iss Arm si and other- Circumstances \\\r Ify V John Davidson MISS ARMSTRONG'S And Other Circumstances MISS ARMSTRONG'S And Other Circumstances BY JOHN DAVIDSON NEW YORK STONE & KIMBALL M DCCC XCVI COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY STONE AND KIMBALL CONTENTS PAGE Miss ARMSTRONG'S CIRCUMSTANCES . . i A WOULD-BE LONDONER 32 SOME POOR FOLK 44 AN IDEAL SHOEBLACK 71 ALISON HEPBURN'S EXPLOIT .... 80 THE MEMBER FOR GOTHAM 164 TALKING AGAINST TIME 172 BANDEROLE'S ^ESTHETIC BILL .... 188 AMONG THE ANARCHISTS 198 THE INTERREGNUM IN FAIRYLAND 212 MISS ARMSTRONG'S CIRCUM- STANCES AFTER all, my friends have been mis- taken ; my experiences are not nearly so exciting as they appeared to be when I saw them through their spectacles. They insisted that I had only to write down an exact chronicle of the days of the years of my life to be the author of a record as inter- esting as any novel. I was pretty well per- suaded of the truth of their judgment when I began to write my history ; but I had not proceeded far when doubts began to spring up, and by the time I had arrived at my seventh chapter, and the end of my seven- teenth year, I was so tired of writing, and of my subject, that I threw my pen in the fire, and stowed away my papers in an old band- box, out of sight and out of mind. I have read somewhere that if a woman once falls in love, and then falls out of it, i i Miss Armstrong's Circumstances she has no peace until she is again swim- ming for life in a high-sea of passion. (I had better state here that I am just nineteen. The English master used to object to my figures of speech; but I am writing this entirely for my own satisfaction, and mean to give my imagination free scope.) It seems to me that literary composition is like love. When one has begun to write some- thing of one's own, it doesn't matter how disgusted one may become, one returns to the ink-pot like a drunkard to his cups. So, after three months, I unearthed the bandbox, and read over my seven chapters. There were only two interesting pages in the whole manuscript, and those were the two last. All the early incidents in my life which my friends thought so wonderful were of no moment to me. My birth in Paris during the siege ; the death of my father, a Scotch Socialist, on a barricade ; my French mother's penniless journey to London ; our life as beggars ; my mother's second marriage to a philanthropic City man ; my running away when I was seven, and my wanderings for a fortnight; my attempt to poison my baby- Miss Armstrong's Circumstances brother with matches ; my attack on my phil- anthropic step-papa with a poker ; my exile to a suburban boarding-school; my step- papa's fraudulent bankruptcy and disappear- ance, and the deaths of my poor mother and her little boy all this was narrated in a dull, frigid manner, quite up to the degree of stupidity that would have registered < Ex- cellent ' on Mr. Standard, the English master's meter. (I wonder what he would think of that metaphor !) A great deal, doubtless, might be made out of my early life, and when I am older I may be able to embody it in some readable way ; but in the mean- time it is impossible for me to put myself in the place of the little girl I was. This is simply because I did not begin to be self-conscious until I was seventeen. When my life ceases to be as full as it has been of late, I shall doubtless be able to study myself from the beginning. At present I am driven as if by some power outside me to write an account of a certain day in my life. I don't like writing, so I am going to make it as short as I can. First of all, I shall quote the last two pages of my manuscript : 3 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ' It was at the age of seventeen, when I found myself in a position of dependence in the house of a relative of my stepfather's, that I first began to look upon myself as a circumstance. Doubtless this notion arose from something I had read, but I have never been able to trace its origin. One night while I was sitting alone in my room, the thought came to me that the whole world was an experiment. Here was I, a tall, handsome girl, already a woman in appear- ance, thrust by circumstances into a family that would have preferred to do without me. Were circumstances playing off a serio-comic practical joke on this family and me? But my fancy took a higher flight. I saw cir- cumstances in the shape of the professor of chemistry and his lean assistant shaking up folk and families, and towns and countries, in bottles and beakers; braying stubborn folks like me in mortars : precipitating, cal- cining, sifting, subliming, filtering powers and principalities, companies and corpora- tions; conducting a stupendous qualitative analysis of the world. I thought, " Since it 's all an experiment, how can we help it if 4 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances we're miserable?" "By joining the ex- perimenters," came the answer pat. This warmed me, and I began to pace my room. " I will be an experimenter," I said to my- self. " I will be a circumstance, and cause things." I marched up and down for awhile, thinking how much greater I was than the Prime Minister, who had simply been tossed up there by circumstances; he was only a bit of the experiment, but I was going to be a circumstance. Suddenly I saw that my metaphor had misled me. Circumstances, I perceived, are the experiment ; everybody and everything is a circumstance. " You donkey!" I said to myself. "You don't need to become a circumstance ; you are one." Then I marched up and down the room again, feeling very miserable indeed, till I hit upon an epigram. " People are divided into two classes," I said triumph- antly, as I prepared for bed : " those who are circumstances without knowing it, and those who are conscious of the fact." I lay awake for long, overpowered by the tre- mendous responsibility which this discovery had laid on me. The load was lifted, and I 5 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances fell asleep the moment I resolved not to submit tamely like a solution or a salt, which is boiled with this, and burned with that, but to have a hand in my own experiment.' Two remarks I must make with regard to this paragraph. The first is