When I was about seven years of age my father died. I think the cause
was aerated waters, although I remember that on being shown his body
after death it looked so small that my mind hardly established any
very definite relation between it and the weary, kindly little man
with the abnormal waist whom I had known as my father.
My mother must, I am sure, have sorrowed greatly, but she spared my
tender years any harrowing spectacle of grief and set herself
courageously to the task of keeping our home together.
My father had been insured for some five hundred pounds, which brought
my mother in a tiny income. The house fortunately was her own. She
immediately dismissed her one servant and let the front rooms, so that
we were not so badly off after all. My mother, who had hitherto
superintended my education, was now no longer able to do so, as the
house took up most of her time. Certainly, the school I was sent to
was a very much better one than a boy circumstanced as I was could
have expected to attend. It was patronised by a great many sons of the
comparatively wealthy in the neighbourhood, and was by no means
inexpensive. I went right through it from the lowest form to the
highest.
My masters pronounced me quick, but not studious. Personally, I don’t
think highly imaginative people are ever very studious in childhood or
early youth. How is it possible? The imaginative temperament sets one
dreaming of wonderful results achieved at a remarkably small outlay of
effort. It is only the dull who receive any demonstration of the value
of application.
My mother was careful that I should not be dressed so as to compare
unfavourably in any way with my schoolfellows, and managed that I
should always have a sufficiency of pocket-money, advantages which I
hardly appreciated at the time. How she accomplished this I do not
know, but I can honestly say that I never knew what want meant, and
although my mother did all the work of the house herself, and cooked
for the gentleman to whom our front rooms were let, we never lived in
the kitchen or descended to a slovenly mode of life. We had our meals
in quite a well-bred manner in the dining-room, which was also our
living-room.
Our lodger was a mysterious creature who always brought me a handsome
birthday and Christmas present and declined to be thanked. The first
time he saw me he pronounced me to be too good-looking for a boy.
He was gruff and abrupt in manner, but the incarnation of deferential
courtesy to my mother, whom I truly think he worshipped. I believe
that his prolonged residence in our front rooms was not entirely due
to their comfort or to my mother’s cooking.
I am sure he embarrassed her by his chronic efforts to spare her
trouble. By degrees he took to dining out nearly every evening,
although his arrival immediately after the dinner hour showed that he
had no engagement anywhere else.
I have every reason to believe that he made her an offer of marriage,
but if it were so he did not allow her refusal to drive him away. He
remained, and continued to treat her with even greater deference than
before.
Apart from the memory of my father, which she held sacred, her
devotion as a mother would, I think, have kept her from the remotest
contemplation of a second marriage. She lived entirely for me.
I was early made acquainted with the story of the Gascoyne succession,
and it was with a quiet smile of indulgence that my mother told me of
the interest with which my father would watch the ebb and flow of the
heirs that stood between his wife and the peerage.
The idea, however, seized my vivid imagination. I got my mother to
bring out all the papers and I set to work at once to see how far my
claims had advanced or receded since my father’s death.
I was obliged before I could completely determine my position to have
recourse to a Peerage. I was surprised to discover that I had come
appreciably nearer to the succession. There were still six lives
between myself and the peerage, but two branches which had formerly
barred the way had become extinct. Perhaps it will be as well to give
a tree of the succession from the point where the branch to which I
belong came into existence. It must be understood that I do not give
those branches which had died out, or the names of individuals who did
not affect the succession.
Henry, tenth Earl Gascoyne
____________|____________________________
| | |
Henry Adalbert George
| | ___|______
| | | |
Henry Patrick Henry Simeon
___|___ ____|____ | __|___
| | | | | | |
Henry Ughtred Gascoyne Ughtred (d.) Henry Henry Ronald
______|_ | _______________|__ (80) __|___
| | | | | | | |
Henry Ughtred Henry Marma- Gascoyne Patrick George Mary
| (45) (53) duke (d.) (59) _|_____ (m. Israel
| | | | Rank)
Simeon Gascoyne Henry Edith |
(16) (17) (13) (14) |
Israel Rank
It will thus be seen that there was by no means a lack of male heirs
and that my chance was remote indeed. In fact, on going into the
question, so little prospect did there seem of my ever standing near
to the succession that I gave up taking an interest in the matter, at
least for the time being.
In looking back at the development of my character, I am not conscious
of a natural wickedness staining and perverting all my actions. My
career has been simply the result of an immense desire to be somebody
of importance. My chief boyish trait was a love of beauty, whether in
things animate or inanimate. People who have possessed that intangible
something which is known as beauty—that degree of attraction made up
of always varying proportions of line, colour and intelligence—have
invariably done something more than merely attract me; they have
filled me with a burning desire to be obviously in their outlook, to
move for a time within their circumference, to feel that I had left an
indelible impress on their memory, and it was my early appreciation of
a capacity to do this that perhaps fostered my egotism, till it had
become an article of faith with me that I must be someone. I looked
upon the possession of rank or renown as a useful weapon for drawing
attention to myself, of increasing the number of individuals brought
under my personal influence.
