“She took it?” asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his bread.
“She accepted me, sir,” returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would have awed any one but Minikin. “Can you give me any good reason for her not doing so?”
“No need to get mad with me,” explained Minikin. “I'm not blaming the poor woman. We all have our moments of despair.”
The unfortunate Clapper again exploded. Uncle Gutton rose to his feet. The ready Jarman saved the situation.
“'Ear! 'ear!” cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two knives. “Silence for Uncle Gutton! 'E's going to propose a toast. 'Ear, 'ear!”
Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into applause.
“What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say—” began Uncle Gutton.
“Good old Uncle Gutton!” persisted the determined Jarman. “Bride and bridegroom—long life to 'em!”
Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against Minikin to evaporate.
“Well,” said Uncle Gutton, “if you think I'm the one to do it—”
The response was unmistakable. In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task. Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to assign to him the duty.
Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce censure of the Adulteration Act. Reminded of the time by the maternal Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with such questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly interested, and directed himself to the main argument. To his, Uncle Gutton's, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity, Mr. Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness. Uncle Gutton it was who had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair Rosina would come eventually to desire—a plain, simple, hard-working, level-headed sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him: such an one, in short, as Mr. Clapper himself—(at this Mr. Clapper expressed approval by a lengthy laugh)—a gentleman who, so far as Uncle Gutton's knowledge went, had but one fault: a silly habit of laughing when there was nothing whatever to laugh at; of which, it was to be hoped, the cares and responsibilities of married life would cure him. (To the rest of the discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a gravity painfully maintained.) There had been moments, Uncle Gutton was compelled to admit, when the fair Rosina had shown inclination to make a fool of herself—to desire in place of honest worth mere painted baubles. He used the term in no offensive sense. Speaking for himself, what a man wanted beyond his weekly newspaper, he, Uncle Gutton, was unable to understand; but if there were fools in the world who wanted to read rubbish written by other fools, then the other fools would of course write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them. He mentioned no names, but what he would say was: a plain man for a sensible girl, and no painted baubles.
The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect that if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it was about full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring his speech to a premature conclusion. The bride and bridegroom were hustled into their clothes. There followed much female embracing and male hand-shaking. The rice having been forgotten, the waiter was almost thrown downstairs, with directions to at once procure some. There appearing danger of his not returning in time, the resourceful Jarman suggested cold semolina pudding as a substitute. But the idea was discouraged by the bride. A slipper of remarkable antiquity, discovered on the floor and regarded as a gift from Providence, was flung from the window by brother George, with admirable aim, and alighted on the roof of the cab. The waiter, on his return, not being able to find it, seemed surprised.
I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O'Kelly and the Signora, who were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had not seen the O'Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years before, so that we had much to tell each other. For the third time now had the O'Kelly proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of the lady to whom he still referred as his “dear good wife.”
“But, under the circumstances, would it not be better,” I suggested, “for her to obtain a divorce? Then you and the Signora could marry and there would be an end to the whole trouble.”
“From a strictly worldly point of view,” replied the O'Kelly, “it certainly would be; but Mrs. O'Kelly”—his voice took to itself unconsciously a tone of reverence—“is not an ordinary woman. You can have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness. I had a letter from her only two months ago, a few weeks after the—the last occurrence. Not one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed against her even unto seven times seven she would still consider it her duty to forgive me; that the 'home' would always be there for me to return to and repent.”
A tear stood in the O'Kelly's eye. “A beautiful nature,” he commented. “There are not many women like her.”
“Not one in a million!” added the Signora, with enthusiasm.
“Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy,” I said.
The O'Kelly spoke quite angrily. “Don't ye say a word against her! I won't listen to it. Ye don't understand her. She never will despair of reforming me.”
“You see, Mr. Kelver,” explained the Signora, “the whole difficulty arises from my unfortunate profession. It is impossible for me to keep out of dear Willie's way. If I could earn my living by any other means, I would; but I can't. And when he sees my name upon the posters, it's all over with him.”
“I do wish, Willie, dear,” added the Signora in tones of gentle reproof, “that you were not quite so weak.”
“Me dear,” replied the O'Kelly, “ye don't know how attractive ye are or ye wouldn't blame me.”
I laughed. “Why don't you be firm,” I suggested to the Signora, “send him packing about his business?”
“I ought to,” admitted the Signora. “I always mean to, until I see him. Then I don't seem able to say anything—not anything I ought to.”
“Ye do say it,” contradicted the O'Kelly. “Ye're an angel, only I won't listen to ye.”
“I don't say it as if I meant it,” persisted the Signora. “It's evident I don't.”
“I still think it a pity,” I said, “someone does not explain to Mrs. O'Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness.”
“It is difficult to decide,” argued the Signora. “If ever you should want to leave me—”
“Me darling!” exclaimed the O'Kelly.
“But you may,” insisted the Signora. “Something may happen to help you, to show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you will go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she is.”
“She's a saint,” agreed Willie.
At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards Fleet Street.
The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the 'Ortensia marriage, I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting me suggested the necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything of his friends beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the fire, filled and lighted his pipe.
“I left you alone,” he said. “You had to go through it, your slough of despond. It lies across every path—that leads to anywhere. Clear of it?”
“I think so,” I replied, smiling.