about myself. I say that I was ' a tall, handsome girl, al- ready a woman in appearance.' A romantic statement : the simple truth is that I was big, and rather stout, with a lot of brown, curly hair, pink cheeks, gray eyes, and generally pleasant to look at at least, I know I liked to look at myself. The second remark is about the chemists who taught in the school where I was done something to, not edu- cated. I had, and have, no ill will to these men ; it was simply impossible that I could help thinking of them in the connection. The only one of my teachers whom I dis- liked, and of whom I still cherish hard thoughts, is Mr. Standard, who condemned my compositions, and objected strongly to my metaphors. Well, on the morning after my great dis- covery, while I was engaged in a large half- furnished room teaching the three little boys 6 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances of my stepfather's relative, a loud knock came to the door, and was followed imme- diately by the entrance of William Somers, the eldest son. There had come between him and the oldest of my charges three chil- dren, but they were dead. I was much astonished to see him, because, although we were on the frankest terms, we seldom met. My astonishment increased, I even felt in- dignant at his masterful manner, as he gave his little brothers sixpence each, and said : ' Be off with you ! They deserve a holi- day, don't they, Miss Armstrong ? ' The three little scapegraces needed no second bidding ; they were half-way down- stairs before I had recovered my presence of mind. William Somers closed the door, and came up straight to me as if he had been sent for on important business. I stared at him blankly, and he stood dumb and blushing within a yard of me. At last he said : 'I have a holiday. Will you come with me?' It was evidently not the thing he had intended to say. 7 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances 'What have you a holiday for? ' I asked. 'It's a Bank Holiday,' he said. ' A Bank Holiday ! ' I exclaimed with scorn, determined to pay him off for his in- trusion. ' What slaves you are, you and the whole of this toiling London ! Your very holidays you must take when they come. You can't do anything else." 'What do you mean?' he said, crest- fallen. 'Are you aware that you are a circum- stance ? ' I asked severely. I deeply resented the laugh, quickly smothered as it was, with which he greeted this question. I see now that it must have sounded funny to him, although after my meditation of the previous night it was a natural thing for me to say in all sincerity. 'I see that you have never realised that you are a circumstance,' I continued coldly. ' The best thing you can do with your holi- day is to spend it, the whole of it, hour by hour, minute by minute, in the intensest contemplation possible to you of the fact that you are a circumstance.' 8 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances He looked at my eyes for fully half a minute, until I was forced to wink. 'You are not mad,' he said; 'and you don't seem to be joking. Still, I mean to say what I have come to say. Will you sit down ? ' His coolness which was, however, as- sumed and his determined tone aggra- vated me. ' No,' I said ; ' I will not sit down. I wish you to understand that 7 have fully realised that / am a circumstance, and I am not going to submit except to such other cir- cumstances as please me. You are a cir- cumstance, and don't know it. And what a circumstance ! Something in the City a broker's clerk, I suppose. You needn't tell me ; I don't want to know. The prop and stay of your widowed mother and your three little brothers ! Did it never strike you what a disagreeable circumstance you are ? A good, respectable young man, who never misspends a penny. The very thought of you is like the taste of yarn.' Now, I didn't mean all I said; I was simply angry without a sufficient reason, as 9 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances girls and older people will sometimes be. He changed colour at my tirade, and held up his hand deprecatingly ; but I went on. ' Don't interrupt me ! ' I cried. * And what is it all for, all your toiling and moiling ? To feed the mouths of four other circum- stances, as unconscious of what they are as if they did n't exist. That 's all. You 're not causing anything. You 're just doing exactly as thousands of others are doing exactly as circumstances will do with you, never realising that, in all regarding yourself, you are the main circumstance. An explorer, an artist, a poet, even a prime minister, attempts to cause something that is unnecessary, and that he need n't do except of his own motion but you !' 'Miss Armstrong,' he said steadily, as I paused for breath, 'you are very excited. Won't you sit down?' ' No,' I almost shouted. ' Don't you see that I have made up my mind not to sub- mit ! I won't be experimented on with impunity. I should like to sit down, that 's true ; but I refuse to yield to such a miser- able circumstance. I won't be experimented 10 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances on with impunity,' I repeated, liking the sound of the sentence, and thinking, with what I suppose I must call feminine incon- sistency, that it would have pleased Mr. Standard. William Somers looked very much an- noyed grieved, even. I ought to say that he was a tall man of twenty-three, with red- dish beard and hair, and hazel eyes. I had not paid much attention to men up to that time, and did not know how handsome William Somers was. The trouble in his face did put me about; but, again, if paltry circumstances were not to be combated, how was I to challenge and overcome the great ones which hemmed me in on all sides ? 