IV

The phrases kept recurring to his mind after they had gone out, and as

they wandered through the lighted streets with all their strange and

variegated show, with glittering windows and glittering lamps, with the

ebb and flow of faces, the voices and the laughter, the surging crowds

about the theatre doors, the flashing hansoms and the omnibuses

lumbering heavily along to strange regions, such as Turnham Green and

Castlenau, Cricklewood and Stoke Newington--why, they were as unknown as

cities in Cathay!

It was a dim, hot night; all the great city smoked as with a mist, and a

tawny moon rose through films of cloud far in the vista of the east.

Ambrose thought with a sudden recollection that the moon, that world of

splendour, was shining in a farther land, on the coast of the wild

rocks, on the heaving sea, on the faery apple-garths in Avalon, where,

though the apples are always golden, yet the blossoms of enchantment

never fade, but hang for ever against the sky.

They were passing a half-lit street, and these dreams were broken by the

sudden clanging, rattling music of a piano-organ. For a moment they saw

the shadowy figures of the children as they flitted to and fro, dancing

odd measures in the rhythm of the tune. Then they came into a long,

narrow way with a church spire in the distance, and near the church they

passed the "church-shop"--Roman, evidently, from the subjects and the

treatment of the works of art on view. But it was strange! In the middle

of the window was a crude, glaring statue of some saint. He was in

bright red robes, sprinkled with golden stars; the blood rained down

from a wound in his forehead, and with one hand he drew the scarlet

vestment aside and pointed to the dreadful gash above his heart, and

from this, again, the bloody drops fell thick. The colours stared and

shrieked, and yet, through the bad, cheap art there seemed to shine a

rapture that was very near to beauty; the thing expressed was so great

that it had to a certain extent overcome the villainy of the expression.

They wandered vaguely, after their custom. Ambrose was silent; he was

thinking of Avalon and "Red Martyrdom" and the Frenchman's parting

salutation, of the vision in one of the old books, "the Man clothed in

a robe redder and more shining than burning fire, and his feet and his

hands and his face were of a like flame, and five angels in fiery

vesture stood about him, and at the feet of the Man the ground was

covered with a ruddy dew."

They passed under an old church tower that rose white in the moonlight

above them. The air had cleared, the mist had floated away, and now the

sky glowed violet, and the white stones of the classic spirit shone on

high. From it there came suddenly a tumult of glad sound, exultant bells

in ever-changing order, pealing out as if to honour some great victory,

so that the mirth of the street below became but a trivial restless

noise. He thought of some passage that he had read but could not

distinctly remember: a ship was coming back to its haven after a weary

and tempestuous voyage over many dreadful seas, and those on board saw

the tumult in the city as their sails were sighted; heard afar the

shouts of gladness from the rejoicing people; heard the bells from all

the spires and towers break suddenly into triumphant chorus, sounding

high above the washing of the waves.

Ambrose roused himself from his dreams. They had been walking in a

circle and had returned almost to the street of the Chateau, though,

their knowledge of the district being of an unscientific character,

they were under the impression that they were a mile or so away from

that particular point. As it happened, they had not entered this street

before, and they were charmed at the sudden appearance of stained glass

lighted up from within. The colour was rich and good; there were

flourished scrolls and grotesques in the Renaissance manner, many

emblazoned shields in ruby and gold and azure; and the centre-piece

showed the Court of the Beer King--a jovial and venerable figure

attended by a host of dwarfs and kobolds, all holding on high enormous

mugs of beer. They went in boldly and were glad. It was the famous

"Three Kings" in its golden and unreformed days, but this they knew not.

The room was of moderate size, very low, with great dark beams in the

white ceiling. White were the walls; on the plaster, black-letter texts

with vermilion initials praised the drinker's art, and more kobolds, in

black and red, loomed oddly in unsuspected corners. The lighting,

presumably, was gas, but all that was visible were great antique

lanterns depending from iron hooks, and through their dull green glass

only a dim radiance fell upon the heavy oak tables and the drinkers.

From the middle beam an enormous bouquet of fresh hops hung on high;

there was a subdued murmur of talk, and now and then the clatter of the

lid of a mug, as fresh beer was ordered. In one corner there was

a kind of bar; behind it a couple of grim women--the kobolds

apparently--performed their office; and above, on a sort of rack, hung

mugs and tankards of all sizes and of all fantasies. There were plain

mugs of creamy earthenware, mugs gaudily and oddly painted with

garlanded goats, with hunting scenes, with towering castles, with

flaming posies of flowers. Then some friend of the drunken, some sage

who had pried curiously into the secrets of thirst, had made a series of

wonders in glass, so shining and crystalline that to behold them was as

if one looked into a well, for every glitter of the facets gave promise

of satisfaction. There were the mugs, capacious and very deep, crowned

for the most part not with mere plain lids of common use and make, but

with tall spires in pewter, richly ornamented, evident survivals from

the Middle Ages. Ambrose's eyes glistened; the place was altogether as

he would have designed it. Nelly, too, was glad to sit down, for they

had walked longer than usual. She was refreshed by a glass of some cool

drink with a borage flower and a cherry floating in it, and Ambrose

ordered a mug of beer.

