The King of Schnorrers: Grotesques and Fantasies

by Israel Zangwill

  _An Odd Life._

  It was the most curious case of croup I had ever attended. Not thatthere was anything unusual about the symptoms--they were so correct asto be devoid of the slightest interest. Certainly they were not worthwhile being called up for in the middle of the night. The patient itwas that attracted my attention. He was a handsome baby of one yearand nine months--by name Willy Streetside--with such an expression ofcandour and intelligence that I was moved to see him suffer. I satdown by his bedside, took his poor little feverish hand, and felt theweak quick pulse, and knew it had not much longer to beat. I put theglass of barley and water to his lips, and he drank eagerly. He seemedto be an orphan, in charge of a strange, silent serving-man,apparently the only other occupant of the luxurious and artisticallyfurnished flat. I judged Downton to be a man of some culture, from thelatest magazines strewn about the bedroom; but I could not helpthinking that a female, more familiar with infantile ailments, mighthave been more useful. Apathetic and torpid though I was, fromeighteen hours' continuous activity in a hundred sickrooms, my eyesfilled with tears, and I sat for an instant, holding the little hand,listening to the poor child's painful breathing, and speculating onthe mystery of that existence so early recalled. All his organs weresound. But for this accidental croup, I told myself, he might havelived till eighty. "Poor Willy Streetside!" I murmured, for hiscurious name clung to my memory.

  Suddenly the baby turned his blue eyes full on me, and said:

  "I suppose it's all up, doctor?"

  I started violently, and let go his hand. The words were perhaps notaltogether beyond the capacity of an infant; but the air of manlyresignation with which they were uttered was astonishing. For morereasons than one, I hesitated.

  "You need not be afraid to tell me the truth," said the baby, with awistful smile; "I'm not afraid to hear it."

  "Well--well, you're pretty bad," I stammered.

  "Ah! thank you," the child replied gratefully. "How many hours do yougive me?"

  The baby's gravity took my breath away. He spoke with an old-worldcourtesy and the ingenuous stateliness of an infant prince.

  "It may not be quite hopeless," I murmured.

  Willy shook his head, the pretty, wan features distorted by a quaintgrimace.

  "I suppose I'm too young to rally," he said quietly, and closed hiseyes.

  Presently he re-opened them, and added:

  "But I should have liked to live to see the Irish question settled."

  "You would?" I ejaculated, overwhelmed.

  "Yes," he said, adding with a whimsical expression in the wee blueeyes: "You mustn't think I crave for earthly immortality. I use'settled' in a merely rough sense. My mother was an Irish poetess,over whose songs impetuous Celts still break their hearts and theirheads."

  I gazed speechless at this wonder-child, pushing the golden locksback from his feverish baby-brow, as if to assure myself by touchinghim that he was not a phantom.

  "Ah, well!" he finished, "it doesn't matter. I have had my day, andmustn't grumble. I scarcely thought, when I witnessed the dissolutionof the third Gladstone Government, that I should have lived to see himPremier a fourth time. Three doctors told me I was breaking up fast."

  I began to be frightened of this extraordinary infant, divining somewizardry behind the candid little face--some latter-day mystery ofre-incarnation, esoteric Buddhism, what-not. The child perceived myperturbation.

  "You are thinking I have packed a good deal into my short life," hesaid, with an amused smile. "And yet some men will make a Gladstonebag hold as much as a portmanteau. Gladstone has done so; and why notI, in my humble degree?"

  "True," I answered; "but you cannot begin to pack before you areborn."

  "You are entirely mistaken," replied the baby, "if you think I havedone anything so precocious as that."

  "Then you must have lived an odd life," I said, puzzled.

  "You have hit it!" exclaimed the child, with a suspicion of eagerness,not unmingled with surprise. "I did not mean to tell anyone; but sinceyou are a man of science and I am on the point of death, you may aswell know you have guessed the truth."

  "Have I?" I said, more bewildered than ever.