'I see some meaning in what you say, Miss Armstrong,' he said ; but I think it is stated a little wildly.' I felt on the point of crying, so I laughed. He looked at me inquiringly. ' Do you know,' he said, ' I never heard your age. How old are you ? ' ' I was seventeen two months ago.' That staggered him. ' I suppose you thought I was thirty ? ' ii Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ' No ; but I thought you were twenty until you laughed just now, and then I saw that you must be younger. How precocious you are ! ' he added. I laughed again, and he saw what a stupid remark he had made. * I mean your figure ' he stammered and stuck. < Mr. Somers,' I said, being now mistress of the situation, ' I will not go with you for a holiday ; but you will come with me, and escort me in my first assault on circum- stances. Observe that I make a concession in having a squire. It is a bad omen.' ' Your causing a bad omen is just another circumstance for you to overcome,' he said, yielding to my humour. ' I '11 be ready in ten minutes. Will you please get a hansom ? ' I said, as we left the room. He had not succeeded in saying what he came to say. Mrs. Somers, a very bright, quiet little lady, looked askance at the hansom, but wished us a pleasant holiday as we drove off. 12 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances It was my first ride in a hansom, a fact which I concealed from William Somers as long as I could about one minute, not any more. ' You have never been in a hansom before,' he said, looking at me in a quizzical way. ' How do you know? ' ' At first I did n't know, you jumped in so smartly, and told the driver where to go with such aplomb ; but then, when we started, in spite of yourself, a half-happy, half- frightened look shot across your face, you sighed, and sank back, and embraced yourself.' ' How dare you ! ' I said hotly. My feelings had never been examined to my face before, and I felt outraged, just as I did once when I was posting a letter at a druggist's, and a ruffian laid his dirty hand on my shoulder, and turned me round, say- ing, ' By Jove ! a strapper and a beauty.' ' I dare do all that may become a man,' said William Somers priggishly. ' Don't talk to me any more just now,' I said. ' Very well,' he replied ; and, leaning his arms on the door, he tilted back his hat, and '3 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances looked with unaffected interest at everybody and everything we passed. I have a great liking for mysteries, and often stop people who begin to explain things to me, because I really don't want to know. A great London mystery of mine is that smooth, elastic, carpet-like roadway along which our hansom glided so stealthily. I admit having thought about its composition, but I have succeeded in overcoming the de- sire to know of what ; it is made. It seemed that when we jolted over the stones, we were being wound up in some curious, uncomfort- able sort of way ; and then, when we reached a stretch of that London turf, I felt as if we had been discharged, and were shooting along through space. (I 'm thinking of a crossbow, Mr. Standard.) Really, every- thing appeared to me delightful and inter- esting. I perceived for the first time what a picturesque city London is all of it we saw that morning. The fantastic stacks of chim- neys, like hieroglyphics wrought in the air ; the mellow, antique streets of dwelling- houses; brick, and plaster, and paint; umber, red, and dull gold, splashed with Miss Armstrong's Circumstances creeping green; the squares, and grave- yards, and crescents, with their trees, and sunflowers, and fountains as if Nature were elbowing a way through the crowded buildings, Mr. Standard ; and the unknown streets of shops and booths where, even on a Bank Holiday, the butchers and the fish- mongers cry their wares, and the little children tumble about among mouldy old furniture on the pavements, like dirty Cupids in the lumber-room of Olympus, Mr. Stand- ard ; and the parks, with their glades, and avenues, and lakes, where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza lurk, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian, too, Mr. Standard, if you had eyes to see ; and the Thames but we did n't see the Thames that morning ; and while my thoughts were still revelling in the beauty of the City, we stopped, with a jerk that dislocated my imagination, at the house of Herr Herman Neunzehn, Wellpark Ter- race, Bayswater. When I got out, and told the driver to wait, Mr. Somers sat very still and attentive. He said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him ; but I turned on the steps, and nodded my head encouragingly. Miss Armstrong's Circumstances Herr Herman had been my music-master in the boarding-school, and had always had a word of praise for my efforts both in play- ing and composing. He was dusting his coat with his gloves preparatory to going out when I entered his room, but he received me kindly and said he could afford a few minutes. ' I have come on business/ I said. ' Have you ? ' 'Yes, Mr. Neunzehn. I wish to make a start in life.' Mr. Neunzehn's little bright eyes dashed for a moment close up to his spectacles like silver fish in a miniature aquarium, and then became dim again in the depths as he pre- pared a cigarette. 'I have brought with me,' I said, dis- playing a roll I had in my hand, ' two songs, the words and music both by myself.' Mr. Neunzehn's fish darted past his peb- bles, and he lit his cigarette. ' Will you oblige me by looking over them ? and if you think them good enough, will you give me an introduction to a music- publisher ? ' 16 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ' I will,' said Mr. Neunzehn, taking my manuscripts, and opening them out with his diabolical fingers. He was all diabolical, but his fingers were the most diabolical thing about him long, knotty, sinewy, as if made for strangling. 'Thank you very much,' I said, moving towards the door. ' Wait,' he replied. ' I will do it just now.' I stood stock still and watched him as he glanced rapidly through my scores. He was much more expeditious than I liked. How could he possibly comprehend in a few seconds the full beauty of my melodies, every ^individual note of which had been chosen with such care out of the old cottage piano's yellow keyboard, and thumped, and stroked, and listened to, positively for hours, alone, and in conjunction with the others of its phase, until each separate sound had become so charged with emotion that I could n't hear one of them without quivering ! And my chords ! and the counterpoint in my symphonies ! He could n't possibly grasp the full harmony and subtlety of these with- out at least playing the tunes over once. 2 i Miss Armstrong's Circumstances The silver fish dashed to and fro behind their glasses, and the smoke curled up through a long, thick, gray moustache as if to cure the fish ; but no change in the dia- bolical expression hinted at a decision one way or other. When he had turned over the last page, he rolled up my manuscripts and handed them back to me, rubbed his shaved cheeks, blew a cloud of smoke that hid his face, and said : ' No, my child.' 