It is not known how many of these _krugs_ he emptied. It was, as has

been noted, a sultry night, and the streets were dusty, and that glass

of Benedictine after dinner rather evokes than dismisses the demon of

thirst. Still, Munich beer is no hot and rebellious drink, so the causes

of what followed must probably be sought for in other springs. Ambrose

took a deep draught, gazed upward to the ceiling, and ordered another

mug of beer for himself and some more of the cool and delicate and

flowery beverage for Nelly. When the drink was set upon the board, he

thus began, without title or preface:

"You must know, Nelly dear," he said, "that the marriage of Panurge,

which fell out in due time (according to the oracle and advice of the

Holy Bottle), was by no means a fortunate one. For, against all the

counsel of Pantagruel and of Friar John, and indeed of all his friends,

Panurge married in a fit of spleen and obstinacy the crooked and

squinting daughter of the little old man who sold green sauce in the Rue

Quincangrogne at Tours--you will see the very place in a few days, and

then you will understand everything. You do not understand that? My

child, that is impiety, since it accuses the Zeitgest, who is certainly

the only god that ever existed, as you will see more fully demonstrated

in Huxley and Spencer and all the leading articles in all the leading

newspapers. _Quod erat demonstrandum._ To be still more precise: You

must know that when I am dead, and a very great man indeed, many

thousands of people will come from all the quarters of the globe--not

forgetting the United States--to Lupton. They will come and stare very

hard at the Old Grange, which will have an inscription about me on the

wall; they will spend hours in High School; they will walk all round

Playing Fields; they will cut little bits off 'brooks' and 'quarries.'

Then they will view the Sulphuric Acid works, the Chemical Manure

factory and the Free Library, and whatever other stink-pots and

cesspools Lupton town may contain; they will finally enjoy the view of

the Midland Railway Goods Station. Then they will say: '_Now_ we

understand him; _now_ one sees how he got all his inspiration in that

lovely old school and the wonderful English country-side.' So you see

that when I show you the Rue Quincangrogne you will perfectly understand

this history. Let us drink; the world shall never be drowned again, so

have no fear.

"Well, the fact remains that Panurge, having married this hideous wench

aforesaid, was excessively unhappy. It was in vain that he argued with

his wife in all known languages and in some that are unknown, for, as

she said, she only knew two languages, the one of Touraine and the other

of the Stick, and this second she taught Panurge _per modum

passionis_--that is by beating him, and this so thoroughly that poor

Pilgarlic was sore from head to foot. He was a worthy little fellow,

but the greatest coward that ever breathed. Believe me, illustrious

drinkers and most precious.... Nelly, never was man so wretched as this

Panurge since Paradise fell from Adam. This is the true doctrine; I

heard it when I was at Eleusis. You enquire what was the matter? Why, in

the first place, this vile wretch whom they all called--so much did they

hate her--La Vie Mortale, or Deadly Life, this vile wretch, I say: what

do you think that she did when the last note of the fiddles had sounded

and the wedding guests had gone off to the 'Three Lampreys' to kill a

certain worm--the which worm is most certainly immortal, since it is not

dead yet! Well, then, what did Madame Panurge? Nothing but this: She

robbed her excellent and devoted husband of all that he had. Doubtless

you remember how, in the old days, Panurge had played ducks and drakes

with the money that Pantagruel had given him, so that he borrowed on his

corn while it was still in the ear, and before it was sown, if we

enquire a little more closely. In truth, the good little man never had a

penny to bless himself withal, for the which cause Pantagruel loved him

all the more dearly. So that when the Dive Bouteille gave its oracle,

and Panurge chose his spouse, Pantagruel showed how preciously he

esteemed a hearty spender by giving him such a treasure that the

goldsmiths who live under the bell of St. Gatien still talk of it before

they dine, because by doing so their mouths water, and these salivary

secretions are of high benefit to the digestion: read on this, Galen. If

you would know how great and glorious this treasure was, you must go to

the Library of the Archeveche at Tours, where they will show you a vast

volume bound in pigskin, the name of which I have forgotten. But this

book is nothing else than the list of all the wonders and glories of

Pantagruel's wedding present to Panurge; it contains surprising things,

I can tell you, for, in good coin of the realm alone, never was gift

that might compare with it; and besides the common money there were

ancient pieces, the very names of which are now incomprehensible, and

incomprehensible they will remain till the coming of the Coqcigrues.

There was, for instance, a great gold Sol, a world in itself, as some

said truly, and I know not how many myriad myriad of Etoiles, all of the

finest silver that was ever minted, and Anges-Gardiens, which the

learned think must have been first coined at Angers, though others will

have it that they were the same as our Angels; and, as for Roses de

Paradis and Couronnes Immortelles, I believe he had as many of them as

ever he would. Beauties and joys he was to keep for pocket-money; small

change is sometimes great gain. And, as I say, no sooner had Panurge

married that accursed daughter of the Rue Quincangrogne than she robbed

him of everything, down to the last brass farthing. The fact is that the

woman was a witch; she was also something else which I leave out for the

present. But, if you will believe me, she cast such a spell upon Panurge

that he thought himself an absolute beggar. Thus he would look at his

Sol d'Or and say: 'What is the use of that? It is only a great bright

lump: I can see it every day.' Then when they said, 'But how about those

Anges-Gardiens?' he would reply, 'Where are they? Have you seen them?

