,” replied Uncle Gutton, glaring
at the unabashed Minikin, “she did not. 'I'm not a duke,' I says, and
_she_ had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic like. 'I'm not
offering you a life of luxury and ease. I'm offering you myself, just
what you see, and nothing more.'
“She took it?” asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his
bread.
“She accepted me, sir,” returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would
have awed any one but Minikin. “Can you give me any good reason for her
not doing so?”
“No need to get mad with me,” explained Minikin. “I'm not blaming the
poor woman. We all have our moments of despair.”
The unfortunate Clapper again exploded. Uncle Gutton rose to his feet.
The ready Jarman saved the situation.
“'Ear! 'ear!” cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two
knives. “Silence for Uncle Gutton! 'E's going to propose a toast. 'Ear,
'ear!”
Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into
applause.
“What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say--” began Uncle Gutton.
“Good old Uncle Gutton!” persisted the determined Jarman. “Bride and
bridegroom--long life to 'em!”
Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against Minikin
to evaporate.
“Well,” said Uncle Gutton, “if you think I'm the one to do it--”
The response was unmistakable. In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses
and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her
chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task.
Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to
assign to him the duty.
Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he
suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce
censure of the Adulteration Act. Reminded of the time by the maternal
Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with
such questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly
interested, and directed himself to the main argument. To his, Uncle
Gutton's, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity,
Mr. Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness. Uncle Gutton it
was who had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair
Rosina would come eventually to desire--a plain, simple, hard-working,
level-headed sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him: such
an one, in short, as Mr. Clapper himself--(at this Mr. Clapper expressed
approval by a lengthy laugh)--a gentleman who, so far as Uncle Gutton's
knowledge went, had but one fault: a silly habit of laughing when there
was nothing whatever to laugh at; of which, it was to be hoped, the
cares and responsibilities of married life would cure him. (To the
rest of the discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a gravity painfully
maintained.) There had been moments, Uncle Gutton was compelled to
admit, when the fair Rosina had shown inclination to make a fool of
herself--to desire in place of honest worth mere painted baubles. He
used the term in no offensive sense. Speaking for himself, what a man
wanted beyond his weekly newspaper, he, Uncle Gutton, was unable to
understand; but if there were fools in the world who wanted to read
rubbish written by other fools, then the other fools would of course
write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them. He mentioned no names, but
what he would say was: a plain man for a sensible girl, and no painted
baubles.
The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect
that if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it
was about full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring his
speech to a premature conclusion. The bride and bridegroom were hustled
into their clothes. There followed much female embracing and male
hand-shaking. The rice having been forgotten, the waiter was almost
thrown downstairs, with directions to at once procure some. There
appearing danger of his not returning in time, the resourceful Jarman
suggested cold semolina pudding as a substitute. But the idea was
discouraged by the bride. A slipper of remarkable antiquity, discovered
on the floor and regarded as a gift from Providence, was flung from the
window by brother George, with admirable aim, and alighted on the roof
of the cab. The waiter, on his return, not being able to find it, seemed
surprised.
I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora,
who were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had
not seen the O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years
before, so that we had much to tell each other. For the third time now
had the O'Kelly proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of the
lady to whom he still referred as his “dear good wife.”
“But, under the circumstances, would it not be better,” I suggested,
“for her to obtain a divorce? Then you and the Signora could marry and
there would be an end to the whole trouble.”
“From a strictly worldly point of view,” replied the O'Kelly, “it
certainly would be; but Mrs. O'Kelly”--his voice took to itself
unconsciously a tone of reverence--“is not an ordinary woman. You can
have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness. I had a letter from
her only two months ago, a few weeks after the--the last occurrence. Not
one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed against her even unto
seven times seven she would still consider it her duty to forgive me;
that the 'home' would always be there for me to return to and repent.”
A tear stood in the O'Kelly's eye. “A beautiful nature,” he commented.
“There are not many women like her.”
“Not one in a million!” added the Signora, with enthusiasm.
“Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy,” I said.
The O'Kelly spoke quite angrily. “Don't ye say a word against her! I
won't listen to it. Ye don't understand her. She never will despair of
reforming me.”
“You see, Mr. Kelver,” explained the Signora, “the whole difficulty
arises from my unfortunate profession. It is impossible for me to keep
out of dear Willie's way. If I could earn my living by any other means,
I would; but I can't. And when he sees my name upon the posters, it's
all over with him.”
“I do wish, Willie, dear,” added the Signora in tones of gentle reproof,
“that you were not quite so weak.”
“Me dear,” replied the O'Kelly, “ye don't know how attractive ye are or
ye wouldn't blame me.”
I laughed. “Why don't you be firm,” I suggested to the Signora, “send
him packing about his business?”
“I ought to,” admitted the Signora. “I always mean to, until I see him.
Then I don't seem able to say anything--not anything I ought to.”
