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 <hiton & BoStn Company
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
PREFATORY NOTE
THIS novel was unhappily left unfinished at the time of my
husband's death. His intention had been that all the incidents
of the story should be presented to the reader in the narrative of
Eustace John. As he did not live to carry out this idea I have
been forced to supply a short setting of my own to make what ho
had written intelligible. This I have termed " The Story " as
distinct from the " Narrative of Eustace John." which is left
exactly as he wrote it. I have endeavoured merely to construct a
framework founded on what I knew to be his general idea in
writing the book, and to obtrude it as little as possible on the
reader.
EVELYN DE MORGAN.
127 CHUBCH ST., CHELSEA.
CHAPTER I
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I GAVE my Self up, as a bad job, long ago. By a bad job, I mean
an insoluble problem. I have asked my Self to explain itself for
sixty years at least maybe more and have never got a satisfactory
answer.
Personally, I am unable to explain my Self. The most I can
achieve is a poor make-believe that I can get away from it at arm's
length far enough at any rate to walk round it and note its
outward seeming. The result is an image in my mind of an old
man who is tired, and wants to stop. Not to stop writing, mind
you! not to stop any particular thing but to stop altogether.
Because then, you see, he would be on all fours with every non-
existent person in the Universe. And think of the improvement
in his position ! No pain at all ! think what that would mean to
his joints, which are arthritic. No eyesight at all! think what
that would mean to eyes that see nothing they welcome. No
memory at all! and what a gain that would be, seeing that all
that was sweet in the Past serves now only to add bitterness to the
Present, and all that was bitter defies oblivion, and lives to sting
in all its freshness, as though no yesterdays had come between.
How much better, he thinks, to have done with it all, and be no
worse off than the countless myriads that have never been born.
Provided always his extinction were complete and guaranteed: no
treachery on the part of Nonentity towards a tired unit in an
infinite void, a Creation that has had, for him, so little purpose,
a Creation whose benefits, if they exist, he grudges to no survivor.
Do not suppose I have not reasoned with my Self pointed out
that this longing to cease is at least irreligious, if not illogical.
Indeed, I have gone further, and assured it that its non-existence
is, to itself, a thing quite inconceivable, although my higher
reasoning powers have enabled me to perceive its possibility.
I have told my Self this plain truth, but it still remains, as at
first, a thing unintelligible, saying it knows nothing of what is
not conceivable, has only a simple wish namely, to be no worse off
than my elder brother; my brother who has never bad a heartache
nor a toothache. How could he, seeing I am the only son of my
1
2 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
parents? For there is no safeguard against pain, that non-
existence cannot give points to, and win.
Can I blame my Self? Am I the person to do it? Certainly
not for being unintelligible, for am I intelligible? Are you pre-
pared to say you understand me? Shall I believe you, if you do,
seeing that by my own admission I do not understand my Self?
Yet, though I do not, and though, as I began by saying, I
have given my Self up as a bad job long ago, I often ask it
questions. I have asked it more than once lately, what can I find
for it to do, that will keep it quiet and prevent it worrying me?
For it is not I that always worry it, whatever the conventions of
speech may suggest to the contrary. And if the answers I have
received only entrap me into a painful task, that I shall fling
aside not long hence incomplete, I have only my Self to blame for
it; For I have consulted no one else, and have no intention of
doing so.
I have questioned my Self further about this task no less a
one than the jotting down of all the memories of my lifetime.
I have asked it how far I dare to do this going back on all my
buried memories: dwelling again on so many half -forgotten
passages of our joint lives, so many I would gladly forget outright.
I have said to it, " Can I can we speak our thoughts aloud,
although none other hears our speech, of all we now know to have
been folly, or worse? Can I confess to you my shame or remorse
for a hundred blots on the page of life that never would hare
soiled it had the writer's hand held a less uncertain pen? Can I,
above all, write truth about the faults of those I loved in their
despite?
The answer to this question has been that it doesn't matter,
that they are all dead and gone, long ago, and will never know
anything about it. And this has been followed by an intimation
to me not to make a fuss about nothing.
But is it nothing? That's the question. What's the answer?
Will they, do they of necessity, know nothing about it? I
cannot help admitting to my Self that I am far from cock-sure on
the point; conceding to cocks their proverbial amount of prophetic
certainty. However, no one will ever know what I write that's
one comfort! And surely I may be allowed to amuse my Self.
Consider how dull are the hours it has to pass; think what a total
theirs may be before the last, last, last one comes with the order
of release! Some septuagenarians are incorrigible they drag on to
eighty ninety get into their teens again sometimes their second
teens.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 3
Anyhow, I can't restrain my Self. It will have me write down
all we can recollect, between us. Surely if T am to employ my Self
at all, I may as well do it in a way that will make the employee
happy and keep him amused. All benevolent taskmasters do this,
to the best of their ability.
When I turn to, seriously, to examine my Self about its share
in our joint recollections, it is not with any idea that it will add
to my own. It may confirm, them. I doubt my having to con-
tradict it.
What is my earliest recollection? A many of us have asked their
Selves this question and got no answer worth calling' one. Mine
answers me, and we are both of a mind.
It is of the Nursery in Mecklenburg Square. . . . What
nursery? did I understand you to ask? My nursery, of course!
What other nursery was there ever in Mecklenburg Square? . . .
and the day the Sweep came in the afternoon. Actually in the
afternoon why, Heaven knows ! The clue is lost irrevocable.
But there he was, black and terrifying, in broad daylight instead
of coming clandestinely before dawn official dawn and piercing
strong-lunged into the heart of unsuspicious dreams with the wail
of a lost soul. And there was I, very small, and four or there-
abouts; I my Self, that have survived to write this now, or I could
not have seen what happened, and remembered it through a lifetime.
And I do remember it plainly, believe what you may! The
kneeling Sweep brings his brush down the chimney it was up as
my memory took form discarding rod after rod as each comes
from under a soot-curbing petticoat forethought has clothed the
grate with. He comes to the critical moment that is to bring
his brush back into Society, and suppresses the petticoat, with
caution. Then, out comes the brush, and upon it it is true, this
that I tell you; honour bright! is a sweet white pigeon, very little
soiled by its journey through the soot. And the last my memory
sees is the black Sweep oh, how black he was! caressing the white
bird as he kneels before the grate; and, as I infer now, open-
mouthed with astonishment. Else how come I to retain so rivid
an image of a very red tongue in the middle of a very black face?
There my memory's eyesight fails and sees no more. But I know
I saw it, and have described it truly, though I was four. And
the reason I know I was four is that when in later years I recalled
the incident. I was told I must be telling stories, because T was
only four when the event honourably acknowledged came about,
and I could not possibly recollect it. But I knew better.
I may remember something else as early, but I cannot prove the
4 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
date. Unless indeed it is a confectioner's shop with a bride-cake
of some pretensions in the window, which my sisters and I were
allowed for a treat to gaze at when we were taken out, to bowl
our hoops under tyrannical restrictions. This cake held me with a
cruel fascination, not as a cake to be cut that would have been
blasphemy but as a type of Oriental splendour, The Court of
Tamerlane, anything of that sort! When in later years I learned
" Ye Mariners of England " by heart, I found that, in connection
with the meteor-flag that would yet terrific burn, my mind dwelt
with satisfaction on the tin flag stuck in it. But it is nothing in
the nature of its enchantments that enables me to fix the period of
life when I came under this cake's spell. It is the railing the
shop stood back from, the top bar of which I was not to climb
up to and suck; or Varnish, my nurse, would tell my mar. It was
above the level of my mouth I can remember the taste fairly
well and I must have been full small, to be unable to enjoy it
on the level of the pavement.
Was Varnish really my nurse's name? I have accepted it as
such all my life, but now I come to write it, I must make the
reservation that I do not believe it can have been her name, or
anybody's. I shall never know now what her name really was;
it is all so long ago. I do not even know, and I only puzzle myself
by speculating, whether she was christened Varnish, or whether
it was the name of her family.
I have often tried, by the light of much subsequent experience
of the genesis of the human domestic, to figure to myself the terms
on which Varnish came to be the power she was in my family
circle. I have forced myself mechanically to grapple with the
conception of her as a candidate for a nurse's place, going through
prescribed formulas, producing written characters, failing to con-
vince with them, being spoken for by a lady in a suburb previously
unknown to man, having her relations with alcohol canvassed
without disguise, and her attitude towards the opposite sex safely
defined; her honesty in money matters and truthfulness of speech
candidly discussed and her seeming satisfactory so far, and, finally,
her coming for a month on trial and giving satisfaction; all these
conditions I have endeavoured to imagine Varnish into, and hare
failed utterly. She still presents herself to me as a Power in
Nature, with a bone in her stays, combining Omnipotence with
a mysterious liability to come unpinned, and reinstating her posi-
tion with pins produced from a recess in her mouth. To a youth-
ful mind awaiting Theism, but taught to say prayers provisionally,
she was not without her uses; filling out a void in which, other-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 5
wise, irreverent speculations might have germinated. But as to her
having ever gone to a registry-office and sought domestic employ-
ment, that seems even now to my inner soul impossible, for all
that reason and subsequent experience have taught me.
Why Varnish used threats to tell my mar, in order to influence
me, I can't say. It was a case of a weak Ministry and a strong
Executive, I suppose; the latter metaphorically brandishing the
former over the heads of malefactors, as the only type of abstract
authority available. I was too young to analyze; so I accepted the
confidence of her denunciations as a sign that they were well
grounded, and asked no questions as to the form the Action of the
Government would take. Varnish must often have felt very
grateful to me for stopping crime short of forcing her to carry
out her threats and exposing their impotence. No doubt she
breathed freer when concession on my part enabled her to dwell
on my good fortune in escaping some form of torture undefined,
which a retributive mother would certainly have resorted to,
though Varnish's own tender soul shrank from thumbscrews or
the rack. " But just let me find you put the butter in the slop-basin
again," said she, " and see if I don't acquaint your mar ! Such
goings on I never ! "
I should not like to say that my mother was not fond of me,
but I am convinced there was a coolness between us, dating from
my entry into this world, for which I think she should not have
held me responsible. Varnish no doubt handled this estrangement
used it as a lever to coerce me into moral courses. Her action
produced two false impressions on me; one that my mother was
a strong character, the other that my father was a weak one. His
ostentatious exclusion from a seat on the Bench beside my mother
could only have one effect, even if unendorsed by running com-
mentary on his demeanour as a parent, which I suppose Varnish
never meant to reach my understanding. Or rather, she made her
assumption that it could not do so a pivot for her conscience to
turn its back upon me with, and say whatever it liked to Space,
whose sympathies she seemed to take for granted. But a sharp
little boy of five or six is sometimes hideously sharp about what-
ever touches his own interests, and when Varnish said to Space
that my father set her off wonderin'. he did, and what that child
would do next she couldn't imagine! that being her style, whjch I
can't help her saying so made me alive to the fact that I had a
friend at court, under whose jegis I might defy the authorities. In
this case he had, to the best of my dim recollection, countenanced
and encouraged me in retiring under the Wash, or more properly
6 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
under the miscellanea which were yearning for the Wash, in the
basement of a cupboard named The Dirty Close, or Clothes; it hav-
ing acquired, by a retroversion of language, the name of its con-
tents. Once concealed, every addendum from the sorted heaps on
the floor which I had not been permitted to roll in, improved my
position of security, while it increased my risks of suffocation. I
was saved, to become an object of opprobrium to all but my father,
who laughed. But such like incidents as this built up a reputation
for him in my eyes a reputation of sympathy with revolution
although it did not convince me that he could be relied on at a
crisis. Varnish's habit of soliloquy was responsible for this, as it
was for the groundless belief in my mother's strength of character.
I was very young then, Had it dawned upon me, I wonder, that
my father was in Somerset House? If not, it must have done so
very soon after, for I knew it at six years old; seeing that I
remember telling a neighbour of it, as a fundamental truth of
nature that could make shift for itself without meaning anything
intelligible. For I had not the remotest idea what Somerset House
was, nor what my father did there. I am not much clearer now,
on this latter point. But I have known all my life, and I told that
little girl clearly, with some sense of reflected glory, that my father
was in Somerset House, past all question. She did not seem im-
pressed, merely inquiring of me whether I was a little boy or a
little girl. Her name was Ada Fraser, and she lived in the house
with the red blinds, right across the Square. Why do I feel now,
at a distance of sixty-five years, that if you, my reader, do not
know which the house with the red blinds was, your ignorance
argues yourself unknown ? Why Europe knew it !
By the time I was six years old the time at which my memories
begin to solidify I not only knew that my father was in Somerset
House, but that his salary was too small. I did not know then
that this piece of knowledge is common to all mankind about its
own salary and that of its belongings. It remains true in spite of
periodical rises. Even so the path in which a serpent moves is an
unvarying mathematical curve, while the snake himself constantly
advances, like the salary.
I cannot say I ever heard my father complain that his salary was
too small, but he must have thought so, for, was he not human?
I knew all about it of that I am certain and felt indignant, long
before I knew what a salary was.
The most vigorous complaints of the inadequacy of this salary
came from my mother's two younger brothers, known to me as
Uncle Francis and Uncle Sam. My mother's discussion of the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 7
subject with my father, in which she would lay great stress on the
difficulties of housekeeping for such an immense family, in such
a huge house, always ended with: "Well, Nathaniel, ask my
brothers what they think. All I say is, ask my brothers ! " On
which my father would fume and become irritable, and my mother
would sit with her eyes shut, and if he became at all demonstrative
and independent, would have that dreadful faintness come over her
again, and would tell my nurse or my elder sister to give her just
one spoonful of Dr. Endicott's mixture only one ! in a wine-glass
of water nearly full up, but not full enough to spill.
Uncle Francis was in the Inner Temple at least, that was how
he was described to me; and I accepted the Inner Temple, just as
I accepted Somerset House. But with a difference. I had, so to
speak, worshipped at the Inner Temple's shrine. Make peace with
Wordsworth for me, if ever you meet him in the Unknown. I had
been more than once taken to the Inner Temple by my mother;
and when it rained, instead of being turned loose in the garden
with my two elder sisters, while my mother talked about an
important mystery called the Settlement, we were taken into my
uncle's chambers and allowed to overhear much conversation about
it. Memory is a funny thing! I remember this conversation quite
distinctly; not its components, but the fact of its existence. Other-
wise, I can only recollect a torrent of unqualified jargon with a
fish-leap suppose we call it or an islet now and again, to vary
its purposeless monotony. As for instance when my uncle inhaled
snuff it vanished up his nostrils in two long gusts recrossed his
slippers two or three times, helped Chaos forward a little among the
papers on his desk, and said to my mother with a raised voice:
" You may talk till you're hoarse, Csecilia, but don't try to convince
me that Nathaniel's a Lawyer. 7 know better. You ask anybody!
They'll tell you so at any club in London." It is odd that I
remember all these words, for I cannot have understood them.
Witness the fact that at the next opportunity I asked my mother
where her horse was, and she said no wonder! "What can the
strange child mean? Do make out, Varnish!''
These visits to my uncle's chambers are responsible for an im-
pression that has lasted my lifetime up to this moment of writing,
and that probably will hold good to the end of it. It bonds
together like the items of a Welsh Triad, or the identities of the
threefold Hecate the atmosphere of snuff, the noiselessness of
slippers, and the solitude of Chambers. I have often endeavoured
to break the spell that holds these three things together and to
think of them apart. But it remains just as strong as ever! The
8 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
recollection of his snuff comes, as a special flavour, through the
memory of the very strong tobacco smoked by Mr. Tom Skidney,
a great friend of his, who was frequently in evidence, but un-
explained. That of the slippers asserts itself through a flowered
silk dressing-gown in which, as I understood, my uncle convey-
anced. And the belief that Man, in Chambers, is a sort of
Anchorite, separated from his species, predominates over a fact
that I perfectly well call to mind, that not only Mr. Skidney was
always there, with an amber mouthpiece in his lips, but also two
other young men who appeared at intervals and accepted from him
what I supposed to be his cigars. They really were my uncle's.
These young men were up in the top set. which is all I ever knew
of them. But whatever they were, they did not want to have
anything conveyanced. On the contrary, they themselves were
yearning to conveyance the goods of others. Now Mr. Skidney,
as far as I could make out, toiled not, neither did he conveyance.
He resided in the Inner Temple, and he smoked. Every one of us
makes some contribution to the sum-total, of active human life,
and that was Mr. Skidney's. My uncle seemed to think that he
accounted for him, or palliated him, when he said of him : " Oh
yes little Kidneys ! He's all right has some means of his own."
But whatever his means were, and whatever the ends to which he
used them, neither he nor those fellows in the top set ever did
anything towards dissipating the idea that Chambers meant loneli-
ness. I had heard the words " all by himself in Chambers " before
I knew that words meant things; and by the time I had decided
on the meaning of this combination, it had become a fundamental
fact in nature, like the Butcher, or the Baker, or the Dust. So
the snuff, the slippers, and the solitude still remains in my mind as
the insignia of my Uncle Francis.
My Uncle Sam was a Civil Engineer, and him too I swallowed
whole and was content to know nothing of the nature of Civil
Engineering. To my mind it merely presented itself as something
great something outside and beyond daily life, mysteriously actu r
ated from the inmost heart of an unimpeachable Office. Even so
Genghis Khan or somebody like him ; I really forget played with
armies on a chessboard, in miniature, and made it all happen in
reality, hundreds of miles away, while he basked in the smiles of
beautiful female captives, who fanned him and gave him pome-
granates. Uncle Sam had no captives or pomegranates. But then,
to tell the truth, I don't believe any of the great events at a distance
had any parallel in his case. My opinion now is that he built
himself a certain reputation by sending in designs, and tendering
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 9
for gigantic jobs that were never accepted. Nothing could be more
impressive than the way in which he would ring a bell with a
button on the office table, and summoning his clerk, whose name
was Marigold, would ask him had we tendered for this job. One
of my earliest images of him shows him to me throwing a letter
across the office table to Mr. Marigold, with this inquiry. I con-
jecture now that his only motive in doing so was to impress my
mother, who was on a visit to him accompanied by my youngest
sister, a little girl three years my senior, and myself. I was
older then by a couple of years than the infant I recollect being,
in the dirty-linen cupboard enduring suffocation with the low
motive of occasioning domestic confusion. I was by this time
taking shrewd notice of the world my mother could have dispensed
with my presence in, and was quite competent to understand her
conversation with my Uncle Sam. They were talking about my
father's salary. They generally did. And their talk led, as always,
to a review of my father's character.
" You mark my words, Caecilia," said Uncle Sam, leaning
back in his important office-chair, which was on castors one of the
sort that pushes back suddenly, unless you know, as he did, how
to avoid it. He closed his eyes to emphasize an Oracular character.
Also to think of his words because I don't believe he had done so.
"I know!" said my mother under her breath, with a slight
inclination of the head in pre-confirmation of the Oracle. Not to
be caught out by any one else making a bid for Omniscience !
" You mark my words ! " repeated my uncle. " It's goin' to
be Sawcrates over again. What did I say to Nathaniel before?
I said Sawcrates, but it doesn't matter who. Any philosophical
old chap. Any old buzzock in a book."
" I know," said my mother again. And again she nodded, as
before. But she did it with a certain condescension of pity, for
the educational defects of younger brothers. My uncle went on to
develop and improve his position:
"Or Simple Simon. Or Corduroy Croydon what's his name?
You know you're up to that sort of trap in Arcadia
My mother looked puzzled for a moment, and then, to her credit,
guessed right. She had read a little of one or two of the Classics,
and thought she had read the whole of most, as well as a little of all
the others. Corydon and Phyllis was the answer to the riddle.
" Ah* and Fillies ! " said Uncle Sam who was a good judge of
horse-flesh. " Anythin' in the Pastoral Symphony line. Anythin'
in books. But for a Man of the World to look after his property
put his little capital out to advantage know what to buy and
10 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
when to sell why, there's little Marigold out there would give
him half the course, and come in at the winning-post, as fresh as
fippence." My uncle seemed discontented with this analogy; for
after thinking a few seconds with his eyes shut he corrected it to
"As fresh as tomorrow mornin'." My mother appeared to submit.
The astute Marigold had been audibly referring to several folio
volumes in his private kennel, and now returned with the negative
information. " No particulars, so far ! " He seemed unwilling
to admit the existence of transactions his employer had no hand in.
But he accepted " Very good cut along! " as permission to dismiss
the subject, and did it without emotion.
My uncle, disturbed for the moment in his homily, reclosed his
eyes to continue it, with the words " Let's see ! what was I sayin' ?
. . . oh, ah your husband, Csecilia ! There's a man now !
could have put down his ten thousand pounds at this moment, and
very little the worse for it. if he'd only have listened. But that's
where it was he wouldn't listen ! "
My mother shook her head over my father, sympathetically. " If
he had only paid attention to you, Samuel," said she. " Or to
Francis."
But Uncle Sam could only give a qualified countenance to Uncle
Francis. " Barristers are middlin'," said he. " But they ain't
always practical men. Such a man as Dale Smith now! Why
I could have asked Nathaniel to meet him at dinner, times out of
mind. Or Tracey 'Awkins ask 'em about him in the City see
what they 1 }} say ! Or Sparrer Jenkins, porter-bottlin' man ! Any
man of that sort. They're your sort. Nothin' sentimental about
them. But it's no use talking to Nathaniel you know 'im,
Caecilia." My uncle spoke in a way peculiar to himself, as though
he were falling asleep though intelligent, and was too lazy to pick
up an H he had dropped of set purpose.
I need not say that much of what I write may be referred to
later experience. But I really was taking in a great deal of what
I saw, considering my years, I am puzzled myself at my own range
and strength of recollection.
Looking back now, from my present standing point of experience,
I cannot the least understand on what grounds these two uncles
of mine claimed a worldly sagacity superior to my father. They
were considerably his juniors; but that I then looked on, at my
mother's suggestion I fancy, as an advantage on their side. This
was not only because the intelligence of their youth was crisper,
my father being several years their senior, but because monetary
success is more convincing in the young, who manifestly must be
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 11
practical men, up to the ways of the world, able to cheat you if
they choose, but restrained from doing so by the inexpediency of
fraud if they have already begun to fill their own coffers.
Whereas the coffer-fillings of middle-life and old age may be the
result of mere dull industry, and something may actually have
been given in exchange for them. But then, as well as being
younger, my uncles' educations ought (as I now think) to have
caused my mother to pause in her decision as between her brothers
and her husband, that the latter was always wrong. They did not,
rather the contrary! My fathers very respectable career at Cam-
bridge was engineered not very civilly to his disadvantage, and it
was impressed on my infant mind that the Mathematics, towards
which he had had a leaning from boyhood, crippled the Student
for the race in Life, and fostered a certain character difficult to
define, owing to the variety of its constituents, but fatal to the
shrewdness that qualifies for worldly success. For it seemed that
they and the Classics also tended to produce Shepherds, Philoso-
phers, and Parsons, but not Men of the World.
I am convinced now that my uncles' function, in the predestined
order of events, was that of irritants. Their scheme, if they had
one, was to goad my father to action, with a view to " making
money," somehow, but it kept cautiously clear of indicating definite
courses. There was, however, one thing they were agreed about
that the first step for him to take was to give up Somerset House.
That house was to them as a red rag to a bull, and they denounced
it until my mother came to identify it with Poverty, and pictured it
to herself as a huge obstacle standing between my father and some
source of gold undefined, preferably in the City.
" You will never get on, Nathaniel," she would say, after stimulus
from her brothers. " You will never get on, until you give up
Somerset House. My brothers both say so. And Samuel men-
tioned more than one gentleman whose name is well known in the
City, who said so too."
My memory supplies definitely, in one case of speech to this
effect, an image of my father saying rather superciliously: "And
what was the gentleman's name that was well known in the City,
who said so too ? "
My mother laid Nicholas Nickleby down in her lap, and folded
her hands over him. to say fixedly i "It's no use my telling you,
Nathaniel. You will only sneer."
My father replied. " Oh no ! we won't sneer at the name of the
gentleman that's well known in the City will we, Eustace John?
Out with it. Csecilia ! " Eustace John was the present writer.
12 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
My mother closed her eyes to reply, " Mr. Sparrow Jenkins. But
I could name others." Her manner said : " I will now await your
paroxysm of scorn. But Truth will survive."
It certainly does seem to me now, if I remember the interview
rightly, that my father did express a certain amount of disparage-
ment of the gentleman so well known in the City. For what he said
was : " Mr. Sparrow Jenkins ! Mr. Griggs Jenkins ! Mr. Dobble-
boy Jenkins!!! What does he know about me? What does he
know about Somerset House ? "
My mother nodded, slowly, expressing patience, toleration, inward
knowledge with disclosure in due course at a time well-chosen.
But for the moment she said only : " Mr. Sparrow Jenkins,
Nathaniel, knows enough to know that the sooner you quit Somerset
House, the better for your family."
" Oho that's it, is it ! " said my father. " He's a nice young
man for a small tea party. Come here, Eustace John . . . yes
sit a-horseback on my foot." I did so, lending myself willingly
to a performance I enjoyed, and a fiction that I was a cavalry
officer. It was dramatically unsound, for no cavalry officer ever
takes hold of two human hands to keep him in his saddle. My
father's held mine, and I knotted my legs together securely under
his foot, having no stirrups, as he continued : " What's the name
of the gentleman? Mr. Dobbleboy Jenkins? Yes, you say it,
Eustace John ! And mind you say it right, or the horse shan't go
on." I said it to the best of my ability, and the horse went on,
gently ambled, while my father continued : " Yes, Mr. Dobbleboy
Jenkins. Well, Eustace John, suppose we take Mr. Dobbleboy
Jenkins's advice, and quit Somerset House, where's the bread-
and-butter to come from meanwhile ? " The horse broke into a
gallop across country, causing its rider to laugh convulsively in
a very unsoldierlike way, but leaving his mind free to form a
false image of Somerset House as a source of bread-and-butter
not metaphorically, nor even independently of each other, but
incorporated in slices, or fingers and thumbs.
How many a time have I said to myself, in after life, " Just like
Uncle Sam," when I have heard it suggested that the surest way
to the next rung of the ladder is to kick away the foothold under-
neath! And yet the pleasure of it! If one could only have,
morally, a moist Turkish bath and a splendid cold plunge, have
one's hair cut and find a new suit of clothes in the dressing-room!
. . . yes! and the past forgotten and Hope ahead; throw that
in! I suppose my father's taste for running after Jack-o'-Lan-
thorns had never developed. To the best of my belief at this time
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 13
at any rate no suggestion of any new career for him after quitting
Somerset House had ever been made.
My mother left Nicholas Niclcleby on her lap, with his face
down and her hands on his back, and waited for the ride to come
to an end. It did, in time; my father saying as he released his
foot from my prehensile legs : " There, that's enough for any young
scaramouch, in all conscience." I thought not, but waived the
point.
My mother then resumed : " Mr Sparrow Jenkins, Nathaniel
but this I believe you perfectly well know is not a person such as
you may make me ridiculous before the child. ..." She paused,
in a difficulty with grammatical structure, but too proud to
acknowledge it.
My father offered help, saying fluently : " Not a legitimate
object of ridicule for the benefit of Eustace John. I see. . . .
Yes go on."
My mother went on, f reezingly : " You need not interrupt me,
Nathaniel. What I said was perfectly intelligible. And Mr.
Sparrow Jenkins, although you think it humorous to pervert his
name is not the only person of influence that believes you have
great possibilities. But all are agreed on one thing not Somerset
House!"
" Several things are not Somerset House," said my father. " I
could give instances. I admit, however, that the abstract idea ' not
Somerset House' has a certain unity."
" Now you are talking nonsense, Nathaniel. I believe Varnish
is right, and that sometimes you are not responsible. Would you
ring that bell, please ? Eustace John had better go to the nursery.
She has done my lace on the Italian iron by now, and he's spoiling
the carpet."
"Why is Eustace John to go to the nursery?"
" Manage the house yourself ! " said my mother, severely. She
contrived to clothe a resumption of Nicholas NicTcleby with an
appearance of abdication. I don't believe now whatever I be-
lieved then that she read a single word of it.
It is difficult to say if what I picture to myself as succeeding
this is a true memory of what happened, or a superstructure of
inferences, based on knowledge acquired later of my father's and
mother's characteristics. If it is the former, I think I may lay
claim to be the son of the most inconsequent mother of whom a
record has survived.
For in reply to a remark not an ill-humoured one of my
father's as he rang the bell, " You're a nice couple, you and
14 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Varnish! So, I'm not responsible is that it? Very good!" she
merely said, affecting reabsorption in Nicholas NicTcleby, " Can you
wonder, Nathaniel ? " A pause followed, during which I waited to
hear my father answer the question. I was naturally anxious to
know whether he could or couldn't answer. But no response came.
My mother said : " You know perfectly well what I am referring
to, Nathaniel." And another pause followed, a longer one, at the
end of which my father saidj "No, I don't."
My mother then, putting Nicholas Nickleby finally aside, seemed
to step frankly forward into the arena of argument, as one com-
pelled to speak. " Whatever," she said, " may be the views you
profess to hold about my brothers; however much you may despise
them and set aside their experience; whether or not you disregard
.the advice of their friends, Men of the "World and qualified to
speak; whether you think your wife a fool or not of which I
say nothing. . . . Oh yes ! you may say : ' Get along,' Nathan-
iel. ... I do say this, and I always shall say, that nothing can
justify your attitude about my grandfather's boxes in the lumber-
room."
" I thought it would be those blessed boxes," said my father, to
himself no doubt, but not inaudibly.
"What's that you said?" asked my mother, with spirit.
" I said * I thought it would be those blessed boxes.' I under-
stand that it was. What's the next article ? "
"Do not evade my question, Nathaniel, but answer it. Are
you prepared to justify your attitude about what you are pleased
to call ' those blessed boxes ? ' Ring the bell again, hard ! Varnish
is an enormous time."
" My attitude being . . . ? " My father had rung the bell
hard and looked round to ask this question. His retention of the
handle seemed to imply that he would not come off it till he was
told about his attitude. So my mother had to tell him.
" Do not equivocate, Nathaniel. You know my meaning. For
years you have opposed the examination of those boxes, and you
are perfectly aware that their contents might prove both valuable
and interesting. ..."
"Very likely!"
" Then why place obstacles in the way of their examination ?
I wonder what Varnish is about."
" Who's placing obstacles? " said my father.
" That is uncandid, Nathaniel. I shall not answer you."
" All 7 ever said was don't expect me to do it. They're inches
.thick in dust, and nailed down."
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 15
" My dear Nathaniel, is it likely I should ask you to do it ? Have
I not said, all along, that it is a job for a Man, by the day?"
Then feeling that it might be put on a safer footing of economy,
she added: "Or at so much an hour. But beer on no account."
" Very well, then," said my father. " There you are ! All you
have to do is to tell your man to get the lids off, and then we
can see what's in 'em. Only, he must be sober."
" You always leave everything to me," said my mother, uncom-
plainingly how well one knows that manner of speech ? " Varnish,
what made you so long?" She did not wait for Varnish to add
to an indication of her line of defence, that she came the very
minute the bell rang, but told her to never mind now! Was to-
morrow The Man's day ? It appeared so. Could he be trusted to
open those boxes in the lumber-room? Not with nobody there,
Varnish testified. You couldn't hardly expect him to do it. But
Mr. Freeman was always sober. And if there was any one to keep
an eye, he could unpack boxes with a rare skill, hard to parallel.
Just only to keep an eye on him, in case!
Mr. Freeman was the name of the man who had the day. His
presence was accustomed to be manifested from below, on the
days he claimed as his own, by the sound of a pump in the back-
airy, followed by the music of a waste pipe when the cistern on the
top storey was full up. Also by a sense of hoarseness diffused
through the basement. His name perplexed me because I thought
the last syllable was the source of my mother's designation for him.
He was a very ancient institution in our house; but my mother
always kept him at arms' length, and spoke of him distinctly as
" The Man." I think she had cherished the idea that he would die
away next week and give place to a superior substitute, ever since
his first appearance on the scene, as long ago, I believe, as her first
entry into the house, some twelve or thirteen years before.
" You might leave the child alone for one moment, Nathaniel,
and bestir yourself to be of some use." So said my mother, and
I wasn't grateful. For a paper bag my father was inflating, with
an eye to a concussion, had to postpone the f ulfilment of its destiny.
But I was thankful to see that he retained control of that event,
throttling the intake of the bag discreetly, as he said : " Can't
you let The Man get the lids off, and leave 'em for me to see. Some
day soon the next opportunity." Thereon my mother said : " I
knew it would be that," and guillotined the subject, with an affec-
tation of final reabsorption into Nicholas Nickleby.
" What is the use of being unreasonable. Csecilia ? " said my
father, and I hoped my mother would tell us. But she kept silence,
16 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and my father continued : " You know there's no holiday this
month. Tomorrow, Saturday, I've an appointment with
Dalrymple. Besides, Saturday is Saturday. And of course Sunday
is Sunday." My memory detects a shrug in my father's shoulders
here, as of secular shoulders entering a useless protest against rigid
Sabbatarianism.
Varnish had a happy faculty of perceiving situations and meet-
ing difficulties. How fully all were aware that my father's shrug
was really an impious suggestion; was shown by her thinking a
fragmentary remark, " O'ny this once, and the young ladies all at
Church ! " sufficient to convey a hint that Sunday morning
even Sunday morning! might be devoted to an inspection of these
mysterious boxes.
Silence ensued and my father watched my mother. Varnish
anticipated a protest on the score of The Man's religious sensitive-
ness. " Mr. Freeman he isn't that particular to the day, not to
oblige," said she; and her meaning was clear, though her style
defied analysis.
My mother was placed on the horns of a dilemma. She could
gratify her religious instincts at the cost of delaying her inspection
of the boxes, or get an early insight into their contents by sacrific-
ing the observance of one Sunday. She saw a way to the latter
alternative which would keep her personally free from blame,
absolve her of rank impiety, and at the same time gratify a long-
standing curiosity, by shifting the responsibility of Sabbath-break-
ing off on scapegoats. " I suppose," said she, " you must have your
own way. Let it be Sunday morning." She entered into a pro-
gramme or scheme of action with an interest which hardly war-
ranted her final dismissal of the scapegoats into the wilderness.
" I always have to give way," was her concluding remark. I
thought that my father's manipulation of the bag, ending in a
really noble report at this moment, had in it all the force of ratifi-
cation.
Anyhow it was decided that The Man, Freeman, should get the
tops off the boxes to the satisfaction of Varnish, and under her
personal guidance and inspection; that the lumber-room's dust of
ages should be abated by the tea-leaves of yesterday, and that in the
absence of my sisters and their educational governess at St.
George's Bloomsbury, my father and mother and myself by
special permission, at my fathers request should witness the
actual disembowelling of these long-neglected receptacles, and make
an examination of the contents. All this came to pass, and my
mind still retains a vivid image of this attic in the roof overlooking
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 17
the Square, and the plane trees rising above the parapet outside ita
two windows, now opened for the first time for years; its sloped
Mansard roof and ceiling with a trapdoor in it, rousing the
curiosity of an infant mind to madness; and a bouquet which I
think was Mr. Freeman, who had been for some time simmering in
the heat when we came on the scene; with which was associated
another flavour which I have since experienced in connection with
sobriety, that of beer. Add to these, please, images of my father
and mother keeping as much as possible out of the way of the
dirt, and Varnish interposing on my natural disposition to get
into it.
Looking back now, I sometimes find it hard to believe that all
those boxes should have been warehoused for so long, unexamined,
at intervals forgotten altogether. I should find it harder still, if
I had not since known cases so nearly equivalent elsewhere. The
worst memories of damp warehouses cannot keep Lethe water from
the throats of those whose goods they have absorbed, at least where
no accommodation rent is charged; then reminders come. And the
mislaying of inventories, punctually and without fail, is one of the
strongest distinguishing characteristics of the human race. I don't
feel at all sure it is not the one that differentiates between ourselves
and the anthropoid ape.
CHAPTEK II
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
OH dear* how dirty it all was ! The contents of the box, I mean.
"Whoever packed this here box!," said The Man, "might just
as well have stopped at home, according to my ideas." From which
I, being young, derived a false impression that no person inherent
in any household could pack boxes, but was always dependent
on assistance from experts. Also that The Man knew and we
didn't.
" It was packed at my grandmother's at Peckham Rye," said my
mother with dignity, as one secure in her ancestral claims; but a
little in awe of The Man, for all that. " It was packed before the
Battle of Waterloo."
" There you are ! " said The Man. " There you have it. That's
how they did their packing, in them days. Wot did I say ? " This
added another impression to the store in my youthful mind, that the
casus belli as between the opposing armies at Waterloo turned on
methods of packing boxes, and that the triumph of my countrymen
I already knew we had won that battle had established a higher
standard for future ages.
" My dear," said my mother, addressing my father. " The Man
says this box is very badly packed."
She had made a good deal of capital out of her heroic ascent
of three flights of stairs, in defiance of a liberal supply of ailments,
and a chair had been sent for to the nursery for her accommoda-
tion. This manoeuvre helped to confirm a position she had captured
for herself, as of one who countenances an escapade of a wilful
husband, an indulged retainer, and an inexplicable Man. It com-
pelled my father to an attitude of indecision, and made her assump-
tion of the task of interpreter between him and The Man meritori-
ous. He was outflanked, and could only stand feeling about on his
face as if the modelling dissatisfied him. " Dear me ! " said he.
"Does it matter? Won't the things come out?"
" They won't come out of theirselves," said The Man. " They'll
have to be took. But you've only to say the word."
"You hear, my dear, what The Man says," said my mother.
18
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 19
" What we have to settle is is the box to be unpacked or not ? "
Even my infant mind saw my mother's inconsistency when she
added " Whichever you wish." For this referred the decision to my
father.
He, with the whole responsibility on his shoulders, meditated
before he replied, " The point is " and came to a standstill.
He seemed preoccupied with the modelling of his face. But when
my mother said, "Don't make faces, Nathaniel," he became sud-
denly attentive and completed his remark, " The point is, if you
do take 'em out, can you get 'em back again ? "
" The Man can," said my mother. And my father seemed to
revise or annul his statement of the point at issue, saying : " I say
leave 'em out of the box. If it was me, I. should."
The Man said, " As easy shove 'em in as not ! " and preserved a
resentful silence.
My mother yielded herself a prey of despair. " You're no help,
Nathaniel," she said. " You never are any help. Oh dear! "
My nurse interposed, saying, " Missis had better set," and intro-
duced the supplied chair.
My mother, who sat down and said it was nothing, suffered
patiently for some seconds from the affection, whatever it was, that
Varnish's thoughtfulness had made her sit down about. During
these seconds, it seemed, there had been interchange of thought
between my father and Varnish, for he said to her, " Just a
spoonful " a valueless instruction taken by itself and she pro-
vided what I conceive to have been " Dr. Endicott's Mixture " in a
graduated glass. After a few more seconds, in which I wondered
whether Dr. Endicott was better, or worse, than my mother, she
revived, and the bill was brought up again for a second read-
ing.
u As you object to The Man unpacking the box, my dear." said
my mother, faintly, " it must be nailed down again, and put back."
Whereupon my father said, " Perhaps you had better get the
things out, Freeman."
Varnish brought a cheerful optimism to bear, " If Mr. Freeman
was to get them out, Mam, we should know what there was, another
time. And, as I say, there's no harm in knowing."
" And The Man is very careful," said my mother, who was less
faint.
"It's nothing, when you come to think of it," said Varnish.
Why. Mr. Freeman he'll be through it afore you can say."
" What I'm considerin' of," said Mr. Freeman, The Man, " is
where all these here things is to be stood. You pint out the place,
20 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and I'll attend to it." He became aggressively motionless. I
observed that by this coup-de-main he had secured the credit of
scheming a plan of campaign, and at the same time devolved
responsibility on every one else.
The respective merits of different proposals were then weighed.
In the end my father put his eyebrows up in a puzzled way and left
them up. If this was a forerunner of speech, it was baffled, for
my mother said, " If I was allowed, I could direct," and closed her
eyes, expressing readiness to endure even more. Varnish said
sotto voce, " What I'm thinking of is Missis," meaning that my
mother's nervous system under such trials was the source of her
anxiety. My father brought his eyebrows down again.
Mr. Freeman said: "If it is to be took downstairs; say took
downstairs. If it's to be kep' up here, say kep' up here. If it is
to be diwision betwixt and between the two of 'em, name the pro-
portions. It ain't for me to settle."
My father scratched his left cheekbone very slowly. " I cannot
see," said he, " I cannot see ' But my mother stopped him.
"You might wait, I think, this once, Nathaniel! Only this once!
I won't ask you to wait again." Those were my mother's words,
and to them my father replied : " Well well ! " And felt his right
cheekbone; comparing it with his left, I thought. Then my mother
continued : " The Man had better place the goods, as they come
from the box, carefully upon the floor." By laying a marked stress
on the word " carefully," she, I am sure, convinced herself that she
was showing in the heart of Chaos great powers of direction and
organization of a staff of employees viciously wedded to destruction,
and insensible to discipline. Just as Maturity and Experience
enjoin Prudence and Caution, but don't tell you what to do.
As I said, first thing, the contents of the box were dirty. It had
distributed a flavour of decay when first opened. Now, the uproot-
ing or detachment of the first parcel it contained caused a fume of
old books to rise, tainted with another of interments; and perhaps
a third, of mice and their habits. The Man was nearly omnipotent,
according to Varnish. He could even undo the parcels and get the
papers out of the way, seeing the mess ; and a bit of clean noospaper
would come in much handier, in the manner of speaking.
" Mercy my! " said Varnish, when she saw the first fruits of the
box. " A murderer, with noomerals ! " It really was a plaster head
good to see your bumps by, with Benevolence and Self-Esteem and
Philoprogenitiveness large, and Music and Language hardly worth
having at all. But Varnish's experience of previous casts were
connected with Madame Tussaud's.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 21
"You might stand that on the chimney-piece downstairs," said
my father.
*' My dear! " said my mother. " Afterwards! It shall all be done
in time, if you will only wait!" If I had not been so young I
should have taxed my mother with breach of promise of
patience.
My father had two identities; one the self that my mother had
to a great extent overwhelmed during some twelve or thirteen years
of married life, the other an uncrushed individuality which still
came out in her absence, as Mr. Hyde asserted himself through
Dr. Jekyll. Sometimes it took form furtively in undertones in her
presence. His saying at this juncture, "Easy does it, Freeman.
You'll break it," was an instance of this dual nature cropping up.
But he had spoken too audibly; for my mother overheard him and
said with some severity : " My dear ! The Man knows." Thereupon
Dr. Hyde vanished, and Dr. Jekyll took his place; or vice versa,
whichever was which in this case.
The Man was getting into difficulties owing to the very trenchant
way in which this huge box had been packed, miscellaneous articles
of all sorts seeming to have been incorporated in each other with
a view to economy of space. Mysterious outlying portions of each
accommodated themselves strangely to the forms of others ; such as
metallic handles, or outstretched limbs of sculptured indetermi-
nates, Maenads or Satyrs as might be, resulting in a compacted mass
which refused to come out except in bulk. The paper used in
packing them appeared to have crept into the cavities, forming
fibrous tissue such as makes good damage done to bone-structure;
or makes it bad, as may be. One hopes!
" Whoever packed this here box," said The Man, after one or two
efforts to disintegrate its contents, " did it with a heye to crompli-
cation." My father touched a square parcel tied with string, im-
bedded in a corner, and said almost aside : " Try that one." Mr.
Freeman said approvingly : " My dear ! " He acted on it, and a
square parcel was drawn out of its strings and cautiously relieved
of its environments. My father identified it as an Orrery, and
Mr. Freeman said : " Ah, I should say that was wot it was." But
by this he only meant to recognize the suitability of so contemptible
a name for so objectionable a thing; not that he discerned any
meaning in the first, or any purpose in the second.
My mother, however, murmured to Varnish: "You see! The
Man knows." My father then said, meekly: "Anyhow, it will be
good for Eustace John." I had been forecasting advantages to myself
from the investigations in progress and rejoiced at any acquisition,
L>_> 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.
<l What he says he means." My Uncle Sam remarked collaterally
that there was no psalm-singin' about little Tommy. Any one
could see that without gettin' off his chair. And my Uncle Francis
assented to this with a screwed up face of astuteness, and so many
nods that an extremely long pinch of snuff he took was made
intermittent, and I noticed its resemblance, both in time and tune,
to the prolonged cluck of a hen in the stableyard, heard through
the open window.
I was too young to be discouraged by what I now perceive to
be a fatal lack of consecutiveness in my uncles. I swallowed
their remarks whole and was deeply impressed. But I could see
that Mr. Skidney did not rise to the occasion, and did nothing to
confirm the testimonials they had given. He picked up and let
fall a leg he had crossed on its fellow, by the pattern of a Ian
plaid trouser: his finger and thumb choosing the same incident in
the pattern to hold by. but always at different points in it; and he
contrived, by pulling one whisker, to twist his cigar aside and
partly elose the eye above it. It did not improve his appenrance.
I do not dwell on these details to show how closely children notice
small things in their seniors that you know already but to.
40 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
convey how attentively I was watching Mr. Skidney for some
discharge of judicial brilliance, some intellectual firework that
never came.
But what did that matter after all, if my mother saw no need
for it? I watched for the firework no longer when my mother
said, " I tell you what 7 should like. I should like Nathaniel
himself to hear that opinion of Mr. Skidney's," with such a tone
of deep conviction of its existence, that I could not but infer that
it must have been somehow expressed, though unperceived by me
on account of my youth. Mr. Skidney may be said to have begun
to try to shake his head in a deprecatory manner, but to have
failed in doing so from want of force of character. During his
effort my uncle drew a breath of solid snuff, presumably, into his
lungs; a sostenuto note this time, and fixed Mr. Skidney with
an eye half -closed by the opening of his nostrils to admit the snuff.
But Mr. Skidney was not capable of anything but an embarrassed
taciturnity, tempered by a weak smile. My Uncle Francis ac-
counted for this by saying that Kidneys was a deep card, and it
was very difficult to get any change out of him. My Uncle Sam
observed that he was a " fly customer." I associated this vaguely
with the fly we had come in that Sunday (as was our practice),
that was to call for us again at five punctually to take us back to
Bloomsbury.
I remember feeling deeply thankful that no arrangement seemed
to follow for Mr. Skidney to accompany us back to Mecklenburg
Square. I had feared my mother might have wanted him at home
straightway, to impress my father with that opinion, which I
had no doubt had been clear to her, although I had somehow
missed it.
I hope, as before, that four-fifths of the foregoing is not concoc-
tion of the intrinsically probable, supplied after the fact by
Memory, in revolt against defeat. If it is, it is only false in the
piecing together; every constituent item is true in itself. I have
no objection to its being thought fiction why should I have any?
Let it be considered to be what I groundedly suppose to have hap-
pened; only make the grounds strong enough.
This recrudescence of doubt, cast by myself on my own trust-
worthiness or as I see folk say in these days " reliability " is
perhaps due to my reason entering a protest against a scene that
follows on the stage of reminiscence. In it my two uncles appear
as promoters of an interview between my father, as Inexperience
with Property to invest, and Mr. Skidney as Worldly Sagacity
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 41
ready to give disinterested advice. I had not then the penetration
to detect in their performance the characteristics of Wags. Neither
had my mother, who took every word they uttered au pied de la
lettre. It is no use trying to pretend she was not a matter-of-fact
woman.
It was this literalness of character that clothed my uncle's
worldly philosophy with an importance that it could never have
acquired or maintained for itself. Reports of their random-shot
lucubrations, as witnessed by the eyes of Faith, carried a weight
with my father which he never would have attached to any of their
utterances had he himself been present to hear them. Even Mr.
Skidney, as delineated by my mother, assumed a judicial import-
ance, becoming under her skilful hands a high Authority on
business-matters, a past master of Stock and Scrip, a man with
an overpowering waistcoat, unimpeachable linen, a stove-pipe hat
above suspicion, a mahogany office, and clerks. " Mr. Waters
Skidney," said she to my father in the next conversation I heard
between them, " may be reticent that I do not deny. But his
responsibility is beyond question. I have never " here my
mother reflected conscientiously for a few seconds " no, I think
I may say I have never, seen a countenance on which the word
' Experience ' was more convincingly written." My mother's man-
ner stipulated so forcibly for the inverted commas as almost to
amount to upper-case type. She ended up an appreciation of
Mr. Skidney's character with : " And I have never in my life met
with any one more absolutely unpretentious."
I rather think that a growing tendency of my father to be
influenced by this description of Mr. Skidney's greatness was
nipped in the bud by its peroration. " I daresay he's all very fine,"
said he. " But what I want to get at is what the dickens do your
brothers and their Mr. Pigney want me to do do do!"
"My mother appeared to me to strengthen the position she had
partially endangered, by her reply: " Not to be impatient, for one
thing, Nathaniel! And his name is not Pigney, but Skidney."
I felt that she was all right again now and that I was a sinner
for not seeing that my father ought to be ashamed of himself.
" I can tell you and your brothers and your Mr. Squibney one
thing," said he, incorrigibly. " I'm not going to throw any of that
thousand pounds away on shares in Mount Bulimy, that's flat ! "
"Who has mentioned Mount Bulimy?" said my mother, freez-
ingly. "Has any one heard me utter the words. Mount Bulimy?
Is there any reason to suppose that my brothers know anything
whatever about Mount Bulimy? Or that Mr. Walter Skidnoy ever
42 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
so much as referred to Mount Bulimy?" My mother's line of
controversy was essentially rhetorical, and her scornful repeti-
tion of terms served two purposes; it overawed and silenced her
opponent, and gave her confidence in her own case. The complete
disconnection from every point at issue of the term repeated was
no drawback on the effectiveness of this method. I felt that my
father was refuted hadn't a leg to stand upon. I was sorry for
him, as of course I was on his side in everything. However, I
mustered courage, and some amount of confidence in his case, from
the calmness with which he replied : " Not so far, Csecilia ; they
will in time. You'll see." My mother didn't say she wouldn't
see, but contrived to make silence say it for her. My father
added : " I know it's Mount Bulimy." Only he did not speak
above his breath.
I suppose Mount Bulimy is forgotten now, after all this length
of time. I learned all about it later, as soon as I was old enough
to know things. It was a hill in Australia somewhere, in the soil
of which a squatter had detected gold. I had been told by Varnish
not to squat on the hearth-rug, but to hold upright like a young
gentleman. So I had a vivid image in my mind of a squatter squat-
ting upon this hill, and detecting the gold, in profile against the
sky. Now at the time of writing, this hill had been raging on
the Stock Exchange. And the verb is rightly applied ; for really
if Mount Bulimy had broken out as a volcano, it could not have
raged more fiercely. The Shares in the Company that had bought
it from the Squatter went up and down like the Barometer when
it gets the bit in its teeth. Fortunes were made and lost over
Mount Bulimy before an authenticated nugget came to confirm the
reports of its auriferous deposits. I like to repeat this expression
now, remembering as I do how my father made me say it then,
for practice in elocution, and I said it wrong. "Odoriferous!"
said he. " That's a long word for a kid to know at seven. Say
it again, Eustace John." I tried it again and I think I must
have said Adariferous, because my mother said: "He's thinking
of that child in the Square."
I lost the thread of that conversation because it was nine
too late for little boys to be up and my second and third sisters
came to conduct me away to bed. My eldest sister I know con-
sidered that she was entitled to stop up till eleven; as I thought
because she was eleven. This fixes the date of this conversation for
me as the last half of my seventh year at latest, as my eldest sister
was just five years my senior. A child remains eleven in the eyes
of its brothers and sisters until its twelfth birthday. Had I been
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 43
over seven I could not have had this idea. My father had favoured
or originated it, in a conversation which ended in a pledge to
myself that when I was twenty, I should stop up till twenty. I
should not care to stop up till seventy now. Sleep is happiness;
what else is?
Anyhow, I went to bed then, and heard no more of Mount Bulimy
till later. I heard a good deal in the end, for my uncles did mention
in time what they had not mentioned so far. And it was Mount
Bulimy.
I firmly believe that my father's attitude in the conversation
given above was due to an expiring effort of his good Angel to
head him off from the dangers of the Stock Exchange. His aver-
sion to tampering with gilt-edged securities was surely an instinc-
tive perception of a red lamp ahead in the darkness that shrouded
the perspective of his line of Life. Why could he not take warning?
His conduct seems to me now to pursue the simile like that of
those insensate railway engines that I have so often seen, and been
obliged to accept unexplained; engines that have rushed headlong
on to what ought to 'have been destruction, if there had been any
good faith at all in signals motionless discs of scarlet vermilion
on a background of unmeasurable night. Engines that have seemed
to compound with their consciences by the remorseless emission
of a deafening yell, having no apparent purpose but to insult the
understanding of outsiders not connected with the Company. Oh,
that my father had heeded his red lamps ahead, and modelled his
conduct on that of those more tractable trains that slow down
even in tunnels, and stand still, suffering from their intestines
audibly, until something supernatural clicks and the red lamps
turn green and then they yell in moderation from joy, and go on
chastened !
Xot that my father's disregard of his guardian Angel's warning
if it was one was followed by the Nemesis financiers would have
regarded as grievous ! On the contrary, he was accounted by his
friends a favourite of Fortune, and altogether enviable. So far
from losing the twelve hundred pounds that at my mother's insti-
gation he invested in Mount Bulirm r . he doubled, trebled, quad-
rupled it, within a twelvemonth. What his shares are worth now,
in the hands of their present possessors, I do not know. But for
all that, the box that Mr. Freeman unpacked was Pandora's box,
to me and mine, and Mount Bulimy was as regrettable a mountain
as the Venusberg.
CHAPTEK V
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I SHALL write what I write my own way else where would be
the gain, to me, of having no readers, and expecting none? Having
said this, if hereafter any stray eye lights upon this page, its
owner will know that the way I have just told the substance of
my story, all in a rush, was chosen of set purpose, with a full
knowledge of its grievously inartistic character. What does it
matter? What does anything matter? There are the facts. But
for my own share in them the share that further information,
later on, filled out that is another aspect of the case. And I
choose to jot down piecemeal, for my own pastime and sad recrea-
tion less sad now perhaps than the tale may become as it grows
just as much or as little of it as I recollect, not pledging myself
to an exact chronology. For I cannot place the events in their
order ; can only guess at it, as they come in independent flashes.
A very short flash perhaps soon after that visit to Highbury
shows me a group consisting of my father, Mr. Stowe from the
Auction Rooms; a gentleman whom I recognize as possessing the
corporation which kept me concealed from its owner there, and
lastly myself. I now picture myself as part of the group, which
includes a small boy not yet seven, playing chess under the table
without the board. Not like Morphy, be it understood, I had the
men, and arranged them on the carpet, at pleasure. They fre-
quently tumbled down, keeping me busy.
If they had been Staunton men, wide enough to bridge the
corrugations of the carpet, I might have taken more note of the
conversation. As it is, all the recollection I can swear to is that
in which the stout gentleman says, " Observe, I take no responsi-
bility! Do as you like, but don't quote me," several times. Mr.
Stowe says, presently : " He wants 'em himself. I see it in his
eye. Don't you let him have 'em, Strap ! " I may then have
glanced out from under the table, for I become conscious that my
father is meshed in uncertainties, and feeling about on his face
for something to reassure. At last he sees a light. " After all, the
vases were my wife's. And they were not in the Settlement, what-
ever my brother-in-law Francis may say." I don't believe I heard
any more of the conversation, but some inner monitor convinces
44
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 45
me that Mr. Boethius then said, weightily : " On the Legal Aspects
of the case, my dear Sir, I venture no opinion. Nice questions
may arise, at any moment." He then, I feel sure, looked at his
watch and became colloquial : " All I say is if you don't close
with the offer, give me the refusal of it."
I can recollect the two visitors taking leave together, and Mr.
Stowe coming back to lay one finger astutely on his nose, and say :
" He wants 'em himself, my boy! Don't you let him have 'em."
Then he departed, and my father said " Hm ! " quite articulately as
it is spelled; Varnish came to summon me to my tea, but took
note of preoccupation of my father's mind. " Your par, he's got
his consider-in' cap on, I lay," was the way she put it.
There vanishes that flash. Even so an inch of Magnesium wire
burns out, and leaves the darkness solid.
The following flash must have come rather soon, for me to
connect it with its predecessor. Else I should have forgotten the
first, seeing that I attached no meaning whatever to the con-
versation I had heard. Meaning had to be supplied later; and it
came to me, as I suppose, on the occasion of my next visit to my
grandmother's. During a somewhat longer inch of the Magnesium
light of Memory, I can hear conversation, as follows, between my
mother and my uncle Francis.
" Speaking as your Trustee and your professional Adviser,
Caecilia. I can only say that it seems to me sailing very near
the wind." My uncle took a long pinch of snuff and repeated
briefly at the end of it: "Very near indeed!" It might have
been the long pinch's last will and testament, and the two sneezes
that followed letters of administration. This metaphorical adapta-
tion is of course recent.
Said my mother : " I cannot question your opinion, Francis. To
do so would be in the highest degree presumptuous. But I think
you are entirely wrong. And I am convinced that further reflec-
tion will show that this is the case. If you are right in saying
that the Heliconides were in the Settlement, why. I ask you, did
you not unpack that box as Trustee, and realize their value, with
a view to its investment in a fund sanctioned by the Lord
Chancellor? I am merely repeating Nathaniel's words. I have no
claim to an opinion of my own, and pronounce none. But that you
are entirely mistaken I have not a shadow of doubt." After which
or something uncommonly like it, my mother embarked on a
dignified silence, visibly.
" That's Nathaniel's theory," said my uncle. " That's your
husband all over, Csecilia." My belief now is that my uncle,
46 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
not feeling secure in his position, was glad to interrupt the thread
of the argument, and turn it to a sort of chronic analysis of my
father's character which he and my mother were fond of ringing
changes on and wrangling over. " You'll never persuade any man of
any standing at the Bar to subscribe to that theory. It's no use,
Ca?cilia don't tell me! Your husband's a man I look at all
round, Caecilia. A man of extraordinary capacity of remarkable
capacity for erudition and all that sort of thing . . . but ! how-
ever, you know what I'm going to say, Csecilia," here my mother
inserted a sigh and a nod " but paradoxical! " After which my
uncle took more snuff than seemed reasonable or necessary, putting
his nose from side to side to receive it, but keeping his eyes on
my mother as he slouched up and down the room. Then he ended
with a short interrogative syllable, most nearly describable as
the " hein ! " of a French author, with the last two letters deleted.
'* Nathaniel is paradoxical, as a rule," said my mother, " but in
this case he has acted judiciously. And you cannot deny that it
was your own advice, Francis. Never mind the boy now! "
But my uncle was glad to be interrupted by the boy, as he was
not in a position to meet the indictment. He conceded a volume
on Zoology to me, in response to my application for it, and set
me going with a picture of a Wanderoo, by request. Then he
turned to my mother, and said: "Let's see 1 where were we?
Oh well it doesn't matter! Nathaniel's Bought the shares, and
paid for 'em " He continued talking, but I suppose the
Wanderoo had fascinated me, or the Magnesium wire is exhausted,
for I can remember nothing more of a tangible nature. A dim
image of the room remains, with its superabundance of cabinets
which I believe contained the Rear-Admiral's geological specimens,
his portrait over the chimney-piece, with Dresden China Galatea
reposing on a clock and miniatures in ovals; Berlin woolwork
cushions and a sense of frills and tassels, and last and chiefest,
my grandmother herself, in gold spectacles, seated in a high-
backed chair to which she bore nearly the relations a centaur has
to his horse, or rather, those his thoughtful half has to his business
half. I, at least, conceived of her as a fixture, the more so that the
chair had wheels, and yet her dinner was brought to her on a
tray. A centaur's advantages are obvious he never can be under
any such necessity.
I suppose that on this occasion my mother and Uncle Francis
had been conversing seriously, taking advantage of the absence of
company. For my Uncle Sam had gone to Wexford on business,,
and no casual of the Mr. Skidney class was to the fore. My elder
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 47
sister Ellen was showing her governess over the estate, this lady
having come with us this time instead of Varnish, making four in
the fly. Her name, Helen Evans, was a constant perplexity to me,
owing to Varnish's habits in religious imprecation of a mild
sort, you understand. " Merciful 'Evans, Master Eustace, wherever
can you expect?" associated itself, with this young lady quite as
much as it did with the final home of subservient and mean-
spirited little boys, who always meet the convenience of their
guardians.
A reaction from this association tended to prejudice me against
her; as I now see, most unfairly; although she certainly fostered
my hostility by a disciplinarian attitude towards persons of my
age and sex. In a chronic feud, which I assumed to exist as a
matter of course in my family and to spread itself throughout
society, for that matter Miss Evans ranked among my opponents.
My father, Varnish, and my sister Grace, the youngest, were " on
my side." The rest of my flesh and blood, and Miss Evans, repre-
sented an opposing army, of which I accepted my mother as com-
mander-in-chief. The casus belli was left undefined, as also the
nature of operations and the class of armament. Preparation
stopped short at scheduling the combatants. Everybody was on
my side, or that other side, less clearly definable. But feeling did
not run so high between me and any other member of this opposing
league, as Miss Evans. My recollection is, that we showed an un-
christian spirit. I did, certainly; for if I am not mistaken I
bit Miss Evans. Not of course, as aliment, but as an act of
tyrannical self-assertion, coupled with a desire to draw blood.
I have only referred to this young lady at this point to account
for her sudden appearance as an aftermath of my checked recollec-
tion of this interview. For as my memory recalls the door into
the garden, her image comes in and says : " Oh, I beg pardon !
I didn't know. Shall I go?" To which my mother replies in
a dignified tone: "Shall you go? Miss Evans? Why should
you go? On no account dream of doing any such thing." And
Miss Evans says: "Oh, I didn't know. How was I to tell?"
Then my grandmother speaks from her chair thus: "Yes you
come in, Miss Helen Evans, if that's your name, and stop 'em
quarrelling." Which convinces me that the blank in my memory
conceals some spirited passages between my mother and her brother,
and that I had found the Wanderoo very engrossing.
My grandmother had a very prepotent manner, and used to say
what she liked. Every one was rather afraid of her. Indeed I
had heard Miss Evans refer to her as an old spitfire. At the time
48 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I attached little weight to her doing so, as I understood the
expression -to be connected with the fireplace, used as a spittoon;
a subject that had been under discussion between myself and
Varnish, not so long previously. Looking back now, with the
experience of a lifetime of the epithetics my fellow-creatures apply
to one another to relieve their own feelings, I am inclined to class
this one as strained and exaggerated. My grandmother, according
to Varnish, had a hoverbearin' way with her of standing no
nonsense, and whatever could you expect at eighty-seven, and
property in the funds? Varnish had no patience with people find-
ing fault, and giving themselves airs. Miss Evans was the people,
this time; and though Varnish was not herself inclined to be
charitable to my grandmother, her objections to Miss Evans were
still stronger. Even in those early days, Varnish took exception
to the owner even of the finest head of hair you ever, being so
keenly alive as was Miss Evans to which side her bread was
buttered. She had not lived to her time of life, Varnish said once,
apropos of Miss Evans, to be unable to tell a cat when she saw
one. I thought Varnish unfair, technically. But Miss Evans was
no favourite of mine, for all that.
CHAPTER VI
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
WHETHER I did or did not gather at the time a clear conception
of the events that followed the discovery and sale of the Heliconides
I cannot say now, nor does it signify. If I did not do so then, the
knowledge came to me not very much later. And it amounted to
this: that my father, coming into possession of a sum of money
shot out of the blue, that he conceived he had a sort of right to
play ducks and drakes with, did so by purchasing for 1,200 what
had a few days before stood in the market at 10,000, acquiring
thereby a considerable fraction of a gold mountain in Australia,
trumpeted as Ophir and Golconda in one, until one day came a
counter blast that shattered, or seemed to shatter, its pretensions
to be either. Mount Bulimy had burst, as a bubble a worse than
South Sea bubble and hundreds of investors were ruined. Its
scrip was so much wastepaper, and remained so until a suspicion
grew that it was being bought up by one or two obscure firms of
brokers on behalf of the very speculators who had been denouncing
it as the most palpably fraudulent of Golcondas.
I suspect that one of the most active manipulators of the stock
and share market in this matter was the massively solvent gentle-
man whose corporation I had seen not himself at the Auction
Room. I had heard his name since then; it was Mr. Seth Boethius,
of the banking firm of McCorgnodate, Boethius and Tripp. I have
sometimes thought leniently of this gentleman, for he could easily
have scared my father off his prize, and bought it himself. To be
sure it was only a small matter. He was a five-figure man, at least.
Besides, is it certain he did not think he was taking the best
means of arriving at his end without showing the cards he held?
One gets cynical over these things.
Anyhow, at the very time that this purchase of my father's was
hanging in the balance, a consignment of nuggets was on its
way to Sydney that was to send the demand for Mount Bulimies
again up to frenzy -point, and despair to the hearts of former holders
who had let them go in panic for what they would fetch. Dogged
by bushrangers, who never dared to risk the trial of their luck
against such a safety-guard as rode front and rear of their precious
charge; sleepless in the persons of their responsible custodians
49
50 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
lest this safety-guard should round upon them, turn traitors, and
retire upon the proceeds of their enterprise, these nuggets travelled
over what was then a desert to Port Jackson to start on an eight
weeks' voyage to England, and convince the Stock Exchange of
Golconda. It is strange to us, in these days when Antipodean news
comes in an hour, to think that old songs were being grudged for
shares in Mount Bulimy weeks and weeks after these testimonials
to its character had started.
