Paul Kelver

by Jerome Klapka Jerome

  Our leading lady had left the theatre immediately on the fall of the curtain; it was not necessary for her to wait, her husband acting as her business man. On reaching my rooms, I found her sitting by the fire. It reminded me that our agent in advance having fallen ill, her husband had, at her suggestion, been appointed in his place, and had left us on the Wednesday to make the necessary preparations in the next town on our list. I thought that perhaps she had come round for her money, and the idea amused me.

  “Well?” she said, with her one smile. I had been doing my best for some months to regard it as soul-consuming, but without any real success.

  “Well,” I answered. It bored me, her being there. I wanted to be alone.

  “You don't seem overjoyed to see me. What's the matter with you? What's happened?”

  I laughed. “Vane's bolted and taken the week's money with him.”

  “The beast!” she said. “I knew he was that sort. What ever made you take up with him? Will it make much difference to you?”

  “It makes a difference all round,” I replied. “There's no money to pay any of you. There's nothing to pay your fares back to London.”

  She had risen. “Here, let me understand this,” she said. “Are you the rich mug Vane's been representing you to be, or only his accomplice?”

  “The mug and the accomplice both,” I answered, “without the rich. It's his tour. He put my name to it because he didn't want his own to appear—for family reasons. It's his play; he stole it—”

  She interrupted me with a whistle. “I thought it looked a bit fishy, all those alterations. But such funny things do happen in this profession! Stole it, did he?”

  “The whole thing in manuscript. I put my name to it for the same reason—he didn't want his own to appear.”

  She dropped into her chair and laughed—a good-tempered laugh, loud and long. “Well, I'm damned!” she said. “The first man who has ever taken me in. I should never have signed if I had thought it was his show. I could see the sort he was with half an eye.” She jumped up from the chair. “Here, let me get out of this,” she said. “I just looked in to know what time to-morrow; I'd forgotten. You needn't say I came.”

  Her hand upon the door, laughter seized her again, so that for support she had to lean against the wall.

  “Do you know why I really did come?” she said. “You'll guess when you come to think it over, so I may as well tell you. It's a bit of a joke. I came to say 'yes' to what you asked me last night. Have you forgotten?”

  I stared at her. Last night! It seemed a long while ago—so very unimportant what I might have said.

  She laughed again. “So help me! if you haven't. Well, you asked me to run away with you—that's all, to let our two souls unite. Damned lucky I took a day to think it over! Good-night.”

  “Good-night,” I answered, without moving. I was gripping a chair to prevent myself from rushing at her, pushing her out of the room, and locking the door. I wanted to be alone.

  I heard her turn the handle. “Got a pound or two to carry you over?” It was a woman's voice.

  I put my hand into my pocket. “One pound seventeen,” I answered, counting it. “It will pay my fare to London—or buy me a dinner and a second-hand revolver. I haven't quite decided yet.”

  “Oh, you get back and pull yourself together,” she said. “You're only a kid. Good-night.”

  I put a few things into a small bag and walked thirty miles that night into Belfast. Arrived in London, I took a lodging in Deptford, where I was least likely to come in contact with any face I had ever seen before. I maintained myself by giving singing lessons at sixpence the half-hour, evening lessons in French and German (the Lord forgive me!) to ambitious shop-boys at eighteen pence a week, making up tradesmen's books. A few articles of jewellery I had retained enabled me to tide over bad periods. For some four months I existed there, never going outside the neighbourhood. Occasionally, wandering listlessly about the streets, some object, some vista, would strike me by reason of its familiarity. Then I would turn and hasten back into my grave of dim, weltering streets.

  Of thoughts, emotions, during these dead days I was unconscious. Somewhere in my brain they may have been stirring, contending; but myself I lived as in a long, dull dream. I ate, and drank, and woke, and slept, and walked and walked, and lounged by corners; staring by the hour together, seeing nothing.

