LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE Of IS THE OLD MAN'S YOUTH AND THE YOUNG MAN'S OLD AGE BY WILLIAM DE MORGAN Ml AUTHOR OF "THE OLD MADHOUSE," "JOSEPH VANCE,'* " ALICE-FOR-SHORT, " ETC. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY t _> OLD MAN'S YOUTH comprehensible or not. I asked promptly, ''Is that faw me?" and Varnish, as my official exponent, seized the opportunity to say, " On'y if you're good, Master Eustace, and don't spit in the bath ! " referring to a recent passage of arms between us. ... I am continually conscious in all this, that I may be writing what I am convinced must have been, rather than an actual memory of what was. But the scene passes so vividly before me whether it be my past itself, or a dream of .it that by the time I have cut my waning pencil, with a very old knife, The Man will seem to have unpacked the next parcel. I need not say that Sunday gear forbade intervention by other hands than his. Yes, there he stands in my mind's eye, I mean disrobing a heavy volume of an outer thick wrapper, and an inner thin one. Then he explains it, for our better apprehension. " This here affair," said he, " is a book, and a big un at that. But if I was to tell you I could read it, I should be misleading of you, and no end gained." He passed the mammoth folio to my father, adding, " I never did set up for a scholar, nor yet I ain't a going to, at my time of life." This speech produced a curious impression on my mother, who thereafter suggested, more than once, that The Man could have read " Herodoti Historia, editit Gronovius, sitmptibus et typis et cetera," if he had chosen, but that his native modesty shrank from a pedantic parade of academical knowledge. My father looked at the beginning and end of the volume, and laid it on a chair. I thought he had read it through. " What's the next article. Freeman ? " said he. But my mother said : " Do give The Man time, my dear." Then she shut her eyes and leaned back, to say : " Always impatience ! " The next article was bronze statuary, such as I have hinted at. It caused Varnish to say : " Oh my ! well I never ! " Which was only because she was unsophisticated, not because any fault could have been reasonably found with either the nymph or the satyr, eren if they had been on the same pedestal, which they were not. My father said, looking at them credulously : " Those might be worth something." But he knew nothing about this department, as was shown before the box was empty. Several things then came out of it. more especially a uniform with gold braiding, that had once been blue. My mother remarked that her grandfather was attached to his uniforms, and I knew language enough to picture them to myself as sewn on to the Rear- Admiral, whom I understood him to have been, during some portion of his earthly career; probably the latter, as our designa- tions at death survive us. I heard this title for the first time, and THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 23 can remember quite well a distinct impression that it must have been a drawback to his rearing freely for I only knew the term in connection with horses if he was attached to his uniform. I must have been a clever child, to get involved in this way with my information. Stupid children fight shy of such ill-organized specu- lation. But the Rear- Admiral's uniform was put aside after due appre- ciation, and bottles came to light wide-mouthed bottles, sealed over the cork. They contained beans, chiefly some, nice and shiny ones; and otherwise, nuts, powders, and amorphous things that might have been worth planting to see if they were roots. My mother remarked that her grandfather, when a post-captain, was for some time stationed in the Southern Hemisphere, and seemed to think this an explanation. My father said, " Oh ah ! " and manipu- lated his countenance. I pictured to myself the Southern Hemi- sphere as brown and dry and rich in bottles. The bottles were so big and round that they could lie in a row with two cylindrical leather cases, such as our forbears used to keep portcrayons in, only larger. Being opened, these were found to contain two pink vases, rather pretty. They received some admiration, and Mr. Freeman, The Man, said : " If they was took to Campling's in 'Igh 'Olborn, they'd tell you the market value of these here to a 'apeny. Just you show 'em to Campling's ! " Varnish welcomed Campling's into the conversation ; why Heaven knows! She had seen the name over the shop, certainly. But this was no reason for so effusive an accolade to Campling's. " There now, Mam, didn't we see it only the other day ? " But there was a greater marvel even than the recency of this observa- tion of its frontage; namely, the perfect concord of The Man with my mother and nurse on the point of its whereabouts. Said Mr. Freeman : " Just you go along as far as Kingsgate Street and cross across. And then foller on no further than what you see the fire-escape. Then there you are ! Campling's/' Said my mother: "That is perfectly right. I have seen the shop myself. On the other side of the way not this side. It is between a pianoforte-maker's and a wholesale chemist's." Said Varnish, irresistibly : " Why. it's not above four minutes' walk after you pass the cab stand ! You've only to go straight on and you can't miss it." And then each underlined each