However, they came these lumps of irrefutable gold; far too
heavy to sow claims with, however many dupes were ready to buy
them. They came, and some mysterious telegraphy, not only
wireless but dynamoless, touched the sensitive nerves of Capel
Court a day before the ship that brought them sighted land, and
caused my father to say to my mother over the Times at break-
fast : " Hullo, Caecilia, we've gone up three-fifths ! "
" I will thank you, Nathaniel," said my mother, " to be intelli-
gible. If you are referring to your Australians as of course you
are why not say so ! Is it so, or not ? "
" That's about it ! " said my father. And then he kissed me
and my youngest sister and went away to Somerset House in a
buoyant frame of mind. And my mother relaxed and showed satis-
faction, not sending me back to the nursery, my proper sphere.
Deep snow was white on Mecklenburg Square when this hap-
pened. Next day it was thicker, and Mr. Freeman, The Man,
was at his wits' end to do down the doorsteps and the front pave-
ment, and the airey out, and clear the gutters. Also it was found
difficult to keep at bay applicants who sought to substitute their
services for his. Then the snowflakes became bloated ; and, though
they tempted the instructor of childhood to discourse on their
crystalline structure, didn't hold up not to say long enough to make
any figure. The bloated snowflakes and a change in the wind, be-
tween them, brought about a steady deluge of lukewarm water from
above; and below, a condition of things you couldn't get a hansom.
Some of my phraseology I borrow from Varnish, not all.
However, this unattainability of hansoms was not universal,
for my father got one to come home from the Office, which ploughed
its way to the door with difficulty. I remember his speech to the
driver, as he handed him a large silver coin, " You won't complain
of that, my man," and the driver's response, " Wot'd I gain by
complainin', Guvnor?" not as an expression of ingratitude, but
of insight into double entry. He would have complained, however
large his fare had been, if he had seen his way to increasing it- But
a five-shilling piece was prohibitive. My father laughed genially.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 51
Indeed, he seemed to be in the highest spirits, in spite of the
weather. He went upstairs two steps at a time, after eliciting
from Watkins, the parlour maid, who had opened the door, her
thought that missis was gone to get ready for dinner. He had sanc-
tioned me, by passing crumple, in the passage, and I considered my-
self warranted in following, accounting for my conduct to Wat-
kins by saying : " I'm going up to par." I am telling the truth,
though you may not believe it, when I say that it was this speech
of mine that made my recollection of what I heard through the
open door of my mother's room hold good until I was old enough to
know what it meant. Here it is :
/ " Hullo I say, Caecilia, where are you ? What do you think ?
. . . What what's that? Anything wrong?" . . .
" Only the start ! the start you gave me. . . . Oh no I shall
be quite right if you will only have patience for one moment."
Presumably my father had it; for after my idea of a moment my
mothef said: "Yes, now! Only tell me gently. Is there any
occasion for so much excitement? What is it?"
" Only the Australians- the Shares I mean ; " said my father,
with all the bloom taken off his announcement. " They've gone up
to Par." It was the identity of this phrase with mine but sounded,
as one might say, in a different key that stamped the event on my
memory. He went on, bewildering me to find a meaning for:
'" They won't stop there. They'll keep on going up." I thought
over this so hard that I missed some dialogue. The next I remem-
ber is that my mother said faintly : " I think perhaps a small
dose might do me good. It never does any harm just before
dinner." I did not wait to see whether Dr. Endicott was effectual.
For I went upstairs. But upon my word I can't say whether I
did this because the shares went on going up, or because my
supper awaited me. It might have been either. I had not the
remotest idea what my father's communication meant. Sharp
little boys live in a world of misapprehensions as perverse as the
foregoing, but they forget them wholesale, until some long en-
forced leisure, late in life, sets them a-thinking of them retail.
After that, a sense of jubilation haunts the life I recollect; it
echoes with congratulations. And even at this length of time I am
conscious of a certain deference shown to my father in many
quarters, which considerably outran the mixture of civility for a
Government official with toleration for his personal weaknesses,
which had been till now the normal attitude of those quarters.
One of them was or was occupied by The Man, Freeman, who
showed it by abasing himself before my father in a way which
52 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I am sure The Observer of Human Nature would have discrimi-
nated from the savage independence of Mr. Freeman's earlier de-
meanour towards his employer. In my father's absence his varia-
tion of manner took another form, conveying his indignation at
the unequal distribution of wealth among classes.
I am still very fond of watching the shine come, when boots
are cleaned. In those days it was a special delight to me to get
down surreptitiously to the back wash'us where stood the copper
with beadles in when the lid was 'took off, and where the knives
were polished, on a board baptized with something sandy, to see
Mr. Freeman do the boots, and enjoy the dawn of their glory at
the critical moment. It is possible I should comment harshly on
some points in Mr. Freeman's method, were I to see it done again
now. I infer this from the fact that when I was last profession-
ally shined, on an undersized headsman's block in Soho many
years ago now I did raise objection to the adept's system of irriga-
tion, as my delicacy prompts me to call it. He met me with the
question : " Wot's the odds if it 'its ? " This boy was a good marks-
man. But Mr. Freeman . . . however, I need not pursue that
subject. My presence in the back wash'us is all the story needs,
and scraps of things forgotten come back again with its image,
and the memory of its flavour.
The voice of Cook comes back, with a consciousness that the
speaker has put a leg of mutton down to roast before a fire that
knows how to roast it not a Kitchener and that it is turning
both ways and will soon perspire and hiss. And Cook's voice
reaches from the kitchen to the wash'us saying, as one that seeks
a fellow-creature with whom to share some new-found interest :
" 'Ark at that, Mr. Freeman ! O'ny to think 1 "
But The Man had been 'arking already. The conversation to
which his attention was solicited, had consisted of lengths of
excited communication from our housemaid, Persia, whose name I
believe was Pershore, but whom I connected with Geography, con-
ceded to me at intervals by Miss Evans. Her tale had been cut
up into these lengths by- Cook's exclamations, but neither had
direrted my attention from the boots. The Man had overheard,
pausing at intervals for valuable bits, like a violinist during a
blank bar or two; a violinist in a nightmare, say, with his finger-
ing badly handicapped, and an ill-constructed bow. And his re-
mark, in reply to Cook, was : " He won't give us none of it, 7 lay ! "
"P'raps we done nothing to deserve it!" said our housemaid.
" Not you, at least, as I account it, Mr. Freeman ! " Persia had
a housemaidenly cap and ribbons of an effective sort, and was prone
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 53
to address what she had to say by preference to males, almost always
giving a personal turn to her remarks.
" Ner nit you, Jumpey," said Cook, using a familiar name of
kitchen currency. I don't think I have ever met Cook's double
negative, or disjunctive, in any other mouth.
Mr. Freeman didn't seem sure, without further particulars.
" Wot did you say it mounted up to ? " said he.
" Six. Thousand. Six. Hundred. Pounds and much good
I hope it'll do him ! " said Miss Persia in five separate short
sentences, with an expressive toss of her head, conveying a sense
of vague religious precept. " How much do you want for yourself,
Mr. Freeman ? Me Most, is all 7 say ! "
The Man appeared to dwell thoughtfully through a full blank
stave of nightmare music on the exact value of his deserts.
" Couldn't say, to a 'apenny," was his comment, as he recommenced
bowing. His suggestion seemed to be that six thousand six hundred
pounds might be distributed, without grave injustice either way,
between Cook, Persia, and himself. But though he seemed sullen,
discontented, and injured, I noticed that he took special pains with
my father's boots. They were to be worn on the way up in the
iWorld.
I understood from this that, somehow or other, my father had
improved his relations with a large sum of money previously in
other hands than his but of course I was too young to under-
stand what how-or-other. Also, that Mr. Freeman, The Man,
grudged it him on grounds that I later learned to speak of as
Communistic. His convictions as to the desirability of the re-
distribution of properties paying larger income-tax than his own
were the same as yours and mine. But like you and me, and unlike
the earlier apostles of redistribution for instance, Jack Sheppard
and Dick Turpin he wanted it to be done officially. His faith in
the identity of Right with the power of majorities sharing his own
opinions, and able to enforce them, would have done credit to
enthusiasm had he been capable of it. But this quality seemed
in him to take the form of sulks ; a fact due, as I now firmly believe,
to the beverage that played so large a part in the formation of his
character. He cultivated a sullen resentment against Parliamen-
tary Government for not placing himself and his relations in
independent circumstances.
If a change in the deportment of The Man towards my parents
was perceived by me, no wonder I noticed that of Society. Or
rather, no wonder that it began to dawn upon me that such a thing
existed. I am sure I had never noticed it until then; not having,
54 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
so far, gone beyond the division of the human race into four classes,
myself, my family, other people, and black men. This last sub-
section had been forced upon me by impostors with a taste for
cheerful music, and a strange faculty of playing tambourines with
all portions of their persons; but impostors, past all question, who
had never been within a thousand miles of Kentucky in their
lives, for all the parade of hardship they made because they would
never see it again. When the idea of Society began to germinate
in my mind, I excluded these nomads, for a reason. My first
inferences on the subject were based on a remark of my father,
coming home and welcomed by me: " More Society, Eustace John,
more Society! And more! And more!! And more!!!" At
each repeat he inspected the visiting card of a caller on the side-
table of the entrance hall. Whereupon I, noting the spotless sur-
faces, and grasping the general purpose of these accretions, did
then and there exclude Ethiopian Serenaders from Society, solely
on the ground of the difficulty they would have in keeping cards
clean. For I had decided that their black came off, and had to
be renewed. Society, however, became then a name for such other
people, not black, as had this unaccountable card habit.
Gradually facts assumed form, and I connected together all the
signs of my family's increased prosperity, and referred them defi-
nitely to their origin, stock-jobbing. At first nothing very startling
resulted, though I became aware of luxury in the quality of my
garments. It was not altogether welcome, because though it had
been conveyed to me by Varnish often enough that little boys
spoiling their clothes was sinful, her intimations had been per-
functory certainly not heartfelt and had been accepted by me
in that sense. I believe I should have been greatly consoled for
an accentuation of discipline which accompanied them, if I had
still been in a position to exhibit them to Adaropposite; not please
observe as the gentleman humming-bird makes the most of his
appearance to fascinate his lady-love, but in order that I might
taunt Ada with the non-possession of a velvet tunic with sugar-
loaf buttons, a cap whose peak shone like a mirror, and which
boasted what Varnish called tossles. It is so long ago that I can't
tell really what these caps were made of, but I know that when they
came from the shop I could see my face in them, and that they smelt
clean, as though they had been sterilized; and that I still retain
a consciousness of braid, without locating it. However, this was
in the period of my ostracism from Ada, which continued for a
long time after the wound on her nose was only a scar.
I was not however destined then to a permanent separation from
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 55
Ada ; for her mother, who played the piano, and her father, who was
at the Bar, were human, and subject to human impressions and
weaknesses. My inquisitiveness one day found in the china dish
their cards, two Mr. Montague Frasers quite flat, and one Mrs.
Montague Fraser doubled back at the knees, or thereabouts. They
caused my mother to say to my father for I heard her myself :
" Those Fraser people have called from across the Square. I
suppose I shall have to return it." Whereupon my father said
to me, hanging on his shoulder: "There now, Eustace John.
Now you'll be allowed to play with Adaropposite again." But my
mother saw exception to be taken to this : " I have never said so,
Nathaniel. But I suppose it must be as you say." She then
added, discontinuously : " For my part I always thought the
people gave themselves airs. However, just as you please!" My
father said, conciliatorily : " Well, my dear ! Montague F.'s a
rising man at the Bar, and knows no end of good stories. And
his wife plays the piano." My mother said: "Then as you wish
it. Nathaniel, I will call, in the brougham, tomorrow afternoon. '
For my parents had by this time become proprietors of a one-
horse vehicle, and I knew it by its name. It lived in a stable which
really belonged to our house, and which in our soberer days had
been let to an affliction who never yielded up his rent except under
threat of ejectment. A frantic scheme for dressing up Mr. Free-
man as suppose we say, speaking broadly Tattersall, and entrust-
ing him with this vehicle and its horse, fell through in favour
of the appointment of a young man of superhuman calmness,
named Mapleson, whose mechanical respect for his employers
seemed only used to cloak his scorn. My father endeavoured to
combat this by adopting with him the manner of a Master of
Foxhounds, and only intensified it. My own opinion is that it is
useless for a Human Creature to struggle against a Groom.
Whether the rising man at the Bar and his wife who played
the piano had been mesmerized by Mr. Mapleson and the brougham
I cannot say. I only know that when next I perceived Adaropposite
in the Square no opposition was raised to our joining company.
But I am sorry to say that Ada's attitude was cold, and that she
said with a painful candour: "I don't like you."
I rejoined, with a strong common sense which other young men
in like circumstances might do well to reflect on : " Then I shan't
play." Yet we did not part then and there, as an older couple
might have done, but stood in undisturbed mutual contemplation
for some considerable time. I was anxious, however, to bring
my new velvet tunic on the tapis, but did not at first see my way
56 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
to doing it without egotism. I adopted an indirect method, saying
to Ada : " You've not got a new frock on." This could not fail
to direct her attention to the fact that I had.
But Ada piqued me by ignoring this fact. She passed my
remark by, in favour of a bald irrelevant statement that might
have suited Atalanta, saying simply : " I can catch you." To
our unfledged minds alternate citations of points in which each
speaker claimed some advantage over the other had all the force
of consecutive argument. But this did not interfere with the
happiness of our association, which possessed for me a charm
I failed to find in the society of my sisters. I was too young to be
aware that this was human nature.
I have written on to the point where I am obliged to stop for
want of paper, almost without reference to " the girls " which
was my father's collective title for my sisters then, and which my
mind recognizes them by now. As soon as the matron has given
me some more, which I know she will do, I must really contrive to
remember something to tell about them. This that I have written
shall be put by in the little locker at my bed's head. You need
not be uneasy about my having all reasonable comforts. The
twentieth century has begun not without swagger, as I gather
from the newspapers we get and things are not what they were
fifty years ago.
CHAPTER VII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I SUPPOSE it was only human nature, that preference for the
society of Adaropposite to that of my sisters. For it was a prefer-
ence, in spite of the peculiar forms our intercourse took. It in-
volved no condemnation of my sisters that did not arise out of
the obnoxious fact of their sisterhood to myself which, had it been
perpetrated at any other small boy's expense, I should have forgiven.
I perceived as an abstract truth that they might compete with
other sisters in looks and accomplishments, but that that did not
redeem the drawback of a common parentage.
Besides, other boys' sisters always appeared in public complete,
I had had opportunities of seeing mine in an incomplete condition,
and despised their appearance at such times; it was often the
reverse of dashing". In my earliest youth I did not scruple to taunt
them before company with details of their identity garters and so
forth. Public reprimand checked this, and at the date of Adarop-
posite, I was getting to be more of a man of the world. I think
I was strongly influenced by refusals of Varnish to allow me to mix
in Society unless I gave securities that I would not refer to my
sisters' wardrobes. I endeavoured to compromise, trying to induce
Varnish to accept my undertaking not to say the name of a selected
garment' selected as notorious, almost infamous. But Varnish
was immovable. " Just let me catch you saying any of their cloze
at all, under or over, and back you come into this nursery ! "
Throughout this very early period I am afraid I regarded my
sisters as an agglomerate or should I say communion? whose
clothes were all made of the same material at the same time. Per-
haps I should except Gracey, who lent herself to partial excom-
munication to play games with me on rainy days. But these games
lacked the fine sense of outlawry which gave such charm to my
escapades in the Square with Ada. A vicious conformity hung
about Gracey's ideas of what little boys and girls were to. This
formula of speech is due to Varnish, as thus : " You mind what
you're told, young Squire! When Miss Gracey says you ain't to,
you ain't to. So now you just pay attention." I didn't pay much,
and did do what I wasn't to, as often as not.
57
58 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
This rebellious spirit may be traceable to a secret resentment
against poor little Gracey's name, her full name being Grace
Margaret. I could not shut my eyes to the fact that she had to
be said, at dinner; hence an aroma of moral precept hung about
her, a thing that would have been all very fine had Being Good
been the question before the House; but that was intolerable in
connection with the great objects of Life. Rainy days, however,
narrowed my resources in companionship, and it had to be Gracey's,
or none at all.
Still Gracey was young enough in those days to play at games,
while Roberta, or Bertie, was just old enough to pretend she wasn't.
She would not join in our favourite diversion, the construction of a
ship with chairs for bulwarks and a stiff sofa mattress for the
main deck, even though she were always allowed to be the Captain.
Gracey and I took turns, either being alternately crew and Captain.
Discipline was equivocal on that ship, because the crew and the
Captain used to fight for the main cabin, which was only large
enough to accommodate one at a time, and had to be crept into
horizontally. It was an unseaworthy boat, liable to founder when
neither Captain nor crew would surrender the cabin claim to the
other, and remain on deck. Bertie held off, affecting superiority.
As for Ellen, she was quite old. Her teens were pending, and
they very shortly after engulfed and absorbed her. Memory,
fishing in the past for something contemporary to recollect in con-
nection with Ellen, catches at Berlin Woolwork, an art and craft
I regarded with favour as far as the colours of the wools went,
but despised as a producer of results kettle-holders chiefly. I
enjoyed assisting in the winding of these wools; and now I come to
think of it, surely this winding was out of all proportion to the
eraftsperson's output. It was, however, a social boon, being, accord-
ing to Varnish, the only thing that kept that Young Turk, quiet.
I was very unhappy about the way these wools seemed to degenerate.
The primal glory of the skein so I thought should never have
been sacrificed to a miserable conversion into balls or small allow-
ances wound on cards, and even these possessed a richness and
charm that vanished as they became incorporated into kettle-
holders or more ambitious chair-backs, with stairs running round
the outline of the design. I remember a magnum opus; swans
with a crimson atmosphere, boldly gradated, for background; and
how I looked back with regret to the splendour of that atmosphere
in its skein-days. I must admit, however, that the same feeling
has haunted my whole life in respect of artist's materials of all
sorts, before and after The Artist has spoiled them. Unsullied can-
THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 59
vasses, virgin tubes of colour, truthfully labelled; hog-hair brushes
with clean handles, and sables still fluffy from their makers' hands,
unlicked by Philistines who have doubted their point and deserved
to be thumbscrewed all these things have always been joys to my
heart, and best kept safe out of the way of The Artist. He is not
to be trusted and will certainly put something in broadly with them
if he gets at them, and won't wash the brushes, and will leave the
caps off the colours and sit down on them, and will one day do
some more to it the something^ only he will first have the canvas
put on a new stretcher and gain half an inch at the top. No
reasonable person can wonder at my preference for the wool in its
protoplastic form of skeins.
Roberta does not connect herself with any particular thing or
incident, except Miss Evans, who might rank as either from my
point of view, being distinctly more an institution than a young
lady with pretensions to good looks, which I conceive might have
been thought by most people a fair way to classify her at that
date. I feel confident now that a judge of women would have
said so; but, at seven, I was not one nor indeed, later. Her good
looks may have been numerous for anything I could tell, but they
were spoiled for me by one bad look, the one that disapproved of
boys. We were antipathetic, confessedly. She and my two elder
sisters presented themselves to me as a league, countenanced by my
mother, but kept in check discouraged from murder, for instance,
by my father. All my impressions of that date were deemed to
change, within what now seems an inexplicably short time when,
I count its actual year-measurement, but which presented itself to
my early manhood as the current era the span of known history.
If I were writing my life I should omit all this, as unimportant.
What connection has my nursery antipathy to Miss Evans with
any event that made it what it became, later? Simply nothing at
all. But I remember it .as a phase of childhood, and as such give
it a passing word.
In the five years that followed, my sisters must have changed,
although my memory is torpid as to the manner how. They grew
larger, but otherwise, remained, for me, sisters et praeterea nihil.
I think a languid curiosity stirred me when Ellen's first long dress
came from the maker's, as to what she would look like in it. I
don't know whether younger brothers generally take much interest
in the gradual disappearance of their sister's ankles from the
public ken. Mine was certainly of the most languid and per-
functory description. My decision, when I saw Ellen in her new
guise, was that she looked like a conscious impostor, a make-believe
tfO OLD MAN'S YOUTH
young lady, when every one knew she was only one of my sisters.
I thought my father looked disconcerted at the result, and my
mother impatient and angry, causing me to ascribe to her a
mental comparison between her own figure at seventeen and that
of her daughter. I heard her say to my father, aside : " What I
can have done I do not know, Nathaniel, to deserve a daughter
whom you may gloss over, but who is nevertheless a scarecrow."
My father said dejectedly:" She'll fill out, Cajcilia, she'll fill out."
My mother contrived to show her incredulity, without doing any-
thing capable of description. I need not say that they supposed that
this conversation reached their own ears alone.
My memory, however languid it may be about my sisters at
this date, is not so about many personalities that should, I suppose,
have interested me less The Man, for instance. By some strange
fatality all the events in which he took part actively remain still
in my mind, or easy to recall. Why should a husky habit of
speech, a flavour of a wardrobe, very thick boot-soles and a vice of
pedalling too frequently in unexpected places, have a charm for
male youth, even when it connects none of these characteristics
with beer. They retained their power over me till after I was
promoted from boyhood to schoolboyhood and I regarded them,
I think, as evidence of sobriety, having so often heard it men-
tioned in connection with them. My recollection of Mr. Freeman
within a couple of years after he unpacked those boxes is that of
a sinner who repented more and more frequently, always qualifying
himself for each successive repentance in the intervals. Each time
this occurred my father swore it should be the last time. But Mr.
Freeman seemed to have an inexhaustible credit at the Bank of
Patience, and might no doubt have gone on drawing increasing
cheques indefinitely, had nothing happened to interrupt him. Just
at the time of which I write he was still attached to the mansion,
having passed through a recent acknowledgment of his weakness,
his evil behaviour. He had induced my father for the fiftieth time
to overlook it this once, and had resumed his duties under a promise
to take the pledge, if by any conceivable chance another lapse from
virtue should occur. An agreement, as it were, to make a Lease.
But I don't believe The Man ever took the pledge; which is con-
nected with my belief that he never broke it. I have no doubt had
he done both, he would have repeated both, da capo ad libitum.
Vamish remained, unchanged. I cannot picture Varnish to
myself as subject to alteration of any sort. If the question had
been raised by any slight fluctuation on her part during the thirty
following years, I should have imputed it to a variation in the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN $1
character of identity; a wavering of the rock-bed of existence, to
which she felt bound to make concession, in order that her relation
to the officially Imputable should remain intact. But her vis
immutatrix naturae was not contagious, for all the other servants
only really I can recollect very little about any of them varied
like Scientific finals; but with this difference, that no decision of
Science is ever rescinded until a new one is ready to take its place ;
while on the other hand no substitute for a new cook or housemaid
was ever sought for by my mother, at least until the outgoing one
had had a month's warning. I think, though, that Anne Pershore,
or Persia, or Jumpey, left us to marry a Professed Trousers-Maker,
and a cousin of hers took her place. But for some reason Jumpey
did not go on the day her cousin came ; so they overlapped, and I
am sorry to say quarrelled. So do the views of Science when the
old certainties and the new overlap. Jumpey and her cousin may be
forgiven. How often her place had been refilled during this five
years I cannot say. As my world enlarged as, for instance, those
great beings my schoolmasters came into it the world of early
babyhood grew small and dwindled. I learned to despise it then.
My old age is vexed to remember no more of it.
Written for its writer's sake, mere reminiscence, rich in trivi-
ality, does not pall. For its reader it is another matter; he must
weary of it, sooner or later. I have throughout assumed his non-
existence, to justify an attempt to disinter so much of my childhood
while its memories are yet pleasant to me. As the store or the
contents of the sepulchre, if you will begin to fail me, I flinch
from the writing of what follows, though in a sense it is easier to
write. Easier, because events cease to be mere flashes of vision,
seen through a mist, and become the thread of a record that is
indelible from my mind, whether I write it or not. If I were to
write it now in full, would it thereafter, I wonder, weigh less upon
me. At least it is worth the trying. I have always had a lenient
feeling towards confession, but as a mental luxury only, soothing
to one's egotism ; not with any view to absolution.
As time went on, and my eyes opened on the world about me, I
came to be aware that, somehow or other, my father got richer and
richer. It was not only that all the appurtenances of life grew
more costly; indeed that alone might have failed to reach my
understanding, as I had always conceived like most boys, surely
that my father's resources were essentially equal to any strain
upon them, though he might disburse reluctantly. Other informa-
62 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
tion reached me, and showed me what my father had, as I think,
wisely kept me in ignorance of. I have the clearest possible recol-
lection of the place and the occasion. Looking back now, it seems
to me strange that what was to my mind European History then,
should only live now in the memory of an old man whom all have
iorgotten, so far as his knowledge goes, of his schoolfellows of the
past. Some still live, no doubt, who would remember the place.
Boys never forget their schools. But to the best of my belief,
I shall name no names but those, of the departed in telling the
occasion.
If this is ever seen and read by a boy of my school those of
my own time grow fewer every day now he will remember at
once by its name the Long Room or Room K. It comes before me
as I write this now, a very, very long image of a room; probably
twice the length of the room itself ever was, with twice the number
of long desks too narrow to write on with comfort, each pitted at
intervals with a socket for a leaden inkpot of a constipated nature;
an inkpot to strike a chill into the heart of authorship and thwart
its inspirations. Of all the hopeless enterprises of my experience,
the getting of another dip of ink at a penultimate stage of the
activity of these inkpots was the most hopeless. A moral flavour
of intense discouragement, and a physical one of stale sandwiches,
hangs about exhausted ink-supply to this day, for me. But the
latter aroma pervades every memory of my school days. It was
an ever-present inheritance from a countless multitude of bygone
sandwich-tins, belonging to the majority of the boys who did not
go home to dinner at a quarter-past-twelve, but filled the play-
ground in fine weather; and, when driven into shelter by rain,
disposed of themselves, Heaven knows how, in and about the empty
class-rooms. Of these at such times the Long Room was one of
the most popular.
I was a boy that went home to dinner. I had on leaving my
last class to pass through this room, and on the occasion of which
I write it was filling rapidly with boys of all ages and sizes, driveu
in by a heavy thunder-shower. Boys with no organized resource
under such circumstances naturally turn their minds to the moles-
tation and oppression of boys weaker than themselves. A spirit of
Imperialism shows itself.
I had been detained as a penalty for some trivial transgression,
and by the time I came out of my class-room the Long Room had
become a scene of anarchy. A fiction existed that this room was
in all offtimes to afford a refuge to the studious. But the studious
cannot do Euclid or Virgil that is what such like miscellaneous
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 63
items of school aliment are for, to be "done" when the lawless
scour round them, climb over them, use their books as missiles, put
foreign matter down their backs, capsize their seats, yell close at
their ears, and distract their minds by mis-statements of current
events.
The boy that I have spoken of as my informant about my
father's increasing resources was qualified to give information on
this point, for his old brother, as he called him, was " in the City,"
and knew about these things. When I came out into the Long
Room this boy, Montague Moss, was sitting cross-legged like a
tailor, with his chin in his hands, deep in a book. As I was pass-
ing him, I was suddenly caught by a special persecutor of mine,
who forced me down on a bench and sat upon me, to the great
delight of other lawless characters. This odious tyrant was a boy
named Xevinson, who had white eyelashes and freckles. He was
dreadfully strong, and had a most offensive supercilious manner.
He was a Wit, or at least had the reputation of being one; but
whether this was deserved, or a mere result of his own opinion
of his powers, endorsed by the subserviency of his admirers, I
know not. He was always surrounded by a circle of sycophants,
who only awaited the opening of his lips to burst into laughter
which I cannot help thinking some of them could have controlled.
At least, I am certain they exaggerated and intensified it on this
occasion because their idol was astride on the object of his satire
videlicet myself who was powerless to resent their offensive
endorsement of it. I should certainly have tried to do this against
any boy of my own size, had I not been obsessed by a superior
power.
The conversation, which engaged the attention of other boys out-
side the group of which I was the unwilling centre, turned upon
the respective employments, professional or otherwise, of the
various boys' fathers, Nevinson giving an abstract, to the best of
his belief, of such instances as were known to him.
" Your governor, little Bloxom," he said, " is a stinking purveyor
of goat's milk to the Royal Family. It stinks. Four governor,
little Kibblewhite. is a stinking Attorney with a bag."
" He yain't. He's a Solicitor." But little Kibblewhite, having
dared this contradiction, got near the door, to make a bolt if
pursued.
But my tyrant wouldn't desert me, as I hoped he would. He
warmed to his topic. " Little Pascoe's governor," he said, " is a
stinking Jew stockjobber."
This was too much for Montague Moss, who was Hebrew to the
64 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
backbone. He was ready with a trenchant repartee on my behalf.
" Tour father," he shouted to Nevinson, " is a stinking potato
salesman."
" Yours," replied Nevinson, with an affectation of serene superi-
ority, lt is a stinking old clothesman." Then he added, referring to
a wriggle of mine ; for I thought I might get away, " you lie still,
little Pascoe, or I'll give you bones in the stomach. See if I
don't!"
I lay still, the victim of irresistible circumstance. But my
torments were not to be for long. For the exasperation of my
tormentor's manner, backed by his minions' offensive delight, shown
by dancing and pointing at the object of their derision, was such
that no son of any self-respecting old clothesman could be reason-
ably expected to endure it. Montague Moss, or Cooky, as he was
called no doubt for some reason, but I never knew it went
straight for Master Nevinson and the two were over on the floor,
pummelling one another with heartfelt ill-will, before I could
recover my footing and my parcel of books. I was frightened at
the chaotic joy of the gathering throng of boys: for they swarmed
from Heaven knows where as the rumour flew of battle toward ; the
cry being merely " Cooky and Nevinson " and got away as quick as
I could to lock up my books, which I never carried home with me
at midday. I was overdue at home, and very ready for dinner.
A torrent of boys swept by me to a rendezvous below, good for
fights; they followed on the heels of the two champions, in charge
of older boys who were going to see fair, and enjoy the battle.
I have felt sorry since that I did not see it. But I was really
only just out of the nursery scarcely nine years old and the
savagery that is understood to be desirable in the formation of the
male character was still to come, in my case. I saw what brought
it home to me though. For being late on my return. I slipped in
a puddle and got muddy. Going to the wash-house made and
provided for such contingencies, to clean up, I heard from its
dark recesses a gasping sound of sobs and angry mutterings, and
when my eyes pierced the obscurity, saw Nevinson. But quantum
mutatus! There are some complexions that show weals and bruises
to the worst advantage. His was one. He turned furiously on me
when he saw me. " You cheesy young sneak ! " he exclaimed. " It
was all your fault. You come here and I'll murder you."
I felt the injustice of the accusation so keenly that I wanted
io expostulate. For the affair had been no fault of mine. I wanted
too an explanation of the adjective applied to me. I had always
understood that it was the equivalent of choice, or super-excellent.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 65
But so hideous to me was the darkness of the place, and HO taint
of blood for I could see how the basin-water had been stained
so hideous the swelled lips and discoloured eyes of its only occu-
pant, inarticulate with pain and mortification; so hideous above all
his rage, that I fled in terror of it. The poor wretch's misfortunes
had not ended however, for next day he and his opponent were
sent for by the head-master, and given five hundred lines, for
fighting.
I suppose that any person on whose stomach the recipient of a
challenge chances to be seated is in some sense morally involved
in the battle when it comes off, and that I am at fault in wonder-
ing why this affair led to my becoming such fast friends with
the boy Cooky. It certainly did, although he was so much my
senior; and the friendship began by my walking home with him
two days later. It was what Cooky said to me during that walk
that opened my eyes to my father's wealth, and its sources. Here
is our conversation :
" I say, Cooky. Can't Nevinson learn by rote like you can ? "
"He? not lie! He can't learn up three lines in an hour. I said
mine yesterday. Five hundred lines of Ovid's nothing." And
Cooky began reciting with fiendish rapidity," Spargere quae f ratris
lacerata per agros," and got through a hundred lines in no time,
checking each off on his fingers, and coming to " emeruitgue
viruiu," " ten " and so on up to a hundred, when he stopped,
saying : " It's all like that. You'll see when you come to do
Ovid."
I was impressed, but was sick at heart to think of the fate of
Nevinson, who had as I thought suffered enough in all conscience.
%< Will he be kept in every day till he's said all the lines ? " I asked.
%i Every day. And if he doesn't do it this term he'll have to
begin again next. Poor beggar ! "
"But I say, Cooky, that's not fair " I hesitated, unable to
define the wicked injustice of the penalty in three words.
" Oh yes, it is," said my new friend. " Because he called my
father a stinking old clothesman, and I only called his a stinking
potato salesman. Stinking was the same for both." By which
he meant that the expression might be written off both sides of the
account, not that the aroma of both parents was identical. No
language could do justice to the absolute gravity and good faith
with which this point was discussed. Boys are miraculous
creatures.
" Is his father a potato salesman ? " I asked.
" Not he ! At least, I don't know anything about him."
66 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I say, Cooky-
"What, little Pascoe?" Then incidentally : " You're a nice
little beggar, and I mean to give you a top."
After saying doubtfully, " Shall I be able to spin it ? " I pursued
my question. " I say, Cooky, though, is your father really an
Old Clothesman ? " I felt seriously concerned.
" Of course he is! " said Cooky. " With three hats! "
I felt ready to cry; for, boylike, I had already got very fond
of my new friend, and we were .sauntering homewards in that
happy companionship that I firmly believe only boys enjoy in the
same degree. His arm was round my neck, and if he did occasion-
ally tickle or punch me slightly the main issue remained unaffected.
But presently I saw a glimmer of hope, and renewed the conversa-
tion. " I say, Cooky, Nevinson said my father was a " I
stopped, with a natural diffidence.
" Stinking Jew Stockjobber," said Cooky, unblushingly.
"Well, but that wasn't true," said I. And I spoke in such a
rueful tone that I suppose my repugnance to the description was
manifest.
"Why shouldn't your father be a Jew Stockjobber? My old
brother's a Jew Stockjobber." Then he seemed to remember that
there was a risk of an important point being lost sight of, for he
added : " Of course ' stinking ' is only a way of putting it."
It did not seem to occur to either of us that it was an extraor-
dinary or abnormal way. It merely emphasized.
I did not like to disclaim my father's Judaism too roundly;
It might have seemed censorious towards Cooky's old brother; but
I was very anxious for illumination on the main question. So I
went to the point, saying? "What is a Stockjobber, Cooky?"
"I'll tell you/ little Pascoe," said he; but he considered a
minute, to see how I could be got to understand. " I should say
he was a chap that sold things for double the money. That sort
of thing."
"Double what he gives for them?"
" No four times what he gives for them. He only gives half
the money for them. Shares in concerns, you know; not things in
shops. That's trade."
" Oh ! " said I. I don't believe Cooky knew much more about the
matter than I did.
" Your governor's not a Tradesman, you know ! "
" Of course not ! " My soul rose against the suggestion, and I
added, with dignity, " My father's in Somerset House." I was not
asked, fortunately, what my father did there.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 67
Cooky pursued the subject, fighting shy of close definitions. " My
old brother says he never came across any one like your father.
He says it's a sort of inspiration." Seeing me look puzzled, he
added : " Like a Prophet ! " But this made it no clearer, for an
obvious reason. And I don't know to this day how the phonetic
school of spellers discriminates between prophet and profit, unless
it ignores the vulgar tongue. However, as soon as this point was
cleared, my friend enlarged on the topic enthusiastically. " My old
brother," he said, " knows, because he buys and sells for your
governor. He says that three years ago he tried to stop your
governor buying a lot of rotten shares. But your governor was too
sharp, and bought 'em all for nothing. They're worth a pot now
a pot of money, I mean."
Cooky was silent in a sort of ecstasy at my governor's intrepidity
and success. I too was silent, but because I was uneasy at the
laxity of his language. My reflections found voice at last in the
question : " What sized pot ? " So much seemed to me to depend
on the size of the pot.
" Oh, you little Ass ! " said he, with the sweet candour of boy-
hood. "What does it matter? Any size. You want everything
like Tit-tat-toe." Exhilarating passages in this game had pre-
ceded this walk home. The game itself is prosaic, though the
poem that mysteriously accompanies it is ornate with imagery.
Cooky resumed : " My old brother says that last year Railways
went down to nothing, and there was a panic. And your governor
came to him and made him buy all the worst Railway Script on
the market. He put every penny he'd got before on it. And
three months after they were a hundred per cent above par." I
asked Cooky what this meant, and he wouldn't admit he didn't
know, avoiding elucidation, but saying vaguely that I should " find
it all right." You see, he was really Classics; not Mathematics or
Arithmetic at all.
Reflecting on my school friend's exposition of the mysteries of
gambling on the Bourse, I am gratified to note in it marks of the
deeply-rooted popular belief, that everything that is has a fixed,
inherent, intrinsic, deep-rooted, unchangeable value in gold, and
in gold alone. The idle pretensions of silver and copper may be
dismissed without comment mere currency! While as to turnips
and the like fancy a value in turnips ! I am gratified, because it
shows that Varnish was right about her Bible, or, at least, that
she had popular opinion on her side when she enjoined upon me
that I should handle that precious volume carefully and not run
dogs-ears into the " profitable annotations on all the hard places,"
68
insomuch as it was " worth two pounds." When, many many years
later, in days that have since become the Past, I got for its owner
four pounds for this volume, she was stricken in conscience, and
would hardly accept the money, on the grounds that it was and
had been, in the nature of things, ever since my nursery days
worth two precisely.
But though Cooky Moss' ideas on business were vague, he re-
peated his old brother's words accurately enough, and gave me a
much improved insight into the sources of my father's new-
found wealth. As far as I can judge for my father never made
me his confidant, his run of luck must have continued for over
three years from the date of this conversation with Cooky. I
believe that during this period he more than once repeated his
seeming utter recklessness, flinging all his past winnings mag-
nificently on the roulette table, and vexing the souls of the croupiers
of the Bank of Ill-luck he played against and won. For a while
his name was a sort of byword on the Stock Exchange, where every
operator knew what " Pascoe's Luck " meant, and prayed for it.
I recollect afterwards hearing him say to Mr. Stowe, the gentle-
man with the eyes aslant : " My dear Scritchey, I tell you I'm
right. They say Fortune favours the bold. But where would the
boldness come in if I ran no risk of losing all my stakes ? " I now
understand his meaning. If he had always put by half his win-
nings and gambled with the rest, his pluck would have made a poor
show by comparison. I believe he regarded the cash he received
for the Heliconides as so much sheer gambler's stakes. And cer-
tainly this view seemed to make him a favourite with fortune.
It was this conversation with Cooky that first set me thinking
seriously on the subject of my father's increase of wealth. It was
pursued through the whole length of a walk full of unwarrantable
detours, ending in our seeing each other to our respective homes
alternately, three or four times. At our final doorstep my father's
to wit we referred to Nevinson, and the fact that he was still
kept in, grinding at his hopeless task, without a brain! Cooky
looked sorry for him, saying: "Poor beggar it's cruel hard
lines ! " Then an idea occurred to him, and he said it wasn't a
bad one. Gently pressed to reveal it, he divulged a scheme for
taking Nevinson's imposition on his own shoulders. " I could
knock it all off by Saturday," said he. He treated the matter as
though the sole essential was that five hundred lines of Ovid
should be gabbled through without book in a way that would have
made the author's blood curdle, had the pronunciation of the words
been such as to enable him to find out who wrote them.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 69
I suppose one becomes unduly suspicious or, perhaps, ill-tem-
pered in old age; and that is why I find myself doubting whether
Cooky's motive was unmixed good-nature. Was there no vainglory
in it? After all, what a splendid position it would land him in,
to reel off, in a few hours, all those hexameters that his late ad-
versary had only been able to struggle through a fraction of in
about as many days!
CHAPTER VIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
WHATEVER goes wrong in a family that includes very young
people, they look upon it as sure to come right. No doubt of the
practical omnipotence of their parents crosses their mind, as
regards all domestic matters. My impression is that though a
boy ascribes to his meanest schoolmaster an Olympian quality
his male parent lacks, he only does so in respect of a great mys-
terious world that does not overlap his father's. This world and
his domestic' world have nothing in common, and his belief to this
effect would even survive his conviction that they occupied the
same space.
Even so it is with all the many Others Science is bestowing
on us. They poor souls! have only one Space, and that one of
only three dimensions, to accommodate the lot. Yet the waves
of Sound cut the waves of Light dead, neither moving when they
meet, and Wireless Electricity ignores both, like Trabb's Boy.
But so far as I know, no undulations of any ^Ether look down on
that of their neighbours.
A schoolboy, on the contrary, looks down on all his home belong-
ings, as against his schoolmasters. Does he not, the moment that
he comes to know anything of their homes and possessions, go back
to his own and flaunt their superiority in the face of all his circle
who will stop to listen to him? But this does not affect his belief
in the omnipotence of his parents in their puny world. He does
not need to trouble himself about the Future. They will see to all
that.
Therefore when my father and my Uncle Francis came to
loggerheads about some point in the management of my mother's
marriage settlement, I was content in my belief that my father
was absolutely right, and my Uncle Francis absolutely wrong.
It was Varnish who told me what they had come to, and
though I had never seen a loggerhead to my knowledge, I at once
discerned its nature from its context, and admitted its linguistic
force a force that explanation would seriously interfere with, to
my thinking. At this time I was no longer under the tutelage of
Varnish, for I was a schoolboy of three years standing, a good
70
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 71
cricketer of my years, and well up in my classes; though that was
a matter of less importance. Varnish and I, however, were on
terms of mutual devotion that no addition of distinction to my
own position could shake, and may be said to have been in the
heart of each other's confidence on all subjects.
Also at this time a change was made in my sleeping apartment,
which brought me very much indeed into the pocket of that of
my parents; more so perhaps than they themselves would have
approved, had they been fully aware of it. At least they would not
have talked so loud, had they rightly appreciated the audibility of
conversation carried on in their own bedroom, which looked out on
the Square, through the wall of my corresponding back room, which
looked out chiefly on cats and their habits. I wasn't eavesdropping
at all, in the dishonest sense; indeed I used frequently to boast
to my father of how much I had heard of their talk, repeating
passages as proof thereof. I must suppose, therefore, that when
they spoke audibly they were either indifferent as to whether I
heard or not ; or believed me asleep. At times, no doubt, they forgot
me as either would now and then respond with a dropped voice to
the shish-shish, or suchlike pianissimo direction, of the other. It
was generally my mother who entered protest, saying, " You needn't
shout," or, "I can hear you perfectly well, Nathaniel," in a cold
suggestive manner. Whenever voices became inaudible in this way,
I always went under the bedclothes conscientiously, until I con-
ceived, from a change in tone, that Europe was at liberty to over-
hear. The weak point of the system was that at late hours they
were apt to take it for granted that I was asleep.
It was after a recess of this kind, occasioned by a rather warm
discussion becoming veiled, with a subacute indication of strained
relations, that I came up to breathe, as speech became normal, and
heard my mother say : " Very well, Nathaniel, very well ! Consult
a lawyer by all means but let me go to sleep." At which broad
hint, my father held his tongue.
I surmise that he held it tighter than was absolutely necessary
under the circumstances. He might have said good-night, or made
some sign of a conciliatory nature. As it was, I could not have
been more morally certain that he shut his lips abruptly, if his
mouth had been a trunk, and the lid had come suddenly down.
Naturally my mother was not prepared to acquiesce in this. Nothing
is more offensive than to be taken at your word when you don't
mean it. And you cannot go to sleep while exasperated.
But I don't believe her wish for sleep was a sincere one. Unless
indeed she slept then and there for some fifty seconds, and then
72 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
awoke with an unnaturally clear idea of what to say next. For,
thereabouts, her words were and they were, one might say, almost
viciously articulate : " I really do not know what you can possibly
mean, Nathaniel, by saying that you are not trying to lay the
blame at the door of my brothers "
My father interrupted. "Nobody's blaming anybody," said he,
briefly.
" I wish you would let me finish. That is just what I was going
to say Oh dear! now you've 'put it all out of my head "
" ' To lay the blame at the door of my brothers/ " my father re-
peated, quoting my mother's previous speech.
My mother picked up the thread of her discourse, with what
seemed to me an unwarranted confidence. " Precisely. The money
is all there, and has never been anywhere else. So what the Lord
Chancellor can possibly have to say on the matter I cannot the
least imagine."
" Xo more can I."
" Then, what is all this temper and prevarication for? "
" I haven't the slightest idea."
" Nathaniel, that is ungenerous of you. It is an attempt to
provoke me by insinuating that it is 7 that have lost my temper,
when you know perfectly well that the reverse is the case. The
exact reverse in every respect. But I will not allow you to provoke
me, and you know it is useless. Listen now and if you will have
patience 1 I will tell you exactly what my brother Francis did say,
and then you can attack him as you like. And I may mention,
Nathaniel, that it was not only Francis, but his friend Mr. Thomas
Skidney, who endorsed that opinion; and that I think few judg-
ments are entitled to greater weight. Indeed I have heard both
my brothers say frequently that the reason Mr. Skidney has not
taken silk is "
" Oh, he's a lawyer then ? I thought he was in the City. Oh
yes that'll do! the Inner Temple's in the City, of course. But
go on with what Francis said."
" It tries me to talk when I am so interrupted. But I will
tell you if you will listen. My brother stated the case with the
clearness which I am sure his worst enemy could not refuse to
entertain." My mother then went on to state it with some
prolixity, the upshot being that my Uncle Francis had virtually
put in a claim, as my mother's trustee, for both the stakes and the
winnings in my father's successful gamblings of the last four
years, on the ground that the original fund, being the result
of the sale of settled property, should by rights have been invested
THE NAERATfVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 73
in some eligible stock sanctioned by the Court of Chancery. But
that as the fund had been otherwise employed in the interim, it
would be competent to the Trustees to claim it now, " subject to
any depreciation or improvement in its value."
I was getting very sleepy by this time, and I suspect that I do
not really recollect my father's reply. It is an automatic con-
coction of my brain from the reaction of subsequent knowledge on
the hazy impression of the moment.
" Then your brother should have said so at first, instead of con-
senting," is the answer I seem to remember, before oblivion shrouds
the dispute in the next room in nothingness. But I am sure of one
thing, that so far from my mother showing any wish to go to sleep,
she appeared to grow more and more emphatic perhaps I should
say quarrelsome and I have no doubt the wrangle lasted well on
into the night.
I came to know in time what position had been taken up by my
father and my uncles respectively, the latter being two out of three
trustees of my mother's marriage settlement; a deed framed, like its
like, for the creation of family discord, and to supply the legal
member of the family with a ,theme to employ his legal acumen on.
Oh, the happiness of writing for no readers, without the ghost of a
compliment to any Grundy!
My father justified his employment of the Heliconides money
in reckless speculation on two grounds; one that no reference
was made to those Art treasures in the Settlement itself, the other
that the old box in which they were found had been deposited
without reservation in the Mecklenburg Square attic long after that
document was signed and sealed, when my grandmother moved into
her new house at Highbury, the long lease of the Admiral's old
house at Peckham Rye having expired. He had frequently sug-
gested that this box and its fellows should be returned to my
grandmother, but that decisive old lady had as frequently refused
to receive them, on the plea that a noxious insect had appeared
when one was partly opened, and had got away unsquashed, owing
to the want of presence of mind of a girl named Anne Tucker,
who was no better than she should be. My grandmother's intro-
duction of irrelevant matter into conversation was not furtive,
but audacious and unblushing, and she used any riposte as ap-
plicable to any thrust. The superseding interest of Anne Tucker's
frailty always put an end to any attempt of my father to get this
property back into the possession of its owner.
My uncle, no doubt alarmed at the dazzling recklessness of my
father's operations on 'Change, was engineering his position as a
74 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Trustee to capture as much as might be of the gambler's winnings
before the fatal day arrived on which the croupier's rake should
sweep in the whole pile, and leave the speculator bankrupt. The
weakness of his entrenchments lay in the fact that they were, so
to speak, arrieres-pensees; that he should in fact have laid claim to
the prizes when their value was first discovered. Instead of doing
this, he had unfortunately been among the earliest counsellors of
reckless speculation. My father was always able to remind my
mother of the sagacious counsel In worldly wisdom that she had
brought back from her Sunday visits to Highbury. As time passed
my Uncle Francis had found it convenient to forget these, or had
taken refuge in a shifty distinction between his advice given as an
unconcerned bystander, and his official decisions as a Trustee,
spoken ex cathedra with a sense of his obligation to the sacred
Settlement.
I can recollect a special conversation between him and my
mother, in a Sunday afternoon conclave at Highbury, in which he
recapitulated and rounded off his standpoint these words are his,
not mine. It occurred shortly before the conversation between
my parents given above, and was probably the cause of it. My
grandmother's chair was empty; she was keeping her bed as a
protection against bitter cold weather. But a folding door, incom-
pletely unfolded by about two degrees, allowed her voice passage-
way. For she slept on the same floor, and neither she nor her
high-backed chair on wheels was visible in the drawing-room on
this particular Sunday.
" Put it that way if you like, Ca3cilia," said my uncle to my
mother, as he stood before the roasting fire, caressing the welcome
heat with leg-wriggles. " But that's what you had better tell
Nathaniel. Tell him from me." And my uncle kept on taking
snuff with an eye on my mother; only one, because the other shut
itself to accommodate the inhaling nostril.
" Tell him what ? " asked mother. For I believe Uncle Francis
had referred to something purely visionary.
However, the vision must have been a vivid one, inasmuch as
he then embarked without fear on what professed to be a crisp
abstract of something much longer. Its effect was that the
Heliconides never were my father's own to put up to auction, and
that even if they had been, the sum they realized, as well as the
usufruct thereof, would have belonged to the Settlement. What-
ever investment my father had made of this sum, he had made on
his own responsibility without consulting his co-Trustees, and as
their supineness would have been held to relieve my father from
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 75
responsibility for loss on a bad investment, they were equally en-
titled to all profit accruing from a good one. The same argument
applied to subsequent employment of such profits, and the Settle-
ment, in short, was entitled to benefit by the whole of my father's
successful speculations.
I fancy I have heard that it is a legal maxim that no man can
profit by his own neglect. Or am I imputing common sense to
Law? If there is such a maxim, I have no doubt my uncle knew
it. But he was relying on my father's Arcadian simplicity when he
propounded this very singular claim. He actually proceeded to
justify his argument by the fact that a criminal misappropriation
of cash cannot be atoned for by a simple refund after detection,
even with interest; and he had the effrontery to wind up with
" What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander eh, Csecilia? "
" I cannot undertake to follow you through all the legal aspects
of this subject," said my mother, when my uncle, whose views had
received support at intervals from my grandmother through the
door, brought them to an end very much to his own satisfaction.
" But this I will say, that I do not understand why Trustees should
not be at liberty to consult the interest of their relations by more
advantageous investments than they do at present. That they
might do so without risk is surely a lesson we may learn from my
husband's experience. They would not need to run any more risks
than he has, merely following the guiding rule of investment in
approved securities at a high rate of interest." My mother warmed
to her subject, and went on to sketch a system of investment in
concerns which should give a statutory undertaking to refund the
price of the shares in the event of the non-success of their enter-
prise. I have always thought this a capital idea, and wished com-
mercial people would take it up. It is as good as the notion,
familiar to so many advanced reformers, of throwing the burden,
of taxation entirely on the undeserving classes capitalists, land-
owners and the like.
My uncle replied to these suggestions on well-worn lines, saying
it was easy to be wise after the fact, and so forth. He dwelt upon
his duty as a Trustee, and on his own liability to the Court of
Chancery. But I don't think my mother paid much attention to
what he said. In these discussions she always endeavoured to keep
in view her own superiority to dross, her natural position as moral
arbiter, and her claim to sagacity in worldly matters. She resumed
the subject with a due sense of these responsibilities. " What you
say, Francis, would undoubtedly hold good in any ordinary case.
In that of a mere speculator, the appropriation of a trust-fund to
76 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
what you choose to call gambling purposes would be unwarrantable,
because of the risk. In the hands of my husband, as events have
shown, the result was a certainty. That being now proved, it seems
to me that Nathaniel will do all that can be expected of him if,
as I suggest, he pays into the Trust a sum equal to the exact value
at this moment of the two vases that were sold three years ago for
twelve hundred pounds. That can be easily ascertained by inquiry
in the proper quarters." My mother paused, with dignity. She was
evidently proud of the way she stated her views.
I don't believe my uncle was equal to pointing out at a moment's
notice the rich crop of fallacies that flourished in my mother's
garden of accepted phrases. I rather think he said, sot to voce,
" Women don't understand these things,'' or something to the same
popular effect. I am sure he was not sorry when my granny's voice
came through the door, none the clearer for a slight bronchial
threatening.
The old lady's exordium took in detail all the persons involved in
the discussion, enjoining the two present not to be fools, and
directing them to tell my father and any one disposed to take his
part, not to be fools either. She then went on, addressing my Uncle
Francis: " You just use your wits, Frank, and get at Nathaniel's
money before he squanders it all away, and put it out of his reach.
Put it in a safe investment, and don't be an idiot." She then dwelt
on a painful experience of her early youth, how a cousin of hers,
Crofton Skipwith hers was a family with connections had won
thirty thousand pounds of the Prince Regent, and would have died
a rich man instead of a pauper, if only he would have stopped play-
ing at the right time. Also, consider Mr. Skidney's friend on the
turf who won twenty-four thousand on the favourite and lost forty-
two on Saucy Sally the same day. Consider these and other cases,
and hinder Xathaniel from behaving like a fool.
My uncle walked the length of the room and back, and gave the
radiant heat a short chance to get out into public life. But he
soon intercepted it again; and, after a silence which I suppose was
due to the shock of the cold from an Arctic bay-window he had
looked at a lamplighter through, spoke thus to my mother: " You
see what mamma says eh, Csecilin '. "
He then proceeded to eulogize Mr. Skidney, or Little Tommy, as
li- called him. He wasn't showy. He wasn't one of your new-
fangled Msiyswater stuck-uppers, strutting and swelling about. He
wasn't much to look at. But for powers of reflection and ratiocina-
tion, no one would believe in the amount of thinkin' that man
would get through in a day. And for sound advice on worldly
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 77
matters, all my uncle said was: "Give Little Tommy a mild
Havana, and don't hurry him."
" But, my dear Francis," said my mother, " what did Mr. Skidney
say this time, when he got his Havana? That's what I want to
get at."
" Little Tommy said, Csecilia, when I told him my views, that
no run of luck lasts for ever, and that the sooner your husband put
forty thousand pounds or so into settlement the better for you and
him, and the worse for his creditors when he bursts up, which is
according to me the point we ought to keep in view when I said
this to Little Tommy, he shut one eye and said : ' You stick to
that, Wiggy ! ' It wasn't much in words, but Tommy has a manner
with him,' that speaks volumes." Have I mentioned that Wigram
was my mother's maiden name?
My uncle dwelt for some time on the great value and weight
of Mr. Skidney's judgments, and on their perfect accord with his
own. But he did not report these judgments at length, and indeed
they seemed to have been oracular in character, like the above.
My mother had a most disconcerting habit of sudden abdication;
only the word is not strong enough. One cannot say those spiders
abdicate, who, if they wish to avoid your notice, vibrate so rapidly
as to become invisible. This habit of my mother's was apt to
assume the form of intentional somnambulism. Perhaps one might
more properly say intentional Nirvana. Anyhow, at this point she
closed her eyes, and after remaining motionless for some seconds,
said submissively: "I am in your hands."
Said my uncle unexpectedly : " Oh, of course, if you are going
to take that tone, I can't talk." He took snuff pianissimo, but
sostenuto, slightly adjusting his nostrils with the flat of his thumb.
Said my grandmother then, as a sort of stage direction to con-
temporary history : " Now temper ! " Perhaps the wording, " Ex-
asperation at this point, please, till further notice!" would have
conveyed her meaning better to a perfect stranger.
My mother's " Perhaps I had better say nothing," implied tolera-
tion for individualities in her family that she was not herself
subject to, and readiness for peaceful compromise in stormy situa-
tions arising from them.
To the best of my recollection my uncle, not to be behindhand
in magnanimity, said: " Perhaps we had better talk of something
else." The conversation was then turned mechanically on a luke-
warm topic, and languished. I went away to my sister Gracey in
another room, and read books until we were summoned to depart.
I am sorry to say that by that time the disputants were hammer
78 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and tongs at the Settlement again, with no prospect of the dispute
ending. The lukewarm topic had had no staying power.
The loggerheads that my father and uncle came to must have
been within a measurable distance at this date, and very near at
hand indeed at that of the conversation I overheard and have
described between my father and mother in the silent hours of the
night in Mecklenburg Square. Being young I paid very little more
attention to it than if it had been cats.
CHAPTER IX
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
THE way in which Mr. Skidney hung about, or rather was sus-
pended about, these controversial interchanges between my father
and uncle through the medium of my mother, did not amuse me
then as it came to do in after years, when my boyish acceptance
of my seniors as sound and reasonable had given way to my later
appreciation of most of them as Fools. It took time for me to
grasp the fact that my uncle paraded an esoteric Mr. Skidney
an imaginary Being of deep thought and experience before my
mother's eyes in defiance of the palpable fact that the exoteric
Mr. Skidney was a woe-begone and brainless little victim of late
hours and whiskey-and-water. The image thus produced on my
mother's mind grew and grew as our neat brougham no longer a
paltry fly! bore us back to Mecklenburg Square, and was shortly
exhibited to my father as that of a Bank Director in marching
order, with private secretaries and appointments and mahogany
drawers and things. My father's image of the little man, based on
this, was I am sure that of a sort of Buddha in a Temple of
Responsibility, with a chronic frown of weighty consideration in
place of a happy smile intended to last for ever, but with an
analogous stomach. I ascribe to my father at this date an auto-
matic respect for the decisions of this Buddha; a pious awe of
its watch-chain and gold pencil-case; a disposition, in picturing
to himself its stove-pipe hat, to look for a few seconds in his own.
It may have had an influence with him in the course he took.
He wrote a cheque for a sum which he arrived at by adding interest
at eight per cent to twelve hundred pounds, assuming that to
be the value of the Heliconides at the date of his marriage, counting
the interest as from his wedding-day, and sent it to my uncle to
pay into the Trust-fund, in clearance of his own indebtedness.
My uncle, who must have known, whatever tale he told my mother,
that no legal or equitable claim would have held good against my
father for anything beyond the bare sale price of the vases and
that even that was doubtful declined to accept it in discharge
of this liability, and returned it to my father with a letter in
which he endeavoured to work upon his feelings to induce him to
79
80 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
place a much larger sum in settlement, out of reach of his creditors.
After my father's death, thirty years ago, my stepmother found
my uncle's letter in its envelope, with the cheque enclosed, and sent
it to me. I need not say that I cannot recall much of it, but I
have still a recollection of some of its phrases, which seem to
indicate that the first of the loggerheads was at least in sight. It
was of course wordy, and showed its writer's extraordinary capacity
for satisfying his desire for a meaning with any set phrase that
happened to come to hand. For instance, " However anxious we
may be to disguise the fact from ourselves," is a meaningless intro-
duction to " A Man's first duty is to his Wife and Family." If my
uncle had written, "Every one must admit that a man's first
duty," and so on, it would have been more rational. But then it
wouldn't have sounded so majestic. I don't believe he meant to
insinuate that my father was anxious to shirk his duties as a
husband and parent. It was merely an excursion into sententious-
ness of a pen that may have been credulous enough to believe that
its holder's brain was that of a cultivated man. Or it may have
thought otherwise. In either case the result was the same. A
loggerhead loomed in the mist, and grew daily more distinct.
As for myself during this period, I was too much absorbed in
cricket and chemistry or an engrossing delight I gave that name
to to be much impressed by family disputes. My youthful op-
timism decided that they were all in order and for the best, in
the best of all possible worlds, subject only to a general reserva-
tion that my father was in the right, I doubt if the incident of the
cheque would ever have caught and held, if it had not happened
to intersect with a school-study which I resented from the bottom
of my soul, called Compound Interest. I had heard my father say
to my mother: "Well, Caxnlia, I shall send Francis the cheque
anyhow. And to make it all fair, and put the matter beyond a
doubt, we'll make it Compound Interest." To which my mother
had replied: " You know as well as I do, Nathaniel, that you can-
not ' do that, because Compound Interest is illegal." My father
replied equably : " Very good then ! If it's illegal, Frank's a lawyer
and can take out a summons, or apply for a warrant, or some game
of that sort. Here, Eustace John, here's a sum for you to do.
Compound Interest of twelve hundred pounds for twenty-two years
at five per cent."
"Oh that's easy!" said I, and did it. It took time though.
When it was done, I handed the result to my father, saying
briefly: "Here you are!" Then a misgiving had crossed my
mind, and I added : " But I say, Pap ! "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 81
" Fire away, Son and Heir," said he.
"It is illegal, isn't it?"
"What is?"
" Compound interest."
}Iy mother did not say: "You have treated my opinion as
worthless, and have flouted me. But you will find I am right, and
Posterity will do me justice." She contrived to make an inclination
of her head tell to that effect, without taking her eyes off the letter
she was writing.
" We're a mighty clever young man," said my father, referring
to me obliquely in the third person plural. " Who told us that
story?"
" All the boys," said I. " They're quite sure of it."
" Then it must be true," said my father, with immovable gravity.
He looked at the total I had handed him, and added : " As it works
out rather high, and it's illegal, suppose we say nothing about
Compound Interest."
But my mother had no idea of letting my father off. She did
not scruple to taunt him with catching at the illegality of Com-
pound Interest as an excuse for making a lesser payment. It was
permissible obviously to make any refund as an act of Justice or
Generosity, but an indictable offence to do it as Compound Interest.
He compromised the matter I think by fixing the amount as
simple Interest at eight per cent, which my mother found satis-
factory I am pretty sure the cheque my uncle returned was for
three thousand four hundred odd. One recollects hundreds, doubts
tens, and forgets units with alacrity. Thousands of course are
branded for ever on the tablets of Memory heavenly records, on
the right side of the account !
But the cheque was returned, and the writing of it was impressed
on my mind by the unsavoury appearance of Compound Interest in
the discussion. I don't think the exhibition of Compound Rhubarb
could have been more unwelcome. However, it was an easy sum to
do! Why! old Cox, our schoolmaster in this department, thought
nothing, for instance, of asking to have it made known to him how
much would six millions two hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds
nine shillings and tenpence farthing amount to in a hundred and
twenty-nine years, five months, four days, six hours and eleven
minutes, at five pounds eighteen and two pence three-farthings
per cent! Compound Interest. Old Cox was a reincarnation of
Caligula at his worst, who no doubt would have asked exactly this
very question, caeteris paribus.
The impression on my own mind of my father's and uncle's
82 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
loggerheads, or their proximity, was that they were an inevitable
condition of things, perfectly right under the circumstances, re-
flecting some credit on my father certainly, but no serious discredit
on my uncle. I doubt too whether Varnish was right in speaking of
them as actually " come to "; indeed I am doubtful whether logger-
heads by post can have more than a metaphorical existence. It
might have been otherwise if my father and uncle had met oftener.
They might have come to angry recriminations if they had not
been kept in check by the exigencies of pens and paper, the re-
reading next morning of the cutting civility of the letter we
thought so clever overnight. Or, per contra, honest scolding might
have been much less irritating than such letters, rashly sent to
the post by some well-meaning person who was passing a post-office
and it was no trouble at all, really. I am almost sorry these lines
will never meet any one's eyes, who might take advantage of my
appeal to mankind, never to carry the letters of his fellow-creatures
to the post, short of actual supplication to do so; or, better still,
without knowing their contents. Did you ever feel sorry you
abstained from sending that first letter, and wrote another one ?
However, actually or metaphorically, strained relations existed;
which Varnish described as loggerheads, and I regarded as normal
and had no particular view about, except that my Governor was
right. Varnish agreed with me on this point, but was equally clear
my mother was wrong. Not that her speech on the subject would
have conveyed her opinion to any one not in possession of all the
facts. She was so often at variance with standard Dictionaries
as to the precise meaning of words that she scarcely gave herself a
fair chance of being understood. For instance, she said to me
once : " Your mar is that absolute, Master Eustace, fetching and
carrying and telling, my only wonder is there's been no previous
hot water, and I say it's a Mercy."
I perfectly understood Varnish, knowing what she referred to,
but I was preoccupied with another subject. So after saying
briefly and disrespectfully, " I think the mater had better shut
up," I referred to it, " I say, Varnish, do you know that when
granulated Zinc is treated with dilute Sulphuric Acid, commer-
cially known as Oil of Vitriol, caloric is generated with evolution
of Hydrogen, and a neutral Sulphate of Zinc remains in solution ? "
" There now, Master Eustace ! " said Varnish. " To think of your
knowing all that Chemistry ! " But she felt that Science could not
be blindly relied on, and continued: " But it smells nasty, I lay! "
" You can't smell it in the next room," said I, keeping in view
a licensed course of Experimental Research to come. But I was
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 83
also concerned for the fame of Berzelius and Davy. " That's
nothing ! " I remarked. " You should smell Bisulphide of Carbon.
"That's something like a smell! Crikey!"