  "Yes. In all these years no one has suspected it. It has beencarefully kept from outsiders. But now it would, perhaps, be childishfolly to be reticent about it. It is the truth--the plain, literaltruth--I have lived an odd life."

  "How did it begin?" I asked, scarce knowing what I said or what Imeant.

  "You shall know all," said Willy. "I must begin before I wasborn--before I could begin packing, as you put it."

  His breath came and went painfully. Overwrought with curiosity as Iwas, I experienced a pang of compunction.

  "No, no; never mind," I said; "you have not the strength to speakmuch--you must not waste what you have."

  "It can only cost me a few minutes of life--I can spare the time," heanswered, almost peevishly.

  Now that he had been strung up to speaking point, he seemed to resentmy diminished interest.

  I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and forced him tomoisten his throat.

  "I can spare the time," he repeated, while an air of grim satisfactioncame over the tiny features. "I have stolen plenty--I have outwittedthe arch-thief himself. I have survived my own death."

  "What!" I gasped. "Have you already died?"

  "No, no," he replied fretfully; "I am only just going to die. That ishow I have survived my death. How dull you are!"

  "You were going to begin at the beginning," I murmured feebly.

  "No! What is the use of beginning at the beginning?" this _enfantterrible_ enquired, in the same peevish tones. "I was going to beginbefore the beginning."

  "Yes, yes," I said soothingly, patting his golden curls; "you weregoing to begin before you were born."

  "With my mother," he said more gently. "She did not lead a very happylife--it enabled her to hymn the wrongs of her country. Her childhoodwas a succession of sorrows, her girlhood a mass of misfortunes; andwhen she married the man she loved, she found herself deserted by hima few months later. It was then that she first conceived the thoughtthat has changed my life. It came to her in a moment of tears, as shesat over the ashes of her happiness. From that moment the thoughtnever left her."

  There was a wild look in the baby's eyes. I began to suspect him ofpremature insanity.

  "What was this thought?" I murmured.

  "I am coming to it. There came into her head suddenly the refrain of asong she had learnt at school: 'Life like a river with constantmotion.' 'The river of life! The stream of life! How true it is!' shemused. 'How much more than mere metaphors these phrases are! Verily,one's life flows on towards the dark ocean of death, irresistibly,unrestingly, willy-nilly--whether swift or slow, whether long orshort--whether it flows through pleasant champaigns or dreary marshes,past romantic castled crags, or by bleak quarries. What is the use ofexperience, of knowledge of past bits of the route, when no two bitsare ever really alike, when the future course is hidden and is alwaysa panorama of surprises, when no life-stream knows what awaits itround the corner every time it turns, when the scenery of the sourceavails one nothing in one's resistless progress towards the scenery ofthe mouth? What is life but a series of mistakes, whose fruit iswisdom, maybe, but wisdom overripe? We do not pluck the fruit till itwill no longer serve our appetites. Nothing repeats itself on thestage of existence--always new situations and new follies._Experientia docet._ Experience teaches, indeed; but her lesson isthat nothing can be learnt.'"

  The baby paused, and reached out his wasted hand for the glass. Hispinafore and his tiny shoes on the chest of drawers caught my eye, andmoistened it with the thought he would never don them again.