_I_ never see them. Show them to me,' and so with all else; and all the

while that villain of a woman beat, thumped and belaboured him so that

the tears were always in his eyes, and they say you could hear him

howling all over the world. Everybody said that he had made a pretty

mess of it, and would come to a bad end.

"Luckily for him, this ... witch of a wife of his would sometimes doze

off for a few minutes, and then he had a little peace, and he would

wonder what had become of all the gay girls and gracious ladies that he

had known in old times--for he had played the devil with the women in

his day and could have taught Ovid lessons in _arte amoris_. Now, of

course, it was as much as his life was worth to mention the very name

of one of these ladies, and as for any little sly visits, stolen

endearments, hidden embraces, or any small matters of that kind, it was

_good-bye, I shall see you next Nevermas_. Nor was this all, but worse

remains behind; and it is my belief that it is the thought of what I am

going to tell you that makes the wind wail and cry of winter nights, and

the clouds weep, and the sky look black; for in truth it is the greatest

sorrow that ever was since the beginning of the world. I must out with

it quick, or I shall never have done: in plain English, and as true as I

sit here drinking good ale, not one drop or minim or drachm or

pennyweight of drink had Panurge tasted since the day of his wedding! He

had implored mercy, he had told her how he had served Gargantua and

Pantagruel and had got into the habit of drinking in his sleep, and his

wife had merely advised him to go to the devil--she was not going to let

him so much as look at the nasty stuff. '"Touch not, taste not, smell

not," is my motto,' said she. She gave him a blue ribbon, which she said

would make up for it. 'What do you want with Drink?' said she. 'Go and

do business instead, it's much better for you.'

"Sad, then, and sorry enough was the estate of poor Panurge. At last, so

wretched did he become, that he took advantage of one of his wife's

dozes and stole away to the good Pantagruel, and told him the whole

story--and a very bad one it was--so that the tears rolled down

Pantagruel's cheeks from sheer grief, and each teardrop contained

exactly one hundred and eighteen gallons of aqueous fluid, according to

the calculations of the best geometers. The great man saw that the case

was a desperate one, and Heaven knew, he said, whether it could be

mended or not; but certain it was that a business such as this could not

be settled in a hurry, since it was not like a game at shove-ha'penny to

be got over between two gallons of wine. He therefore counselled Panurge

to have patience and bear with his wife for a few thousand years, and in

the meantime they would see what could be done. But, lest his patience

should wear out, he gave him an odd drug or medicine, prepared by the

great artist of the Mountains of Cathay, and this he was to drop into

his wife's glass--for though he might have no drink, she was drunk three

times a day, and she would sleep all the longer, and leave him awhile in

peace. This Panurge very faithfully performed, and got a little rest now

and again, and they say that while that devil of a woman snored and

snorted he was able, by odd chances once or twice, to get hold of a drop

of the right stuff--good old Stingo from the big barrel--which he lapped

up as eagerly as a kitten laps cream. Others there be who declare that

once or twice he got about his sad old tricks, while his ugly wife was

sleeping in the sun; the women on the Maille make no secret of their

opinion that his old mistress, Madame Sophia, was seen stealing in and

out of the house as slyly as you please, and God knows what goes on when

the door is shut. But the Tourainians were always sad gossips, and one

must not believe all that one hears. I leave out the flat

scandal-mongers who are bold enough to declare that he kept one mistress

at Jerusalem, another at Eleusis, another in Egypt and about as many as

are contained in the seraglio of the Grand Turk, scattered up and down

in the towns and villages of Asia; but I do believe there was some

kissing in dark corners, and a curtain hung across one room in the house

could tell odd tales. Nevertheless, La Vie Mortale (a pest on her!) was

more often awake than asleep, and when she was awake Panurge's case was

worse than ever. For, you see, the woman was no piece of a fool, and she

saw sure enough that something was going on. The Stingo in the barrel

was lower than of rights, and more than once she had caught her husband

looking almost happy, at which she beat the house about his ears. Then,

another time, Madame Sophia dropped her ring, and again this sweet lady

came one morning so strongly perfumed that she scented the whole place,

and when La Vie woke up it smelt like a church. There was fine work

then, I promise you; the people heard the bangs and curses and shrieks

and groans as far as Amboise on the one side and Luynes on the other;

and that year the Loire rose ten feet higher than the banks on account

of Panurge's tears. As a punishment, she made him go and be industrial,

and he built ten thousand stink-pot factories with twenty thousand

chimneys, and all the leaves and trees and green grass and flowers in

the world were blackened and died, and all the waters were poisoned so

that there were no perch in the Loire, and salmon fetched forty sols the

pound at Chinon market. As for the men and women, they became yellow

apes and listened to a codger named Calvin, who told them they would all

be damned eternally (except himself and his friends), and they found his

doctrine very comforting, and probable too, since they had the sense to

know that they were more than half damned already. I don't know whether

Panurge's fate was worse on this occasion or on another when his wife

found a book in his writing, full from end to end of poetry; some of it

about the wonderful treasure that Pantagruel had given him, which he was

supposed to have forgotten. Some of it verses to those old

light-o'-loves of his, with a whole epic in praise of his

mistress-in-chief, Sophia. Then, indeed, there was the very deuce to

pay; it was bread and water, stripes and torment, all day long, and La

Vie swore a great oath that if he ever did it again he should be sent to

spend the rest of his life in Manchester, whereupon he fell into a swoon

from horrid fright and lay like a log, so that everybody thought he was

dead.