  It has surprised me since to find the scenes I must then have witnessed photographed so clearly on my mind. Tragedies, dramas, farces, played before me in that teeming underworld—the scenes present themselves to me distinct, complete; yet I have no recollection of ever having seen them.

  I fell ill. It must have been some time in April, but I kept no count of days. Nobody came near me, nobody knew of me. I occupied a room at the top of a huge block of workmen's dwellings. A woman who kept a second-hand store had lent me for a shilling a week a few articles of furniture. Lying upon my chair-bedstead, I listened to the shrill sounds around me, that through the light and darkness never ceased. A pint of milk, left each morning on the stone landing, kept me alive. I would wait for the man's descending footsteps, then crawl to the door. I hoped I was going to die, regretting my returning strength, the desire for food that drove me out into the streets again.

  One night, a week or two after my partial recovery, I had wandered on and on for hour after hour. The breaking dawn recalled me to myself. I was outside the palings of a park. In the faint shadowy light it looked strange and unfamiliar. I was too tired to walk further. I scrambled over the low wooden fencing, and reaching a seat, dropped down and fell asleep.

  I was sitting in a sunny avenue; birds were singing joyously, bright flowers were all around me. Norah was beside me, her frank, sweet eyes were looking into mine; they were full of tenderness, mingled with wonder. It was a delightful dream: I felt myself smiling.

  Suddenly I started to my feet. Norah's strong hand drew me down again.

  I was in the broad walk, Regent's Park, where, I remembered, Norah often walked before breakfast. A park-keeper, the only other human creature within sight, was eyeing me suspiciously. I saw myself—without a looking-glass—unkempt, ragged. My intention was to run, but Norah was holding me by the arm. Savagely I tried to shake her off. I was weak from my recent illness, and, I suppose, half starved; it angered me to learn she was the stronger of the two. In spite of my efforts, she dragged me back.

  Ashamed of my weakness, ashamed of everything about me, I burst into tears; and that of course made me still more ashamed. To add to my discomfort, I had no handkerchief. Holding me with one hand—it was quite sufficient—Norah produced her own, and wiped my eyes. The park-keeper, satisfied, I suppose, that at all events I was not dangerous, with a grin passed on.

  “Where have you been, and what have you been doing?” asked Norah. She still retained her grip upon me, and in her grey eyes was quiet determination.

  So, with my face turned away from her, I told her the whole miserable story, taking strange satisfaction in exaggerating, if anything, my own share of the disgrace. My recital ended, I sat staring down the long, shadow-freckled way, and for awhile there was no sound but the chirping of the sparrows.

  Then behind me I beard a smothered laugh. It was impossible to imagine it could come from Norah. I turned quickly to see who had stolen upon us. It was Norah who was laughing; though to do her justice she was trying to suppress it, holding her handkerchief to her face. It was of no use, it would out; she abandoned the struggle, and gave way to it. It astonished the sparrows into silence; they stood in a row upon the low iron border and looked at one another.

  “I am glad you think it funny,” I said.

  “But it is funny,” she persisted. “Don't say you have lost your sense of humour, Paul; it was the one real thing you possessed. You were so cocky—you don't know how cocky you were! Everybody was a fool but Vane; nobody else but he appreciated you at your true worth. You and he between you were going to reform the stage, to educ
ate the public, to put everything and everybody to rights. I am awfully sorry for all you've gone through; but now that it is over, can't you see yourself that it is funny?”

  Faintly, dimly, this aspect of the case, for the very first time, began to present itself to me; but I should have preferred Norah to have been impressed by its tragedy.

  “That is not all,” I said. “I nearly ran away with another man's wife.”

  I was glad to notice that sobered her somewhat. “Nearly? Why not quite?” she asked more seriously.

  “She thought I was some young idiot with money,” I replied bitterly, pleased with the effect I had produced. “Vane had told her a pack of lies. When she found out I was only a poor devil, ruined, disgraced, without a sixpence—” I made a gesture expressive of eloquent contempt for female nature generally.

  “I am sorry,” said Norah; “I told you you would fall in love with something real.”