I was greedy of importance, because of the beauty it might bring into
life. Naturally the beautiful things in life vary according to
temperament. Romance was to me the chief thing. After all, it is the
salt of existence. Not that I believe romance to be necessarily
conditioned by rank and wealth. A real artist may create it for
himself out of very humble materials. One of the most complete
romanticists I ever met was a coal-heaver, who had a list of
experiences that sounded in the telling like the Arabian Nights
entertainment. At the same time, rank and wealth fascinate the Jew as
much as precious stones. They glitter, and they have value. The
Israelite is probably less of a snob in these matters than the average
Englishman, but as an Oriental he appreciates their decorative effect.
Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether he is ever so far dazzled by
them as to forget his own interests. I most certainly was not. I
should have liked to be Earl Gascoyne. It would have meant grasping
the lever to so many things, and this fact dawned on me more and more
as I grew up.
My distant relationship to the Gascoynes was the cause of some
humiliation to me at school. There was a boy whose father had just
been made an Alderman of the City of London, and he was rather
boastful of the fact.
“Bah! what’s an Alderman?” I asked.
Instinctively the other boys felt that it was not right that one of
Hebraic extraction should make such a remark. They had the intuition
of their race that a Jew is after all a Jew.
“Shut up, Sheeny,” said one.
“Now then, old clo’,” said another.
I was not the possessor of Jewish blood for nothing. Where an English
boy would have struck out I remained Orientally contemptuous of
insult. I merely wondered if the time would ever come when I should be
able to remind Lionel Holland—the last boy who had spoken—of his
insult.
“If six people were to die I should be Earl Gascoyne,” I said grandly.
There arose a shout of laughter.
“Pigs might fly,” said Lionel Holland.
I flushed. The only impression produced by my grandiloquent speech was
that I was a stupid liar. Even my bosom friend Billy Statham shrank
away from me. Such a useless lie offended his sense of propriety.
I was only twelve and had some difficulty in keeping back my tears.
“It’s true,” I asserted.
“How can it be true?” demanded Holland. “You are a Jew and your name
is not Gascoyne.”
“It is—my name is Israel Gascoyne Rank. My mother’s name was
Gascoyne.”
But whatever I said they declined to believe in the possibility of
such a thing. The incident taught me, however, to hold my tongue on
the subject of my noble extraction, and that was a point gained.
I don’t think I was unpopular at school, but I suffered the penalty of
all marked personalities; that is to say, I was very much liked or
very much detested. I was not in one sense of great importance in the
school life. I should have been untrue to myself if I had been. There
is perhaps nothing more remarkable than the false estimate held by
boys of character. Their giants are as often as not the pigmies of
after life. Our school captain at the time I am speaking of was a boy
called Jim Morton. He had a pleasant face bordering on good looks, and
the body, so we thought, of a young Hercules. The basis of his
popularity was a sense of justice and a reticence in the display of
his physical strength. He was most certainly worshipped by the entire
school, including myself, although I was by no means prone to idealise
those in authority. For Jim Morton I had a veritable respect, although
in any case my Jewish blood would have taught me to simulate deference
until I was in a position to betray my true estimate without danger to
my own interests. To my imagination as a small boy he seemed to
possess something Titanic, to tower above everybody else in the school
immeasurably. I met him in after years, an insignificant looking man
with a ragged moustache and a slouch. It was quite a shock, and I
waited for him to open his mouth, sure that his power over my juvenile
imagination must have been a question of intellect. I talked to him
for a long time, hoping for some echo at least of a lost magic. I can
safely say I never met anyone more destitute of ideas, and it seemed
impossible that he could ever have had any. Perhaps had he lived among
savages the primitive virtues which had made him supreme among
boys—and boyish communities are psychologically similar to savage
races—would have developed, and he would have remained a force. It may
be so; I give him the benefit of the doubt. I am inclined to think,
however, that there never had been any personality in the true sense
of the word.
Billy Statham, a boy a year older than myself, I loved. Where my
affections are roused—and I have very strong affections, however much
people may feel inclined to doubt it—I cling like a leech. I am
supremely indifferent to defects in those I love, even when they
affect myself. The only thing I ask is marked characteristics; I am
incapable of concentrating myself on the colourless.
Billy Statham was certainly not colourless. He was gay, emotional, and
beautiful as morning. He was brilliant and indolent. In many ways he
seemed to be the most backward boy in the school, but to accuse him of
being ignorant would have been preposterous. I never knew him tell a
lie, and I never knew him do a dishonest thing; and yet once when a
boy in the school who had been discovered in a flagrant piece of
dishonesty was by general agreement sent to Coventry, Billy Statham
was the one person who treated him as if nothing had happened. I
really think his was the most Christ-like nature I have ever met. He
always seemed to hold on to the intangible something in people which
is above earthly stains. Evil had at times a bewildering effect on
him. I have seen him look quite blank—when a curious look of wonder
did not come into his face—as other boys were discussing matters which
properly belonged to a more adult stage. The impending complexities of
sex into which the other lads were always taking surreptitious peeps
attracted him not at all. It seemed as if he must have possessed some
inward consciousness that his body would never be called upon to take
part in the sterner struggle. When he was fourteen he contracted
rheumatic fever, and was returned to us after a few months with the
roses blanched from his cheeks and the consciousness of a weak heart.