'Why?' I faltered. ' Because they are not good enough.' Oh, but try them ! ' 'I have read them through.' ' But let me play them to you ; ' and I made a dash at the piano. ' No,' he said, closing the instrument. ' It would be of no use. Your music is wrong, and it would not make it right to play it.' I said to myself : ' The battle has begun ; here 's a circumstance with a vengeance : don't give in.' Then aloud : ' If you show me the mistakes I will correct them.' ' You could n't.' 18 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ' Will you correct them, then ? ' I sug- gested faintly. 'I never correct music except for fools whose money might get into worse pockets than mine.' I thought I understood now. 'But I will pay you, Mr. Neunzehn,' I said sweetly, with a sudden burst of patron- age, hope flaming up in my heart. ' You 're a stupid little girl ' I was a foot taller than he. * Listen.' He seized a news- paper and read : ' Some prank them up with oaken leaves ; some small- pox hospitals, and banished as far as pos-tribution of articles of clothing to the heads of-pensations to large cities.' He read slowly, making pauses and inflec- tions as if the matter had been important ; then his cigarette glowed and crackled faintly like a squib, and a cloud of smoke enveloped him, from which he emitted hoarsely the terrible sentence : ' That is your music.' 'How?' I whispered, stammering. 'I do not understand. Will you read it again ? ' He showed me the newspaper, and with 19 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances his diabolical finger tracked a line of type, straight across three columns and a half. He read also, but without attempting to make it sound like sense. ' That is your music,' he repeated. ' My dear young lady, amateurs come to me every week with things like that parts of remem- bered words and phrases, correctly spelt as a rule, and each phrase or sentence quite grammatical, and sometimes containing bits and bobs of the most unconnected mean- ings ; and they think they have made music. It just needs a little polishing, they know ; and that is so easy for me. Look at these words again. See : out of four columns on four different subjects ! Would you take that to Mr. Standard, and ask him to polish it for you, to make it into one clear sentence? Read it again. " Some prank them up with oaken leaves ; some small-pox hospitals, and banished as far as pos-tribution of articles of clothing to the heads of-pensations to large cities." You might by taking a few words and rejecting all the others invent a sen- tence. But that won't do for my amateurs. They bring me notes, and I supply the 20 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances music, the meaning; but it must be with their notes. They select nonsense, and I must make it sense. I never can make it sense ; but it pleases them, and I make them pay for it, I can tell you. You are young and sensible, and can learn a lesson.' The cigarette had gone out ; the fish were pressed close to the glasses, and there seemed to be more water in the aquarium than usual. The old man was pitying me, I had turned so white. ' My dear child,' he continued, ' you must not be downcast. I am like a surgeon. You come to me and ask me if you have a disease, and I tell you that you have not ; that you are not a musician, and will never be one. You ought to be very glad.' Here he sighed, and I saw that he was pitying himself. I pronounced with diffi- culty a heartless ' Thank you,' for I felt he was right. Then a new idea occurred to me in a flash. ' Mr. Neunzehn,' I said, ' did you look at the words of my songs ? ' * Here and there.' ' What do you think of them ? ' 21 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ' Nothing ; I am no judge.' 'Will you look at them, and if you like them set them to music and publish them ? ' ' No. Look here.' He opened a press and showed me a pile of manuscript. 'There are fifty songs composed by me the best music I have written ; and I cannot get one of them published. It is not my reputation. My reputation is that of a com- poser of pianoforte pieces.' But I did n 't give in. I said : ' Can you introduce me to any one who might buy my songs ? ' * I can. Howard Dapper lives three doors from here on the right.' My heart bounded at the name of the famous composer, and I could have kissed old Neunzehn as he wrote me an introduction. ' My time is more than up,' he said, hand- ing me the letter. ' We will go out together.' He took no notice of the hansom, and I gave Mr. Somers another encouraging nod. ' Dapper may be stiff,' said Mr. Neunzehn at the door of the great man's house ; ' but 22 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances never mind. If your songs please him he '11 buy them.' Having knocked and rung, my old music- master left me in a great hurry. 'Courage, you miserable, trembling cir- cumstance ! ' I said to myself, kicking my heels in the hall till Mr. Dapper should have read the letter. Again a little fellow, less than Mr. Neun- zehn ! I thought of the tall, straight, au- burn-haired man waiting in the hansom ; but I plunged into business. Mr. Dapper had received me stiffly, and I was just as stiff. 'I have with me the songs to which Mr. Neunzehn refers,' I said. ' May I read them to you ? ' ' I prefer to read them myself.' ' Unfortunately, I have them set to music here, and as the music is bad, it might affect your opinion of the verses.' ' It might.' 