  "As my mother brooded upon this bitter truth," he resumed, when he hadrefreshed himself, "and saw how sad an illustration of it was her ownlife--with its sufferings and its mistakes--she could not help wishingexistence had been ordered otherwise. If we had had at least twolives, we mig
ht profit in the second by the first. But, she toldherself, with a sigh, this was vain day-dreaming. Then suddenly _the_thought flashed upon her. Granting that more than one life wasimpossible upon this planet, why should it not be differentlydistributed? Suppose, instead of flowing on like a stream, one's lifeprogressed like a London street--the odd numbers on the one side andthe even on the other, so that after doing the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9,11, &c., &c., one could return and do the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12,&c., &c. Without craving from Providence more than man's allottedspan, what if, by a slight re-arrangement of the years, it werepossible to extort an infinitely greater degree of happiness fromone's lifetime! What if it were possible to live the odd years,gleaning experience as well as joys, and then to return to the evenyears, armed with all the wisdom of one's age! What if _her_ childcould enjoy this inestimable privilege! The thought haunted her, shebrooded on it day and night; and when I was born, she drew me eagerlytowards her, as if to see some mark of promise written on my forehead.But a year passed before she dared to think her wish had foundfulfilment. On the eve of my first birthday she measured and weighedme with intense anxiety, though pretending to herself she only wishedto keep a register of my growth. In the morning I was more by a year'sinches and pounds. I had shot up at a bound into my third year, andmanifested sudden symptoms of walking and talking. She almost faintedwith joy when my unexpected teeth bit her finger. She could not getmy shoes on me, nor my frock. But, although my mother had made nopreparations for my changed condition, she welcomed the trouble I puther to, and carefully laid aside my useless garments, knowing I shouldwant them again. The neighbours noticed nothing; they thought me a bigboy for my age, and extremely precocious. When I was in my fifth yearI went on the stage as an 'infant phenomenon,' my age being attestedby my certificate of birth, though you will of course see that I wasreally in my ninth. In the next few years I made enough money to gildmy mother's few declining years; and when I retired temporarily fromthe boards at the advice of my critics, it was of course with theintention of studying and returning to the stage when I was younger.And so I advanced to manhood, skipping the alternate years. I rejoiceto say that my mother, though she died when I was seventy-three, hadthe satisfaction of knowing what felicity her unselfish aspiration hadbrought into my life. She told me of my strange exemption from thecommon burden of continuous existence, as soon as I had skipped intoyears of discretion. Not for me did Time pass with that tragicfootstep which never returns on itself; for me he was not theirrevocable, the relentless. I regretted my lost youth--but it was notwith hopeless, passionate tears, with mutinous yearnings after theimpossible; it was as one who waves a regretful adieu to a charminggirl he will meet again."

  "Ah! but you will not meet her again," I said softly.

  "No; but the feeling was the same. Of course, when I was thirty I didnot know I should die before I was two. I had no more privilege ofprescience than the ordinary mortal. But in everything else howenviable was my lot compared to his whom every day is sweeping towardsDeath, for whom no vision of renewed youth gleams behind the blackhangings! Oh! the glory of growing old without dread, with theassurance that age, which is ripening you, is not ripening you for theGleaner, that the years will add wisdom without eternally subtractingthe capacity for joy, and that every tottering step is bringing younearer, not the Grave, but the joyous resurrection of your youth!"

  "And you have experienced that?" I cried, with envious incredulity.

  "Yes," answered the baby solemnly. "Of course I prepared for the GreatChange. Not that Nature did not herself smooth the metamorphosis. Theloss of teeth, the gradual baldness, the feeble limbs, everythingpointed to the proximity of my Second Childhood. I knew that my oddlife had not much longer to run, that at any moment the transformationmight take place and the even numbers begin. Giving out that I wasgoing to explore the African deserts, and accompanied only by myfaithful body-servant, Downton, I retired to Egypt to await the greatevent, having previously ordered baby-linen and the various requisitesof infantile toilette. I had at one time meditated providing myselfwith parents, but ultimately concluded that they would prove tootroublesome to manage, and that it would be better to trust myselfentirely to the management of Downton, since I had already placedmyself in his power by leaving him all my money."

  "But what necessity was there for that?" I enquired.