One day he told me that he had heard the doctor say to his parents
that if he had rheumatic fever again he would die. On a damp afternoon
in late autumn we were caught in a heavy downpour and I left him at
his front door shivering. I did not see him alive again, and I have
never known boys so profoundly moved by the death of one of their
number. It seemed as if they realised that something spiritual and
valuable had gone from them in their corporate capacity. He left
behind him the recollection of a nature entirely unspoilt.
To me his death was a profound grief. I have never experienced so
great a friendship for anyone since. At the time, I was unable to
understand why he chose me as his Jonathan, excepting that, as I have
already said, he had the instinct of great minds for grasping the
essentials in human nature and allowing a man’s actions to remain a
matter of opinion. He seldom argued with me. He was content to
influence, and in this he displayed another trait of great natures,
which let fall here and there a truth, but are not prone to
discussion. I have often thought that he might have been the remnant
of a great consciousness, having somewhat, but not a great deal, to
expiate in human form. His goodness seemed to stretch out, invisible,
beyond himself.
When he died I was fourteen, and the firmest of friendships are not at
that age sufficiently strong to leave an inconsolable grief. My next
great friend was a boy of very different character. Grahame Hallward
was the son of a fairly well-to-do City man. They lived in comfortable
style, albeit they were a somewhat uncomfortable family. Wherein their
uncomfortableness lay it would have been difficult to say. They all
had a more than usual share of good looks, and this possibly was their
first attraction for me. Indeed, two of them, Grahame and Sibella,
were quite beautiful to look upon. The family constituted a very
aristocracy of physical gifts, and, despite their peculiar natures, I
was always at my ease among them. It is true that they were inclined
to patronise me, but the qualities of my race enabled me to endure
this without resentment, and even with dignity. It was, however, only
natural; for although I was always neatly dressed, the position of my
mother was well known, and had it been otherwise, the house and street
in which we lived would sufficiently have revealed the truth. In
matters of this sort I was not a snob; besides, I had too quick an
instinct for things well-bred not to realise that my mother was
gentlewoman enough to hold her own with the very best.
One day I took Grahame Hallward home to tea. I think he felt a little
nervous, wondering if tea in the house of such poor people would be a
very uncomfortable affair. I realised from the way in which he
accepted that he was a little surprised at the invitation. He always
had beautiful manners, and he said that of course he would be
delighted to come. The two words “of course!” were a mistake, however,
and I resented them, although I was secretly amused.
He came one day after school, and when we reached the house my mother
was already seated before the urn. There were flowers on the table,
and the linen was spotless. There was a silver teapot and sugar-basin
given to my mother by our lodger on the occasion of his having
completed two years’ residence in the house. His ingenuity in finding
occasions whereon it might be considered suitable to make my mother
and myself presents was quite remarkable. I was entrusted with the
task of calling him in the morning. Hence it became necessary for me
to have a watch, entirely, as he explained, to suit his convenience.
In the same way a piano arrived one day—our own had been sold at my
father’s death—and our lodger explained that it had been left to him
by a distant relation. I gazed at it longingly as it disappeared into
his sitting-room. After a day or two he said that he believed it would
be spoilt unless it were played upon, and asked me as a favour to do
so. Then, having come home once or twice as I was practising hard, he
declared almost irritably that it was inconvenient and that he really
thought considering the time he had been with us we might oblige him
by having it in our sitting-room, but that of course if my mother
objected there was nothing more to be said. He would have sold it had
it not been in his cousin’s house for so many years. Needless to
chronicle that the piano stood henceforward in our sitting-room. Our
suspicions were somewhat aroused when the man who came to tune it gave
as his opinion that the instrument could not be more than two years
old, if that; in fact, he should have said it was brand-new.
My mother was pleased for my sake that she was able to greet my friend
from behind a silver teapot and sugar-basin. I was secretly conscious
of the effect she produced on Grahame. He had, I am sure,
believed—despite all my assurances to the contrary—that my mother was
a Jewess, and he was not a little surprised to find a well-bred
Englishwoman with a reserved and quite distinguished manner. Tea being
over my mother kept us seated, whilst, almost unobserved, she placed
every article from the table on the tray. She was full of manœuvres
for minimising the bustle consequent on the want of a servant. I was
rather nervous of the moment when she would rise and bear forth the
tray. I had set her on such a pinnacle before my friend that I could
not bear that he should see her otherwise than enthroned. I was
painfully conscious that there is no snob like a boy. My mother,
however, had foreseen everything.
“Israel dear, Mr. Johnson has brought home a beautiful old Chinese
cabinet. I am sure Mr. Hallward would like to see it.”
Mr. Hallward—barely fifteen and a half and very flattered at being
referred to as Mr. Hallward—expressed himself as most anxious, and we
adjourned to the front room.