  Her words irritated me, unreasonably, I confess. “In love!” I replied; “good God, I was never in love with her!”

  “Then why did you nearly run away with her?”

  I was wishing now I had not mentioned the matter; it promised to be difficult of explanation. “I don't know,” I replied irritably. “I thought she was in love with me. She was very beautiful—at least, other people seemed to think she was. Artists are not like ordinary men. You must live—understand life, before you can teach it to others. When a beautiful woman is in love with you—or pretends to be, you—you must say something. You can't stand like a fool and—”

  Again her laughter interrupted me; this time she made no attempt to hide it. The sparrows chirped angrily, and flew off to continue their conversation somewhere where there would be less noise.

  “You are the biggest baby, Paul,” she said, so soon as she could speak, “I ever heard of.” She seized me by the shoulders, and turned me round. “If you weren't looking so ill and miserable, I would shake you, Paul, till there wasn't a bit of breath left in your body.”

  “How much money do you owe?” she asked—“to the people in the company and anybody else, I mean—roughly?”

  “About a hundred and fifty pounds,” I answered.

  “Then if you rest day or night, Paul, till you have paid that hundred and fifty—every penny of it—I'll think you the meanest cad in London!”

  Her grey eyes were flashing quite alarmingly. I felt almost afraid of her. She could be so vehement at times.

  “But how can I?” I asked.

  “Go straight home,” she commanded, “and write something funny: an article, story—anything you like; only mind that it is funny. Post it to me to-morrow, at the latest. Dan is in London, editing a new weekly. I'll have it copied out and sent to him. I shan't say who it is from. I shall merely ask him to read it and reply, at once. If you've a grain of grit left in you, you'll write something that he will be glad to have and to pay for. Pawn that ring on your finger and get yourself a good breakfast”—it was my mother's wedding-ring, the only piece of dispensable property I had not parted with—“she won't mind helping you. But nobody else is going to—except yourself.”

  She looked at her watch. “I must be off.” She turned again. “There is something I was forgetting. B—”—she mentioned the name of the dramatist whose play Vane had stolen—“has been looking for you for the last three months. If you hadn't been an idiot you might have saved yourself a good deal of trouble. He is quite certain it was Vane stole the manuscript. He asked the nurse to bring it to him an hour after Vane had left the house, and it couldn't be found. Besides, the man's character is well known. And so is yours. I won't tell it you,” she laughed; “anyhow, it isn't that of a knave.”

  She made a step towards me, then changed her mind. “No,” she said, “I shan't shake hands with you till you have paid the last penny that you owe. Then I shall know that you are a man.”

  She did not look back. I watched her, till the sunlight, streaming in my eyes, raised a golden mist between us.

  Then I went to my work.

  Chapter IX.

  The Princess of the Golden Locks sends Paul a Ring.

  It took me three years to win that handshake. For the first six months I remained in Deptford. There was excellent material to be found there for humorous articles, essays, stories; likewise for stories tragic and pathetic. But I owed a hundred and fifty pounds—a little over two hundred it reached to, I found, when I came to add up the actual figures. So I paid strict attention to business, left the tears to be garnered by others—better fitted maybe for the task; kept to my own patch, reaped and took to market only the laughter.

  At the beginning I sent each manuscript to Norah; she had it copied out, debited me with the cost received payment, and sent me the balance. At first my earnings were small; but Norah was an excellent agent; rapidly they increased. Dan grew quite cross with her, wrote in pained surprise at her greed. The “matter” was fair, but in no way remarkable. Any friend of hers, of course, he was anxious to assist; but business was business. In justice to his proprietors, he could not and would not pay more than the market value. Miss Deleglise, replying curtly in the third person, found herself in perfect accord with Mr. Brian as to business being business. If Mr. Brian could not afford to pay her price for material so excellent, other editors with whom Miss Deleglise was equally well acquainted could and would. Answer by return would greatly oblige, pending which the manuscript then in her hands she retained. Mr. Brian, understanding he had found his match, grumbled but paid. Whether he had any suspicion who “Jack Homer” might be, he never confessed; but he would have played the game, pulled his end of the rope, in either case. Nor was he allowed to decide the question for himself. Competition was introduced into the argument. Of purpose a certain proportion of my work my agent sent elsewhere. “Jack Homer” grew to be a commodity in demand. For, seated at my rickety table, I laughed as I wrote, the fourth wall of the dismal room fading before my eyes revealing vistas beyond.