'I know the words by heart. Shall I repeat them?' Mr. Dapper bowed, and I recited my songs very badly indeed. My auditor's pale, 23 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances oily face and purple eyes, like a plain suet- pudding into which two raisins had got by mistake, had a dispiriting effect. The songs, which I still think fair productions for a girl of seventeen, were both pathetic : in the one a deserted maiden died ; in the other, a mother's only child. When I had done, Mr. Dapper coughed, puckered his dumpling face, and delivered a short address in a juicy voice. ' Miss Armstrong ' glancing at the let- ter to make sure of my name ' your songs, I am sorry to say, do not suit me. I will be glad to look at any other verses you may have, here or elsewhere, suitable for pathetic ballads, with a little story ; but death I never like introduced. If you have a sort of musical duologue, say, to occupy about half an hour, with a good, rather startling, plot, and a little fun, I shall be glad to look at it. Or if you have a cantata for female voices only, I shall be glad to look at that ; but, remember, I always like something with a story in it ; and one thing I always object to death, in the broad sense; that is, de- scription.' 24 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances * But death is a circumstance,' I said, at my wit's end. ' It happens always.' ' We will not argue the point,' he replied, with a wave of his hand. ' If you are really anxious to succeed as a writer of words for music, you must be guided entirely by the requirements of the composer; but and you must not take it unkindly I do not think you will ever succeed in that way. If you wish to try, send me a cantata, or songs, or a duologue to occupy half an hour these are things I need immediately but I advise you not to.' ' I will,' I cried ; ' I will go and write them at once.' ' I advise you not to. I am almost cer- tain that they would n't suit me.' 'Why?' ' I will tell you.' Mr. Dapper had gradually dropped his professional tone and air. Some humanity had slipped into him covertly, wrinkling his brow and softening his mouth. His face looked liker a pudding than ever a pud- ding that had been boiled in a cloth and creased; but no longer a plain suet-pud- 25 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ding ; rather a plum-pudding, with the gra- ciousness and sweetness of that Christmas delicacy. A light also shone in his eyes, as if the cook had lit some brandy, and I ex- pected every minute to see a sprig of holly appear in his hair. His voice was still juicy, not with the tallowy juiciness of a suet-dump- ling, but with the rich and fragrant sap of the Yule haggis for I must ' derange my epitaphs,' Mr. Standard. Miss Armstrong,' he said, ' however clever you may be, you are much too young to suc- ceed in this kind of work. It takes a very practised writer to make a song, or else a special talent, which I don't think you have. I shall tell you how to graduate in the school of song-making. Write a tragedy, and pub- lish it ; write an epic in twelve books, and publish it ; write a volume of miscellaneous verse, and publish it; write a great novel, and publish it. The sale of these remarka- ble works will teach you what not to do; and besides having acquired facility with your pen, you will have expended all your idealism. Then you will be in a condition to write six original songs, which no com- 26 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances poser will take. Then you will write one song about sitting by the river in the moon, or walking in the wood when May is young and a composer this composer, possibly will give you a guinea for it ; and while you are dying of consumption and starvation your song will be sung at every concert and in every drawing-room, and be well forgotten before the dandelions have grown on your grave. But ' and here, as if he had been a conjurer who performed culinary tricks with his own head, he shifted his face back into a plain suet-pudding ' but if you have a cantata for female voices only, or a duologue for a lady and gentleman to occupy about half an hour, or songs for pathetic ballads, I will be glad to look at them; only, death I always object to naked, absolute death, or even a broad hint.' I don't remember getting out of Mr. Dapper's house and getting into the hansom. At seventeen hope is very fierce and reck- less, and is always staking happiness against some old song or other. I wakened up out of a blank dream in the midst of the very street where, an hour before, the picturesque- Miss Armstrong's Circumstances ness of London had dawned on me. Prisons the houses seemed, the leprous bricks stained with blood, the scanty creepers striving piti- fully to cover up the loathsomeness. The fluent roll of the hansom was it a hansom, or some dragon-car, sweeping along a pave- ment of good intentions? ' FacilisJ I began to myself, when Mr. Standard's face in ebony, surmounted by ram's horns, flashed in at the window. My own special, private butt become a demon to torment me ! What a war he had waged against quotations from pocket dictionaries ! ' Fortiter in re, 1 I said aloud, in frantic defiance of the fiend. * Re spice finem, Ad libitum, Cuibono!' The ebony visage vanished ; but another was peering into mine a fresh face, with won- dering hazel eyes. I was frightened at it, and turned away to think about myself again. Why, I had only had the opinion of two men the one old and soured with his half-success; the other middle-aged and cynical from prosperity. My music was doubtless as bad as Mr. Neunzehn said, and my songs too maudlin for Mr. Dapper ; but as meaningless music and more lachrymose 28 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances songs were bought and sold and sung every day. I would visit all the music-publishers in London. I laughed, and, stopping the cab, told the driver to go to one of them. * Closed, ma'am. Holiday.' Then I burst into tears, and Mr. Somers directed the driver to take us home. I drew myself together and cried quietly. The first comforting thought that came to me was, that if this had not been a holiday I would have kept William and myself on the rack for hours yet. I had given in. I did make an attempt to return to my own side. ' Circumstances,' I thought, ' are against you. To-morrow is n't a holiday, and you can re- sume the fight. You can even post your music.' But, deep down in my own heart, I knew I had made a mistake about myself; and gradually that thought came up, and up, and up, until I writhed and wriggled on it as if I had been impaled. I then perceived this was something very like remorse, and, feeling