several view expressed, in its several order, as follows: " 'Taint as if it warn't wrote up plain, Campling's. Any other name I'd have told you ! " 24 OLD MAN'S YOUTH "The pianoforte-maker is on this side; not the other. But my advice is write it down. (I know I shall not be attended to.) " " Law, Missis, master can't miss it starin' him in the face ! And he can always ask a policeman." Then a short chorus of approval endorsed the policeman, as a sort of through-route glance- guide to the Universe. By the time Campling's had been so long under discussion, its raison-d'etre therein may have been overlooked. After all, it was only to be referred to as an authority on the market value of pink pots, if any. And this only on the strength of The Man's omnis- cience, for which the only warrant was his own ipse dixit. But I have learned since those days that great positiveness, accompanied by virgin ignorance, commands a reverence which the slightest evi- dence of information by the speaker would undermine altogether; even as the little pitted speck in garnered fruit soon makes us search for a bite in vain. Several other things came out of the box. I remember a Malay Creese and a pair of ancient pistols which were afterwards responsi- ble for some confusion when I came to read my Shakespeare. But of course my father's name for them was provoked by Bardolph's colleague, and stuck. I remember these because they were after- wards placed on the wall in the drawing-room, and spoken of, thenceforward, as having come out of " The Box." So was a serious Buddha from Japan in porcelain, who could bow and wave his hand for quite a long time, granted a primum mobile. Then there was a Gardener's Chronicle, twelve bound volumes of the John Bull newspaper, bundles of MSS. frightfully curled at the corners, and a Russian Zamovar whose tap waggled. My father said he would see to having it put in repair, and The Man said they would attend to anything of that sort at Bradbury's in Lambs Conduit Street. It might come to eighteenpence. My mother appeared to be as it were possessed with a feverish desire, perfectly unaccountable, that my father should go forth- with to Campling's, to learn the market value of the little pink pots. Campling would know, and The Man knew he would know. The Man, for his part, aided and abetted by Varnish, persisted in" giving my father encouragement, as an antidote to constitutional timidity of spirit. " You won't find no difficulty," said he. " Why, you can see 'em from across the road! And as for inquiries, Law bless you, they'll answer you anything you want to know, as soon as look at you." But, even as the Sphinx might have done under like circumstances, my father said. " Oh ah! well, we shall see," and remained unmoved as far as Mr. Freeman's suggestions THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 25 went. But, unlike the Sphinx, when my mother said to him, " You might pay attention to what The Man says, my dear ! " he replied meekly, " Certainly, my dear, certainly ! " and appeared to climb down off his metaphorical equivalent of the Sphinx's pedestal. CHAPTER III THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN MR. HYDE must have got the upper hand of Dr. Jekyll when my father started with me, some mornings later, under promise to be sure and call at Campling's to make that inquiry. I have often puzzled myself to account for his freedom on that day from the thraldom of Somerset House. Why did I never question him on this point during his lifetime? I did not, and can only accept unchallenged my recollection of how we set out together, ostensibly for a walk, about an hour after breakfast. It seemed to me he stood committed to Campling's, especially as he carried in a brown paper parcel the two pink pots, tied up with stout string, very easy to undo without cutting, not to ask for any fresh at the shop. But we never went to Campling's, and its generosity was not presumed upon. And as for Mr. Hyde, no one knew anything about him, in those days. But my mother knew of a Spirit of Contradiction which obsessed my father, and no doubt it was under its influence that he called .a cab the moment he and I were out of sight of the house. For even my tender years knew that Campling's, being in High Hoi- born, was only a step. Possibly the same spirit actuated him when he said to the cab : " I can't tell you where I want to go, because I've forgotten the name of the street." The cab replied : " That don't concern me, so long as you're satisfied. Jump in, Governor ! " My father said : " Suppose we try Pall Mall ? I rather fancy it's near Pall Mall." " Histe the Little Governor in, and get in yourself," said the cab. " I've heard tell of Pall Mall, in my time." Whereupon my father hoisted me in and we were off. It was my first experience of a hansom, and I appreciated it. And the consciousness of its newness is with me now; for it was a newborn cab, with new velvet seats, and such copal all over it as only coachmakers can buy. But even as the first bagpipes found a complete highlander to play them, so this cab, fresh from the hands of its maker, had lighted on a matured hansom cabman to drive it, who must have left the hands of his maker twenty odd 26 THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 27 years before. In saying this, I am deferring to the popular