Paul Kelver

by Jerome Klapka Jerome

  Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak. Cabinet Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped from Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries disguised in grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that with six strokes of the pen they could set half London laughing at whom they would; raw laddies with the burr yet clinging to their tongues, but who we knew would one day have the people dancing to the music of their words. Neither wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor position counted. Was a man interesting, amusing; had he ideas and thoughts of his own? Then he was welcome. Men who had come, men who were coming, met there on equal footing. Among them, as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my place—somewhat to my dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I have shocked them by the originality of my views, impressed them with the depth of my judgments. They declined to be startled, refused to be impressed; instead, they laughed. Nor from these men could I obtain sympathy in my disappointment.

  “What do you mean, you villain!” roared Deleglise's caretaker at me one evening on entering the kitchen. “How dare you waste your time writing this sort of stuff?”

  He had a copy of the paper containing my “Witch of Moel Sarbod” in his hand—then some months old. He screwed it up into a ball and flung it in my face. “I've only just read it. What did you get for it?”

  “Nothing,” I answered.

  “Nothing!” he screamed. “You got off for nothing? You ought to have been whipped at the cart's tail!”

  “Oh, come, it's not as bad as that,” suggested old Deleglise.

  “Not bad! There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end.”

  “There wasn't intended to be,” I interrupted.

  “Why not, you swindler? What were you sent into the world to do? To make it laugh.”

  “I want to make it think,” I told him.

  “Make it think! Hasn't it got enough to think about? Aren't there ten thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers, long-eared philosophers, boring it to death? Who are you to turn up your nose at your work and tell the Almighty His own business? You are here to make us laugh. Get on with your work, you confounded young idiot!”

  Urban Vane was the only one among them who understood me, who agreed with me that I was fitted for higher things than merely to minister to the world's need of laughter. He alone it was who would listen with approval to my dreams of becoming a famous tragedian, a writer of soul-searching books, of passion-analysing plays. I never saw him laugh himself, certainly not at anything funny. “Humour!” he would explain in his languid drawl, “personally it doesn't amuse me.” One felt its introduction into the scheme of life had been an error. He was a large, fleshy man, with a dreamy, caressing voice and strangely impassive face. Where he came from, who he was, nobody knew. Without ever passing a remark himself that was worth listening to, he, nevertheless, by some mysterious trick of manner I am unable to explain, soon established himself, even throughout that company, where as a rule men found their proper level, as a silent authority in all contests of wit or argument. Stories at which he listened, bored, fell flat. The bon mot at which some faint suggestion of a smile quivered round his clean-shaven lips was felt to be the crown of the discussion. I can only conclude his secret to have been his magnificent assumption of superiority, added to a sphinx-like impenetrability behind which he could always retire from any danger of exposure. Subjects about which he knew nothing—and I have come to the conclusion they were more numerous than was suspected—became in his presence topics outside the radius of cultivated consideration: one felt ashamed of having introduced them. His own subjects—they were few but exclusive—he had the knack of elevating into intellectual tests: one felt ashamed, reflecting how little one knew about them. Whether he really did possess a charm of manner, or whether the sense of his superiority with which he had imbued me it was that made any condescension he paid me a thing to grasp at, I am unable to say. Certain it is that when he suggested I should throw up chorus singing and accompany him into the provinces as manager of a theatrical company he was then engaging to run a wonderful drama that was going to revolutionise the English stage and educate the English public, I allowed myself not a moment for consideration, but accepted his proposal with grateful delight.

  “Who is he?” asked Dan. Somehow he had never impressed Dan; but then Dan was a fellow to impress whom was slow work. As he himself confessed, he had no instinct for character. “I judge,” he would explain, “purely by observation.”

  “What does that matter?” was my reply.

  “What does he know about the business?”

  “That's why he wants me.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “There's not much to know. I can find out.”

  “Take care you don't find out that there's more to know than you think. What is this wonderful play of his?”

  “I haven't seen it yet; I don't think it's finished. It's something from the Spanish or the Russian, I'm not sure. I'm to put it into shape when he's done the translation. He wants me to put my name to it as the adaptor.”

  “Wonder he hasn't asked you to wear his clothes. Has he got any money?”

  “Of course he has money. How can you run a theatrical company without money?”

  “Have you seen the money?”

  “He doesn't carry it about with him in a bag.”

  “I should have thought your ambition to be to act, not to manage. Managers are to be had cheap enough. Why should he want some one who knows nothing about it?”

  “I'm going to act. I'm going to play a leading part.”

  “Great Scott!”

  “He'll do the management really himself; I shall simply advise him. But he doesn't want his own name to appear.”

  “Why not?”

  “His people might object.”

  “Who are his people?”

  “How do I know? What a suspicious chap you are.”