how unworthy it was of one who had deter- mined to fight circumstances to go on suffer- ing when the thing was over, I looked up at William. He was staring out of the window, 29 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances with his brows knotted and his mouth set. There was pain in his eyes, and I thought at first he was ill. As I watched him a new idea came stealing on me like some melan- choly music, unheard before, but strangely familiar. It filled all my senses like the smell of roses in the evening, and made my body feel as light as my soul. This was the new idea : he, here beside me, was not mis- erable for himself; he was suffering for me. A great desire seized me to lay my head down on this man's shoulder, to feel his arms about me, and sleep or faint away ; and this desire would, I am afraid, have had its course had we not arrived home before it overpowered me. That night, in the half-furnished room, William said to me what he had failed to say in the morning. How he said it, and how I replied to him, shall never be written down. We said things that men and women say to each other only once things high and sweet that ink would soil, and an eavesdropper mock. . . . ' Ho-ho, boy ! ' 30 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances I must end now. A little circumstance for which William and I are responsible I have helped to cause something is shout- ing in the next room for what nobody can give him but me. 3 1 A WOULD-BE LONDONER OANDRIDGE came to London too late wj for what he wished to accomplish. His ambition was to be a Londoner. It is true the Londoner is made, not born ; but, at the very latest, the process must begin at twenty-five. Sandridge was two-and-thirty when he left a North of England town, a circle of interesting acquaintances, of which he was the centre, and a roomy, old-fashioned house of his own, for London solitude and a modest apartment near Oxford Circus. In the provincial bosom, faith, even at thirty-two, meditates Metropolitan miracles. Sandridge expected to have the London mountains removed by a Member of Parlia- ment who was his second cousin. ' Ah ! ' said the Member, ' you must begin to learn the ropes at a club.' Needing for himself all the influence he could snatch, he resented Sandridge's uncon- 3 2 A Would-be Londoner nected state, and refused him a single bone. That is the use of the fable of ' knowing the ropes ' ; nobody believes in it, but it is very convenient to refer to when you are asked for assistance. ' It 's a shame ! ' grumbled the Member. ' A man's relatives ought to be able to help him, instead of requiring help.' So he put up his cousin at an expensive new club. * Let him find out the ropes there if he can,' he snarled to an acquaintance. 'As well there as anywhere, when you think of it, though,' he continued, reconsidering. ' Have you found out the ropes? Has any one ever found out the ropes? No; there's no rig- ging about it. It's simply a huge tumbling coil of hemp and iron, all tarred with the same stick ; and you get hold of a hawser-end or a chain-cable, and hang on or drop off.' In the smoking-room of the new club, Sandridge made diffident remarks about the young Disraeli, the young Bulwer; about Count D'Orsay, about great talkers, about personalities who had been powerful outside of politics, literature, and art. These were the Londoners he had talked of with such 3 33 A Would-be Londoner confidence in the North. He and his friends had discussed their waistcoats, their elo- quence, their repartees; their influence on fashions of dress, fashions of speech, fashions of thought. In a month's time Sandridge's diffidence changed into taciturnity. The younger club- men chaffed him, and called him ' the Dis- raelian Johnny.' He withdrew into corners and moped in anterooms. One afternoon Lieutenant Hopeby, of the Purple Guards, lounged in beside him. He was a very exquisite giant, twenty-three years old, guile- less, as certain about everything as a child of seven ; and his forte was patronage. He felt himself an amateur Providence, and was always on the look-out for somebody to con- sole. It was he, and Sandridge knew it, who had struck out the phrase 'the Dis- raelian Johnny ' ; but it was also he, and he only, who had given any real attention to Sandridge's remarks. 'Well, old chap,' began Hopeby, in his paternal way. 'Let's have a comfortable talk. How do you get on? Do you find yourself becoming a regular Londoner?' 34 A Would-be Londoner Sandridge blushed to the roots of his hair, but he was quite powerless. He thought, writhing mentally, how Disraeli would have touched this youngster with a point of flame able to drill a passage even through his armour-plating of conceit, whereas he hadn 't a leaden dart to throw. ' I am afraid,' he stammered, ' I am too old. " Art is long, and life is short," you know.' 'But you mustn't say that,' replied the Purple Guard kindly. 'Look at what's his name? the old Roman who began to learn Greek on his deathbed. It 's never too late to learn, as the penitent thief said. But what 's your difficulty, Sandridge ? ' ' Nobody ever asks me anywhere ; I never have a chance to ' ' To what ? Come, old chap.' ' Well,' said Sandridge, shifting uneasily in his chair, 'it's not like me to talk in this way ah Hopeby ; but I seldom have a chance to talk to anybody now. I 'm awfully ambitious.' He could have bitten his tongue off at every word. ' You 've heard my idea of the Londoner, his place and power. My 35 A Would-be Londoner intention is to be a Londoner of that kind. I have educated myself for such a position by the study by many studies ; just as one is educated to take Orders, or for the Army. But I get no opportunity to to exercise my functions.' ' Hard on you eh ? But I say, you know, you 're quite an original, Sandridge. It 's a new branch ; deportment 's nothing to this. You should have a professorship, my boy; teach them to be Londoners. I saw an article in a paper the other day : "Wanted a new occupation." Here you have it : " The art of being a Londoner in twenty lessons." You could charge what you like ; and you 'd get it for a time.' ' But I 'm demoralised,' rejoined Sandridge, overlooking Hopeby's banter. ' The fellows here don't understand me.' Then he added very slowly, measuring his words that some- times faltered, and with eyes that flickered between confidence and timidity : ' I take it that I have not yet met a foeman worthy of my steel. At a dinner of celebrities I believe I could at once make my mark.' 36 A Would-be Londoner The Purple Guard sat up, and stared at Sandridge for fully a minute. 