costno- genesis, and accepting the view that a hansom cabman like you and me though originally the work of God, is entirely indebted to Nature for his subsequent growth and development. Am I right in my impression that in those early days of hansoms, when their life 1 and mine was new, they laid claim, by implication, to familiarity with the Turf and the Fancy; that they struck a sporting attitude; affected intimacy with the Aristocracy; probably put the amount of their overcharges upon the Favourite? Am I wrong in supposing that they have grown meeker and meeker and meeker ever since those golden days, and that the poor crestfallen survivors of their glories are dying of Locomotor Ataxy, and very soon won't have a word to throw at a dog? Never mind if I have diagnosed a little wrong the fatal complaint that is destroying them. It's very plausible, anyhow! I may be mistaken in my belief that in the years I had before me then, the sun shone brighter and the days were longer, the full moons were fuller and the nights warmer, the ways of men less iniquitous and the November fogs a cause for rejoicing, with which were associated squibs. It may have been an exaggerated view of Mecklenburg Square to account it the pivot of the Solar System; and possibly the organman who came Saturdays was a discordant organman when he played all the six tunes for two- pence to my father's extreme annoyance; but he bore it for my sake. Perhaps even The Waits were unmusical ! My faith has been so shaken in my old age about these idols of my youth, that I can believe almost anything. But that word " almost " leaves a corner in which I may still treasure intact an image of the hansom cab in the days of its early splendour, its confidence of unchanged prosperity in the years to come. A little way from the entrance to this building where I write is a cabstand, or the ghost of one; and in my last familiarity with London streets, before I became bedridden, I used to note the spec- tres that hovered about it. They laid claim to be, or to have been, the drivers of these relics of a bygone day. There was one that was always there; he may be there still; but if he is, he will not be very long, unless he is, as may be, a real ghost now ; and not a metaphorical one merely for that was what I meant when I called him a spectre. He was a very, very old man; older than myself, by fifteen years. When he told me so for I asked him his age and he made no secret of it a thought passed through my mind that as far as years went he might be that very selfsame Jehu that drove my father and me in that resplendent vehicle to 28 OLD MAN'S YOUTH St. James' Square, and hadn't change for a bull, which was in those days an obscure name for a five-shilling piece; but who, when my father said, " Then you'll have to do with two shillings," replied merely, " Chuck it up," and went his way contented, as one who could now and then despise mere dross. And that forlorn old cab, whose fractured shaft might with advantage have been re- broken and reset, whose harness had been made good and left bad so often, whose splash-board had been kicked in and confessed it, whose cushions' hearts had hardened and whose window stuck in the middle and wouldn't go up or down this very cab was not so unlike that cab of old as I am now unlike the small boy that sat in it and saw for the first time the glorious spectacle of the Duke of York's column. For the driver stopped a moment to look at it, to oblige. And I feel, illogically, that his doing so has some- how given me time for all this about the two cabs, or the two phases of the same cab. Just as I cannot, at this length of time, form any surmise as to how my father came to be a free-lance, clear of the Office, on that day, neither can I reconcile or explain many things that my memory insists on my believing. I can only accept them. I am convinced for instance that a small boy, who may have been me, went up a stair, flanked by black figures which I have since failed to identify anywhere, and said to my father : " When shall we go to Campling's ? " " Tomorrow or next day or the day after that," said my father, with what I have since understood to be effrontery. "Yes, but which?" said the small boy, who really must have been me. " Do you know what happened to Inquisitive Bob ? " said my father. I intimated that I did not, but should be glad to hear. So he continued : " Inquisitive Bob was sat on the hob. So now you know what happened to him, young man." I reflected deeply, and framed a question, of which I cannot supply the pronunciation ; so I do not know if my father was right when he mimicked it, repeating my words: "'Worse the fire lighted in the fire?' Of course it was. They made it roasting hot on purpose." It was most unsatisfactory to forsake this topic without know- ing how much Inquisitive Bob had suffered. I approached it again indirectly. " How hot was it on the hob where he was? " said I. " It was for asking that very question he was put on," said my father. " Was he tooked off? " I asked. I think my father's answer must THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 29 have been that he was, in the course of next day, as a corresponding image of Inquisitive Bob, suffering severely, remained to harrow my feelings. I cannot remember the words that created this image. But I can remember passing