Which reminds me forcibly up to digression point that this
happened in the days when boys, and even grown men, said
" Crikey ! " to relieve astonishment, or express admiration. It is to
me, if not a solemn, at least a strange thought, that unless there
chances to be living some veteran, not brought up to date, who
still says " Crikey ! " there must have been a moment in these
last years that have fled, when " Crikey! " was actually said for the
last time. Think of it! if we had been there and could have
known it! A little landmark, but a clear one, in a journey that
had left youth behind! But if ever these words are read, will he
who reads them even recognize " Crikey! "?
I suppose there still are survivors of Chemistry, as I understood
it; superannuated lecturers in long extinct Institutions, perhaps,
who do not in their inmost hearts believe but that Carbonic Acid
was really Carbonic Acid all along, not merely Carbon Dioxide. It
makes me half glad to be so far from the madding crowd, that I
dare to write of Bisulphide of Carbon without fear of rebuke, know-
ing that it is really something else all the time. It smells just
as nasty now that's one comfort!
Varnish never smelt it, so far as I know. Had she done so, I
am sure she would have been ready with a tribute, of some sort,
to the memory of Berzelius and Davy. But her experience of my
later researches had made her suspicious of precipitates and reac-
tions generally, in spite of their plausible appearance and frequent
apathy. My earlier ones, which followed the lines indicated in a
work called The Boy's Own Book had been countenanced by
her on the ground that nothing ever come of any such silliness,
and how ever could any one expect it? Her view that the details
of experiments supplied in this work were on the face of them
mendacious misdirection, published to mislead the credulous with
promises of concussions and sudden unwarrantable changes of
colour that never came off, was not quite without justification, as
witness my earliest essay towards following them out. The text
boldly stated that such persons as placed a cork impaled by a short
tube in the mouth of a bottle, having previously introduced " caout-
chouc " into the said bottle, would be rewarded for their labours by
the appearance of a jet of flame, burning at the end of the said
tube, of course on application of a lighted match. MY sister
Gracey and I were on the tiptoe of expectation when all the ar-
rangements were complete, but as was to be expected the fragment
84 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
of Indian Rubber we had requisitioned, from the piece known to
the household as " The India Rubber," remained callous and sta-
tionary, and nothing ignited. Our disappointment was bitter.
Having the solemn assurance of print before our eyes, we felt as
though the solid earth had failed beneath our feet. Varnish was
content to point out the verification of her prediction.
The only explanation I can devise for this miscarriage of
Science is that possibly the writer should have said " caoutchou-
cine"; which is, I am told unlike my Self a spirit with a very
low flashpoint. If so, it is another proof, if one were wanted, of
the wisdom of using words with an eye to their meaning, without
fear or favour.
I fancy that it was just as well that we should not call spirits
with low flash-points from the vasty deep, in this case represented
by the shop where I bought chemicals whenever funds permitted.
Gracey and I might have had an explosion worse than the worst
we contrived with the materials available. I remember it well.
To you chlorate of potash spells lozenges for a relaxed throat; to
me it is a crystalline salt which being pulverized with its own, or
something else's, weight of lump sugar, acquires what in my youth
I seem to have considered a desirable property this reads as if the
Pytchley Hunt would come next but which I now regard as a
drawback. Surely, even when an ill-advised bystander drops one
drop of concentrated Sulphuric acid on a mixture, it is better that
it should not explode suddenly. So I think now, but in that happy
time I thought otherwise; deeming sudden explosion an advantage,
and Scientific. Gracey and I powdered a perilous lot of the salt,
and made the atrocious composition. I am sorry to say that Science
responded, this time, and did credit to the memory of Davy and
Berzelius. The explosion was all that could be desired. My eye-
sight was miraculously preserved, but my eyelashes and hair were
turned to stubble. They have had time to grow again and again,
and fall away at last since then, and what is now left of them is
colourless.
But the smell of the polish of the Chemical Cabinet which started
this career O the rashness of that gift of my father's! is with
me still, and the images of its bottles and its test tubes and its
small allowances in pill-boxes of such chemicals as had the sense
not to be hygrometric; and its stopper-bottles containing horrors,
chuckling to themselves over the way they meant to destroy my
clothes; and its two scraps of litmus and turmeric test papers which
would detect all sorts of things, only you had to be so careful to
remember which was which; all these are with me still, and I can
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN *:,
He here and wonder now what possessed my parents to let me
appropriate that celebrated attic where The Man unpacked Pan-
dora's box, and devote it to what Varnish rightly called my messes.
So much did I appropriate it, that it came to be known as The
Chemistry Room; and if it were possible for speech to come again
from vanished lips, and talk could turn now as it used to turn, some
trifle of thirty or forty years since, on what we then fancied was a
time-worn memory of the house of my babyhood, I should still refer
without a pause to " The Chemistry Room," and never dream the
phrase could call for explanation. But my old nurse was the last
for whom it held its meaning. They are all gone now, and the
last flicker of the old familiar names will soon die down in the
one old brain that holds them, and leave to Oblivion an inheritance
of darkness.
CHAPTER X
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I CAN fix the date of what I am about to disinter from the past ;
a morning of the year fifty-three, shortly before Christmas, when
I was on my way to fourteen years of age. Too old, that is, to
leave me room for wonder, now, at sudden vivid flashes, as I write,
of memories long forgotten ; things not to be recalled at will, but
clear as daylight in this haphazard resurrection. But I did wonder,
mind you, at the like illuminations of my babyhood!
There was a Sense fog that morning. The gas, burning through-
out the house with a nerveless flame, as though the sudden run upon
its resources had overtaxed them, was itself barely visible; and
the choked combustion was struggling for life even as the choked
lungs of the household were struggling for breath. A universal
paralysis reigned over things animate and inanimate. Fires were
refusing to burn with the only eloquence at their disposal, the pro-
duction of smoke, which went reluctantly up the chimney to help
the fog without. The urn, discouraged by the introduction of a
lukewarm piece of cast iron into its vitals, was yielding tepid water;
and yesterday's milk, pathetically submitted in a jug adapted to its
volume, was confessing, when I came down to breakfast, at a
quarter-to-nine "eight-forty-five" was unknown in those days
that the milk proper had not yet come, and suggesting that some-
thing had happened to its sponsor, a person whose appearance laid
claim to rural innocence and seemed to shrink from the vices of
Town. At least, I believed that to be the import of an embroidered
'smock and a peculiar low-crowned hat.
I was due at school at a quarter-past-nine, but not deeply con-
cerned on that account, as there was a general leniency in the air
towards demoralization, owing to the near approach of Christmas.
So I trifled with my conscience on various pretexts, and post-
poned the evil hour of departure into the cold. The Governor would
like to see me before I went, and he wasn't down yet. Also the
clock was five minutes fast. Also old Rameau the master of my
first class, for I started with French in the morning wouldn't be
there till half-past.
On second thoughts the clock was ten minutes fast. I couldn't
86
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 87
swear that my governor hadn't said, " Wait till I come down, you
young scaramouch ! " from the inner recesses of his dressing-room,
though I had only slender grounds for imputing such a speech
to him my ignorance of what he had said being the chief
one.
On third thoughts that clock was a quarter fast. It didn't
matter. Nothing mattered. I couldn't be in time now, anyhow!
Just as well be late in earnest, while I was about it!
Varnish, passing kitchenwards, said: "Your par, he's out of
his dressing-room, Master Eustace, and what he'll say I don't
know. Fancy his finding you not gone, and it getting on for ten
o'clock!" Varnish's speech called for knowledge of its why and
wherefore, to make it intelligible.
But I refused to accept the official view of my father, within a
week of Christmas. My last justification of delay turned on the
unimportance of Modern Languages, as against the Classics.
French wasn't Latin. Nothing was less important than French;
except indeed German ; which, like Dancing, was optional. But
only some twenty families seemed ever to be in an optative mood
about either. Latin was the plat fort of the school, in my day, and
on that morning my first Latin class was at a quarter-past-ten.
I think the reason of my wish to see my father before diving
into the fog was in a great measure that I had overheard dissension
between himself and my mother through the cancelled door of my
room, the night before. Whenever this happened I always wished
to see him complete next day; safe in his groove, and lubricated;
qualified, as it were, for further existence. There had been marked
asperities in their concert this time; sharp accents on my father's
side, on my mother's the loud pedal, frequently. Also, disturbance
in the night had crept into my dreams. The amount of friction
seemed to have gone beyond ordinary Settlement, or my mother had
been ill. Or both.
He was worried, there was no doubt of that. He came straight
downstairs and passed me by in the passage, and had rung the
dining-room bell before he said to me: "Hullo! you're a nice
character. What are you doing here, this time of day? Go and
catch Varnish, and send her to your mother." But Varnish was
on her way to the bedroom. So, said my father, that was all right!
But how about me? "What are you doing here, you profligate
youth ? " he continued. " Why aren't you at school ? "
I began a statement, incorporating contradictory excuses; but
he stopped me with, " Good job you're not. perhaps ! make your-
self useful " meaning, maybe I might ! " Look here, you immoral
88 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
young scamp, just you take this lettert wait till I've written it!
to Dr. Scammony in Bernard Street, and wait for the answer."
" Is mamma ill ! " I asked. My father did not reply until he had
written a brief note in a hurry, as I have seen letters long ones
written on the stage. " One or two tablespoonf uls three times a
day, That kind of thing. Now trot ! "
I believe I said something my father either did not hear, or
ignored, reflecting on the medical skill of our family doctor, whose
name was not really Scammony, but Hammond. I always treated
him with scorn, but without assigned reason. Having expressed
my contempt for him, I trotted, as directed, leaving my father
feeling round on his face for some solution of the perplexity that
was visible on it. He always did that, and never seemed to find it.
I am as sure as I am of anything in this uncertain world, that
my father loved my mother dearly, devotedly. Why he did so, I
never was able to discover. But that he did love her, uphill work
as it must have been, I have not a shadow of doubt. I am sure
that if she had asked him " on her own " I am told that this ex-
pression is Modern English to pay over any fraction, or the whole,
of his stockbroking swag into her settled funds, he would have done
it straightway. But the evil genius of a remorseless egotism must
needs set her a flaunting the superior wisdom and experience of her
brothers in his face, and the fruit of his successful speculations
became an Apple of Discord as venomous as the one Ate put into
Settlement for the Gods at that feast of Olympus. Hence the
dissensions of which the one I overheard that night was a sample,
in which a certain combativeness of my father's no doubt was to
blame as much as my mother's querulousness or overbearing,
whichever we agree to call it. And I suspect he was brewing an
indictment against himself for it when I left him; saying to him-
self, perhaps, that maybe the delicacy my mother was suspected of
was more real than he had hitherto supposed, and that more for-
bearance on his part would have averted bad consequences this
time- ; that he had lost his temper, in fact, and was to blame.
I think I despised Dr. Scammony because he was bald and small.
If he had had more bounce I should have respected him. But he
was the meekest little man with, I should say, the meekest little
manner within the scope of meekness. When he had read twice
through my father's note, he said absently: "Cardiac symptom.
Then I shall call in Jobson." But I don't think he knew I heard,
or thought I didn't matter. Then he looked at me regretfully, and
shook his head. He played a chord faintly, with open fingers, on
each of my lungs, and said : " Should wrap up ! " Then he told
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 89
me to run along, my boy, and he would be round in a minute,
and I was to tell my father. But I had to go to school, and I said
so, and went. My father had given me instructions not to return
unless Dr. Scammony was unable to come at once.
I suppose I wasn't reported by the Cerberus I had to pass before
I could slip in and mix with the throng of boys swarming from
class-room to class-room at the end of the first hour, for I was never
called to account for my delinquency. Certainly I told Cerberus
in confidence that I had had to go for the doctor for my mater, who
was seedy; and that may have influenced him to silence. Anyhow,
I never was brought to book. As for my mother's indisposition
and Dr. Scammony, I soon forgot all about both, with the renewal
of Latin saturation, having for its object, I suppose, the cultivation
of a distaste for the Classics.
In these days I never went home to dinner at midday. The usage
had come to an end at my special desire. I preferred the Satur-
nalia of the playground, even when it involved neglect of a so-called
dinner, in Room Zed which I had heaps of money to pay for if I
chose or the satisfaction of hunger with the most unwholesome
food I have ever tasted, certain hideous confections retailed in the
playground by an enemy of boys' stomachs called " The pieman."
I can revive at will the taste of any of it, by imagining its bearer
bringing it on a tray, hot from the oven, and placing the tray on
a chair near the door that led from the school to the playground,
and the rush of purchasers that followed. The penny bun was the
safest to eat, peptically. Then came the Scotch bun. Then the
three-cornered tart. Then the meat-pie, princeps oltsonium, judged
by its indigestibility. I am glad to say they were all gone, that
day in the fog, by the time I got in touch with their vendor. I
mention all this to account for my non-return home at midday
on this occasion. I often went home by arrangement on rainy days
when there was no fun going on in the playground. But not on
foggy days, thank you!
For a generous optimism of boyhood in those days recognized, in
a dense fog, an awful lark. Boyhood does not recoil from inac-
curacy of metaphor. Surely Destiny was amusing herself at my
expense, to make that fog so awful a lark. I can remember the
enjoyment it afforded to all but a delicate few of some three
hundred boys; the splendid consciousness that Authority could not
see what was going on a few paces off a very few paces! the
sense of righteous triumph over abuse of power when the master
of one class, who was unpopular, had to throw up the sponge, or
choke, in an effort to make himself heard by a swarm of young
90 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
miscreants who had no pity for asthma, and no interest in
Keightley's History of England; the final paeans of exultation as
they broke loose from bondage. For the condition of release, that
they should go quietly, was not honourably observed, the con-
sciousness of power to disappear into Cimmerian darkness proving
too much for the highest morality.
Two stories are told of the effect that any great surprise or
shock has on the memory of what has just preceded it. Accord-
ing to some, all vanishes and is forgotten, obliterated by the force
of the new incoming record. But others tell another tale, that the
very force of its impression has as it were involved the trifles of
the hour that preceded it, that else might have been forgotten, and
left them stamped, indelible, for ever.
This was my experience of the events of that day. The choking
fog, the spiritless gas-jets struggling to assert themselves, the fiction
that they were burning in the daylight, the wild Saturnalia of
boyhood broken loose, hard to catch and impossible to identify
at anything worth the name of distance; embarrassed Authority's
pretence of tolerating, on the score of magnanimity, outrages it
was powerless to prevent all these things and the details of them,
that might have belonged to a hundred other London fogs, are to
me ^till part and parcel of this one and none other. And as I
think over that day, they all come back to me, and I can recognize
even now the share each had in the composition of that awful lark,
and picture to myself the exuberant reports of its joys in the larger
half at least of two hundred homes, whereof mine was not one.
In our school, the boys were not turned out when the classes
were over, necessarily. Those especially who lived s near at hand
used to remain on in the playground to the limit of toleration of the
ruling powers. Boys who lived at a distance departed promptly,
in their own interests.
My group of companions, a gang of desperadoes who were still
glowing with satisfaction at misdeeds committed during the awful
lark, were the sons of residents within an easy walk of the school
in Oower Street, Bedford and Russell Square, or further east-
ward in the Great Coram district. They were not given to going
straight back to their families, preferring to see Life in each
other's company, as much as possible; and on the present occasion
several came out of their way, or beyond their destination, drop-
ping scattered units at their respective homes. I arrived at mine,
so accompanied, most immorally late; and my companions, all but
Cooky Moss, passed on when we reached the doorstep. Cooky re-
maining to gather what might be of news, and overtake the others
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 91
with it; or break his contract to do so, as should chance. I was
immensely relieved to find that a carriage leaving the door of
our house in the fog was not a doctor's, but our own peculiar
brougham with its imperturbable box-occupant, looking forward
unmoved to a drive through the fog to Roehampton, to convey my
sister Roberta and Miss Helen Evans to an amateur theatrical
performance; in which my sister, who had a dramatic turn, was
to take a Reading part. They were just starting as I came to
the door.
"Hullo!" said I, merely to entamer conversation, "What's the
matter?"
" Oh, it's the boy," said Roberta. " Mamma's better. Go on,
Mapleson . . . I'm really afraid I am crushing you, dear." This
was to Miss Evans, whose head appeared out of a surging mass
of skirt and crinoline, which squeezed up, from close packing, to
very near the chins of their wearers. It was as though two balloons
had been forced inside the brougham, and some decorative heads
and hands had found their way through the silk. Miss Evans
replied that she was the less crushable of the two. " Besides," said
she, " as if 7 mattered ! " She had been grooming herself very
carefully, I could see, for all that.
"I say," said I, " are you sure?" I might just as well have
waited until I was in the house. But a well-known twist of the
mind well known to the student of human perversity, I mean
must needs make me insist on the completion of my information
by its first communicant. When the crossing-sweeper at the corner
of the street touches his hat to the gentleman four doors up, and
says to him, "Postman's just been to your house, Sir," ten to one
that gentleman says to that crossing-sweeper, " Did you see if he
had a letter for me? " at least, he does so if he is a weak character;
which one is, broadly speaking. I was, on this occasion, and my
sister was too preoccupied with her personal beauty to give much
attention to a questioning boy.
" Oh yes I'm sure," said she, perfunctorily. Then she made
corrections. " At least, I'm not sure, I mean I am sure, only I
hardly saw her. You saw her, Helen! Miss Evans saw her, and
said she was all right. . . . Go on, Mapleson ! "
" Stop a minute while I tell your brother," said Miss Evans.
" Yes, your mamma was getting on all right, Dr. Hammond said,
She'll be asleep now because she's just had her medicine." She
added something I did not catch, and my sister responded. u Strong
did you say? Well, we can't help that do let's be off. . . .
How do you know? Did you pour it out for her?"
92 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" No I didn't pour it out. But I could smell it, for all that."
Then my sister pulled up the window, and Mapleson was just
going to make a suggestion to the horse, when she dropped it again,
to say : " Tell them if the fog's bad we're sure to stop. ... I
mean, not to expect us." To which I replied, with brotherly in-
difference, " All serene ! " an expression at that time recently intro-
duced into the language, and still occasionally used by old-fashioned
.people. She said, "Vulgar boy!" and shut the window. They
vanished into the fog, and Cooky, who had heard tne colloquy,
accepted it as containing a satisfactory report, and said good-night,
leaving me on the doorstep.
I knocked and rang with confidence, and even some sense of
inflation. For had I not been for the doctor in the morning?
Was not that a feather in my cap, apart from the mere glory con-
ferred by illness in the house, possibly dangerous ? Think of that !
Varnish opened the door and was glad. Her words were:
"You're wanted, Squire! Come in to where your pa's waiting
for you." She frequently addressed me as though I rode to hounds
and had manorial rights. " Squire " was a common form of speech
with her.
My father came out of the dining-room, looking pleased also.
*' There you are, Master Jackey," said he. u Your Mamma's asked
for you." Then he said to Varnish : " She'll be awake by now.
Go and see."
" Missis's words was Master Eustace to go up, the minute he
came," said Varnish. My father did not contest the point, but
said : " Well suppose you go up, Jackey. Go up quietly, and if
your mother's asleep still, just you go in quietly and sit down.
Keep quiet till I come."
" What am I to tell Cooky?" said I.
"Tell Cooky? Bless the boy," said my father, "why tell Cook
anything ? "
" Naw-awt CooTc!" said I, prolonging my first word needlessly,
not without implied contempt for Cook, an excellent woman.
" Cooky Moss. He's waiting outside."
"Oh, that's your game, is it?" said my father. "I see. Why
isn't he called Belshazzar or Nebuchadnezzar ? Cooky ! "
" His Christian name's Monty," said I unconscious that my
vocabulary was open to criticism. I was equally unconscious of
what there was to be said against my father's random selection of
Scripture names for Cooky; chosen only, I am sure, by the vaguest
biblical association.
"You trot up to your mamma. Go quietly, I'll talk to
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 93
Nebuchadnezzar." I heard afterwards of the interview that fol-
lowed, but the sequel of the moment cancelled other events for the
time being.
I did as I was bid, as to quietness, fervently. I took my shoes
off on the landing, and opened the door of my mother's bedroom
stealthily. I stood by the bed and wondered would she wake?
I was not alarmed, for I only saw in all this mere everyday ill-
ness, which would of course give way before a certain number of
doctor's visits. That is how youth looks at therapeutics : doses of
medicine are mere concurrent formalities, that make the belly,,
bitter, like the Seer's little book, but are not like honey in the
mouth. There the metaphor fails, with a vengeance.
One can know of a dense London fog in a closed room, if one
watches the fire, by the reluctance of its smoke to rise. Or by
listening for the changes of the street sounds without. As the fog
deepens, and shakes hands with the darkness of night, the wheels
die down and the hoofs of patient horses, accepting fate, are slow
and almost silent. Mysterious shouts appear such shouts as may
one day tell us, on this side Styx, of Cimmerians in the gloom be-
yond. I stood watching the fire and listening to the shouting,
thinking what a glorious time the link-boys must be having out
there in the dark, and waiting for my mother to speak or move.
It seemed a long time, but one cannot judge time by the ticking
of a clock alone. One only knows that it pulsates at its slowest
to the waiting ear in the silence. Very possibly I had not stood
there over five minutes when I thought the hand that lay on the
coverlet, and looked white, was moving, and that my mother had
spoken in a whisper. I spoke in reply. said, " Yes," or, " What ? "
I think.
To my ear, dropped to hear it, the whisper that came sounded
like, " Your father." My judgment was cool enough then, but in
a moment uneasiness came upon me. There was something wrong,
outside my experience. I touched the colourless hand, and it
barely moved.
I began to speak, and my voice did not encourage me. I felt
it was showing fear lest there should be no answer. " I say,"
said I, using my invariable exordium, " I say, Mamma. Do you
want the Governor?" I listened hard for any sound, my heart
beginning to go. I think what set it going was chiefly that the
counterpane felt cool. Compared to that, the hand was nothing.
Hands are cold, if left out of doors. Coverlids are only cold on
empty beds.
Hearing nothing in reply to my question, I slipped from the
04
room as noiselessly as I had come. My father I knew would be
in the small parlour, not in his dressing-room. He had been in
the house unusually early, having been able to get away from the
office, as I suppose, on the plea of illness at home. Subordinates
cannot do this sort of thing; his standing warranted it. I found
him writing a letter, and wished he would look round, to see that
something was wrong, rather than that I should have to broach
the subject. I found I could not choose words that would alarm
cautiously, without saying too niuch. I do not wonder at this
now, for I have been at the same loss, in after years, under the
same circumstances.
"I say, Pap!" said I.
" Human Schoolboy," said he, going on writing deliberately,
without looking round, " what do you ? " He dropped speech
abstractedly until he had signed the letter, saying rapidly as he
did so, " His very faithfully Nathaniel Pascoe," and was blotting
it, when he turned to me with his mind on my business at my
service now, as it were and said, concretely: " What do you say,
Human Schoolboy ? "
I began hesitatingly, " I think Mamma's " and stopped.
" Wanting to go to sleep again ? " said he. " Was she all right ? "
" Oh yes, she was all right," said I; but. as I suppose, grudgingly.
For my father spoke back quickly, " Quite all right? " and waited,
holding his half-folded letter with his eyes fixed on me.
I hesitated, and at last decided on " I thought she said for you
to come." It was lame in structure, but it answered its purpose.
" Something wrong ? " said he. " You go and call Varnish, old
man. Don't say anything to your sisters." He went straight from
the room, and up the stair-flight two steps at a time.
Varnish, whom I had called to below without getting an answer,
was already by the bedside when I arrived in the room, having in
fact been close at hand throughout my visit. My father said,
" Anything wrong, Varnish ? " and she replied, " I daresay not."
She spoke encouragingly, a thing one should never do.
But alarm was getting possession of them, and it grew. " Get
her up get her up ! " said my father. " Get her to sit up ! " They
raised my mother into a sitting position between them, and I saw
that she spoke, and my father heard. For he replied : " Yes, love,
we'll let you go to sleep directly." Then he said: "Brandy, I
think, at once! "
With a boy's sharpness I saw the brandy bottle on the table.
" Good boy ! " said he. " Pour some out and about as much
water. That's right." The brandy was not spilt, but neither hand
THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 95
that touched the glass was steady. We did have an accident though,
I remember. A medicine bottle fell and broke on the floor, but
there was almost nothing in it.
The efforts to get brandy down the patient's throat were must
have been successful. For she spoke again as soon as she was
back on the pillow, so that at least my father heard, and answered.
" Well, well then ! you shan't have any more of the detestable
stuff." And her hearing must have been active, for when my father
said, not supposing she would hear, " We must have Hammond
at once," she moaned and said, " Oh, please no more doctors ! " I
think my father was relieved at the slight asperity of her tone.
It meant revival. No danger there!
I was prompt to suggest that I should fetch Dr. Scammony. But
my father would have it that I should lose my way in the fog. He
would go himself. But he was over-ruled by Varnish's voice and
mine combined. Our opinion was that I should be there in half
the time. The Man, Mr. Freeman, was a poor resource, even if
he hadn't already departed. He was unable to pass a public house,
said Varnish. This was a disqualification, in London, for ambas-
sadorship. / ought to go, clearly; but my father would look out
at the front door to see me off. The fog might have lifted. He
saw me off, seeming to derive confidence from the fact that a poor
woebegone street-lamp was visible, about thirty feet distant; aM
its energies taken up in self-assertion ; not a ray left to illuminate
beyond its radius. Otherwise, solid fog!
A voice met me in the fog, and a greeting. It had detected me
under that lamp. " Stop a bit, little Buttons," it said. " This
letter's for your Governor. From my old brother."
My school-fellow Cooky had had time to walk to his own home,
to find this letter in want of a bearer, and to run back with it.
This would fix our parting at over twenty minutes ago; it can-
not have been much more. I considered the letter, looking at
it.
" Let's go back and shove it in the letter-box," said I. " I'm
going to the doctor's. My mater's worse."
" I'll come too," said Cooky Moss. We went back and dropped the
letter in the box; not resorting to violence that was mere poetry.
Then we went off quickly through the fog; too quickly to allow of
our usual practice; arm-in-arm, or arms round necks, as might
be. We ran, as fast as was safe in the almost impenetrable dark-
ness.
" There's an awful kick-up in the City," said Cooky. " But you
don't understand these things, little Buttons."
96 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Don't I, rather ? " said I. " Don't be an ass, Cooky ! I sup-
pose that was what your old brother's letter was about?"
"Why of course it was! What did you think it was about?
Pickles? Grand Pianos?" This was a selection, without prejudice,
from the whole available Universe. " My brother wouldn't write
a letter about anything else, unless it was editio princepses. That's
his hobby. He knows nothing about the insides of books, but
he knows about editio princepses."
" I say, Cooky ! What was the 'letter about though ? "
" MacCorquodale, Boethius, and Tripp. I don't know, but I
expect it was that. They've burst up."
"What's that?"
" That means that you can buy shares in MacCorquodale's for an
old song, like so much waste paper."
Now I had kept an eye on my father's transactions, so far as
they were public property, in proportion with the growth of my
powers of understanding of the machinery of the world. And I was
just then acquiring knowledge of the various ways of possessing
money, and of the great games of Beggar-my-neighbour and Enrich-
myself that are being played at the Royal Exchange, the Bourse,
Wall Street, and Monte Carlo. I had come to appreciate my
father's modus operandi, and to regard him as absolutely infallible.
So when Cooky Moss told me this latest news from the City, all the
impression it produced on me was a slight sketch on the tablet of
my mind of my father buying up MacCorquodale shares at a nomi-
nal cost; and selling them again at a fabulous price after a
Phoenix resurrection of the extinct Bank. I was happily uncon-
scious of the uncomfortable truth, that my father was a principal
shareholder already, and had paid quite enough for his shares; Mr.
Boethius had seen to that. My belief to this clay is that my father's
error of judgment, his faith in this gentleman's hat and seals and
spotless linen, was produced when those shares in Mount Bulimy
were not snapped up by the latter. If I am right, it was the old
Confidence Trick on a large scale, and Mr. Boethius's sagacity was
far-sighted.
I thought so little of Cooky's 'Change bulletin that I contented
myself with an inquiry about old songs. Why were they vili-
pended ? " They're better than new ones, anyhow," said he ; for this
young Ebrew Jew was musical. " Palestrina's better than Balfe."
I am recording all this merely because it happened, and I recol-
lect it, sharp and clear, word for word. I remember everything on
that day the dense Stygian veil over the soundless streets, almost
too dense to be a Lark any longer; the invisible traffic that came on
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 97
a sudden, with a lurid glare of link-boys, from the Unknown, to
be reabsorbed by it ten paces off; the man who had just found
out he wasn't in Long Acre, and wanted to be directed there; the
other who wanted to be directed to Mecklenburg Square, just where
we turned out of it. A very red-faced memory of an old gentle-
man comes out of that fog, points out how disgraceful it is to The
Authorities that such a state of things should be permitted to exist,
and vanishes into it again.
Then comes my recollection of our catching Dr. Scammony on
his own doorstep, trying for entry with gloves too thick to wield
a latchkey. He gave up trying on hearing my message. He would
go straight to my father's, without going into his own house. But
we two young gentlemen must take a message to Oldwinkle and
Bousfield the Chemist's, to the effect that that firm's boy had never
taken the medicine to Mrs. Fullalove's. That was the whole no
more. We were flattered by the trust placed in us, felt our way
to the Apothecary's, and delivered the message conscientiously.
" Two prescriptions for Fullalove liniment and ointment. We
shall have to get another boy, " was Mr. Oldwinkle's reflection.
No doubt, in time, Fullalove got her medicine.
I trust, for the sake of Human Nature, that the remainder of
our walk did not show any real indifference on my part as to what
was going on at home. I hope it was only my perfect faith in my
mother's recovery for had not the doctor gone post haste to
succour her? that made it possible for me to enjoy that aftermath
of the day's awful lark at school. Had Cooky not been overdue
at his own house he would have seen me home, and left me in
Mecklenburg Square. As it was I saw him home, leaving him at
his own door in Doughty Street, and through it could hear his
mother and his sister Rachel denouncing him for being home
late for dinner. For in some houses in those early Victorian days,
dinner was at six. How strange that used to seem, forty years
later!
Cooky's dinner was at six and he was very late for it a poor
landmark in the realm of Time! How late, is hard to say; for
never a clock could we see in the darkness, and his watch had
stopped, and I did not possess one. " Waterbury " was unborn in
those days; was primeval forest, probably. It may have been
two hours since we left my father's house. It may have been
more, I have no memory to determine time, closely. I know that
I contrived, Heaven knows how. to lose my way in the fog. near
home as I was. Once orientation is lost, in a dense fog, all sense
of locality goes, and panic takes its place. Then comes the hour
98 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
of trial, and one has to decide which contradictory advice he shall
accept and which reject. To choose between two advisers absolutely
without data, pointing opposite ways, is at least as hard as to choose
for oneself without anything to go upon. Three policeman told
me I was going the wrong way, and yet I followed the advice of
each, with a newborn faith in each, and a newborn doubt of his
predecessor. I believe I had been at Charing Cross before I got
to Fountain Court in the Temple, where I met my uncle's friend,
Mr. Skidney. It was his recognition, -not mine.
I can almost laugh now to recall the absurdity of his appear-
ance; of which I was conscious, although I did not at the time
assign its cause rightly. I put it down to the fog that Mr.
Skidney addressed me ceremoniously, calling me " Sir," and taking
off his hat to me. I fancy the image of himself he had in his
mind, as he did this, resembled Beau Brummell. He held to a
railing as he endeavoured to get the hat on again, but seemed to
miss his head, and to impute his failure to some peculiarity in the
hat itself, holding it at arm's length, and placing it slowly in
various lines of sight, which he seemed unable to focus properly.
His speech was fairly clear as to articulation, but so confused and
uncertain in structure, that I could only guess at its bearing on
the hat. I think he was dwelling on the roguery of the tradesman
who sold it to him, and the deterioration of hat-manufacture in
modern times. Those made now would not keep steady. Just look
at it ! He added that he had bought it of a dem Jew.
I resented this, because of Cooky. Besides, I did not like Mr.
Skidney, on his merits. He did not improve his position with me
by wringing my hand, as soon as he had got his hat insecurely on,
and showing that he knew me, calling me Wiggy's nephew.
" Wigram Q. C." he added. And it was then I saw he was drunk,
from his way of taking aim at these initials, and missing the last.
For what he said was " Kewsh," and there an end.
I wanted to get away from him, but he would not leave my
hand. " I say," said I, as usual. " I say, do let go please, Mr.
Skidney. I've got to get home. My mater's ill. ... I say . . .
don't!"
He would persist in holding my hand, and I did not like the feel
of his. He then said in one word, " Stop a minute; " and, in about
fifty, that there was a very respectable tavern at hand with a private
bar. where they would always supply him with a glass of dry
Sherry on credit. He said it was " Gold Sherry," but I think
he meant " Good Old."
" I hate sherry! " I cried, getting rather desperate. " No I say
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 99
Mr. Skidney really, I won't, please! I want to get home. Do
leave go!" But Mr. Skidney held on, slimily; and, although no
doubt I could have broken from him by sheer violence, I felt that
would have been unwarranted and outrageous. For was he not
my uncle's friend ? Up to a much greater age than mine, family
friendship of any sort is a hall-mark on its object.
A circle of light, like a vacant Saint's nimbus on the lookout
for a tenant, fluttered as a jack o' lantern is said to do by those
that have seen one, across two sides of Fountain Court. It ended
by encircling the group composed of Mr. Skidney and myself, and
then shrank, concurrently with the slow approach of a heavy
tread.
The tread came nearer and the nimbus grew smaller. Its glare
brought a black wall of darkness close to us containing, as I
supposed, a police-sergeant going his rounds rested on me for a
second, and seemed satisfied; then pinioned Mr. Skidney, who
couldn't dodge it.
" It's getting towards time that young master was thinking about
bed," said its promoter, apparently to lead up to conversation,
there being nothing in the position to call for official intervention,
whatever suspicion might be justified. "That your son?"
Mr. Skidney relinquished my hand, and I wasn't sorry to feel
the last of him. The appearance he had, of a sort of woebegone
claim to dignity or gentility of some sort was inexpressibly funny,
as he replied, rather more thickly than before: " Boyshawlrigh.
French. Shun. Not famlimanself, offshire."
The officer's reply should trace the meaning of this through the
ultra-phonetic spelling it amuses me to assign to it. " If he's your
friend's son he'd best be thinking about going to bed, Mister."
He seemed to regard this as his strong platform in the conversa-
tion, and not one to be lightly relinquished. I think though he was
taking an unfair advantage of the extinction of the Hours by the
fog. to billet me as sleepripe in that way. But he was healthy and
strong and broad, and his voice was big, with an implication that
it could be double the size if called on, and the steam from his
lungs in the frost-bound air brought thoughts of a horse to my
mind. His strong jaw, and cheekbone too for that matter, were
blue, stamping him as distinctly a man without a huge black beard
one that had been shaved off him lately, and meant to be again.
His immensity and repose of manner were so much fresh air after
Mr. Skidney. But that gentleman, though he might have been at
a loss to say why, had an inner conviction that he was one, and
could patronize common men from a social standpoint.
100 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
The Alcohol Fiend was scoring points against Mr. Skidney.
He collapsed against the railings, giving the impression that the
impact of the light had just made the difference, it having been
touch-and-go with him. But he could muster enough dignity to
wave the hand of condescension, saying benevolently : " G'night,
off sher ! "
The officer illuminated the contemptible sum-total of imbecility
and whiskey for a moment, and then said to it, " You've not had
enough yet," meaning that a glass more would bring it to maturity,
and qualify it for the station-house. Then he added, to me:
"Where was it you said you wanted?" For him, this fog had
changed the whole world into home-seekers, baffled.
" Mecklenburg Square," said I. " It's in behind the Foundling
Hospital and that's in Guildford Street. And Guildford Street's
out of Russell Square " 1 became aware that I was doing
what my father called " teaching my granny," and stopped sud-
denly.
"Ah!" said the officer, sedately. "I've been in those parts.
I'll put you on your road. And don't you speak to nobody, only one
of our men." He accompanied me as far as Chancery Lane, put
me on it as a road to be relied on as far as Holborn, where it
would cease to be valid, and I should have to use my wits. They
were hardly wanted, as some rain began to sneak down from
Heaven; and the fog's heart was broken by the time I had a big
crossing to negotiate.
Why do I tell so much the story has no need of? Why do I
omit what stories need? as, for instance, what my father was
like. I am almost sure I have said nothing of it. Clearly enough,
because what I write is not needed itself, as a story. It is a record
written for its writer's sake and no sake else. Do I, the only
person concerned, not know well enough what my father was
like? Or rather, is he not an identity, more than an image? But
gleams of a moment in the past are images, and I have had the
image of that policeman in my mind for sixty odd years, and it is
still a fresh and noble one; almost cruel in its contrast to that
of the wretched drunkard, which is still vivid too, trying to manage
without the railings, but not able to do that, and wave a dignified
farewell at the same time. I am glad I did not accept that glass
of good old sherry, at that respectable tavern. Whether my friend
with the bull's-eye went back and found Mr. Skidney mellowed, and
qualified for lock and key. I cannot say. We parted the best of
friends and never met again. I went as quick as my legs could
carry me to Mecklenburg Square.
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 101
The present is at odds with the past, either denouncing the other
as a dream, when I reflect that I, the old man that passes day after
day, night after night in the Workhouse Infirmary, longing that
each doctor's visit may bring some clear hint of an end of it all
approaching, now within a very measurable distance, I even I
strange as it is to tell, am that boy that stood scared and wonder-
ing, near sixty years ago, at the door he had left two hours before;
scared at the sound of the voices within; wondering why none
should hear his knock, repeated twice, thrice ; why footsteps should
pass down and up, in seeming panic, so close that he could have
made the passers hear by calling aloud, but stood irresolute to do
so. I am that boy, and the growing panic of that moment is on me
still, and the gloom.
CHAPTEK XI
THE STORY
ON that foggy morning of the Old Man's Youth, Miss Evans
the governess sat by herself in the schoolroom in Mecklenburg
Square. Her duties were now somewhat of a perfunctory order as
regarded her two elder pupils, Ellen and Roberta, Gracey the
younger one was still under her tutelage; but Mrs. Pascoe's attack
of illness that morning had disturbed the ordinary routine of the
household, and Miss Evans sat idly warming her feet at the fire
with her thoughts travelling back to the days when she had been a
small girl at a large fashionable school kept by a distant relative,
who had undertaken to give her her education and train her for a
career as a governess, free of charge, her parents having both died
leaving her and her two sisters practically penniless, and dependent
on the charity of not very near or very wealthy relations.
At that time Miss Caecilia Wigram one of the older pupils at the
school had been sent there in order that she might receive a finish
to her education prior to her being launched into society, she was
therefore some six or seven years older than the beautiful little
Helen, who, in spite of her fascinating appearance, was snubbed
and patronized by the big daughters of prosperous homes, more
especially by Csecilia Wigram who with the unthinking cruelty of
youth roused a fierceness of resentment in the breast of the little
orphan, that she never for one moment suspected or intended.
Time wore on, the days of childish things passed, and Csecilia
Wigram became Mrs. Pascoe, and in due course the mother of
daughters who in their turn required tuition, and Mrs. Pascoe be-
thought herself of the little girl who had been training for a
governess in her own schooldays, looked her up and engaged her,
all unconscious that the flavour of benevolence with which she
coloured the transaction, was fanning the flames of an unreasoning
bitterness and resentment hidden deep down under Helen Evans'
placid exterior.
The fog deepened, and Miss Evans lit the gas. As she did so
she caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror over the
102
THE STORY 103
mantelpiece. Yes, she was lovely! there was no mistake about
that, yet of what avail were all those good looks if she were never
to rise above this wretched down-trodden existence! It was
maddening!
Tonight she was going with Roberta the second girl with whom
she had struck up a great friendship, to some private theatricals.
Roberta was very fond of acting and Miss Evans was to chaperon
her and help with the dressing up. Yes, always in the background !
Never a real life of her own with the admiration she felt to be
her due. She was now turned thirty and the precious years were
slipping by ! and envy, hatred, malice, desperation, fought together
in her dark small mind as the yellow fog grew denser and denser
on that dreary December morning. The doctor had been and had
prescribed for Mrs. Pascoe. The symptoms, he said, though un-
doubtedly serious, were not alarming. She must be kept very
quiet and he had ordered a soothing draught to be taken should
there be any recurrence of the pain. It was mostly nervous, and
the nerves must be quieted to avoid any undue strain on the
heart.
The day wore on and Roberta proceeded to don her fancy dress
much to the satisfaction of Varnish, who suggested that before
starting she should show herself to her " mar " who was awake
now and seemed to be much better, so Varnish thought.
Accordingly before setting off Roberta went to display her
finery to her mother. " Yes, I am certainly better," said Mrs.
Pascoe in answer to her daughter's inquiries. " That dress is very
pretty," she continued, " but is it safe for you to go all the way
to Roehampton in a fog like this?" My dear, just think if you
get lost ! They can hardly expect you such a dreadful night."
" The fog is lifting, Mamma, and the carriage is there, I am sure
it~will be all right," said Roberta in a great hurry to be off.
" It strikes me as still very thick in the room," said Mrs. Pascoe,
uneasily. " Well, I must just speak to Miss Evans for a moment
before you start ; tell her to look in on her way down."
Roberta kissed her mother and hurried off, calling to Miss
Evans that her mother wished to speak to her but not to stop long as
the carriage was waiting.
Mrs. Pascoe lay in bed propped up by pillows, a shaded lamp shed
a dim subdued light through the room. The fire flickered dully in
the grate, and on the table at a little distance from the bedside
stood a glass and a ribbed blue medicine bottle labelled " Poison."
" I wanted to see you, Helen," said Mrs. Pascoe, as the governess
came into the room, " to say that if you find you are driving into
104 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
a dense wall of fog, you must exercise your authority and insist
upon turning back. Roberta is always so headstrong about any-
thing she has set her mind on, but remember my express orders
are that you, are not to give way to her, you are to turn back."
" I will do my best, Mrs. Pascoe," replied Miss Evans, sullenly,
" but Roberta is bent on going, and after all the fog has lifted con-
siderably."
il Well, I am not up to arguing about it," says Mrs. Pascoe, peev-
ishly. " I look to you to see that my orders are obeyed. Is Varnish
there?"
"No; shall I call her?"
" Oh, never mind about calling Varnish, you can just give me
my medicine before you go; I had better take it now as all this
has made my heart flutter."
All what ? "
" Oh dear, why cannot I ever be obeyed without a discussion, it
is so fatal to me."
"No one is discussing anything. Is this the medicine?" And
Miss Evans held up the bottle to the lamp.
" Yes, that blue bottle, the dose is marked on it."
Miss Evans took the glass in one hand, and the bottle in the
other, but the hand that held the bottle shook and an ugly gleam
flashed in her beautiful eyes.
" Are you sure that is the right dose ? " inquires the invalid as
Miss Evans hands her the glass.
" Perhaps I have not given you enough," and Miss Evans' voice
sounds strange. " I went by the markings on the bottle only, this
lamp gives such a bad light."
Mrs. Pascoe swallowed the medicine, remarking : " I am sure
there was enough, it seemed to me a bigger dose than last time."
"I followed the directions on the bottle, Mrs. Pascoe; is there
anything more I can do for you before I go ? "
" Nothing, thank you, I shall rest now."
" Good-night," said Miss Evans. " I hope you will sleep well,"
and she left the room to rejoin Roberta.
CHAPTER XII
THE STORY
THE fog did lift, and Roberta and Miss Evans reached their
destination without any adventures by the way. The theatricals
were voted a great success by the actors and actresses who thor-
oughly enjoyed their own performance. The audience was a small
one owing to the bad weather, but they endured their martyrdom
with amiable resignation, and all went merry as a marriage bell.
Meanwhile tragedy grim and fateful, was being enacted in
Mecklenburg Square. Dr. Hammond and his assistant, hastily
summoned to Mrs. Pascoe's bedside, were fighting the King of
Terrors with all the means in their power. " But who gave her
the dose?" inquired the doctor. Varnish had left her to help
Roberta to dress for the private theatricals, she was much better
then, and Roberta had paid her mother a visit before leaving for
Roehampton. The medicine was not due to be given for another
hour or more, and then only in the event of a recurrence of the
pain. " Mrs. Pascoe had a hand-bell placed well within her reach
to ring for me if she wanted anything," said the distracted Varnish.
" I was only in the room the other side of the passage; I must have
heard her had she rung."
In the sudden alarm of finding his wife in a comatose condi-
tion when summoned by Eustace John, Mr. Pascoe had over-
turned the small invalid table near the bed and the medicine bottle
which stood on it was broken in falling on the floor, so that it was
impossible to say how much she had taken, but as no smell or trace
of laudanum could be found on the carpet presumably the bottle
contained none, and the patient must have emptied the whole
contents of the bottle into the glass under the impression it was
one dose. She was all but past speech when her son went in to
see her, on his return from school, and since the arrival of the
doctors the most violent attempts at rousing her, combined with
the use of the stomach pump, had only succeeded in eliciting a faint
whispered protest. " Oh, this is cruel, let me be, let me be. I want
to sleep."
Far on into the night they made her pace the room. They banged
the dinner-gong in her ears. They beat her across the shoulders,
105
106 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
poured the strongest black coffee down her throat, but all to no
avail. Long before the first faint streak of the chilly winter dawn
appeared over the housetops, the Thing that had been Caecilia
Pascoe to the world in which she lived lay cold and lifeless on the
bed, the baffled doctors had left the house, and the bereaved family
had retired to get such rest as physical exhaustion can sometimes
bring to a barely realized grief and wornout nerves.
Soon after four o'clock in the morning Roberta and Miss Evans
drove up to the silent house and let themselves in with the latch-
key conceded to them for the occasion. The hall lamp had been
left burning and bedroom candles were placed ready for them on
the hall table; everything looked as usual, and they came in so
noiselessly that no member of that tired out overwrought house-
hold heard them arrive. Miss Evans seemed specially anxious to
steal upstairs as quietly as possible. As they passed the door of
Mrs. Pascoe's room she paused for a second to listen. No sound
was audible. All was still as death, and Roberta who was going
on in front turned round in time to catch a glimpse of the scared
white face of her friend as she hurried on after her to their joint
sleeping apartment on the floor above.
" What's the matter, Helen ? You look as if you had seen a
ghost."
" Nothing's the matter. I am very tired ; we are so late," replied
Miss Evans, " do make haste and get to bed."
" I suppose Mamma is a lot better," remarked Roberta, " or
some one would have been sitting up with her, and there was no
light under the door; I looked specially to see."
" Of course she's better," says Miss Evans, irritably. " Why,
she seemed fairly well yesterday evening, didn't you say?"
" Well, but you saw her last, Helen ; didn't you think she was
going on all right?"
" How can you say I saw her," snapped Miss Evans. " Why, I
only just put my head in at the door, and that lamp gives no light."
" Oh dear, how cross you are," yawned Roberta, " do get to bed
and put the light out, I can hardly keep my eyes open."
Roberta tumbled into bed and almost before her head touched the
pillow she had sunk into the deep sound sleep of tired un-
troubled youth.
Not so Miss Evans; she could not rest, her ears were ever on
the alert to detect the slightest sound. At one time she fancied
she heard footsteps in the room below. Some one seemed to be
pacing up and down, then, what was that? a moan, then silence.
THE STORY 107
Of course everything was all right! She must forget that inci-
dent of the medicine! think of it as a dream, and in course of
time it would become one. In any case if the dose had done its
worst there was no proof against her! There could be none!
She was safe! quite safe! She had better get to sleep. But she
did not blow the light out, she left it to flicker and die down, and
when the darkness came she lay and trembled longing for the dawn,
but she could not sleep.
A cart came slowly rumbling through the Square. Then more
sound of wheels, then she heard the milk man deposit his can at
the door, but still no one stirred in the house! Yet it must be
getting late ! What did it all mean ? Miss Evans got out of bed
and cautiously opened the shutters of the window on her side of
the room and drew up the blind. Roberta was still sound asleep,
but it was broad daylight now, and she saw the postman going his
round on the opposite side of the Square, a few chilly looking
pedestrians were hurrying along as if they feared they were late
for business, but still not a sound in the house! At last a slight
tap came at the door. The hot water, thought Miss Evans as she
called " Come in." But it was not the hot water, it was Varnish
who opened the door and closing it gently behind her, walked
straight up to the window and drew down the blind, ignoring Miss
Evans' alarmed inquiry as to the reason of this unusual pro-
ceeding. Roberta woke with a start, and Varnish who had crossed
the room to her bedside, leant over her with her white drawn face.
"Varnish, what is it? What has happened? Oh, why do you
look at me like that?"
" It's your mar, my poor dear lamb ! Your dear mar ! She's
gone!"
And before many moments had passed, Roberta was sobbing
her heart out in her old nurse's arms, and her half stunned and
dazed youth had made acquaintance with grief and learnt the
bitterness of parting.
CHAPTER XIII
THE STORY
OF the days that followed, the days of drawn blinds and newly
ordered mourning garments, of crape and misery, of hushed voices
and tearful faces, there is little to telL
Mrs. Pascoe had died of an overdose of laudanum ; she had taken
it herself, there was no other possible explanation. Instead of
ringing for Varnish or one of the servants she had poured out the
fateful dose with her own hands mistaking the quantity. Her
brothers, however, never very amiably disposed to their brother-in-
law, openly accused him of neglecting their sister and added to the
general unhappiness by refusing" to attend the funeral.
Poor Mr. Pascoe utterly worn out and miserable was sitting
alone in the library on the evening of the day when the last rites
had been performed and finis written large over his twenty years
of married life. His thoughts travelled back to the day when lie
had brought his happy bride of nineteen home to this very house.
How well he remembered it all now ! All she said and did. How
delighted she had been with the house and its possibilities, and
how the transformed schoolgirl had played at being the dignified
married woman, and oh, how happy they were together. Then how
the years had passed and the children come, and how the glamour
of those early days had gradually faded into prosaic everyday life,
with a growing complaint of constant ill-health on his wife's part
that he reproached himself now with never having taken -seriously
enough. Perhaps had he been more gentle and patient with Caecilia
who knows but that all this terrible tragedy might never have hap-
pened ! Yes, his mind was quite made up, he would write that letter
at once! He would do it now, now that it was all too late! lie
would follow out her last and often reiterated wish, and send in his
resignation to Somerset House! By doing so he would forfeit his
right to a pension in the future, and lose his employment in the
present. But had he any real need of either? All he touched had
turned to money, and he was a rich man ! As for employing his
time there would, could be, no difficulty about that! so without giv-
ing it another moment's consideration, Mr. Pascoe sat down at his
writing table and wrote the letter that was to sever his connec-
tion with Somerset House for ever.
108
THE STORY 109
An hour or so later his old friend Mr. Stowe looking in to inquire
how it fared with him, found him sitting sadly before the fire with
his schoolboy son on his knee, and was duly informed of the
decisive step he had just taken.
" You see it was her last wish, Stowe, and it is some sort of con-
solation to me to carry it out."
His friend stared at him as if he thought he must have taken
leave of his senses.
" Yes ! of course I quite understand your feeling, but under the
circumstances, Pascoe, it would be madness! Sheer madness to
throw up your post ! Think of your family, you have no right to
run such a risk, at least wait and see."
"What circumstances and why should I wait? What do you
mean? I can't see where the madness comes in?" And Mr.
Pascoe looked completely bewildered.
" Why, how can you risk giving up a salaried employment now,
Pascoe? You can't tell yet awhile if anything at all will be saved
out of the smash. You don't know yet how you may be situated ! "
"But what smash?" inquired Mr. Pascoe. "I know of none."
"Why, the big smash in the City, of course. MacCorquodale's
Bank, your bank has burst up, is suspended, the money is gone!
Why, the papers are full of it ! "
" I have not looked at a paper since all this trouble," said Mr.
Pascoe, glancing at the pile of unopened Times that had accumu-
lated on his table. " But Moss would never have left me to hear
of it first from the newspaper, he would have been certain to write.
Absolutely certain ! "
Then it was that Eustace John raising his head suddenly from
his father's shoulder where he had been resting half asleep, worn
out by the emotions of the long trying day, remembered about the
letter that Cooky had brought for his father the night he went
for the doctor. He, Cooky, had said there was a smash in the City
and that that letter was from his big brother to tell about it, and
they had put it in the letter box and rung the bell without waiting for
any one to come. On his return he had asked about it, and Gracey
had told him that she had seen the letter in the box with " Im-
mediate" on it and had taken it straight up to the library, and
not finding her father there had laid it on his writing table in the
most conspicuous place she could think of, after which all recol-
lection of the letter had been banished from both their minds by
that night of misery and death. There it lay exactly where she
had placed it, but hidden by the stack of un-read newspapers that
an unobservant servant had heaped on the top of it.
110 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Mr. Pascoe read the letter now, and from it he learnt of the
great crash in the City that would in all probability rob .him of the
whole of the fortune the. Heliconides had brought him, and make it
imperative that no such step as retiring from Somerset House
should be taken. His future would have to be remodelled, but on
far different lines to those he had been contemplating an hour
ago. He ought to remain in harness, there could be no doubt about
what! All the same he decided to send the letter he had written
containing his resignation, and strange to say found a certain
relief in contemplating the changed aspect and uncertainty of his
monetary outlook in the future.
CHAPTER XIV
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
MY father had been in the house half-an-hour when I arrived,
and the fact that he was looking just like himself had impressed
Varnish, who came to meet me at the door, very favourably. She
evidently thought that the identity of one who goes to the City
and meets news of his insolvency might suffer in the process. He
had not said anything, but it was known when he went away in the
morning that he was going first to the City, and later to Somer-
set House to resume his ordinary routine work. I found that my
sisters shared Varnish's impressions, and in fact that a sort of
provisional optimism prevailed in the household a kind of jury-
mast to the ship of Hope, to keep her under way till she could sight
port, or meet a tug-boat. There must have been a thread of mis-
giving in the sailcloth, for I caught a hysterical undertone in my
sisters' hopefulness, when I came to hear their confirmations of
Varnish.
I considered that, as my father had taken me so far into his
confidence the evening before, I might presume to apply to him for
first-hand information. I had my doubts about my claims to it,
but no harm could come of asking.
I knocked at his door, and in answer to, "Who's that?" replied,
"It's me." To which the answer was: "Then me had better
come in, and not hold the door open. Come in, Scaramouch ! "
By the time I was in I had forgotten the form in which I had
arranged my catechism, and it worked out crudely as: "I say,
Pater, what was up? " I daresay this was really more to the point.
Anyway, information was forthcoming. My father repeated,
"What was up! What next?" as much as to say, " This it is to
have a promising son, and this is modern education." But he
continued : " I suppose we mean what was up in the City? Well,
what was not up was shares in a certain Bank, which has burst
up nevertheless. So I suppose the Bank itself is up though the
shares are down."
I believe I was impressed, although I showed it in a strange way,
saying merely. " Hookey ! " after a moment of appalled silence.
My father said, "And then one's offspring says 'Hookey!' as one
compelled to accept a new and outlandish expression under protest.
Ill
112 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Well." ho added, a serious sadness showing itself through his half-
joking tone, " Poverty is an evil but we must hope. At any rate
we shall always have a roof over our heads. And " still more sadly
" your mamma will know nothing about it." It was this speech
of my father that made me first alive to the gravity of the position.
I doubt, however, if at that time 1 ever grasped it fully.
These were the days of the unprotected shareholder, before the
passing of Limited Liability into, law. It is hard now, almost, to
believe that at one time the whole brunt of the collapse of a
joint-stock undertaking might fall upon a solitary individual; in-
somuch that every shareholder made himself liable for the whole
of its debts, if his fellows all proved insolvent on winding up.
I believe I am not overstating the case in theory, though I do not
know whether such a thing ever actually happened in practice as
the liquidation of a bankruptcy out of the pockets of one share-
holder, all the others making their escape through the Bankruptcy
Court. 1 can remember vaguely how a change in the law some
years later was followed by a storm of reckless speculation as
soon as investors knew that their liability went no further than
their paid-up contributions. I never mastered the whole sub-
ject, and it may be I am now writing this to gauge my under-
standing of it. Indeed, what other object can I have? I do, how-
ever, know this much, that the insolvency of MacCorquodale,
Boethius, and Tripp left my father, who had bought up most of the
shares, with practically nothing but my mother's settlement money
to live upon, except of course his own earnings after the affair
was wound up. 1 cannot even feel sure that his year's salary, much
of which was actually earned after the Bank suspended payment,
was not impounded for the benefit of the depositors. To the best
of my recollection it came out that Mr. Boethius had quietly parted
with all his own holding was in fact no longer a shareholder,
though he continued in the position of a salaried manager, at a
lucrative salary. His great business abilities could not be dis-
pensed with. Perhaps he took alarm at his partner, Mr. Tripp's,
reckless gambling on the turf, and indeed at Monte Carlo and
elsewhere. Anyhow, he continued a monument of Solvency. Mr.
Tripp disappeared, I believe, having provided a resource for his
family in the shape of diamonds for his wife, on which the hungry
eyes of defrauded creditors were fixed in vain. But I am really not
able so this attempt shows me to fill out the particulars of this
great failure. 1 only know how ruinous its effects were, and how
my father's opulence was changed by it to what was relatively
poverty.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 113
I think the milliner's bill for all that mourning, seeking a cash
settlement on delivery, was the first awakening we and perhaps
my father himself had to the full seriousness of the position. I
can well remember my sister Ellen applying to him for the
amount, and his saying, "Oh yes how much is it?" and auto-
matically, from old habit, taking out his usual MacCorquodale
cheque-book, and almost beginning to write in it. Then of his
abruptly stopping with the exclamation: "No use now I No use
at alll" 7 understand, but Ellen, who was not very clever, said,
"Why, papa dear, have you no money at the Bank?" before she
saw what was wrong. Hy father leaned his head a moment on
his hand; then said, with more heartbreak than I had heard in
his voice before : " I shall have to use your mamma's book." She
had had a separate account with another bank, but he had signed
for her by arrangement for some time past, as a matter of con-
venience. This was probably the first time he had drawn on it
for a debt properly his own. I am far from certain that he had, as
it was, any legal right to do so. But I can only give the facts as I
recollect them. 1 cannot vouch for anything but crude memories,
fifty years old.
I fancy he would have had to borrow for current expenses had it
not been for this fund, which would not have been available but
for the double signature. Even as it was, I have a recollection that
my uncles, acting as my mother's trustees in the course of what
my father called the seiilementeering which followed, endearoured
to compel him to pay back this amount into the settlement fund.
My father replied to them, perfectly correctly as I believe, that my
mother's pocket money belonged to herself, not to her trustees.
But Uncle Francis may have been legally right.
If it had not been for the peculiar attitude of my uncles and
their mother about my father's management of my mother's case
which might have been connected with a blood-feud, so demon-
strative did they become over it the settlementcering might not
have assumed so vicious a form as it did later. Where there is
goodwill among all the parties to a settlement, their affairs may
be managed almost as well as though no settlement had ever been
made; but where trustees utilize it as a means towards the lacera-
tion of co-trustees or cesfui-qui-trusls and we are all human, and
not to be trusted with power settlementeering ensues. I hope that
I am not uncharitable in the belief that my Highbury relations
for I include the old lady turned my father out of his house to
avenge his imputed neglect of my mother. In any case they might
have deferred the decision of the matter until it was known what
114 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
my father's income was going to be, instead of hurrying on to
outstrip the accountants who were getting the affairs of the Bank
tidy, to make a good show when the final winding-up came. As it
was my Uncle Francis contrived to get a very high bid for the
unexpired lease of the house within two months of my mother's
death, and he engineered this offer and his responsibility to the
Lord Chancellor in such a way that.my father's sensitive conscience
forced him to assent to an arrangement that his reason mistrusted.
Moreover, he had little choice, for my uncle " pointed out " to
him that though he was treating the house as his own, it was in
no sense his property, but that of the trustees, who were entitled
to keep it or sell it, for the benefit for its inmates of course, just
as much as consols : standing in their name. As for whether he
remained on as tenant, that would " rest with the purchaser." This
came by letter, for my uncle had refused to meet my father " for
the present."
My father, I believe, wrote back to the effect that if the trustees
provided a cheaper substitute for the house, all costs of removal
considered, their position would be a justifiable one. He doubted
he said whether the Lord Chancellor would at all approve of
the arrangement without such a condition attached. He knew that
dignitary formerly at Cambridge, and had always accounted him of
sound mind. But of course his Chancellorship had since then
had a legal education. My uncle's countercheck quarrelsome to
this was that if my father " desired an official application to the
Chancellorship " he would " promote it to the best of his ability."
But he " had to remind " my father, that the offer for the lease
would only hold good for a limited period; terminating, as it did,
next Easter, namely, "the 27th prox"; I remember this, because
I rejoiced so at the Easter holidays coming so early. We were
then near the end of February.
If my Uncle Francis had not, maliciously as I think, precipitated
this disposal of the Mecklenburg Square lease, it is more than pos-
sible that the house would have remained in my fathers possession.
The final settlement of his affairs, a twelvemonth later, would have
warranted his offering my mother's trustees an equivalent for
what the sale brought, although he might have had to let part of
the house to cover it. He was, however, at the time of the sale,
under the belief that he had renounced his salary as a Government
employee, and indeed this seemed warranted, for had he not written
his resignation and received a formal acknowledgment of it ? What
better evidence could he havel
Nevertheless Somerset House did not lose his services, nor he
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 115
its salary, for a long time after. My only clue to the why and
wherefore of this, at the time, was a conversation I overheard be-
tween him and an official colleague who came one evening, and
talked with him long and earnestly, dissuading him from his
resignation, which, as it appeared, had not been accepted with
avidity; had in fact been pigeon-holed, and had not resulted, so
far, in the appointment of a substitute. I overheard it because
when this gentleman who was a Sir, and whose name was Brang-
wyn or Brathwayt glanced at me as I sat reading, deeply en-
grossed in the last number of Bleak House, my father said,
''Never mind the boy if you don't?" and he replied, "I don't."
So the boy remained, and what he has become remembers frag-
ments of the conversation, as thus :
" Your friend's eyes are very queer why doesn't he have them
seen to? It's a surgeon's job. What did you say was his
name?"
" I called him Scritchey just now. He always calls me Strap.
But his real name is Stowe. Alfred Stowe. We were boys at
school together. He made money coffee-planting in Ceylon. He's
a partner in Stacpoole's now. the picture-auction people."
" Well, he was very much concerned about you. Came straight
to me after you told him why "
" Yes, I know "
" why you were doing it, and said he was certain you were not
yourself, and that it would be most unfair to accept your resigna-
tion."
" I was myself."
'* Perhaps, but how was I to know it? I said, it didn't lie with
me to accept or reject, but that I wished it did, because I for one
should miss you at the Office."
" Thank you, Sir Jim." said my father and shook hands with
the gentleman, who continued :
" Mr. Stowe was very earnest that I should keep back your letter
as long as possible, and communicate with you again as late as
possible, before passing it on to Dalrymple. I saw that he was
reasonable, and have done so. Now, the question is "
" The question is do I adhere to my decision ? The answer is
Yes, I do ! "
" My dear Mr. Pascoe, do let me appeal to you. I respect your
motive, Heaven knows, and can appreciate it. But will not your
promise to "
"My wife? "
" be fulfilled just the same if you throw up the place this time
116 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
next year? Come now, be reasonable! Come to the Office for
another twelvemonth!"
"Six months!"
"Well make it a compromise! Go on to the end of the year.
. . . All right I very well then, let it go at that ! . . . Oh no !
I'm not fancying you'll change your mind. Nothing of the
sortl" And then Sir James whatever-he-was changed the subject,
and presently departed.
I can understand from this conversation exactly how my father's
connection with the Inland Revenue remained unchanged until the
Christmas following. Why he did, after all, change his mind, and
remain in office indefinitely; I did not know until long years after.
I shall have to record it in its proper place, if I carry out my
scheme of writing all I can recollect, to be read by my Self alone.
So I need not write any more about it here.
At this point my memory furnishes me with something to dwell
upon with pleasure my first experience of the joys of house-
hunting. My uncle and the new lessee of our old house had this
much grace of courtesy in them left that is Tennyson, I think
that they left us in possession till Michaelmas. But it was no
use searching for a new domicile till my father had a more definite
idea what his resources were going to be. He was convinced before
midsummer that they were going to be so restricted that sixty
pounds a year would be our maximum figure for rent. This was
a very different thing though, in those days, from what it is now.
London rent has doubled, or nearly, since the early fifties.
House-hunting is like opium eating, or dram drinking. It
begins so very modestly, and takes possession of its victim so in-
sidiously. The sportsman who starts in the morning hoping to
bring down an eligible sparrow at most, comes back in the eve-
ning having spent his ammunition on impracticable elephants. He
dutifully examines one or two shanties well within his means,
goes through a form of counting the bedrooms and measuring the
sitting-rooms, and makes a legal entry almost of the landlord's
name and address on a clean page in his notebook. Then he goes
his ways and forgets them heartlessly, in favour of one very
nearly the same shape, that recommends itself less offensively to
the sanitary nose. These too he discards as the poison enters into
his system, and he loses eight of his rent-limitations in view of
an abstract truth that there is no harm in seeing any particular
empty house; therefore let him have a look at it while he's there!
