“I say, Kelver,” he broke out, the moment we were beyond hearing, “you really are funny!”
It gave me no pleasure. If he had told me that he admired my bowling I might not have believed him, but should have loved him for it.
“So are you,” I answered savagely, “only you don't know it.”
“No, I'm not,” he replied. “Wish I was. I say, Kelver”—he glanced round to see that no one was within earshot—“do you think you could teach me to be funny?”
I was about to reply with conviction in the negative when an idea occurred to me. Wakeham was famous among us for one thing; he could, inserting two fingers in his mouth, produce a whistle capable of confusing dogs a quarter of a mile off, and of causing people near at hand to jump from six to eighteen inches into the air.
This accomplishment of his I envied him as keenly as he envied me mine. I did not admire it; I could not see the use of it. Generally speaking, it called forth irritation rather than affection. A purple-faced old gentleman, close to whose ear he once performed, promptly cuffed his head for it; and for so doing was commended by the whole street as a public benefactor. Drivers of vehicles would respond by flicking at him, occasionally with success. Even youth, from whom sympathy might have been expected, appeared impelled, if anything happened to be at all handy, to take it up and throw it at him. My own social circle would, I knew, regard it as a vulgar accomplishment, and even Wakeham himself dared not perform it in the hearing of his own classmates. That any human being should have desired to acquire it seems incomprehensible. Yet for weeks in secret I had wrestled to produce the hideous sound. Why? For three reasons, so far as I can analyse this youngster of whom I am writing:
Firstly, here was a means of attracting attention; secondly, it was something that somebody else could do and that he couldn't; thirdly, it was a thing for which he evidently had no natural aptitude whatever, and therefore a thing to acquire which his soul yearned the more. Had a boy come across his path, clever at walking on his hands with his heels in the air, Master Paul Kelver would in all probability have broken his neck in attempts to copy and excel. I make no apologies for the brat: I merely present him as a study for the amusement of a world of wiser boys—and men.
I struck a bargain with young Wakeham; I undertook to teach him to be funny in return for his teaching me this costermonger's whistle.
Each of us strove conscientiously to impart knowledge. Neither of us succeeded. Wakeham tried hard to be funny; I tried hard to whistle. He did all I told him; I followed his instructions implicitly. The result was the feeblest of wit and the feeblest of whistles.
“Do you think anybody would laugh at that?” Wakeham would pathetically enquire at the termination of his supremest effort. And honestly I would have to confess I did not think any living being would.
“How far off do you think any one could hear that?” I would demand anxiously, on recovering sufficient breath to speak at all.
“Well, it would depend upon whether you knew it was coming,” Wakeham would reply kindly, not wishing to discourage me.
We abandoned the scheme by mutual consent at about the end of a fortnight.
“I suppose it's something that you've got to have inside you,” I suggested to Wakeham in consolation.
“I don't think the roof of your mouth can be quite the right shape for it,” concluded Wakeham.
My success as story-teller, commentator, critic, jester, revived my childish ambition towards authorship. My first stirrings in this direction I cannot rightly place. I remember when very small falling into a sunk dust-bin—a deep hole, rather, into which the gardener shot his rubbish. The fall twisted my ankle so that I could not move; and the time being evening and my prison some distance from the house, my predicament loomed large before me. Yet one consolation remained with me: the incident would be of value to me in the autobiography upon which I was then engaged. I can distinctly recollect lying on my back among decaying leaves and broken glass, framing my account. “On this day a strange adventure befell me. Walking in the garden, all unheeding, I suddenly”—I did not want to add the truth—“tumbled into a dust-hole, six feet square, that any one but a moon calf might have seen.” I puzzled to evolve a more dignified situation. The dust-bin became a cavern, the entrance to which had been artfully concealed; the six or seven feet I had really fallen, “an endless descent, terminating in a vast and gloomy chamber.” I was divided between opposing desires: One, for rescue followed by sympathy and supper; the other, for the alarming experience of a night of terror where I lay. Nature conquering Art, I yelled; and the episode terminated prosaically with a warm bath and arnica. But from it I judge that desire for the woes and perils of authorship was with me somewhat early.
Of my many other dreams I would speak freely, discussing them at length with sympathetic souls, but concerning this one ambition I was curiously reticent. Only to two—my mother and a grey-bearded Stranger—did I ever breathe a word of it. Even from my father I kept it a secret, close comrades in all else though we were. He would have talked of it much and freely, dragged it into the light of day; and from this I shrank.
My talk with the Stranger came about in this wise. One evening I had taken a walk to Victoria Park—a favourite haunt of mine at summer time. It was a fair and peaceful evening, and I fell a-wandering there in pleasant reverie, until the waning light hinted to me the question of time. I looked about me. Only one human being was in sight, a man with his back towards me, seated upon a bench overlooking the ornamental water.
I drew nearer. He took no notice of me, and interested—though why, I could not say—I seated myself beside him at the other end of the bench. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man, with wonderfully bright, clear eyes and iron-grey hair and beard. I might have thought him a sea captain, of whom many were always to be met with in that neighbourhood, but for his hands, which were crossed upon his stick, and which were white and delicate as a woman's. He turned his face and glanced at me. I fancied that his lips beneath the grey moustache smiled; and instinctively I edged a little nearer to him.