"All this while the great Pantagruel was not idle. Perceiving how

desperate the matter was, he summoned the Thousand and First Great

OEcumenical Council of all the sages of the wide world, and when the

fathers had come, and had heard High Mass at St. Gatien's, the session

was opened in a pavilion in the meadows by the Loire just under the

Lanterne of Roche Corbon, whence this Council is always styled the great

and holy Council of the Lantern. If you want to know where the place is

you can do so very easily, for there is a choice tavern on the spot

where the pavilion stood, and there you may have _malelotte_ and

_friture_ and amber wine of Vouvray, better than in any tavern in

Touraine. As for the history of the acts of this great Council, it is

still a-writing, and so far only two thousand volumes in elephant folio

have been printed _sub signo Lucernae cum permissu superiorum_. However,

as it is necessary to be brief, it may be said that the holy fathers of

the Lantern, after having heard the whole case as it was exposed to

them by the great clerks of Pantagruel, having digested all the

arguments, looked into the precedents, applied themselves to the

doctrine, explored the hidden wisdom, consulted the Canons, searched the

Scriptures, divided the dogma, distinguished the distinctions and

answered the questions, resolved with one voice that there was no help

in the world for Panurge, save only this: he must forthwith achieve the

most high, noble and glorious quest of the Sangraal, for no other way

was there under heaven by which he might rid himself of that pestilent

wife of his, La Vie Mortale.

"And on some other occasion," said Ambrose, "you may hear of the last

voyage of Panurge to the Glassy Isle of the Holy Graal, of the

incredible adventures that he achieved, of the dread perils through

which he passed, of the great wonders and marvels and compassions of the

way, of the manner in which he received the title Plentyn y Tonau, which

signifies 'Child of the Waterfloods,' and how at last he gloriously

attained the vision of the Sangraal, and was most happily translated out

of the power of La Vie Mortale."

"And where is he now?" said Nelly, who had found the tale interesting

but obscure.

"It is not precisely known--opinions vary. But there are two odd things:

one is that he is exactly like that man in the red dress whose statue

we saw in the shop window to-night; and the other is that from that day

to this he has never been sober for a single minute.

"_Calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est!_"

V

Ambrose took a great draught from the mug and emptied it, and forthwith

rapped the lid for a fresh supply. Nelly was somewhat nervous; she was

afraid he might begin to sing, for there were extravagances in the

history of Panurge which seemed to her to be of alcoholic source.

However, he did not sing; he lapsed into silence, gazing at the dark

beams, the hanging hops, the bright array of the tankards and the groups

of drinkers dotted about the room. At a neighbouring table two Germans

were making a hearty meal, chumping the meat and smacking their lips in

a kind of heavy ecstasy. He had but little German, but he caught scraps

of the conversation.

One man said:

"Heavenly swine cutlets!"

And the other answered:

"Glorious eating!"

"Nelly," said Ambrose, "I have a great inspiration!"

She trembled visibly.

"Yes; I have talked so much that I am hungry. We will have some supper."

They looked over the list of strange eatables and, with the waiter's

help, decided on Leberwurst and potato-salad as light and harmless. With

this they ate crescent loaves, sprinkled with caraway seeds: there was

more Munich Lion-Brew and more flowery drink, with black coffee, a

_fine_ and a Maraschino to end all. For Nelly the kobolds began to

perform a grotesque and mystic dance in the shadows, the glass tankards

on the rack glittered strangely, the white walls with the red and black

texts retreated into vast distances, and the bouquet of hops seemed

suspended from a remote star. As for Ambrose, he was certainly not

_ebrius_ according to the Baron's definition; he was hardly _ebriolus_;

but he was sensible, let us say, of a certain quickening of the fancy,

of a more vivid and poignant enjoyment of the whole situation, of the

unutterable gaiety of this mad escape from the conventions of Lupton.

"It was a Thursday night," said Ambrose in the after years, "and we were

thinking of starting for Touraine either the next morning or on Saturday

at latest. It will always be bright in my mind, that picture--the low

room with the oak beams, the glittering tankards, the hops hanging from

the ceiling, and Nelly sitting before me sipping the scented drink from

a green glass. It was the last night of gaiety, and even then gaiety was

mixed with odd patterns--the Frenchman's talk about martyrdom, and the

statue of the saint pointing to the marks of his passion, standing in

that dyed vesture with his rapt, exultant face; and then the song of

final triumph and deliverance that rang out on the chiming bells from

the white spire. I think the contrast of this solemn undertone made my

heart all the lighter; I was in that odd state in which one delights to

know that one is not being understood--so I told poor Nelly 'the story

of Panurge's marriage to La Vie Mortale; I am sure she thought I was

drunk!