“You are on the high road,” he continued. “You have only to walk steadily. Sure you have left nothing behind you—in the slough?”
“Nothing worth bringing out of it,” I said. “Why do you ask so seriously?”
He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.
“Don't leave him behind you,” he said; “the l
ittle boy Paul—Paul the dreamer.”
I laughed. “Oh, he! He was only in my way.”
“Yes, here,” answered Dan. “This is not his world. He is of no use to you here; won't help you to bread and cheese—no, nor kisses either. But keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has been the real Paul—the living, growing Paul; the other—the active, worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep.”
“I have been driving him away,” I said. “He is so—so impracticable.”
Dan shook his head gravely. “It is not his world,” he repeated. “We must eat, drink—be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is the child. Take care of him.”
We sat in silence for a little while—for longer, perhaps, than it seemed to us—Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied with his own thoughts.
“You have an excellent agent,” said Dan; “retain her services as long as you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as regards your affairs. Women never have where they—”
He broke off to stir the fire.
“You like her?” I asked. The words sounded feeble. It is only the writer who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often selects by contrast.
“She is my ideal woman,” returned Dan; “true and strong and tender; clear as crystal, pure as dawn. Like her!”
He knocked the ashes from his pipe. “We do not marry our ideals,” he went on. “We love with our hearts, not with our souls. The woman I shall marry”—he sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face—“she will be some sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield's Dora. Only I am not Doady, who always seems to me to have been somewhat of a—He reminds me of you, Paul, a little. Dickens was right; her helplessness, as time went on, would have bored him more and more instead of appealing to him.”
“And the women,” I suggested, “do they marry their ideals?”
He laughed. “Ask them.”
“The difference between men and women,” he continued, “is very slight; we exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he is, Norah's ideal? Can't you imagine him?—But I can tell you the type of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart.”
He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his eye.
“A nice enough fellow—clever, perhaps, but someone—well, someone who will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will appeal to the mother side of her—not her ideal man, but the man for whom nature intended her.”
“Perhaps with her help,” I said, “he may in time become her ideal.”
“There's a long road before him,” growled Dan.
It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopement with Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed. His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked boastingly: Had I seen the Post for last Monday, the Court Circular for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a Grand Duke? What I think of that! and such like. Was not money master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made to acknowledge it!
But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.
“No children,” he had whispered to me across the table; “that's what I can't understand. Nearly four years and no children! What'll be the good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?”
It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was the talk of the town for the next day—and the following eight. She had heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and see her.
“I thought you would rather hear it quietly,” said Norah, “than learn it from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her.”
Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought it. I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My goddess had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself. From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world. So some youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the Great Queen was but a woman.
I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me that Madame G——would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain I went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her glass, a loose shawl about her shoulders.
“Excuse my shaking hands,” she said. “This damned hole is like a furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act.”
She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with grease.
“D'you know my husband?” she continued. “Baron G—; Mr. Paul Kelver.”
The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man. “Delighted to meet Mr. Kelver,” he said, speaking in excellent English. “Any friend of my wife's is always a friend of mine.”
He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach much importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether he was offended or not.
“I am glad I saw you,” she continued. “Do you remember a girl called Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.”
“Yes,” I answered, “I remember her.”
“Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago.” She was rubbing paint into her cheeks as she spoke. “She asked me if ever I saw you to give you this. I have been carrying it about with me ever since.”
She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's office framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my outstretched palm.
“Quite a pretty little romance,” laughed the Baron.
“That's all,” added the woman at the glass. “She said you would understand.”
From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never to see again that look upon a woman's face.
“Thank you,” I said. “Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I shall always wear it.”
Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.
Chapter X.
Paul finds his Way.
Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of the sad eyes, would seek to lure me from my work. But for my vehement determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my honesty, my desire—growing day by day, till it became almost a physical hunger—to feel again the pressure of Norah's strong white hand in mine, he might possibly have succeeded. Heaven only knows what then he might have made of me: politician, minor poet, more or less able editor, hampered by convictions—something most surely of but little service to myself. Now and again, with a week to spare—my humour making holiday, nothing to be done but await patiently its return—I would write stories for my own pleasure. They made no mark; but success in purposeful work is of slower growth. Had I persisted—but there was money to be earned. And by the time my debts were paid, I had estab
lished a reputation.
“Madness!” argued practical friends. “You would be throwing away a certain fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence. The one you know you can do, the other—it would be beginning your career all over again.”
“You would find it almost impossible now,” explained those who spoke, I knew, words of wisdom, of experience. “The world would never listen to you. Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic actor insist upon playing Hamlet. It might be the best Hamlet ever seen upon the stage; the audience would only laugh—or stop away.”
Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, “Goggles” and I, seeking some quiet corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other. He would lay before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo—an excellent conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to interest me. Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo. But I listened with every sign of encouragement. It was the price I paid him for, in turn, listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how monumental literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and built up.
“Perhaps in a future existence,” laughed Goggles, one evening, rising as the clock struck seven, “I shall be a great tragedian, and you a famous poet. Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we are both sinning our mercies. After all, to live is the most important thing in life.”
I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him to get into his coat.
“Take my advice”—tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy eyes upon me. Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should have laughed, his expression was so comical. “Marry some dear little woman” (he was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own weight); “one never understands life properly till the babies come to explain it to one.”
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