upstairs holding my father's hand; and then finding myself in a crowd, among many legs and a few skirts, each containing an additional pair, presumably. I remem- ber his last caution to me, u Now, don't you get lost in the crowd, Eustace John," and that he then talked to a leg-owner whose head I could not compass, because I really saw nothing of him but a ponderous corporation. The leg-owner's voice was as ponderous, and the two together gave me an impression of something I had then no name for. I have learned it since it is solvency. After some conversation his voice said to my father, with weighty pauses : " Don't hesitate to make use of my name, Pascoe." That was my father's name, and my own; but I can't say I had ever before known any one to call him by it, without " Mr." I was naturally curious to know what the leg-owner's name was, having inferred that my father would now occasionally at any rate substitute it for his own. I never knew it, as the gentleman said, " Ta-ta, Pascoe! " and moved away. But first he interfered with my head which I resented and said, without looking at me so far as I saw: " That your little chap? That's fine." But he may have got a peep at me round his stomach, when my eyes were not on him. However, my father consoled me, looking down on me in my grove of legs, and saying : " How are we getting on down there ? All right ? " I was able to give satisfactory assurances, like the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Then a gentleman without a hat who seemed to be at home, addressing my father with unwarrantable familiarity, called him Straps. But my father did not resent this ; only saying in reply : " You're the man I was looking for." I quite anticipated that this gentleman would say I was the boy he was looking for, so firmly did he fix one eye upon me. The other seemed fixed on my father, as I thought at the time by choice, ascribing to his eyes the independent action of twin screws. But what he said was not what I expected at all, for he repeated exactly what the solvent gentleman had said: "That your little chap?" But he did not sanction me in the same way, and I felt die trop when he added, "' I thought all yours were little girls. Straps," rather reproachfully. I had the impression that my father cut a poor figure when he answered evasively : " So they are, all except this one." Both appeared then to consider me, and I believe I anticipated some compromise that might soften the posi- 30 OLD MAN'S YOUTH tion. But the gentleman only played the piano on his legs with his fingers; which were loose, because it was his thumbs only that were stuck in the trouser pockets. He stopped the tune to say suddenly : " NothV else at my shop. Boys, boys, boys ! What's the office now, Straps ? " By which I clearly understood he was inquiring about the purpose of my father's visit. u Anything I can do for you ? " confirmed it. " Not out here," said my father. " Haven't you got a quiet corner? " " There's nobody to speak of in the clerk's den," said the gentle- man. " Come along in." So we went along and found only a freckled youth of whom I think I felt that it was as well no one should speak, as praise might have been artificial. He had white hair close cropped, and was trying to get the feather of a pen below the collar of his shirt, as though to combat some irritation on his scapula. When we entered, he gave up trying, and wrote assiduously. The gentleman gave my father a chair and sat on a high stool himself, taking me between his knees. I was obliged to lend myself to the fiction that I liked this sort of thing. But I didn't. I was, however, too much occupied at this moment with a problem to be much concerned about this. I was asking myself the riddle : " Why did this gentleman ask my father what the office was, when he must have known ? " *' I'm prepared to be told I'm a fool, Stowe," said my father, beginning to untie the parcel he carried. " But even a couple of pounds is not to be sneezed at. I expect you can tell offhand whether these will fetch anything or not." " Get 'em out, and let's have a look at 'em." My father untied deliberately, with an evident motive. His amour propre wanted soft places to fall on, of disbelief in any substantial value of the articles to come- pounds, you know! The leg-owner would have done the same, but would have made it hundreds. " There's any amount of string on the premises," said Mr. Stowe, of whose name I was still unaware, for a reason that will appear later. " I like untying knots," said my father, not very plausibly. " You see after all, the things are no use to us. And I expect they'll pay the cab-fare. And it gave me the excuse for a ride with the kid. And what's a couple of shillings when all's said and done?" " Well let's have a look at 'em ! " said Mr. Stowe. My father finished the first knot, and began on the one at its THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 31 antipodes. This sort of knot is always harder to undo than the consummation knot, which clever young men can make a porterage loop of only the parcel rotates and amputates your finger. My father didn't appear to be in a hurry, but I thought Mr. Stowe did. However, he may have drummed on me from a mistaken benevolence : people do get so very wrong about what children like. " Bother the string ! " said he. " Throw it away. Hang the