“Please, sir,” I said, after awhile, “could you tell me the right time?”
“Twenty minutes to eight,” he answered, looking at his watch. And his voice drew me towards him even more than had his beautiful strong face. I thanked him, and we fell back into silence.
“Where do you live?” he turned and suddenly asked me.
“Oh, only over there,” I answered, with a wave of my arm towards the chimney-fringed horizon behind us. “I needn't be in till half-past eight. I like this Park so much,” I added, “I often come and sit here of an evening.”
“Why do you like to come and sit here?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“Oh, I don't know,” I answered. “I think.”
I marvelled at myself. With strangers generally I was shy and silent; but the magic of his bright eyes seemed to have loosened my tongue.
I told him my name; that we lived in a street always full of ugly sounds, so that a gentleman could not think, not even in the evening time, when Thought goes a-visiting.
“Mamma does not like the twilight time,” I confided to him. “It always makes her cry. But then mamma is—not very young, you know, and has had a deal of trouble; and that makes a difference, I suppose.”
He laid his hand upon mine. We were sitting nearer to each other now. “God made women weak to teach us men to be tender,” he said. “But you, Paul, like this 'twilight time'?”
“Yes,” I answered, “very much. Don't you?”
“And why do you like it?” he asked.
“Oh,” I answered, “things come to you.”
“What things?”
“Oh, fancies,” I explained to him. “I am going to be an author when I grow up, and write books.”
He took my hand in his and shook it gravely, and then returned it to me. “I, too, am a writer of books,” he said.
And then I knew what had drawn me to him.
; So for the first time I understood the joy of talking “shop” with a fellow craftsman. I told him my favourite authors—Scott, and Dumas, and Victor Hugo; and to my delight found they were his also; he agreeing with me that real stories were the best, stories in which people did things.
“I used to read silly stuff once,” I confessed, “Indian tales and that sort of thing, you know. But mamma said I'd never be able to write if I read that rubbish.”
“You will find it so all through life, Paul,” he replied. “The things that are nice are rarely good for us. And what do you read now?”
“I am reading Marlowe's Plays and De Quincey's Confessions just now,” I confided to him.
“And do you understand them?”
“Fairly well,” I answered. “Mamma says I'll like them better as I go on. I want to learn to write very, very well indeed,” I admitted to him; “then I'll be able to earn heaps of money.”
He smiled. “So you don't believe in Art for Art's sake, Paul?”
I was puzzled. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means in our case, Paul,” he answered, “writing books for the pleasure of writing books, without thinking of any reward, without desiring either money or fame.”
It was a new idea to me. “Do many authors do that?” I asked.
He laughed outright this time. It was a delightful laugh. It rang through the quiet Park, awaking echoes; and caught by it, I laughed with him.
“Hush!” he said; and he glanced round with a whimsical expression of fear, lest we might have been overheard. “Between ourselves, Paul,” he continued, drawing me more closely towards him and whispering, “I don't think any of us do. We talk about it. But I'll tell you this, Paul; it is a trade secret and you must remember it: No man ever made money or fame but by writing his very best. It may not be as good as somebody else's best, but it is his best. Remember that, Paul.”
I promised I would.
“And you must not think merely of the money and the fame, Paul,” he added the next moment, speaking more seriously. “Money and fame are very good things, and only hypocrites pretend to despise them. But if you write books thinking only of money, you will be disappointed. It is earned easier in other ways. Tell me, that is not your only idea?”
I pondered. “Mamma says it is a very noble calling, authorship,” I remembered, “and that any one ought to be very proud and glad to be able to write books, because they give people happiness and make them forget things; and that one ought to be very good if one is going to be an author, so as to be worthy to help and teach others.”
“And do you try to be good, Paul?” he enquired.
“Yes,” I answered; “but it's very hard to be quite good—until of course you're grown up.”
He smiled, but more to himself than to me. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose it is difficult to be good until you are grown up. Perhaps we shall all of us be good when we're quite grown up.” Which, from a gentleman with a grey beard, appeared to me a puzzling observation.
“And what else does mamma say about literature?” he asked. “Can you remember?”
Again I pondered, and her words came back to me. “That he who can write a great book is greater than a king; that the gift of being able to write is given to anybody in trust; that an author should never forget he is God's servant.”
He sat for awhile without speaking, his chin resting on his folded hands supported by his gold-topped cane. Then he turned and laid a hand upon my shoulder, and his clear, bright eyes were close to mine.
“Your mother is a wise lady, Paul,” he said. “Remember her words always. In later life let them come back to you; they will guide you better than the chatter of the Clubs.”
“And what modern authors do you read?” he asked after a silence: “any of them—Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton, Dickens?”
“I have read 'The Last of the Barons,'” I told him; “I like that. And I've been to Barnet and seen the church. And some of Mr. Dickens'.”