  "Every necessity," he replied gravely. "Do you not see that I had toarrange all my affairs and make my will before being born again,because afterwards I should not be of legal age for ten years. Atfirst I thought of leaving all my money to myself and passing as myown child, but there would have been difficulties. I was unmarried andseventy-seven. Downton could easily pretend his septuagenarian masterhad died in the African deserts, but he could not so easily patch up amarriage there. I had no option, therefore, but to make Downton myheir, and I have never had occasion to regret it from the day of myrebirth to this, the day of my death. As soon as I was born wereturned to England, and I wrote my obituary and drove to the PressAssociation with it. Downton took it into the office while I waited inFleet Street in the hansom. I can scarcely hope to convey to you anidea of the intensity and agreeableness of my sensations at thisunprecedented epoch. The variegated life of Fleet Street gaveme the keenest joy: every sight and every sound--beautiful orsordid--thrilled my nerves to rapture. I was interested in everything.Imagine the delicious freshness of one's second year supervening uponthe jaded sensibilities of seventy-seven. All my wide and variedknowledge of life lay in my soul as before, but transfigured. Over mylarge experience of men and things was shed a stream of sunshine whichirradiated everything with divine light; every streak of cynicismfaded. I had the wisdom of an old man and the heart of a little child.I believed in man again, and even in woman. I shed tears of pureecstasy; and when I heard a female of the lower classes say: 'Poorlittle thing! What a shame to leave it crying in a cab!' I laughedaloud in glee. She exclaimed: 'Ah! now it's laughing, mypetsy-wootsy!' Her conversation saddened me again, and I was glad Ihad not burdened myself with a mother, and that I took my milk from abottle instead of a doting nurse. And how exquisite was this sameapparently monotonous menu of milk to an epicurean who had ruined hisdigestion! I felt I was recuperating on a vegetarian diet, and Irejoiced to think some years must elapse before I would care forchampagne or re-acquire a taste for full-flavoured Manillas. Perhapssomewhat unreasonably, I was proud of my strength of will, which hadenabled me in one day to abandon tobacco without a pang, andseven-course dinners without repining. I slept a good deal, too, atthis period, whereas I had previously been greatly exercised byinsomnia. But these joys of the senses were as nothing to the joys ofthe intellect. An exquisite curiosity played like a sea-breeze aboutmy long-stagnant soul. All my early interests revived; worldlypropositions I had thought settled showed themselves unstable andvolant; everything was shaken by the moving spirit of youth. Theology,poetry, and even metaphysics became alive; all sorts of unpracticalquestions became suddenly burning. I saw in myself the seeds of agreat thinker: a felicitous congruity of opposite capacities that hadnever before met in a single man--the sobriety of age tempered by theaudacity of youth, fire and water, judgment and inspiration. I wasrevolutionist and reactionary in one. I read all the new books, andagreed with all the old."

  "All you tell me only makes the pathos of your premature death moreintolerable," I said in moved accents. "You are, like Keats andChatterton,--only an earlier edition,--an inheritor of unfulfilledrenown."

  The little blue eyes smiled wistfully at me.

  "Not at all," said the wee rose-lips, with a quiver. "Don't you see, Ihave already dodged Death? Evidently, if I had taken my second year inits natural order, I should have been cut short by croup at theoutset. Apparently I had enough vital energy in me to have lasted tillseventy-seven, if I could only get over the croup. I think one oughtto be satisfied with having survived himself by thirty odd years."

  "Yes, if you put it like that, the pathos lightens," I admitted. "Ofcourse I saw fro
m the first that you were considerably in advance ofyour age. Did you assure your life?" I asked, with a sudden thought.

  "I did; but by an oversight I let the policy be invalidated by myimaginary expedition to the African deserts. Downton has, however,taken out a fresh policy for my new life."

  "What a baffling complex of probabilities would be added to LifeAssurances if your way of living were to become general!" I observed."Downton will probably more than recoup himself for his first loss.Have you always been a bachelor, by the way?" I asked.

  "Yes," said the baby, with a sigh. "I missed marriage; it probablyfell in an even year."

  "Poor child!" I cried, my eyes growing humid again. To think, too, ofthat beautiful young girl, that fond wife, waiting for him who wouldnever come; that innocent maiden cheated of love and happiness becauseher appointed husband had not lived in the other alternate series ofyears,--to think of this tangled tragedy moved me to fresh tears, nota few of which were for the husband who never was.