expense ! " My father was trying his teeth on the knot. Through them he said: " All right! It's just coming." And it came, in time. Then during the removal of the paper he found an opportunity to say, anxiously : " You quite understand that I do not myself attach any value to these articles. It is only that my profound ignorance hesitated to condemn them as valueless without reference to an authority like yourself " " Shut up ! " said Mr. Stowe ; and I thought he meant repack the two cylindrical boxes. But I saw my error when he held out his hand for one of them and began removing the cover. He got it off and looked inside. He said : " Hullo ! " "It's not broken, is it?" said my father. '' Hand over t'other one," said Mr. Stowe. " I say, Straps ! " "Well, what? . . . They're exactly alike." *' Catch hold of this young shaver. He ain't safe when there's valuables about. . . . Pepper, go and tell Mr. Stacpoole to look in here before he goes." This was to the clerk who said " Mr. Stacpoole " inanimately, and went out into the big crowded room from which people were departing as for lunch, talking a great deal. I presumed that it was Mr. Stacpoole whose voice I had heard saying a great many sums of money somewhere in the heart of this grove of legs. Do not suppose I lay claim to having grappled, under seven years old, with such a name as Stacpoole. But the fact that the great Fine Art Auction Mart of those days has held its name explains my belief that I heard it then. I believe my belief is a mistaken belief; but I should not talk such seeming nonsense did I not be- lieve that every one's record of childish recollections is ready to meet me halfway. I heard something then no doubt, and subse- quent experience told me what. But the clerk's name Pepper I know I heard; because I imputed to him a relation to our pepper- castor in the nursery, somehow connected with his freckles. However, I can't understand much of what followed. Perhaps I was getting anxious for my midday meal, which my father had undertaken to be responsible for. But I do recollect that Mr. 32 Stacpoole came in, and Mr. Stowe intercepted him outside the office, speaking to him sotto voce over one of the vases, which he took with him. Presently Mr. Stacpoole said, " Glasgow? " and Mr. Stowe said, " No Pascoe; " and both came in and he addressed my father by name, and added, "Pretty little thing! but won't go into three figures I should say." My father looked highly satis- fied, and then all three talked rather loud. After which Mr. Stacpoole actually said what the other two had said : " That your little chap, Mr. Pascoe? Wants .his dinner, I should say." I thought Mr. Stacpoole a very sensible man. I can't account for my remembering nothing clearly of the banquet, unless it is owing to my having devoted myself entirely to the pleasures of the table. I am haunted by an impression that the name of the restaurant was Tippetty's, but twenty years later my father repudiated Tippetty; only he couldn't recollect the real name. We went at the recommendation of Mr. Stowe, who accom- panied us. He and my father talked a great deal, but much of their talk turned on what appeared to me to be sums, things I had a very strong objection to. My memory is abnormally clear about my interview with my father in another cab, driving home. Probably items of it were repeated afterwards anecdotically, in my hearing. I said to him : " When you sneezes at some money, how much money is it ? " He had some difficulty in tracing out the original of this in our conversation, but he found it out in the end, and gave a clear reply : " Anything under fifteen shillings." I was grateful to him for his conciseness. The next interrogation I inflicted on him was more difficult. " Why was you a fool's toe ? Why wasn't you a fool's f um ? " It required close analysis to run this home. But it was found at last in the only mention my father had made of the cross-eyed gentleman's name. Had he uttered it a second time, I firmly be- lieve I should have solved the problem unassisted. He laughed all the way home, after finding it out, repeating to himself again and again : " Prepared to be told I'm a fool's toe ! " He laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. When we got home I said to him, " Shall we go to Scampling's tomorrow?" in perfectly good faith. And he again replied insin- cerely : " Tomorrow or next day or the day after that." CHAPTER IV THE NARRATIVE OF EJJSTACE JOHN I WASN'T going to let my father off about Campling's, taxing him each day with his perfidy. He assigned reasons for it of the baldest insufficiency. When, next day, I asked him, " Why wasn't me and you went to Scampling's today? " he replied without shame, as far as I saw, " Because me is the accusative case of the pronoun I " ; and, when I repeated my question in another form twenty-four hours later, he took a mean advantage of the circumstances under which I found myself, saying : " Because Scampling's don't care about little boys that take too much cake at one mouthful." I was obliged to accept these as sound reasons, because I could not meet the gravamen of their contained accusations. But when on the third day I was put off with, " Because you're kicking holes in your father's trousers"; my suspicions of ill-faith became irrepressible and I said, " That is not a question to my