The first shanties are merely the slow introduction to a symphony
those very deliberate notes far apart that almost seem an insult
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 117
to the crude musical understanding that does not know what a
magnificent chaos of harmonies and discords they portend as
soon as the composer's concessions allow their executants to get the
steam .up. The really brilliant movement begins on the house-
hunter's side of the metaphor when he first flings rent to the
winds, and admits the poisonous idea that you must look at a
thing of this sort all round. The meaning of this is not apparent
on the surface to Inexperience; those who know will at once asso-
ciate it with schemes for taking a house twice as large as you
want, and letting half of it at the full rent, so that the whole affair
will " stand you in " just merely the rates and taxes and repairs.
But to enjoy a castle-in-the-air of this sort to the full needs an
enlarged mind, a mind saturated with premises; each example, or
set, or congeries which ought it to be? at least half as large
again as its predecessor. Then you can look at it all round.
I was not privileged to share in all the delights of the many
inspections of tenements suited for our occupation in every respect
but one. I did not see the villa at St. John's Wood whose garden
would have paid for itself, nor the f ourteen-roomed house at Ken-
sington whose rent was so ridiculously moderate, till it was con-
victed of being merely the ground rent by a revelation that the
premium was fifteen hundred pounds, vouched for as a low one by
an agent my father was weak enough to interview. Nor the cot-
tage that really might have been built for us, near Hampstead;
only the builder had chosen the wrong side of Hampstead, and it
turned out that his idea of proximity was two miles. It was nearer
Hendon, and he seemed to consider it a mere matter of senti-
ment which of the two you said. "'Ampstead and 'Endon," said
he, " are not so far apart in theirselves, if you come to that."
Neither suburb was in a position to throw stones, according to
him. Still, it was a pity it was so far from my school, and from
Somerset House. For my father continued to quote Somerset
House as a factor in the problem; and I, ascribing this to a mere
readiness to use it as an engine in argument against my sisters
who did not know what I did of that resignation business
appreciated what I thought was his anxiety that I should not be
spirited away to a place full two hours' journey from my school.
Indeed, this was what stood for some time between us and his
final decision about the house near here that we finally came to
occupy.
It was of course my school that prevented my sharing in the
pleasures of the chase to the full that is to say, house-hunting.
But on half-holidays I developed into a perfect Nimrod. I infected
118 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Cooky Moss with my enthusiasm; and our excursions every
Wednesday and Saturday afternoon must have covered on an
average twenty miles of roadway in London and the suburbs every
week.
It was after such an excursion that he and I, having exhausted
Wimbledon Common and Putney as residential neighbourhoods,
found ourselves walking back along the King's Koad, Chelsea, on a
glorious summer evening. In those days you could walk from
Putney to Chelsea through fields all the way, by keeping off the
road a little. Putney still was, and Chelsea was almost, in the
country. I can recall now how we rested at Eelbrook Common, and
what the hay smelt like. If I had not given up see supra et
passim that problem, my Self, I might try to make out why it is
that I can lie here and think of my mother's death, almost of any
death, quite calmly; but as I remember the smell of that hay, in
those fields that evening, I feel as though my heart would bear
no more would break outright and give me my release. So much
the better, granting bona fide Death no shuffles about Immortality?
Misgivings creep into my mind, as into the Prince of Denmark's.
I must needs feel the same as I write the rest. It is all very
vivid to me, by some chance. Again as I think it through, Cooky
jumps to his feet exclaiming, " This won't do, young feller. Six
o'clock! Legs!" which was a brief exhortation to walk. I can
even note that in following his lead I am caught by a briar, and
have to disengage it with care from my trousers before I can
start to catch him up. Then we got under way in fine pedestrian
style, and do not pause until we have got well past Cremorne, of
which we took no notice, as indeed we knew nothing about it, nor
for that matter of anything else in the neighbourhood.
Just beyond the kink of the road, that must have been caused
by some antediluvian pond, Cooky was brought up short by a 4< to-
let " notice over a gateway on the left. It announced the existence
of an eligible bijou residence with a quarter-of-an-acre of garden
and a coach-house.
"Look at it, or not?" said Cooky, who always treated me with
great decision, to correct a corresponding defect in my character.
" Say which ! "
" Dinner ! " said I. I left the word by itself, and went on : " But
we could just walk down and look at it."
" Bother dinner," said my friend. " Let's go down the lane and
see what's to be seen."
The lane was lined with trees on either side, elm and chestnut,
and was entered through a swing-gate as a private carriage-way,
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 119
shared by two or three residences at the end. The gravel pathway
made a circle between them, round some larger older elms, to make
turning room for things on wheels. At the end on the left, unseen
at first, was a garden open to the roadway, except for chains on
posts, that hardly counted, and its owner certainly deserved the
rich crop of peas that were helping the universal scent of hay in
the kitchen-garden behind, if only for having planted the standard
roses on the smooth bit of lawn in front. However, it was not our
business, any more than the house on the right or its large garden
in the rear, or the meadow beyond the fence at the end, or the two
fallow deer actually fallow deer ! that were browsing in it. Be-
yond it were big trees in some private park or garden.
" I say, Cooky/' said I, " this is just exactly the sort of place
for us." I had hardly yet set eyes on the house itself barely
glanced at it.
" We had better have a look at the diggings themselves first,"
said Cooky, bent on sobriety and reason. So we went and stood
at the gate of the eligible bijou residence, and looked. " I suppose
we may go inside if the gate's open," said he. We did, anyhow.
The house such at least was my impression laid claim to the
name bijou chiefly because of certain verandas on the ground floor,
in which wood-trellis, curvilinear fretwork, and a graceful dip in
the lead roof combined towards an ornate character. Otherwise,
Taste seemed to have kept her distance; unless indeed a mermaid
that had climbed up on a plaster bracket to blow a horn had been
egged on by her to do so.
We did not at first know where a voice came from an old old
voice saying : " What do you two young gentlemen want ? It
can't be here." Then we saw that an old, old man was speaking to
us through a funny little grating over the letter-box.
Cooky acted as prolocutor. " This boy's Governor," said he, " is
looking for a house, and we thought this might do."
The old man shook his head, still looking at us through the
grating, and said : " You are too young to inspect premises, I'm
afraid."
" This boy's Governor," said my friend, " sends him first to
look, then comes himself. Where's the card, Buttons?" This
meant my father's card, which he always made me carry on these
excursions as a kind of talisman before which locks and bars
would give way, and conviction would reach the souls of care-
takers. I put it through the grating into the trembling finger-
tips of the old boy, and hoped it would appeal to him, somehow.
It did, ultimately.
120 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
He seemed to read it a good deal before his cracked old voice
came again : '" Mecklenburg Square Mecklenburg Square ! Why
does your father want to leave his big house in Mecklenburg
Square? He wouldn't have any room here. Look at the size of
it ! " He pushed the card back through the grating for me to take.
Acceptance of it would close negotiations perhaps, and I didn't
want that. I have often thought how much may have been hanging
at that moment on the simple issue could the interview be pro-
longed, or not?
I prolonged it by a heedless frankness, whose efficacy surprised
me then, being a boy. It does not now. I said : " Because my
mother's dead and the house has to be sold. My governor says we
could do with a lot smaller house. I say, Sir, do let us see inside."
The card made concession, withdrawing into the house, and the
door was slowly opened. u I'll show you the house, my boy. Do
you know why?" I said no, and Cooky said no. "Then I'll tell
you. I'll show you the house because of why I'm giving it up. It's
the same as your father. My wife is dead, and I have to go. We
lived here fifty years. The house was new when we came. Come
through into the garden and see the fig-tree I planted. Fifty years
ago!"
We followed him straight through the house and a greenhouse
into the garden. It was a lovely garden, and stretched away to a
high hedge with a road beyond, and haycarts. at a standstill at a
roadside pothouse. I saw a carter's head and hands and a quart-
pot above the mountain of hay that hid his residuum. He had been
too lazy to get down for his drink.
There was the fig-tree, sure enough, doing well. I am afraid boys
are a cold-blooded race, for the impression it produced on me
was that it would be a fine asset for an incoming tenant, pre-
ferably my father. We could, however, enter freely on admiration
without analysis of its motives, and did so.
But the old man reserved complete assent. " It isn't what it
was," said he. ." It was open country then. All built up now
all built up!" He looked towards the backs of new houses that
were asserting themselves crudely along the King's Road. They
did not trouble us.
He took us into the house and showed us the rooms. Everything
was in its place, as though there were no lack of use for them
all in good order. Yet the old man seemed alone in the house, at
the moment. " I have not allowed them to move anything," said he.
" Nothing will be touched till I go." He hung fire a little at one
door, which was locked, then opened it saying : " My wife's room
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 121
our room. Fifty years ! no ! look in and see it." For we hung
back a little. Then he showed us the small coach-house and
stable-yard, empty. He had sent the horse and trap away, he said,
but his coachman's wife came in to do for him. That ended the
inspection. He said : " There, boys ! now you've seen it. Tell
your father, if he comes to see the house, not to go to the agent.
I would sooner show it him myself. Tell him it's small." He
seemed anxious that my father should not make a journey under
a misconception, but for all that to hope he would come. Being
a boy, I only half read his feelings. I can quite understand them
now.
" He's in Somerset House, my father is," said I. " He can't
always get away. Might he come late in the afternoon?"
"Why shouldn't he come on Sunday morning?" said the old
gentleman.
" He'll come, fast enough," said I. It was what I wanted, on
my father's behalf. " It's Nebuchadnezzar's Sunday today," I
added, looking at Cooky, and puzzling the old gentleman out of all
reason. So I explained : " Because he's a Jew, you see, and that's
why we call him Nebuchadnezzar." Whether I was intelligible
I do not know, but it was clear that my father was to come on
Sunday, and that the old boy was, for some reason not quite cleared
up, rather pleased that he should do so.
Cooky and I threshed the subject out as soon as we were under
way again. But discipline demanded that neither of us should
show human feeling, for it is unmanly to do so. I broke silence as
we crossed Church Street not before. " What a rum old bird ! "
said I.
" Wasn't he a rum old bird ! " said Cooky.
" I say, Cooky " I began, tentatively.
"What's your idea?" said he. "Because I've got one."
*' Why don't you see well, it was rum, wasn't it now, to let us
in all over the house, when the board said distinctly go to the
agent ? "
" Well, no ! on the whole, now I come to think of it, I don't
think it particularly rum. Because of what you said!"
"About my Governor?"
" That was my idea. Because it was like ! "
" Awfully like, wasn't it ? " Both our voices dropped over this
enigmatical interchange, whose meaning was perfectly clear to
both of us. The word awfully had, however, no kinship with the
subject, being as usual a mere expletive to intensify the exact
likeness of the two bereavements, the rum old bird's and my
122 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
father's. It seems to me now that they were singularly unlike in
all respects had nothing in common but the main fact, widower-
hood. But our incoherence, as boys, was purely intellectual.
Morally, our view was quite sound and healthy. Details of how,
where, and when a mate's place in the nest is left empty are as
nothing against the one great fact of the void that is left, whether
it be in the heart of old birds or young.
CHAPTER XV
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
So that old man and his wife who was dead and gone, had lived
in that house for thirty-seven years when I forsook a harmless non-
existence for an equivocal humanity, thirteen years before. Did
they snap and bicker, I wonder those two? I received the im-
pression that they had not done so. But does not the survivor,
quenched and gentle after collision with Death, always give that
impression? Who would have guessed, to hear my father talk of his
life with my mother, that such a thing as a family jar had ever
existed? I detect no hypocrisy in it; indeed in my father's case at
least, it was honest delusion.
Before I came into this Infirmary since which time I have been
bedridden, or something very like it I always availed myself of the
liberty of my walks out in the neighbourhood to prowl down The
Retreat, as my old home was called ; for now it became to me my
old home, as then it was old Mr. Wardroper's. That was his
name; and though it seemed an improbable one to my youthful
mind and really I thought at the time that he must be mistaken
about it it now strikes me as the only name he could rationally
have had. The last time I saw the place I wondered what he
would feel if he could come back to life and the sight of it.
For though it remained then an oasis in the desert of bricks
and mortar that grew and grew throughout the whole of our occu-
pancy, the signs of its approaching doom were upon it. The en-
trance gateway swung helpless on one hinge and it seemed no one's
business to repair it. The lane was defiled with filth and dis-
carded journalism, and the trees were dead or dying. The gardens
remained, but a weed familiar to me that I never knew the rijrht
name of had overrun them, and the standard rose-trees were things
of the past, though I detected a stick trying hard to pretend it
had been one a stick with prongs, tied long ago with bass to a
stick without yes, tied by a real gardener. Our house was no
longer there, but traces of it appeared in the structure of two
smaller houses, on its site, one of them inhabited by artists, who had
built a studio on our garden. Where have they not done so, and
who wants the work they do in them? Nemesis had come upon
123
124 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
these, for a giant factory had sprung up and overwhelmed them
and their studio, and even the old retreat for that matter. It
stood this factory on the sites of those intruders old Mr.
Wardroper had felt so sore about ; the new houses that had blocked
the open country out, for him. They had served their turn, been
homes and made memories, and been worked up into their own
weight of factory. Even so old clothes are made shoddy, to re-
appear as Fabrics at Stores and be sold for something-three-farth-
ings a yard, and last quite a long time considering how cheap
they were. I suppose that one day the factory will come down
and make shoddy for flat-builders, who seem to be threatening.
How the old bricks will dream of the days when they were the
walls of domiciles, with a staircase apiece, and cupboards, and
rents that had mercy on the tenants' pockets.
On that day, as I stood and wondered whether the fig-tree the
old forgotten inhabitant had planted survived in the back garden, I
noticed that our old coachhouse-gate was still there, with its two
big globes on piers on either side, but that the coachhouse had gone
to make way for the studio. The gate was half buried in garden
mould at the back heaped up for a border, and shrubs were thick
behind it; and to the front in the road-growth that curious in-
evitable change of level that makes towns seem to be courting
burial; and explains their discovery underground, long ages after
they have been forgotten the grass and weeds were thick, and fungi
were caressing its rotten timbers, and pretending to sympathize
with their decay. This old disintegrating portal over which
Cooky and I saw the announcement that the clean-painted, scrupu-
lously cared for mansion was for sale, brought home to me the
long scores of years I have had to undergo since then, and have
somehow had the heart to live through. Here I am so cut away
from every outward thing connected with my past, such a mere
waif adrift in a current of memory that may at any moment dry
up and leave me a prey to nothingness I resort to nonsense that
tells me my own thought, as and when I choose that it would
be almost more relief than pain to me to see the old gate once
more, a something visible out of the bygone time, a shred of it
to catch at and be convinced of its reality. But I never shall,
for I am to be kept quite still by the doctor's orders, lest I should
get my release one moment too soon. He is much exercised and
interested in the question how long so weak a heart will coun-
tenance its owner's life, when every other function is entirely
sound, and there is no active disease at all to take the initiative
in his extinction. He comes every day to examine it, and talks
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 125
about systolic movements and so on; and, though he shows sur-
prise at my pertinacity, is in earnest in his encouragement of it.
I think he regards me as an instance of temporary immortality,
not warranted by precedent.
I do not talk to him about myself; in fact, I scarcely exchange
a word with any one here, except the Matron. She and I are
very good friends, now, but shall we continue so, if she persists
in suggesting that I should take the blessed Sacrament from the
hands of the Rev. Mr. Carpenter, who attends to the souls of such
of us as seek his ministrations that's the word, I believe? I
have explained to her that I have never been a member of the
Church of England, or of any communion, but she did not seem to
attach any weight to this, nor to what I believed, only saying:
" That's because you dislike Mr. Carpenter, but indeed he's a
very good man." What had that to do with the matter? He was
ordained, I suppose. Miss Ensoll added : " Perhaps you'll like Mr.
Cartwright who is coming instead next Thursday ? He's heterodox
enough, they tell me. I don't think the name's Cartwright though,
I think its Mackintosh." Vagueness about names reached perfec-
tion in Miss Ensoll's mind.
I shall get back to the old gate directly in my writing I mean,
though never in reality but before I do so I like to put on
record why the Rev. Mr. Carpenter and I only say good-morning.
He and I had some talk awhile back, and the good man, to elicit
I suppose whatever of orthodoxy was dormant in my soul, sighed
so to speak over Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels. This
nettled me, on Cooky's behalf. I explained civilly that my oldest
friend, and one of my dearest, had boen an unalloyed Jew, and
must have been doomed to a certainty on those lines. And not
only that, but that my tobacconist in Bond Street, twenty years
back, with whom I was on cordial terms, was an unmistakable Turk,
though he sported a Greek name, while my father was surely a
Heretic if ever there was one. So that I was not unreasonable in
preferring to retain my own Infidelity intact, to have a chance
of seeing one of them again, if it were only Lucas Palingorides.
The Rev. pulled a long face when he found that his schedules of
the damned would include friends of mine, and made concession.
We must hope. After all, were not the mercies of God infinite?
I am afraid my comment on this, u If so, what's all the fuss about ? "
put an impassable gulf between me and Mr. Carpenter. For
though he is good, he has not the brains to perceive that there is
a limit, of his own making, to the mercies of God, as long as we
have any occasion for anxiety. Anyhow, the Rev. and I only say
126 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
good-morning now. And I think it hard on him if he is yearning
for me for I had dragged in the argumentum ab homine, which is
as bad as the argumentum ad hominem on this topic of damnation.
It is a subject that should be kept free from personalities. Per-
fect strangers be damned!
Now as to the old gate. My memory, crossing fifty-odd years
at a bound, finds me approaching it in a hansom cab beside my
father, calling out, " This house on the left," in pursuance of the
usage which makes cabs so very anxious to go exactly to their
destination and not a yard further. So much so that a proud
cab that overshoots its mark will keep you in its jaws while it
revokes, in order to be intensely opposite your destination. It is
professional feeling, and one has to defer to it.
" Big enough for you and one sister-girl," said my father. " But
not for the whole gang." He stopped and left something unsaid,
visibly; something perhaps that would have referred to the gang's
recent diminution, and qualified it. Instead, he half-whistled till
we were admitted by the coachman's wife, still in office till the old
bird's flitting. We walked in and Mr. Wardroper came directly,
fulfilling a pledge she had given, on his behalf.
I felt greatly relieved to see my father's gradual conversion to a
belief in the capacity of the bijou residence. He did not admit it,
but I could read his mind well enough to see into his motives when
he disclaimed powers of deciding on the accommodation necessary
for his three daughters, and represented them, as, so to speak, pala-
tial in their ideas, and very exacting in their demands for super-
fluous luxuries. He was really building a golden bridge to retreat
across in case momentary enthusiasms, provoked by unexpected
developments of room-space, should give false hopes either to its
owner or myself. As for me, I was so in love with the place,
that I was quite surprised that my father did not clinch the bargain,
then and there.
I was nearly as much surprised, however, that the old gentleman
said nothing, in my hearing at least, to my father of his own wife's
death. I wonder now, being an old man myself, that I could not
then see what is now so clear to me, that it was far easier for him
to talk of his loss to two raw boys than to any fellow-man. Never-
theless, I believe they did speak briefly of their common sorrow, to
judge of what I caught of their talk when I returned from a
private exploration of the garden; countenanced by both, with
cautions from my father to climb nothing, and keep off the borders.
A very few words supplied at a guess, and the talk I heard runs
thus:
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 127
" I can't say why No ! I can't say why but I should like you
to have it."
" I will write at once to tell you, if it seems out of the ques-
tion. I am rather afraid of my girls, because of the size. But we
must talk it over. They must come and see for themselves."
"But you like the place?"
" Oh yes, 7 like it very much. And the boy is off his head. . . .
Oh, there he is. You like it, Eustace John, don't you?"
My enthusiasm found relief in a scornful tone. " Rather ! "
said I. and my father laughed. The old man smiled a shadowy
smile, not to ignore my father's laugh. But he had something to
say:
" Which side of Mecklenburg Square is your house, Mr. Pas-
coe?"
" North side. Number sixty-four. Did you know it ? "
" Oh yes I knew the Square. But a long while since . . .
yes, a very long while since." His voice implied that it was too
long ago to talk about, for any practical purpose. I felt curiosity,
but my father showed none.
Coming back in the cab, which had waited for us by contract the
supreme being having slept in its recesses while his horse cropped
selections above and below, and dealt with flies in detail my
father damped my ardour. Instead of bursting into a paean over
the bijou residence, he merely said: "Nice little crib!" And
when a report was submitted to my sisters of the accommodation
available at The Retreat, they rose as one young woman, and
protested against its palpable impossibility. Papa was really wast-
ing his time visiting little cottages no one could ever dream of
living in, and there all the while was that delicious place at the
foot of Highgate Hill, which would be snapped up to a certainty
unless opportunity were taken by the forelock, and one might
have added scalped. Of course Chelsea was nearer Somerset House
than Highgate; but when you drove into town, a mile more or
less couldn't matter.
That such an argument as this last could be advanced shows me
now that even at this date, six months after my mother's death, my
sisters were not properly alive to the state of my father's finances.
I suppose that they had been hoodwinked by the spurious appear-
ance of solvency that so often casts a glamour over affairs that are
being wound up. Many a time in my experience have I known
financial desperation in theory to be accompanied by a mysterious
command of ready money in practice. Opulence dies game, I sup-
pose, before Retrenchment begins in earnest.
128 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I have to remind myself constantly that an attempt to write what
one can remember of one's past need not include the discovery
of all its underlying reasons. I was a youngster not fourteen at
that time, and when I ask myself now how was it that our
brougham and its belongings had not vanished months ago, I find
I cannot answer the question. I have a hazy recollection of a
phantom aphorism haunting discussions of the situation, to the
effect that it would cost just as much to give it up as to keep
it on. When I try to remember who uttered it I am altogether at
fault. All I know now is that the reason we had a hansom this time
was that Roberta and Miss Evans wanted the brougham to drive
them to Clapham after Church; and certainly it had carried some of
them to the Highgate Hill discovery the day before. I rather
think it was this luxury which clung to us and refused to be given
up, that was answerable for that view that a mile more or less
didn't matter.
" A mile more or less," said my father at lunch that Sunday,
" doesn't matter when you drive into town. But when you have
nothing to drive in, you don't drive into town." He addressed
Ellen, Gracey, Mr. Stowe, and Ellen's fiance of whom by-the-by
nothing has been recorded, owing to my recollecting so little of him.
But his name was Wicking, and there are no two ways of recollect-
ing a name like that.
In commune with my Self, I have decided that I am quite
justified in forgetting even the little I have retained about
Wicking. Surely if there is one person more than another one has
a right to forget, it is a young man with too little hair brushed
too tight over his head, who was attached to one's elder sister fifty
years ago, but who came off, owing to some unsoundness in the
attachment. I claim the right to forget Wicking to the full extent
of my powers, more especially as he did not shine when detached.
He had contrived so my recollection runs to force all the respon-
sibility for that operation on my father. However, I am sure it was
a let off for Ellen, Varnish said he was a riddance. For all that,
I wished I had been big enough to thrash him. If it had been
Gracey I really believe I should have made the attempt.
Mr. Stowe laughed aloud in derision at my father's implied
renunciation of the brougham. " What's the next article, Strap,
my boy?" said he. "What shall we knpck off next? Blankets,
counterpanes, pillows, animal food, boots and shoes? Give it a
name. Which is it to be ? "
" The whole of the articles you have enumerated, Mr. Stowe,"
said my father, with an assumed sententiousness, " belong strictly
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 129
to the category of the necessities of life, so called. Broughams
nothing of this sort pass the mustard." These last words all ran
together, reinforcing meaning by a sudden change of style.
" Don't be in a hurry ! " said Mr. Stowe, who was helping him-
self. " Directly. Wait till I've done with the pot. . . . Now we
can pursue the subject. Be good enough to observe that the man
who goes in cold blood to live in a suburb, when his vocation is at
Somerset House, has to be carried to and fro, or to and not fro, or
fro and not to. The same remark applies to his daughters except
Somerset House. But Farmer and Rogers are further from
Chelsea than Somerset House." He added, in confidence to my
father : " It's all gammon, Strap. You won't have to part with the
brougham. Just you wait and see ! "
" Nor Miss Evans, I hope," said Ellen. " Because if you do
Bertie's temper will become quite impossible, and it's trying enough
as it is. And I shall give up." Ellen always laid claim to being
an overtaxed pivot on which all things turned. Which is a
simile, but not a happy one; for a pivot contributes nothing to
working power, and I am sure my sister was a cypher in the
housekeeping, although her constant declarations that she should
give up seemed to imply the contrary. I am certain none of the
household ever paid the slightest attention to Ellen. Still, her con-
viction remained that the Universe would collapse if her sustaining
power gave out. I despised her at this time, but that was largely
on account of her entichement for Mr. Wicking. I should have
had a low opinion of her in any case as a victim of the tender
passion classing all such as awful idiots but when its object was
per se contemptible, scorn must needs reach its climax, and did
so. In communion with Varnish, aside, I went great lengths in
condemnation of Mr. Thomas Wicking, generalizing freely at his
expense. All gentlemen of independent means and no fixed em-
ployment were sneaks. Wearers of shiny boots with thin soles were
milksops. All habitual bearers of walking canes were stuck-up.
All boobies were snobs, and vice versa. And Mr. Wicking was a
typical offender on all these points. Besides, his trousers were too
tight.
The text of my indictments against this culprit is far clearer in
my memory than any image of the man himself a funny trick
for one's powers of recollection to play! But it so changes that
one of my clearest recollections of him is of his demeanour and
appearance at this same Sunday lunch. He was a very polite
young man with a startled glare, whose eyeglass never stayed in.
It was difficult to resist the conviction that the glare had knocked
130 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
it out. He gave the idea that he was always being taken aback
by a sudden demand on his powers of courtesy; perhaps because of
audible snippets of hesitation that seemed chronic, though they
occasionally took form, as, u I I beg your pardon I " " No, really
Hot on my account ! " " Don't mention it, I beg " " Not of the
slightest consequence, I assure you, 'pon my honour!" disclaimers
which always seemed to improve his position, and confirm it as
that of a very gentlemanly young man. They always got his way
for him, under a specious pretext of readiness to stand out of
yours. I may be wrong in my recollection that he said, as a sort
of grace before meat, "I very seldom touch anything at this time
of day," and looked surprised at every single thing that was offered
to him ; but I am certain of this, that whenever he asked for more,
he waited till no more was coming, and then cried in panic : " Oh,
heaps too much ! thank you thank you ! " But he finished it,
whatever it was.
" Give up Miss Evans," said my father this resumes the con-
versation on previous page " not so bad as that, Nelly ! No, no,
we won't give up Miss Evans. She must be Miss Evans to the
end of the chapter ! "
" Unless she gets married," said both my sisters simultaneously,
and thereupon that fool Wicking put down his knife and fork to
say in his best society manner: "Aha yes! mustn't forget that!
'Tractive young woman under thirty never can tell!" What I
remember specially is his image as he said this, with ten extended
admonitory fingers, deprecating rash condemnations to spinster-
hood; and then picking up his knife and fork again.
" Think so ? " said Mr. Stowe. " Well, I shouldn't wonder, all
things considered. Yes." I wondered what were all the things
to be considered and decided that one must certainly be Miss
Evans's ample crinoline, or rather the yards too many of skirt that
hung on it. Perhaps Miss Evans's hair, of which she was vain,
and the net she kept it in, might be two more things."
" Unless she gets married of course," said my father. And there
ean be no doubt that at the time he meant it. He added after
reflection : " No, no we mustn't compel her to be Miss Evans to
the end of the chapter, against her will."
" Miss Evans isn't under thirty," Gracey struck in, in the in-
terests of Truth. " Miss Evans is thirty-one if she's a minute.
Because her older sister is six years older, and she's thirty-seven.
I know I'm right," added Gracey, flashing into self -justification, to
meet and nip in the bud an incredulity that seemed brewing. That
fool Wicking was shaking his head and saying: " Come, I say, you
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 131
know. No scandal against Queen Elizabeth ! " Which I am certain
meant nothing, in the context.
" Then I shall tell Bertie you said so." Thus Ellen, sotio voce
to Gracey.
" All right. Tell away. I shall say it as much as I like,
Bertie or no Bertie! Thirty-one thirty-one thirty-one!" Thus
Gracey, more sopra than sotto voce, defiantly. For she and Miss
Evans lived in strained relations. It seems singular to me, now,
that thirty-one should be counted an age to justify taunts from
juniors, and a serious drawback in husband-hunting. It was so, in
the middle of last century; and to me, as I think back to it, that
seems the other day.
" Hush, hush children," said my father. " Don't quarrel."
Whereupon the encounter, ended, ostensibly ; but I am sure I heard
Gracey say at intervals, for some time thereafter, " Thirty-one,"
quite under her breath.
The young lady who was or wasn't thirty-one did not reappear
in the afternoon, as she and Bertie stayed where they lunched till
late, only coming back to supper, as dinner was called on Sunday,
because only the potatoes were hot. Then afternoon had ended
and it was evening. After supper, formal comparison ensued be-
tween the Highgate house, seen yesterday, and our new discovery
at Chelsea. I only remember that each of the two prospecting
parties was so besotted about the perfection of its own find that it
would hardly listen to the rhapsodies of the other. In the end,
however, as neither could induce the other to go and see the object
of its admiration, without pledging itself to a counter-visit, it
was arranged that at any rate my sisters and Miss Evans should
be driven over to see The Retreat, and I might sit on the box;
after which, if they condemned the house unanimously my father
would consent to inspect the Laurels, as the Highgate house was
called.
But his visit never came off. For Miss Evans, having seen
The Retreat and decided- in her own mind that it would suit her
down to the ground, became almost hysterically impressed with the
hardships my father would have to undergo, travelling daily twice
over the distance between Highgate and Somerset House. She had
laid a very marked stress, the evening before, on the fact that this
distance was the only blot on the other house's scutcheon, otherwise
flawless. I suppose I had an unsuspicious soul in those days, for
I never saw anything in Helen Evans's growing consideration for
my father, except indeed that it redeemed other faults I ascribed
to her. And I am sure my father saw nothing. However, she began
132 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
dawning upon me a little later. For the time being, her change of
front about the house almost made me forgive her other short-
comings.
Then follow memories of many councils, waverings, and decisions,
each with its affix of my father's face perplexed and anxious, like a
seal on a document. Then a final visit of mine with him to The
Retreat; and then the die was cast. We were to leave the old
home and make new lives in a new one, for worse or better, as might
be. I became alive to the fact that the joys of house-hunting,
choosing of wall-papers, ingenious accommodations of old furni-
ture and extravagant purchases of new, cannot be indulged in
without their counter-sorrow of the old domicile forsaken.
As van after van of goods departed from Mecklenburg Square,
each one leaving behind it its contribution of barren floor and
vacant wall, whose echoes had been dormant for twenty years, and
now revived to startle us, the sadness of its desertion after all those
years of service wound itself about my heart, and I found myself
appealing to my sex to protect me against a choking sensation in
the throat an experience I ascribed to sisters and suchlike, which
I should no doubt have called mawkish sentimentalism if that
valuable phrase had formed part of my vocabulary. Looking back
now, and communing together, my Self and I have agreed to dis-
cern in it the evidence that a sort of development had germinated ;
and to set some store by the fact, small as it is, that I blew my nose
about the discovery of this sensation, having no cold to warrant my
doing so, more than once. Manhood protested, but was I not a
boy?
In due course the last van's greed was satiated, and things my
sisters had prayed might be overlooked stuffed into it by a mis-
taken enthusiasm to be sure that nothing was left behind. The
owner of the van whose name may have been Satterthwaite, as his
card after describing his resources and adding the brief remark,
" Removals," enforced the words, " Personal attention to every-
thing," by a pictorial hand with a cuff, pointing at them took it
very much to heart that my father would not allow him to remove
certain old boxes in what I have called the Chemistry Room. They
included the celebrated box which contained the Heliconides, and
others which had also been opened more than once, but always with
the same result, that despair despair of ever finding appreciators
for their contents repacked them after a brief examination, and
called out for hot water to wash its hands.
It seems to me that I remember the first exploration of these
boxes more clearly now than I remember being able to recall it
THE NAEKATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 133
on any subsequent occasion. When my father, at the dismantling
of the drawing-room, captured the Chinese Buddha and some other
things which had been brought down from them, saying that Free-
man must do the repacking because he took them out, the discovery
of the vases came back to me I am sure of it less clearly than
it does now, as I lie here letting the past mix itself with the
sounds of life without, but putting no stress on Memory, lest some
spurious Mnemosyne should slip in and take her place. Recollec-
tion goes to sleep briskly in childhood and sleeps sound. I awak-
ened mine then with an effort, to bring back that day seven years
earlier, when Pandora's box let the Heliconides loose upon us, and
it remained drowsy. It is more wakeful now, to my thinking. But
I may be mistaken.
Anyhow, Mr. Freeman recollected. If there was a scrap of
noosepaper 'andy, he would undertake to repack these so that the
Queen herself could do no better and you wouldn't think they'd
ever been took out. He often referred to the Throne as a standard
climax, to add emphasis to achievement by imputing to her
Majesty inability, though Royal, to outshine it. He was removing
the Buddha upstairs, when he was held up cut off short by Miss
Evans, who presently received the moral support of Ellen and
Roberta, to counterpoise my father's confirmation from below of
Mr. Freeman's report of his instructions as to the disposal of the
Chinese affair, as his scorn termed it. " 'Wot the guv'nor said
was to re-pack-as-before, or on sim'lar lines. As directed, so I
done. I don't hargue."
The ladies did argue, and over-ruled my father, Mr. Freeman
awaiting decision with a stolid self -subordination that silently con-
demned all handling of the case but his own, reserved. He ac-
cepted the outcome with : " Very well then, that's to be 'eld to !
This here goes back to the van, the others goes in the box." For my
father had compromised with his conscience, which had prompted
him to forestall a possible outbreak of Settlement from my Uncle
Francis by putting back in the box all that came out of it, and
leaving it locked up to be settlementeered at pleasure when he
handed the house over to that impracticable trustee. So Mr.
Freeman reinstated the other contents, and my father locked the
door of the Chemistry Room to baffle Satterthwaite, with whom no
mere instructions had any weight at all when he was, so to speak,
on the war-path; by which I mean at such times as he was strain-
ing after his high ideal of not letting nothing get left behind.
I remember well the last few minutes, after my sisters and Mi??
Evans had departed for Chelsea, where Varnish and Gracey awaited
'134 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
them, when Satterthwaite and his myrmidons, husky and beery in
the twilight for the September day was wearing out consented to
relinquish them goods in the top attic, to admit reluctantly that
in course the Governor knew best if you came to that, ad to go.
Then my father and I were left alone, to say farewell. For me,
farewell to mere childhood; such an easy parting in view of the
coming years, with an insignificant past almost slightingly flung
aside to welcome the resplendent life ahead all its glories taken
for granted! For him, farewell to the house he entered, a happy
bridegroom, more than twenty years ago.
'* Xow, Master Eustace John!" said he, with resolute cheerful-
ness. " One more look from top to bottom, to see all clear and
nothing on fire, and then off we go ! "
"All right, Pater!" said I. I hope I understood a little was
not entirely opaque. I didn't feel at all confident about it.
The garrets were not on fire, clearly. So far good. My father
opened the door of the Chemistry Room, glanced in, and relocked
it. As I recall now, quite plainly, this last peep into my old den,
I wonder why, so many faces of friends and kin having vanished
from me in my long life, I should so often forget outright, when
and where they vanished. Why have I lost them, when I have
kept the Chemistry Room? Memory laughs at my attempts to
understand her.
The next floor below was not on fire, neither. In one of the
rooms, the nursery that seems to me still the nursery of all nurs-
eries, though other rooms elsewhere usurped the name to my knowl-
edge, there lay on the floor Gracey's doll that dropped behind the
wardrobe nine years ago, and had been choking unrescued in
accumulating dust ever since. I did not know it at first, it seemed
so small. I remembered a doll as long as my arm. It was not
so very much longer than my hand now. I wrapped it in a piece of
green paper that was at large, and secured it, conceiving it
humorous to carry it to Gracey and offer it to her for readoption.
What reinforces this recollection is that when Gracey died eight-
een years later, this doll was found among her leavings in the self-
same green paper, on which was written the name it had been
baptized by, and an inscription : " Florindia. Brought away by
Jackey from dear Mecklenburg Square, Sept. 25, 1853."
Neither was the floor beneath on fire. Seeing that my father
checked each floor off in this way, as we left it, I do so too. His
voice fell, but he said it nevertheless as we ended up the sleeping
rooms with the one my mother had died in. Then came his own
room and the drawing-room, neither a prey to the flames, but each
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 135
the home of unaccustomed unnatural echoes, and stamped upon its
walls the grisly stencillings of light, obscured by furniture and
pictures, on a flock paper whose colours had fled in darkness
a distinguished paper that once was new ! And now I know how
my father's mind was going back to the days of its glory; thinking
perhaps, as I have done since in a like case, how hard it is that wall-
paper must see carpet and curtain go, that it started so bravely
neek-and-neck with, and be left to fate; perhaps not even cleaned
with bread, but stripped by unfeeling hands, and taken away in a
builder's rubbish-cart, because the Dust won't countenance it, to
the nearest shoot that money will bribe to accept it.
My father finished his inspection of the house so conscientiously,
that he was not content without glancing into the cellars. Evi-
dently, nothing was on fire. He added to a verdict to this effect,
that it was as well to do it thoroughly while we were about it ; and
then seemed, with a sigh, to make up his mind to go to face the
wrench of actual last departure. I threw the street-door wide
open, letting the last afterglow of the sunset in on the panelled
partition that enclosed the kitchen stairs, and then something
caught my father's eye, as he paused to brush a cellar-soil from
his sleeve. " What's that?" said he, pointing to the angle of the
skirting.
"Only a hole," said I.
" Only a hole ! " said my father. " The crater of Mount Etna
is only a hole. However, this isn't quite so big, certainly. I never
saw this before. How's that ? "
I volunteered an explanation, which I believe was unnecessary,
as the thing was obvious. The base of the skirting had been slotted
by some former tenant, for no purpose that we could see, and to
conceal the slot the oil cloth on the hall-floor had been cut full
and turned up against the skirting over half-an-inch. It had been
left undisturbed whenever the woodwork was repainted for no
one ever disturbs oilcloth and now a straight line of many coats
of paint showed where it had come away.
" Put your finger in, Jackey," said my father. " Exercise due
caution and don't scratch it with nails. See how deep back it
goes." I did so promptly, scorning caution, and showed the depth
on my finger. " What's behind ? " said my father.
"Wood," said I, confidently. And I was right; for an overhead
cupboard had been contrived in the kitchen stair-flight, and I had
touched the side of it. I jumped up and saw that this cupboard was
visible through an opening in the panel above the slot. The re-
moval of a box that we used to call the Private Post Office was
136 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
responsible for this, somehow, but I did not understand why even
Satterthwaite's enthusiasm should have carried away part of the
panel, till my father explained it afterwards.
The box had, when first fixed, been found to project awkwardly
over the hall table where trays paused for in those days lifts
were not so common as now and had been set back into the
panelling, so that the cupboard side had been its back, its own
having been cancelled to make space.
" Stop a bit, young man, and allow your seniors to come," said
my father. He tried to get his stick into the slot between the
cupboard and the perforated panel, but it was too thick. I saw
his object and with juvenile sharpness hit on a device. I folded a
piece of thick brown paper that had come out in the cold from
under the dining-room carpet, and thrust it down the narrow slot,
working it up and down.
" Now feel again," said my father. And I felt again.
" Well," said he, " what do you feel? "
" There's a stiff corner," said I. " It's an envelope. I can't get
it out."
" Look here, Master Jackey." said my father, with interest grow-
ing in his voice, " you run round to Cornick the carpenter's and tell
him to come at once, whether he's at supper or not. And bring his
tools."
" Just let me have another try," said I. " With your knife with
the corkscrew on it." He let me have my way; and with this
corkscrew, which opened like a blade, lengthwise, I managed to
extract a letter through the slot. It rumpled, but it came. I
handed it to my father, who took it saying: " Any more? " It was
too dark where we were, to read the writing. I extracted a second
letter, and then, as no exercise of my brown paper slot-sweeper
produced a third, we started for the nearest cabstand.
There could be no doubt of what had happened. The Private
Post Office had been a depository of letters for the Public Post,
to be carried to the nearest Office by Anybody, next time Anybody
went out. It was open at the top; so that Anybody, when he
fished out its contents, might easily have helped a letter or two
into the slot below, provided that an accommodating rift existed
in the box-floor above it. There must have been such a rift
else matter passed through matter. Therefore, there was such a
rift. Perhaps the box-floor did not touch the cupboard.
I can understand now why my father took this discovery so easily
at the moment. These two letters were not lost letters that had
never reached their destiny, in which case some awkward revela-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 137
tion might have been in store for him. They were from, not to,
inmates of the house, and to my thinking that made the whole
difference. They had missed being posted every day for twenty
years or so that was all !
I was so undisturbed by this incident that I did not credit it
with any share in my father's whiteness, and almost tremulousness,
as \ve rode home for now The Retreat was to be home nor with
the fact that after we arrived I heard through a thickness of soap-
suds, as I cleared off the last dirt Mecklenburg Square was ever to
bestow on me, an inquiry for brandy for Papa, who seemed quite
dead with fatigue, counter-ordered by his own voice saying:
" No no ! I shall be all right. No brandy ! " I put everything
down to the mere strain and stress of the day, except what my crude
perceptions detected as emotion not a large fraction.
Perhaps if we had not met Nebuchadnezzar round the corner, I
should have been in better form for taking notice. As it was, we
boys were deep in conversation at the moment when my father
first read the directions of these letters by the light of a street-lamp.
It was after that though, not before, that I became aware how
white he had become.
One of these letters my father returned unopened to its writer,
Varnish, who showed it to me. It was to her sister, and in it
I read that the baby was a beautiful child and was to be called
Ellen; the King was going to open the " New Parliament House ";
and Master had spoke very serious to Mr. Freeman, who had
promised to become " a teetotaller/' This last item fixes no date,
because " The Man's " promises of total abstinence were of all
dates; but the other two point to the year 1832. Varnish had
only dated her letter January 21.
Gracey was inquisitive about it, and asked was it an old letter
too? My father replied: "Yes, yes older older! But it was
nothing. And the person it was written to is dead, ages ago."
So Gracey had to suppress her curiosity to know more.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STORY
Is it not Browning who tells us that the charm and beauty of
youth are given us to hide the crudeness of the spirit in its early
years of growth, that were we to look deeper into those frank and
innocent eyes and read the minds of the sweet angelic looking
boys and girls of our acquaintance, we should find ignorance, yes !
but ignorance alone that stood between them and the ideals of the
worst of the Roman Emperors. If you doubt this statement just
take the spirit of any vigorous baby you are acquainted with, and
transfer it into the body of an elderly middle-aged friend of
yours, and you would soon see that Browning knew what he was
writing about.
Now when Mr. Pascoe found that unposted letter written by his
girl wife twenty years previously, and directed to John Emery,
Esquire, Cutch, India, he would have acted more fairly by her, and
certainly as the sequel proved, with greater advantage to himself,
had he burnt it unread. Jack Emery why, of course, he recollected
him perfectly well now. A handsome young fellow, a playmate of
Caecilia's in her childhood! Went to India, accepted an appoint-
ment in a bad climate, no prospects to speak of, had to take what
turned up, and later on married a begum. But what on earth
could Csecilia have been writing to him about ! And Mr. Pascoe
broke open the sealed envelope and unfolding the yellowing pages,
read as follows:
JACK,
I am married ! It is done! And I feel I ought not to be writing
to you at all, but I said I would and I shall keep my promise. And
you must keep yours my poor, dear, darling Jack, and not answer
this letter, and never, never write to me, or see me again. I shall
always love you deep clown in my heart, and don't blame me, dear-
est old Jack, papa did it ! He simply ordered me to give you up.
I had no choice. I could not do any differently. You know how
it all was, you know I could not help it!
I am getting on very happily with Nat Pascoe, he is a very good
fellow, but he is not you, that is all I have against him. And I
138
THE STORY 139
have such a lovely home, so now you must forget me, my poor old
Jack, and find a nice rich bride and be happy with her.
Yours still, but for the last time remember,
Your loving CECILIA.
And yet in those far-away days of their courtship, Caecilia had
kissed Nathaniel Pascoe on the lips and sworn to him that he was
her first and only love! . . . And with the reading of that letter
the heart-whole allegiance of twenty long years snapped and broke !
Yet all the same the unfortunate Ca?cilia was the mother of
his children and had been a good and faithful wife to him. Had
she herself in the days of her maturity unearthed the long forgot-
ten letter, the chances are she would have laughed over that episode
of boy and girl love, and forgiven herself her act of duplicity
on the score of her youth and immaturity.
CHAPTER XVII
THE STORY
THE garden of The Retreat was very pleasant on that fine
October morning, so thought Miss Evans as she wandered round
with her basket and pruning scissors, intent on a little amateur
gardening; so far there had been no frosts and the roses still
lingered on, great bushes of blue asters, and a few rich coloured
chrysanthemums glowed brightly in the morning sun, yes it was
altogether restful and refreshing.
The move from Mecklenburg Square had been successfully
accomplished, and the family had settled down in their new
home, welcoming the change of surroundings and trusting to
it, and the lapse of time to soften the painful memory of their
mother's tragic end.
Mr. Pascoe had resumed his duties at Somerset House and
was always absent till the evening, Jackey was back at school
again, the two elder girls went their own independent ways re-
senting any interference on the part of Miss Evans, Gracey alone
justifying the presence of a governess in the house, by the few
hours devoted daily to her studies under Miss Evans's tutelage.
Roberta's strong affection for Helen Evans had cooled down
perceptibly, and though they still shared the same room, the
glamour of the friendship had died away, and had Roberta been
older, and better able to analyze her feelings towards her friend,
she would have summed them up in the one word " distrust,"
though why she distrusted her she could not have said.
On this particular morning Helen Evans was feeling satis-
fied and fairly content with her position. She felt that each
day as it passed made her more and more indispensable to the
master of the house. Ellen's attempts at performing the duties
of mistress of the household, though backed energetically by the
faithful Varnish, were never very successful, and her failures
were skilfully commented on by Miss Evans in the hearing of
her father, with the result that Mr. Pascoe entertained a grow-
ing admiration for Helen's powers as a housekeeper.
As for Roberta, her passion for private theatricals which she
shared with her friends, the Graypers, caused Miss Evans, so she
told Mr. Pascoe, great anxiety. But what could she do? She
had no real authority. Mr. Pascoe ought positively to put his
140
THE STORY 141
foot down and stop this craze for perpetual acting. What Miss
Evans feared was, that a girl like Roberta, with no mother to
look after her, might so easily drift on to the stage. And her
father, who had never seen his daughter act, or he would have
been completely reassured on that score, was made very uneasy,
and implored Miss Evans to do all that lay in her power to pre-
vent such a catastrophe taking place. He could not bear the
idea, he said, of Roberta becoming a professional actress ! It
would never do at all ! Something must be done to stop it ! Miss
Evans was absolutely right there; in fact, she always was right
about everything, a perfectly invaluable woman, so thought Mr.
Pascoe. On this particular autumn morning Helen Evans was
feeling decidedly pleased with herself. Her navy blue morn-
ing dress was very fresh and becoming. Her beautiful white
hands were carefully protected by leather gardening gloves, and
as she clipped away at the dead leaves on the rose bushes her
thoughts ran riot. Of course, Mr. Pascoe was no longer the in-
cipient millionaire with the golden doors of wealth opening wide
before him. But, after all, it was very much not poverty, as
Miss Evans knew it. No, decidedly, it was not poverty! With
a brougham and a horse and a coachman and stables, and then
this very charming Chelsea house with its big garden, and a
well set-up household and servants to wait upon one! Things
certainly might be worse, and after all, what had happened once
might it not happen again? Fortunes went up and down, and
occasionally down and up, especially, might this be looked for
with any one like Mr. Pascoe, who had shown such a distinct
genius for money-making; no, it was not so bad, after all! As
for that! . . . Well . . . that episode! . . . She was safe there.
No one had ever so much as asked her a single question on the sub-
ject. She was not implicated in any way! Roberta knew that
she had just put her head in at the door of Mrs. Pascoe's room
on her way downstairs, and that was all. No one in the house-
hold had ever grasped the fact that she had even done that. To
all intents and purposes, she and Roberta had been out of the
house during the whole time of the occurrence yes, she was per-
fectly safe! She had absolutely nothing to fear! She could
put her mind at rest. And Miss Evans's large, dark eyes glanced
up at the pretty house with its vine-covered walls decidedly a
nice house to be mistress of!
At an upper window stood Varnish gazing intently at the gover-
ness, and as their eyes met Helen Evans shivered in the sun-
shine.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
OUR flitting was just before Michaelmas, 1853, so that events
had travelled very fast since the first discovery of The Retreat
by Cooky and myself in the early summer. That any builder who
undertook to complete in a month shouW do so in six weeks shows
that the repainting and papering that was decided on was very
plain sailing, without the ghost of a hitch. No doubt, the good
condition the house was left in, made the work particularly easy.
Though my father's lease was from September, old Mr. Ward-
roper gave up possession in July, and all his belongings were re-
moved to make way for white lead and boiled oil and trestles; and,
as soon as redecoration subsided internally, for our furniture to
quarrel for floor-space among itselves for furniture is intrinsi-
cally plural our turn came. Outside the house three good coats
of stone colour on all work previously painted, and a dazzling green
on the woodwork of the veranda and the iron palings and front
gate took their own time about drying, so as to favour the fourth
good coat. And were so long over it that it looked as if the
builder had not been taken into the confidence of boiled oil before
he submitted his estimate.
None of us saw the old tenant again at that time. The old
boy had screwed himself up to the wrench of moving, as soon
as his granddaughter, a widow lady with one child, could arrange
to take him in. When I saw him again, some two years later,
he looked to be vanishing, as some very old folks do just as though
they might die of a rough handshake, or a loud voice too near
them. But, like many another, he was stronger than he looked,
and lived for many years after that.
My father was interviewed by a grandson-in-law, who seemed
to have the management of affairs, to settle the transfer of the
remainder lease. He looked like my idea of a betting man a
fairly accurate idea as I have since found when I saw him on
the steps at Mecklenburg Square talking to my father after an
interview about the lease. I understood, however, that he was " in
the Law." somewhere undefined. I was coming home from an
exhilarating day spent chiefly on the water at the Welsh Harp,
142
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 143
and only came in for the fag end of the conversation. The visitor
was speaking.
" The reason the old man talks about Mecklenburg Square is
that my wife's sister, Mrs. Addison, lived there with her husband.
Couldn't say anything about which house. Never saw him. Wasn't
in England. Don't know anything about him."
" Mrs. Addison is a widow ? "
" B'leeve so yes, certainly ! Widow of course. Never saw
her husband. . . . Well, you see, I Only married my present wife
three years ago, and then Mrs. Addison was a widow. Wife's
family ! That sort of thing."
My father seemed to accept this as lucid, and expressed no
surprise at this gentleman's unreadiness in family history. But
he said he could not remember any Addison in the Square, and it
was funny, because he thought he had known the names of all the
people who had left the Square in his time. There had only been
Partridge and Fraser and Strachan. And Addison was neither
Partridge nor Fraser nor Strachan. It only showed how little
\ve knew about our neighbours. The gentleman said, taciturnly,
yes, it showed that. And he would have the lease ready by Monday.
And he thought it was working up for a thunderstorm, but he had
an umbrella. Good-evening, Mr. Pascoe!
My father wouldn't let this undiscovered ex-neighbour of ours
alone, catechizing my sisters and Varnish and Miss Evans as to
their memories of bygone residents. But nobody had ever heard
of Addison. Mr. Mapleson held out hopes, being confident that
the party had been misled by the similarity of the name of the
people at number twelve, which he had forgotten, himself. It
turned out to have been Endicott, so from no point of view was
Mr. Mapleson illuminating.
Our retention of the brougham, and its establishment in the
coachhouse at The Retreat was so mixed up with the relations of
my father with his creditors that I never mastered the subject
properly. I always saw in the huge sums that floated about the
winding-up of that Bank, great distant abstraction that could
never dirty their hands with such small matters as furniture and
broughams. They were to me like high tension currents to the
electricians, and I had had no experience of their conversion to
low tension, and development of what Mr. Cranium called a
cataballative quality. I find I remember " Headlong Hall "; though
I have not seen it for half a century. Would it amuse me now,
I wonder?
144 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I suppose the fact to have been only I don't understand these
things and there is no one here who does, that I know of that
in the early days of a winding-up which took its time, the suf-
ferers were the depositors and the writers or holders of dishonoured
cheques. Mr. Boethius had sold all his shares to my father, so he
could not suffer. Mr. Tripp had changed all his money to diamonds,
hung them on Mrs. Tripp, and vanished; so he was safe. Mr.
MacCorquodale was safest of all for he did not exist; he was a
name ! Enviable man ! I heard the expression " men of straw "
used more than once by winders-up, or victims, who interviewed my
father at this time, and later experience inclines me to believe that
the other shareholders, whoever they were, were meant. My father's
assets, claimable by the creditors, as I understand, to the last
farthing, were probably their only piece de resistance.
I took for granted the sheets of figures that abounded at this
date as correct for see how beautifully written they were ! How
could such ciphering err? And where such very large sums were
being written down, things were sure to come out all right, some-
how. My father would see to that. So I really never knew any-
thing about the matter, worth knowing.
Mere surmise by a veteran without a document to refer to
points to concessions by creditors in return for some form of bond
giving them a claim on his earnings. It was desirable that he
should be kept going as long as possible, to earn them; and the
brougham contributed to this, obviously. So long as he went and
came every day, to and from Somerset House, was there much
balance of gain in any substitute for the brougham? I know it
was our only luxury in the days that followed, unless Miss Evans
was one. I had my doubts on that point.
Still, I myself believe that my father would have over-ruled the
brougham, as a sheer extravagance for people in our position, and
perhaps underlet the coachhouse, if it had not been for Mapleson,
the impassive young man with two identities, one of which I came
to know for the first time when the proximity of The Retreat
coachhouse forced its inner life upon us. If Mapleson had been
Shiva or Vishnu, his two Avatars could not have been much more
unlike each other. Mapleson on the box, with conformity oozing,
one might say, from every pore, was one thing; Mapleson in shirt
sleeves, with pails, in the stable-yard, was another.
I became familiar with the latter; an Avatar which in its
former home in a mews had been, so far as the Square was con-
cerned, little better than discarnate. It opened its heart to me,
as far as the hinges would allow it to go, in the intervals of at-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 145
tacks on the horse with a currycomb. I inferred from what I
heard that Mr. Mapleson had become attached to the family, and
would not be happy if either of his incarnations came to an end
with us, though reincarnate elsewhere. This one could com-
municate to me what that other could not disclose to my father,
without breach of discipline. It was not fond of change and was
at present sooted. It recognized the fact, nevertheless, that King's
Road, Chelsea, could not pretend to hold its head as high as
Mecklenburg Square, and instead of claiming compensation for
loss of caste, as uncultured greed might have done, generously
hinted that under the circumstances it could not expect the same
figure. If I was agreeable to do so, I might name it to the Governor
that it was prepared to take less, and so pave the way to an under-
standing.
I told my father that Thomas a name that seemed to me war-
ranted by the shirt sleeves, while grande tenue on a box called
for Mapleson would be awfully sorry to leave us; but when I
came to ask myself how Thomas had managed to express his affec-
tion for his employer, I found that, strictly speaking, he had
never done anything of the sort. He had conveyed the idea to
me by vilipending the remainder of the human race, as employers;
saying that he knew when he was well off, and that there was
Very little dependence to be put on everybody else. With a Gov-
ernor like my father, you knew where you were. Further, if he
might make so bold, there were a many ways in which a young man
might be useful about the house there was the garden for instance
and he was always agreeable. Besides, he thoroughly understood
poultry; no man better.
I think my father was pleased and relieved when I reported to
him the shirt sleeve Avatar's appreciation of itself. He had been
contemplating a proposal to the other one, embodying the same
ideas, all but the poultry. But his awe of that august being had
stood in the way of his making it. He now accepted Thomas, as
an intercessor and mediator between him and Mapleson.
" As to the poultry," said he, " I hope he understands their
motives and impulses better than I do. I always find them perplex-
ing to the last degree. But if he has enough influence with them to
persuade them to postpone certain noises they know how to make,
until a reasonable hour in the morning why, fowls by all means ! "
So we had fowls.
When I made that last expedition to The Retreat, and measured
its decay against my memory of its past, nothing made me so sad
146 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
as the half-hearted cluck of a joyless hen somewhere out of sight,
bringing back as it did the controversies that raged over those
fowls of ours my father's frequent resolutions to abolish them
my sisters defence of their position the different estimate of the
value of new-laid eggs by sleepers in the front and back of the
house respectively. Was I all wrong in thinking that, however
much too soon they roused me on summer mornings, their intoler-
able chorus, as my father called it, was at least one of exultation
an awkward hymn of praise, suppose we say ? Was I right in set-
ting down that woe-begone croak of their successor, fifty years
later, as an ill-worded lament over the traditional delicacies of a
stable-yard, handed down through countless broods of chicks, ut-
tered by their most dilapidated survivor? Sound and smell and
taste bring back what sight leaves in oblivion, and this sound
brought back those summer mornings, and the leaf-flicker of the
vine across my window, and the sparrows in it, quarrelling cheer-
fully. And myself, and my youth, and my unconsciousness of the
things to be. Then I turned away and forgot that early time, to
think of how those things came about, and what they made me.
I am told that now nothing is left of the old house. It will all be
a residential neighbourhood soon, with maisonettes at the best. The
indwellers will dream undisturbed through the early daylight, un-
less passing motors hoot into their dreams and murder sleep. The
last cock will have crowed its farewell; supposing, that is, there is
one still left to crow. Childless couples a numerous class now-
adays will find room enough with a little spirit of mutual accom-
modation in a cubic area, about which the less said the better. It
is a curious thing that cubic areas are so small. Yet they appear
to foster rents double that of houses where they are unknown. I
sometimes doubt the existence of one in Mecklenburg Square. No
one ever tried to find it, certainly. However, we had no bathroom
there; maisonettes have that feather in their cap. The child-
less couples can always have a bath, granting the spirit aforesaid.
And there may be more room in a flat than one thinks, though it
appears that one cannot get a servant to stop in one. I heard Miss
Eusoll saying so to the new Parson, or rather the temporary locum
ten ens of the Rev. Mr. Carpenter. He is a great big man, more
like a sea-captain than a parson, but I like his voice. It travels
well, without grating on one. His name is neither Cartwright nor
Mackintosh, but Turner.
We were a good-sized family for the house, but we all found a
corner in it and thought ourselves well off. There was room
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 147
for all without any strain on mutual accommodation. The size of
it and the space it occupied seemed on good terms with one another
although indeed, now that I have written it, I have my doubts
whether that means anything. Several childless couples might
have lived in it without quarrelling, I am sure of that. Also, that
all the womankind but Gracey and Varnish had an undercurrent of
belief that each for her part had made great sacrifices in order that
the others might live in palatial luxury, and felt therefrom the
satisfaction of conscious generosity. This is like Gibbon, but then
perhaps it is the sort of thing Gibbon would have said, and spiteful.
Only I am sure Miss Evans deserved it, if the others didn't, as
thoroughly as some objects of Gibbon's sarcasms deserved them.
Varnish never made a secret of her feelings to me, and at this
time a subacute exasperation against Miss Evans, always latent,
began to take a more defined form. I was too young at first to
follow her ideas closely; an older mind than mine would have
detected her apprehensions, and might have shared them. I re-
mained for some time unimpressed, ascribing Varnish's seeming
acces of resentment against the governess to its ostensible cause,
and suspecting nothing behind it. But I was illuminated in the
end, and I remember the occasion.
It must have been two months or more after the move, for there
was snow on the ground, when Varnish said to me, at one of
our confidential foregatherings over tea, now in a room called
the pantry, a sort of lobby of the kitchen : " It's only a year,
Master Eustace, since your dear ma was took." I immediately
became absorbed in a problem that vexed me greatly then and has
hung heavily upon my understanding all through life what ought
I to say about the dead, in conversation with the living? Should
I respond to my old nurse in the sacred hopeful tone, the dumb
acquiescence tone, or that of mere lamentation, with passing com-
pliments to the departed? I was not qualified for the first; my
education had been neglected. The second or Greek tone, one
might say would have seemed un-Christian to Varnish. I had
to fall back on the third, leaving the eulogiums to be taken for
granted. If necessary, Varnish would insert them.
I must have taken my time over deciding, if Varnish's speech
that escaped my attention was a plausible connecting link with
what followed. For when I had muttered what seemed fit to me, I
found that she had already passed to some phase of the topic that
I could not at once understand, causing me to say, " Why shouldn't
she?" the '"she" I referred to being Miss Helen Evans.
" Why, Master Eustace," Varnish answered, " if not artful, no
148 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
reason at all! But you are young and cannot see through. Only
. . . Well! you ask any of the young ladies, and go by them.
I could wish I might be wrong."
Gracey came into the room, and stood by the fire. " What about,
Varnish dear?" said she.
I volunteered to explain : " Why, look here, Gracey, Varnish
says Miss Evans oughtn't to button the Governor's coat."
"Does she?" said Gracey, emphatically, meaning did Miss
Evans do so?
".There you see now. Master Eustace, your sister's nex r er seen
her do it! What did I tell you just now about artfulness? "
Gracey qualified what her emphasis had seemed to imply : " But
really, Varnish, I do not see anything in that, now one comes to
think of it. I buttoned Nebuchadnezzar's beautiful new fur coat
for him only the other day, on purpose. Why shouldn't I ? " I
welcomed this precedent.
But Varnish disallowed it. " Because you are two children, my
dear. Besides, Master Moss is a Jew, and out of the question."
I advanced a view which I now seriously think for snobbishness
of conception, vulgarity of expression, and inapplicability to its
point, is without a parallel in the records of bad argument. " Isn't
Miss Evans a governess and out of the question ? " said I. My
inexperience was fructifying on the subject.
Neither of my hearers was competent to overwhelm me with
the refutation I deserved. Varnish said weakly : " Governesses
are not Jews, but Christians, Master Eustace." Gracey entrenched
her position. "You're a little boy, Jackey, and had better shut
up," said she. Which I thought unfair, as I was in the discussion,
by hypothesis. She added, after reflection : " I suppose Papa
knows best, and it's his concern, anyhow!"
I felt on unsafe ground. After all. was not the whole thing
outside my province? I remembered that all the evidence had not
been heard. " Varnish said more things," said I. But I shrank
from further responsibility.
"What did you say more, Varnish dear?" said Gracey. "Say
it again for me." She was hugging our old nurse, persuasively,
over the back of her chair, as she said this.
" No, my dear," said Varnish, " I shan't say another word. But
there's no need, for any one can see, that looks, when a young
person is layin' herself out. and when she isn't. It don't depend on
any telling of mine. But there, the Lord be praised, that is where it
is, and a deceitful person has only herself to blame, come what
may ! " I believe Varnish was already repenting of having talked
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 149
so openly to us two youngsters, and was falling back on an
enigmatical tone as a safe resource. She filled out obvious blanks
with oracular nods, and affected absorption in the problem of
whether tea would go round for a second cup, without draining
the pot. You should never do that, in case of anybody else. I
adopt her expression.
" But I say ! what humbug ! " said I, fructifying for I was
sharp enough. " Who ever heard of such rot? Fancy Jemima try-
ing it on with the Governor!" This name, Jemima, was a con-
fidential name of Miss Evans, seldom used outside secret con-
claves of Varnish, Gracey, and myself. It was founded on a pas-
sage in Dickens. " Miss J'mima Ivins. and Miss J'mima Ivinses
friend, and Miss J'mima Ivinses friend's young man," are to be
found in Sketches by Boz.
" If she only buttons his coat " began Gracey, who seemed
inclined to think an unjust imputation had been launched; though
she may also have felt in danger of throwing stones from a glass
house, after her own coat-buttoning escapade. She finished her
speech in another key altogether : " All I know is that I shall but-
ton Monty's coat as often as I like, whether or no ! So there ! "
" Till you're grown up, my dear," said Varnish.
"I can't see the difference," said Gracey. " A coat's a coat! "
" That is not where the question turns on. my dear," said Varnish,
not quite without pride in her powers of expression. " The coat is
only one way round and no one knows that better than Miss
Evans. You may call her Jemima, Master Eustace, but the thing
is the same or similar. And put it how you may, artfulness is at
the bottom of it, and nothing but artfulness."
"I say look here!" said I. "I want it put out in language.
What's Jemima's game?" Then I lost force by not awaiting a
reply : " Because she won't be any the wiser, if it's that ! " I think
I diluted this even further, by saying I would bet anything I was
right, but not naming the odds; so that my offer remained the
expression of a pious confidence in my own infallibility. Varnish
and Gracey may have felt that I was a crude exponent of my own
ideas, for they proceeded to talk over my head, taking no notice
of my occasional marginal notes. Thereafter the conversation ran
thus:
" Your pa, my dear, knows what is due to himself no one
better, so, as I say, it's not for us! But if you come to seeing
through, all I say is, don't, ask me what I think of any person
with an underhanded countenance. Looks goes for nothing; though
Kiss Evans has her share, I willingly admit. But what I look at
150 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
is the ' art ' ' here I felt perplexed as to whether Varnish meant
the subtlety of the lady in question, or the metaphorical seat of
good and bad feeling *' and her deceitfulness is bore out by her
actions, every day."
"But she only buttoned Papa's coat!"
"This time, my dear, yes! But, other times, a hundred things.