"We went home in a hansom, and agreed that we would have just one

cigarette and then go to bed. It was settled that we would catch the

night boat to Dieppe on the next day, and we both laughed with joy at

the thought of the adventure. And then--I don't know how it was--Nelly

began to tell me all about herself. She had never said a word before; I

had never asked her--I never ask anybody about their past lives. What

does it matter? You know a certain class of plot--novelists are rather

fond of using it--in which the hero's happiness is blasted because he

finds out that the life of his wife or his sweetheart has not always

been spotless as the snow. Why should it be spotless as the snow? What

is the hero that he should be dowered with the love of virgins of

Paradise? I call it cant--all that--and I hate it; I hope Angel Clare

was eventually entrapped by a young person from Piccadilly Circus--she

would probably be much too good for him! So, you see, I was hardly

likely to have put any very searching questions to Nelly; we had other

things to talk about.

"But this night I suppose she was a bit excited. It had been a wild and

wonderful week. The transition from that sewage-pot in the Midlands to

the Abbey of Theleme was enough to turn any head; we had laughed till we

had grown dizzy. The worst of that miserable school discipline is is

that it makes one take an insane and quite disproportionate enjoyment in

little things, in the merest trifles which ought really to be accepted

as a matter of course. I assure you that every minute that I spent in

bed after seven o'clock was to me a grain of Paradise, a moment of

delight. Of course, it's ridiculous; let a man get up early or get up

late, as he likes or as he finds best--and say no more about it. But at

that wretched Lupton early rising was part of the infernal blether and

blatter of the place, that made life there like a long dinner in which

every dish has the same sauce. It may be a good sauce enough; but one

is sick of the taste of it. According to our Bonzes there, getting up

early on a winter's day was a high virtue which acquired merit. I

believe I should have liked a hard chair to sit in of my own free will,

if one of our old fools--Palmer--had not always been gabbling about the

horrid luxury of some boys who had arm-chairs in their studies. Unless

you were doing something or other to make yourself very uncomfortable,

he used to say you were like the 'later Romans.' I am sure he believed

that those lunatics who bathe in the Serpentine on Christmas Day would

go straight to heaven!

"And there you are. I would awake at seven o'clock from persistent

habit, and laugh as I realised that I was in Little Russell Row and not

at the Old Grange. Then I would doze off again and wake up at

intervals--eight, nine, ten--and chuckle to myself with ever-increasing

enjoyment. It was just the same with smoking. I don't suppose I should

have touched a cigarette for years if smoking had not been one of the

mortal sins in our Bedlam Decalogue. I don't know whether smoking is bad

for boys or not; I should think not, as I believe the Dutch--who are

sturdy fellows--begin to puff fat cigars at the age of six or

thereabouts; but I do know that those pompous old boobies and blockheads

and leather-skulls have discovered exactly the best way to make a boy

think that a packet of Rosebuds represents the quintessence of frantic

delight.

"Well, you see how it was, how Little Russell Row--the dingy, the

stuffy, the dark retreat of old Bloomsbury--became the abode of

miraculous joys, a bright portion of fairyland. Ah! it was a strong new

wine that we tasted, and it went to our heads, and not much wonder. It

all rose to its height on that Thursday night when we went to the 'Three

Kings' and sat beneath the hop bush, drinking Lion-Brew and flowery

drink as I talked extravagances concerning Panurge. It was time for the

curtain to be rung down on our comedy.

"The one cigarette had become three or four when Nelly began to tell me

her history; the wine and the rejoicing had got into her head also. She

described the first things that she remembered: a little hut among wild

hills and stony fields in the west of Ireland, and the great sea roaring

on the shore but a mile away, and the wind and the rain always driving

from across the waves. She spoke of the place as if she loved it, though

her father and mother were as poor as they could be, and little was

there to eat even in the old cabin. She remembered Mass in the little

chapel, an old, old place hidden way in the most desolate part of the

country, small and dark and bare enough except for the candles on the

altar and a bright statue or two. St. Kieran's cell, they called it, and

it was supposed that the Mass had never ceased to be said there even in

the blackest days of persecution. Quite well she remembered the old

priest and his vestments, and the gestures that he used, and how they

all bowed down when the bell rang; she could imitate his quavering voice

saying the Latin. Her own father, she said, was a learned man in his

way, though it was not the English way. He could not read common print,

or write; he knew nothing about printed books, but he could say a lot of

the old Irish songs and stories by heart, and he had sticks on which he

wrote poems on all sorts of things, cutting notches on the wood in

Oghams, as the priest called them; and he could tell many wonderful

tales of the saints and the people. It was a happy life altogether; they

were as poor as poor could be, and praised God and wanted for nothing.

Then her mother went into a decline and died, and her father never

lifted up his head again, and she was left an orphan when she was nine

years old. The priest had written to an aunt who lived in England, and

so she found herself one black day standing on the platform of the

station in a horrible little manufacturing village in Lancashire;

everything was black--the sky and the earth, and the houses and the

people; and the sound of their rough, harsh voices made her sick. And

the aunt had married an Independent and turned Protestant, so she was

black, too, Nelly thought. She was wretched for a long time, she said.

The aunt was kind enough to her, but the place and the people were so

awful. Mr. Deakin, the husband, said he couldn't encourage Popery in his

house, so she had to go to the meeting-house on Sunday and listen to the

nonsense they called 'religion'--all long sermons with horrible

shrieking hymns. By degrees she forgot her old prayers, and she was

taken to the Dissenters' Sunday School, where they learned texts and

heard about King Solomon's Temple, and Jonadab the son of Rechab, and

Jezebel, and the Judges. They seemed to think a good deal of her at the

school; she had several prizes for Bible knowledge.