Short as was the time we were gone, on our return all signs of a meal
had disappeared, and my mother was seated before the fire as if she
possessed ten servants instead of her own ten fingers.
Then I played. This was not entirely a novelty; I had often been shown
off at the Hallwards’ house. Indeed, my musical abilities were, I
fancied, often made an excuse when the Hallwards felt that the
presence of my humble self in their mansion occasioned surprise. In
Clapham, residence was everything, and the leading families were a
little suspicious of anyone who lived in a house as small as our own.
Had they been generally aware of the lodger they would have considered
themselves entirely justified in deciding that I was not socially
eligible!
I walked part of the way home with Grahame Hallward.
“I say,” he burst out, “your mother is rippin’.”
If Grahame Hallward said so I knew he meant it. His chief enemy in
life was his tongue. He always had an uncontrollable habit of speaking
his mind.
Sibella Hallward exercised an irresistible fascination over me from
the first moment I saw her. She was undeniably lovely even at an age
when most girls are at their worst. Her hair was deliciously silky and
golden. Her eyes were large and blue, with dark-brown brows and
lashes. Her cheeks were the petals of a blush rose. Her mouth was
perfect and petulant, and the one imperfection with which Nature
invariably salts the cream of the correct was her nose; it was a
little tip-tilted, and seemed to have been made to match her voice,
which was curiously childish and treble, with an acerb complaint in it
that was indescribably delightful. She allowed me to play at
sweet-hearting with her, and then one day when we quarrelled called me
a horrid little Jew. I was possessed by my love for her from that day.
My obsession has never been defensible. She was no excuse for any
man’s love excepting that she was beautiful, and I loved her because
such beauty would confer distinction on the man who won her.
She was vain and shallow, but with a will of her own which was
somewhat remarkable, combined with her other characteristics.
I was constantly at the Hallwards’ house. I was always quarrelling
with Sibella and declaring that I would never visit them any more, but
she invariably managed to lure me back without in any way apologising
or admitting herself to be in the wrong.
At this time she was a shameless little flirt and permitted me to make
love to her, which I did with all the precocity of my semi-oriental
nature. Her parents were a good-natured, indulgent couple, and they
usually alluded to me as Sibella’s sweetheart.
It was not a household where principles counted for much, and most of
the inmates possessing, like Sibella, very strong wills the result was
chaotic. At the same time, they were sympathetic in an egotistical
way. To anybody who like myself was able to hold his own, and also to
put up with them, the household was tolerable and enjoyable. Woe,
however, to any luckless person who found them too fascinating to
avoid and too strong-minded to be battled with! Such an one was ground
to powder by the sheer weight of their egotism.
I suppose it was this egotism that made Grahame Hallward somewhat
unpopular at school. He always bore himself with an extraordinary
pride; not aggressive, but the sort of innate aloofness and
condescension which might have been expected from the member of a
reigning house. It was natural to the family, and even shallow Sibella
possessed it. At times it gave one the impression that she had
dignity, when in reality it was only an aspect of her vanity.
Amongst other things which Grahame Hallward and I had in common was a
dislike of Lionel Holland. We had both suffered from his superior
physical strength, and with Grahame even more than with me this was an
unpardonable offence. Lionel Holland was not deficient in head; he had
great intelligence of a certain kind, and almost a genius for
displaying his mental wares to the best advantage. It was commonly
reported that his father had begun life as a newspaper boy, and
certainly his son’s wit and repartee were of the gutter order
notwithstanding their veneer of middle-class suburbanism. He was
slightly older than either of us and of an altogether stronger type.
We found a means, however, of putting an end to his tyranny. We
engaged in a defensive league, not verbally agreed upon—Grahame would
have been much too proud to admit that such a thing was necessary—but
we got into the way of standing by one another when he commenced to
annoy us. Candour compels me to admit that he was almost a match for
both of us, but we managed to inflict sufficient punishment to make
him consider that the entertainment of baiting us had its risks, and
finally he left us alone.
It was Lionel Holland’s ambition to be captain of the school. He
considered that his brilliance at certain sports entitled him to it,
but somehow he never reached the position he aimed at. The boys did
not trust him. He was deficient in those very qualities that make a
boy’s hero, and they were not to be deceived by the easy insolence of
his manner. I never knew success in the cricket and football field
carry a boy such a little way into his comrades’ hearts. He was a
handsome lad enough, embryon of the flashy, brilliant brute he
afterwards became. I think, but for Grahame and myself, he might have
been elected to the post he coveted. He had more money than any other
boy in the school and spent it freely where he had an object in view.
My friend and I, however, were determined that so unsuitable an
election should not take place. The captain of the school had large
powers, and we had no mind to see ourselves in Lionel Holland’s hands.