Interference in what does not concern. For if Cook, after such a
many years, does not know your dear papa's likings, who can pre-
tend to it?"
" Cook's an awful fool about potatoes." This side-note of mine
had reference to a perversity of Cook's, which sacrificed the allevia-
tion of cold joints by baked potatoes in their skins, to the serving of
these vegetables in connection with hot ones, prematurely. It ex-
tenuated Miss Evans, somewhat.
" I'm not sure I don't like her best," so said Gracey, wavering
towards a forgiving tone " when she worries over Papa's dinner."
" Law, Miss Gracey, as if there wasn't plenty to give attention,
without her meddling!"
But I endorsed my sister's judgment. " I don't hate Jemima
half so much when she goes in for badgering Cook," said I, forci-
bly. Whereupon Varnish seemed to feel out-voted, and in a mi-
nority, for she said : " Well, my dears, all I say is, I hope I may live
to find myself mistook. Young folks know best, nowadays."
My enlightenment from this conversation was out of all propor-
tion to the amount of direct accusation brought against Miss Evans
by Varnish. She had not formulated any specific indictment,
except that of buttoning my fathers coat. Otherwise, she had
merely put on record her conviction that the lady was artful. I had
at once jumped to her meaning, and so had Gracey.
We two young people resolved ourselves into a committee of
observation, and at intervals reported progress. Not consciously;
but that is how the survivor sees them, looking back sixty years
afterwards. The committee sat through that winter, sometimes
agreeing on a report, more often differing about details, without
any chairman to give a casting vote. I can reconstruct some of
the committee meetings in part at any rate. As for instance,
on Christmas day or Boxing Morning, more strictly. It was our
first Christmas in the new house, a twelve-month after that miser-
able one that followed my mothers death.
" I say, Gracey, I think it must be all rot."
" I don't know. . . . No! I really don't. Why?"
" Why look at Jemima last night."
"Well!"
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 151
" She didn't do anything."
" What did you expect her to do? "
" Why she didn't dress up, or anything."
" Well. I thought that rather nice of her. Ellen dressed up."
" Yes, because of that ass she's engaged to. And he never came! "
" It was because of his toothache. . . . Yes his tooth really
was very bad, Jackey."
" Oh ! . . . Well, what were we saying ? About Jemima "
" What were you saying about Jemima? "
" I thought Varnish had found a mare's nest about her and the
Governor."
"Why?"
" Oh, very well you don't think so "
" Don't be a silly boy. Tell me why you thought so."
" Well, anybody would have thought so ! Look how she kept
out of the Governor's way. And what a rumpus she was making to
stop our making any noise."
" I don't see what that has to do with it." And Gracey evidently
didn't.
Clear as the thing had seemed to me, unentangled in language,
I found I couldn't word it when challenged to do so. I can now.
I meant that Miss Evans's desire that no over-festivity should grate
upon my father proved her too keenly alive to the degree of his
bereavement to permit of our entertaining the idea that Varnish
was right. I think I answered Gracey by an unintelligible attempt
to explain this, and she treated it as it deserved. I escaped into
a realm of speculation about the future. " Won't she be in an
awful wax when she finds it's no go!" said I, delicately. I failed
to interpret Gracey's dubious expression rightly. As I now read it,
the grave blue eyes and closed lips closed against temptation to
speech of the image memory supplies, seem to be keeping back the
counter-question: "Will it be no go?"
The next committee meeting I have a vivid recollection of must
have been well over four months later, for the grass was summer-
dry to the feet on the lawn that committee walked on, with its
arms round each others neck the phrase analyzes all right, if you
analyze fair. And the apple-blossoms were thick on our neighbour's
trees, but the pear-trees had paid their usual tribute to late April
frosts, and the crop we had been at liberty to dream of three
weeks since had become a mere might-have-been, in our garden.
I recall Gracey and myself on the grass talking about the apples
and lamenting the pears. So I suppose it was in the middle of a
warm May, after a fiendish April.
152 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Our talk ran, otherwise, on a domestic perturbation. Miss Evans,
who had been for over fifteen years almost one of the family, was
going to desert it inexplicably. More inexplicably now by far than
if she had cried off during any of my remembered years before my
mothers death. For I could well recollect the dissensions between
them, especially latterly; though of course they only came within
the scope of my observation imperfectly, as the inner life of his
seniors is so often manifested to a boy. Since my mother's death,
almost unbroken concord reigned; and. during the last few months
particularly, Miss Evans's relations with every member of the family
Varnish perhaps excepted had been perfectly satisfactory. They
might be summed up as generally affectionate, the affection be-
coming passionate for my sister Roberta, cooling down to tolerance
towards myself, and strongly imbued with grateful respect, towards
my father. And yet. this lady had made up her mind that she must
say adieu to this haven of continuous peace, assigning for her
action no reason that seemed really to account for her con-
duct.
" Anyhow it shows we were right," said I in committee, with
Gracey, after an ad interim lament over the pears. " Varnish was
talking rot."
" Was she?" said Gracey, accepting my language, as strictly
in order.
*' Well wasn't she? " said I. " Anyhow, we were right! "
" Don't say we, Jackey. Because 7 didn't, say Varnish was talking
rot. Perhaps she was perhaps she wasn't."
" I knew you'd milk and water it all away. That's just like you
girls."
" Silly boy! Why can you never be reasonable, Jackey, for two
minutes together?"
"Well come now I say look here! Would Jemima be such
an ass ? "
Gracey made no pretence of not understanding me. Indeed, our
reciprocities in apprehension were fully up to special brother-and-
sister point a point near clairvoyance. But my speech would
profit by interpretation. " You mean," said she, " would Miss
Evans run away from Papa, if "
" If she had the idea. Yes." I notice now that whenever I
half think into this reconstruction of an almost forgotten past, any
direct reference to bald unqualified marriage with my father as
Miss Evans's end my memory refuses to countersign its certifi-
cate. I don't believe we ever referred to matrimony. It was
among the subconsciousness of the position, at least in this com-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 153
mittee meeting, which proceeded as follows, Gracey accepting my
completion of her sentence:
" Varnish says she won't run away "
" Won't run away?"
" She says we shall see."
"Of course we shall see! I could have told her that. But I
say look here! If Jemima means to stick on, I can't see what all
the shindy's about."
"There is no shindy. Don't be such a boy!"
" I'm not and there is a shindy. Why, you should have seen
the Governor. He was in a fine stew!"
"When?"
" I was in the room when. I mean when he got Jemima's letter
eight pages on pink letter-paper put on his table for when he
came back."
"What was in it?"
"How should I know?"
" I mean what did Papa say? "
"Oh, he said well, he said hero was a pretty how-do-you-do!
Helen was going."
" What did you say?
"I said: 'Helen who?'"
" You silly boy! Who else could it have been?"
" Nobody. But I asked, for all that. . . . What did th'e Gov-
ernor say then? He didn't say anything read some of the letter
twice over."
" And when he'd read it, what did he say then?"
" Oh then he said : ' Helen Evans, inquisitorial offspring.' You
know the Governor's way."
" Didn't ho say anything else ? "
" No yes he thought a minute, and then went back. Helen
Evans was Helen. What did I call her? I said Jemima, some-
times. He made me explain about J'mima Ivins in Boz."
" Then he wasn't in such a towering passion."
" I didn't say he was. I only said he was in a fine stew. . . .
No I don't consider it's at all the same thing."
" I consider it is."
" Well it isn't! The Governor's able to be in a fine stew and
not stamp and ramp like a booby."
My companionship with my father, with the free run of his
room, continued as I am reminded by my resuscitation of this
interview for a long time after this. It was a phase belonging
154 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
to bo3 r hood, which merged later on in maturity. Its absorption im-
plied no diminution of affection on the part of either. The only
difference it made was that as time went on I saw less and less
of the background of my father's life, as developed by conversa-
tion with visitors; carried on, so far as he was concerned, with
entire carelessness as to whether I was listening or not. Now and
then he would give me a broad hint that I was not wanted, tell-
ing me to make myself scarce till I was next in demand. He did
this, rather to my surprise, on the Sunday morning following the
above garden chat; saying he expected a visitor. And though I
complied without remark, I spent all the time of my absence in
dissatisfied speculation about the reasons of so unusual an action.
And this more especially because at the moment of his suggestion
that I should go or, as ho put it, trot no visitor had come in
sight.
Varnish was attending public worship in the old church, and so
was Gracey. The two other sisters had gone to St. Luke's to hear
the Rev. Mr. Kingsley preach. 1 thought Miss Evans had gone
with them as usual, but I was mistaken.
After a constitutional to the old bridge gone now! along the
old river road, changed now but there still, and so on to the gate
of Cremorno Gardens and back home, my curiosity as to this
visitor, audible in my father's library, became so great, that I could
not resist the temptation to eavesdrop up to what I held a legitimate
point, just so far as to identify the voice, if I might. There was
no doubt who it was, and ray mind said: "Why it's Jemima!
I thought she was at church." The voice spoke fragmentarily
emotionally. I was so honourable that the moment I had identified
it I recoiled from the door and went a needlessly long way off, to
emphasize, as it were, the blamelessness of my intent. I went in
fact as far as the end of the garden fence next door, but I am
thankful to say without anticipating in the smallest degree that
the conversation there would be much more audible than at the
street-door. That it was so was due to the fact that the side window
of the library opened on our neighbour's garden. A modest amount
of casuistry was sufficient to convince me that it was honourable
under these circumstances to draw inferences from the sound of
voices, though I should of course retire to their vanishing point
of articulation, if I detected any. It was playing with fire, but then
I should tell no one but Gracey. Not even Varnish, unless indeed
what I overheard made for refutation of her rot, which a less
trenchant vocabulary than mine would have called her mistaken
views or misapprehensions.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 155
A nice point of conscience connected itself with Mr. Mapleson's
fowls or rather, Thomas's. Is eavesdropping practicable at all
when a powerful hen is dwelling on domestic details a few yards
off? Do phrases that reach one's ears, during momentary eluckful
subordinations of the main theme, count as having been really
overheard? I say not.
Anyhow, I think I was excusable for holding myself only academ-
ically aware so to speak of one or two fragments of speech that
detached themselves audibly from the steady earnest current of
the two voices that rose and fell and interlaced, or paused to begin
again; renewed, as it seemed to me, with more of tension or emo-
tion than was compatible with the complete decay of Varnish's
rot. But the audible phrases were all, or almost all, spoken by my
father.
"Unless you have some better reason . . ."it said, and was
lost. Then a little later, petulantly: "People say! people say!
What does it matter what people say?" Then, after an interval
which Miss Evans seemed to have all to herself: "All fanciful
nonsense! If you are really happier here ..." drowned by what
seemed earnest, almost passionate, extension and confirmation of
the only words I clearly caught. " But I am I am ..." from
Miss Evans. Then quick undertones for a while, almost as folk
speak who suspect a hearer, and yet must needs risk speech in
despite of him. They need not have been so supercautious. for that
hen took possession of the rostrum; with the good effect of com-
pletely soothing my conscience, which was getting a little un-
easy at so much overhearing. Obviously I was not listening, when,
broadly speaking, nothing was or could be audible. But one always
welcomes confirmation of opinion.
I walked to the garden end and back, and persuaded myself that
I was interested in lilies of the valley. They palled, and my
interest was transferred to some house-martens, who I think had
come back to look up their last year's lodgings, and were dis-
gusted with the smell of the fresh paint. I doubt when I saw
the old house last, any swallow had built for a long time in its
eaves. There was no fresh paint in question then; the London
sparrow was responsible, I take it.
I could do nothing for these birds, so T went round by the side
path in the garden into the drawing-room, wondering when Jemima
would have done so ran soliloquy, through a fawn. For the ques-
tion was beginning to arise should I, or should I not, get the
walk to Lavender Hill and Clapham with my father that I had
been promising myself? If this foolery went on soliloquy
156 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
continued would not the answer have to be in the nega-
tive?
Not necessarily, for Jemima's voice, still audible in the distance
seemed to be drawing to a close. Soliloquy remarked, disrespect-
fully, that she and the Governor had had their whack, anyhow.
I think, if this expression implies satiety in discussion or action,
leading to a profitable result, that Miss Evans had certainly had
hers. At least, I gathered as much from her expression as her
eyes met mine in the drawing-room, which she entered a minute
later than myself; having however opened the door just before I
came in, keeping it nominally closed that no dialogue should slip
through to a hearer, if any. Some came through the inch ajar,
to me, nevertheless.
" Well, then, we quite understand there's to be no more non-
sense about going. You promise?"
" Yes I promise."
" Whatever happens ! "
" Yes whatever happens ! " And thereupon the door opened,
and Miss Helen Evans came in with the expression on her face
that I have referred to.
The scant material at the disposal of Memory after a sixty
years' gap makes a vivid image of the past a thing to treasure,
even when concurrent record is absent. How much more when it
carries, as this image of Miss Evans does, a conviction to my
mind as to the nature of that interview with my father, not borne
in upon me then, but developed by maturer insight in the years
that followed. I have repeated a guess-version of it to my Self
fifty times, and met with scarcely any contradiction.
In it my father appears as absurdly paternal, almost affectedly
so; for he was not over five-and-forty, and young of his years-;
while the young lady, though she may have looked young of hers,
certainly had not a minute less than thirty-one to plead guilty to.
It presents her does this fancy of mine as accepting this
paternality, possibly for strategic purposes. I have no blame for
her; a woman has a right to fend for herself. I can picture my
father also, making a joke of the eight-page screed she had com-
posed with such care for his perusal; saying, come now, what was
the mystery? what did it all mean? surely we need have no
secrets we who had known each other so many years ! He knew
well enough ; it was the malicious gossip of some fool of a woman,
was it not? Well forget it! was it worth a second thought?
Oh no! No one knew that better than Miss Evans. But this
sort of thing was so difficult for a woman to pay no attention to,
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 157
however absurd it might be in itself. A woman was so defenceless
people would believe anything! . . . Oh yes! it did matter
what they believed. Only it was hard for a man to realize a
woman's position. Every one would think . . . but there! it
was impossible for her to talk about it.
At this point, this puppet of my imagining shuts in a secret
perturbation closes her lips upon details it would never never do
to converse upon. For them to converse upon, that is! Thereon
the other puppet, whose strings I find it easier to pull, breaks into
a laugh with an encouraging tone in it, exclaiming: " Come now!
what does it all amount to when the murder's out? Mrs. Some-
body Something said you paid me the compliment of ... Oh,
very well very well ! All right all right ! I won't say anything."
I forged this, I doubt not, to suit a deprecating gesture of this
lady's, familiar to me but not quite easy to describe, a rapid vibra-
tion of two very pretty hands for her hands were pretty, un-
deniably followed by a semi-clasp, halfway to prayer, good to ex-
press the words : " Oh, please don't ! "
My dramatic imputations have gone further than that, a great
deal, sometimes speculating on the possibility of tendresses of
manner between the puppets, but never ascribing active, loverlike
behaviour. I am inclined now to credit this to a curious fancy of
mine in youth, that persons I accounted grown up never made
love; it was no concern of theirs! Miss Evans's expression, which
went such lengths in suggestion of dramatization, conveyed no
hint of kissing; and I really never had any grounds for inserting it
into my text. But her face gave me plenty to build upon.
And yet why? Not because the lips were shut close; that was
her most common lip-form. Not because her eyes gleamed; they
usually gleamed. Not because she was white; she very seldom
flushed. So if I never come to know and I am not likely to, now
what it is that gives a triumphant look to a face, the question will
remain unanswered, for me. All I can say to my Self now is that
the recollection of her visible face and figure at that moment seems
to convey with it a knowledge that her invisible heart was pulsat-
ing with a sense of triumph. Her voice helps it perhaps. Any-
how, she was in a good way, as the phrase runs.
" Why, you naughty young man ! fancy your being here still !
Dear Mr. Pascoe thinks you have gone for a walk."
"Do you mean the Governor?" said I. For I never approved
of this designation for him, one Miss Evans used very often.
" Oh, if you like the Governor! " her laugh over this concession
was rich and pleasant. But it rubbed my boyhood into me and
158 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I resented that. Still, her laugh had its charm; it ran over its
boundaries like the juice of a ripe peach. Really if Miss Evans
had always laughed and spoken, I should have had much more
Christian feeling towards her. A constant watchfulness that beset
her countenance when at rest kept me in a state of subacute
Paganism. Varnish hated it was often what I lucidly described
as *' down upon Jemima's mug," and expressed her reading of it
by calling its owner a " perseverin' "Cat."
However there was nothing of this phase of Jemima as I recol-
lect her image and its laugh in the newly furnished drawing-room,
with the smell of lilac and mignonette everywhere, and a loud
blackbird outside snubbing her u fledglings " impertinent remarks.
It seems so odd the way the whole thing comes back as I dwell
on it 1 For. instance, how Miss Evans spoiled the good impression
of her laugh, and her vast redundance -of spring muslin dappled with
a leaf-broken sun reflection from the greenhouse, by adding : " Yes
the Governor thought you had gone for a walk. We both
thought so."
I was secretly exasperated at Jemima grouping herself, as it
were, with my father. "We!" the idea! Castor and Pollux,
Gog and Magog nay, Adam and Eve themselves ! could have said
no more, unless indeed a first-person-dual existed in their day.
But no protest was possible that would not have given more
openings to duality. Better ignore it ! " There won't be any time
now for him and me to get a walk before lunch," said I, somewhat
morosely, avoiding the pronoun Miss Evans had used, to keep aloof
from her. But. I was not equal to a complete dignified silence
about my injury. " I thought you were never going to have
done jawing," was the form my protest took. It weakened my posi-
tion. One should never be offensive. It gives the other party
an opportunity, and is tactically bad.
" Oh dear," cries Jemima, with that musical laugh again. " I
am so sorry! I didn't want to spoil your walk. Stop a minute! "
And the young woman actually had the presumption to constitute
herself an intermediary between me and my father! She ran back
and tapped at his door. I could have passed her easily if she
had been half as narrow as the Rev. Cuthbert Turner's daughter,
who was here with him yesterday; but in those days no one could
pass a lady of the standard width, in an ordinary entrance lobby.
' ; I am so sorry," said Miss Evans again, when my father responded;
" I'm afraid I've kept you from your walk." I was too proud to
sanction Miss Evans's priority by playing second fiddle visibly;
so I remained out of sight. I heard my father's comment that
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 159
followed her communication about which there was too much con-
fidential undertone for my liking. It ran : " He's a nice young
monkey! How many hours does he want to walk about Clapham
Common ? " However, he came out and called to me. " Pedestrian
persecutor where are you? Attention! Mind you're ready to
start in five minutes." I went into the passage to say " All right 1 "
and thought Miss Evans was much too close to him.
My only impression of that was that the young woman was
taking rather a liberty. I could still have speculated uncon-
cerned as to how great a wax she would be in when she found
" it " was no go that mysterious it that neither I nor Gracey nor
Varnish ever gave its title to. And yet marriage, however much
Grundy pere and mere hocus-pocus it to keep Miss Grundy in the
dark, is a word used freely by all to designate a well-known incident
in fiction and the drama, but dictionary-bound about ladies and
gentlemen out of harness.
CHAPTER XIX
THE STORY
WHEN Nathaniel Pascoe came to the decision that he would take
the plunge and ask Helen Evans to become his wife, he was
actuated by several motives, but by no means the least of them was
his desire to retain permanently such an invaluable inmate in his
home as Helen was proving herself to be, and moreover give her
the position that would best enable her to direct and control his
family. She had played her game so dexterously in the past year
that he had come to regard her as the absolute salvation of his
daughters, and to feel that once bereft of her benign influence, they
would undoubtedly drift into a life of wanton lawlessness. No!
girls must have a mother to guide and counsel them, and who was
better able to fill their dead mother's place than a clever beautiful
creature like Helen, who moreover had known them all from child-
hood.
So that when Miss Evans played her trump card, and wrote to
inform her employer that she felt forced regretfully to leave the
home that had been hers for so many years! That circumstances
had changed! that Mr. Pascoe was now a widower! and that it was
in the nature of things that some tongues should be evil ! etc.
etc .... Mr. Pascoe, whose romantic devotion to his wife's
memory had received a rude shock from the reading of that un-
fortunate letter of hers to her former lover, promptly determined
that the only way out of the difficulty, was that the beautiful Helen
Evans should become Mrs. Pascoe without further delay, and he
therefore lost no time in pressing his suit.
Miss Evans after a creditable amount of surprised hesitation ac-
cepted him, and it was then and there decided that as soon as a
sufficient time had elapsed to meet the exigencies of propriety they
should be married very quietly without taking any of the family
into their confidence.
So in due course of time it was arranged that Miss Evans should
pay a visit to her married sister at Tooting, merely telling her
pupils that she was going for a week or ten days' holiday. The
marriage could then take place from her sister's house, and Mr.
160
THE STORY 161
Pascoe, who had timed things to fit in with his Easter vacation,
drove off alone early one morning in April, got married and re-
turned with his bride in time for lunch, when the unwelcome news
was broken to the assembled family. Now though the idea of their
father's marrying Miss Evans had been discussed by the girls as a
possible nightmare in the future, they were totally unprepared for
the reality when it was burst upon them, and they found that the
dreaded marriage had actually taken place.
Gracey and Ellen were sullen and resentful, but Roberta though
she was the one her father had looked to to welcome Helen as his
bride, simply refused to speak to her. In vain Mr. Pascoe fetched
a bottle of champagne from the cellar and tried to be hilarious,
they would not thaw. Perhaps had Eustace John been there things
might have been easier, but he was out for the day with Cooky, and
the happy pair were undisguisedly relieved when at three o'clock
the brougham came round to take them to the station, and they
departed for their short honeymoon at Folkestone.
In the dusk of that chilly spring evening Varnish sat by the
fire in her own sanctum; at her feet sat Roberta her head resting
on her old nurse's knee. Roberta had been crying, and Varnish
made no attempt at consoling her, on the contrary she enlarged
upon the cause of her unhappiness. " Your poor dear ma ! and she
dead and buried ! and that not eighteen months ago ! "
" Oh, Varnish, Varnish, it is all too dreadful," sobbed Roberta.
" It is what she has been plotting and scheming for all these
past months; I have watched her at it," continued Varnish, "but
I never thought your pa would be took in so easy like. I never did
take to her, Miss Roberta, not even when she just come, and you
were all small. I said to myself that's a hussy if ever there was
one, and mark my words, darling, there always has been a summat
queer about her, I am sure at the time your poor ma was took, she
was that unnatural, not that I could give it a name so to speak,
but I sort of felt her queer about it all."
"Do you think then," said Roberta, "that she began plotting
all this immediately? I mean as soon as ever Mamma was gone."
" Who can say," answered the old nurse, " nor for the matter of
that who can say but what she may have looked forward to summat
of the sort, long afore your poor dear ma took the poison."
Roberta gave a sudden start and turning sharply round looked
up into Varnish's face, and said almost in a whisper:
u You know. Varnish dear, Helen did go into Mamma's room
that awful night, just before we started for the theatricals. I am
162 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
positively certain she did, though she told me she only just put
her head in at the door. Mamma sent me to tell her to come, and
she would never have let her keep the door open while she talked
to her, it was such a cold night, besides; the bed was ever so far
from the door, she must have gone into the room, or she could
not have heard what Mamma had to say to her. And I'll tell you
what, Varnish," continued Koberta with a quick flash of vehement
insight, " she knew about that overdose, I am sure she did ! And
she never told! Mamma might have been saved had the doctor
been sent for in time! And she knows it, and talks about poison
bottles in her sleep ! And now ! ! "
" Hush, hush, my pretty," said Varnish with a startled scared
look on her wrinkled face. " Remember, darling, she has married
your pa ! "
CHAPTER XX
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
THE evening of the day the bride and bridegroom returned from
their short honeymoon my father looked so much like himself,
when I entered his library, that I could have easily given way to the
fancy which stirred in my mind that none of the past two years was
reality, but only dream dream to be waked from with joyful
alacrity. Especially Jemima, said a sub-conscious postscript, in
an undertone.
The two glazed bookcases which had nearly baffled Satterthwaite,
so much were they out of scale with The Retreat, would have had
all the force of Mecklenburg Square, if they had touched the
ceiling less uncomfortably. There, at the Square, a two-foot
margin would have given Tom Thumb room to stand upright.
Here, a cat could not have wedged herself into the concealed space
that was looking forward to undisturbed dust until the expiration
of our lease. Otherwise, they made the same background to the
same Governor as in the old days of the Square, two years since.
His chair, table, lamp, cabinet with nests of drawers with a lock-
up to each nests from which no drawer ever took flight were all
the very same, only nearer together. They hardly looked at home
yet then, but they must have forgotten the Square by the time
The Retreat came to an end, long years after.
What bid highest for the dream interpretation was my father's
pipe. Its aroma was so intensely the same as in the old days,
that when I closed the door I had entered by, I could have ascribed
my own alacrity in doing so to my mother's edicts against the
escape of smoke into the passage; the traditions of which my
father reverenced, for her sake. I recollect cancelling a proposed
thought in my brain at that moment, touching Jemima's probable
attitude towards tobacco. If she approved it, would its limita-
tion to my father's sanctum lapse naturally, or would he stick to
it as a memorial usage, a tribute to the past?
" Come along in, Jackey boy," said he. " Come in and forgive
your father." I had done that, to my thinking, but I supposed he
wanted ratification. My going straight to sit on his knee served
this turn. There could be no reserve of unforgiveness behind
163
164 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
that. I was embarrassed nevertheless, and he did nothing to
relieve ray embarrassment by saying: ''Well! And what then?"
I took advantage of the ambiguity of this question. Surely it
left the determination of its subject to me.
"I say," said I, "where do you think we went? We went all
over by Willesden and round by Wembley, and if we had only
had another hour we could have got to Pinner, and been back in
time for grub." I felt the irrelevancy of this information even
as its words passed my lips.
" That was glorious ! " said my father. But I could see that he
was not deeply involved in topographical comparisons as he went
on: "Let's see! where did we go? Round by Willesden, and
over by ... where was it ?"
" Wembley. And we really could have gone on to Pinner, if only
we hadn't had to be back for dinner at half-past-seven! " All our
records of these walks-out were framed to tax human credulity.
" Poor old Jackey ! " said my father, with true commiseration in
eyes I seem to see as I write. " We were back for dinner at half-
past-seven, and found a new stepmother on the premises. Strange
sort of wild beast, eh ? "
The discovery of any form of language to grapple with the
subject was quite beyond me. I could only nod a long nod. not
a short one leaving my eyes fixed on my father till further
notice.
" And which was it, beastly ? or awful ? "
I submitted to the implied criticism of a style which I now
see has its faults, and shook my head firmly and continuously,
behind closed Ups. I was ready to go great lengths in white-wash-
ing my father would have tried for it had he brought home a
cartload of brides but I preferred to veil that readiness in
mystery as to its details.
" Your sister Gracey," he went on, using the form of speech
he always preferred, for some reason unknown to me, " your sister
Gracey seems to be inclining towards a more lenient view of the
culprits. One of them, at any rate! "
" She means you, of course! " I said. " She's not such a beastly
fool as Bert! " I was rapidly taking sides with my father.
Perhaps he would have done better to leave me to the natural
course of development. But I think he felt that my attitude
towards my other sisters was too drastic. " Jackey boy," said he,
gently almost apologetically as his fingers made chance re-
arrangements of my unruly head of hair: " Remember what it is
the girls are thinking of. Don't let us be hard on them! "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 165
" What are they thinking of ? " I was really asking for informa-
tion, while maintaining a collateral contempt for girls, chiefly
sisters.
His reply was simply: " They are thinking of your mamma."
It was very daring. The living die every day, and are dust.
But they are not to be spoken of too soon. They must be laid-up
for awhile, to give decorum breathing-time. Analysis of their
faults will wait, and a time will come when even their next of kin
will be philosophical over their extinction. But a decade is wanted
for this it is quite the lowest figure the Correctitudes will accept.
That visit to Highgate Cemetery was not yet two years old.
I feel now horribly ashamed of my question that followed,
which seems to me, look at it how I may, no better than crude
brutality. I was not conscious of any want of feeling then only
of a burning thirst for an answer to it. I began it tentatively: " I
say, Gov " and wavered back into an awkward silence, checked
by a sudden suspicion that I might be transgressing rules. I had
so often broken through imperative ones before now, through igno-
rance of their existence.
''What do you say, importunate interrogator?" The hand that
was caressing my face felt cool and collected, so far as its touch
could register its owner's feelings. I feel sure he had no idea what
was coming.
"What would Mamma say?" I thought for one short moment
that I had hurt or offended him, so quickly did he withdraw his
hand. But I was wrong, as far as offence went, at any rate. For it
was back again as before a moment after, having just covered
his eyes and brow during that moment, as though some sudden
pain had shot through them.
And he was repeating my question. " What would Mamma say?
what would Mamma say? Quite right, Jackey boy! Good boy to
ask ! . . . No, no don't run away ! " I remember his words
more clearly than the movement on my part that had occasioned
them. He went on, dreamily: "Why should I not tell my boy?
Only, need I? need I? " I am certain that he was not alive to the
way I was absorbing his words as little as to my retention of
them in the years to come. Sixty years now just think of it !
His words that followed are what I have been feeling so solicitous
about; solicitous, that is, that my powers of memory should not
flag at a critical moment, and make my record of them barren.
These are what I heard these I am about to write. I may have
unconsciously added some word I knew he meant; but, if so,
my conviction of it must have been indeed a strong one. I have
166 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
more faith in it than in my record-power, at the end of such an
almost geological period.
" Let us talk about Mamma, Jackey boy. Why should we not, my
boy and I ? Listen, Jackey ! ' What would Mamma say ? ' that was
your question?" I nodded an unequivocal affirmative. "Shall I
tell you what Mamma would say ? " I nodded again. " She would
say nothing. If your mamma were here, and I could see her and
hear her voice, and the whole of -life could be as it was . . .
Yes! the whole the whole! Back in the old house . . . with
the old ways . . . and the misery unknown !" His voice
shook under the stress of old memories revived, the clash of by-
gone time with our own; and I, being a mere crude boy, was as
much alive to my own objection to emotion, which was very strong,
as to its demand for human sympathy. I did not see in his speech
something I see plainly now. He seemed to make an effort towards
a completer self-control, repeating his own words quickly : " If
your mamma were here and I could see her and hear her voice
. . . Why what would there be for her to say anything about?
We should all be back again, like old times, eh Jackey boy ! " I
think he wanted me to receive the idea, without elaborate explana-
tion, that hypotheses cut both ways are edged tools to play with.
He ended, a moment after, with: "I have turned Miss Evans into
Mrs. Pascoe because your mamma can know nothing about it, as
one day, dear boy, we too shall know nothing. The wind will
blow, and the sun will shine, but we shall know nothing. No
neither pleasure nor pain, light nor darkness. We shall pass away
as others have passed away from us, and know no more than they
know now."
I have always thought the better of my father, and reverenced
him more, that he had the courage to speak so plainly about his
own views of Death. Should I love his memory more if it pre-
sented him to me as the preacher of a vague hereafter he had no
belief in? Surely not. But he had never interposed between me
and the precept and example of others, for he stood alone in his
Sadducism, and was condemned by my mother and elder sisters for
it; while Gracey had communicated to me, in secret conclave, her
view that Papa was not in earnest. So that in my immature mind
the tenets of the current Orthodoxies were not unrepresented, and
even my disposition to condemn them broadly as rot out of
respect for him did not seem to warrant my acceptance of an
entire condemnation of them without a protest.
It took form after some moments of silence, in which I decided
that I could not refer to my mother's faith ; that Ellen's and Bertie's
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 167
\vere valueless; and that Gracey was still juvenile to quote as an
authority. I began hesitatingly: ''Varnish says "
" What does Varnish say, Solemn Jackey ( " said he, pinching my
cheek and making me feel too young to go on.
But I screwed up my courage, and selected from among a con-
siderable variety of views of the state of the Departed held, or
professed, by my authority, a good, round, satisfactory one no sur-
vivor could reject on its merits.
" Varnish says Mamma's an angel," said I, bluntly.
" And Varnish knows," said my father. " How does Varnish
know ? "
" She says the Bible says so." I don't know that I had ever
actually heard this from Varnish, but it sounded right.
" The Bible says so many things," said my father, drily. " Some
are much more improbable than that your mamma is an Angel.
But listen to this, Jackey, and bring your powerful mind to under-
stand it, old man. If your mamma is an angel, and can see us
here now, I know she would not be happy to see Helen Evans go
away from her girls, and leave them alone, after being with them
so many years."
I know that my response to this was crude and coarse, but it
was to the point. " Why wasn't Jemima to stick on without any
marrying?" And, indeed, as Jemima had "stuck on" for the
last eighteen months, the question did seem to arise.
!My father only smiled benignantly. " There are more little
niceties in Heaven and earth, blaster Jackey," said he, " than are
dreamed of in your philosophy. Suppose we consider that I know
best, about that ! "
"All right!" said I, with generous complacency.
"Suppose we do! And, my dear boy. there's this." His voice
fell to a greater seriousness. " There's a thing I want you to bear
in mind. Promise me you will. I mean promise you will remem-
ber what I am going to say to you." I expressed my readiness to
do so, or indeed anything else, and he continued : " Some of these
days, when you are a man, and I'm not a man any longer, which
\vill also come about some of these days, quite naturally if ever
it crosses your mind that your Governor's behaviour seemed un-
accountable . . . Understand ? "
"All right!"
" Don't run away with the idea that I had not some good reason
for what I did. Now, that's difficult. Sure? you understand it ? "
I was absolutely sure that I understood it ; much surer than I am
now that some of the foregoing conversation has not been invented
168 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
by Memory to accommodate Probability. She has her complacent
as well as her contradictious fits. If one of the former should
prompt her to revive any more of it. I will write it in, in its place.
There must have been more, for I remember plainly that when I
left my father, my sisters and the bone of contention were light-
ing bedroom candles outside in the passage, with a parade of mutual
courtesy quite foreign to current usage at that date. It was less
than an hour after dinner when I closed the library door behind
me so quickly, to shut in the smoke.
I suppose it was what writers of fiction call the " irony of Fate "
that Roberta, whose affection for Miss Evans had been regarded
by us all as an unchangeable institution like the Equator, or Sun-
day was the fiercest of the whole family in her resentment of
her stepmother.
My sister Ellen and myself at least were quite ready to mani-
fest a grudging cordiality. My own was far the warmer of the
two, being based on a bedrock of faith in my father, while Ellen's
was little more than a version of her usual objection to any decided
form of action, or active form of decision. " What is the use of
fuss?" was a question she often asked, and never got any satisfac-
tory answer to, although many are obvious. Gracey was merely
quiet and frightened throughout, not going far away from Varnish;
evidently feeling her protection, and perhaps also regarding her as
a person used to marriages, and capable of dealing with them. I
suspect this, because I had a similar feeling myself.
1 suppose it was at about this time of my life that it occurred to
me to look at my sisters critically. Ellen soft-haired, pretty, violet-
eyes; blue-veined on a tender skin; irresolute lips their owner
would not leave to assert themselves as an intelligible mouth, but
would perversely hold between very pearly teeth, or manipulate
out of all reason with a tender finger and thumb. For her hands
were uncommonly pretty without a doubt. But she had never
made good the defect my mother complained of so strongly, that in
spite of her own example in youth, her daughter had not to borrow
my father's phrase filled out. She remained figureless, but-
said professional skill easy enough to fit when backed by secret
artifices. My brutal boyhood discerned in these underlying abomi-
nations a reason why Ellen's lovers wore out at a certain stage
of courtship, that stage occurring at or soon after the time when
its maturity permitted or demanded tendresses of a nature to detect
them. I may write what amuses me, and it amuses me now
and saves further delicacy to put on record words I used myself,
to describe contingencies of the situation. " If she goes crack
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 169
or scranches," I said, " he knows it isn't her." This was to
Gracey's ears alone. She nodded a thoughtful assent.
Then as to my image of Bertie. 1 had never recognized the
fact that she was handsome if I tie myself to an exact date
until she turned upon the treacherous Jemima, on the occasion, I
mean, of Miss Evans's first appearance as Mrs. Pascoe; I fancy I
may have referred to it but I remember her white anger seemed
to turn her hair black, and it became her. I know I remarked to
Gracey that Bert was in an awful wax. Possibly the awful wax
sat well upon her brought out her good points. For it certainly
dawned upon me for the first time, at that moment, that, I had a
handsome sister. It was a moment no more but when I coax the
image back to me, by thought of the time and its surroundings, it is
vivid still.
I fancy now that that old grandmother of mine, the Old Spit-
fire, when she was young and George the Third was King, carried
herself erect and flashed, like a slightly more truculent Roberta.
I remember a black silhouette of her, over the dining-room chim-
ney-piece at Highbury, which looked as though she was measuring,
back to back, against a great-aunt in the same frame. Each was
trying to shoot up the tortoise shell comb her knot owed its sta-
tion in life to. as high as possible; and each had the longest pos-
sible neck, and the shortest possible waist. As I recall Bert's un-
compromising demeanour now, it brings back to me those sil-
houettes, though 1 don't know that I ever connected them with
her before. Of course it must have been the Spitfire from whom
she inherited. Why was the strain in abeyance through one gen-
eration, to reappear in the next? My mother must have been like
her father, or an entirely new departure on her own account.
But she was handsome, this dark sister of mine. I cannot write
that she was beautiful, because the word does not ring true. I
cannot apply the word to a girl whose knuckles interfere with
my recollection of her hand, and whose bone-distances assert them-
selves in my memory of her after all else has vanished, like the
smile of Alice's Cheshire cat. I think her individualities and
Ellen's quarrelled, to the advantage of neither, and they were best
apart. I did not at all agree with a Mrs. Walkinshaw, who used
to visit us about this time, and who was all soul. " Dear Ellen "
she would moan " is Elaine; and dear Roberta is Joan of Arc.
They bring each other out." She repeated this whenever she saw
them, but I can find no fault with her on that score, for she con-
fessed, and disarmed censure. " I always did say so. and I always
shall say so," came as a sort of recitative. That, howerer, was not
170 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
what I wanted to kick her for. I did, and what provoked me was
her postscript about Gracey, who had to be worked in somehow,
although she limped. Mrs. Walkinshaw would suddenly recollect
this, and pounce on her with what Gracey called treacly violence,
and a sort of expansive gush, exclaiming: "And he-ee-ere is my
little interesting Gracey!" She had better have left Gracey out,
as the reason of the word interesting a very limited word was
that limp. Gracey was a damaged article.
I think I was well alive to all this at about the time of my
fathers marriage, having more or less regarded my elder sisters
as merely samples of their class, with no qualities to speak of.
I think his marriage directed my attention to Human Nature,
meaning thereby that very large department in it which determines
the relations of the two sexes, or upsets them. I had ignored this,
with a liberal application of the epithets Ass, Idiot, Booby, and
Fool to victims of the Tender Passion. That expresses my attitude
towards such cases in this department as had been brought to my
notice at this date. The conversion of Jemima to my stepmother
must have done much to convince me that Love and Matrimony,
or either alone without the other, were forces to be reckoned with.
It may easily have been this new consciousness that made me re-
flect more seriously than I might have done before it germinated, on
the constant reference in my sister's conversation to Anderson
Grayper.
He was the young man who had played Charles to Bertie's
Maria at the Hazela at Roehampton, two yeirs before, and whom
I had dismissed from my mind as a friend of Bertie's on the
many occasions when he had turned up as a visitor at The Re-
treat; sometimes uninvited, with an inadequate pretext. This
was all very well so long as I regarded the entichements of young
persons of opposite gexes as, broadly speaking, tomfoolery. But
a new light had reached my mind. Roused by a painful ex-
perience of what might ensue in the case of a mature lady and
gentleman, I became alive to possibilities in the bush in the
case, even of my own sisters.
Still, so deeply penetrated was I with a peculiar view of the
attractions my sisters possessed for unattached mankind so con-
vinced that no arrow would ever leave Cupid's quiver on their
behalf that I stifled a suspicion that rankled in my mind in
connection with the long survival of a common interest in the
Drama, which certainly made this Charles dance attendance on
this Maria much longer than any belle letire seemed to warrant.
It might have remained a suspicion until the climax came, if it
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 171
had not been for a conversation I remember well enough with
my dear schoolboy friend, Cooky, otherwise Nebuchadnezzar. Its
date must have been about a couple of months after the estab-
lishment of Miss Evans as Mrs. Pascoe, as we were in the gar-
den after dinner, and he and I had our jackets off by preference,
for coolness' sake. This sort of thing is usually well after mid-
summer in England.
"You didn't understand what I meant, little Buttons," he had
said, referring to an Italian word he had used.
"Oh yes, I did!" said I. "Because of the way you said
it. Besides, there was amor in the middle of it. Amor amor
amorem amoris amori amore amores amores "
"That'll do," said Cooky. " Well what did I mean?"
" Meant they were spooney, I suppose. In love. That sort of
thing ! " I am sure I infused contempt into this.
" Exactly that sort of thing." said he. " Amores amorum amo-
ribus amoribus." 1 suppose Cooky felt that after all it was hardly
fair to leave a deserving substantive half declined.
I hastened to exonerate myself from any suspicion of inex-
perience. u Of course, 1 thought they were going it, ever so long
ago ! " said I, endeavouring to speak with the maturity of a
worldling. It was pretence, on my part.
" That's it, little Buttons. Ever so long. So now you know/'
" Oh yes! " said I, anxious to maintain my character. " They've
been going it like one o'clock this evening, anyhow."
Cooky detected a movement on my part towards observation
of what was going on now. " I say, little Buttons, none of that ! "
said he, bringing me back to my position, in which the sugges-
tions of endearments could not be verified. " Peeping's not fair
play."
''Not when it's only sisters?" said I.
"Not even when it's sisters!" said he. "What do you think
Ruth would say if she caught me ?" But such espionage
was too disgraceful to be put into words, and Cooky stopped
short. Young Israel was, I knew, alive to the beauty of Ruth,
who resembled her handsome brother, and presumably had tete-a-
tetes that warranted him in ending his sentence " I always cough,
or fiddle with the handle of the door." Which quite explained
itself, to me.
I think some consciousness of the part this garden had played.
a twelvemonth past, as the scene of the ratification of my fathers
treaty with Miss Evans, must have made my crude mind recep-
tive of my maturer friend's enlightenments, for my next words
172 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
showed how they had fructified. " Won't he sneak off ? " said I.
I had appreciated the position.
"Why should he?" said Cooky.
" Ellen's did," was my convincing reply. However, my sense
of justice was ready with a qualification: "But then his boots
were prunella ! "
" See what you've got to be thankful for, little Buttons ! You
might have had a brother-in-law with prunella boots."
" Not by now."
" Yes, by now, this very minute ! With prunella boots."
" What rot ! Ellen isn't old enough." This was sheer frater-
nity on my part, as Ellen was over twenty. But brothers stint
mature years to sisters. Have they not known them in the
nursery?
Cooky seemed to be seeking for some landmark in the wilder-
ness of Time to fix Ellen's age by. " You said," said he, thought-
fully, " that Gracey was nearly sixteen. She says quite."
" Her birthday's just coming," I explained. " Ellen's two years
older than Bert, and Bert's two years older than Gracey. And
two bits to each go a bit apiece." This was luminous, I sup-
pose, as Cooky understood it.
" Making Miss Ellen five years older than Gracey," said he.
For Ellen was always Miss Ellen, and Bert Miss Roberta, as
neither had sanctioned Christian naming.
" There abouts ! " said I, and we chewed the end of our reflec-
tions on this point, till a thought crossed my mind which made
me break the silence. "I say, Cooky " I began.
" Go it, little Buttons ! " said he.
" You don't mean to say that in five years' time Gracey will
be old enough to go getting married ! "
" My old sister Rachel was less than eighteen when she went
and got married. Then, of course, she didn't matter!"
" You mean we should care if it was Gracey."
" Well yes I suppose that was what I did mean." My mem-
ory of Cooky's words ascribes a sort of constrained manner to
him, a change from his easy chat of a minute since. It is an odd
trick of my mind that it refuses to recall that his manner pro-
duced on me then any impression akin to this recollection of it,
now.
Instead, I seem to look back on a crude boy, who sees and
understands only the baldest and most palpable facts; and who
says, after a moment's thought : " Couldn't he be kept out of it ? "
"Who be kept out of it?"
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 173
" Him. Her him. Everybody could do without him. Who
wants him in?"
'Instead of replying as I, or that boy that I was, would have
had him reply: "Nobody, that I know of!" Cooky answered
with gravity : " Gracey's husband. No he couldn't be kept out
of it." And his gravity remained on him, becoming taciturnity,
and making stillness of his closed lips resemble Amun-ra. Our
talk had somehow stopped with a jerk, and had left me listen-
ing to the undertones of my sister and her sweetheart, just too
remote to allow any of their articulate speech to be forced upon
me, which was what my idle curiosity wanted.
If any one were to read this, would he, I wonder, discern in
it the relation in which my sister, her brother, and his friend,
stood to one another? I cannot describe it to my Self other-
wise than as The Club, which was our way of referring to it
sometimes. It was accepted in that sense by members of the
family; by Varnish, for instance, who spoke of it collectively
as " you and Miss Gracey and Master Moss." My father also
would refer to us as " the three of you " or as " you two young
heretics and Nebuchadnezzar." He laid stress on this imputed
heresy of the Christian members of The Club by referring to its
possible guests suggestively, as thus : " Get some of the Turks
and Infidels from over the way to come and sing tunes." I am
not sure of the exact occasion of this speech, but I am of its
application. It referred to the Illingworths, who lived oppo-
site, and were naturally spoken of as the Shillingsworths in my
family. Two of them were musical enough to supply S and B
in the Mendelssohn quartets in which Gracey and Cooky were
respectively A and T. I used to believe in their singing, as a
musical achievement; and, so far as I can retain a belief by
choice, this one is mine still. And who is the worse, because
an old cripple in a workhouse infirmary conceives that voices
of nigh sixty years ago sang right, that like enough sang wrong,
or rery crudely at the best?
If I had caught any word of what my sister and Anderson
Grayper were dropping their voices to say among those rustling
leaves in that vanished garden, where, as I write now, some new
flat with every modern convenience is running riot, it might
have turned my outraged mind from that intrusion of Gracey's
imaginary husband within the sacred precincts of the Club. But
not a syllable reached my ears, and the only idea I received from
their rapid passionate undertones was that a quarrel was brew-
ing. Something was brewing, as I came to know later, but not
1T4 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
a quarrel. I went back on my resentment against any indeter-
minate brother-in-law.
l< If he shoves himself in," said I, carrying on the talk, which
had lulled, " I shan't be able to stand it. Should you, now ? Sup-
posing you were me, I mean ? "
Cooky looked more than ever like Amun-ra, as he delayed
his answer. It came at last. " You will have to stand it, little
Buttons, whether you like it or no."
What I said next convinces me. that boys are things sui gen-
eris, a strange class apart, or else that I was unlike most other
samples. I incline to the former belief. " I say, Cooky," I
began, " I've got such a jolly idea ! "
I don't think Amun-ra saw what was coming. Indeed, the way
his face relaxed for the moment stayed with me, and I can
see him, almost, now spoke of relief at a welcome change of
topic. "What's the next article?" said he, borrowing a meta-
phor from commerce. " Go ahead ! Fire away ! Don't bottle
up!" I suppose he saw, in my speaking countenance, an after-
math of hesitation which I now remember, or can easily feel
convinced of. For he thought it necessary to add, encourag-
ingly : " What's the jolly idea?" I think he thought it related
to walks, or chess, or cricket.
"Why shouldn't you and Gracey get married?"
Never have I seen such a blaze of red flash suddenly over a
human face as the one that covered Cooky's, even to the roots
of his rich crop of black hair. He caught me by my trouser-
band for I had repudiated even my waistcoat, from the heat
and pulled me back on his knee, clapping his open hand on my
mouth, to silence me. "Hush, little Buttons!" was his admoni-
tion, none the less telling for his suppression of voice to utter it.
" I didn't mean now directly, you know," I said, forcing my
words through a freed corner of my mouth, against the palm of
his hand. " I meant some of these clays, when you are both
grown up."
His hand closed tighter on the freed corner, quashing further
elucidation. " Promise to shut up ? " said he, " and then I'll take
my hand off."
My reply was as nearly " All right ! " as those words can be
uttered, through lips compulsorily closed. The first half of the
letter n is of little service in such a case. I helped it with nods,
and the gag came off.
l< Now mind you keep your promise," said Cooky.
" Never to ? " I began, and was stopped by the fact
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 175
that I could not recite the terms of the compact without break-
ing it.
" Exactly," said Cooky. " Never to. You've promised never
to ; so mind you don't ! "
It was not in human nature to shut up absolutely without
reserve, in obedience to a pledge so given. Besides, inquiry
into the reasons for silence was not incompatible with its obser-
vance. I could not resist the temptation to transgress. u But
what for? " said I, naively. " Why mustn't I? "
" Shut up till you're older, little Buttons," was the reply. And
as the deep flush Memory recalled on the speaker's face gives
place to pallor as he revives these words, I infer that the boy
I was took note of it at the time, and wondered. And my won-
der leads to nothing, for I remember no more at least, of any-
thing akin to its later topic. -That vanished, to be recalled years
after, when I became alive to its meaning. I had to shut up
till I was older, and no event had worked on my understanding
to open it.
Perhaps the sequel of my sister's interview with Mr. Grayper,
which I had classified as " going it like one o'clock," was what
brought my wonder at Cooky's sudden changes of complexion,
and his silence that followed, to an end, abruptly. For in that
silence I caught articulate words, supplying a clue to their own
audibility. Roberta was saying : " No those boys have gone,
and you needn't fuss. How nervous and ridiculous you men are,
about everything! .... Well suppose they did, what does it
matter?" Then the young man's voice, only a husky murmur.
Then Roberta again, impatiently : " Don't be didactic ! The
simple question is are you willing to run the risk ? "
I conceived that this had reference to some theatrical scheme,
and that the parties had ceased to " go it " in any tender or
passionate sense. What sort of moony imbecility, derived from
fiction or the stage, I ascribed to the human lover and his lass
art this time, Heaven only knows; but I am certain that if I
had formulated a sample, it would have gone far to justify my
belief that the victims of Cupid's darts were Awful Fools. I
felt uninterested had no desire to eavesdrop. Indeed, when
Cooky whispered to me : " They think we've gone. Suppose we
hook it ? " I assented without a protest. We hooked it, and I
rushed upstairs to put my head in cold water and smooth myself
out for Society.
So long ago, and all the memories are dim! But flashes come,
and one shows me a moonlight group, visible from my open win-
176 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
dow over the stables, of two persons, who do not interest me,
locked in each other's arms, where they must certainly have arrived
with the suddenness of torrents from a mountain source, as de-
scribed by Tennyson and read by all of us. So Cooky's insight
into the position had been shrewder than mine, and it was well
that it whatever it was had been hooked.
Nevertheless, when I rejoined Society, straightened out, I was
deeply impressed with the effrontery of that couple, who were
ignoring one another at different ends of the drawing-room, the
gentleman's being the end nearest to the lady's stepmother.
Did I, or did I not, anticipate what followed ? I think not,
so far as concerns my sister Roberta's marriage. I appreciated
the position, as I have said, but without anticipation of any
substantial result. So far as I reflected on the subject, sur-
mise was in favour of Anderson -Grayper sneaking off, as Mr.
Wickham had done. That hot evening in The Retreat garden
was responsible for my honouring the subject with any reflec-
tions at all.
But I am quite certain that the signs of perturbation in Cooky's
face and manner produced no impression on me at the time. I
was to be puzzled with my own stupidity at not interpreting
them right, later on.
CHAPTER XXI
THE STOEY
THAT year the uncertain climate vouchsafed to these islands
was at its best, and the opening days of June brought with them
a burst of real summer.
Helen Pascoe lay stretched at full length on a deck chair in
the garden, at The Retreat. She was exquisitely dressed and she
smiled to herself as she opened her pretty lace covered parasol
to shade her eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. " Yes, on
the whole, she had played her cards well ! " And her thoughts
travelled back over the weeks that had elapsed since she and her
husband had returned from their honeymoon.
Eustace John had been skilfully managed by his father, and
in consequence seemed rather proud of his self-imposed role of
champion of Jemima. Ellen and Roberta were still undeniably
hostile in their attitude to their stepmother, especially the latter.
Gracey was not so bad. Varnish, Helen disliked and feared, but
she knew it would be hopeless, not to say perhaps dangerous, to
attempt to get rid of her she had been far too long a family
institution for that. Besides, it was always safer to let sleeping
dogs lie, and in this particular case the dog had no teeth to bite
with, so there was really nothing to be uneasy about Varnish
could not hurt her!
During the past few weeks the newly married couple had dined
out a good deal. The invitations at first given somewhat tenta-
tively by a few very old friends of Mr. Pascoe's, who felt they
really must do the civil thing and ask them, soon took on a dif-
ferent complexion. The beautiful bride with her conciliatory,
though dignified manner, and her distinguished appearance, did
not lend herself to adverse criticism, and she easily took her place
in the society to which her husband belonged, while she lost no
opportunity of extending the circle of their acquaintance. Soon
there would be return dinners to be given, and Helen lay dream-
ing of anticipated social triumphs.
As for the girls! Why, Ellen and Roberta would be sure to
marry, they would not be in her way for long! They both had
lovers already. Gracey, the youngest, was by far the most amiably
177
178 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
disposed towards her, and would no doubt be quite all right if
her sisters were out of the way. Of course, she was far less likely
to marry than the others on account of that limp, but then she
might be made very useful in the house and save Helen trouble!
No, the prospect for the future was none so bad when you looked
at it all round! And Helen smiled again to herself.
Have you ever, you who read this story, watched the sun shin-
ing and glinting on the unruffled surface of a deep pool? And
have you ever reflected that if your eye could pierce down into the
deep depths of that blue, still water, what hidden horrors you would
find there. Just for once, take your microscope and study the
conditions of aquatic or insect life, and you will find it a hideous
record of life and death struggles, of murder, and ceaseless strife.
Yet that invisible world, seething with all the dire cruelty of
which nature is capable, lies concealed under that smiling surface
of water, reflecting the serene beauty of the midday sky.
Five o'clock came, and with it the servant bearing the tea-
tray. Tea was to be in the garden on that lovely day, so the
table was spread and the chairs brought out.
" Where are the young ladies ? " asked Helen of the maid.
"Tell them that tea is ready."
" Miss Elten and Miss Gracey have been out all the after-
noon; they have not come in yet, but Miss Roberta is in the
garden."
What was there in this simple statement that it should make
Mrs. Pascoe start so? The parasol fell from her hand in her
confusion, knocking over a tea cup and breaking it into a dozen
pieces. Why, she had thought she was quite alone! and she cast
an almost terrified glance round the garden.
Yes, sure enough, at the far end of the lawn was the shim-
mer of Roberta's white dress, and from among the rose bushes
peered a pair of burning dark eyes fixed intently upon her. Yes,
there was Roberta watching her every movement, and seeking
to pierce her innermost thoughts, and Helen shuddered, and turne-1
sick!
CHAPTER XXII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
MOST people of my age, who had embarked on an undertaking
to write all their recollections, would be able to get some stim-
ulus and help and confirmation from the memory of others. I
cannot. All my contemporaries of that date are dead, or dead
to me, and I have only my Self to refer to.
I have made many inquiries in that quarter, without result,
as to the relations of my father with his family connections at
Highbury at the time of his second marriage and subsequently.
I have tried to prevent my Self indulging in guesswork, but I
doubt if I have succeeded. I suspect that some portion of the
images my mind forms of that past are due to my Self alone,
and have no foundation in fact. I must accept them now, as
they stand, for I only get bewildered when I try to distinguish
the false from the true.
I am, however, convinced that I knew more than any of the
others about what was going on, except perhaps Gracey. I ascribe
this to my position as a student. Why a schoolboy, even if he
is " doing " the Epistles of Horace, should be supposed not to
be paying attention to what goes on close at hand, I do not know.
But it was an accepted view of things, or seemed to be, seen
by the light of my experience. My father and his new partner
always regarded me, I am sure, as too deep in the Classics to
overhear chance conversation about what did not concern me. I
might not have done so if they had never shown their conscious-
ness of my presence; but when they desired secrecy, they dropped
their voices. And I, being human, listened against my will! Of
course, I did so under a covenant with Space, to stop listening
as soon as I heard something I was not meant to know.
Said Miss Evans as I prefer to call her, seeing that I never
succeeded in thinking of her as Mrs. Pascoe, and I cannot well
speak of her as " the woman my father married," every time I
mention her one evening when my father was enjoying his pipe
in her company, and I was deep in Julius Florus at the table
near the window: "I feel as if iL were all my fault."
Said my father, who had been reading a letter backwards and
179
180 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
forwards, as one reads letters that perplex or annoy : " Stuff
and nonsense, my love! What had you to do with the Settle-
ment?"
I saw Miss Evans as she replied, so I suppose I looked round
at her. Her answer was : " It's a feeling no more." Her face
was reposeful, with dropped eyelids and still lips just apart, as
she stood watching the fire blaze in earnest, for this must have
been November at least. Her rich throat was in evidence, for
she wore her chin a little raised. A diamond ring I knew my
father had given her flashed in the firelight, and made me sav-
age. I am satisfied now that my fits of resentment against Helen
Evans were quite unreasonable, for if I ever knew anything against
her, it came to my knowledge later years later. And even as
I pen these words, the doubt crosses my mind whether I am the
right person to cast a stone. For there are other reasons for
withholding censure than the mere fact that one cannot plead
not guilty to a like indictment. I may live to write the explana-
tion of this in its proper place, but I can scarcely promise it
in view of the doctor's last visit to me, and the long face he
pulled over his auscultation, yesterday.
Let me get my father's answer written. " A feeling without
a foundation. A perfectly groundless feeling! For look you!
how many years was that blessed Settlement made before you
turned up; you and your hair trunk? Over ten years, because
Ellen was eight."
" Are you sure Mr. Wigram's ? "
"Accusations? "
" Well accusations. I suppose they are. Are you sure they
have anything whatever to do with the Settlement ? "
" Yes certainly ! At least, in this sense that if it had not
been for the Settlement, Uncle Frank and I would have remained
the best of friends to this day. Sure of it ! "
" But it seems too unreasonable "
" Nothing is too unreasonable for a lawyer who is a Trustee
of his sister's marriage settlement. It poisons his mind, and
makes him perfectly unscrupulous as to what he says against the
against the culprit."
" Meaning, the ' I don't believe I looked round at this
point. The image of the speaker, puzzled, which comes back to me,
was due to the tone of her words.
" Meaning me," said my father. " when it's me meaning him,
when it's him. Meaning the male factor in the concern, and
treating him as a malefactor." He paused a moment to. tap out
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 181
the ash from his pipe, then added : " I see that's a pun, now it's
too late. Never mind ! "
Said Miss Evans then, with a wrench in her voice : " But it's
such a horrible accusation to bring, if he means it." She in-
tended this for my father's hearing only, but the wrench brought
her voice outside her intention. I affected to be absorbed in Julius
Florus, and, indeed, went the length of looking out verna in Ains-
worth, to convince myself that I was not listening. Any one who
cares to look up the passage can find, without any tax on his
latinity, that I was not getting on very fast. Certainly it was
difficult to make out without a crib; but then I was translating
it all wrong, so that goes for nothing.
My father repeated his wife's last words, with a serious stress
on them. " // he means it. But he does not mean it, in the
ordinary sense. His feelings towards me are, quite unconsciously
to himself, created by the insidious nature of his Trusteeship.
Can any one seriously suppose that any human idiot, with a good
heart enough as hearts go because that describes him, very
fairly would write such a sentence as this to his sister's hus-
band if he were not under a spell of some sort. No, no! it's the
Settlement. That's what it is." I heard the letter handed to
the lady, by its rustle, and felt that she looked thoughtfully at
the passage.
She must have forgotten my presence for the moment, for she
read, loud enough for me to hear : " I have no hesitation in hold-
ing you morally responsible, whatever the legal aspect of the case
may be, for the disastrous consequences of a neglect which "
She stopped suddenly, saying, " What ? " as though my father had
spoken, which he had not. I conceive that he had glanced round
significantly at me.
Then my father, as though to test the degree of my abstrac-
tion, said cheerfully: "Well how's Horace?" To which I re-
sponded :" Beastly difficult to do. What's argilla?" For I did
not see why I should not utilize sporadic knowledge to save a ref-
erence to Ainsworth.
My recollection of this incident which I believe I have recorded
fairly shows me why I knew more than Gracey what was going
on, and I know she knew more than either Ellen or Roberta. Can
I recollect the letter now that my stepmother proceeded to read
aloud, or part of it? I can try. I am discouraged at the outset
by a failure to recall how it opened with my father's name or
"dear Sir." But I am sure the text was as follows, or a near
equivalent :
182 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" I cannot profess surprise at the news of your recent mar-
riage, the news of which now reaches me for the first time, but
I must confess to some astonishment that no communication has
been received by my mother or myself hitherto. She desires
me to say that she does not consider any expression of opinion,
favourable or otherwise, to be called for by the circumstances.
She therefore abstains entirely from comment. At the same time
she cannot be blind to the fact that this young person, whom
you have put in the place of my late lamented sister, was for
some years in your employment as a governess, and she wishes
you to know that she draws the same inferences from the fact that
the World will draw. For the same reason it must be distinctly
understood that she will not consent to receive her. At the same
time she is prepared to overlook her connection with your son
and daughters, to whom this does not extend, as they are in no
sense responsible. . . ."
Then followed some three pages of which I can recollect noth-
ing, except that the style was well maintained. But I remem-
ber the peroration. Here it is:
" It is my painful duty to add that I consider it incumbent
on me to say that I have no hesitation in holding you morally
responsible, whatever the legal aspects of the case may be, for
the disastrous consequences of a neglect which only terminated
with my lamented sister's tragic death."
And then he remained, I think, my father's faithfully.
That exhausts my recollection of that letter. Julius Florus
was undisturbed for the rest of that evening, as even while my
father was supplying me with the English for argilla, his wife an-
nounced that she would be better in bed, and retired for the
night. " Your stepmother," said my father, " has got overtired.
That's all."
I felt called on to say something, and began it: "I thought
Je "
" Mima," said my father.
" Was looking blue," said I. I did not feel revision necessary,
as my father had not called for it. I devoted myself to
Julius Florus, and got to the twentieth line, my prescribed
limit.
I was not a little surprised, some while after about Christ-
mas, I think, as the roads were slippery when my father ended
up a conference with me in his library by saying : " Very good,
human schoolboy, use a crib as much as you like. If you can
make out why it's the English for its original, you will do quite
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 183
as much as can be expected of a human schoolboy. Now do you
know what you have got to do on Sunday afternoon ? "
" Skate on the Serpentine, if it freezes," I said, confidently.
The Serpentine was at its usual tricks, promising to freeze, and
thawing suddenly in the night.
" I'm afraid you'll have to break the appointment with the
Serpentine," said my father. " Because you are to accompany
your stepmamma on a visit to Highbury. But it can't matter.
Because the Serpentine cannot possibly know who is skating on
it."
I believe I said : " Hookey ! " and looked my curiosity for
further particulars.
' Why hookey, I wonder?" said my father, thoughtfully. He
tried, to judge by his look, to solve me as a problem, and to stand
me over as temporarily insoluble, then went back to his text.
'' Yes your stepmamma has got it into her head that she can
make peace with " He paused a moment, controlling a dis-
position to laugh. " What was it Varnish called your venerable
Granny? An old ?"
" Old Spitfire ! " I supplied the name with unscrupulous en-
joyment.
" Precisely ! " said my father. " She imagines she can make
peace with the old Spitfire says a soft answer turueth away
wrath. I suppose that was King Solomon's experience. I can't
say it is mine. In fact, I become infuriated. However, that's
neither here nor there."
"What's she going to say to her? I mean, what Miss
Ev ?"
" That won't do try again ! No objection to Jemima ! But
not 'Miss Evans.'"
" Well, Jemima then ! What's Jemima going to say to the
Gran?"
" You'll hear when she says it, young man. That's enough
information at present for one of your age and sex. You'll have
to do without endangering your life on rotten ice half-an-inch
thick, for once."
I looked lugubrious. " Suppose it's three inches thick, and
quite hard," said I, "won't Jemima wait?"
My father glanced at the window. " I'll give you that," said
he. " If the ice is three inches thick, Jemima will wait." This
meant no chance for the skating!
" But won't Bert or Ellen do as well ? " said I, ruefully.
" Those young women, I believe, have declined to go, without
184 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
thanks. And I'm not sure that if they do go, it would better mat-
ters. I can see my way to you and Gracey. So be resigned to
your hard fate! "
"All right!" said I, grudgingly. But resignation turned out
an easy task. For the Serpentine only froze just enough to keep
the ice of promise to the ear, but broke it to the skate, as whoso
ventured thereon that Sunday found to his cost. The frost itself
continued ; it was the Serpentine that was in fault sheets of water
indulge idiosyncracies. The roads, were, according to Thomas,
mortally slippery when he drove us over to Highbury in the
brougham.
However, we got there my stepmother, Gracey, and myself.
I could see Gracey's excitement and curiosity in her blue eyes
as we approached the house; and I felt curious too about the out-
come of this singular visit, which I believe was quite unexpected.