"She was sixteen when she first went out to service. She was glad to get

away--nothing could be worse than Farnworth, and it might be better. And

then there were tales to tell! I never have had a clearer light thrown

on the curious and disgusting manners of the lower middle-class in

England--the class that prides itself especially on its respectability,

above all, on what it calls 'Morality'--by which it means the observance

of one particular commandment. You know the class I mean: the brigade of

the shining hat on Sunday, of the neat little villa with a well-kept

plot in front, of the consecrated drawing-room, of the big Bible well in

evidence. It is more often Chapel than Church, this tribe, but it draws

from both sources. It is above all things shiny--not only the Sunday

hat, but the furniture, the linoleum, the hair and the very flesh which

pertain to these people have an unwholesome polish on them; and they

prefer their plants and shrubs to be as glossy as possible--this _gens

lubrica_.

"To these tents poor Nelly went as a slave; she dwelt from henceforth on

the genteel outskirts of more or less prosperous manufacturing towns,

and she soon profoundly regretted the frank grime and hideousness of

Farnworth. A hedgehog is a rough and prickly fellow--better his prickles

than the reptile's poisonous slime. The tales that yet await the

novelist who has courage (what is his name, by the way?), who has the

insight to see behind those Venetian blinds and white curtains, who has

the word that can give him entrance through the polished door by the

encaustic porch! What plots, what pictures, what characters are ready

for his cunning hand, what splendid matter lies unknown, useless, and

indeed offensive, which, in the artist's crucible, would be transmuted

into golden and exquisite perfection. Do you know that I can never

penetrate into the regions where these people dwell without a thrill of

wonder and a great desire that I might be called to execute the

masterpieces I have hinted at? Do you remember how Zola, viewing these

worlds from the train when he visited London, groaned because he had no

English, because he had no key to open the treasure-house before his

eyes? He, of course, who was a great diviner, saw the infinite variety

of romance that was concealed beneath those myriads of snug commonplace

roofs: I wish he could have observed in English and recorded in French.

He was a brave man, his defence of Dreyfus shows that; but, supposing

the capacity, I do not think he was brave enough to tell the London

suburbs the truth about themselves in their own tongue.

"Yes, I walk down these long ways on Sunday afternoons, when they are at

their best. Sometimes, if you choose the right hour, you may look into

one 'breakfast room'--an apartment half sunken in the earth--after

another, and see in each one the table laid for tea, showing the

charming order and uniformity that prevail. Tea in the drawing-room

would be, I suppose, a desecration. I wonder what would happen if some

chance guest were to refuse tea and to ask for a glass of beer, or even

a brandy and soda? I suppose the central lake that lies many hundreds of

feet beneath London would rise up, and the sinful town would be

overwhelmed. Yes: consider these houses well; how demure, how

well-ordered, how shining, as I have said; and then think of what they

conceal.

"Generally speaking, you know, 'morality' (in the English suburban

sense) has been a tolerably equal matter. I shouldn't imagine that those

'later Romans' that poor old Palmer was always bothering about were much

better or worse than the earlier Babylonians; and London as a whole is

very much the same thing in this respect as Pekin as a whole. Modern

Berlin and sixteenth-century Venice might compete on equal terms--save

that Venice, I am sure, was very picturesque, and Berlin, I have no

doubt is very piggy. The fact is, of course (to use a simple analogy),

man, by his nature, is always hungry, and, that being the case, he will

sometimes eat too much dinner and sometimes he will get his dinner in

odd ways, and sometimes he will help himself to more or less unlawful

snacks before breakfast and after supper. There it is, and there is an

end of it. But suppose a society in which the fact of hunger was

officially denied, in which the faintest hint at an empty stomach was

considered the rankest, most abominable indecency, the most detestable

offence against the most sacred religious feelings? Suppose the child

severely reprimanded at the mere mention of bread and butter, whipped

and shut up in a dark room for the offence of reading a recipe for

making plum pudding; suppose, I say, a whole society organised on the

strict official understanding that no decent person ever is or has been

or can be conscious of the physical want of food; that breakfast, lunch,

tea, dinner and supper are orgies only used by the most wicked and

degraded wretches, destined to an awful and eternal doom? In such a

world, I think, you would discover some very striking irregularities in

diet. Facts are known to be stubborn things, but if their very existence

is denied they become ferocious and terrible things. Coventry Patmore

was angry, and with reason, when he heard that even at the Vatican the

statues had received the order of the fig-leaf.

"Nelly went among these Manichees. She had been to the world beyond the

Venetians, the white muslin curtains and the india-rubber plant, and she

told me her report. They talk about the morality of the theatre, these

swine! In the theatre--if there is anything of the kind--it is a case of

a wastrel and a wanton who meet and part on perfectly equal terms,

without deceit or false pretences. It is not a case of master creeping

into a young girl's room at dead of night, with a Bible under his

arm--the said Bible being used with grotesque skill to show that

'master's' wishes must be at once complied with under pain of severe

punishment, not only in this world, but in the world to come. Every

Sunday, you must remember, the girl has seen 'master' perhaps crouching

devoutly in his pew, perhaps in the part of sidesman or even

church-warden, more probably supplementing the gifts of the pastor at

some nightmarish meeting-house. 'Master' offers prayer with wonderful

fervour; he speaks to the Lord as man to man; in the emotional passages

his voice gets husky, and everybody says how good he is. He is a deacon,

a guardian of the poor (gracious title!), a builder and an earnest

supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society: in a word, he is of

the great middle-class, the backbone of England and of the Protestant

Religion. He subscribes to the excellent society which prosecutes

booksellers for selling the Decameron of Boccaccio. He has from ten to

fifteen children, all of whom were found by Mamma in the garden.