answer," a perversion of a reproach often addressed to myself. Varnish interposed upon this, with an absurd pretext that it was possible to carry on communication with me without the knowledge of others present in the flesh. My father was supposed to be un- aware of a short homily she addressed to me, to the effect that no young gentleman of the better class ever indulged in such a dis- respeck as contradict his father. She was surprised and shocked, nothing in my extraction or bringing up having warranted an anticipation of such conduct. It was time and plenty I learned to behave, in order to deserve certain privileges now accorded to me. For instance, no renegade against the traditions of his family could be received in Society, which couldn't abide such goings on, notoriously. Most young gentlemen's mars, on hearing of such transgressions, would at once say they wasn't to be allowed to play with Adaropposite in the Square that afternoon. This was the young lady properly named Ada Fraser, and her familiar name given above was intended to convey her provenance as well. For her father and mother lived on the other side of the Square, and her mother played on the piano. Campling's evaporated, unfulfilled. I was chagrined, because I had made some parade of my approaching visit there, in conversa- 33 34 OLD MAN'S YOUTH tion with this same Ada Fraser, in the Square conversation which Varnish denounced as rude. Vainglorious would have been a better chosen expression. It consisted of boastful statements on either part, every such statement laying a more emphatic claim than the one it outfaced to greater social influence, more extensive premises, larger households, wider information, superior furni- ture, longer hours of study, more learned instructors, more courtly manners, a completer solvency? all man can covet, in short on the part of the Pascoes and the Erasers respectively. On these terms, I think Ada and I enjoyed each other's society. Possibly this relation had its origin in a denial of mine, early in our acquaintance, that Ada's name could possibly be Fraser. I had very strong grounds for doubting it, but they are difficult to explain. I will however see what I can do. When very young indeed I had heard the name Fraser applied in a way no English dictionary, I am sure, warrants. u Striggits and slammons, yes ! " these words were Varnish's " Frasers quite another thing, and on no account, especially when a clean cloth." Cast over in your mind all your memories of tea and bread-and- milk in the nursery, and see if you can't identify these mysteries. . . . You give it up? well then, I shall have to tell? Striggits and slammons were incidents in my refreshments, foreign to the nature of the lixivium they occurred in. The former were twiggy, the latter leafy. But frasers, strange to say, were those by-products of The Milk, that float in its surface; and being skimmed off with a spoon, are deposited by Law and Order in the slop-basin, or at least in the tray; but by Anarchists on the cloth, and a dreadful mess made, you never! that is, if you were Varnish. Even now, when I accommodate the flotsam and jetsam of an unsuccessfully compounded cup of tea, it is borne in upon me that tea-timbers, afloat, are striggits; tea-leaves, on the loose, slammons; and, above all, that the accidents of milk are frasers. How can they be anything else? Don't I know? Anyhow, I was so clear about it at seven years old that when the little girl in the Square told me her name was Ada Fraser. I scornfully denied the possibility of such a name for any human creature. A name apiece for all things, and property in any name established by priority of use that was only fair play, according to me. My understanding like other children's was in revolt against the calling of any two things by the same name. So a precedent of mutual contradiction was established between me and the little girl in the Square, and a warm friendship was founded on it, although the severe model of conversation it originated was THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 35 never relaxed from. And it was, according to Varnish, rude; and had she been me, she would have been ashamed to it. The need for this fact in my narrative now is to explain an inti- mation I remember giving to Ada Fraser one morning in the Square, some weeks probably after my hansom-cab experience, to the effect that her father hadn't got six hundred pounds apiece. Why the event that led to this statement is dim in my memory, and my interview with Ada vivid, I cannot tell. I have to accept the images of myself, Ada, and the large stone roller in the Square, as forcible realities; while a visit of Mr. Stowe, connected with the two pink pots, to my father the evening before, has become in sixty-four years two eyes pulling opposite ways, and a great deal of laughter and congratulations. All the rest is oblivion. But I know from my clearly remembered speech to Ada, and her prompt rejoinder that her father had sixty hundred and what was more our cook hadn't a tortoise-shell cat that this must have been just after he heard of the amazing sale of the two pink pots at auction, which was, as I have always believed, the beginning of our family misfortunes. As I have since understood, a set of Rose-du-Barry vases of this shape had been known to exist, with a muse painted