I kept a furtive eye on Jemima, to fathom her sentiments if
possible, but her face was inscrutable. She was looking her best,
in a sealskin wrapper that seemed to have been meant for her
by Destiny; that power having been well-disposed towards her
at the time. I suppose that my frequent peeps at her equable
face made me analytical, for I remember attaching more weight
than usual to the pretty ripple of her hair over the white fore-
head it half-hid, and also thinking, with the perverse improba-
bility of a boy's mind, that if my ferocious grandmamma wanted
to scalp this intruder in her family circle, her opportunity to do
so would be all that Catlin's North American Indians, or any
one else's, could desire. Gracey's anticipations were probably less
highly coloured than this, but I saw her sidelong glance at the
culprit I was opposite, of course and almost, in a sense, saw
her wondering at the oddity of the situation.
I recall, in connection with this drive, that it was the first
occasion on which my mind accepted and ratified yet another
mode of denominating my stepmother than Miss Evans, Jemima,
or Mrs. Pascoe, the last being the exclusive property of Varnish.
This new designation was not one absolutely unused in the early
days of Mecklenburg Square, and had been revived as a con-
venient solution of a real difficulty what Miss Evans was to
be called now that she had captured the citadel our mother had
hitherto been sole mistress of. " Mamma " was quite out of the
question, and " Miss Evans " clearly would not do. Fancy " Good-
night, Miss Evans!" at bedroom-candle time! I had all but used
it once, but was stopped by my father's : " Com^ I say, Master
Jackey, draw it mild ! " I drew it mild somehow, but chiefly by
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 185 '
evading nomenclature altogether. Jemima's musical laugh, and
" Dreadful boy ! " on that occasion, are with me still, for all the
lifetime that has come between.
" Aunt Helen," said Gracey, using this revived epithet, when
we got out of the noisy traffic, " What do you think Grandmamma
will say? "
" My dearest child, I haven't the slightest idea."
I supplied a prediction^ of an unfeeling nature. " She'll trem-
ble all over with fierceness," said I.
" Oh, Jackey however can you ? " said my sister, and our
stepmother turned a glance towards me that was as much amused
as shocked. " Boys will be boys," said she, " to the end of the
chapter. Wait till you're eighty, young man ! " I set up a par-
tial defence, saying : " Other people are eighty, just as much
as her," meaning thereby that all octogenarians were not tiger-
ish. I was thinking of old Mr. Wardroper, our predecessor at
The Retreat.
I had never been at my grandmamma's villa since my mother's
death, nor had any of my sisters. On returning to it I was im-
pressed by the way it had maintained its identity, having had no
experience of how our own lives may be turned upside down
without the rest of the world taking the slightest notice; and I
felt nettled at the trim front garden and the well-cleaned win-
dows, the long flight of stone steps up to the front door, fault-
lessly hearthstoned, sanded now with golden sand for safety, in
keeping with the dazzling polish of the brass knocker and letter-
box flap they resulted in. I felt quite reproachfully towards
the more than emerald-green dovecot on a post in the stable-
yard, seen across the trellis that was as nothing now, but that
I knew would be white with jasmine in six months. I remem-
ber looking at it as we paused on the expanse of stone landing
we had climbed to, following by permission or invitation the
unimpeachable white apron-tie of a flawless housemaiden who
had opened the garden gate. I resented that dovecot's stolid insen-
sibility, which almost made a parade of ignoring my mother's
death. I was unreasonably outraged by the tone of its inhabi-
tants' conversation, merely because it was exactly the same as
two years since. I was not quite satisfied with Rab, the rough
Pomeranian, who came out to smell us, and appeared to go
back into the house to say we were all right as far as smell
went. But he had always done so, and he annoyed me by
making no difference between Miss Evans and my mother. " Rab "
was an abbreviation, not of the Scotch for Robert, but of Rabies.
186 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Not that he was mad, but in connection with a picturesque prac-
tice of my uncles, who christened animals after the most formi-
dable disorders to which they were liable. Thus the coach-horses
who lived under that dovecot were respectively Staggers and
Glanders, although neither was suffering from either calamity.
Also my grandmother's canary, a treasured favourite, had been
christened Pip; most unfairly, as it was a robust bird, not sub-
ject to indisposition.
" Shan't we go in, Aunt Helen ? " said Gracey, when that
pause on the top step was ten seconds old.
" Hush a minute, Gracey dear!" said Aunt Helen, listening
to sounds of colloquy, between docile acquiescence and splenetic
exasperation, within. The flawless one, after letting us in with
a gate-key she went back for for she had deemed us a mistake
until she had attestation to the contrary had preceded us into
the house as a harbinger, admitting that it might be desirable
to get the authority of headquarters, which were In, but not Up.
Gracey and I were disconcerted though I was not sure she
was not relieved, too when the owner of the white apron came
back dejected; all her edge taken off, I supposed, by the extreme
violence of the old Spitfire. How she communicated to my step-
mother that Mistress, though In, and nearly Up, was quite clear
that she would not see Mrs. Nathaniel Pascoe, I do not know, as
I did not catch her words, but Gracey understood them, and ex-
claimed : "There, Aunt Helen, didn't I say so? I knew she
wouldn't."
"Then we can't help it, can we, my dear?" said Aunt Helen.
She was fishing in a mother-of-pearl card-case with a silver //
inlaid, to get at a conciliatory offering, a submerged card of
my father's the other cheek to the smiter, the soft answer to
turn away wrath when I perceived at the garden-gate my Uncle
Sam, looking prosperous and rosy, and well-shaven for Sunday,
lie had arrived in a curricle with two horses, and an enormously
heavy fancy coachman's overcoat, with buttons like saucers, and a
lining like the fur of a buffalo.
" You tool the prads up and down till I tell you, little Foundlin',"
he was saying, to the minute groom attached to his chariot, whose
peculiar name had been bestowed on him in honour or dishonour
of his parents, who had neglected the precaution necessary to
Establish their family's legitimacy. At present, so said my Uncle
Sam.
" Oh it's your other uncle," said my stepmother. This meant
that she knew him much less than his brother. Indeed, she can
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 187
have seen but little of either, all told; but she certainly knew
most of Uncle Francis.
Now my Uncle Sam and Gracey had always been in each other's
good books. Therefore, Gracey greeted him affectionately and
started towards the garden-gate to meet him.
I saw he looked pleased, the more that he forthwith assumed
his good-humoured manner; a sort of lazy drone with as few
accents as possible, and no consonants to speak of. " Oozish a
com'nalong?" is the best spelling can do for his reception to
Gracey. But one can't spell drowsiness, especially when it is
a parti pris. The upshot of his greeting to her was: "Who is
this coming along? Who is the grown-up young lady?" To
which Gracey replied: "Me!" and threw her arms round his
neck. I endorsed her testimony, saying: "It's us." He acknowl-
edged Gracey's accolade with : " Now another, t'other side where
there's no plaster ! " presenting an intact cheek. He pulled my
nose slightly, not to seem unconscious of me. As he did so, I
saw him looking furtively at Jemima, who was putting her card-
case away.
Now this uncle of mine perceived in the genus Woman so
says my memory of him two distinct species, the sort with
nonsense about it, and the sort without. Perhaps nonsense did
not mean decorum, but it must have meant something akin, by
the contexts he used with it. They were odd, and often difficult
to follow. I remember hearing him say, in contrasting the quali-
ties of two sisters, that one of them might have been, a parson's
daughter, for the matter of that, while the other was distinctly
a ripping female, without a scrap of that sort of nonsense about
her. I am, and was, in the dark about the exact value of his
terminology; but of this I am sure, that he would not have hit
it off, as the phrase goes, with the former of these two young ladies ;
while it would have stood a poor chance, whatever it was, of
remaining on between himself and the latter. I connect a cer-
tain awkwardness, or shyness, in the presence of all young ladies,
that he betrayed on first introduction, to his uncertainty as to
which of these species the sample presented belonged to.
My impression is, that he had this feeling about Jemima. I
gathered that her appeal to sentiments of his class had gained
force by a greater latitude in dress than her position as a gover-
ness had allowed her, to say nothing of the moral effect upon
her of her new position. For he said to Gracey, sotto voce, while
his eyes rested perceptively on the rather distinguished figure
that was now halfway down the paved approach from the gate
188 OLD MAX'S YOUTH
to the door: "Who's the lady swell, Sixpence? Your new thing-
ummybob ? " The name he called my sister by was a private
one, only in use by himself and his brother.
" It's our stepmother, Miss Evans," said Gracey, making up
for a loud whisper by dramatic play of the countenance. Then
she tried to throw out an apologetic word or two. " She isn't
really nasty, you know, Uncle Sam."
I may have caught his comment, half -spoken to himself, wrongly.
It sounded like: "Where's the governess?" I treasured in my
mind an intention to say, if appealed to, that Jemima was rather
a brick. No opportunity occurred for the production of this
testimonial. For Jemima was upon us. She was perfectly at
her ease, while my uncle was distinctly embarrassed. At the
time I accepted this embarrassment as one that he would hare
betrayed equally in the presence of any other young lady of showy
exterior.
Her hand came out to shake his as soon as the card-case was
disposed of; not before. The delay accentuated her deliberation,
and gave the concession value. I think she also strengthened
her position by taking preliminary greetings for granted, saying
merely with a slight shrug and eyebrow-action : " Driven away,
Mr. Sam!" which perhaps laid claim to a familiarity she was
not entitled to. I was aware that, somehow, she had made a
friend of my uncle.
I could not understand, with my boyish perceptions, how the
possessor of so perfect a silk hat as his could be got over so
easily. The beauty and newness of its inside was impressing me
as he held it, doffed to salute the lady, well out of the way of my
heedlessness, or Gracey's. I could see the line it had left on his
forehead, for his complexion, which was fair, showed marks.
"You don't say that now, Mrs. Pascoe?" said he, and this clear
use of her name seemed to improve relations still further.
"Indeed I do, Mr. Sam! Obliged to fly the country!" She
glanced slightly towards the house, and the glance seemed to
convey enlightenment. For Uncle Sam said: "Old lady been
cuttin' up rough is that it?" And both laughed. I then be-
came aware that our visit had not come to an end, though I
could not guess how events meant to work. I felt very curious.
" I haven't seen her, you know," she added. " She sent out word.
I'm one of the sinners, I'm quite aware of that, but why these
two children? "
Unr-l^ Snm did not consider the last word spoken clearly. " Old
lady'll firzle down," he said. " On'y give her timel She hasn't
189
had time." His lazy insouciant speech ignored the aspirates, but
I cannot omit them in writing, as a want of culture is connected
with dropped H's. Now, although Uncle Sam was not highly
cultured, that was not the cause of his H-droppings, which were
a parti pris, adopted to show the extent of his indifference to his
topic. He could not be at the trouble to aspirate H's about trifles!
That was the implication.
' Oh, Mr. Sam, I wish I could think so. I fear she has a
strong character."
" Not the old lady. Don't you be afraid of her. She's a bit
of an old Turk at the first go-off, as often as not. But she'll
fizzle down."
" And meanwhile ?"
" Supposin' we was to go inside ! "
"Ought we to?"
" On a Sunday? I always do everythin' I oughtn't to on a
Sunday. So does little Sixpence, I lay." He tickled Gracey, who
was holding his arm. She said : " Oh Uncle Sam ! " remon-
stratively. He then suggested that we should all go into a side
room, which he had somehow monopolized, so that it was known
to the household as Mr. Sam's room. "You'll be able to hear
the old lady swearin' at a distance," said he, as an inducement.
" How kind you are, Mr. Sam ! " said my stepmother. " And
you really think she'll soften?"
" You see if she don't ! " said my uncle in his laziest way. " Git
along in, you two brass f ardens ! " What he then did reminds
me how long ago this was. He offered his arm to my step-
mother, who made use of it. In those days one met with sporadic
survivals of a belief once universal, that you should always offer
your arm to a lady. It was an article of faith with Varnish.
Whatever manners my Uncle Sam had that were not his own
invention had been instilled into him by my grandmother, who
was eighty at about this period. He may have been thirty-six,
being the youngest son of a large family.
It is rather singular that I should retain so vivid a recollection
of this encounter with Uncle Sam at the front gate, and have
such a poor memory of what followed. We went into the Pigsty
my uncle's designation for his sanctum and sat by a blazing
fire listening to the sounds of a distant collision between my
uncles and their old mother. I drew inferences from its pauses
and cadences. Uncle Sam was endeavouring to influence the
old lady towards a reconciliation, partly from contradictious-
ness, partly from the effect which a good-looking woman has on
190 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
a man of his type, when sufficiently showily dressed. I remember
the place, the blazing fire, the voices, and my certainty of their
general import, but cannot supply the connecting links with
what followed. The scene changes in my mind to my grand-
mother's drawing-room, where she sits in her high-backed chair
by another blazing fire, which her gold-rimmed spectacles flash
back the more vividly that the day without is dying prematurely
of a fog. Facing her is my stepmother, seated and looking her
best; perfectly cool and collected, I must say. My Uncle Sam is
lounging on a sofa midway, with Gracey on its margin leaning
against his waistcoat. My memory takes cognizance of my Uncle
Francis's back, in the middle window, I think, and the inter-
mittent movement of his head either way to bring alternate nos-
trils to bear on a double-barrelled pinch of snuff. What I can-
not determine is where I myself, who see it all, am in the room.
Does it matter?
My granny is justifying to the full my forecast of her atti-
tude. She is trembling all over with fierceness. But, although I
can see it in her old hand on the chair-leather from where I
am wherever that is it is not evident in her voice. I can re-
member her voice, but not the words it said. I have to recon-
struct them.
" I have intimated to you, Mrs. Pascoe as I suppose I must
call you that I desire not to see you. My son Francis has already,
at my request, written my reasons for refusing to receive you. I
do not consider myself bound to add one word to what I have
already said. But I have given way to the wish of my son Fran-
cis, and also my son Samuel "
Her son Samuel interrupted her, saying three times distinctly:
"Don't bring me in don't bring me in don't bring me in!' 1
lying back on the sofa and shaking his head with his eyes shut.
He ended up : " I ain't in it," and I suspect pinched or tickled
Gracey, to express alliance aside, as she entered some protest
sotto voce.
My grandmother resumed what I was pleased to call her jaw.
I believe I reconstruct it fairly. " I have given way to my son's
wish that I should see you whatever my son Samuel may say
to the contrary for you to know from my own lips my opinion
about your husband's shameful neglect of my daughter in her last
illness ..." My stepmother showed signs of interrupting, and
the old lady caught her up tartly. " I do not wish to hear any-
thing you have to say," she said, and my stepmother murmured
deprecatorily : " Oh, is this just ? "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 191
My Uncle Sam, without unclosing his eyes, expressed sympathy.
" Dairmed unjust, I should say," said he. " But just you sit
still, and let the old lady work it off."
This colloquy had slipped in, while the old lady was already
working it off. " Nothing that you say can alter my opinion
that my daughter was the victim of gross negligence, and that
her husband was responsible for that negligence. You can tell
him from me that I hold him morally guilty of murder. My son
Francis minces matters like a poltroon, and refuses to write as
I direct him. Yes I tell you it is so. I am in his power, for
how can I write myself, when I cannot hold a pen ? "
My Uncle Francis protested; weakly as I thought then, and
still think. " Come, I say, Mother ! " it's as much as I can depose
to. Uncle Sam remarked, placidly, in spite of the heavy firing
that was going on : " Old lady's pitchin' it rather strong. But
I ain't in it."
My stepmother, whose breath I conceived had been taken away
by the sudden vigour of the old Spitfire's attack, recovered it and
turned to Uncle Sam. " Surely, Mr. Samuel, you can never be-
lieve such a horrible accusation."
" I ain't in it," said Uncle Sam.
The old lady stood to her guns. " Samuel and Francis, you
may shuffle out of it. You may turn tail, and leave your old
mother to tell the truth. But you know what you have said of
your sister's death "
" What have we said ? " I think both spoke.
" You know what you have said of this Miss Evans woman. In
this room! Yes here!"
Uncle Samuel looked amused, and Uncle Francis embarrassed.
The latter took more snuff into one nostril than was usual with
him, as though it was impossible to go on to the next nostril until
this difficulty was disposed of. The former had the impudence to
say, addressing his brother : " What have you been a-sayin' about
Mrs. Pascoe, Frank? Out with it! Don't bottle it up!"
I hope the dim recollection I have of the old lady at this moment
is wrong. For she turns fiercely on her eldest son and says:
" Answer your brother ! "
" If you are going to pay any attention to Samuel, I shall let
it alone." Thus Uncle Francis, still keeping the other nostril
waiting, as a consentaneous action with the halt in the conver-
sation.
Uncle Sam exaggerated his drony manner in harmony with a
continuous shake of the head, to say : " Don't you expect to get
192 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
out of it that way, Frank! What have you been a-sayin' about
Mrs. Pascoe? That's the point. You keep to the point, my good
fellar!" He then remarked aside to my stepmother: "Nothin'
like keepin' these legal characters to the point. Slippery lot they
are!"
Perhaps the accusations against my stepmother were repeated,
or insinuated, and I did not understand them. For I only remem-
ber what presents itself now to me as meaningless altercation until
my stepmother says : " What does it matter what Mr. Frank
or Mr. Samuel have said about me? We all say angry things
that we are sorry for afterwards, sometimes. I can forgive any-
thing that has been said against myself, although I grieve that
any one I respect for I do respect you, dear Mrs. Wigram "
" Don't call me ' dear,' " snapped the old lady.
My stepmother went on without noticing the interruption.
u That any one I respect should believe such malicious nonsense.
But I cannot bear to hear dreadful charges brought against my
dear husband, knowing as I do and how can any one know better
how utterly and cruelly false they are. I came here today, dear
Mrs. Wigram " the old lady snorted " to try and influence you
towards a more charitable judgment of him. I came in the face
of your prohibition, and I ask you only to hear me. Remem-
ber that I was there the whole time "
My Uncle Francis interrupted. " I think that's fair, Mother."
said he. " I don't think Mrs. Pascoe's travelling outside the
record." He always used any legal phrase that came to hand,
and I think felt thereby like Counsel, or at least Amiens Curiae.
" I am silent," said the old lady, savagely. " But I retain my
opinion." She became a grim monument of determination not
to be convinced.
My stepmother continued: "I was there during the whole of
my dear employer's " her voice wavered and threatened tears
" last sad illness, and I am sure I can tell you if you will hear
me what will convince you that there was no neglect."
Uncle Francis interjected, professionally: "I think we are
bound to hear Mrs. Pascoe's statement." My grandmother said
inexorably: "It will not change my opinion." Uncle Sam said
something under his breath that I did not catch, but afterwards
Gracey assured me, that at this juncture he had said: "Go it
one, go it t'other!" I can easily believe it.
I believe that I am supplying a good deal of this writing what
must have been said, to supplement what I heard, and remember.
I know that I cannot write " Mrs. Pascoe's statement," as she
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 193
spoke it, but I can give its substance. On the night of the tragedy,
she had been the last person so she said to look in at my mother's
room before the discovery that the patient had taken that fatal
double dose of laudanum. She could vouch for the fact that
the bottle that contained it was safe on the chimney-piece, at
a great distance from the bed. She had noticed this particularly,
though she did not go further than the door of the room, for my
mother had said she was then quite comfortable. She was not
sleepy, but she wanted to lie quiet, and not to have people fussing
in and out, but the boy might come in, to say good-night. The
medicine glass was on the table by the bed, but she was quite
certain there was nothing in it. If any living creature was to
blame for what happened it was she, the deponent herself, for not
entering the room and removing the medicine bottle still further
from the patient. But, candidly, would any of her hearers have
done so, under the circumstances?
" We shall have to give Mrs. Pascoe the benefit of that," said
my Uncle Francis, who was gradually becoming a cross-examiner,
with legal acumen, as well as snuff visible in every twitch of his
nostril. " Eh, Mother ?"
i My granny took no notice of this, but fixed a basilisk glance on
my stepmother. " How do you know you were the last person
to look into the room ? " she said.
" Oh how do I know ? " was the response, which I remember
clearly enough, given as though the speaker was really distressed
with a suspicion that she might have taken the fact for granted
rashly. But she recovered, saying : " Oh, but I am sure that I
was!"
u Why, of course, you were, Aunt Helen," struck in Gracey,
looking very white, but not overwhelmed, and seeming to under-
stand the points at issue. " As if I wasn't there in the house
all the time!"
I also testified. " Nobody'd been in when I was there," I
said, giving as a certain fact what was really only my own strong
conviction. Older folk than I have done the same, before now.
My Uncle Sam seemed to accept a moment's silence as a con-
fession of public conscience that this topic should not have been
mooted before us youngsters. For he said, with severity: " There,
now you seel Talkin' before these kids! What did I say to you?
I only ask, what did I say? Why, of course, the kids are takin*
notice, and mean to. You ain't a baby, little Sixpence! " Gracey
confirmed this, saying: " No, I'm not. At least, I shall be almost
directly.'' My Uncle proceeded: " It's no use your tellin' me! If
194 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
you talk before a young lady that's nearly out, you'll just have
to take the consequences. Makin' believe they are in the nursery!
But I wash my hands."
"Perhaps," said my stepmother, "I did wrong to bring them
with me. It was my husband's wish that they should come." It
occurred to me then, and I see it clearly now, that my father
thought of me and Gracey as possible buffers between his bride
and the storm of indignation she was likely to encounter. I
doubt if he anticipated our taking part in the probable melee, only
meaning that our presence should serve as a check on the opera-
tions of the enemy. It is not unlikely that he made the usual
mistake of underestimating our years, as parents do. They for-
get that their children are no longer in the nursery, until some
rough revelation of their maturity brings it home to them. Under
this delusion he had assented to my stepmother's importunity that
she should attempt to carry an olive-branch into the hostile terri-
tory, sheltered by the youth and inexperience of the rising gen-
eration the project was intended to benefit.
But he was reckoning without his host in this calculation that
we could be present, and yet be kept outside active operations.
For Gracey, whom I suppose to have been far ahead of me in
her perception of the realities of life, took the bit in her teeth,
and however faulty the metaphor may be flared up.
"I don't care, Uncle Sam," said she, responding to some dis-
suasion undetected by me, " I'm not a baby and I ivill speak. Dear
Mamma got at the horrible medicine herself " here the poor child
broke into passionate tears " and took and took it herself twice
as much as was meant on the bottle and it killed her and it's
cruel and wicked to say that it was any fault of Papa's. I don't
care I tell you it is. Why. it was miles off, the bottle was ! Aunt
Helen saw it she's told you so "
I think I recollect that at this point my Uncle Frank said in a
dry, disagreeable way : " Yes Mrs. Pascoe has told us so, cer-
tainly," and his mother turned on him sharply, with : " Hold
your tongue. Frank, till you're asked to speak ! " To which he
replied: " Very good I'm out of it," and became morosely silent.
My stepmother said in a quick, parenthetical way, as a fact
just due to herself to mention : 4< The bottle was on the mantel-
shelf near the washstand, quite on the other side of the room.
No one could have imagined it possible." Possible, that is to
say, that my mother should get up, ilj as she was, and cross the
room to get at this bottle. It did, indeed, seem a thing no one
could have foretold. But she had done it. For there was the
195
attestation of the last person who had looked into the room, until
3 entered it, when my father told me to do so, and was presently
alarmed at her silence and the coldness of her hand and the
bed. 1 fancy I remember writing of this some time since.
I recollect my grandmother's eyes fixed on Gracey, through
her gold spectacles, with what I thought an appreciative look in
them. " Yes," said she, speaking to my stepmother, " you did
wrong to bring the children with you. What did you expect? "
Then to my Uncle Sam : " What are you saying to the girl,
Samuel? Send her over to me." Whereupon Gracey, who told me
afterwards my uncle's words, " Never you mind the old lady. You
stick up to her ! " crossed over to her grandparent rather reluc-
tantly, who examined her face carefully, and came to a con-
clusion. " You're a Brewster," said she, and for a full two seconds
I imagined this an epithet of condemnation or censure ; but it was
only her own maiden-name, which I had always known as a fact,
but had never visualized. It had been in some knowledge-box whose
key I had lost. She surprised me by saying: "Kiss me, child!
You do right to take your father's part. My sons are different."
I have an impression that Uncle Sam's comment on this was:
" Must kick somebody ! " Uncle Frank stopped to shrug his shoul-
ders, halfway through several milligrammes of snuff, and then
absorbed the balance curtly. He seemed resentful, while his
brother didn't seem to care.
A kind of truce seemed to come about over the impropriety of
thrashing out the point before us youngsters. But the joy of
battle had gone out of intercourse, and Gracey and I felt our-
selves wet blankets at least, I did. I was forming an opinion that
my mother's family's modus vivendi was dissension, and it matured
later.
This was not the end of the conversation, but it was the last
I can report of it. For Gracey and I retired by request into
Uncle Sam's pigsty, and had candles, not to be in the dark. We
listened to the voices in the other room, with comments, as thus:
"That's Jemima."
"Yes that's Aunt Helen."
" She's stopped No she hasn't . . . Yes, she has . . . Now
that's Gran."
"Yes that's Grandmamma. . . . That's Uncle Sam, inter-
rupting." An apparent collision was followed by a lull.
"She's shut him up. Isn't she a one-er! ... I say what
a long innings she's having! "
" Now she's done. I thought she sounded civiller. Who's that ? "
196 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Only Uncle Francis. He'll work her up again. . . . Now
Tie's got shut up, and that's her. . . . No she's just the same
fierceness."
" Isn't that Aunt Helen crying? "
" I betted she'd blub before they'd done." This was untrue,
taken literally. I had laid no wager.
" I thought she would. / call it a shame."
" That's the whole lot, all together. They're going it ! They'll
go on all night, at that rate."
"No, they won't! There's Granny on the top. . . . Now I
think I can hear them stopping. . . . Only they've begun again."
" You see, if they don't go on all night."
"No I'm right! They're dying down. . . . Yes Aunt
Helen's coming out. Uncle Sam's being civil."
"Why can't Uncle Francis be civil?"
" He's got some idea. Besides, he's a lawyer."
" I don't see that that counts. ... I say, I hope they are
shutting up. What'll the Governor say about keeping Thomas's
mare so long in the cold ? "
And so on. However they did shut up, in the end, and Gracey
and I were sent to say good-night to our grandmother.
My stepmother was reticent about any actual or possible results
of the interview, Thomas drove us home over slippery roads
through a dense fog. and we got to The Retreat very late and
found my father just on the point of starting off to discover and
rescue us, Heaven knows where or how.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
SOMETHING was "brewing, that hot summer night in the garden,
that I am sure I was writing about not so very long since only
I can't hunt it up now between my sister Roberta and Mr.
Anderson Grayper, and it was not a quarrel. It occurs to me that
hot summer nights dwell vividly in the memory, for how clearly
I recollect that one a year before when as I am convinced my
father's treaty with Miss Evans was ratified. History repeated
herself in this case, and I, schoolboy that I was, did not lay her
first recitation to heart, or I should have been less unprepared for
her second.
But then it was a sister! The idea never crossed my mind that
one of those inferior creatures should take the bit in her teeth,
and bolt in harness with a male outsider, who strange to say
possessed absolutely no charm for her younger brother! Why
should the second marriage of a father who of course knew all
about marrying, having done it before suggest the possibility of
such an outrageous new departure on the part of a sister?
Let me recall the story as best I may. I shall refer to many
events of the time that have nothing to do with it, because any
of these may strike a precious lode of memory, and bring back
things of ten thousand times more importance than themselves.
Roberta kept her own counsel about her intentions, and Mr.
Grayper's. I am sure she did, though I cannot conceive why my
father should not have been taken into the confidence of either,
unless indeed she made use of her love-affair as an object lesson, to
emphasize her resentment of my father's marriage with Miss
Evans, especially with reference to the clandestine character of
their wedding, and her own exclusion from its programme.
Jemima would have done more wisely to make her a bridesmaid.
Then she might, or might not, have made that weak young man
the partner of her joys and sorrows. If it had been shown that she
was really longing for it, I cannot imagine that my father would
have offered any serious opposition to their union. He was far
too good-natured to do so, on any grounds but the proposed son-
in-law's moral character, or his probable poverty. As to the former,
197
198 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
he was visibly blameless ; while, as to the latter, he was certain of a
partnership in the brewery You know ? " Grayper's Entire." He
was that Grayper and his mother was one of the Brewers of
Milldale. But he had a turn for the Drama, and I suppose
Roberta had another; a common ground of sympathy. It was,
strangely enough, for most of two years accepted by both families
as a sufficient pivot for friendship to turn upon; and indeed it is
possible that Roberta only discovered that she loved the young
man as soon as the idea occurred to' her of making him the stalk-
ing horse of Retributive Justice; a means towards effectual con-
demnation of her father and stepmother. Whether, in doing so,
she was cutting off her nose to spite her face, opinions may differ.
It does not matter now. Grayper has been dead twenty years;
finally worried to death, said Gossip, by his third wife. Bert has
been in her grave near half a century, and underneath the oak
coffin containing his second she herself having been treated to a
leaden one for this last twenty years. I have asked my Self in
vain where or when we heard this fact. We did not go to the
funeral of my sister's successsor.
I never mentioned to any of my family the embrace of these
lovers, that I detected in the moonlight, but once, and then I was
met with such incredulity that thereafter I remained silent, even to
my father.
The occasion was a meeting of the Club, Varnish being present
as a sort of favoured guest. Allusion had been made to the fre-
quency of Roberta's interviews with Mr. Grayper in connection
with an approaching winter season of the Roehampton Rosciuses.
But there had been no hint of a suspicion that there, " was any-
thing," and I think I felt insincere the possessor, as it were, of
a sort of guilty secret knowledge, that itched for publicity.
" I say, Varnish," I began, " I saw her and him ki " A
powerful hand stopped the revelation. " You shut up, little But-
tons ! " said Cooky, with decision.
Said Gracey : " Now, Monty, what nonsense ! Why isn't Jackey
to speak ? It's only us. Besides, he'd got as far as ' kis,' and I can't
see what difference it can make if he does say ' sing.' "
" All right, little Buttons ! Go ahead." Cooky's docility to my
sister was absolute.
" Kissing," I shouted, all the more emphatically that I had, as it
were, public sanction. "Kissing kissing kissing! What were
they kissing for, if it's not to count?" I then added particulars
of time and place.
Varnish took exception to the accuracy of my observation. " Of
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 199
course it would count, supposin' they did it, Master Jackey. But
supposin' you see wrong ! "
" How far off had you to see ? " said Gracey. I enlarged upon
the subject, giving figures. Gracey's earnest eyes calculated
thoughtfully. " You couldn't see persons kissing, as far off as that,"
said she.
" Oh yes, but I did," said I. " I could have seen them miles
further off. Kissing ! Both of them ! "
" What I look at, to go by," said Varnish, " is them when there's
company. Why they would be downright artful, to behave so
strict ! Just nothing beyond civil, 7 call it." This referred to the
attitude of the culprits in the drawing-room, after the fact.
" That's only their rot," said I, forcibly.
Varnish shook her head, unconvinced. " When it's a young lady
and gentleman, you can always tell," said she.
" Oh, you ridiculous boy, Jackey," said Gracey, " can't you see it
was theatricals? They are always doing theatricals."
I believe that what I wanted to say was that it was too great
a tax on human credulity to suppose that heartwhole embraces by
moonlight, in loneliness, could be ascribable solely to a dispassionate
study of the Thespian Art. But my vocabulary failed me, and I
preferred : " That's bosh ! "
" You're a silly boy, Jackey," said Gracey. And so weak was the
moral influence of my testimony, that neither she nor Varnish
attached or at least admitted that they attached the slightest
weight to it.
As for Cooky, he simply maintained a profound silence. Be-
cause, you see, he knew all about it.
Varnish was quite accurate when she described the public atti-
tude of these secret inamorati as nothing beyond civil. I believe
that Mr. Grayper was acting under orders, and that he would have
preferred to confess up, and have an ascertained position. But
Bert had her motives; and, with her, concealment was a parti pris.
She went beyond passive non-confession, giving out that she had
understood that Mr. Grayper was engaged to a Miss Pollexfen,
which was so decisive a name that it nipped inquiry in the bud.
Further, she assigned this engagement, which was an unblushing
fiction, as a reason for being quite at ease in her intercourse with
Mr. Grayper. I used to wonder how Miss Pollexfen contrived to
do without so much of the young gentleman's society. More
especially as he could never get away from the Brewery till five
o'clock.
Nevertheless, shadow as I am almost certain she was, Miss
200 OLD MAX'S YOUTH
Pollexfen acquired a certaiu amount of credence in the family cir-
cle. I think her reputation for existence was helped by the rest-
less vanity of its members, none of whom would admit that they
knew absolutely nothing about her beyond her name. My father
may, however, have been actuated by a desire to allow his second
daughter every latitude of choice among little boys to play with.
As, for instance, when Mrs. Walkinshaw, discerning afar that dear
girl Bertie, with her admirer firmly pinned to her apron strings,
exclaimed most suceulently, "But who's the swain?" my father
remarked, as to a confederate, " Nothing there. . . . Oh no ! I
know about it! He's engaged to a Miss Pollexfen. That's all
right ! " Whereupon the good lady, baffled in her spring, discerned a
new source of social stage business, exclaiming: " No now really!
That is interesting. I wonder which Pollexfens." My step-
mother, who was present, refused to be behindhand, saying with a
puzzled air, " Oh, don't you know those Pollexfens Eccles-
thorpe ; " and seemed to think that a rapid movement of her fingers
would revive some forgotten particulars about this family, of
which I don't believe any particulars ever were, or ever had been
forthcoming.
However, this visionary young lady was of service in deflecting
the Mrs. Walkinshaws of our visiting list from the scent of a love
affair. I doubt if " the swain " had the technical art required to
draw such a red-herring across its track in the case of his own
family. For his mamma and his grandmamma called stiffly, with
intent. It can only have been to express their own attitude towards
a proposed measure which was not yet developed enough to war-
rant discussion on a first reading. But they seem to have relied
on the subject being mooted by the other party, and the other
party kept silence. Indeed, so long as my father did not inaugurate
it, no one else felt warranted in doing so, and his uniform principle
was to hold his tongue on all delicate topics. This one might have
been indirectly approached by an inquiry after the Miss Pollexfen,
but she was too shadowy even for that. The visit fell flat, and an
attempt at parting to constitute its reality by cries of gratification
fell flatter still. Delighted anticipations of quick and frequent re-
currence of the phenomenon were so very unwarranted.
Therefore, it fell out that my legend of the kissing was dis-
credited by all who heard it; and indeed, an idea grew that what-
ever other couple might be in danger from the darts of Love, this
one was safeguarded against them. The Miss Pollexfen was an
effectual one, in this case, and nobody anticipated the result that
came about some weeks after the garden incident.
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 201
One day Koberta, who had gone away by herself early in the
day, did not return as anticipated. She had refused, somewhat
curtly, my stepmother's offer to convey her to her destination in
the brougham, on the ground that it was quite in another direction,
and that she could not wait so long, wishing to arrive early. She
would shift for herself. Roberta was always very independent
in her movements,
I believe the truth dawned on me first, partly because I knew I
was right about the kissing, partly because since my father's
marriage I had got into the way of suspecting that any single
person or persons who failed to appear at lunch or dinner, as
might be, had gone to the Altar. But it did not dawn upon me
when she defaulted that day at lunch, because she had gone
report said to the Flinders Cortrights' at St. John's Wood to play
croquet, and she was sure to stop for lunch, though she had spoken
of being back. Nor at dinner, because public opinion decided that
she had stopped on. " Oh nonsense, my dear," said my stepmother
to my father. " What a fidget you are! As if Roberta wasn't able
to take care of herself ! "
"But something may have happened," said my father, uneasily.
" Of course anything may have happened. What's to prevent
it? Only nothing has you may be sure of that. Nothing ever
does happen when one gets in a stew. It's all thrown away. So
now carve the hare and be contented." Whereby my father was
silenced but not convinced. Also, the cook had left the hare's head
on, in defiance of past requests, and this threw the previous ques-
tion off the line.
The older the evening grew without the sound of cab-wheel? in
The Retreat, the firmer became the conviction that Roberta had
stopped on. Reasoning was held sound that determined that if
anything had happened we should have heard of it by now. a
fortiori as now came to mean more and more half-hours gone for
ever. Until at last my father revolted against further self-delusion,
and sent for a hansom. The brougham, I remember, was for the
moment disqualified for service, owing to some trifling mishap in
the morning.
" Mayn't I come too 1 " said I, when the hansom had opened its
jaws to receive my father. He assented, provided I looked alive.
I looked alive, and forthwith we were on our way to St. John's
Wood; naturally the first, because the only, clue to my sister's
whereabouts.
I can lie here, fifty-five years later than that mysterious ftarlit
windy night, and recall the silent streets as our cab-horse, informed
202 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
by its driver of the amount its fare had promised if he got over
the ground in twenty minutes, threw his whole soul into promoting
the interests of his master. I see again the lonely policeman on his
beat, becoming aware of a case of alcoholism that can sing, across
the street, and wondering probably whether that case will last out
his own term, and remain a negligible quantity of beeriness, until
he can leave him as an inheritance to his relief, and go off duty.
Or that other, shutting his eyes to midnight in consideration of a
bribe, outside the half-closed pothouse where that beeriness blos-
somed into song. And, in all the ride, not a hundred yards of
pavement without its woman-outcast, whose meaning my boyhood
had hardly come to the knowledge of. The wind-blown street-lamp
at one corner flickers still for me on a face that it lighted up for
one moment as we whirled across the canal-bridge at Maida Vale,
and I wonder still whether the water was deep enough to drown her
and give her rest and nothingness. Over fifty-five years ago, at
this hour of writing ! But I did not know then why she looked so
greedily at the water.
My father had hardly spoken throughout the eighteen minutes
for the horse earned that five shillings for his master, nobly
but had sat with a rigid face and a bitten lip, and an impatient
movement now and then. He only just got clear of the wheel,
in his haste to get down and ring the bell at Grove Villa, which
was the Flinders Cortrights'. That bell jangled perfunctorily, but
nothing came of its first temperate suggestions.
" All gone to bed ! " said my father. " Give 'em a minute."
They had it, but showed no sign of life. A second more thrilling
appeal, and a pause for results. " They're coming now," said he,
listening.
They came, in the form of an old woman who lurched, who
could not hear, and would not open the garden gate, preferring to
speak through a cast iron lattice work of a pretentious design in.
its upper panels. Yes that was Mrs. Cortright's, but the family was
away in the Islands, or Highlands, as might be. She added what
seemed irreconcilable with reason, that she herself was Mrs.
Perquisite, the caretaker, and in bed, but could take a message.
It seems odd now; to think how almost impossible it would be to
find out what her name really was, if one had a mind to try.
My father accepted the name as I write it now. " Well !
open the gate, Mrs. Perquisite, and listen to what I say, and you
shall have this shilling." The gate was opened. " Now tell me has
a young lady been here today to play croquet? With other young
ladies of course."
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 203
But Mrs. Perquisite could not answer this question without a
clear understanding as to what game the young lady had come to
play at. She treated the subject as though several young ladies
had been there in the course of the day, to play at several games
football, say, or chess, or lansquenet. She required an identifica-
tion of the game of croquet, before she could give a final answer.
My father had the misfortune to confuse her by saying, " With
balls. . . . On the lawn With mallets ! " rather impatiently. I
think she confused the last word with malice. It led, however, to
a decisive negative, founded on a conviction that no young lady
that came there would ever play at sech. Her disposition would
be too sweet.
"Has any young lady been here?" said my father, severely, to
clinch the matter. Well no! since my father put it that way,
and no discrimination of games was needed, Mrs. Perquisite was
in a position to say boldly that no young lady had come anigh that
house since the family departed for the Islands or Highlands.
Mrs. Perquisite received her shilling, and my father and I fled in
the cab, which awaited us. He told the driver to make for a
police-station between us and home Marylebone, I think and
when we arrived there, went in to interview the inspector on duty,
leaving me in the cab. It was during his absence that I began
to associate my sister's disappearance with Mr. Anderson Grayper.
The idea made my mind much easier about her, for though I do not
suppose I ever felt any anxiety comparable to my father's, I had
paid Roberta the compliment of feeling more concern about her
welfare than it had ever occurred to me to feel before. I had
even gone as far as a misgiving that to go snugly to a bed and
sleep upon such an unsolved mystery would be in a sense sinful,
but this abated now, and I looked forward to a normal night's rest
based on a theory that pointed to everything being all right
somehow. As to whether such a rash step would lead to happiness
or otherwise, that was Bert's lookout, not mine.
I think if I had had the slightest idea of the nightmare pos-
sibilities that my father was conjuring up about his missing
daughter, I should have spoken out freely about this surmise, and
eased his mind. But I could only have advanced it as a pure
conjecture of my own, and I could not remember any recent inci-
dent that pointed to such a thing, to give his speculations a list
in the same direction.
I heard almost nothing of his interview with the police inspector.
Coming out from the station door with him, the latter said without
emotion : " You may rely on everything being done correct,
204 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Mr. " I thought he was never going to remember his name
" Pascoe. Full particulars will be despatched at once to our
head office, and in a few hours they will have them at every station
in London. I shouldn't be the least uneasy, if I was you." And
I saw that this official assurance though it left matters exactly
where they stood before really acted as an anodyne to my father's
anxiety. I am sure that, as we scoured away through the now
almost empty streets, he felt that something had been done
something practical, correct, effectual! Nothing had.
As for me though really I write with mistrust about my own
feelings, so little do I remember them as compared with the vivid-
ness of surrounding event I looked forward to finding, on our
return, that some tidings had come to throw light on the mystery,
probably in the sense of the theory I had framed to account for it.
But no news had arrived. I can still see the frightened faces that
came out to learn the most unsatisfactory result of our expedi-
tion can still hear the despairing exclamations that greeted it.
What! Never at Mrs. Cortright's at all! Were we sure? Which
Cortright did we see? Who told us^ And so forth a torrent of
exclamation nipped in the bud by a brief presentation of the empty
house and its abortive curatrix.
What then were we to do? Where could we go to find out?
What activity could we exercise to soothe our souls into the belief
that we were doing something effectual ? There lies the sting of
the sudden blank a simple disappearance leaves in a great city.
Let a dweller in some mountain village fail to find his home at
night, and in a trice his kith and kin, and half the dwellers nearby
are on his track, and dogs that know their errand as well as their
masters, or better, are baying from ridge to ridge, discounting a
triumph that is sure to come. Let a wanderer in the Australian
bush vanish from eyes that watch for his return in vain, are there
not the black trackers, whom such of us may follow as are swift
of foot, to cherish the delusion that we too are factors in the
search ? But in a great city, where he whom we seek has become
one of an unseen swarm, even this self-deception is at fault, for
want of a clue. Nothing is left but to bear our intolerable souls as
best we may, and go mad for a next minute to come which may
have pity in its heart.
No respite came to my father all through that miserable night.
I lay and listened to his restless pacing to and fro in his own room,
until its monotony soothed me to sleep, in despite of an unreason-
able conviction of the dutifulness of lying awake. Once asleep,
Morpheus, who didn't care twopence what became of my sister, saw
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 205
to Oblivion for me. I never woke, until the voice of Varnish came
before her into my room and roused me : " There now, Master
Eustace, now what will you say when you're told ? "
My answer was incoherent. It belonged to a conversation in a
dream, with some sort of shellfish.
"You wake up, young Squire!" Varnish shook me, to hasten
matters. " When you're quite woke'll be plenty of time to hear the
news."
" No I say what is it though, Varnish? Stop humbugging! "
That is to say a truce to pleasantry! Get to the point!
" Your sister Miss Roberta, Master Eustace ! "
I suddenly became wide awake, and sat up in bed with my
knees up to my chin. " Jiminy Cracks ! " I said, obscurely. " What
was it ? " Last night's events had come back to me.
" Your sister Miss Roberta, Master Eustace, she's gone and
got herself married to " Varnish paused, to enjoy her
climax.
But I spoiled it for her. " That Ass Anderson Grayper ! " said
I. " Is that all ? I don't see that that matters."
" Law now, Master Eustace, on'y think ! Your sister's a Mrs."
"Much I care!"
" You unfeeling boy," said Gracey, coming in. " You ought
to be thankful it's no worse."
"If only he wasn't such an Ass !" I paused regretfully.
"But how ever come you to guess right?" said Varnish.
"As if I didn't know!" said I, scornfully. "/ knew, fast
enough."
" Then you should have up and said so, Master Eustace."
" I don't see that. Besides, it wasn't that sort of knowing."
Analysis of niceties in knowledge was averted by my father's
voice from afar: " When's that boy coming down? Breakfast's
just ready." Which sent my visitors away for me to hurry my
things on.
My father looked still worried, but on the whole relieved. " Give
him the letter to read for himself," said he to my stepmother, after
a curt announcement of Roberta's escapade. She remarked, " What
the boy ! " but as he replied, " Yes ! the boy. Why not ? " she
handed me the letter. This is my nearest recollection of it.
"PiER HOTEL, FOLKESTONE.
" MY DEAR PAPA: I write this that you may not be uneasy about
what has become of me. I am married to Mr. Anderson Grayper,
and you will probably be applied to by the newspaper people to
206 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
verify the advertisement. I have no time for more now, as we have
to catch the boat.
" I wish to say that this arrangement has been my own wish
entirely, and that my husband is not responsible. If you wish
for an explanation, 1 will tell you my reasons. Only 1 think you
will understand without. They have been the same as other
people's.
" Do not give my love to Miss Evans, only to Ellen and Grace and
yourself, and believe me,
" Your affectionate daughter,
"KOBERTA GRAYPER.
" P. S. And the Boy. And Varnish of course."
I recollect that they all seemed curious about what I should
say, and waited ; Gracey only beginning, " What does she mean
by ?" and being stopped by my father. "Don't give Master
Jackey any tips! " said he. "Let's hear him on his own hook! "
" / know what she means," said I, somewhat resenting the sug-
gestion that tips would have any influence. " She means by ' verify
the advertisement.' Of course that means "
" No I didn't," said Gracey. " I meant by ' other people's.' Who
does she mean by them?"
My father laughed good-humouredly. " Why of course me and
your stepmamma ! " said he. " Whom else could she mean ? We're
the culprits! Now what does Jackey say?"
I felt flattered and important. My oracular utterance was:
" It's all her cheek ! All about explanations and other people is her
cheek." I am not sure that I did not qualify her cheek as
" beastly " an unwarranted expression ! I developed the subject
further. Bert had been in an awful wax with Miss Ev . . .
stopped by the censorship . . . and, if you came to that, with
the Governor himself, because she wasn't a bridesmaid. This pro-
found view of my sister's conduct only found a lukewarm public.
I don't think my father felt that his son was shining as an ex-
ponent of contemporary history. For he seemed ready to suspend
the subject, saying : " Well, well ! We shall have a happy couple
on our hands, that's all ! Perhaps they'll be wiser after their
honeymoon. . . . I'm ready for breakfast, my dear. I don't
know what you are."
If you know the Christian spirit of forgiveness to which sup-
pressed execration changes when the guest appears who has kept
dinner waiting, you will be able to acctunt for the leniency with
THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 207
which all of us viewed this needlessly irregular marriage. The
fact was that the nightmare of an unaccountable disappearance had
been so oppressive, that we should have welcomed the truant's re-
turn on any terms. For my own part, I have always felt that a
sudden vacancy, unaccounted for, in a place some belonging of
mine not a beloved one of necessity has vanished from, is harder
to bear than the worst of mishaps with explanations. Yes I
would sooner the missing unit should return a leper than not return
at all! Anything rather than an Old Oak Chest! And when
the calamity is recognizably short of leprosy when the only afflic-
tion involved is a sudden unprovoked son-in-law, are we not
excusable if we feel thankful for the outcome of our anxiety; as
I really believe my father did, when he found that his affectionate
daughter had become nothing worse than Roberta Grayper? For
I have no doubt his imagination had run riot among possibilities
more formidable than anything mine could achieve.
But there were things to be reckoned with. Among others the
police. A solemn mysterious emissary called next day from Scot-
land Yard to inform my father that on the morning of my sister's
disappearance a young lady of her name had been married by
special license at some church at Putney, or thereabouts. Further,
that the couple so married had been traced to Folkestone, and had
probably gone to Paris. My father had to produce the letter he had
received from the bride, feeling rather ashamed all the while; with-
out, as he said, sufficient reason; for what was there unreasonable
in his action ? The police officer seemed to take umbrage at his
lenient view of the situation, and would naturally have preferred
some statutable outcome. My father had to affect a regret he did
not feel that no proceedings could be taken against some person
or persons. His daughter was certainly not yet twenty-one, but it
would be absurd to pretend that she was still a child. She was a
minor technically, no doubt, but ... a good many buts. The
officer expressed dissatisfaction with the state of the law. Girls
should not be allowed to go away from home, to visit at friend's
houses, to associate with the opposite sex or to invite its admira-
tion by figging themselves up. Many other in fact most other
things would not be allowed, if he had his way. But he could
be, and was, mollified, and induced to take up the position that
after all young women would be young women, say what you might.
I don't think he left the house dissatisfied, but I cannot say with
how much.
Another thing to be reckoned with was Mrs. Walkinshaw. I am
sure my father would have compounded liberally with this good
208 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
lady in exchange for silence about our affairs, leaving her quite
free to deal with everybody else's, or to make a like bargain with
Society. But I must say this for Mrs. Walkinshaw; I believe her
to have been quite above mercenary consideration. She was an
example of a drug-habit, and a common one, though I don't exactly
know the name of the drug. But I know its chief symptom, a keen
interest in what does not concern the patient, and I can distinguish
further between its acute and chronic forms. Varnish indicated
this distinction once when she said' to me, overhearing Mrs. Walk-
inshaw through a closed door: "I declare if she ain't talking
about a lady and a gentleman, Master Eustace." I said, " The
door's too thick to tell;" and Varnish saw what I meant, for she
replied, " It don't want to come through, for the sake of the
meaning. So you go along, Squire! Why 'ark at that! " And I,
harking at it, could discern a something halfway between roguery
and relish archness and carnivorousness which my later experi-
ence has learned to associate with the acuter phases of the dis-
order. I diagnosed the symptom unmistakably when on the second
day after I became the brother of a Mrs. this excellent lady was
announced as a visitor to my stepmother. She may be said to have
appeared in war-paint.
She loomed over us one moment over all the family, that is,
except my father, who had not yet come home before she swooped
to kiss the female members of it, who had to submit. But so full
was she of her topic, that she interwove a large expansive interro-
gation into the weft of her salutes. "And what is this ?
My dear Mrs. Pascoe, how well you are looking ! What is
this I hear ? And my Elaine! My child, you are abso-
lutely lovely What is this incredible news ? And dear
Gracey, of course ? This incredible news about my Joan of
Arc? " She had reached her climax, and accepted a sofa to hear the
answer on.
I felt grateful internally that I had a stepmother who always
proved a mistress of the situation, and I saw how her figure and
its dress helped her. " My dear Mrs. Walkinshaw," said she. " your
Joan of Arc has taken the bit in her teeth and provided herself with
a husband. But don't ask me to account for anything ! '' She
threw up the palms of her very elegant hands, to defend herself
against interrogation.
" Then I mustn't ask." She submitted to circumstance, but as
a box shuts, or a door. A hasp of any sort knocks all the heart out
of passivity.
I think Jemima saw dangers ahead, for she surrendered the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 209
point. " Oh well, I suppose I may as well say what I do know.
Of course, dear Mrs. Walkinshaw, you are such a very old friend ! "
Both went into a kind of ecstasy, or rapture, over the antiquity of
this friendship. Jemima continued : " 1 wouldn't tell every one
this, but with you it's so different! You know, she's a character,
Roberta is?"
" My dear, do I not always call her Joan -of Arc ? "
" Precisely. And she's very like her, if you can rely on her
statues ... I mean Joan's. Well but really I'm not sure how
much I ought to say ! "
Mrs. Walkinshaw suddenly begged that she might be told
nothing nothing that was the least a secret. She merely curled
up over that word " least."
My stepmother let out several reefs in a hurry, to catch the
wind. " It's not such a secret as all that," said she. She looked
attentively at her visitor for a moment or two, and then rather
over the heads of us young people, as one speaks to experience
which will understand added in a quick abated voice: "She
won't forgive me, you know! That was what was at the bottom
of it."
" / understand. My dear, you needn't tell me another word."
<: Yes that was it! Nothing else."
" So natural! The dear girl ! "
" It's not the least surprising. You know I can quite under-
stand her position, and forgive her completely."
" Why of course! You have known her from a baby."
" Almost a baby. And she has always shown this decision of
character. It is really a beautiful trait, however we look at it."
" And they've gone to Paris, this young couple." Mrs. Walkin-
shaw spoke as if this was an added testimony of the decision of
character. Irresolution would haVe wavered on this side of the
Channel, clearly! " But how surprised you must have been ! ''
" Quite taken aback. And we had a dreadful fright, too, be-
cause her letter was delayed till next day. How were we to know
she had not come to some harm ? "
I could not help intruding on the conversation, being impatient
of what I thought humbug in it. " Bert didn't care twopence,"
said I; behind a side-wing, as it were.
" Oh, you boys ! " said Mrs. Walkinshaw. And Jemima laughed
equably.
But the question really before the house was still unsettled; to
wit. my sister's motives in making a runaway match nemine con-
tradicente. My stepmother no doubt thought this a good oppor-
210 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
tunity for an official statement, knowing that her interviewer might
be relied on to tell every one immediately. Mrs. Walkinshaw was
on no account to pay any attention to what Jackey said, nor to
any boy at any time on any subject. Their dear Roberta had never
supposed her letter would be delayed till next day. It was the
Post. Letters would arrive of their own accord, if only the Post
would not come in theway so Jemima seemed to imply. She had
no need to tell Mrs. Walkinshaw what it was that had produced
such a sort of ... resentment it was the only word she could
use in our dear Roberta. Oh no Mrs. Walkinshaw knew, with-
out being told, that it was the steps her dear husband had thought
prudent and advisable to take in connection with their own wed-
ding. She sometimes felt uncertain whether in that case the
wisest course had been pursued. But that was neither here nor
there. My father's wish was her law, and it was no use crying
over spilled milk. Anyhow there it was! Roberta had felt well!
exasperated at her father not having disclosed his intentions
more plainly, and had, perhaps absurdly though Jemima was not
without sympathy for her pursued a similar course in circum-
stances absolutely different, where no reason could possibly be
assigned for it.
Mrs. Walkinshaw perceived everything with microscopic in-
tensity, expressed by glaring, and squeezing out superlatives. No
one who had the least understanding of girls could feel the slight-
est wonder at the course which so exceptional, yet typical, an ex-
ample had adopted in this case. She herself approved nay, ap-
plauded everything that every one concerned had done. Every-
thing did everybody credit. But if she had had an inquiring mind,
and had weakly given way to its promptings, she might have felt
inclined to ask whether it was possible that Roberta had shied off
being married from her father's house, in view of the' unpopularity
of its present mistress. This last is not verbally reported, but
abbreviated down to its bare meaning. For what with apologies,
extenuations, reservations, " prudent pauses, sage provisos, sub-
intents and saving clauses," the good lady took some time over ex-
pressing this simple idea. It certainly was not an easy one to
propound, and I remember feeling afraid that Jemima would be
offended, although I recognized a certain skill in the way it had been
formulated.
But she only treated it with derision. Roberta's conduct had
certainly been dictated by unforgiveness towards herself. It was,
however, an assertion of independence, a censure of her father's
concealment of his intended marriage and an affirmation of her
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 2H
right to play the same part herself. The sentiment of it was that
two could play at that game. " I don't believe," said Jemima,
" that she would have looked upon it as being married from my
house in the least. I doubt if the dear girl considers me the mis-
tress of it at all."
I muttered, for Ellen to hear : l< No she says you're Miss
Evans." And Ellen checked me in a horrified way with : " Oh,
Jackey, don't!" Whereupon our visitor asked gushily what the
dear boy was saying, and Ellen said I had said nothing. I did not
repeat my remark, for a reason for which I afterwards found ex-
pression when I reported the interview to Varnish, in the words:
" I didn't want to be slobbered over by her" I believe Jemima heard,
for she did not press for a repetition, and presently Mrs. Walkin-
shaw took her departure, overflowing with benedictions.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
How can recollections of over fifty years since be written, so that
they shall not seem bald, disjointed, unconnected? Ask rather
how can they be written at all! Think what he who looks back
over half a century has to see beyond, and wonder that that early
world should be distinguishable from the crowd of incidents that
succeed it!
And yet, they are distinct enough when Memory gets a clue
to hold by. Things forgotten come back at the bidding of a chance
image. For instance, that ride with my father to St. John's Wood
in the hansom, all the events of which were hidden in Oblivion
until a match was struck to illumine them. What was it now, that
summoned that vanished journey from the past? Something as
forgotten as itself, but a moment since! Was it the head of that
hare my father carved at dinner? Very likely since I fancy it so.
But why? That is more than I can tell. If I were to trace every
such clue that crosses my mind, and write all that each suggests,
there would never as my sister Ellen used to say be the end of
it. To avoid mere Chaos, I have to catch at landmarks, let what
will revive in my mind, and leave cohesion to take its chance.
One such landmark is an event which placed, for a time, a meta-
phorical gulf between me and my beloved friend Cooky. He who
had been a schoolboy like myself however much he stood above
me in his classes became a college man, and adopted the style
and title of " Mr. Moss." I regret to say that he adopted a
chimney-pot hat with it, thereby becoming for ever the slave of con-
vention. It did not suit him. Sane banality sat ill upon the
reputed semblance of Nebuchadnezzar my father's name for him.
When he appeared, not without pride, in his cylindrical headgear
at The Retreat, he was treated with derision; indeed Gracey went
so far as to call him an old clothesman. So, as I recollect, he
thereafter kept it in the background as much as possible.
If I had not been within a twelvemonth of passing the barrier
that separates the School from the College, this promotion might
have fixed a great gulf between us. But I was so soon to know
knowledge more grown-uply nobody will ever read this word, so
212
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 213
why not use it ? than was possible to a schoolboy, with a cap, that
our separation did not arrive that, I see in newspapers, is a good
expression to use nowadays and might have been fairly described
as a Platonic detachment. I was already looking forward to having
my knowledge-box repacked secundum artem, and indeed I felt
a foretaste of omniscience in my limited communications with
my friend, which were otherwise a little like calling across the Styx
to a departed ghost.
Another landmark, which had painful consequences for me in
after life, was my discovery that I had a genius for the Fine Arts.
This pernicious idea would never have crossed my mind, if a
schoolfellow of mine named Jacox had not had another idea, nearly
equally pernicious, that he had a genius for Satire. These two
ideas fructified in Room K. which I fancy I have already referred
to. under circumstances as follows :
In Room K., on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, a delusion
was indulged in by boys willing to sacrifice two half -holidays in the
week to self-deception, to the effect that they were being taught
how to draw. A correlated delusion obsessed at the same time
certain instructors, who were not Early Masters at least on the
morning of this occurrence. For they came late late enough to
allow of my making a crude sketch of the Farnese Hercules, with
Jacox looking over my shoulder, before their authority ejected us
from the premises, where neither had any business. I wish to
Heaven that they had been earlier. Then Jacox might never have
said: " You know how to draw and no mistake, Pascoe! " I per-
ceive, now that it is too late near sixty years too late! that he
was, according to his lights, satirical. He had justification, how-
ever, in the widely spread belief that an exaggerated overstatement
of the contrary is an effective form of ridicule. What he wished
to convey was that I did not know how to draw, and probably
never should. I doubt if I was able at that time to conceive myself
incapable of anything, and I accepted his encomium seriously.
It was very natural. Tell any over-confident boy of fifteen that
he has a strong bent for anything, and egotism will do the rest.
Of course if the bias of his supposed genius is towards a subject
which calls for a slight effort to acquire a rudiment of skill in its
earliest manifestation, he has a better chance of escaping a mis-
conception of his own latent abilities. He has to learn to play
scales on the piano, at least, before it will occur to the most of-
ficious family friend to assure his parents that they have added
to the world's musical wealth the germ of a Paderewski. He must
learn musical notation to convince the most sanguine critic that
214 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
he is a Beethoven in embryo. No one will believe he is a mute in-
glorious Soyer until he can cook a potato, that he is Kobin Hood
or William Tell until he hits something; or Tom Cribb or Nat
Langham until he knocks some one down, or out. All these accom-
plishments taken at random call for an admission ticket to their
outer court, for which the aspirant has, as it were, to pay cash.
Even Poetry and the Drama demand spelling, and even grammar,
though I confess I write this with diffidence.
It is otherwise when we have to deal with the Fine Arts. A piece
of drawing-paper and a pencil are all that is necessary to show
genius, and the less visible it is to a normal vision the greater the
credit to his insight who detects it. And herein lies the difference
between the painter's art and that of the musician, cook, marks-
man, or prize-fighter. No preliminary knowledge is necessary, and
no authority can convict him of incompetence. If incompetency
always broke its pencil-point, or sucked the vermilion, as some of us
have done in early youth, authority would have something to lay
hold of and could point out those disqualifications for the career
of a Reynolds, a Michelangelo, or a Turner. But any moderately
clever boy can get over these difficulties in a few hours, and is
thereafter entrenched behind his genius as in a fortress where
none can touch him. It is no use to tell him he has drawn a leg
a mile long. It is the foreshortening that makes it look so, or the
perspective, or it is your narrow-minded academical accuracy that
prevents you entering into the ideal character of the work.
Measurement, he will explain to you, is useless as a criterion of
proportion, except on the picture itself, which is wet, and you must
on no account touch it. Anyhow, he's right. Few of us have the
hardihood to express opinions about colour to real artists, but
now and then a meek voice rises in protest against emerald green
eyes, and blackberry-juice lips, and is told that its owner is colour-
blind. How can he know that he isn't? And when he points out
that another real artist has painted the same original with emerald
green lips and blackberry- juice eyes, he does not score a single run.
Because that is interpretation. It is always a case of heads, In-
spiration wins; tails, you lose. Respectful silence is always open
to bystanders, whose consolation it must be to reflect that the most
original and powerful neosophies may pass and be forgotten, unless
they get vaguely mixed up with Belial, who never loses a chance of
self-assertion.
However, the Mystery of Colour, with all its splendid openings
for Popes in want of a job, had not offered itself as a resource for
my infallibility when I first discerned in myself, at the suggestion
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 215
of friends, the materials of an Artist. That was a sad day for
me when Jacox told me that I could draw and no mistake. If he
had only put his tongue ever so tenderly in his cheek! . . .
But it is no use talking about it. I did not detect his ironical
method, and I did buy cartridge paper and a three-penny BB
pencil, and a piece of India-rubber of the period, as I walked back
from school, that very afternoon in the autumn of fifty-five. I
promptly put the rubber to thaw in my breeches-pocket, and the
moment I got home unrolled my sheet of cartridge paper, with a
misgiving that it would not flatten out. It did not, but I drew
Prometheus, in spite of the way the paper cockled with the vulture
just beginning to think of where he would turn to in earnest, and
his wings reaching all across the picture. I was dissatisfied with
Prometheus, and tore him up.
Then I made acquaintance with a phenomenon which was to em-
barrass me greatly later in life. Every artist knows that the frag-
ment of a destroyed picture speaks to the regretful spectator of a
miracle of composition, vigorous draughtsmanship, delicate play
of light and shade, solidity, tenderness, fancy all the things !
lost for ever through the ruthless Vandalism of its destroyer. Any
one can test this who possesses a work of Art that he has loathed
from infancy has placed in a lumber-room with its face to the
wall because who can say but that some one, some day might like
it, to have? Any portion of such a picture, produced in a society of
real connoisseurs, will procure for him who has detached it ex-
ecrations and contumely. And what is worse, he will himself be
overwhelmed by a sudden perception of the Qualities of the miser-
able residuum, and will thereafter writhe with penitential anguish
at the thought of the careful modelling of the torso and the at-
mosphere of the middle distance lost, lost for ever! And all 'be-
cause he gave way to rashness, when he might at least have shown
the Art Treasure to any really good Judge, who would have saved
it for posterity.
My first experience of this phenomenon came to me when I tore
Prometheus up ; and did not, when I threw the pieces away, make a
clean sweep of the whole lot. One remained, with the vulture's
claw upon it. Varnish found it, and recognized it as the work
of an Artist, whatever it represented. She exclaimed against my
act of wanton destruction, but not so much on the score of its
vandalism as because of the cost of the materials. Think of all
that money gone, and nothing to show for it ! Wherever I got
the example from it went beyond her powers to imagine. Only one
thing she was sure it wasn't Master Moss ! This, please note, was
216 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
not an expression of popular opinion about Judaism, which ascribes
to it an exaggerated economy; but of faith in Cooky as an adviser.
Nor yet it wasn't Miss Gracey, because she knew better. It was
the corruption of man's heart. She referred the matter to Gracey,
who was forthwith deceived by the surviving fragment into the
recollection of conspicuous promise in the original which presently
became masterly performance. " How ever could you be so silly,
Jackey ? " said Gracey, " as to spoil. all that beautiful drawing? And
all out of your own head, too ! " Thereupon she and Varnish laid
their wits together, and traced the bulk of Prometheus to a house-
maid's box, where it was waiting to light her next fire, and the
Titan's head to The Dust; and that filthy, one wondered Miss
Gracey could touch it; the one being Varnish.