Our brains were more astute than his when it came to a real tussle of
intellect. We discredited him in every way possible, and he endured
the humiliation of defeat. A psychologist would have been interested
in noting how, when Lionel Holland’s defeat was an accomplished fact,
the different characteristics of Grahame’s nature and my own displayed
themselves. Grahame, having attained his object, was sorry for his
antagonist. I was unfeignedly glad, and rejoiced in his humiliation to
an extent which was very unpleasing to my friend. We had quite a
quarrel over the matter; and Grahame, whose plain speech never failed,
told me that I was exhibiting the worst faults of the Old Testament,
in that I showed unsportsmanlike exultation over a fallen foe. I ought
perhaps to mention that Lionel Holland had attempted to win me to his
side by asking me to go with him to the Crystal Palace and there
treating me to all the side shows. I enjoyed the outing but took the
liberty of continuing to distrust him; another method of which Grahame
disapproved most strongly. Certainly Lionel Holland would never have
attempted to bribe Grahame. The crudest of perceptions—which his was
not—would at once have seen the futility of such an attempt.
I fancy that I was constantly disappointing my friend, and he was
impatient of any point of view which he was unable to sympathise with.
It was therefore the more remarkable that he should have remained so
staunch. I think that at times his friendship for me was living on his
capital of loyalty, of which he possessed an inexhaustible store. His
loyalty tended to make him very inelastic in argument, but he was
altogether an unexpected person and would on occasions display a
susceptibility to logic which was amazing in one so young.
He was, what most people who knew him superficially hardly suspected,
sensitive to an extraordinary degree. His impassivity deceived them.
He had a horror of death, and Billy Statham’s end affected him more as
a practical example of the inevitability and ruthlessness of bodily
extinction than with regret at the loss of a schoolmate whom like all
of us he had really loved.
He did not believe that my fear of death was not equal to his own, and
concluded that my indifference was affected and mere bravado. In after
years when I explained to him that without having any particular
religious opinions, I regarded this body as a more or less useful
vessel in which to perform part of the voyage of mental evolution, I
found him quite unable to follow me and still possessed by just the
same dread of death. The mere idea terrified him. The sight of all
dead things, even when they happened to be the corpses of quite low
forms of life, filled him with repulsion, and the idea of making him a
doctor, which his father had entertained during his childhood, was
abandoned.
I used to find a certain satisfaction in raising the question of death
in order to see the colour fade out of his cheek. He was too proud to
say that it frightened him, but it did. Fear was so little in his
character that I came to the conclusion that it lay partly in the
extraordinary value he and his family placed on personal appearance,
and that in addition his terror might have its roots in some such
cause as made Catherine de Medici faint when she saw an apple, even if
it were a painted one in a picture.
As a boy I forbore to make him a confidant of my passion for his
sister. Perhaps I realised that he would resent it. I think he
believed that his sisters were fit matches for the most exalted, and
was secretly astonished and disgusted when the eldest married a
struggling young solicitor.
Once, when Sibella had taunted me and teased me past bearing, I threw
the Gascoyne pedigree in her face. I shall never forget the silvery
and maddening laugh of disbelief with which she received the
announcement. She did not even ask me for proof but went on laughing
till I could have struck her. At the moment I hated her. It was on a
half-holiday. I had been asked to tea, and was making love to her in
the schoolroom, waiting for Grahame and his brother to come in from
football.
“When you laugh at me like that,” I said tersely, “I feel as if I
could kill you.”
“And when you tell stories like that,” she said, mimicking my
intonation in her childish treble, “you are simply ridiculous.” She
took another chocolate from the bag of sweets I had brought her. I
used to save up my pocket-money for two or three weeks until I had
sufficient to buy sweets worthy of her acceptance. It is very certain
that had she considered them other than the best she would have told
me so.
“Yes,” she continued, “you are simply ridiculous. Just as if you could
ever be a lord. I don’t believe it! If six people died!” she
concluded, with a laugh which made me feel what I was capable of. I
could have killed her where she stood but for the consequences.
If I held human life cheap I was still possessed of the caution of my
race, and even at that age I loved her. Even at that age indeed!
Looking back at my boyhood I am astonished at the insanity of passion
of which I was capable. There is nothing more narrow than the
scepticism with which older people treat the love-sickness of the
young. Boys love even better perhaps than men ever can. Romeo was, I
am convinced, not more than seventeen or eighteen—that is to say, as
Shakespeare conceived him.
I felt humiliated by her disbelief. I had been anxious to give myself
some importance in her eyes, and instead she treated the whole thing
with absolute derision. That day was to be in every way one of
bitterness. She was standing at the schoolroom window drumming on the
glass, when suddenly she gave a little shrill cry of surprise.
“Oh what fun! Grahame is bringing someone in to tea, and father is
with them.”
I looked out and saw to my annoyance Lionel Holland accompanying
Grahame and his father up the drive. What was the meaning of it?
Surely Lionel Holland had not succeeded in winning Grahame to
friendship! It was hardly likely.
“And I do believe it’s that good-looking boy who won all the prizes at
last year’s sports,” continued Sibella. “Yes, it is!”
I had, even at the age of sixteen, a very genius for the analysis of
character—although analysis is hardly the word. Characters have always
had a way of displaying themselves before me at a bird’s-eye view.