  Still, it was slow work. Humour is not an industrious maid; declines to be bustled, will work only when she feels inclined—does not often feel inclined; gives herself a good many unnecessary airs; if worried, packs up and goes off, Heaven knows where! comes back when she thinks she will: a somewhat unreliable young person. To my literary labours I found it necessary to add journalism. I lacked Dan's magnificent assurance. Fate never befriends the nervous. Had I burst into the editorial sanctum, the editor most surely would have been out if in, would have been a man of short ways, would have seen to it that I went out quickly. But the idea was not to be thought of; Robert Macaire himself in my one coat would have been diffident, apologetic. I joined the ranks of the penny-a-liners—to be literally exact, three halfpence a liners. In company with half a dozen other shabby outsiders—some of them young men like myself seeking to climb; others, older men who had sunk—I attended inquests, police courts; flew after fire engines; rejoiced in street accidents; yearned for murders. Somewhat vulture-like we lived precariously upon the misfortunes of others. We made occasional half crowns by providing the public with scandal, occasional crowns by keeping our information to ourselves.

  “I think, gentlemen,” would explain our spokesman in a hoarse whisper, on returning to the table, “I think the corpse's brother-in-law is anxious that the affair, if possible, should be kept out of the papers.”

  The closeness and attention with which we would follow that particular case, the fulness and completeness of our notes, would be quite remarkable. Our spokesman would rise, drift carelessly away, to return five minutes later, wiping his mouth.

  “Not a very interesting case, gentlemen, I don't think. Shall we say five shillings apiece?” Sometimes a sense of the dignity of our calling would induce us to stand out for ten.

  And here also my sense of humour came to my aid; gave me perhaps an undue advantage over my competitors. Twelve good men and true had been asked to say how a Lascar sailor had met his death. It was perfectly clear how he had met his death. A
plumber, working on the roof of a small two-storeyed house, had slipped and fallen on him. The plumber had escaped with a few bruises; the unfortunate sailor had been picked up dead. Some blame attached to the plumber. His mate, an excellent witness, told us the whole story.

  “I was fixing a gas-pipe on the first floor,” said the man. “The prisoner was on the roof.”

  “We won't call him 'the prisoner,'” interrupted the coroner, “at least, not yet. Refer to him, if you please, as the 'last witness.'”

  “The last witness,” corrected himself the man. “He shouts down the chimney to know if I was ready for him.”

  “'Ready and waiting,' I says.”

  “'Right,' he says; 'I'm coming in through the window.'”

  “'Wait a bit,' I says; 'I'll go down and move the ladder for you.”

  “'It's all right,' he says; 'I can reach it.'”

  “'No, you can't,' I says. 'It's the other side of the chimney.'”

  “'I can get round,' he says.”

  “Well, before I knew what had happened, I hears him go, smack! I rushes to the window and looks out: I see him on the pavement, sitting up like.”

  “'Hullo, Jim,' I says. 'Have you hurt yourself?'”

  “'I think I'm all right,' he says, 'as far as I can tell. But I wish you'd come down. This bloke I've fallen on looks a bit sick.'”

  The others headed their flimsy “Sad Accident,” a title truthful but not alluring. I altered mine to “Plumber in a Hurry—Fatal Result.” Saying as little as possible about the unfortunate sailor, I called the attention of plumbers generally to the coroner's very just remarks upon the folly of undue haste; pointed out to them, as a body, the trouble that would arise if somehow they could not cure themselves of this tendency to rush through their work without a moment's loss of time.