  Dan shrugged his shoulders. “You are not an actor, you never will be; you are not a business man. You've made a start at writing, that's your proper work. Why not go on with it?”

  “I can't get on with it. That one thing was accepted, and never paid for; everything else comes back regularly, just as before. Besides, I can go on writing wherever I am.”

  “You've got friends here to help you.”

  “They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense.”

  “Well, clever nonsense is worth writing. It's better than stodgy sense: literature is blocked up with that. Why not follow their advice?”

  “Because I don't believe they are right. I'm not a clown; I don't mean to be. Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he has nothing else. That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the highest. I have knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct. I mean to prove it to you all. Vane's the only man that understands me.”

  Dan lit his pipe. “Have you made up your mind to go?”

  “Of course I have. It's an opportunity that doesn't occur twice. 'There's a tide in the affairs—”

  “Thanks,” interrupted Dan; “I've heard it before. Well, if you've made up your mind, there's an end of the matter. Good luck to you! You are young, and it's easier to learn things then than later.”

  “You talk,” I answered, “as if you were old enough to be my grandfather.”

  He smiled and laid both hands upon my shoulders. “So I am,” he said, “quite old enough, little boy Paul. Don't be angry; you'll always be little Paul to me.” He put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the window.

  “What'll you do?” I enquired. “Will you keep on these rooms?”

  “No,” he replied. “I shall accept an offer that has been made to me to take the sub-editorship of a big Yorkshire paper. It is an important position and will give me experience.”

  “You'll never be happy mewed up in a provincial town,” I told him. “I shall want a London address, and I can easily afford it. Let's k
eep them on together.”

  He shook his head. “It wouldn't be the same thing,” he said.

  So there came a morning when we said good-bye. Before Dan returned from the office I should be gone. They had been pleasant months that we had spent together in these pretty rooms. Though my life was calling to me full of hope, I felt the pain of leaving them. Two years is a long period in a young man's life, when the sap is running swiftly. My affections had already taken root there. The green leaves in summer, in winter the bare branches of the square, the sparrows that chirped about the window-sills, the quiet peace of the great house, Dan, kindly old Deleglise: around them my fibres clung, closer than I had known. The Lady of the train: she managed it now less clumsily. Her hands and feet had grown smaller, her elbows rounder. I found myself smiling as I thought of her—one always did smile when one thought of Norah, everybody did;—of her tomboy ways, her ringing laugh—there were those who termed it noisy; her irrepressible frankness—there were times when it was inconvenient. Would she ever become lady-like, sedate, proper? One doubted it. I tried to picture her a wife, the mistress of a house. I found the smile deepening round my mouth. What a jolly wife she would make! I could see her bustling, full of importance; flying into tempers, lasting possibly for thirty seconds; then calling herself names, saving all argument by undertaking her own scolding, and doing it well. I followed her to motherhood. What a joke it would be! What would she do with them? She would just let them do what they liked with her. She and they would be a parcel of children together, she the most excited of them all. No; on second thoughts I could detect in her a strong vein of common sense. They would have to mind their p's and q's. I could see her romping with them, helping them to tear their clothes; but likewise I could see her flying after them, bringing back an armful struggling, bathing it, physicking it. Perhaps she would grow stout, grow grey; but she would still laugh more often than sigh, speak her mind, be quick, good-tempered Norah to the end. Her character precluded all hope of surprise. That, as I told myself, was its defect. About her were none of those glorious possibilities that make of some girls charming mysteries. A woman, said I to myself, should be a wondrous jewel, hiding unknown lights and shadows. You, my dear Norah—I spoke my thoughts aloud, as had become a habit with me: those who live much alone fall into this way—you are merely a crystal, not shallow—no, I should not call you shallow by any mans, but transparent.

  What would he be, her lover? Some plain, matter-of-fact, business-like young fellow, a good player of cricket and football, fond of his dinner. What a very uninteresting affair the love-making would be! If she liked him—well, she would probably tell him so; if she didn't, he would know it in five minutes.

  As for inducing her to change her mind, wooing her, cajoling her—I heard myself laughing at the idea.

  There came a quick rap at the door. “Come in,” I cried; and she entered.

  “I came to say good-bye to you,” she explained. “I'm just going out. What were you laughing at?”

  “Oh, at an idea that occurred to me.”

  “A funny one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell it me.”

  “Well, it was something in connection with yourself. It might offend you.”

  “It wouldn't trouble you much if it did, would it?”

  “No, I don't suppose it would.”

  “Then why not tell me?”

  “I was thinking of your lover.”

  It did offend her; I thought it would. But she looked really interesting when she was cross. Her grey eyes would flash, and her whole body quiver. There was a charming spice of danger always about making her cross.