From the first I mistrusted the effect of a handsome and confident
piece of physical splendour on a nature like Sibella’s.
In the hall I could hear Lionel Holland apologising for his mudstained
appearance, and Mr. Hallward’s breezy voice laughing away his
scruples.
“Nonsense, my boy, nonsense, I like to see it. It shows you have been
enjoying yourself in a fine, manly way. Grahame, take your friend
upstairs and let him wash his face and hands.”
Mr. Hallward always took pleasure in the display of jovial
hospitality. In reality he was a somewhat bad-tempered man, but when
he was in the mood for a little display of amateur histrionics there
was no one more genial or hearty.
Sibella was flushed with excitement and I was inwardly fuming.
“What is his name?” she demanded, turning to me as Lionel Holland’s
voice died away upstairs.
“Lionel Holland,” I answered, as cheerfully as I could, determined
that, if possible, I would not betray my annoyance.
“Do you like him?”
“Oh, he is all right.” I might just as well have said plainly that I
disliked him, for Sibella was not deceived. She had a Jezebel’s gift
for detecting antagonisms between those of the opposite sex and
playing upon them. I believe this characteristic invariably
differentiates the woman who uses her sex power for evil from the
woman who uses it for good.
“You don’t like him,” she answered at once. “You are jealous of him.”
“Jealous! Why?”
“Because he plays games better than you do.”
I laughed. It was the last thing that was ever likely to make me
jealous. She saw that the taunt had failed and tried another.
“And also because he is so much better looking than you are.”
I laughed again. From Sibella the absolutely untrue was not
convincing.
But Sibella had a way of thrusting till she thrust home.
“You needn’t laugh—because it’s quite true, and you are also jealous
because he is so much more manly than you are.”
I knew what she meant. Lionel Holland’s flamboyant animalism and sex
assurance stood in her eyes for prime qualities. She was superficially
feminine and loved a brute. The woman of delicate upbringing, who
astonishes her friends by her inexplicable infatuation for a boaster
who is obviously a cad and a bully despite his physical advantages, is
twin sister to the lady of the slums who worships the brute who
blackens her eyes and kicks her as an amusing conclusion to the week’s
work. The poor slut flatters herself that it is evidence of a strength
which he would not fail to use in her defence, forgetting that a bully
is only occasionally a brave man.
I saw what was coming and grew sick at heart. One thing comforted me;
Sibella was a snob, and despite his riches she would never be able to
taunt me with his superior caste.
“I shouldn’t show my jealousy if I were you,” she concluded.
I looked at her quietly.
“You ought to be killed.”
I said the thing I knew would bludgeon her into silence. She shared
Grahame’s fear of death, but in her case it was more ignoble. I
believe if Grahame had been condemned to death his pride would have
overcome his fear. I could imagine Sibella whining and fawning at the
executioner’s feet.
She looked at me with distinct apprehension, and at that moment
Grahame entered the room accompanied by Lionel Holland. Sibella
immediately began to exercise her fascinations and to concentrate the
attention of the visitor on herself. I have often thought since that
Lionel Holland must have manœuvred his invitation to the house, for he
seemed already to have made up his mind how to proceed with Sibella.
He flattered her vanity, said that he remembered her perfectly on the
day of the sports, and declared that he should certainly not have
tried so hard had she not been there.
The younger members of the Hallward household had tea in the
dining-room, and on Saturdays were privileged to bring in their
friends, so that there was generally a large gathering. The tea itself
was a sumptuous affair, and as the elders were seldom present it was
as a rule very enjoyable. Cynthia Hallward, one year older than
Sibella, poured out.
Lionel Holland seemed supremely unconscious that Grahame was not very
pleased at his presence.
I was of course unable to express my displeasure until I was given a
lead. Grahame lingered a minute or two in the school-room with me.
“I wish the Guv’nor would mind his own business,” he said sulkily.
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“Is it likely? He insisted on walking home with me, and just as I was
saying good-bye to him the Guv’nor met us and said ‘Bring your friend
in to tea.’ Friend indeed!” And Grahame snorted.
When we reached the dining-room Sibella had arranged so that Lionel
was on her right and a girl friend of her sister’s on her left. I
verily believe she wanted me to sit opposite to her in order that she
might enjoy the spectacle of my chagrin. She should have known me
better. I betrayed not the least sign of the hatred and wounded vanity
that were surging within me. I was measuring my chances against Lionel
Holland. I was better looking than he was, but not in the way likely
to appeal to Sibella. He was rich; I was far cleverer. It appears to
me on looking back that I quite understood, even at that early stage,
that the incident was the prologue to a drama which would develop
itself in after years. Most boy and girl romances might be ephemeral,
but ours had the promise of permanence. This was the more curious in
that two out of the three, Sibella and Lionel, were entirely
superficial.
I joined in the conversation and laughter with very fair success, but
Sibella was in her most aggravating mood. Cynthia Hallward asked
Lionel Holland what he wanted to be. Apparently he did not quite know,
but some cross-questioning from Sibella elicited the fact that his
only definite ambition was for riches.