"'Mr. King was a horrible man,' said Nelly, describing her first place;

'he had a great greasy pale face with red whiskers, and a shiny bald

head; he was fat, too, and when he smiled it made one feel sick. Soon

after I got the place he came into the kitchen. Missus was away for

three days, and the children were all in bed. He sat down by the hearth

and asked whether I was saved, and did I love the Lord as I ought to,

and if I ever had any bad thoughts about young men? Then he opened the

Bible and read me nasty things from the Old Testament, and asked if I

understood what it meant. I said I didn't know, and he said we must

approach the Lord in prayer so that we might have grace to search the

Scriptures together. I had to kneel down close to him, and he put his

arm round my waist and began to pray, as he called it; and when we got

up he took me on his knee and said he felt to me as if I were his own

daughter.'

"There, that is enough of Mr. King. You can imagine what the poor child

had to go through time after time. On prayer-meeting nights she used to

put the chest of drawers against her bedroom door: there would be

gentle, cautious pushes, and then a soft voice murmuring: 'My child, why

is your heart so bad and stubborn?' I think we can conceive the general

character of 'master' from these examples. 'Missus,' of course, requires

a treatise to herself; her more frequent failings are child-torture,

secret drinking and low amours with oily commercial travellers.

"Yes, it is a hideous world enough, isn't it? And isn't it a pleasant

thought that you and I practically live under the government of these

people? 'Master' is the 'man in the street,' the 'hard-headed,

practical man of the world,' 'the descendant of the sturdy Puritans,'

whose judgment is final on all questions from Poetics to Liturgiology.

We hardly think that this picture will commend itself to the 'man in the

street'--a course of action that is calculated to alienate practical

men. Pleasant, isn't it? _Suburbia locuta est: causa finita est._

"I suppose that, by nature, these people would not be so very much more

depraved than the ordinary African black fellow. Their essential

hideousness comes, I take it, from their essential and most abominable

hypocrisy. You know how they are always prating about Bible

Teaching--the 'simple morality of the Gospel,' and all that nauseous

stuff? And what would be the verdict, in this suburban world, on a man

who took no thought for the morrow, who regulated his life by the

example of the lilies, who scoffed at the idea of saving money? You know

perfectly well that his relations would have him declared a lunatic.

_There_ is the villainy. If you are continually professing an idolatrous

and unctuous devotion to a body of teaching which you are also

persistently and perpetually disregarding and disobeying in its

plainest, most simple, most elementary injunctions, well, you will soon

interest anglers in search of bait.

"Yes, such is the world behind the india-rubber plant into which Nelly

entered. I believe she repelled the advances of 'master' with success.

Her final undoing came from a different quarter, and I am afraid that

drugs, not Biblical cajoleries, were the instruments used. She cried

bitterly when she spoke of this event, but she said, too; 'I will kill

him for it!' It was an ugly story, and a sad one, alas!--the saddest

tale I ever listened to. Think of it: to come from that old cabin on the

wild, bare hills, from the sound of the great sea, from the pure breath

of the waves and the wet salt wind, to the stenches and the poisons of

our 'industrial centres.' She came from parents who had nothing and

possessed all things, to our civilisation which has everything, and lies

on the dung-heap that it has made at the very gates of Heaven--destitute

of all true treasures, full of sores and vermin and corruption. She was

nurtured on the wonderful old legends of the saints and the fairies; she

had listened to the songs that her father made and cut in Oghams; and we

gave her the penny novelette and the works of Madame Chose. She had

knelt before the altar, adoring the most holy sacrifice of the Mass; now

she knelt beside 'master' while he approached the Lord in prayer,

licking his fat white lips. I can imagine no more terrible transition.

"I do not know how or why it happened, but as I listened to Nelly's

tale my eyes were opened to my own work and my own deeds, and I saw for

the first time my wickedness. I should despair of explaining to anyone

how utterly innocent I had been in intention all the while, how far I

was from any deliberate design of guilt. In a sense, I was learned, and

yet, in a sense, I was most ignorant; I had been committing what is,

doubtless a grievous sin, under the impression that I was enjoying the

greatest of all mysteries and graces and blessings--the great natural

sacrament of human life.

"Did I not know I was doing wrong? I knew that if any of the masters

found me with Nelly I should get into sad trouble. Certainly I knew

that. But if any of the masters had caught me smoking a cigarette, or

saying 'damn,' or going into a public-house to get a glass of beer, or

using a crib, or reading Rabelais, I should have got into sad trouble

also. I knew that I was sinning against the 'tone' of the great Public

School; you may imagine how deeply I felt the guilt of such an offence

as that! And, of course, I had heard the boys telling their foolish

indecencies; but somehow their nasty talk and their filthy jokes were

not in any way connected in my mind with my love of Nelly--no more,

indeed, than midnight darkness suggests daylight, or torment symbolises

pleasure. Indeed, there was a hint--a dim intuition--deep down in my

consciousness that all was not well; but I knew of no reason for this; I

held it a morbid dream, the fantasy of an imagination over-exalted,

perhaps; I would not listen to a faint voice that seemed without sense

or argument.