'Yes,' continued Sandridge, misunder- standing the other's silence, and feeling, to his own surprise, as secure as a man who had led the ace of trumps for the last trick * yes, Hopeby ; my place is in those circles where conversation is understood. Here every man is full of himself and his own little affairs. They talk of the club cuisine, of their regiment, of an actress, or of a billiard-player; a thought, an epigram, only makes them raise their eyebrows. I feel among you like an eagle in a dovecot.' The Purple Guard sat back, and watched Sandridge through his eyelashes. ' Conversation is like piano-playing,' went on the would-be Londoner, ' and is not truly valued except by virtuosos. Most of you fellows, now, would as soon hear a piano- organ as Paderewski. I have practised talk- ing ; we used to practise it for hours daily in the North the genial initiative, the sudden digression, the calculated repartee, the retort in ambush, the fitted apologue, the grooved anecdote, the cascade of words, the slow sen- 37 A Would-be Londoner tentious movement, the intolerant harangue ; we had an art and practice of talk with a terminology all our own. Yes, Hopeby; I . have it in me to make a great name as a conversationalist.' The Purple Guard sat up again. His sur- prise was over. It took this young man a very short time to docket and dismiss any revelation of character. ' You 're one of the queerest chaps I ever met, Sandridge,' he cried ; ' and I '11 tell you what I '11 do for you. You know my uncle, the Pope.' ' Your uncle, the Pope ? ' ' I see you don't. Major Hopeby-Bonner, my uncle, is one of the best talkers in London or has that reputation, which is better. Somebody of consequence whom he snubbed called him the Pope, and the name stuck. Now, he's dining here with me to-night. You come too, and the pair of you can talk for a wager.' Sandridge accepted in a faint voice. He wished that it had been anybody but Major Hopeby-Bonner' s nephew who had asked him, because he would have preferred to 38 A Would-be Londoner decline the invitation. He and his friends had discussed the Major ; his novels, poems, and essays had been declared inferior the work of a callow amateur. Rumours of his gifts as a talker had also reached the North, and it had been decided that he was a mere farceur, on a level with the jester of antiquity. Sandridge had imagined himself brushing off like flies such people as Major Hopeby-Bonner ; to be asked to meet him as a man of the first importance blew the foun- dation-stone out of his aerial castle. But he quickly built another one, told himself it would be practice, went to his room, drank tea, and dipped into lives of Carlyle, Beaconsfield, Macaulay, and Houghton, till dinner-time. The Purple Guard introduced Sandridge to his uncle as ' a talking chap, too.' Sand- ridge, perspiring, wondered what Carlyle would have done in such a circumstance. Major Hopeby-Bonner, like most garrulous people, was a reticent, bashful man, who plunged into speech because silence was ac- companied with the discomfort of greater self-consciousness. 'Talk,' said the Major, 'is diluted silence. 39 A Would-be Londoner I confess I could never carry more than a thimbleful of neat silence in an evening.' 'The idea', rejoined Sandridge, very white, and in an unsteady voice, but wishing to say something strong at once, 'is ah hardly is not quite It might have been phrased differently.' He was thinking that Beaconsfield would never have used such a commonplace image. 'It might,' assented the Major, much amused. ' How would you phrase it ? ' 'Well, I would have said,' stammered Sandridge, ' that you remember Carlyle Really, I think there is nothing to beat the proverb, " Silence is golden." ' ' A good proverb. But what is the con- nection ? ' ' The connection ? ' Eh we were talking of silence ; at least, I think so.' The Major smiled, and went on with his soup ; and the Purple Guard said, half aside to Sandridge : ' Bravo ! That must be the retort in ambush eh ? You 've floored him ; he has n 't a word to say, you see.' He added : ' What do you think of London, Sandridge ? ' 40 A Would-be Londoner 'It's very big,' stammered Sandridge ; 'and enormous crowds and 'buses, and I understand the fogs are dreadful.' He had no idea of what he was saying ; he was going over in his mind the sentences that had passed between himself and the Major, trying to improve or explain away his own ineptitude. ' Ah ! the slow sententious movement,' mur- mured the Purple Guard. ' I have been in London half my life,' said the Major ; 'and yet the mere speaking of the word " London," the over- hearing it said casually, often thrills me with a sense of terror, and wonder, and delight.' ' Mesopotamia,' trolled the Purple Guard. Sandridge, still several remarks behind time, struck in : 'The connection, Major Hopeby-Bonner, between what you said about silence and what I said is perhaps, at first sight, not very evident, but ' There he paused, and for the life of him could not resume his sentence. ' We 're waiting for the " sudden digres- 41 A Would-be Londoner sion," ' said the Guardsman ; and the Major smiled encouragingly. But it was all over with Sandridge; he went hot and cold, turned ghastly pale, pleaded illness, and withdrew. That was his last appearance in a club or any haunt of men for a long time. He ceased all correspondence with his old friends; he hid away his biographies and books of table- talk, took all his food in his own room, walked about the streets at night muttering to him- self, grew gray and bent, and was watched by the police. One autumn evening, feeling that actual madness beset him in his solitude, he slipped into the concert-room of the Cafe" Cosmopolite. The band had just ceased play- ing a selection from ' II Trovatore,' and the crowd was somewhat subdued. Many noticed Sandridge, and were moved by his appear- ance. His furtive life had given him a stealthy, gliding