on each. Five of these were in the collection of a Duke, two of a Marquis. Euterpe and Calliope were missing, till they turned up the very self-same vases! in the box Mr. Freeman unpacked so carefully that Sunday morning in Mecklenburg Square. There was a scene of wild enthusiasm at Stacpoole's when they were brought to the hammer. My father I believe could not attend the sale, owing to the tyranny of Somerset House; but Mr. Stowe called in on his way home to congratulate him on the result. The Duke and the Marquis had gone into competition, and the Marquis had outbidden the Duke, ''becoming the possessor" of Euterpe and Calliope for the modest sum of twelve hundred pounds! It is possible that my own interest in these developments would have been greater, and that I should have kept a livelier memory of their details, had I not been preoccupied by a desire to report to Ada a confutation of a point she had laid great stress on. I was absorbed in my anxiety to triumph over her with a state- ment that my father had denied the tortoise-shell cat she had claimed for her cook. He had done so, in a sense, but his in- credulity had been founded on a misconception, due to my pronun- ciation. When I reported Ada's words, to the best of my ability, his comment was: "A torture-cell cat! what a hideous creature! 36 OLD MAN'S YOUTH Like the Inquisition, exactly." But the misconception was my own, not my father's ; for I had imagined his denial which followed, that such an animal existed, to mean that Ada's cook possessed no cat at all. My repetition of this to Ada made her indignant, and strained our relations for a time. I read a short while since in the Sunday Times which is fingered here, by waste old men like me, as long as the copy is legible, and sometimes lasts on t'ill its next Sunday that " The Heliconides," originally painted for Madame de Courtraie, had been pooled by their respective noble owners, to increase their value, and sold by them u for a fabulous sum " what very dull fables are told in Auction Rooms ! to an American gentleman, who was ready to give them up for double the money, if English en- thusiasm would subscribe to " keep them in the country." However, all that is neither here nor there. I know these rather pretty little pots were called " The Heliconides " which is, in plain English, the Muses. And my father got six hundred pounds apiece for his two, less percentages. And no good came of it. Indeed, these pots were ill-starred from the beginning. I could not even brandish their price in the face of Ada Fraser without a mishap to follow. I may say that she and I were torn asunder, if not in consequence of, at least in connection with, the sale of the Heliconides. No doubt this was partly due to our way of dealing with the question of their price. The handle of the big stone roller had been so adjusted by its manufacturer that it would not lie on the ground normally, and when held down sprang up, and fluctuated to equilibrium. We availed ourselves of this property as a rhythmical accompaniment to a monotonous recita- tion, in unison, of the price of Euterpe and Calliope. I cannot pre- tend any surprise now at the result that came about. Ada Fraser got a bad blow in the face from the recoil of the handle, and we both howled loud enough to be heard at 'Ammersmith, if Varnish's estimate was trustworthy. It was never corroborated; but for all that Ada's nurse, backed by authorities at home, decided against my being allowed to play with her, I was that rough and rude. So I lost sight of Ada. Now this was very unjust, because the affair of the roller-handle was at least a joint-stock iniquity. I suppose it was this tragedy, and my seeing Ada at a compulsory distance next day, with diachylum on her nose, that made me remember this part of my sixth summer in London more plainly than the actual sequel of my excursion into auction-land. That presents itself to me in disjointed fragments. One of these is a THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 37 period of mere crude jubilation following naturally on the an- nouncement of the sale, in the middle of which my father's voice appears to say repeatedly, " Shan't believe it till I see the cheque ! " and my mother's, " I suppose now I shall be allowed a brougham and not have to tramp." Both these speeches remain clearly enough, with the meanings I ascribed to them; connecting the former with the pattern on my father's trousers, the latter with carpet-sweeping, owing to my mother's pronunciation of the word " brougham.'' Another later fragment is the great offence my father gave to my mother by saying, "That's just like you, Caecilia!" after reading aloud something in Punch, which my mother seemed to think the reverse of humorous. She captured the London Charivari, and burnt it, and though I had no doubt my father immediately bought another copy, he hid it away discreetly. Anyhow, when his effects came to be sold after the cause of them was laid in his grave a complete set of Punch, from the earliest dawn till the " now " of that date, which has since changed somehow to forty years ago, was entered in the auctioneer's catalogue, and sold as perfect. So it must have contained the deathless first lec- ture of Mrs. Caudle, which I identified later as the one that gave my mother such offence. From it, reasoning backwards, I can