The flavour of Carbolic Acid that pervades this Infirmary and
every other, no doubt dies in my nostrils at the bidding of
Memory, to make way for a phantom of that whiff that came from
The Dust as my intrepid little sister plunged into its penetralia
with a candle, and identified the missing fragment among potato-
peelings and some broken crockery which speculation may remain
dumb about. That whiff makes me shudder still, near upon sixty
years later. And when I see Gracey's bright triumphant face, and
hear her voice exclaim that she has got it! And then her resurrec-
tion and surrender of the candlestick, and a search for foul
floating cobwebs that had caught and clung to her hair, and
tickled. But she had been touched by nothing else, having rescued
the salvage with a cautious finger and thumb, and brought it out
proudly to the light of Heaven, where it could be blown and shaken.
I ask my Self now, as I look back to that hour, was it really he,
that spoiled young cub, who could even utter derision of that
darling girl for going into that beastly dust-hole to resuscitate
his rubbish ? For he did, and all the while I was flattering him that
the incident could be made capital of for our common glory.
What could be more splendid than to despise and fling aside so
powerful a manifestation of genius? What nobler than to under-
value it as a mere symptom of the great achievements that were
to follow?
At the same time, I was still such a mere baby, so crude a
product of a nursery and a school, that I, looking back, am fain to
tolerate my Self the Self of those days even as my circle toler-
ated and encouraged its self-conceit and crudity.
But their forbearance and patience were my ruin. A little disci-
pline might have saved me, and none was forthcoming. It hap-
pened unfortunately that my bent, to the top of which they fooled
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 217
me, was one in which the only sane and responsible guardian I had
my father to wit was completely at sea. His easy-going mod-
esty could form no judgment as to whether I had, or had not in
me the stuff from which an artist can be made. When I followed
up Prometheus with a heterogeneous muddle of unfinished designs,
all of the most ambitious sort, none a scrap better than what any
fairly clever self-confident boy could reel off by the score, he either
mistrusted his own critical powers, or kept silence, borne down by
the applause of well-meaning friends; who, when called upon to
admire my latest marvellous productions, thought they were com-
plying with his wish in perceiving in me the nascent germ of any
and every great artist whose name they happened to remember.
They went away and laughed at the ridiculous boy; that I do
not doubt for a moment. But how was my dear father to know
that I was not a Raphael in embryo, when every approach he made
towards discussing my abilities as mortal, was quashed with assur-
ances that the Fine Arts were not subject to any ascertainable
laws not to be discussed by the vulgar outsider on any intelligible
lines, such as would be followed in the case of any other subject.
This, however, is outrunning my story. Let me get back to that
filthy dust-bin, and Gracey, limping triumphantly up the kitchen
stairs with the rescued Titan's head.
I am reminded that, on the way. our Cook was instructed to make
paste of an exceptional tenacity, nothing that human power could
detach from anywhere being held applicable to the purpose in
hand. She made, I think, a quart. I condescended so far as to go
out to a neighbouring oilman's and buy a pastebrush for two-
pence, which moulted disgracefully, very soon reducing the quart
of paste to a matrix full of hog's bristles. Enough remained,
however, to reinstate the drawing on a cardboard backing, with
only one or two holes in the sky, which did beautifully for clouds.
As I write all I recollect, I must record that the paste was care-
fully covered over and consigned to a shelf, where it proceeded to
become green mould. It was known thereafter as " the paste '' and
allowed to get worse for a long time on the plea that it might, after
all, be wanted for something. It never was, and would have been
found ineffectual and sickly, under its green mould, if it had been.
That evening when my father, having finished his pipe in his
own room, joined the remainder of the family in the drawing-room,
the first words he said were: "Now let's see the great work of
Art."
" There now ! " said Gracey. " Jackey must have told. What a
shame ! " The explanation of which is, that during dinner, and
218 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
previously, hopes had been held out to my father of a privileged
inspection of a rare production undescribed, the work of a
near connection of the family, not specified. He had under-
taken to possess his soul in peace until after pipe-time, but had
broken his promise, inquiring of me in the library, where I was
detecting the meaning of an obscure passage in Juvenal, what
the fun was. I affected ignorance, and he explained, referring
to expressions used at dinner. ,1 said, as one who recalls what
has merited oblivion: " Oh thai! That was nothing. Only a
rotten drawing I made of Prometheus."
" Well ! " said my father, placidly smoking. " We'll see the
rotten drawing, at any rate. Fine Arts ! that's our game, is it ? "
So, when we joined the ladies, we saw the rotten drawing, and
its author felt that his position was the stronger since its disin-
tegration and restoration. Could I have anticipated some later
experiences, I should have discerned the cause of this, and given
it a name. There is no doubt about it it was the Quality it
had acquired. In my innocence I then imagined that my posi-
tion had been improved by false concepts in the Spectators' minds
of what the splendour of the drawing was before I tore it up.
But this was delusion. Quality was the responsible agent.
"Which did which?" said my father, under misapprehension
as to the authorship. " Gracey the bird, and Jackey the statue?
Or Jackey the bird, and Gracey the statue?"
" You dear, old, silly papa," said Gracey. " It's not a statue.
It's Prometheus. And the Vulture gnawing at his liver, like in
Shelley. And I didn't do any of it; Jackey did it all all by him-
self, out of his own head, and nobody to help him! He did,
indeed!"
My father glanced at his wife opposite, for confirmation. " I
believe that is the case," said she. And her manner did not deny,
at least, that " the case " was a remarkable one.
His response was: "H'm!" And I discerned in the tone of
each a sufficient confirmation of the wisdom of Jacox. My
father then proceeded to examine details. " The vulture isn't
gnawing his liver," said he. " His liver's on the other side."
"Would a vulture know?" said Gracey, thoughtfully, anxious
about my fame for accuracy. " But, of course, they would have
told him i " She seemed quite disconcerted on my behalf !
" It doesn't at all follow," said my father. " Anyhow, he would
make preliminary prods. But why hasn't Prometheus got eyes?
I should have preferred to see the Vulture, myself."
" Oh, papa dear, how can you ? He has got eyes. Hasn't
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 219
he got eyes, Jackey? You did give him eyes, dear, didn't
you?"
I was skulking at the other end of the room a misinterpreta-
tion of a modest demeanour. " He's got Greek eyes," said I.
" Perfectly correct," said my father, with gravity. " And Greek
hair, I suppose. In those days they had some consideration for
the sculptors. And what's that going on in the sky? Greek
fire?"
I took this quite seriously. " That's the sunset," I said. Those
are only holes. We've lost the pieces."
" Oh they are holes. Very good. But what I want to know,
young man, is why did you tear it all up?"
" Because I thought it so beastly bad when it was done. I
didn't want it stuck together again. It was Gracey's idea." I
am conscious now of what an ungracious young cub I must have
been, or seemed. I feel horribly ashamed as my young sister's
animated face comes back to me, looking over my father's shoul-
der at the puerile drawing, courting the caressing hand that toys
with her sunny curls, and lingers on her downy cheek, appre-
ciatively. I say to myself in vain that it does not matter now,
and I try to shield my heart against its penitence, behind the
long decades that have come between, in vain.
But Gracey had no thought of blame for her cub-brother. Of
that I am convinced. She was only thinking what a dear, clever
boy he was, and rejoicing that she had rescued his precious work
from that filthy dust-bin down below. " Now do say it's a lovely
drawing, papa dearest!" said she. "Just think of Jackey doing
it all himself, and in such a little time, too! And he's never
done a drawing before! Do say so, and I'll give you such a nice
kiss, exactly in the right place."
My father accepted a prepayment of the bribe, but I don't
think he fulfilled the contract, though he appeared to assent to
it. " I'll tell you just what I think, chick," said he. " Only it's
not good for much when it's done because it's not my line. I
think that, considering that it is the work of a young gentleman
who never did a drawing before, and that he took such a little
time over it. and further, that it is done under some embarrassing
Greek conditions which I can't profess to understand."
" Yes. Considering all that, you think it's lovely. Now, don't
you?"
" Well considering all that, I think the drawing might have
been worse." With which very modest concession to his son's
greatness, my father escaped, that time.
220 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I have sometimes thought very leniently of my stepmother for
her share in hurrying me on to destruction. Because, although
she conceded to me abstract ability of a high order and we must
remember that it is as much as one's life is worth to attempt to
stem High Art so long as no question was raised of its adoption
as a profession, yet as soon as a murmur of Destiny was reported
to the effect that I was " going to be " an Artist, she took up her
parable on the score of Caste, and denounced Art the profession,
however High on the slopes of Parnassus, as socially low, and alto-
gether unsuited for the son of a Gentleman. For, strange as it
seems now to tell it, there were still, in the fifties, persons in
Society who grudged admission to its sacred precinct to every
Art but Literature. The Elite so said a Gospel that had sur-
vived from the last age but one might be amateurs, like Count
d'Orsay, but not professionals. And this Gospel was preached
with the greatest vigour by persons on Society's outskirts, who, in-
deed, are apt to take up the cudgels in defence of its citadel even
while the garrison is contemplating all sorts of mean concessions
to the enemy.
Xo prophet was at hand to tell my stepmother that in twenty
years' time the Upper Circles would make a general stampede into
the Lower ones that the parts of tinkers, tailors, ploughboys,
and apothecaries would be played by Gentlemen, who had never
before stooped lower than soldiers, sailors, and thieves. And
Jemima was all the more in need of a Daniel to read this writ-
ing on the wall and plenty more for that matter insomuch as
that her position before marriage had been quite low and vulgar.
Solicitude that her stepson should not imperil the Gentility
whatever it might amount to that he had inherited from an
attenuated ancestry, was graceful in an ex-governess, on her pro-
motion. Not that she could not claim kinship of Aberllynponty-
stradrindod, or somewhere thereabouts, only she thought all this
Ancestry was such nonsense. But a line had to be drawn, and
persons who belonged to a class which offered peculiar difficulties
to exact nomenclature in plain language, but which, neverthe-
less, was instantly recognizable on its merits, had decided to draw
that line at Art. No Gentleman's son she would have to use
the word in the end, one always had could become a Working
Artist without loss of Caste.
I overheard a conversation to this effect, and became a little
confused about the Farnese Hercules, from whose cast I luul
drawn the sketch that had led to it. Mrs. Walkinshaw under-
stood, however, and appiauded Jemima's social views to the echo.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 221
Somebody must have told me that this good lady, then or there-
abouts, expressed the opinion that dear Mrs. Pascoe had all along
seemed well, she knew no other expression! as if she belonged
to, she supposed she must not say the better class, because that
was odious, but to some section of the population which made
the speaker concentrate her discriminative powers forcibly with-
out result, and left her hearer, whoever she was, nevertheless
fully informed about her meaning, and intensely perceptive of
dear Mrs. Pascoe's qualifications which it indicated. I say some
one must have told me this, or I should not have known it.
This protest against serious acceptance of Art as my destiny,
which makes me slow to condemn Jemima as a principal among
those whose good intentions decided my adoption of it as a pro-
fession, must have come about long after the incident of Prome-
theus, as I had added to it a long series of other evidences of
my genius one worse than the other, I should say before my
father allowed himself- to travel with the stream in the direc-
tion of the quagmire of Modern Art in which it and I were to
stagnate The discussion of whether I should or should not u be
an Artist " was prolonged through my last year of school life, and
a short two years of attendance at College, before a final deci-
sion became necessary.
I told my Self, when I took up the writing of these memories
that many of them would be painful. But I did not anticipate
that the record of my adventures and misadventures in my pro-
fession would prove so. I thought of them as a farce, the recall-
ing of which might amuse its writer, but could never sting him
so many years after the curtain fell on its last scene. I find
now that the farce was a tragedy. If I could think, as others
do, of human life as the work of a well-intentioned Creator, I should
have to concoct an excuse for his mismanagement of my career
by supposing that he wanted to make an example of the conse-
quences of presumptuous vanity and shallow lack of purpose, and
considered me a worthless young jackanapes suitable for the
object he had in view. I have so long ceased to perplex my soul
with thoughts beyond its reach to my gain, for I no longer
" quake in my disposition '' that I conceive it more reason-
able to divide the blame among those who visibly deserve it, my
Self in chief. What was he about, not to turn upon me with
reproaches not to warn me that I could not trust his prepos-
terous confidence in my own fatuous performances? I am glad
that as I write this I am alone that none can read it and make
it the text of a sermon on Free Will and Necessity. I could
222 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
not stop it by telling him the Will is to me free of hypothesis,
since Freedom is not known to me except as a quality of the
Will. He would not understand me in that, nor probably in
anything else.
And whom can I blame now, except my Self? Not Gracey,
when the dear girl's only motive was her love and admiration
for, and her confidence in, her younger brother. Not my father,
whose only fault was that he mistrusted his own judgment in a
subject that was to him a terra incognita, a land without a sign-
post. Not Varnish, who to the best of my belief regarded Art
and Science as forms of Nonsense, which well-informed people
had every right to indulge in ; only they could hardly expect sensi-
ble, uneducated persons to countenance them. Not my stepmother,
as she scarcely came into Court as an Art-Critic, and certainly
discouraged my adventure on social grounds, which I despised, but
which I recognize now as ill-handled lifeboats. Not my sister
Ellen, who was negative on all opinions, but shrank from unwel-
come perplexities of every sort, saying: u Oh dear! If only
they would settle it one way or the other, and then perhaps we
should get a little peace!" Not, therefore, any of my family. . . .
Stop, though! I have not mentioned Roberta. She did not en-
courage me, I know. But what can I recollect ? Almost nothing.
Of course, plenty were to blame, outside my family circle. I
could reproach nay, murder Mrs. Walkinshaw, for her share
in the arrangement of my destiny. At the time, I felt a spirit
of Christian forgiveness stirring in my heart forgiveness for
gushes untold, untellable when I found that the excellent lady's
wild cries of approbation, overheard by me afar, had been provoked
by the presentation for her inspection of a drawing of Milton's
Allegro, unfinished, a recent production of the master. She had
greeted it with a yell, to the effect that this was Correggio so
Gracey told me after. When I entered the drawing-room, she
greeted me as Correggio Himself. I felt ready to condone many
previous raptures, in view of this new discovery. If I could sum-
mon her from the grave now she would only be a hundred and
fifteen, about I could murder her and pack her off to her coffin
again, without remorse, so keenly have I since resented the mis-
chief she did me by her gross flattery. But I doubt if my father
paid much attention to Mrs. Walkinshaw.
I had one adviser outside my family to whom he might, with
advantage to my welfare, have paid more namely, my old school
friend. But I must in justice say that I doubt if Cooky spoke
freely to him. I fancy I remember referring to the extraor-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 223
dinary ascendency which Gracey exercised over Cooky. I was
fully aware at the time of that young college man's doubts
however temperately he expressed them of the reality of what
every one else was a-hailing as an extraordinary development of
youthful genius. But I had no means of knowing what I after-
wards suspected, and indeed ultimately knew, that Gracey had
laid an embargo, backed with the full force of her blue-eyed
earnestness, on his free speech to my father.
To me, he would speak freely enough. I remember well, when
my powerful rendering of Jove's vengeance on the Titan was
ready to burst upon an astonished Universe, that Cooky, on a visit
to The Retreat one Sunday morning, as of old, found that im-
pressive work of Art with its face to the wall for I had had
doubts whether to court indiscriminate publicity for it and
turned it round to the light for inspection and explanation.
" What's all this, little Buttons? " said he. " What's the fun ? "
"Oh that!" said I, with a lame pretence that it was, as it
were, a chance production of a thoughtless moment, easily for-
gotten. " That's only a piece of beastly foolery."
"That all?" said Cooky. "I guessed it was something of that
sort. What jolly long legs you've given him! Who's the party?
Prometheus, I suppose. Because of the Vulture."
I had secretly hoped that Cooky would censure my estimation
of the work, and instead of that he appeared to have accepted
it. " Of course, it's Prometheus," said I with dignity. " Nobody
else has vultures."
"Not they!" said Cooky. "They know better. He wouldn't
have had his'n if he'd had his choice. But he doesn't look put
out enough about it. P'raps, though, that's because the Vulture
hasn't begun ? "
"The Titans," I said, "were Demigods."
" I see," said Cooky. " Of course, they could stand anything."
I did not feel that this treatment of the subject was respectful.
I was hurt, and showed pique. " I don't care about it," said I.
"I think I shall tear it up and chuck it away."
'What's the good of doing anything, little Buttons, if you're
going to tear it up and chuck it away the minute you lose your
temper?"
" I haven't lost my temper."
" Very well, then make his legs a little shorter, and he'll be all
right. And I say "
" Whaw-awt ? "
" Couldn't you manage to make him squirm a little. Because,
224 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
you know, little Buttons, a Vulture is a Vulture, put it how you
may!"
" No, I can't. I can't alter him now. It's too late. He
won't rub out. No I shall chuck him away, and do another."
Which came to pass, but not before Cooky's departure that eve-
ning. I think he told Gracey of our interview and my intention,
and that enabled Gracey to identify the Vulture's claw through
the Quality which the surface had acquired during some hours
passed face-down on the carpet.
I have just recollected Roberta's reception of the revelation of
my genius. It happened some months after her absurd runaway
marriage, which fixes its date as in the spring following. It recalls
what else I might easily have forgotten the young woman's audac-
ity when she returned from her honeymoon abroad. I must sub-
mit to the vagaries of Memory, and allow her to lead me back to
a late autumn morning, which I can only identify as close to
Guy Fawkes Day, but not Guy Fawkes Day. I do this because
as the image of a four-wheeled cab becomes clear at the gate of
The Retreat, I am also aware of the voice of our servant Raynes
reproaching a Guy with being an Anachronism, saying that he was
an imposition, to claim a half-penny for inability to see why Gun-
powder Treason should pass and be forgotten on any day in the
year but one. The youth of his constituents he was of the plural
number; his soul, or core, being carried on a chair to which it
had to be tied owing to imperfect stuffing must have excused
this. For he had got a hoyp'ny, which might have been more
had he been historically accurate, and was imposing on the Prot-
estantism of the Tllingsworths by the time the four-wheeler arrived
at our gate, and its contents were discussing whether they should
come in, or should leave their cards and be wafted to some other
scene temporarily, until my father returned home. For Raynes
said that Master was late, but couldn't be long now.
" Oh," said Roberta, perceiving me at this point, " it's you ! It's
the boy, Anderson . . . Oh, very well only don't crush my lace! "
This arose from an impression I had that my sister, returning
to her family under these circumstances, would want to be kissed,
however conventionally. T very nearly said : " 7 don't want to
kiss you," because it would have been so true. But I practised self-
restraint, and Roberta continued: "How long will Papa be?
That's the point. Because T won't come in if he isn't here! That's
flat!"
In my heart I cordially wished the newly wedded pair would go
away anywhere else, and postpone themselves indefinitely. So
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 225
I would say nothing to encourage them to stop. I decided on :
" The Governor's got a Committee and a Board Meeting and an
Investigation of Accounts, and he didn't say how late he'd be.
Awfully late, I expect." I chose the functions that were to detain
him quite at random from an assortment overheard during the
past three years. Roberta accepted them as possible or probable;
but then she knew as little as I did about such things.
'* Very well, then," said Roberta. " If Papa isn't in, I don't see
the use of coming in. Is Ellen in?"
I denied Ellen sufficiently she being always an indistinct fea-
ture of family life by implication. " Varnish is in," I said. " And
Miss Evans is in, if you come to that."
" He's talking about Mrs. Pascoe," said my sister to her lord
and master, who as I then suspected, and later became con-
vinced was as wax in her hands, and looked to her for guid-
ance in all things. " He may call her Miss Evans all day long
if he likes. / shan't stop him. Now look here, Eustace John,
you've got to give our love .... Yes I know quite well, Ander-
son. I know what I'm talking about, so don't fidget ! " I was
dimly conscious of my new-made brother-in-law struggling to
make his individuality felt from beneath a crinoline. Probably
no one who has never shared a cab with a lady in equivalent skirts
can know how hopeless this task was, in those days. Mr. Gray-
per remained in compulsory abeyance, and his better-half pro-
ceeded "Yes give our loves. Never mind what he says! Give
our loves to Papa, and . . . and not to Miss Evans, as you call
her." . . .
I do not know how it came about that the lady herself, unper-
ceived till then, was standing close behind me. I suppose I made
no inquiry at the time, and now I have to accept her position
under the gate-lamp as a fact, and to be content with it. There
she \vas, and there was her equable voice, saying: "Do as you
like. Bertie dear. Call me ' Miss Evans ' if it gives you any
pleasure. Only don't go away and disappoint your dear father.
If you had any idea how anxious you made him ! "
She stopped with a jerk, I think, because Roberta's manner was
too insistently repellent to allow of negotiations; then continued
without irritation : " Oh well if you must, you must ! Or stop
a minute look here now! won't this do? If I go upstairs and
keep out of the way? You shall have the drawing-room all to
yourselves! Honour bright!"
I became conscious of an abraded head, at odds with skirts,
a head involved with vortices of pleats and gores and gussets
226 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and gathers. Its mouth was trying to articulate: "1 say now,
Ro, don't ! " Wherein I discerned this young gentleman's private
abbreviation of his wife one we had never used at home.
"Don't what?" said she, looking for him in her rear, strug-
gling with her concomitants. "Don't speak plainly, I suppose?"
" No don't be such a Turk. Get along down and go in ! I
don't see anythin' to be gained by rows. Let's go in and be reason-
able! You heard what Mrs. Pascoe said."
My stepmother saw her opportunity and caught at it. A traitor
in the enemy's camp! "Thank you so much, Mr. Grayper, for
taking my part a little! How do you do?" She had captured
his right hand, kid glove and all, with her beautiful ungloved one,
before any sort of protest was possible. I felt that Jemima was
more than a match for my sister. Besides, she was wielding that
powerful weapon, forgiveness, which ensures a dance on the body
of one's prostrate foe after the battle.
Circumstances had placed the new-married lady at a disadvan-
tage. Merely having to let her husband out of a coop, to shake
hands, compromised her case. She descended from the cab pale,
with a bitten lip, and remained stony towards her beie noire;
though, I confess, I felt she would not have weakened her case
by tolerating a ceremonial kiss. As it was, Jemima's: "Very
well, dear! I won't ask you to kiss me till you feel like it," rather
strengthened that lady's position than otherwise.
My father's return was close upon our heels as we entered
the house. lie, in fact, was shaking hands with his son-in-law
on the doorstep when Roberta was following her obnoxious step-
mother into the drawing-room.
I went back. Mr. Grayper was trying his hand on apologetic
semi-penitence, and had evidently been preparing a speech. But
he was so terribly handicapped by the fact that he could only
exculpate himself by blaming his wife that he made a complete
hash of it. His stammering was excellent in itself, but when-
ever it took articulate form he had to qualify whatever meaning
had leaked out with so many reservations that his words might
quite as well have been left unspoken. I can recollect nothing
except that he was well aware of an immense number of things,
that, he yielded to no one in a considerable number of others,
that his respect and love for my father were unbounded, and that
the first and whole duty of manhood in respect of its marital
arrangements was deference towards the feelings of its fiance's
families .... but! Recollection stops here, and I doubt whether,
if the young gentleman did go on with the exception to which
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 227
his conjunction pointed, he got very far with it. For it was diffi-
cult to introduce the point that, in spite of his punctilios, he
had suddenly and without warning married by special license a
young lady whose family circle had no intention of throwing
obstacles in the way of a normal and reasonable union.
My father, I think, enjoyed his confusion, letting him run into
all sorts of quickset hedges and morasses of eloquence. Then his
constitutional good-nature got the better of him, and he helped
the unhappy man out of his misery. "Well well well!" said
he, getting himself clear of a thick overcoat for the year was
cooling fast and then, as he found a hook to hang it on, adding
as though a happy thought had struck him : " Look here, my
boy! I've got a good idea. Suppose wo say no more about it
eh ! " Mr. Grayper, whom my father's speech makes me remember
as quite a young man no older than my sister, in fact seemed to
me to welcome the supposition greedily, seizing my father's hand
and holding it gratefully. But he gave up the attempt to utter
something; gratitude, I conceive. He seemed, however, to breathe
much more freely, and after hanging up his own coat, followed
my father into his library.
My father's expression always told me whether my company was
desired, or otherwise, and this time I accepted an eye-lid-signal
of the slightest sort, and left him to discuss the position with
his new-found son-in-law. I was curious to know how Jemima
and my sister were getting on, and made for the drawing-room.
Voices were at tension-point within. I opened the door gently,
to give them every chance of intercepting an intruder. If, inci-
dentally, this gentle opening was unheard and I caught a few
bars of the conversation within, was it my fault? I missed some-
thing my stepmother was just ending on, but T heard the answer.
"Whatever I think, I shall say nothing. What can I prove?
It is only my own belief. You know the truth yes, your con-
science knows the truth, Helen Evans! How can any one else
know? You say you will repeat what T say to Papa, but I know
better. You will do nothing of the sort. How could you look
him in the face, pray?"
The reply had a- sort of despairing tone: "Oh. Bert, Bert, can
it be you, to say such a dreadful thing of me? Think what friends
we have been!" This was appealing: what followed had a sound
of self-defence. " And you are so inconsistent. Never to say
a single word to me all the time we have been here in Chelsea!
. . . No you never said one word till after our wedding '
My sister cut her off sharply, striking in with : " Because I
228 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
had no reason. I never knew your motive. ... Is that door
open? " I judged it best at this point to complete the opening of the
door, and go into the room. Both accepted me as a passer-by.
Roberta said: "Well, Eustace John, what do you want? Get
it and go." And my stepmother said: "Yes, we're talking." I
thought it best to be ephemeral, and find a book to have been in
want of. Besides, it was a little pretence that soothed my con-
science for a peccadillo; really, I had been just on the point of
coughing ostentatiously to announce my presence. When I left
them I closed the door honourably, and the talking began again.
Gracey's knock at the street-door which I knew well inter-
cepted a half-formed intention on my part to try for admission
into the library, and hear what was going on there. It was quite
amicable, as an occasional laugh showed. I varied my programme,
not an imperative one, on the appearance of Gracey, who had
been out on a shopping excursion with Ellen, whose constitutional
indecision of character disqualified her for shopping single-handed.
She could not decide on a purchase without an adviser, her demean-
our in a shop resembling that of a Laputan sage whose flapper
had gone for a holiday. I answered the door that was the ac-
cepted phrase and was called upon to account for the cab that
still browsed at our gate, content with sixpence every fifteen min-
utes till further notice. That cab was, I said, Bert in new togs,
and her booby, as large as life. She was jawing with Jemima
in the drawing-room, and her booby was jawing with the Gover-
nor in the library. If, I said, Ellen and Gracey liked jaw, an
opportunity now offered itself for glutting themselves therewith
to repletion. I myself, being sick of human folly I forget how
I put this point should go and see Varnish, and get some tea.
Varnish was always good for tea in the late afternoon. More-
over, I wanted my old nurse's views on the conversation I had
overheard.
A human bride, however she has been brought about, is always
a bonne bouche for her sisters, and Ellen and Gracey rushed tumul-
tuously to the drawing-room to greet theirs. I heard their accolade
and felt that a provisional peace would hold good between Roberta
and her stepmother. I found Varnish on the landing, listening
curiously. " Why, Master Jackey," said she. " I do declare if
it isn't Miss Roberta and young Mr. Grayper, back again ! "
"It just is," I said. "And I say, Varnish, look here! Come
in and shut the door." The door, that is, of Varnish's reserve,
a room off the landing. " I say what do you think ? Bert and
Jemima were having it out when I went into the drawing-room."
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 229
" ' Ark at you, Master Eustace, saying Jemima! What would
anybody think, to hear you? Such a way of going on, I never!"
" Nobody's any the worse, that I can see."
" Because nobody ever listens to young gentlemen. They're just
let have their way. On'y Jemima! Such a name to call by!"
"Well what's she to be called? Mary Ann? Eliza Jane?"
Varnish was driven to stand at bay, face to face with a per-
plexing problem. " Both of 'em more respeckful than Jemima,
anyhow ! " said she, " but people's own names are what they look
to be called by, so why not behave according?"
"What's her's?"
" Now, Master Jackey, you know that, every bit as well as me."
But Varnish flinched from prescribing " Mrs. Pascoe " for my use,
definitely. She edged away to seek some compromise. " Of course,
it would have made it more easy like if she could have kep' Miss
Evans for a bit." That is to say, if the designation could have
held good, in the privacy of family life, until some better one
presented itself. "In course," continued Varnish, reflectively,
" she is your stepmamma, and the young ladies'."
I immediately seized this solution by the forelock. " Very well,
then! Bert and her stepmar were having it out, hammer and
tongs, when 1 went into the drawing-room."
I escaped from complete submission to an obnoxious title by
a slight perversion of it and a contemptuous accent. I added
that they had shut up now, because of Ellen and Gracey. but
that they would begin again when the girls came upstairs and
might go on till Doomsday.
Varnish's curiosity seemed roused. "You never took account
of what they were saying, I lay," said she.
"Didn't I, rather?" said I. I then repeated exactly the con-
versation I had just heard, with all the confidence of a shrewd
young memory. I ascribe my clear recollection of it now to its
duplication at the time, for Varnish's benefit.
It is an instance of how things the stupidity of boyhood ac-
cepted without comment come back to me in maturity to baffle
investigation of their causes, that I took Varnish's cross-examina-
tion, as to my recollection of these chance words I had over-
heard, as a matter of course. Later on in life, when I have pon-
dered over this story of my father's second marriage, I have thought
to myself what would I not give for speech once again with dear
old Varnish, long dead, to ask her what was passing in her mind,
that she should be so keen to know every word that passed between
Roberta and her stepmother. As it is, I can only recall that
230 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
her demeanour outwent the occasion I conceive for it now. Her
long silences, broken by interjections, as: "Mercy me!" or:
" There now, to think of it ! " ; her tense abstraction of mind,
always coming back to a request to have some phrase or sen-
tence repeated; the visible ill-success of her attempts to reconcile
one such with another all seem, as I look back to them, to have
reference to some train of thought she would not communicate to
me; that I, at the time, never suspected. As time passes on, and
I, with memory at fault, and no resource of written documents to
go back to, feel that the thread that holds me to the past grows
more attenuated day by day, I have to be content with the belief
that has done duty for certainty for so many years all a long
lifetime! that she thought my stepmother's marriage with my
father was schemed by her from the day when my mother was
laid in the grave, and that it was no subject for open speech with
a mere boy. Yet I was old enough even then to scent manhood
ahead, on the watch to pervert all my healthy natural instincts,
and make me the slave of the World's conventions. I cannot see
why the young should not be trusted more with a knowledge of
their own fast-coming ambitions and passions. Better surely than
to launch them on the sea of life, without chart or compass, to
find out its shoals for themselves.
Apart from that, I cannot now see that even if Jemima had
acknowledged to herself her penchant for my father, during my
mother's lifetime, she was so very much to blame. After all, one
is human, oneself.
But I have to recollect that all this incident of Roberta's return
was recalled to me by my reference to her opinions about my
artistic achievements, and these came to her knowledge months
after. I might dwell longer upon it, and upon the uncomforta-
ble evening that followed for the happy couple sent the cab
away, and stopped on but that very little of it survives 'in my
mind, and that does not tempt me to remember more. I prefer
to get back to my memories of the dawn of Art.
Roberta and her husband drifted away from us, which may
have been partly owing to their starting housekeeping, in a villa
at Petersham. It was a good distance from Wandsworth, where
the Brewery was; but not so very much farther, when you came
to think of it, than the young man's mother's house at Roehamp-
ton. It was, however, at least a hundred miles from Chelsea,
measured by the only accurate gauge of distance, imagination.
The consequence was that, as Petersham kept its distance from
Chelsea, my sister Grayper seldom came near her family. I rather
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 231
think that she had not done so for near upon three months, when
one day Gracey took advantage of a visit from her to leave a
portfolio, in which she had enshrined if the expression is not
too strong some important examples of my work, on the drawing-
room table near her, in a manner to invite inspection. Her
sister may have felt curiosity to know its contents for in the
fifties people did about portfolios and books and things. Now-
adays the side-tapes of the former are, like the young lady of
Ryde's shoestrings, seldom untied.
On this occasion Roberta took the offered bait, asking Gracey
what she had got in that new portfolio. It looked a very good
one. How much was it? The price of it nearly elbowed its con-
tents out of Court.
Gracey said: "Never mind! Do you want to see what's in it
or not? That's the question?"
Said Roberta, superciliously : " What have you got in it ? Oh,
drawings ! "
"What did you expect, Bert?" said Gracey. "Flatfish?"
Whereupon Ellen, near at hand, remarked : " How silly you are,
Gracey! You know flatfish are impossible, in portfolios." Gracey
said she didn't see that; but then that was only her contradic-
tiousness. It had, however, the effect of rousing speculation in
Ellen's mind as to the possibility of flatfish in portfolios, and she
kept up thereafter a short of Greek Chorus on the subject, which
lasted out the interview.
"Have I got to admire these?" said Roberta, turning them
over with disrespectful rapidity. " Who did them ? Your Jew,
I suppose ? "
"That's a bad shot!" I was looking out of a distant window,
affecting abstraction, as I contributed this remark. " Cooky doesn't
go in for this sort of humbugging."
"Oh that's the boy!" said Roberta. "What sort of hum-
bugging does Cooky, as you call him, go in for?"
I muttered a statement in reply, which Gracey interpreted to
Europe. " Mathematics and Music," said she. " Monty has no
turn for Art."
"Then who did them? The boy, I suppose? Well they're
very bad ! "
"Oh, Bert, how can you be so unkind?" Thus Gracey, hurt
and disappointed, but not quite sure that such a preposterous
criticism should be taken seriously.
The Greek Chorus was going on, obligato. I believe it was
saying : " If the fish were ever so thin, three of them would be
332 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
too thick for any portfolio. And no Holland flaps could possibly
prevent their getting out, if they were alive. So it's no use."
" I didn't say fish in earnest^ 11," said Gracey. " It was only
a way of speaking."
" I think it was a very silly way. I think the sooner you leave
off speaking in such ways, the better. Because it isn't witty,
whatever you think." It is just possible Memory has dressed
up and exaggerated my poor, dea-r sister Ellen's method. But
really, the- conviction that the foregoing, or some equivalent, is
what she must have said, is irresistible.
Roberta was turning over the drawings, commenting: "Have
these things been shown to any one who knows about drawing?
They ought to be shown to an Artist, a real one, if his opinion,
is to have any weight. / think them very bad, but then, I'm not
a Judge."
The Greek Chorus continued: "That's exactly what 7 say.
But, oh dear, it's no use! Nobody ever listens to me, and Gracey
talks nonsense about fishes in a portfolio. 7 give up." Ellen was
very near the truth in one thing. No one ever did listen to
her.
Roberta on this occasion did not. She went on, as though no
Greek Chorus existed: "Why not ask Mrs. Walkinshaw. She's
considered a Judge, I know. Anyhow, she knows real Artists,
with Studios. She knows Gromp, certainly, if she knows nobody
else."
I had never heard the name of the great man she referred to.
It wasn't really Gromp; however, Gromp impresses as his did.
The real name I have forgotten, in spite of the fact that my
soul, as it were, rose to it, acknowledging its owner as the highest
human authority on things Artistic. Even so when some person,
of weight says, of a patient who has been pronounced a sufferer
from Polysyllabitis: "lie must have the best advice. He must
see Smilax, at once!" one feels that Smilax, of whom one has
never heard before, spells salvation for any sufferer from such
a complex disorder. I was a stranger to the name of Gromp, but
when I felt that he had been actual, though I knew him not, my
ignorance of him began to have the force of knowledge. Retro-
spectively, I recognized Gromp. But I was afraid of him, for all
that.
" Of course," said I, " I shall have to do something heaps bet-
ter than those things, before they can be shown to a Swell." A
hurried vision passed through my mind of a really great design
of Chaos, Tartarus. Erebus, The Fall of Satan, the last Judg-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 233
merit something really powerful that would convince the Swell,
and reveal me in my true light. I was disconcerted at Roberta's
attitude. " You'll have to do something heaps better, young man,"
said she drily, and wanted to talk about something else.
I was dissatisfied, as I felt that not only my abilities, but my
modesty, should receive acknowledgment. I am sorry to say I
saw no way of bringing it on the tapis except by vilipending
Gracey's judgment. " It isn't my idea," said I. " Only Gee would
buy a portfolio for 'em. and stick 'em in." Gee was Gracey, indi-
cated by her initial. The dear girl had bought the portfolio
out of her pocket money, and I used it as a fulcrum for a spurious
self-abasement. Rather in fear that my humility would be ac-
cepted, T thought it best to emphasize it as it seemed to me
beyond all reason, so as to ensure its repudiation. " 7 think them
rot," said T, with decision.
" So do T," said Roberta, unexpectedly. " However, don't be-
lieve me. Ask any Judge. Ask Gromp. Get Goody Walkinshaw
to give you an introduction to her Gromp, if she knows him. I
don't believe she knows him."
I believe the Greek Chorus was still dealing with the fishes,
but this speech brought her again into touch with humanity. " T
do not see, Bert," snirl Ellen, "why you are so nasty about Mrs.
Walkinshaw. She may not be a Judge, but at any rate she comes
of a very old Lincolnshire family, and one of them was beheaded
under Henry the Somethingth I forget which and another was
Sir Stephen Walkinshaw, known as The Apostate, and really His-
tory. And whatever she has done to deserve to be Goodied, I
cannot imagine. As if she was a Hag! " And so forth.
If my father had come into the room two minutes later, Roberta
would have given up her portfolio that sounds Parliamentary
and it would have been laid on the table so does that where it
belonged, near the window. But, as it happened, he entered the
room just as she was saying: "Well Hag or no Hag. she can
be asked about Gromp, and she can back out if it was fibs."
One is not obliged to bring down family speech to standard proba-
bility, in writing what is never to be- read! So I leave my sis-
ters' phrases untinkered.
My father, patriarchally good-humoured, accepted them, but
asked for elucidation. " Who's been telling fibs about Gromp,
and what is Gromp she told fibs about?" Being enlightened, he
said: "But Gromp's a royal Academician! One couldn't ask
a Royal Academician about pencil drawings " This seemed so
plausible I don't know why that Gromp went into abeyance, to
234 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
crop up later. My sister's husband, who had come in with my
father, began looking at my drawings, and put his foot in it
forthwith, being shut up, or down, by his wife. If he had con-
fined himself to holding them at a distance, and leaning his head
to right and left to foster art-visibility let the word stand! bis
position would have been comparatively safe. But he must needs
say they were not half -bad. considering! Whereupon, Koberta
said tartly: "Then I shouldn't consider, if I were you!"
But Gromp was not destined' to disappear. The next time
the Hag was to the fore, she broached him, claiming a life-long
intimacy. In fact, she suggested that only the fascinations of
her departed Walkinshaw had stood between herself and Gromp
at the Altar. Whereby, Gromp, unable to meet with charms like
hers elsewhere, had become a non-marrying man, and lived chiefly
on hard-boiled eggs and milk in a Studio that had been a dis-
senting chapel at Clapham Rise. He never saw a living soul, and
admitted no one within its walls, but a letter from her would be
Open Sesame would operate like magic. My father had only
to say the word, and she would make an appointment for him
with this Royal Academician, even with Gromp.
CHAPTER XXV
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I WAS not destined to see Gromp in the flesh for a long time
after. He had to live on hard-boiled eggs for another clear twelve-
month yet before I experienced that satisfaction. For my father
put his foot down firmly on every attempt to bring the Fine Arts
into the arena of serious discussion as a profession for his son,
until I had finished my course at school, and attended lectures
for at least a year at the College. Even with that delay I should
still be short of nineteen scarcely old enough to make the choice
of a profession compulsory.
I think my father's imagination was misled by the word Col-
lege. He could not dissociate it from his old University life, with
its intoxicating traditions of ancient learning; its freedom of
sacred precincts where every stone brings back its memories of
bygone scholars; its great silent libraries, whose peace alone is
stimulus enough to make an otherwise bookless man read out
the day, and part reluctantly in the end with the quarto or folio
he never would have looked into elsewhere. He had never known
how much of his own love for the classics was due to the associa-
tions of the spot where they had reached his soul, and he fancied
that his son too might be bitten with the love of Literature, or,
it may be, of the practice of thinking mathematical or scientific
thinking by the surroundings of a College. But, honestly as I
believe that tfiere was not in the world, in my time, a sounder
curriculum of learning than the one he offered me, it had one
defect. There was nothing in the places of study, in their ante-
cedents and surroundings, to catch and hold the imagination of
a crude boy, who, behind his many faults which I do not think
my words conceal had one predominant impulse of the mind,
which was ready to grasp good or evil, truth or falsehood, accord-
ing to the garb it came in. My year of College life in no sense
Collegiate life placed the banquet of learning before me ungar-
nished and colourless, and my father wondered why the dishes
that had tempted his intellectual palate in the library or the
gardens of Peterhouse should be tasteless to his son's in Gower
Street. Surely, a College is a College, wherever chance has placed
it. He attached no weight whatever to University residence, as
235
236 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
against home and daily attendance. Of what advantage was it to
a studious youth to be shut out of his College after hours? Would
any amount of gating make study acceptable to an unstudious one?
No it was manifestly my natural aversion to letters, developed
as soon as application to them became optional ; for that was
a condition precedent of College-manhood, no longer schoolboy-
hood. And lore, artificially injected into the recesses of an un-
willing brain, under a pumping force of Black Books and Im-
positions, would be rejected by that stomach of the intellect at
the first convenient opportunity. Whereas my propensity to draw-
ing incidents of Greek Mythology and English History, however
fatuous its results were, was judged by him to be possibly the result
of an inherent energy of the soul, the vapidity and awkwardness
of whose first developments only needed guidance to make it bear
rich crops of fruit, with said Hope opulence and fame, for its
possessor.
Nevertheless, it was evidently a point which he could not decide
on his own responsibility. Even Mrs. Walkinshaw's squeal of rap-
ture, when Gracey showed her with delight my design of Narcis-
sus, in the boat of Charon, detecting his image in the waters of
Styx, could not move him from his decision to mistrust his own
judgment. He gave way, however, thus far, that he would send
me to a real School of Art, where I should have Training; and if
Training should train me effectually, and make him feel that
Art was not an Ignis Fatuus, but a substantial reality, he would
accompany me armed with the first evidence of that substantial
reality, into the august presence of Gromp, or a congener, and
act on such advice as might be vouchsafed to him.
Meanwhile, my stepmother was unconsciously advancing the
interests of the Ignis Fatuus. How fortunate it is, by the by,
that I have no one to satisfy but my Self! Think how smug and
tidy metaphor would have had to become, under the rod of Pub-
lication ! In her anxiety that the gentility of my forbears should
not be dragged through the mire by my adoption of an ungenteel
profession, she never perceived that every lament she uttered over
the degringolade of his race biassed my father towards approval of
a Jack-o'-Lantern, whose guidance he only mistrusted because its
follower might be landed in the mire of poverty. For his common-
sense told him that the World would never lack respect for mone-
tary success; and, granting that, that its most pernicious snob-
beries would drive a coach-and-six through the usages and dis-
tinctions his wife vouched for, of which he himself knew little
enough, and cared to know less.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 237
" Tush, Jacky boy ! " said he to me one day, when I had summed
up some reports of conversation by ascribing to my -stepmother
the words : " All Artists are cads." " We're all cads at this shop.
Your father, my dear boy, is a ruined stock-jobber. His old
friend who is coming to dinner tonight is an auctioneer, and your
great churn is a low, vulgar Jew." I remember this almost word
for word, and that he a' 1 '" ' reflectively: " It is worthy of remark
that Nebuchadnezc; ' ::;! been going it with kings and mas-
sacres and and the -jc-ratic conduct generally, two or
three thousand years DC illiam the Norman founded De-
brett." My father's figures were loose, and his designation of
Cooky was dictatedly a schoolboy rhyme rather than historical
warrant. My impression is that its hero is inaccurately described,
and I cannot conceive that any good authority bears out the
statement of his very unaristocratic conduct. I must ask Mr.
Turner about this the first point, I mean; neither point being
either here or there. What is to the purpose is that the more
stress my stepmother laid on the desirability of a respectable pro-
fession for her stepson, the more leniently my father seemed to
look upon the one which, as she alleged, was little short of dis-
reputable.
" Somebody else must settle all that part of the job," said he.
" Somebody that knows. I honestly confess that I have never met
a gentleman in my life. . . . Well I've never met a he male
who answered to all the specifications! A gentleman never sneers,
nor swears, nor spits. I'm sure I could find chapter and verse for
all three, and I'm equally sure though I can't advance proof
that I never knew any chap that didn't do either one or other
of them. Just you take notice of the next man you meet that
doesn't swear or spit, and see if he doesn't sneer. I'm not vouch-
ing for anything I'm only suggesting guides to observation. Be-
sides, I'm told a gentleman always keeps his word." My father
paused, with retrospection written on his face, then concluded:
" No I'm convinced that I have never met a gentleman in my
life, not a real one ! "
"It's only Papa's nonsense!" said Gracey. "He knows per-
fectly well that all his friends keep their words."
" They don't," said my father. " Not if nobody else hasn't
overheard their words. I mean not unless somebody else has.
And then not unless you remind 'em of it."
" I call that silly," said Gracey. " Because it's so little trouble
to remind anybody of anything."
" I feel," said my father, " that the conversation is getting out
238 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
of my depth, possibly out of its own. Chuck me a walnut, and
the crackers."-
My stepmother always kept silence during sporadic discussions
by the family of this subject, as she did on this after-dinner occa-
sion. Her relation to the question was too real, too fraught with
responsibility to Society, her husband, and herself, to regard it as
a subject for ingenious paradoxes and quips of logic. She retired
to an inner sanctum of the Temple of Social Usage, where she
could hold converse with High Priests, or at least with acolytes
with some one at least who could speak from its inner shrine with
authority. I have noticed since those days that the highest priests
of the Unholy Trinity the World, the Flesh, and the Devil are
very hard to get at; the attainable votaries of the first always
alleging the existence of a higher rank still, mysteries in impene-
trable clouds described as the very best circles; while those of the
second and third are able to point to depths of iniquity compared
to which their own haunts of vicious dissipation are mere Arca-
dian solitudes. As for their Pope, the Vicar of Satan on earth,
no one has ever seen him. Therefore, it was that my father
said to me more than once, in this connection : " Yes, Master
Jackey, your stepmamma and Mrs. Walkinshaw must square it up
with Society. Society isn't my line."
It struck me that Mrs. Walkinshaw, considered as a moral
balustrade, was scarcely a safe one to rely upon. For when
Jemima appealed to her to support her views, and save me from
social degeneracy, she exclaimed : " My dear, I'm sure you're
right! I'm certain you're right! All you say is exactly what my
aunt Apollonia would have said. She "was a Paletot, you know,
and became the third Lady Wheelbarrow. And the Authority she
was on points of this sort! Everything was referred to her abso-
lutely everything!" The good lady became, as it were, rapt in
ecstasy over the multitude of things that had been decided by
the late Lady Wheelbarrow, whose names, Christian, maiden, and
married, I have got wrong, the ones I give being those most palata-
ble to my memory. Her niece spoiled her implied encomium of
my stepmother by ending suddenly: "But don't ask my opinion.
In all worldly matters I am worse than useless a child."
I heard Jemima say: "How?" and, looking up from a book
I was not absorbed in, I saw that she seemed really puzzled. I
find I recall moments at about this time of my Iffe when I begin
to recognize the good looks of my stepmother. This was one
of them.
Mrs. Walkinshaw closed her eyes to picture to herself her ante-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 239
cedent past. " It has been so with me from childhood," said she.
" As a mere girl I flung worldly Considerations to the winds.
Pretence has always been useless, so I never pretend. Art, Music,
Poetry are my idols. I may be wrong." A defiant humility threw
down a challenge to the Universe.
My stepmother let it lie on the ground, merely saying: " No
I'm sure you are right, looking at it from that point of view."
Which seemed to me altogether without meaning, Mrs. Walkin-
shaw's point of view not having been reached. But the inten-
tion of it was merely to extinguish the good lady, as she seemed
to be declaring off the social tenets her friend had been seeking
her support for. She was not the sort to take extinction lying
down, and enlarged upon the topic impressively. " If you knew.
If you knew ! " She repeated the phrase of tener than was nec-
essary, landing at last on its raison-d'etre: "If you knew how
I have been preached at by my aunts and sisters yes! and
daughters, all of them disciples of my Aunt Apollonia !"
"If I knew? : . . I should . . . ?" Jemima threw out sugges-
tions for the completion of Mrs. Walkinshaw's sentence, that lady
having come to a dead stop apparently for no better purpose than
to nod her head with her eyes shut, like a Chinese mandarin.
She responded, rather tartly: "You would wonder I had sur-
vived to have any convictions at all. But it has always been a
peculiarity of mine, to be true to myself. Others may be slaves
of Mammon and Croesus, and all that sort of thing. I do not
quarrel with them they must go their way, including my Aunt
Apollonia, and I must go mine. Now, my dear Mrs. Pascoe"
she left them to go their way unchecked, and became cosy and
confidential " I will tell you exactly what 1 feel about this dear
boy." She dropped her voice till I had to listen hard to hear
anything, so I may be wrong in supposing that she said that I
had Genius written in every pore. My mind assigns those words
to her, and Memory accepts them in silence. Other fragments
came to me disjointedly, to the effect that the precepts of Aunt
Apollonia should be allowed to lie dormant until at least the
decision of the great Gromp had been sought for as to the trust-
worthiness of these inscriptions. I gathered also that Mrs. Walkin-
shaw had a strong inner conviction not unconnected with In-
spiration that the decision would be favourable.
Therefore, Gromp remained, as a Rhadamanthus of the near
future, until I should complete at Slocum's, my inoculator with
the germs of Academic Art, a drawing from the Antique a solemn
thought in itself worthy to be formally submitted to Gromp,
240 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
to enable him to settle whether its author was, or was not, quali-
fied by nature for the career of a real artist, with a studio and
lay figures and things, like himself. I have often thought that
the conspiracy to elicit from Gromp an opinion on which would
turn the career of a young man, with a disposition to hold him
responsible for any disaster which that young man might encoun-
ter in consequence, was a little unfair on Gromp. However, I
suspect that that gentleman had been the victim of many similar
conspiracies, and had decided on superhuman caution in every
such case made and provided.
I contrived to get inducted into the real School of Art, where
I was to have Training, some months before the expiration of
the term of Collegiate life 1 had pledged myself to. I believe
I achieved this by showing distinctly that I had no intention of
doing any more work in the classes or out of them. My father
had some acquaintance with one of the classical professors, and
this gentleman felt it his duty to forward to him a portrait of
himself which ho had caught me executing in- class-time, and
confiscated. His letter to my father said : " I have no objection
to being represented as the Tragic Muse, but I think even the
Tragic Muse, if she had caught one of her pupils wasting his own
time and his father's money, would (especially if she had been
at Cambridge with his father) have thought it her duty to com-
municate with headquarters. Don't blow your boy up much he
is very young."
My father did not blow me up, but he did what was more
effective. After producing the Tragic Muse and asking if that was
what I supposed I was at College for, he told me that he had made
up his mind not to enter me for another session. I might go
to Slocunrs, or whatever his name was, and see what sort of a
hash I should make of the Antique, which he understood to mean
plaster casts. I was just thinking how glad I was he took it so
easily, and what a fortunate youngster I was to have so lenient
a parent, when he added, sadly: "I sometimes feel almost glad,
my boy, that your mamma is not here any longer. There go away
and draw things!" I went away, but I had no heart to draw
things.
I felt inclined to throw all my Artist's Materials into the dirty
dust-bin, and go back and beg and pray my father to allow me
at least to carry out the scheme he had first planned for me.
But my dear little sister, my Evil Genius unawares, was at hand
to neutralize my wiser instincts, and poison my mind with a
creed she firmly believed, that the right course for me would be
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 241
to throw my whole soul into Training, and the Antique, and
prove the wisdom of forsaking the Greek Tragedians and the
Binomial Theorem 1 remember both, thenabouts for something
in which I felt a keener interest. Gracey cried over me in my
dejection in earnest, and, of course, made me perceive that the
road I wished to tread was also the one 1 was morally bound
to take, especially in my father's interest. It was wonderful how
keenly alive 1 became to my father's interest when Gracey, in
perfect good faith, pointed this out.
So, next spring saw me a real Art-Student, drawing a Globe
from nature. I suppose, however, that " nature " is a misnomer,
as the Sphaera Mundi, has all the nature to itself; at least, if, in
the country where they make the Definitions, the Authorities can
shut their eyes to a slight flattening at the poles. Also a mis-
nomer in respect of the absence from the surface of my Globe of
all those beautiful lines there arc in real nature, ecliptics and
equators, and so forth, and signs of the zodiac that make one's
mouth water, especially Scorpio. While as for finding the longi-
tude on my Globe. . . . Well you know what a job it is on the
original! And this Globe 1 drew was all over like the interior
of Africa when 1 was a boy. I am told that Companies are devel-
oping it now.
I wish that I had put into anything I have ever done in life
one-half the earnestness and zeal I spent on making that Globe
round and solid. 1 believe that in doing so 1 was indebted to the
fact that there is absolutely nothing in the whole world so easy
as to draw a Globe. First one outlines a full moon, then draws a
crescent moon into the outline just opposite where the light re-
flects, or would reflect if shiny. You can see this by looking at
nature. Then you hatch black lines at least, we did at Slo-
cum's all over the crescent moon. And then comes a delightful
surprise. When you fill up the hatching, so that the lines dis-
appear, you perceive with joy that a perfectly even rich, velvety
black is appearing on your handmade paper, and this makes you
foresee a great career for yourself, with decorations and ateliers.
Then you tone it up, like anybody will show you that's done it
before, and he'll give you a start with the pedestal ; only you'll
have to go by nature, for that. On the propriety of drawing chips
out on the pedestal, where they came in nature, opinions were
divided. Some held with doing it, because it was rather a lark,
others considered it meretricious. The dispositions of the former
were sensuous of the latter severe. I attached myself to the
former school, but felt humiliated when Slocum himself said lie
242 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
saw no harm in doing it if I liked, only it was so easy to do
he couldn't see the fun of it. I believe I should have taken these
appeals to the gallery out, only the size was ready, not the dimen-
sions thoso were intrinsic but the hot size for fixing, which
mustn't be let get cold; and once you size a drawing, there's no
getting anything out.
The worst of it was that when I proudly carried home my
Globe and exhibited it to my family, these chips and blemishes
on the pedestal were at once accepted by them as proof that T
was Praxiteles, Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo any one of the
great ones of old whose name sounded well to say or, at least,
that I was all Mrs. Walkinshaw's fancy painted me. I vainly
attempted to call attention to the nobler qualities of the draw-
ing. Those abominable fractures asserted themselves noisily, and
would not be silenced.
My father said: " H'm, well! That's all very fine. Now, is
this to get you into the Academy? Is it to be shown to Gromp,
R. A.?" I repudiated the idea, forcibly. "Well!" m.y father
continued, " I suppose it's all right as far as it goes. Anyhow,
thoso bitsi chipped out of the stand are first-rate. Look quite
the real thing!" And he looked through his hand at them, to
increase the illusion.
Gracey said: <l Oh, you darling, good Jackey, did you really
do that in a fortnight? 1 should have thought it would have taken
weeks. It looks just as if you could touch it." She drew her
finger over the bits of realism I had hoped she would not notice.
"I really thought it would feel. Oh, how clever of you! Nelsie,
do come and see this lovely drawing Jackey has brought home."
Nelsie that is Ellen being summoned, came. "Oh dear!"
she said, weakly, "can't you ask somebody else to look at it, that
knows? Yes*, it's very good. I'm sure it's very good, by the look.
I've .got to see about letting out those gathers, and nobody is any
help or gives the slightest advice. Yes, it's very good. . . . What
are those?" She had been on the point of departing on the milli-
nery errand, whatever it was. when her eye was caught by those
pestilent corrugations, and she quite brightened up under their
influence, touching them with her finger, as Gracey had done.
"Why it's quite smooth. How clever!" I had nearly written
that this was the only time I ever knew Ellen to show an inter-
est in anything. I refrained because it was only almost true,
not quite.
Gracey triumphantly carried tho drawing away to show to
Varnish, who was mending something in the reserve. I have
THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 243
scarcely a recollection of Varnish not mending something, or not
having just mended something, or not being about to mend some-
thing. How anything remained unmended in those days if it
ever did! is more than I can imagine. This time, Varnish laid
aside a woolen undervest, making its heart sick with deferred
hopes of a button, in order to look at my drawing.
"Well my word, now!" said she, holding it as far off as
possible. " I do declare it's that round, and that smooth, it does
do one's ? art good, only to see it. And my gracious me, if Master
Eustace hasn't actly done where a bit's been broke out, just
for all the world like real!"
I had cherished a dim hope that the smoothness and round-
ness would absorb Varnish's attention, and even now I fondly
fancied I might head it back to them. " They were awfully easy
to do," I said. " I only did them because they were there."
"Silly Jackey!" said Gracey. "As if you could have had a
better reason! Mr. Ruskin says so." Since those days, the name
of Ruskin, at that date I think still an object of literary ferocity
to standard Art critics, has been successively that of an Apostle
whose sayings it was blasphemy to contradict, of a fogey in a
niche in the Temple of Orthodoxy, and of a successful candidate
for a more commodious one in that of Oblivion.
" Slocum says Mr. Ruskin's an ass," said I, briefly. And the
subject dropped. Gracey said she should buy a frame and glass
for my Globe, and it should hang in Varnish's room the reserve.
Varnish treated the prospect of this as a lot quite beyond human
deserts.
I believe after this I " did " a foot at Slocum's, and then a hand;
only I think the hand's wall-hook came out and let it down on the
ground, smashing it and stopping my appreciation of its knuckles.
In consequence of this mishap, I rose prematurely to the level of
the Young Antinous, who was accounted easy, having no arms
or legs. Strictly speaking, I ought to have tackled Jupiter Olym-
pus, who is only a head; but then his magnificent coiffure defies
the draughtsman, unless he 'umbugs it. This expression I borrow
from a fellow-student to whom I am also indebted for one or two
phrases which I fancy have crept into this text. He told me his
name without its initial, and I was led to believe that T should
be safe in omitting it, as I presumed he knew. So I was puzzled
when he said: "You're pokin' your fun at me, calling me Hop-
kins!" I came in time to understand that a definite effort on his
part to omit an aspirate always led to the production of one rather
like a gunshot. Thus in describing to me his grandfather, who had
244 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
written a treatise, he stated that he was known to some Theologi-
cal world I presume as Horthodox 'Opkins. He had a maternal
aunt who was born without legs, but could make elder wine. 1 am
giving his words as I remember them. He was pursooin' the Fine
Arts on his own 'ook, because his family disapproved of them.
I became acquainted with him because he lent me his plumb-bob,
mine having vanished through a curly hole in the box I sat upon,
through losing touch with its string. He informed me that I
might shake that box till my 'art broke, without getting of it
the plump-bob out; whereas if I had a little patience, and giv'
up thinkin' about it, it would come out easy, of its own accord.
Which proved to be the case in the end, though I should have
wished it might have happened sooner, as the Young Antinous wns
entirely fostered on my neighbour's plumb-bob, and he and I always
wanted it at the same time. Hopkins told me further concerning
plumb-bobs and their inherent vices, that they always did get
inside of your box, do what you would, and that you had to look
uncommon sharp to see that no one else got 'old of them when they
emerged again into the light of Heaven. It appeared that these
boxes resembled hens; and were, like them, prone to lay in un-
expected places, but without the paans of triumph that announce
the advent of an egg to the Universe. So you had to look uncom-
mon sharp!
If any one unaccustomed to art-culture as it existed in the
fifties were to read this, he might ask what the plumb-bobs were
for. I should reply, if I were within hearing, that they were to
assist the artistic eye in its determination of what was underneath
what. My recollection of the " Antique School " at Slocum's is as
of a room full of aspirants, suspending plumb-bobs between their
eyesight and the model they were drawing, to determine the posi-
tion of points above or below others. They might, but for the
absence of rods, have been fishermen, looked at from the point
of view of those who, like myself, regard the careful watching of a
line suspended in water, without result, as fishing. A shrewder
effort of memory brings back sporadic examples of what wo called
measurement; to wit, the checking of proportionate length-; on a
porte-crayon held at any convenient distance. The variation in this
distance always struck me as fatal to accuracy. It was, however,
regarded as Training, at my school, in the fifties.
There was so much flat shadderin'-up in the Young Antinous
so said Mr. Hopkins that he '* took " six weeks. V\ 7 hat could you
expect when the largest possible surface had to be "gone over"
with the smallest possible point. That sounds like Political
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 245
Economy, but it isn't. Six irredeemable weeks of my life did I
spend, filling up any little white spots I could detect in the rich
black velvet surface of that shadow, I think my pertinacity may
have had a good moral effect, as no doubt was the case with
Sisyphus; though indeed my surroundings may have been more
trying than his; and, therefore, more chastening. As nearly as I
can remember, the landscape in Tartarus which supplied the back-
ground to the son of ^Eolus was desolate, whereas I was surrounded
I need not scruple to write it now, fifty-odd years later by a
ribald crew. Every profession has its offscourings, and Art
Schools have, or had in those days, an extraordinary power of col-
lecting and detaining the scum and detritus of suppose we say
Artists' Colourmens' Customers ! We can hardly say Artists. I have
asked my Self whether I am bound to write a word about xxxxx
or xxxx or xxxxxx, and the answer comes back that I may do as
I like. I am not sure I might like a word or two about them.
I will, as Varnish used to say, " leave them be " for a while, and
get on with personal memories.
Apollo Sauroctonos followed the Young Antinous, and then I
girded up my loins for a dash at the gates of the Academy Schools.
Laocoon absorbed the whole of my energies for six weeks, as well
as six shillings-worth of Italian chalk, and the undivided atten-
tion of my own plumb-bob, which had risen from the tomb, and
been provided with a new string. I suppose my drawing was a
creditable one, or it would not have landed me in the R. A.
schools, as it afterwards did. But if it was, I contend that my
admission proved nothing biit that a youth below the average
capacity for drawing can convince inattention that he is above it,
if he is allowed indefinite time, Italian chalk ad libitum, and a
plumb-bob all to himself.
My own belief is that that plumb-bob was my Evil Genius,
and that my Good Genius shoved it inside of that box, hoping
weakly, I must confess to head off a beloved protege from a
labyrinth bristling with disasters at every turn. How that plumb-
bob must have chuckled when it got its narrow end through the
zigzag hole again, and how pleased and vertical it must have felt
with its new string! A droring with all the perpendic'lars took
wrong could never said Mr. Hopkins, whose phraseology hangs
about me, meet with approval from The Experienced Eye, and I
feel he was right.
Before, however, this drawing was submitted to the Experienced
Eye, it had to be shown, with other evidences of ability, to Mrs.
Walkinshaw's Gromp; no one else's appearing on the horizon.
246 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Gromp dwelt in Park Village East, and had done so since the
romantic mind of its founder carried out the idea of fringing
the Regents Canal with bowers and cots and chalets. When we
were admitted to his Studio my soul felt hushed with awe at
being inside a real Studio ! it was borne in upon us that tho
windows had not been open since that date. Nevertheless, respira-
tion appeared possible in practice, suggesting that Gromp smoked
a mixture which yielded oxygen. A damp flavour of a canal may
have been imagination stimulated by knowledge of the proximity
of one, or it may not. But the gloom was real, due to a square
yard of a window a mile square, or thereabouts, admitting light
enough to make it visible. And the Chaos was real; the unaccom-
modating properties sprawling over one another without the slight-
est regard for Chronology; Henrietta Maria's frock crushed by a
suit of armour; the rest of the suit riding a wooden horse with its
nose chipped off; a murdered woman in a sack, or what seemed
one, till the spectator detected square steel heads ingrafted in her
joints the sort whose winch is never to be found when wanted
and thereby knew her for a lay figure. And folios on chairs
the sort that wants the title-pages or the colophons whose backs
had to be held on when referred to. Which, however, one felt
instinctively, never happened nowadays, and might never happen
till they were catalogued for auction, and picked up for an old
song by their next neglecter. Then would a spasmodic attempt
be made to prove them of value, followed by the collapse of baffled
sharpers.
I suppose what brings Gromp's mouldy folios to my mind is
that when my father and I were shown into the presence of their
owner, he, after giving my father three fingers to shake, and
myself one, enjoined a pause with a deprecating hand, to the end
that seats should be provided for his company. " Stop a bit ! "
said he. " Don't you touch because of the dust." He decanted
a cat off a stack of books on a chair, and removed them cautiously
onto a neighbouring throne, which I recognized as such because
we had one at Slocum's. He was making some show with his
pocket-handkerchief I think of beautifying the seat of this chair
for service, when an attempt of the cat to go to bed again on the
top book caused it to slide off, and fall with a dust-producing thump
on the floor. The painter threw up his hands in despair as a
visible cloud rose and floated into a ray of light that came through
some chink or keyhole, while my father melted away into con-
trition for the disturbance we were creating.
"Wouldn't matter if it wasn't for the dust!" said Gromp.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 247
" Seine Studios they try sweeping up, but we let it lie, here. No
fault of yours, you know only the cat! She's accustomed to
sleep on a book, and prefers Poliphilus. We'll come in the middle
before the picture, if you've no objection. My housekeeper wipes
over a place on the floor in the middle like an island. . . .
There! we shall do now."