"And now that voice was ringing in my ears with the clear, resonant and

piercing summons of a trumpet; I saw myself arraigned far down beside

the pestilent horde of whom I have just spoken; and, indeed, my sin was

worse than theirs, for I had been bred in light, and they in darkness.

All heedless, without knowledge, without preparation, without receiving

the mystic word, I had stumbled into the shrine, uninitiated I had

passed beyond the veil and gazed upon the hidden mystery, on the secret

glory that is concealed from the holy angels. Woe and great sorrow were

upon me, as if a priest, devoutly offering the sacrifice, were suddenly

to become aware that he was uttering, all inadvertently, hideous and

profane blasphemies, summoning Satan in place of the Holy Spirit. I hid

my face in my hands and cried out in my anguish.

"Do you know that I think Nelly was in a sense relieved when I tried to

tell her of my mistake, as I called it; even though I said, as gently as

I could, that it was all over. She was relieved, because for the first

time she felt quite sure that I was altogether in my senses; I can

understand it. My whole attitude must have struck her as bordering on

insanity, for, of course, from first to last I had never for a moment

taken up the position of the unrepentant but cheerful sinner, who knows

that he is being a sad dog, but means to continue in his naughty way.

She, with her evil experience, had thought the words I had sometimes

uttered not remote from madness. She wondered, she told me, whether one

night I might not suddenly take her throat in my hands and strangle her

in a sudden frenzy. She hardly knew whether she dreaded such a death or

longed for it.

"'You spoke so strangely,' she said; 'and all the while I knew we were

doing wrong, and I wondered.'

"Of course, even after I had explained the matter as well as I could she

was left to a large extent bewildered as to what my state of mind could

have been; still, she saw that I was not mad, and she was relieved, as I

have said.

"I do not know how she was first drawn to me--how it was that she stole

that night to the room where I lay bruised and aching. Pity and desire

and revenge, I suppose, all had their share. She was so sorry, she said,

for me. She could see how lonely I was, how I hated the place and

everybody about it, and she knew that I was not English. I think my

wild Welsh face attracted her, too.

"Alas! that was a sad night, after all our laughter. We had sat on and

on till the dawn began to come in through the drawn blinds. I told her

that we must go to bed, or we should never get up the next day. We went

into the bedroom, and there, sad and grey, the dawn appeared. There was

a heavy sky covered with clouds and a straight, soft rain was pattering

on the leaves of a great plane tree opposite; heavy drops fell into the

pools in the road.

"It was still as on the mountain, filled with infinite sadness, and a

sudden step clattering on the pavement of the square beyond made the

stillness seem all the more profound. I stood by the window and gazed

out at the weeping, dripping tree, the ever-falling rain and the

motionless, leaden clouds--there was no breath of wind--and it was as if

I heard the saddest of all music, tones of anguish and despair and notes

that cried and wept. The theme was given out, itself wet, as it were,

with tears. It was repeated with a sharper cry, a more piteous

supplication; it was re-echoed with a bitter utterance, and tears fell

faster as the raindrops fell plashing from the weeping tree. Inexorable

in its sad reiterations, in its remorseless development, that music

wailed and grew in its lamentation in my own heart; heavy it was, and

without hope; heavy as those still, leaden clouds that hung motionless

in heaven. No relief came to this sorrowing melody--rather a sharper

note of anguish; and then for a moment, as if to embitter bitterness,

sounded a fantastic, laughing air, a measure of jocund pipes and rushing

violins, echoing with the mirth of dancing feet. But it was beaten into

dust by the sentence of despair, by doom that was for ever, by a

sentence pitiless, relentless; and, as a sudden breath shook the wet

boughs of the plane tree and a torrent fell upon the road, so the last

notes of that inner music were to me as a burst of hopeless weeping.

"I turned away from the window and looked at the dingy little room where

we had laughed so well. It was a sad room enough, with its pale blue,

stripy-patterned paper, its rickety old furniture and its feeble

pictures. The only note of gaiety was on the dressing-table, where poor

little Nelly had arranged some toys and trinkets and fantasies that she

had bought for herself in the last few days. There was a silver-handled

brush and a flagon of some scent that I liked, and a little brooch of

olivines that had caught her fancy; and a powder-puff in a pretty gilt

box. The sight of these foolish things cut me to the heart. But Nelly!

She was standing by the bedside, half undressed, and she looked at me

with the most piteous longing. I think that she had really grown fond of

me. I suppose that I shall never forget the sad enchantment of her face,

the flowing of her beautiful coppery hair about it; and the tears were

wet on her cheeks. She half stretched out her bare arms to me and then

let them fall. I had never known all her strange allurement before. I

had refined and symbolised and made her into a sign of joy, and now

before me she shone disarrayed--not a symbol, but a woman, in the new

intelligence that had come to me, and I longed for her. I had just

enough strength and no more."