infer that my mother had no sooner built one castle in the air with the hundreds paid for the Heliconides, than she used them to lay the foundations of another. They played the part of Mr. Caudle's five pounds, which could have bought black satin gowns and bonnets for the girls and no end of things, if Mr. Caudle hadn't lent it to a friend. But Mrs. Caudle was a strong character, acting on the courage of her own convictions. My mother was a weak one, and no doubt needed the support she received from Uncle Francis and Uncle Sam, in concert with whom her attacks on my father became as formidable as her prototype's on her defenceless mate in the small hours of the morning. These uncles of mine had shown some restlessness on the question of the ownership of the treasure trove. But I suppose the fact that the house in Mecklenburg Square had been settled on my mother at her marriage without reservation as to its contents, which were I suppose presumed to be of no value appeared con- clusive at this time, and this restlessness never came to maturity. Only, they were not going to let the windfall alone. They would have a finger in the pie. I suppose my own powers of observation were growing rapidly at this point, so clearly do I begin to recollect some of the con- 38 OLD MAN'S YOUTH versation of my seniors. But, quite possibly, what seems to my memory now to belong to a single occasion, may be several sub- stantially identical conversations rolled into one. It does not matter. I write it as I recollect it. On one occasion I recall distinctly this speech of my Uncle Sam's : " Your husband, Caecilia, will be a wise man, and consult his own interests, if he does as I tell him. Just let him look at this little windfall as a nest egg, and 'andle it as Capital." I remember the words of this, and could almost reconstruct the substance of the homily which followed, one of the sort I have already indicated, a review of the great successes that would have attended might even still attend my father's course in life if, instead of letting himself be guided by mysterious precepts of some moral code which, for any definition of it that came into the conversation, might have been anything from the Vedas to Virgil's Eclogues, he had allowed himself to be tutored by practical men of the world; who knew something of life, and had escaped the baneful influences of Ideas and Sermons. I am not responsible for the vagueness of my uncle's methods of discussion, but I vouch for the accuracy of my report. " Your husband, Csecilia," said my Uncle Francis, when his turn came, speaking as though he had just settled off a number of other ladies' husbands, " your husband, with his great talents and faculties and things, might have had his seat in the House of Com- mons, years ago, and be looking forward to an Under-Secretaryship now. If he'd listened to me! Don't take my word for it! / ain't anybody. But just you go to any Club in London, and see if they won't tell you the same ! " I fixed my eyes on my mother, expecting to see her start at once. And I felt very curious about the result, because I only knew of Clubs in connection with their King and Knave and so on, in Beggar-my-neighbour. But my mother sat still 1 something, as I think now, as a balloon remains quiet to be inflated. My Uncle Francis added a postscript, to en- dorse his rather boastful modesty, repeating more than once: "Don't let what I say go for anything." He then inducted a bystander into the conversation, saying: "Here's little Kidneys. Ask little Kidneys. He's a practical man. He'll tell you! Don't mind me." Mr. Tom Skidney, to whom my uncle referred, was, like my mother and my sisters and myself, a Sunday afternoon visitor at my grandmother's suburban villa at Highbury. It was suburban in those days, and fowls clucked there in the coach-house yard, about new-laid eggs, with perfect sincerity. And small boys and THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 39 girls might walk carefully up the avenues of the strawberry -beds, and gather the big ones into a basket lined with grape-leaves out of the hothouse; cnly not to eat more than three themselves, till after dinner. One has a happy faculty of recollecting the summer days of one's childhood, and my memories of Highbury are, briefly that it was summer there! I don't think Mr. Tom Skidney appreciated his opportunities in the country; at least, not as one would have supposed a town- sparrow from the Inner Temple might have done. For he sat indoors and drank whiskey-and-water with my uncles, as long as they remained with him, and by himself when they forsook him. When appealed to by my Uncle Francis, as above, he was already consuming whiskey-and-water, though it was quite early in the day, and of course smoking. He did not seem prepared to risk his reputation for sagacity by giving a definite opinion. He blinked and tittered slightly, and then said : " Ah ! " It was not much; but my Uncle Francis appeared to accept it as a reinforce- ment of his view, saying: "You see what little Kidneys thinks. Now there's a man, Cecilia, whose opinions are worth having!" He stopped in a sort of perpetual sentry-go up and down the room, with an opened hand extended towards Mr. Skidney, as though to lay the expanse of a great mind open to a world in search of good counsel. " He's no mere theorist," he added.