motion. His grizzled hair, which he wore long, had gone off his forehead, and showed a high brow ; his beard was also long and wizard-like. His slender, stooping figure, pale face, and deep-set, haunted eyes, in- terested some spectators, and made others 42 A Would-be Londoner uneasy. He felt the impression he created, and was gratified. Next night he returned, and soon formed a habit of dining at the Cafe Cosmopolite every evening. He enters a cold, self-centred figure, with wolfish, wan- dering eyes, like those of one who had been racked, and glides to his chosen seat. Women catch their breath as he passes, and all who see him for the first time ask who he is. Some think him like a picture of Christ ; others, like Mephistopheles. The waiters know nothing of him, but tell country visitors that he is this, that, or the other celebrity, according to fancy. He must be served in silence; points out on the card and the wine-list what he requires, and eats ravenously. He is never heard to utter a word except ' Go away ! ' if, as sometimes happens, a waiter forgets and addresses him. He is the type of failure, and a legend be- gins to grow round him. His ambition was paltry, but he pursued it highly. Defeated in his effort to be first, he refused any other place ; and it is this element of greatness in his char- acter which makes him now so impressive an apparition in the Cafe Cosmopolite. 43 SOME POOR FOLK IT was at Banning, on an Autumn after- noon in 1893, that I lighted on a hop- picker's encampment ; thirty - seven white tents gleaming in a white field. Half the people were in their tents, and the remainder divided between the public-house and the pay-office. The hop-pickers' day is a short one from seven till four, with half an hour or an hour's interval. The early stoppage is necessary, because the day's picking has to be measured, and that is a tedious process. I went into the encampment and sat down beside a man, apparently a little over middle- age, who was lounging at the door of his tent. A little fellow of three romped about him, and a girl of fourteen was lighting a fire of sticks. The man had a pleasant, clean-shaven face, and dark, dancing eyes. He replied bashfully to my salutation, but seemed well pleased that I should speak to 44 Some Poor Folk him. Hardly had we started a conversation when a woman came up dressed in rusty black. She said a few words aside to the man, and was about to move away, but remained when I asked her if she liked this outdoor life. ' Well,' she said, ' I shall have a few shil- lings over when the picking 's done, and I had no money at all when I came.' ' She 's just out of hospital,' said the man. ' Yes, sir,' she went on ; * I had pleurisy, and have been in hospital for months.' ' She was once better off,' interjected the man in a half-aside. ' She kept a lodging- house in Kensington.' ' A tent is hardly the place for a con- valescent from pleurisy, too,' I said. ' That 's true,' she assented ; ' but when I came out of hospital a fortnight ago I had only two or three shillings in my pocket, and no home, and no friends. I had been hop- ping when I was a girl, and I knew if I could get down here I would n't starve for a week or two. My money brought me down and no more. I have no bedding and no clothes but what 's on me ; and I have got to keep 45 extraordinar' clean to be clean.' (She looked very clean and tidy.) 'At night without bedding it 's very cold in the tent, and if he,' nodding to the man, ' did n't give me two coats to put over me I would be frozen. I 'm always glad when the morning comes. Cold as I am, though, it's colder still when I get up and out ; it 's like going into the sea. It makes me nimble, I can tell you. I light the fire and make the tea, and then we all get up.' ' All ! ' I said. ' How many are there of you?' ' Nine,' replied the man. ' There 's me and the missus and the three children; mother here, a young couple, and a lad.' ' Then you came down hi company ? ' ' No ; we never saw each other till the overseer put us together in this tent.' 'But I thought that hoppers travelled in companies ? ' ' Many of them do ; but there 's lots of couples and families and singles that come down independent.' The convalescent left us on some errand, and when she had gone the man said some 46 Some Poor Folk things about her, chiefly in praise of her spirit and her good-nature. ' She 's no home to go to, and I think she '11 go back with us for the winter. My daughter there, she 's fourteen and can go out to service ; and the old lady would be a great help in the house, and her meat would n't be missed.' I asked if I might be allowed to look into the tent. The man laughingly permitted me ; but there was nothing to see. A thick carpet of clean dry straw, some bundles of bedding, a perambulator, and a few metal and earthenware plates constituted the en- tire plenishing, the pots and pans being outside. I asked him if he really liked camping out. ' Yes,' he replied, ' I like it very well. I 've always been a roving blade. I ran away from home when I was fourteen, and have turned my hand to many a thing. I 've been a painter, a docker, a barber, a carpenter. I was in a country post-office for three years, and I was in the Customs on the hop-duty before the tax was taken off. At home I 'm a painter again, but I 'm too old to 47 Some Poor Folk be on the market ; besides, my health 's giving way, and I can do only half a man's work.' ' How old are you ? You don't look over fifty.' ' I 'm sixty-three, sir. I know I don't look it in the face ; but my back 's giving way.' 'Then this little three-year-older will be your grandson? ' ' No, my son ; and there 's a baby eight months old. I 'm married to my second wife, and she 's thirty years younger than me. She was a cook in a good family. I painted her kitchen once, and we made it up. She 's a good wife, and a good cook, is my missus. She makes sixpence go as far as half-a-crown, and the Queen might eat the dinners she turns out.' During my talk with the hop-picker there had been a constant coming and going through the gap in the paling by which I had entered the encampment. Those who came were returning from the pay-office, and those who went were mostly going away for good. 48 Some Poor Folk