“And what do you think of Mr. Dickens?” he asked. But he did not seem very interested in the subject. He had picked up a few small stones, and was throwing them carefully into the water.
“I like him very much,” I answered; “he makes you laugh.”
“Not always?” he asked. He stopped his stone-throwing, and turned sharply towards me.
“Oh, no, not always,” I admitted; “but I like the funny bits best. I like so much where Mr. Pickwick—”
“Oh, damn Mr. Pickwick!” he said.
“Don't you like him?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, I like him well enough, or used to,” he replied; “I'm a bit tired of him, that's all. Does your mamma like Mr.—Mr. Dickens?”
“Not the funny parts,” I explained to him. “She thinks he is occasionally—”
“I know,” he interrupted, rather irritably, I thought; “a trifle vulgar.”
It surprised me that he should have guessed her exact words. “I don't think mamma has much sense of humour,” I explained to him. “Sometimes she doesn't even see papa's jokes.”
At that he laughed again. “But she likes the other parts?” he enquired, “the parts where Mr. Dickens isn't—vulgar?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “She says he can be so beautiful and tender, when he likes.”
Twilight was deepening. It occurred to me to enquire of him again the time.
“Just over the quarter,” he answered, looking at his watch.
“I'm so sorry,” I said. “I must go now.”
“So am I sorry, Paul,” he answered. “Perhaps we shall meet again. Good-bye.” Then as our hands touched: “You have never asked me my name, Paul,” he reminded me.
“Oh, haven't I?” I answered.
“No, Paul,” he replied, “and that makes me think of your future with hope. You are an egotist, Paul; and that is the beginning of all art.”
And after that he would not tell me his name. “Perhaps next time we meet,” he said. “Good-bye, Paul. Good luck to you!”
So I went my way. Where the path winds out of sight I turned. He was still seated upon the bench, but his face was towards me, and he waved his hand to me. I answered with a wave of mine. And then the intervening boughs and bushes gradually closed in around me. And across the rising mist there rose the hoarse, harsh cry:
“All out! All out!”
Chapter X.
In which Paul is Shipwrecked, and cast into Deep Waters.
My father died, curiously enough, on the morning of his birthday. We had not expected the end to arrive for some time, and at first did not know that it had come.
“I have left him sleeping,” said my mother, who had slipped out very quietly in her dressing-gown. “Washburn gave him a draught last night. We won't disturb him.”
So we sat round the breakfast table, speaking in low tones, for the house was small and flimsy, all sound easily heard through its thin partitions. Afterwards my mother crept upstairs, I following, and cautiously opened the door a little way.
The blinds were still down, and the room dark. It seemed a long time that my mother stood there listening, her ear against the jar. The first costermonger—a girl's voice, it sounded—passed, crying shrilly: “Watercreases, fine fresh watercreases with your breakfast-a'penny a bundle watercreases;” and further off a hoarse youth was wailing: “Mee-ilk-mee-ilk-oi.”
Inch by inch my mother opened the door wider and we stole in. He was lying with his eyes still closed, the lips just slightly parted. I had never seen death before, and could not realise it. All that I could see was that he looked even younger than I had ever seen him look before. By slow degrees only, it came home to me, the knowledge that he was gone away from us. For days—for weeks, I would hear his step behind me in the street, his voice calling to me, see his face among the crowds, and hastening to meet him, stand bewildered because it had mysteriously disappeared. But at first I felt no pain whatever.
To my mother it was but a short parting. Into her placid faith had
never fallen fear nor doubt. He was waiting for her. In God's good time they would meet again. What need of sorrow! Without him the days passed slowly: the house must ever be a little dull when the good man's away. But that was all. So my mother would speak of him always—of his dear, kind ways, of his oddities and follies we loved so to recall, not through tears, but smiles, thinking of him not as of one belonging to the past, but as of one beckoning to her from the future.
We lived on still in the old house though ever planning to move, for the great brick monster had crept closer round about us year by year, devouring in his progress all things fair. Field and garden, tree and cottage, time-mellowed house suggesting story, kind hedgerow hiding hideousness beyond—the few spots yet in that doomed land lingering to remind one of the sunshine, one by one had he scrunched them between his ugly teeth. A world apart, this east end of London, this ghetto of the poor for ever growing, dreariness added year by year to dreariness, hopelessness stretching ever farther its long, shrivelled arms, these endless rows of reeking cells where London herds her slaves. Often of a misty afternoon when we knew that without this city of the dead life was stirring in the sunshine, we would fare forth to house-hunt in pleasant suburbs, now themselves added to the weary catacomb of narrow streets—to Highgate, then a tiny town connected by a coach with leafy Holloway; to Hampstead with its rows of ancient red-brick houses, from whose wind-blown heath one saw beyond the woods and farms, far London's domes and spires, to Wood Green among the pastures, where smock-coated labourers discussed their politics and ale beneath wide-spreading elms; to Hornsey, then a village consisting of an ivy-covered church and one grass-bordered way. But though we often saw “the very thing for us” and would discuss its possibilities from every point of view and find them good, we yet delayed.
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