“My father wasn’t always rich,” he announced; and, to do him justice,
his pride in the fact that his father was self-made was the
pleasantest trait in his character. “He began without a shilling, and
he says that money is nine-tenths of everything, and he ought to know.
I wouldn’t give twopence to be anything which didn’t bring in money.”
“Wouldn’t you like to be a lord?” said Sibella, looking at me
mischievously.
“It’s quite easy to be a lord if you’re rich enough,” said Lionel.
“Oh, but Israel is going to be a lord. That is to say, when six people
die,” laughed Sibella. And there was that peculiar quality in her
laugh which when it was turned against myself made me feel cruel
towards her.
Lionel Holland laughed too, delighted to assist Sibella in teasing me.
“Israel is always telling us that at school,” he said.
“I’ve only said so once,” I answered, keeping my temper by a violent
effort of self-control, “and it’s perfectly true.” I think there must
have been something in my voice that warned them to desist, for the
subject was allowed to drop.
After tea we adjourned to the school-room. Sibella’s appetite for
sweets was insatiable, and she took the most comfortable seat by the
fire and proceeded to finish the box of chocolates I had brought her.
“Do you like sweets?” I heard Lionel ask. He was sitting by her side.
She handed him the box and he helped himself.
“Awfully.” Sibella’s English was extremely slipshod.
“I’ll send you some. What kind do you like best?”
“Chocolate nougat.”
“Very well. I’ll send you a much bigger box than that.”
Sibella laughed appreciatively. “That will be jolly of you,” she said,
perfectly aware that I could hear. She was evidently entirely dazzled
by her new admirer, but was too much a born flirt to let me go even if
I had had the least intention of retiring from the contest.
Just before I left the house she sidled up to me.
“You’re not angry, are you, Israel?”
I made a faint attempt at a smile as I answered:
“Angry? Of course not. Why should I be?”
Finding me inclined to fence, she assumed her most childish treble.
“I don’t know, I’m sure, only you have been looking so dreadfully
cross.”
I very nearly shook her.
Lionel Holland left the house a few minutes before I did. Grahame
walked with me as far as the gate.
“I say, Israel, what’s that about your being a lord some day?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to go into the matter. Everybody is so beastly
rude about it.”
“Is it true?”
“Of course it is. I’ll show you the papers if you like.”
“I don’t want that. If you say it’s true, of course I believe you.”
But I was secretly determined that Grahame should see the papers, and
I took the earliest opportunity of showing them to him, for I knew
that though he liked me too much to say that he disbelieved me, he
felt that there must be a mistake somewhere.
I explained the whole thing to him and showed him our genealogical
tree.
I fancy he was more surprised than he appeared to be, for although he
had always been very kind to me there had been just the faintest
suspicion of patronage in his manner. It was perhaps only natural. A
semi-Hebrew lad, in humble circumstances, with no prospects to speak
of, was not in the ordinary course of things the most natural
companion for the son of a successful city merchant.
I knew he told Sibella, for she condescendingly informed me that I was
not such a story-teller as she had thought, adding, however, that it
wasn’t very much to boast of, as the six lives between me and the
peerage would probably be sixty-six before very long, and it was quite
evident that the Gascoynes did not even know of my existence. She
became quite friendly again, but when I tried to kiss her she refused
to allow me to do so; or rather, she attempted to prevent it and was
really furious when I did so by force. I detected in her resistance
that I no longer occupied her thoughts. Indeed, I was soon made aware
that I was expected to be content with the place of an ordinary
friend. Lionel Holland managed to be constantly at the house. Grahame
had expressed his disinclination to bring him, but Sibella and her
sister evidently had an understanding by which they were to meet him
by appointment on Saturday afternoons and bring him back to tea. Mr.
and Mrs. Hallward were too easy-going to notice these manœuvres, and
would have treated them quite good-naturedly even had they done so.
The Hallward children were allowed to do pretty well as they liked,
with the result that careful mothers of the neighbourhood, resentful
of their extreme good looks, made Cynthia and Sibella the subject of
much spiteful gossip and whispered inuendoes which I verily believe
had little truth in them. Compelled to stand by and watch Lionel
Holland’s triumph, I suffered terribly, and my mother grew quite
anxious at my appearance, but attributed it to overwork.
Once, and once only, did I implore Sibella to have pity on me. She
laughed in the most silvery manner, and frankly said she was tired of
me. I recall my abjectness with humiliation. Lionel Holland’s was a
nature quite devoid of sympathy for his own sex, and where another lad
might have decently veiled his triumph from his rival, he displayed it
on every possible occasion. His manner was insufferably
self-complacent. He had the natural contempt of all Westerns for
anything Jewish, and he had not the breeding to disguise the fact. He
told a mutual friend that ‘it was just like a beastly little Jew to
make up to a girl like Sibella.’
I affected indifference because I knew the remark had been repeated to
me with the object of goading me into fighting him; and that was a
matter which required thinking out. At the same time I planned the
first attempt of my life to deal a secret blow at an enemy. It was
crude, but youth and inexperience must be my excuse.