“Ye do say it,” contradicted the O'Kelly. “Ye're an angel, only I won't
listen to ye.”
“I don't say it as if I meant it,” persisted the Signora. “It's evident
I don't.”
“I still think it a pity,” I said, “someone does not explain to Mrs.
O'Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness.”
“It is difficult to decide,” argued the Signora. “If ever you should
want to leave me--”
“Me darling!” exclaimed the O'Kelly.
“But you may,” insisted the Signora. “Something may happen to help you,
to show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you
will go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she
is.”
“She's a saint,” agreed Willie.
At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards
Fleet Street.
The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied
chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the
'Ortensia marriage, I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting
me suggested the necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything
of his friends beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he
pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the
fire, filled and lighted his pipe.
“I left you alone,” he said. “You had to go through it, your slough of
despond. It lies across every path--that leads to anywhere. Clear of
it?”
“I think so,” I replied, smiling.
“You are on the high road,” he continued. “You have only to walk
steadily. Sure you have left nothing behind you--in the slough?”
“Nothing worth bringing out of it,” I said. “Why do you ask so
seriously?”
He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.
“Don't leave him behind you,” he said; “the little boy Paul--Paul the
dreamer.”
I laughed. “Oh, he! He was only in my way.”
“Yes, here,” answered Dan. “This is not his world. He is of no use to
you here; won't help you to bread and cheese--no, nor kisses either. But
keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has
been the real Paul--the living, growing Paul; the other--the active,
worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his
fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep.”
“I have been driving him away,” I said. “He is so--so impracticable.”
Dan shook his head gravely. “It is not his world,” he repeated. “We must
eat, drink--be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is the
child. Take care of him.”
We sat in silence for a little while--for longer, perhaps, than it
seemed to us--Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied with
his own thoughts.
“You have an excellent agent,” said Dan; “retain her services as long as
you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as
regards your affairs. Women never have where they--”
He broke off to stir the fire.
“You like her?” I asked. The words sounded feeble. It is only the writer
who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often selects
by contrast.
“She is my ideal woman,” returned Dan; “true and strong and tender;
clear as crystal, pure as dawn. Like her!”
He knocked the ashes from his pipe. “We do not marry our ideals,” he
went on. “We love with our hearts, not with our souls. The woman I shall
marry”--he sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face--“she will be
some sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield's Dora. Only
I am not Doady, who always seems to me to have been somewhat of a--He
reminds me of you, Paul, a little. Dickens was right; her helplessness,
as time went on, would have bored him more and more instead of appealing
to him.”
“And the women,” I suggested, “do they marry their ideals?”
He laughed. “Ask them.”
“The difference between men and women,” he continued, “is very slight;
we exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he
is, Norah's ideal? Can't you imagine him?--But I can tell you the type
of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart.”
He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his
eye.
“A nice enough fellow--clever, perhaps, but someone--well, someone who
will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will
appeal to the mother side of her--not her ideal man, but the man for
whom nature intended her.”
“Perhaps with her help,” I said, “he may in time become her ideal.”
“There's a long road before him,” growled Dan.
It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopement
with Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old
Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance,
and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly
changed. His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a
fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked
boastingly: Had I seen the _Post_ for last Monday, the _Court Circular_
for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown
Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a
Grand Duke? What did I think of that! and such like. Was not money
master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made to acknowledge it!
But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.
“No children,” he had whispered to me across the table; “that's what I
can't understand. Nearly four years and no children! What'll be the
good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten
popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?”
It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was
the talk of the town for the next day--and the following eight. She had
heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and
see her.
“I thought you would rather hear it quietly,” said Norah, “than learn it
from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did
wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has
done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she
derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her.”
Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought
it. I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My
goddess had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself.
From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world. So
some youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the Great
Queen was but a woman.
I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years
later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a
theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had
commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the
extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon
the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me
that Madame G---- would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain I
went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table
were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her glass, a
loose shawl about her shoulders.
“Excuse my shaking hands,” she said. “This damned hole is like a
furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act.”
She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with
grease.
“D'you know my husband?” she continued. “Baron G--; Mr. Paul Kelver.”
The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man. “Delighted
to meet Mr. Kelver,” he said, speaking in excellent English. “Any friend
of my wife's is always a friend of mine.”
He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach
much importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether
he was offended or not.
“I am glad I saw you,” she continued. “Do you remember a girl called
Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.
“Yes,” I answered, “I remember her.”
“Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago.” She was rubbing paint into
her cheeks as she spoke. “She asked me if ever I saw you to give you
this. I have been carrying it about with me ever since.”
She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn
as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed
it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's
office framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my
outstretched palm.
“Quite a pretty little romance,” laughed the Baron.
“That's all,” added the woman at the glass. “She said you would
understand.”
From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never
to see again that look upon a woman's face.
“Thank you,” I said. “Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I
shall always wear it.”
Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.