  "Nay, do not pity me," said the baby, and his tones were hushed andlow, and in his heavenly blue eyes I seemed to read the high sorrowfulwisdom of the ages; "for, since I have lain here on this bed ofsickness with no spectacular whirl to claim my thoughts, with fourwalls for my horizon, and the agony of death in my throat, the darkerside of my dual existence has been borne in upon me. I see the shadowcast by the sunshine of my privilege of double birth; I see the cursewhich is the obverse of the blessing my mother's prayers brought me; Isee myself dissipating a youth which I knew would recur, throwing awaya manhood which I knew would come again, and sinking into a sensualsenility which I knew would pass into an innocent infancy. I seemyself rejecting the best gifts and the highest duties of To-Day forthe illusory felicities and the far-away virtues of theDay-After-To-Morrow. I see myself passing by Love with the reflectionthat I should be passing again; putting off Purity with the thoughtthat I should be round that way presently; and waving to Duty anamicable salute of 'Expect me soon.' And in this moment of clearvision I see not only my past, I realise what my future would be if Ilived. I see the influx of fresh feeling gradually exhausted,overcome, ousted, and finally replaced by a satiety more horrible thanthat of the septuagenarian, as I came to realise that life for me heldno surprises, no lures to curiosity, that the future was no enchantedrealm of mysterious possibilities, that the white clouds revealed noseraph shapes on the horizon, that Hope did not stand like a veiledbride with beckoning finger, that fairies were not lurking round everycorner nor magic palaces waiting to start up at every turn. I see lifestretching before me like old ground I had been over--in my mother'simage like a street one side of which I had walked down. What couldthe other offer of fresh, of delightful? It is so rarely one sidediffers from the other: a church for a public-house, a grocer'sinstead of a bookshop. Conceive the horror of foreknowledge: of havingno sensations to learn and few new emotions to feel; to have,moreover, the enthusiasm of youth sicklied over with the prescience ofsenile cynicism, and the healthy vigour of manhood made flaccid byanticipations of the dodderings of age! I foresee the ever-growingdismay at the leaps and bounds with which my youth was fleeting. I seemyself, instead of profiting by my experience, feverishly clutching atevery pleasure on my path, as a drowning man, borne along by atorrent, snatches at every scrap of flotsam and jetsam. I see manhoodarrive only to pass away, as an express passes through a pettystation, full speed for the terminus. I see a panic terror close uponme with every hurrying year at the knowledge that my hours were thirtyminutes and my months virtually fortnights, and that I was leading thefastest life on record. Add to this the anguish of feeling myself tornfrom the bosom of the wife I loved and hurried away from the embracesof the children whose careers it would be my solicitude to watch over.Imagine the agony if I had been cruelly spared to my seventy-eighthyear--the agony of a condemned criminal who does not know on what dayhe is to be execu--"

  "THE ENTHUSIASM OF YOUTH SICKLIED OVER WITH THEPRESCIENCE OF SENILE CYNICISM."]

  His voice failed suddenly. He had slightly raised himself on hispillow in his excitement, but now his head fell back, revealing thefatal white patches on the baby throat. I seized his hand quickly tofeel his pulse. The little palm lay cold in mine. I started violentlyand sat up rigidly in my chair.

  The child was dead. Downton was sobbing at my side.

  As I was writing out the certificate, an odd thought came into myhead. I scribbled what I thought an appropriate epitaph and showed itto Downton, but he glared at me furiously. I hastened home to bed.

  My epitaph ran:

  HERE LIES WILLIAM ("WILLY") STREETSIDE, WHO LED A DOUBLE LIFE, AND DIED IN BLAMELESS REPUTE, AT THE AVERAGE AGE OF 39 YEARS.

  "_And in their death they were not divided._"