  “I suppose you think I shall never have one.”

  “On the contrary, I think you will have a good many.” I had not thought so before then. I formed the idea for the first time in that moment, while looking straight into her angry face. It was still a childish face.

  The anger died out of it as it always did within the minute, and she laughed. “It would be fun, wouldn't it. I wonder what I should do with him? It makes you feel very serious being in love, doesn't it?”

  “Very.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  I hesitated for a moment. Then the delight of talking about it overcame my fear of being chaffed. Besides, when she felt it, nobody could be more delightfully sympathetic. I determined to adventure it.

  “Yes,” I answered, “ever since I was a boy. If you are going to be foolish,” I added, for I saw the laugh before it came, “I shan't talk to you about it.”

  “I'm not—I won't, really,” she pleaded, making her face serious again. “What is she like?”

  I took from my breast pocket Barbara's photograph, and handed it to her in silence.

  “Is she really as beautiful as that?” she asked, gazing at it evidently fascinated.

  “More so,” I assured her. “Her expression is the most beautiful part of her. Those are only her features.”

  She sighed. “I wish I was beautiful.”

  “You are at an awkward age,” I told her. “It is impossible to say what you are going to be like.”

  “Mamma was a lovely woman, everybody says so; and Tom I call awfully handsome. Perhaps I'll be better when I'm filled out a bit more.” A small Venetian mirror hung between the two windows; she glanced up into it. “It's my nose that irritates me,” she said. She rubbed it viciously, as if she would rub it out.

  “Some people admire snub noses,” I explained to her.

  “No, really?”

  “Tennyson speaks of them as 'tip-tilted like the petals of a rose.'”

  “How nice of him! Do you think he meant my sort?” She rubbed it again, but in a kinder fashion; then looked again at Barbara's photograph. “Who is she?”

  “She was Miss Hasluck,” I answered; “she is the Countess Huescar now. She was married last summer.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember; you told us about her. You were children together. But what's the good of your being in love with her if she's married?”

  “It makes my whole life beautiful.”

  “Wanting somebody you can't have?”

  “I don't want her.”

  “You said you were in love with her.”

  “So I am.”

  She handed me back the photograph, and I replaced it in my pocket.

  “I don't understand that sort of love,” she said. “If I loved anybody I should want to have them with me always.”

  “She is with me always,” I answered, “in my thoughts.” She looked at me with her clear grey eyes. I found myself blinking. Something seemed to be slipping from me, something I did not want to lose. I remember a similar sensation once at the moment of waking from a strange, delicious dream to find the sunlight pouring in upon me through an open window.

  “That isn't being in love,” she said. “That's being in love with the idea of being in love. That's the way I used to go to balls”—she laughed—“in front of the glass. You caught me once, do you remember?”

  “And was it not sweeter,” I argued, “the imagination? You were the belle of the evening; you danced divinely every dance, were taken in to supper by the Lion. In reality you trod upon your partner's toes, bumped and were bumped, were left a wallflower more than half the time, had a headache the next day. Were not the dream balls the more delightful?”

  “No, they weren't,” she answered without the slightest hesitation. “One real dance, when at last it came, was worth the whole of them. Oh, I know, I've heard you talking, all of you—of the faces that you see in dreams and that are ever so much more beautiful than the faces that you see when you're awake; of the wonderful songs that nobody ever sings, the wonderful pictures that nobody ever paints, and all the rest of it. I don't believe a word of it. It's tommyrot!”

  “I wish you wouldn't use slang.”

  “Well, you know what I mean. What is the proper word? Give it me.”

  “I suppose you mean cant,” I suggested.


  “No, I don't. Cant is something that you don't believe in yourself. It's tommyrot: there isn't any other word. When I'm in love it will be with something that is real.”

  I was feeling angry with her. “I know just what he will be like. He will be a good-natured, commonplace—”

  “Whatever he is,” she interrupted, “he'll be alive, and he'll want me and I shall want him. Dreams are silly. I prefer being up.” She clapped her hands. “That's it.” Then, silent, she looked at me with an expression of new interest. “I've been wondering and wondering what it was: you are not really awake yet. You've never got up.”

  I laughed at her whimsical way of putting it; but at the back of my brain was a troubled idea that perhaps she was revealing to me the truth. And if so, what would “waking up,” as she termed it, be like? A flash of memory recalled to me that summer evening upon Barking Bridge, when, as it had seemed to me, the little childish Paul had slipped away from me, leaving me lonely and bewildered to find another Self. Was my boyhood in like manner now falling from me? I found myself clinging to it with vague terror. Its thoughts, its feelings—dreams: they had grown sweet to me; must I lose them? This cold, unknown, new Self, waiting to receive me: I shrank away from it with fear.