Lionel Holland was training for a mile handicap, and I knew that in
the evening he used to go to the school sports ground, with a friend
to time him, and train till after dusk.
The track, half a mile in circumference, ran round the entire ground,
skirting the backs of houses, and bounded at one part for the length
of about a hundred yards by a hedge. I conceived the idea of throwing
him as he was running. The track was hard, and he might hurt himself
seriously or not at all. There was at any rate the chance of a full
retaliation.
I chose a spot about midway along the hedge opposite, where on the
inner side of the track, just upon the grass, and facing the cricket
pitch, was an iron seat firmly fixed to the ground.
One evening I followed Holland and his friend to the sports ground
and, having seen them go in, reached the back of the hedge by a
circuitous way. There was an aperture just large enough for me to
crawl through. I waited. In about ten minutes I heard his measured
stride on the hard asphalt. He passed me going at a good pace. As he
disappeared in the dusk I crept swiftly through the hedge, passed a
cord I had with me round the upper part of one of the legs of the iron
seat, and, holding both ends in my hand, crept back. In a few moments
he came round again. I pulled the cord as tight as I could. He
tripped, fell full length and lay still. I hauled in the cord and
stole away.
My sensations are worth analysing. At first I felt a certain elation
at having thrown an enemy. Then I experienced disappointment. What I
had done was somewhat pointless. Unless I had spoilt his looks—which
was hardly likely—I could not be said to have scored any advantage,
unless—I stopped, and my breath came quickly. Was it possible I had
killed him? I had heard of people dying from as slight a cause. I felt
terribly uncomfortable. I grew afraid of having the cord in my pocket.
I went swiftly home and burnt it, a small piece at a time, lest my
mother should come in and find it being destroyed. Afterwards I was
ashamed of my want of nerve. Even if he were dead nobody on earth
could connect me with the accident. I had always heard that murder
will out, but I was strong-minded enough, considering the
circumstances, to doubt whether it was possible in this case.
Anxious as I was to know the upshot of the affair I slept quite well
and started for school not a minute earlier than usual. I was in the
same class as Holland. When school began he had not arrived and
neither had the boy who was his time-keeper. Five minutes late the
latter walked in with a note in his hand.
“Holland has had an accident, sir.” He handed the note to the master.
“Indeed? I am sorry to hear that.” He opened the note and began to
read, his face growing more serious as he read on. “Concussion of the
brain! Mr. Holland does not quite seem to know how it happened.”
“It was on the cricket ground, sir. It had just got dusk and I was
timing Holland for the mile. The second time he did not come round, so
I went to see what had happened and found him lying on the path
insensible. I had to leave him there whilst I went for help.”
“Has he recovered consciousness?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How did it happen?”
“I can’t think. He must have tripped. The doctor says he is not to be
asked any questions and that he is to be kept quite quiet for the next
few days.”
“Quite so. I suppose you will be going round there, so you can let us
know how he is getting on.”
“Yes, sir.”
The boy went back to his seat. The class had been listening intently.
The master looked up and caught sight of my face.
“Why, Rank, you have turned quite pale.”
Everybody looked at me in surprise. The lack of friendliness between
Lionel Holland and myself was generally known, and it certainly
astonished them that I should have turned pale out of sympathy for
him.
He came back to school in about a fortnight looking none the worse for
his accident. He was as confident as before and as irritating to me as
ever.
I heard him explaining the incident in the playground afterwards.
“I’ll swear,” he was saying, “that something caught me just above the
ankle. I don’t see how I could possibly have tripped otherwise.”
“What could it have been?” asked Grainger, the boy who had been timing
him.
“I can’t think, I am sure, but I’m certain something tripped me up all
the same.”
“I expect you turned giddy,” said a member of the Lower Fourth.
“Giddy? Never was less giddy in my life;” and Holland turned a
withering glance upon the small boy that made him retire into the
background.
He had a way of twisting the arms of small boys, and holding their
elbows while he brought his knee sharply into contact with a soft but
sensitive part of their bodies, besides many other little devices for
making them wish it were possible to grow up suddenly into a strong
man with a strong fist.
I have always resented cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and petty
tormenting with no object in view has invariably impressed me as being
supremely silly. It is quite another matter when one is obliged to
take a strong step in support of a logical line of action. The end
must justify the means. The Jesuits are quite right. All around,
Nature teaches us the lesson. An infinite amount of apparent evil is
being done that good may come, and even if the end be not a
particularly elevated one that surely is a man’s own affair;
especially if he be prepared to pay the penalty of supporting his own
opinion with action which is against the moral sense of society in
general.
Sibella’s solicitude during Lionel Holland’s illness was an ample
revenge for the latter had he known it. It tortured me. At one time I
calculated my chances in a stand-up fight with him supposing I should
train for the event. I decided after careful thought that the odds
would be against me, and I had no intention of fighting for honour’s
sake with the prospect of leaving him more triumphant and complacent
than ever.