My father had the cat's chair, on the island, and the painter
read through Mrs. Walkinshaw's letter of introduction twice; once
apparently to get to the signature and find out who wrote it, a
second time to master its contents. This done he said : " I
thought her husband had a g in his name. Walkingshaw. I sup-
pose she knows. ... Is this the boy?" He broke off to lay a
hand on my shoulder, as if there were several other boys in the
room; then went back to the letter. "Yes she was Miss Brabazon
when I knew her Adelaide Brabazon. None of your Mrs. Walk-
ingshaws! I suppose she's changed eh? . . . Well, she must be
. . . Eh what how long ago ? " For my father had manifestly
begun to frame an obvious question. The old man I believe he
was over eighty began thinking of dates: "Ninety-eight
ninety-nine. . . . Yes it was ninety-nine when I painted my
Herodias. There she hangs in the dark corner there you can't
see her, so it's no use looking. Four, five, yes it must have been
six years after that I saw Miss Brabazon. Saw her at odd times
for some years after that! Then she married. Seen nothing of
her since! . . . She wants me to look at your boy's drawings
and say what I think. That's the compact. He's got 'em in a
roll there, I see. Fetch 'em out ! "
I did so, and flattened them out for inspection, but it took
minutes to do. My father's voice, talking to the R. A. mixes in
my memory with the obduracy of cartridge paper that has been
rolled up to the diameter of a gunbarrel. It says to that veteran :
" I'm quite in earnest, Mr. Gromp. I shall be just as grateful for
a decisive condemnation of my boy's drawings as for any approval.
What I want is to have the question settled for me by those who
know. I know I can rely on a conscientious verdict, from you."
" I'm not so sure, myself. But I'll see what I can do for you, in
the way of conscientiousness. Just this once! Because, you see,
I've no interest in telling any fibs. However, if I can't give a
verdict it will be conscientious to say so won't it now?"
" I hope," said my father, " it's a plain case, one way or the
other. Thank you!" I looked up to see why he was thanking,
and found that the old gentleman had offered him a pinch of
snuff. He accepted it, and I felt it ratified a treaty that might be
248 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
fatal to my aspirations. Mr. Gromp tapped the snuff-box and said,
" Petitot," and I don't think my father understood. It drew them
nearer together, however, for its owner began talking confi-
dentially. " Mrs. Walkingshaw, or I should say Walkinshaw.
Yes. I haven't really seen her since she was a stylish young lady
of twenty. Saw her rather frequently then. Gave her drawing
lessons. I was I was by way of being a poor artist, in those
days. And when she married, I lost- sight of her. Naturally! "
"Naturally!" said my father, and I didn't see why.
" She wrote a line to say expect you. Where did I put it? ...
Oh, 7 know it's in this drawer. Yes, I knew the hand. The
hand hasn't changed much. . . . But you say she has changed
a great deal ? "
"I didn't say so," said my father. "Because how can I know?
But I think you may take it as the case. Why her daughter has
a son nearly grown up ! "
The old man stood silent for a space, seeming to ratify or reject
some passing recollection. Then he said thoughtfully, half to
himself : " Yes. She didn't look much like a grown-up grandson,
thenadays ! " And to me : " Well let's see the drawings."
I have tried to recall all I could of this passing talk of old
Gromp, partly because it seems to me to have a bearing on the
strange way in which one may go on living in the dark about one's
fellow-creatures, with light near at hand for whoso chooses sight;
partly because it was the cause of much restless speculation after-
wards as to which was telling lies about a matter-of-fact, he or
Mrs. Walkinshaw. I have my own opinion now, but at that time
this lady was above ground, and I have always felt that it was
one of the most difficult things in the world to face a real liar, and
denounce him to Heaven and Earth. I could not reconcile my
mind to the existence of so much mendacity, while its perpetrator
was actual and visible.
We saw the drawings. I spread them over the dustless island
before the eyes of my Rhaclamanthus, and every moment felt
smaller and smaller ns he looked at, and said nothing about, each
successive sample. Hope stirred feebly in my mind as he went
back to my early Prometheus, and dwelt upon it considerately. I
am convinced now that this was merely his tributo to Quality,
backed by the charm which careful reconstruction confers on a
disintegrated sample of incompetence. Ask the Italian artist whose
great abilities supply a steady current of Anticliita to the shops
of Florence and Rome, how he attains to his greatest successes.
He will tell you that he throws his whole soul into the production
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 249
of a Lippi, a Ghirlandaio, or it may be a Cassone by a pictor
ignotus, so that the purchaser may start fair and ascribe it to
everybody; and that then when his work is perfect he honestly
spoils it, and has it carelessly restored by a Vandal. This is why
Time has always spared so fortunately the best bits of what you
have picked up so very cheap, considering. The forger true
Artist to the core cannot bring himself to be absolutely ruthless
to his best work.
This aspect of things influences Royal Academicians as well as
mortals, and the undeniable Quality of Prometheus for the mo-
ment arrested Gromp. But the appreciation of his position only
came to me later. " I have made you a promise, Mr. Pascoe,"
said he, when inspection time seemed near a natural end. " I have
promised to tell you if these drawings of your boy's would warrant
you in refusing to give him an Artist's education. Well they
won't. I'll go as far as that."
I saw that my father was adjusting his cheekbones with his
fingers, as he used to do when perplexed. " I almost hoped you
were going to say they would," said he. " It would have supplied
me with a foothold. It seems to me that the point is will they
warrant me in giving him an Artist's education ? "
Mr. Gromp said "Hm-m-m!" so continuously that I thought
he didn't mean to stop. He did, however, and apparently found the
words he wanted. For he seemed contented with: "I don't think
I could give a positive negative to that." I felt a slight revival of
Hope.
My father said: "But more no than yes?" And then getting
no answer, " Or more yes than no?" rather as a reminder that an
answer was expected, than as catechism.
" I couldn't say," said this unsatisfactory Rhadamanthus. " Try
it by all means if you like. I should be better able to say in an-
other twelvemonth. Send him to the Academy, if you think it
worth it. I couldn't undertake to say more at present." I was
just going to tie up my roll when he stopped me and made me
undo it again. Where, he asked, was the drawing I had done for
admission to the Schools?" I produced Laocoon, and unrolled
him. Rhadamaothus took a good look all round at him, then
said: "Yes I thought so! It's a better drawing than one I
sent in when I was a boy a month or so younger than this young
chap, I should say."
" And that one got you in ? " said my father, not unnaturally. I
thought I saw daylight, but disappointment was in store for me.
For this inconsequent Academician answered: "Well no!
250 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
It didn't get me in. I stayed out wasn't a student at any
time."
I think my father began to be alive to the fact that Rhada-
manthus was rather a broken reed to lean upon. " We mustn't
take up your time any more, Mr. Gromp," said he, " it's very kind
of you to give an opinion, and I shall be guided by it." This can
only have been civility.
I rolled up Laocoon with the rest, and the visit to the great
man came to an end. I think he was one of the most advanced
adepts in the Art of Saying Nothing that I ever came across.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE STORY
As time went on Helen's life as Mistress of The Retreat took
on a rather monotonous cast. The novelty of her position wore
off, and she recognized more plainly the inevitable limitations
attendant on her social career. Roberta's marriage was an im-
mense relief to her, she felt safer now that she was out of the
house. Ellen with her flabby nature and all-absorbing interest
in Church matters was not to be feared, and since her sister had
left home she had become quite friendly with her stepmother in a
negative sort of way; besides she was sure to marry that parson, he
was always dangling after her. Varnish she knew was her secret
enemy, but as no uncomfortable developments occurred in that
(juarter, Helen felt she might consider herself safe.
It was not any of the household that she feared, her husband
was amiable and considerate, convinced that he had done the
right thing by his family and himself in marrying Helen, and
gifted with a most comfortably unobservant nature strongly tinc-
tured with optimism. No, as far as he went all was well.
Wliat was it then that was wrong? Why could not Helen
Pascoe, secure in her surroundings, and able to indulge at will
in all the minor diversions and dissipations of a fairly well-to-do
professional household, why could she not be content and still
that restless longing for change and excitement that beset her?
Change at any price was what she craved for. Something to break
the uniform greyness of the life that seemed closing her in on all
sides. She longed for the sun to break through the cloud and bring
her light and warmth and vitality. But her sun, the centre and
mainspring of her being, her sun that hid behind that leaden veil
of everyday existence, was dark! It was black! Black as ink!
And Helen Pascoe restlessly paced the embankment one chill
November evening, in a vain endeavour to escape from the thing
that she knew to be herself.
It was getting late, surely it was time to go home now? But
still Helen continued her rapid walking to and fro!
Oh, it was that print! she could not forget it! What could have
possessed Eustace John, with his newly found enthusiasm for the
251
52 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
fine arts, to bring home such a hideous thing and expect them
all to admire it!
" I thought peradventure the darkness might cover me." She
had it always before her eyes, that hunted figure hurrying along
the deserted road, with the full moon emerging from behind a
dark cloud, and lighting up vividly the bloodstained fugitive. Oh,
it was horrible, and Helen Pascoe leaned over the parapet and gazed
down at the cold dark river beneath her. Peace and rest, could
she find them there? The water seemed calling to her! She had
only just to climb the parapet and plunge in, and end it all! The
struggle of drowning would soon be over, then rest and oblivion
for ever! . . .
She glanced hurriedly round, it was nearly seven o'clock and
the embankment was deserted. Now was the moment! She must
be quick or some one might come!
" Forth John's soul flared into the dark."
What made those lines of Browning's suddenly ring in her ears
and unnerve her? Whence came the flash of startled insight that
made her hug the warm covering of the flesh that hid her dark soul,
and tear back with frantic haste to the shelter of the home she had
been on the brink of leaving for ever.
" My love, how late you are," exclaimed Mr. Pascoe as he opened
the street-door himself to let her in. " I was getting quite anxious
about you."
" Aunt Helen, Cook is afraid the fish will be overboiled," called
Gracey, looking over the bannister rail.
" I shan't bo a minute getting my things off, I mistook the
time," explained Helen, as she ran upstairs.
The dining-room door stood open, and as she passed it she caught
sight of the cheerful fire blazing on the hearth, and the table taste-
fully laid for their evening meal. Oh, she was glad to be back.
What an escape she had had! That awful cold dark river! and
Helen shuddered. She must forget it all! cast it from her like
some frightful dream. Yes, but that grave at Highgate, could she
forget that?
CHAPTER XXVII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I WAS put through my paces at the next meeting of the Club,
which had retained its character, in spite of the fact that its
members were growing up, better than Institutions of its class
usually do. This meeting followed the visit to Gromp, which took
place one Sunday morning, on the subsequent Saturday. Cooky
always came to dinner on Saturday, risking his soul when the
days were long and the dinner-bell rang before sunset.
I cannot fix the time of year at which this happened, to my
satisfaction. But Cooky's soul must have been safe, for though
he came early to allow of the Club meeting, the waning light made
it hard to see some features of my Laocoon, which was adduced in
evidence, or illustration, of the only point in my favour that could
be extracted from the indecision of Rhadamanthus.
" So he said the details were better, little Buttons was that
his game? " Thus Cooky, looking at Laocoon, with Gracey looking
over his shoulder.
. " No, he didn't. He said the deetails were better. In Art,
they're deetails."
" Well, it isn't much to go by, but it's something. You've
done something better than a Royal Academician, little Buttons! "
I felt set up. "But did he say he was older or younger?"
I had to climb down. " He said he was younger a lot ! "
"Oh, blow!" said Cooky. "What a chap he is for taking his
own edge off! First of all your Governor asks him if these draw-
ings would warrant his giving you an Artist's education, and he
says he can't give a positive negative. Then your Governor asks
if they would warrant him in refusing it, and he says he won't
go as far as that. Then he says he sent in a worse drawing than
this to the Academy when he was younger than you, and didn't
get in! He's no good, little Buttons! "
" But, Monty," said the female member of the Club, ruefully*
" He did say he wouldn't go as far as that."
"As far as what?"
" As far as what you said just now. And he did say he couldn't
253
254 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
give a positive negative to ... to the other way round. I
think if you add those two up, it makes a great deal."
In the Club, we were never pedantic. Cooky accepted Gracey's
speech as intelligible, because its meaning was clear not a bad
reason. "Your sister thinks you've got a verdict, Buttons,", said
he.
"Well hasn't he, Monty?"
" If you think so, Gracey, I'll stick up for you."
"But don't you agree that I'm 'right?"
" I don't care whether you are or not. I'm on your side."
" But I do care whether you don't care whether I am or not.
No do say what you really think! " Gracey spoke coaxingly, and
knew that Cooky's reply would come from his inner soul.
It came. "All right, Gracey!" said he. "I won't make any
compliments. But I shall stick up for your side, on principle,
when I'm asked." He then gave what seems to me now a perfectly
reasonable view on the merits of my case. He had no faith in my
Art, that was clear. But he knew nothing about Art that was not
so clear. The judgment of Rhadamanthus he condemned as too
indecisive and ambiguous to have any working value. But he,
Cooky Moss, was prepared to put aside conscience and veracity,
and espouse any faith soever, on any subject, to meet the views of
the lady-member of the Club.
Gracey did not seem to have any scruples about accepting
chivalrous service on the terms stated. " Now mind you do! " was
her injunction to Monty when he finished up with : " I shall say
so to your Governor if he asks me."
I wish now that the deliberations of the Club had had a more
vitally judicial character. I see now that its decisions were those
of Love, not Judgment; of Gracey's love for her brother and his
friend's love for her. I suppose that, in a sense, I knew of the
existence of the latter, but a fatal immaturity clouded my mind,
and I took everything as a matter-of-course without thought of
the future. I believe that if any one had then raised discussion
about the nature of these two young people's sentiments, I should
have contributed to it the valuable view that it wasn't Lover's Rot,
but that they really were awfully fond of one another, and no
humbug. Why I should take this drastic view of the tender
passion I have no idea. I have to accept facts as they stand.
My Governor did ask for Cooky's views on the subject, that eve-
ning. A kind of symposium on the merits of the case ensued. For
not only was the whole family there, my sister Roberta having
'driven her husband over from Petersham, but Mrs. Walkinshaw
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 255
had also graced our board, with two distinct purposes; one to hear
what Gromp thought, the other to meet again that charming
Roberta, her Joan of Arc, and her delightfully intelligent husband.
It seemed to me that she took up a position about this couple, that
she had been present at the first development of their early love,
and had watched its growth and fostered it. It seemed to me
also that Joan of Arc's delightfully intelligent husband had on
some previous occasion incurred the displeasure of Joan by acced-
ing too readily to Mrs. Walkinshaw's assumption. For I distinctly
heard Roberta say to him : " If you are going to lie down this
time and allow that woman to foozle over us, do! But 7 won't
stand it. Joan of Arc, indeed ! " To which he answered, weakly :
" What's a feller to do against a woman like that, Ro?" And she
replied tartly : " Very well, go your own way. Now you know ! "
I fancy also that she said : " I'll Joan of Arc her, if she tries it
on me ! " When the excellent lady, shortly after, swam into the
room with outstretched arms, as though to enfold Society in her
embrace, if its sex permitted it, and exclaimed: "Well this is
delightful ! " I fully expected to see her Joan of Arked I have
to write it that way somehow or other. Perhaps she was. All I
noticed was that she failed to get home on Roberta, who used her
right cleverly, with the expression on her face that one ascribes
to Polly Hopkins, when Mr. Tomkins called on her. An attempt
at pleasantry fell through, Mrs. Walkinshaw having expanded into
empressement, voluminously, and opened her eyes as far as they
would go, to say: "We are the Graysons! Think of that!"
But she had given herself away. For my sister said briefly, " I
beg your pardon," and awaited an explanation, which was not so
easy to formulate at a short notice. It is of course possible
that this was Joan of Arking, or akin to it.
I certainly thought Roberta victorious on points, in these pre-
liminary rounds. Mrs. Walkinshaw kept away, avoiding clutches,
and showing some clever tactics. She escaped the explanation, just
referred to, by rushing into my stepmother, and absorbing her
apologies, for being late into her outskirts. She always seemed,
when in evening warpaint, to teem with clouds of a gauzy nature,
and to be saturated with eau-de-Cologne. I knew what Jemima
was saying to her, on a sofa afar to which she had been success-
fully carried off for confidences, while we awaited my father's ap-
pearance : dinner was always announced first. She was saying she
could not but rejoice, for the dear boy's sake videlicet mine
that Mr. Gromp, who seemed a charming old gentleman, had been
able to speak so positively as to my unfitness for an Artist's career.
256 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
She was dwelling on the social advantages I might have sacrificed
by adopting it. But she feared it would be a bitter disappointment
for the dear boy. I must have heard something to this effect to
carry into the dining-room an impression I distinctly remember,
that Gromp had written to my father, unknown to me, a sup-
plementary judgment on my work, condemning it.
It was, however, merely an innocent attempt on Jemima's
part to get a flavour of prejudgment of the case into the moral
atmosphere. If she had succeeded, it may be I should have been
headed off from the pursuit of Art, and become, somehow, a
useful member of Society.
It was late in the evening when the Symposium came about.
My father came in after his pipe, accompanied by my brother-
in-law, Anderson, and Mr. Stowe, the auctioneer, our other guest.
They had gone into the library to smoke, while Cooky and I
slipped away to a late club-meeting. I suppose I had been under
consideration in the library because my father said : u Here are
the drawings some of them " on entering the drawing-room,
much as though ha were carrying on a previous conversation.
The drawings had been produced to be shown to Mrs. Walkin-
shaw, amid shrieks of congratulation to their author on that
lady's part.
" Just come and take a look at them, Scritchey," said my
father, addressing Mr. Stowe. 4< You're an Art Auctioneer, and
ought to know something about Art."
" I don't," said Mr. Stowe. They sat together at one end of
the room. I was halfway between them and Mrs. Walkinshaw,
beside my stepmother on the sofa, at the other. So I heard both.
" Now, we shall hear ! " gave out Mrs. Walkinshaw. " Dear
Mrs. Pascoe, where did you get your Mr. "
" His name's Stowe," said Jemima, impassively. Mr. Stowe
was not a favourite with her she thought him not quite. " What
about him?"
" He seems to m my beau ideal of .... of the Art
Thinker "
I fancy Jemima saw the necessity of stopping this. " He's
Stacpoole's, you know that's all ! " said she, so low that I barely
caught the words.
Mrs. Walkinshaw's roice changed. " Oh-h, ye'es ! Stacpoole's
... let ... me . . . see (Stacpoole's." She spoke as if she was
puzzled by the first syllable, and would rather he should have been
Welshpool's or Hartlepool's.
u Yes auction people Old Masters articles of vertu . . . that
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 257
sort of thing!" Jemima spoke as one who said come down far
enough and you shall see.
Mrs. Walkinshaw dried up very much, but felt about for pallia-
tives. " Oh, but old Masters! Dear Mrs. Pascoe, the sums spoken
of are frequently fabulous! Those who handle them must have
some knowledge of Art."
Jemima detached herself from auctioneers, saying as she got
away to the horizon : " Very likely. We shall see."
However fabulous were the sums that Stacpoole's handled, one
of the partners of that firm continued to profess ignorance of
the Fine Arts. I inferred this from overhearing my father's
words to him at this moment, as he raised his voice to say:
" It doesn't matter how little you know about Art yourself,
Scritchey. That's not the point. What I want to know is, if it
were your boy, not mine, what should you do?"
Mr. Stowe seemed very uncertain. Indeed, he was apparently
trying for a way out. " Which of 'em do you mean ? " said he.
" I've got such a lot."
" Any one. One about the same age."
" Well you see having such a lot, I'm only too glad to let
'em have their own way. I don't believe there are eight pro-
fessions are there?" Some reckoning ended in the conclusion
that there might be, if you counted the Church. " I couldn't stand
that, you know," said Mr. Stowe. " He'd want to read prayers,
and I should want him to behave like a reasonable Christian. . . .
Well, you know perfectly well what I mean, Strap! "
" I know. Only it doesn't arise from the question on the paper.
Keep to the point. If one of your boys thought he could do
Art, would you let him ? "
"Let him be an Artist? Why certainly! if he showed abil-
ity. If people bought his pictures, why shouldn't he make his
living that way?"
" That brings us to the point. Do you see any reason, from
these drawings, to suppose that any one will ever want to buy
my boy's pictures?"
" That can only be settled by trying the experiment. Teach
him to paint pictures and see if any one buys them. He can be
taught in three or four years, if he's tractable. I fancy but I
tell you I don't know that there's nothing in these drawings to
show that he won't be able to paint pictures. Rather t'other
way, I should say. When they are painted, we shall soon see if
any one wants them."
" I am completely puzzled," said my father. And, indeed, he
258 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
looked so. "Do you mean to say, Scritchey," he continued after
a moment, " that there is no such thing as an absolutely good
or bad picture that it is entirely a matter of fashion ? "
" Selling is entirely a matter of fashion. Pictures are good
pictures that sell. Bad pictures are pictures that don't. There
may be people that know good pictures from bad, but all I can
say is they keep outside auction-rooms."
" Then Master Jackey may still have a chance, however badly
he paints? "
" Rather. You come to the Mart some day when a big sale's
on, and see if what I say isn't true."
" But I shan't know good from bad myself."
" Oh dear, yes you will ! Everybody does."
"Doesn't that contradict what you said before?"
" Of course it does, flatly. But what I said before didn't mean
that nobody knew good from bad, but that nobody could prove
anything either way. Everybody knows, but then, unless he praises
what other people think rubbish, nobody will credit him with a
higher form of knowledge than his own, and that's the sort of
fame bounce grows fat upon. Believe me, dear Strap, that there
is a factor in Art of more importance than correct drawing or
dignified composition, or striking chiaroscuro or vigorous impasto,
and that is " Mr. Stowe dropped his voice to a whisper on his
last word, " Humbug ! " I knew what the word was, though I
didn't hear the whole of it.
I have asked my Self how much of the above conversation I
really recollect, and the reply has been almost none! How then,
is it that I am so firmly convinced that the conversation, or
something very near it, took place? I can't account for my
conviction; but having it, I can resubstantiate its spirit to my
own satisfaction, which is the only one I am bound to consider.
One thing is in my Memory's favour that she resents admission
to her report of what I know belongs to a later date. As for
instance, her repetition to me of Mr. Stowe's enumeration of the
bull's-eye, so to speak, in Art's targets, which belonged to its
time, an age anterior to " Values," and still more so to Impres-
sionism, Post-Impressionism, and Futurism. The late fifties were
still under the spell of Pastism, and my own feeling is but I
mention it with diffidence that they were kept steady by it. I
must, however, resist the temptations of a fascinating subject, the
Correlation of Art and Imposture, and get back to The Retreat,
in what must have been the spring of a very late fifty.
The remaining incidents of that evening, that tempt Memory
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 259
to turn them over with her spade, on the chance of a find, flicker
to and fro in her phantasmagoria, as she presents them to me, at
random. My sister Roberta yawns behind her hand, frequently;
latterly like a gulf or chasm at one's feet, in Poetry. She sits at
the round table in the middle of the room with the big oil lamp
on it, looking at the last Punch. She is waiting out the evening
and wants to get home. Why she need keep so savage with
Jemima is a thing that puzzles me. Ellen has forgiven, superfi-
cially at least. Varnish certainly has not, but then I don't be-
lieve my dear old nurse ever did forgive the Sly Cat. Every
one has some fault, and I suppose this was Varnish's. As my
mind goes back to the image of Roberta that evening, it sees
those dark, handsome eyes of hers fluctuate between Punch and
my stepmother, still devoting herself to Mrs. Walkinshaw, as
the guest par excellence. I speculate a little, idly, on how Bert
can know when Jemima is looking at her, so as always to avoid
meeting her eyes. She does know, somehow, and becomes absorbed
in Punch at any critical moment. Her husband is one of a talka-
tive group, at the piano. He appears to be enjoying his visit, and
is in possession of the rostrum, or music-school. He can sing
nigger songs, but his choice of one rouses his wife to protest.
She is sick and tired of that dreary " Old Folks at Home," and it
is suppressed. I had a sneaking liking for that family and was
sorry.
This is all fifty-five years ago. The last time I set foot out of
doors I heard a small boy singing that air, and it brought back
my early days to me, as nothing can but a song except, indeed,
a smell, which beats all other resurrections hollow. I thought to
myself that he must needs be the composer's grandson. But no!
For, an hour after, in another place, behold a totally different
small boy, addressing an imaginary audience of Darkeys, and
longing for the Suwannee River. The song had come to life again,
after half a century of oblivion, and I was still here still here!
to hear it.
The memory of Anderson Grayper's suppression by his wife
when he played a few chords of the air, and stopped for instruc-
tions what else he should sing, is stronger in my mind now than
that of those small Chelsea interpreters of it, whose parents I
suppose were then unborn. I suspect that the mind of old age,
thrown back on itself, revives all the first clean press-work of
experience, struck off before the sheets were soiled. The recalling
of this incident makes me recollect that he sang an alternative.
a song about rhinoceroses, curious beasts who got theirselves all
260 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
over mud and revelled in morasses. The sublime condescension
of Mrs. Walkinshaw towards these trivial and puerile diversions
was a sight to be seen and remembered.
J wish some such suggestive power would work towards the
explanation of an incident that happened an hour later, after
Mrs. Walkinshaw's carriage had borne her away to Ladbroke
Square, Bayswater. It arose from my father saying to Cooky:
" I haven't heard you yet, Nebuchadnezzar, on the subject of the
drawings. Come along into the library, and let's hear it. Come
along, boys! Come along, Anderson!" I knew he threw my
brother-in-law in, that he might not feel out in the cold. The effect
was that as Mr. Stowe had departed some time since my two
elder sisters and our stepmother were left alone in the drawing-
room. For Gracey took leave to follow us, and no one said her nay,
Bert called out impatiently after her husband : " Don't be long,
Dan. Remember it's more than an hour's drive! " Dan obviously
a perversion of his first name gave rather a grudging assent, and
I bore my collection of drawings in, and laid them out favourably
for inspection.
I don't think my father was the least aware that the witness
whose testimony he was seeking was influenced by a member of the
public who had got into the Court. I don't think he knew in-
deed, I did not know myself the extent of that influence, or its
possibilities. My father never saw anything. He was aware that
it was very nice that Gracey and Nebuchadnezzar were such
good friends. But he thought it possible that two reasonable
young persons, who knew that Hymen was out of the question,
would keep Cupid out of the answer. I was as bad as he. But
then I had the excuse of youth and inexperience.
I never knew Cooky to do anything^ by halves. He had under-
taken to misrepresent facts on my behalf, and he kept his prom-
ise honourably. Gracey got behind my father's chair to keep her
eye on her advocate and encourage him if he wavered; she being,
as it were, in the position of the solicitor in charge of the case.
But no supervision was necessary. I saw a trace of impatience in
the solicitor's blue eye when her counsel opened with a disclaimer
of any knowledge of the Fine Arts. But it disappeared when the
spurious and insincere character of this aggressive ebullition of
modesty became manifest.
My father treated it as it deserved. "Don't know anything
about the Fine Arts, don't we?" said he. "What's that got to
do with the matter? We should never have any opinions at all,
if we waited to know about things before we formed them. Be-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 261
sides, if we know things our opinions get biassed. I want an un-
biassed opinion."
Cooky's opinion, which derived great weight from his large dark
eyes and massive cheek bones, was sound according to my father's
view, in so far as that it was uninfluenced by any knowledge of
the subject. But he had been entrusted with a brief by my solici-
tor and was bound to make the best of the case, having once
accepted it. He only knew, he said, that none of the other chaps
could do that sort of drawings. Some of them could copy, but
that wasn't Art. Mr. Gromp was an awful swell, of course; but
the more awful a swell was, the more cautious would be his judg-
ments. Also, it was to be observed that this caution had been
shown just as much by a refusal to say that it was quite impossible
that I should become famous, as to admit that it was possible
that I should. Such scrupulous impartiality cut both ways. And
so on. The counsel's solicitor looked very much as if she should
employ him in her next case, and said : " There now, Papa, you
see what Monty thinks ! "
I suppose it was because my father felt that it would be uncivil
to leave his son-in-law out in the cold that he said: "And what
do you think about it, Anderson ? " The answer began : " Roberta
thinks . . . . " And went on to give his wife's opinion that I
was constitutionally and intellectually unfitted for the practice of
painting, and that the lives of Artists were generally disreputable.
He did not mention his own opinion. My father said : '' And
what do you think yourself?" He, therefore, vacillated as one
vacillates who has no views of one's own, and is afraid to advo-
cate any one else's.
He was still engaged in expressing uncertainty when Ellen came
in from the drawing-room, and spoke to my father in a disturbed
undertone, so that I did not hear her words.
"Oh .... Yes! ... Well! . . . Yes, I'll come!" said he,
catching the last words of her communication in the intervals
of his reply to her first. "Pick up the drawings and put 'em
away, Jackey ! " I thought I caught the sound of ruffled speech
in the drawing-room in spite of its distance, both doors being
then open, but I don't think this was my reason for carrying the
drawings back thither to replace them in their portfolio. I should
have done that in any case, without incentives of curiosity. As
a matter of fact, I cannot remember that I felt any vital interest
in what was going on. I was too selfishly absorbed in my own
affairs. I heard, " Do they want*us? " from Cooky, and, "Perhaps
they don't," from Gracey. They remained. My brother-in-law
262 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
hesitated out at the door after me, and wavered in the pas-
sage.
I entered the drawing-room long enough after my father to
lose what he first said. But from my knowledge of him I sus-
pected it of being: "What's the rumpus?" For his words that
followed some incomplete reply to a question were : u Well what
is?" I made for my portfolio the one that never had the flat-
fish in it and attended to the stowing away of my drawings. I
was conscious that my incoming had checked two answers; one
from my sister and one from my stepmother. My perceptive-
ness went the length of hastening operations, and I got my works
interned in the pause which followed. Then L looked round.
My father was still standing near the door, with his eyes fixed
on Roberta. As I turned I caught vividly the image of her that
is with me still, the flashing anger of her eyes, and the white
face I saw on the day of my father's wedding, but this time with
the mass of rich black hair too securely coiled to be shaken loose
by a brusquerie of movement. Her eyes were .not fixed on my
father, but on Jemima, and I turned to look at her. She was on
the sofa where she had sat by Mrs. Walkinshaw, with her gaze
directed towards her stepdaughter, and a look in her face that was
as much astonishment or terror as anger. I recall her image
less clearly than my sister's, but then, of course, I saw Jemima
so often later. As I picture her now, as seen then, there is a
burning red spot on her either cheek, that my mind harmonizes
idly with the tint of her pink silk dress. She moves uneasily and
gives me the idea that her breath comes quick. Ellen was there,
too, crying, I think; but I did not notice her. Further, I was
merely aware that there had been hostilities, arrested by my
father's entry, and that I was, on the whole not wanted. A
glance from him gave me the hint to go, and I departed. I caught
a word or two of the recrudescence of the dispute as I closed the
door.
Anderson Grayper was in the passage, still wavering. I thought
he looked very much concerned, and rather frightened. " Is it a
shine? " said he.
" Is what a shine? "
"I mean are they quarrelling?"
" Two of them are. Your one and Jemima."
"Jemima's Mrs. -Pascoe? Is that it?"
" I suppose she is." I think J added that she was not Mrs.
Anything-Else. It was my habit to be easily satisfied with what-
ever speech presented itself for utterance.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 263
" I shan't go in," said Mr. Grayper after reflection. He became
confidential. "I say, Jackey, look here! What the dooce have
they got to fight about I "
" Nothing in particular anything ! For the sake of the row
any row
" I say, look here ! I wish you'd go in and get your sister out.
We shan't get to Shotfield till two in the morning." That was
the name of their villa at Petersham.
I was an obliging boy. Moreover, it was easier to comply than
refuse. "All right!" said I. "Next time there's less shindy!"
I went and listened at the door for a lull. So listening, I captured
small interchanges in the shindy. I could not listen, /or it to
subside, and stop my ears at the same time.
Roberta was saying : " Then let me keep away altogether, and
not come! " My stepmother's voice came audibly and musically,
heard against the somewhat harsh tension of my sister's : " Mr.
Pascoe, be fair to me! Make her tell you what she has against
me! What have I done?"
Then I heard my father, trying to pour oil on the troubled
waters. " There there, Helen ! You mustn't mind Bert. It's
only Legitimate Drama not Tragedy ! Come, come ! "
Then Bert again, poignantly : " Papa I tell you I am in earn-
est," and Jemima's voice struck in sharply: "In earnest about
what? Make her tell you that!"
My father's voice had in it no note of levity as it said : " You
ought not to find fault, Bert, unless you are prepared to indict the
culprit. Think what friends you were, when Helen was Miss
Evans, and at least tell her clearly what you mean. Remember,
my dear, that when you are unkind to her you are unkind to me."
He raised his voice slightly, suggesting more emphasis to come.
" Now let's have an end of all this ! Kiss your stepmamma and
be friends, or else say why you won't. My suggestion is do the
first, and let the last alone ! "
My brother-in-law, behind me, seemed to be overhearing. For
he said, half to himself :" Yes that's it! Cut the cackle." I
had never heard this phrase, but thought it sounded knowing. I
associated it with footlights and flies.
I thought the lull had come, and got the door ajar, feeling my
way to entering. Roberta's voice came out clearly, saying : " I
shall do neither. She can tell you, as well as I can. I shall not say
a word more. I am sure the carriage must be there, waiting. I
suppose my husband is somewhere."
I put my head in at the door, saying: "Yes, he's out here.
264 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
getting in a stew about the time." Anderson Grayper then fol-
lowed me in, his wife saying to him : " Oh, you're there, are you ?
Is the carriage there ? " Our entry made the previous question lapse,
by general consent. Roberta kissed her father, he saying nothing,
but looking very grave and displeased. His wife, of whom Roberta
took no cognizance, hung on his arm, looking at her enemy more
beseechingly and reproachfully than resentfully. I noticed that
the red spot had died out from her cheeks, and that she looked
white and tearful. It certainly seemed to me that my father was
curiously forbearing towards his married daughter, who, whatever
her grievance against Jemima was, had no excuse for so odious
and unreasonable an attitude towards her.
I got away without much valediction, and found Gracey and
Nebuchadnezzar still in the library, in earnest colloquy across a
very small table, so that the comparison of the respective black and
warm brown, rather pale, of their two heads, seemed a natural one
to pass through my mind. I assumed that they had been talking
all this while about me and my valuable drawings, and felt con-
firmed when Gracey said : " There now, Jackey, wasn't Monty a
perfect darling? Didn't he do it beautifully?" And Cooky, look-
ing up at me with a happy gleam on his face, said : " Yes little
Buttons! And I hope it will be good for you."
I walked with him affectionately up our lane, and said adieu
when his omnibus accrued ; the last from Putney, with one place
left for him outside. I got back to find Gracey interceding with
Raynes not to shut me out. She and I had a kind of chorus of
jubilation over Cooky's heroic inveracity. But I ended up: " I'm
sorry he thinks me a duffer, though. Because he really does, you
know! Now doesn't he?" I hoped Gracey would treat this with
ridicule, and she didn't. However, she said : " You'll be able to
prove he was wrong, Jackey, anyhow, won't you?" Of course I
should !
I put my little sister's beaming face to the credit of the moral
victory I was imputing to my drawings, and was about to retire
to my own den when I was intercepted by Varnish, seeking infor-
mation about an incident I had all but forgotten already, to wit,
the emeuie in the drawing-room. "What ever," she asked, "was
Miss Roberta that angry about? You could hear her all the way
up here ! "
" She was pitching into Jemima," said I. " Good-night! That's
all I know."
" But, Master Jackey, there if you wasn't actly in the very room,
and no chance to be off hearing ! Now, if only you'd 'a listened ! "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 265
I was not prepared to admit that I had not heard the whole.
But I put in a proviso as to its valuelessness. " It was only because
Bert was savage, and wanted to pay Jemima out." I then told
her what I could recollect of Bert's words and Jemima's retorts,
adding as comment: " What put Jemima in a rage was that Bert
went dodging about, and wouldn't say what her game was."
" And whose side was you on, Master Jackey ? "
" Jemima's a little. But I thought them both beastly fools."
" Now be a good boy, and say it again what your pa's good
lady said about Miss Roberta telling what she had against her."
" What all that rot all over again ! . . . . Well look here !
..." I then went over the ground again, my enunciation of
words forming an interesting commentary on file and volley-firing.
" And she was for your pa making Miss Roberta up and say
what she had against her? Why was she to, now?" Varnish
seemed very thoughtful over this.
"As if everybody didn't know that!" said I, scornfully. And
indeed, even now I think Varnish was right. What earthly pur-
pose would have been served by a formal indictment of Jemima by
Bert, for marrying her father, when the thing was done past recall,
and the guilty couple had been a couple for over two years past,
and were standing there handfasted and armlinked, facing the
accuser?
An evening or two later, my father and I being alone in the
library, during his pipe-time, he said to me : " I've made up my
mind what to do with you, young man. You'll send in your draw-
ings for admission to the Schools, and then if they won't have
'em . . . Well ! we shan't be any worse off than we were before.
If they will, we shall see what you make of it! . . . How long
will it take to see? Can't say. We shall see how long it took
when it's taken it."
I accepted the postponement of the fixture I had inquired about,
with a cheerful " All right ! " and looked f orward to breaking the
fact of my genius gradually on Europe. America existed certainly
. . . But !
My father went on to indicate a second string to my profes-
sional bow, in case the first should snap. I might get an insight
into Architecture t>y attending a course of lectures at the College
in the evenings, and then I should know if it "would be a congenial
employment to me if Painting seemed unattractive. He would
not be indisposed to welcome that outcome of the experiment, for
he had been assured by my stepmamma that it was more genteel
to be an Architect than an Artist. He did not covet gentility for
266 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
his son on his own account, but it would at least be a satisfaction
to Helen. I knew he was speaking half to himself at that moment,
by the use of the name.
It struck me then, seeing him s6 to speak thinking about her,
that I might try to find out if he had got to the bottom of the
cause of Roberta's vendetta against her. I had developed a cu-
riosity on the subject. " I say," said I, " what was it set it off
on Saturday ? "
"What was it what?" said he. "Say it all over again. And
explain incidentally the meaning of the expression to ' set off '."
I considered that I answered this adequately by saying that
I meant the evening Goody Walkinshaw dined here.
My father looked into my inquisitive eyes through his pipe-
smoke, as if I was an amusing phenomenon whose persistency did
not displease him, and said, a puff or two later: " ' Goody Walkin-
shaw ' is rude, but I don't know why. I suppose there are reasons
for not saying * Mrs Walkinshaw/ which seems the most obvious
course. Suppose we compromise, and make it ' Dame Walkin-
shaw'?"
"All right!" said I. "Dame does as well as Goody. But it
was Saturday, anyhow. What made Bert flare up so ? "
"Unintelligible Investigator!" said my father, making a new
name for me convey his opinion of my method. " Assuming that
your sister can be fairly said to have flared up, I believe I can tell
you what made her do so. It was, apparently, because they inter-
rupted her reading Hamlet."
"What! In Shakespeare."
" Exactly in Shakespeare." He changed his manner to one
more serious. " Your stepmamma told me all about it afterwards.
Mind you recollect it, to think about when you are older and wiser,
and I'll tell you. . . . All right, is it? Very well! It was like
this. After we left the room, Bert was unsociable, and would only
sit reading, and hardly answered when your stepmamma spoke to
her. Well that wouldn't have been unusual if she had been
living here still, like old times. But she hadn't been here for
months."
" / don't see that Bert matters."
" Very likely not. But she does. Because she is one of your
mamma's girls. Master Jackey, Besides, they were such friends,
she and her stepmother."
" I should have left her alone, to read Hamlet."
" Well, you see. they didn't leave her alone, but asked her, one
of them, where she was reading. I think she said. . . . Yes, I
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 267
think what she said was: 'Nothing of any interest to you! The
Queen was the Ghost's widow, and the new King was the Ghost's
brother. All the circumstances were entirely different.' " My
father paused, looking at me curiously, as though he wanted to
see how the words struck me, without gloss or comment. Then,
as I hung fire, he said, as though to prompt me: "You know
Hamlet? You've read Hamlet? .... Well what do you make
of it ? "
" Bert meant everything was changed across," said I, lucidly.
" But she's always savage with Jemima, about that." I was sorry
a moment after for my own outspeech, which made reserves im-
possible for me when my father repeated after me: " ' Meant
everything was changed across.' What was everything, in this
case? " I had to find words, and I found them somehow, to explain
that whereas Hamlet's father was the Ghost, the parallel in the
case of my family would assign that part to my mother, and his
stepfather-uncle's part would be allotted to my stepmother.
I turned very red and stammered over this, as it was the first
time I had ever in speech to my father treated his second wife
as the wearer of my mother's shoes. He did not seem upset or dis-
turbed by my doing so, still keeping his eyes fixed on me as though
he read, or failed to read, some meaning into my words behind
their face-value. He only said, presently : " Well, it was an
unkind speech, anyhow! We must hope your stepmamma thought
more of it than your sister meant her to think. Very likely she
did. However, she took it to heart. And I think Bert made mat-
ters worse by refusing to be explicit. I suppose she was frightened
and didn't want to say any more, really. That's one way of look-
ing at it."
Bert frightened ! The idea ! I dismissed it with the words :
"She didn't care! All she wanted was to aggravate Jemima."
My father only said: " Well, she succeeded; at least, if I am right
in my interpretation of the word aggravate, which has to mean, in
this case, the causing of undeserved annoyance to the aggravatee.
not any addition to weight. Your stepmamma had a very bad
feverish night, and I believed she would have slept very well but
for that rumpus."
It had hung in my mind that as I closed the drawing-room door
on the said rumpus, after disposing of my drawings, Roberta had
seemed to me to say, in answer to my father's first words to her:
"Why am I to be silent? Was she not my own mother?" I re-
peated this to him, and his reply was: "Evidently Hamlet. The
ghost was Hamlet's own father." His tone gave me the impres-
268 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
sion that he regarded Bert's outbreak as having at least as much
connection with stage-mania as with actual cause of complaint
against her stepmother. Indeed, poetry apart, why should grown-
up sons or daughters insist on either parent remaining unmated
after the other's death?
I think I was right in ascribing to Roberta a more independent
action than my father's stage-mania theory would have admitted.
For, when curiosity led me next day to look into the volume she
had been reading, although the book-mark was certainly in Hamlet,
nothing in the text in that place seemed on all fours with her rela-
tion to her stepmother. I can't say what Act and Scene it was,
but I remember that it was where Hamlet calls himself a dull and
muddy-mettled rascal, like John-a-dreams, in a long soliloquy all
about the murder of his father. Roberta had not even been with
us on that visit to Highbury two years since, when my worthy
granny's suggestion that my mother's overdose of laudanum should
be laid at my father's door might have warped her mind on the
subject.
Of course, however, the book-mark may not have been left in
the place where she left off reading.
CHAPTEE XXVIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
MY boyhood is difficult to record from the fact that my youth
excluded me from the counsels of my seniors. Thus my narrative
of that passage of arms between Roberta and our stepmother is
merely as much as reached me not a substantial history. It
happened that I was brought in contact, as narrated, with tangible
event in that slight collision between them; which, according to
my father, began in Hamlet. I wish, for my own satisfaction, that
I had been able to remember more. One does not know how keenly
one can feel regret for the loss of the Past, until one sits down
to write a fair and intelligible record of it. The Historian is
in no such dilemma. He has his authorities, and can interpret or
amplify them to his liking. I am especially badly off, having no
authority but my Self to refer to. And I do this with misgiving
that he will mislead me, as often as not.
He has not misled me, I know, in my recollection that Jemima
rose in my estimation after that fracas. That feverish night,
vouched for by my father, told in her favour; and in addition to
that, she did not bear malice. Not that she forgave. With a good
deal of tact I suppose it was tact she hoped that one day Bertie
would forgive her, and would see and understand the altruism
in the exercise of which she had incurred such displeasure. I
accepted this, without analysis of niceties. But it was the sleep-
lessness which went home to my understanding, and made me say
that it was a jolly shame to keep on pitching into Jemima.
I must have worded this opinion, thus or otherwise, to all the
members of my family, else I should not remember how each one
received it. My father patted me cordially on the back, saying:
" A very pretty sentiment. Forgiveness of stepmothers is rare
so let's give Jackey credit." Ellen said : u That's what I always
keep on saying to Bert, over and over and over again. And it
doesn't do any good! Oh dear, if I've said it once, I've said it fifty
times." She recurred a good deal to this estimate. Gracey said,
"Suppose we leave off!" and evaded the subject. Varnish said,
dropping the question of forgiveness, and taking up the sleepless
269
270 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
night: " Half-an-hour, I lay! No one ever did nor ever will
lie awake all night. But seemin' goes a long way." She would not
commit herself to not pitching into the Sly Cat, though she never
used that name for her now.
She I mean The Cat adhered to the views she had expressed
about the social status of picture-painters; and I think really
helped my case with my father, whose dislike of the subject went
the length of a parti pris against all consideration of the respecta-
bilities. This unintentional assistance was reinforced by her pro-
testation that she appreciated the remarkable ability shown in my
work. It was a tribute to the critical authority of Mrs Walkin-
shaw. My stepmother was not inclined to be behindhand in show-
ing that she too had an insight int.o the Fine Arts; and followed
suit, for safety.
All went well for my wishes, and ill for me. I sent my drawings
in the R. A., and they passed. My probationary drawings fol-
lowed, and also passed. Then I was an Academy Student, and had
a round ivory ticket v\'ith my name and the date. It was lost, I
suppose, with all my other things. I kept it as a kind of mascot,
for over three decades. If I were superstitious I might believe
that it acted as an evil talisman, binding me to a trade for which
I never had, and never could have, any adaptability that is not to
be found in any youngster of moderate capacity. And that trade
the one of all others which calls for special qualifications of hand
and brain! However, I am not superstitious; at least, I believe
not. An important reservation that, in view of my doubts about
the meaning of the word!
Another forty years and the memory of the old Academy Schools
will linger only in a few old, old noddles for a while a short
while and will flicker out at the very last in the brain of some
centenarian. Burlington House was still a decade ahead in my
day; and the schools, out of the Exhibition time, were in the Ex-
hibition rooms. The way in was under the right hand entry, and
there was a door on each side. On the left, to the schools; on the
right, to the library. I am writing it down now to recall it to
my Self. I think it must have been in the autumn of fifty-seven
that I entered that door on the left. Can I blame it, that when T
did so lasciavo ogni speranza left behind me, that is, every hope
of becoming a useful member of Society ? Not every hope of com-
ing out again, for I came out to get lunch.
The first person I saw at work in the Antique School was my
friend who had lent me a plumb-bob at Slocum's. 'Opkins. He was
drawing the Discobolus as a Probationer, and two other neophytes
271
were a droring of the Discoblus too; so he informed me. I made a
fourth.
All four of us were in grim earnest. Probation has that effect.
There were plenty of other draughtsmen at work, or passing to
and fro, young and old, all incorporated as Students; some of
the latter were Life-students, I was told, who had been at work
all their lives in the schools. These, however, were great creatures,
learning to paint in the next room. I felt that there must be
difficulties in Art serious ones! These elderly men were still
learning hadn't learned yet! Perhaps it was only their humility,
if one knew!
As for those I saw drawing probates, I suppose, as they had
passed through successfully I was strongly impressed with the
persistency with which they gazed on their own work, glancing
occasionally at its original for comparison. Now and then, rarely,
as a fly occasionally touches the surface of a still pool, the point of
a crayon or the bustle of a stump touched the surface of a draw-
ing. The serene contemplation of achievement, which filled tho
gaps between the touches, set thought on the alert to determine
when the drawings were actually executed; a task before which
thought reeled and staggered speechless. A fair percentage of
these matured students seemed morally degenerate more repro-
bates than probates passing their time in the exchange of rep-
artees, the comparison of the beauty of actresses, or reminiscences
of theatrical tit-bits.
My reason now revolts against my recollection of the way in
which order was maintained in this school, but no concession is
made by Memory. I cannot rid my mind of an image of a sort of
dog-kennel in a corner, in which Authority lay hid in the form of
a Curator, or, perhaps, I should say, from which it came out in
that form; for the inner life of that kennel was as hidden from
us students as ever was that of Maskelyne's and Cooke's guest,
agent, representatives, or proxy, tied up inside a cabinet. Xo
beautiful female arms shot out from that dog-kennel, but Authority
now and then said, "Too much noise!" as if its slumbers were
disturbed. Otherwise, nothing happened.
Indeed, I now look back to the Antique School as a sort of
backwater in the flow of Event rather than an Institution. If
anything had happened there in my time I should surely recollect
it. But it only presents itself to me now as easels perhaps I
should add boxes above which rise into the gloom Mars, Bacchus,
and Apollo, while one Gladiator dies on one pedestal and two
others fight on another. I wonder, if the ghosts of Myron or
272 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Scopas ever came to London a city that was a morass, in their
day and chanced upon casts of their own works knee-deep in
easels, would they know what to make of it! What would they
think had possessed the Northern. Barbarian, to complicate his
Hyperborean life with images they remembered making, ages long
ago, this side of Styx,* in the sunshine of the Acropolis?
I have every reason to believe that no one of the four proba-
tioners who got the Discobolus done in plenty of time looked at
the work of Myron in a way that would have pleased that sculptor's
ghost. Artists are such egotists. I doubt if Beethoven would
have been pleased with the compliment paid him by a young man
'Opkins had known, who had a fine tenor voice. All his friends
said so. It was his duty to practise such a fine tenor voice.
And what could he do better than get a seat for Sims Reeves at
the Monday Pop, and go on singing Adelarder till he could sing
it reg'lar well? Myron's ghost might have had feelings akin to
Beethoven's, in his parallel case, could he have seen those four
Discoboli, day after day and week after week, and have been alive
to the plenitude of indifference with which their authors had
come to regard the plastic Art of their original. I remember
something of an opinion to this effect creeping into my conversa-
tions with my neighbour, and evolving the particulars of his
musical friend's abuse, as I considered it, of Beethoven's song. I
find that his pronunciation of its name, as I have written it,
suggestive of meat storage to some, no doubt means to me four
Discobolusses on imperial sheets of Whatman's handmade, two of
them done in Conte; and the original with his quoit still uu-
thrown, as sure to fly right now, if only its Destiny would come
to the scratch, as it was when Myron got him done, in plenty of
time, two-and-a-half'thousand years ago.
" Old Lofft knoo Foozly," said 'Opkins to me one day then-
abouts. "I don't see anythin' in that! Foozly was 'ardly dead
when I was born." Lofft was the Curator who dwelt in the dog-
kennel.
One of the Conte chalksmen turned a lack-lustre eye halfway,
and said: "Ain't you sticking it on?"
" I don't foller your idear," said 'Opkins. " Stickin' what on?"
The Eye came round the rest of the way, and its owner said:
" You ain't thirty."
"Never said I was. Five and twenty's my figger!" But the
speaker was compelled to admit that the expression " hardly dead "
was strained and exaggerated, Fuseli having been quite dead
buried at least well over thirty years ago.
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 273
Discussion of the point grew warm and was cut short by. " Too
much iioise!" from the dog-kennel. I felt that it contained a
connecting link, for surely Fuseli was a friend of Reynolds. But
if our presiding genius in the kennel was a connecting link with
the past, how much more so was old Gromp, who was eighty-four.
I was so interested in this that I looked up dates, and found that
Gromp was eleven years old when Reynolds died. Of course he
could remember him. But then of course also he would have had
to see him. I resolved to question the old boy on this point next
time I visited him. He had very kindly volunteered to take a
look at my drawings at intervals, and I was to go to his den for
the purpose as occasion offered.
This happened after I had got my admission as student, and
reclaimed my probationary drawings. I showed my Discobolus with
pride to my family circle, and felt that their approval was. the
thin end of the wedge of European fame. Besides, I felt meritori-
ous, for I had been taking pains. Reassured by their plaudits,
I took my courage in both hands, and started by my Self to see
the old Academician one Sunday morning when there was thin
snow on the roadway into The Retreat, which had only been dis-
turbed by The Milk's wheels for it reached us on a sort of
perambulator showing how early I parted from Gracey at the
gate, winged by her benediction. Tt also shows the time of year,
or that it was next year; I cannot say which now, but I remember
the snow. The fact that it had been pounded slushy in the main
road by the few busses that had lurched deliberately to town, re-
mains in my mind as evidence that it was late Autumn, not early
Spring.
But I know the day was still young apart from that. For the
time Gromp had fixed was not a minute later than ten, and I had
made so many allowances for so many contingencies, that as I
passed over the bridge in Hyde Park the big new bell at West-
minster rang nine. My pedestrian's feet carried me easily the
rest of the way in thirty minutes. Then just outside my destina-
tion I had a fit of shyness fear of being too early that kept me
hesitating about pulling the bell, the whole of a quarter of an hour.
I wonder now, if I had not had that fit of shyness, would there
have been time to ask him the question I had been treasuring in
my mind? Had he ever seen Reynolds?
However, it was written otherwise in Fate's book. At a quarter-
to-ten I pulled the gate-bell, and had misgivings that it would
never stop, and that I should be held responsible. Tt died down
in the and, to my great relief, and the housekeeper cnme. in a
274 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
clean apron and curl-papers. Was it not church-time soon? She
remembered my face, and moreover her master had said he expected
me for I had written to him and that I was to go straight in.
Mr. Gromp would be there directly. I went straight in, and she
closed the door behind me with caution. I was a premature visitor;
ten minutes too soon, clearly. I could look about me, and did so.
There was a picture on the easel, which must have been Milton
dictating something; preferably Paradise Lost, as the middle-aged
principal character, with two fingers on his brow to co-operate
with thought, and his spare hand outstretched to indicate its
delivery to a listening world, was palpably blind, though illumi-
nated by Inspiration. The purity of his white throat-gear, starch
itself, was all but equal to that of the two she-Puritans his
daughters, I presume which was really enough to knock out any
unprepared person, not a strong moralist. One of them was acting
as scribe; the other, with clasped hands, was welling or gushing
from founts nearest the heart, I should say. I suppose it is
owing to some subsequent commentary overheard, or critique read,
that my mind conceives that the Poet was meant to be dictating
the beautiful words : " Pie to God only, she to God in him."
Because I really have not a particle of reason for supposing that
any particular passage is referred to.
I dutifully went through the form of hoping internally that I
should one day paint such a beautiful and touching picture, and
turned to examine another, hung high up on the wall. It was in
another style, in which I discerned Gray's Bard. I had recited
him at school and knew him of old. There he was, on the rock
whose haughty brow o'erlooked old Conway's foaming flood; and
there was the crested pride of the first Edward, moved to wild
dismay on the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side by the voice of a
singer ten miles off. I had not been at Bettws-y-coed in those days,
and I took it all seriously, and wondered whether I too should
one day be able to paint a beard like that. And there, as large
as life, was Boadicea, bleeding from the Roman rods, and the
venerable Impostor whose tongue's terrors were tied by resentment,
or he would have done wonders honour bright! There he was,
spreading oak and all!
Then, as I was afraid to move from the island, for fear of
disturbing the dust, I turned to examine the miscellanea over the
chimney piece. There was the usual allowance of slight drawings
with resolute signatures and margins that brazened out their
vacuity; of water colours that had clearly been dashed in, so that
you could acknowledge their broad treatment without being fright-
THE NAREATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 275
ened, which you might have been if there had been any evidence of
painstaking; of Senef elder lithographs and Stothard mezzotints
all the things one counted upon at that date in anchorages undis-
turbed for a generation or more. But what interested me most was
an oil sketch of a boy, not over six years old, with '' Reynolds "
on the frame, and the date 1TS5. That boy might easily have
changed into Gromp R.A. Yes that was his sort of age seventy-
seven years ago. I stood before the picture trying to detect a
likeness to my recollection of the old man's face with some
success as I thought and wondering when he himself would make
his appearance. I was more than ever anxious to hear about
Reynolds, of whom I felt convinced he must have memories.
The cat, who had knocked the books down when I came before,
seemed for once sleepless, and came curling about my legs, inquir-
ing for refreshment, as I understood her. I explained that I
had brought none, and stroked her; but she seemed indifferent to
mere platonic affection, and sat down close to a door I had not
noticed so far; not curling up for a nap, but apparently wishing
to have it opened. I felt that I could not meet her views, being a
mere visitor.
Presently came a tap at the other door, and the housekeeper,
in her Sunday best, duly armed with a prayer-book, looked in to
say: "I'm just off to Church, Mr. Gomp. Is there anything else
before I go ? " She fancied he was on my side of the easel-picture
unseen.
" Mr. Gromp isn't here," said I. " I was waiting."
" Lock-a-daisy think of that now, young master! Isn't he out
of his room ? Why, to be sure, I thought he was safe and certain
to hear and come out." She pondered a little, looking serious, and
then said: "It's very like he's dropped asleep in his chair. Be-
cause he has' done that and he does do that, there's no denying,
but as I say where's the harm, whatever time of day."
I had no apprehension of anything wrong, and indeed had some
vague idea of vouching for the practice of sleeping after breakfast
in my family. I contented myself with expressing my readiness
to wait on indefinitely, with the addendum: " I say. I hope he's
quite well." I suppose I felt that at some future time I might
feel uneasy, not more than that.
" Yes, indeed ! " said the housekeeper. " Because eighty-four
ain't eighteen, and I'm late for Church already." She deliberated
a moment; and then, almost in a whisper, said: "Look here now,
young gentleman, I'll tell you what's best to do. Just you set
down, and wait for him coming out. He'll wake up within ten
276 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
minutes, because that's the most his nap'll last. Then you'll hears
him move about and just you tap on the door and say it's you.
I've no call for to wait, that I can see." She hesitated, for all
that; in spite too of the cordial ' confidence of my "All right!"
I wanted her to go, appreciating the dramatic importance of my
own position. " I'll tell you what I'll do," said she. " I'll just
look in, quiet-like, without waking him, to see that he's all right,
and then you wait another ten minutes. Only he'll come out.
You'll see!"
She went to the bedroom door, opened it very gently, and
closed it after looking in. " All quite right ! " said she. " He's
in his chair by the fire, and it's made up." The cat shot noise-
lessly through the first inch or so of opening, causing comment:
" She's not allowed in there, and she knows it. But just this
once won't hurt." And then I was left alone with Gray's Bard,
and Boadicea's Druid, and the everlasting pause in Paradise Lost.
I daresay it was then that I selected that line for the inspired
mouth to have just spoken.
I suspected that I was alone in the house, and really had at first
no idea of acting on the suggestion of the housekeeper and knock-
ing at the bedroom door. I would wait for the spontaneous appear-
ance of the ancient painter so I resolved until the moment when
I should be compelled to depart by the necessity of my presence
at home; and I would then depart silently, leaving my drawing
perhaps, and writing from Chelsea to ask when I should call for
it on another day. But I had not reckoned with the effect of
prolonged solitude and silence.
Even the cat would have been an alleviation. The ticking of
the clock, which I had never noticed before, became first a fact
in the stillness, then a monotonous repetition of words: "Don't
wait don't wait don't wait don't wait ! " Then for variety :
" Why stop why stop ? " And then when these words had lasted,
on the speaker's own evidence, a full quarter-of-an-hour, it changed
suddenly to : " Best knock best knock best knock ! " Once the
clock's speech became plain, it seemed to me more vociferous in
the silence; as though this was really what it had meant all along,
and it had only been my slow apprehension that ignored it.
I tried in vain to rob the clock-tick of this meaning, and
thought another sound that asserted itself also for the first
time would help me; some mysterious choke and drip that the
water supply was, I suppose, responsible for. But its indecisive
bursts and gurgles had no force against the monotonous resolu-
tion of the clock-tick. " Best knock best knock ! best knock ! "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 277
After all, had I not best knock? Was I not sufficiently author-
ized to do so by the distinct instruction of an old and trustworthy
retainer? For there was no doubt about her; her cap frill and
the ribbons of her old-fashioned bonnet were enough alone, without
the prayer-book. Surely to be able to say, " Your housekeeper told
me to knock," would warrant that latitude of action.
I approached the door, timidly enough, and tapped gently. No
answer. Again, louder louder than I meant, for I was rather
frightened at the sound. But still no answer! If that most re-
sponsible housekeeper had any sufficient warrant for saying he
was safe to come out soon, surely half-an-hour's delay meant some-
thing wrong.
I don't think the circumstances justified my opening that door;
and I thought they did not, even as I did it. I cannot remember
now how I apologized to myself for my action. I can only recol-
lect that I did open it, and looked in. The cat surprised me;
forcing herself through, and vanishing somewhere into furni-
ture.
All was as the responsible housekeeper had said. There, in an
armchair, was the old painter asleep, before a brightly burning fire.
I had no right to wake him. My course was clear to retire, leav-
ing my drawing in any conspicuous spot, and write to him from
Chelsea.
I had closed the door gently, and had chosen the writing-table
as the best place for the drawing, before a sombre thought stirred
in my mind, somehow reviving my memory of my mother, that
day when my misgiving about her sent me to summon my father
to her bedside, none too soon. It never shaped itself into words,
though they began a question : " How if he too ? " How if he
too what ? I could not leave that question unanswered, to work,
all through my journey home, until I came to speech with my
father or Gracey, to pooh-pooh it. I mu-st know, now, though I
was taking for granted that my own thought was nonsense.
Back again to the door, furtively ! My hesitation on the handle
made it shriek like a mandrake root; door-handles do, when one
wants them silent. Surely that noise would wake him! But it
did not. There he lay, his hand hanging as I had seen it before,
impassive over the arm of his chair. I must see his face. If he
was so sound asleep he would never see me.
Against my conviction of any right I had, I went a-tiptoe, like
a thief in the night, till I all but saw the old face in profile.
He slept with his mouth open. . . . Well what of that ? Some
do. But that sombre thought of my mother caught at something
278 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
in the surroundings, and made it an excuse for activity. The
image of Death was upon me before I saw his eyes, still open, but
lustreless. Then I knew the meaning of it all.
A painful fascination drew me to touch for a moment the cold
nerveless hand. Then, crying for some help, yet knowing none was
in the house, I made for the street-door, and leaving it open, went
out.
A very respectable-looking gentleman was consulting a pocket-
book two doors off, before getting into a compact brougham. To
me the words " medical man " seemed to be written large all over
him and the carriage too. I suppose my appearance spoke my
errand, for before I could shape it in words, he said : " Which
house?"
I led the way rapidly, giving the best quick abstract I could
manage of what I had seen. The gentleman had a leather case
in his hand as we passed through the Studio, and opened it when
he saw the motionless body, without so much as pausing to search
for a pulse. I have seen morphia injected more than once since
then, in cases of heart-failure, but never more promptly. I do not
know how long it was before he said: "Quite useless of course!
But one does it." Then he turned to me, saying: " And you know
that there is no one in the house?"
I explained further the position of things, and that I was, so
to speak, a mere accident of it. He only said : " I must stop
and see this out." Then I became aware how painful it would be
to tell the old housekeeper. I felt so certain she had been in that
position many years. I tried to communicate this apprehension
to the doctor, saying, " She's an awfully old servant, you know! "
under my breath. To my relief he seemed to seize the idea readily.
" I quite understand," said he. " She will have a latch-key to
let herself in, and she must not be allowed in here at once." He
considered a moment, and added: "The best thing will be for
you to wait in the Studio, and let her find you there. I must remain
here till she comes, or some one."
"Am I to tell her?" said I, flinching from the task.
" She will see, without much telling," he answered. " You might
say the doctor is here."
I did as he told me, feeling thoroughly frightened and op-
pressed. I certainly have seldom had a more uncomfortable half-
hour than the one that followed. I could only sit gazing in a
bewildered stupefaction at the boy's portrait, painted by Reynolds
. . . how many years ago ? Close upon eighty, somewhere ! All
the mystery of Life and Time was upon me, as I looked at the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 279
child's face, and tried to see in it the old, old face I had just seen,
cold in Death.
I started up at the sound of a latch-key outside and waited,
with my eyes on the room-door, wondering whether my voice would
coine when I needed it. I heard the housekeeper talk to herself
in the passage, but the only articulation was : " Highty-tighty ! "
Then she came on quicker, and tapped ; then came into the room,
looking alarmed. " Is the doctor here?" she said. "It's not his
time till two." She had seen the hat and gloves outside. I suppose
doctors' hats were distinguishable in those days. I don't know.
"Yes, a doctor!" said my voice, and at the sound of it really
I hardly knew it for mine! the woman stopped, with her eyes
fixed on me, with a scared look growing in them. But I don't
think she connected me with its cause. I was only a bystander
who had seen the doctor pass through exchanged a word with
him perhaps. But why was I still there?
" You'll be late home, young gentleman," said she, and was
passing on.
" No no please no ! Please not yet ! Let me say " I
stammered a good deal as I laid my hand on her arm to arrest her.
A sudden understanding came into the scared look, and then came
a cry: "Oh, master, master! After so many years!" I saw she
knew, and that the doctor was right. She had seen, without much
telling.
I was very late home, for I stayed to be of what use I might,
as bearer of the news to the old man's nearest relative, a mar-
ried niece; and otherwise. I could not disguise from myself that
this lady and her family bore the shock remarkably well, and
cynicism suggested later that they were borne up in their affliction
by an anticipated fulfilment of expectations. I did, however,
gather that his death from heart-weakness, suddenly, had been
predicted for many years, so cynicism may have been unfair, as
is not uncommonly the case. She was, however, so emphatic about
the matter, that I remember a sort of malicious pleasure at the
announcement that he had left a great deal of his money to
Trustees, to purchase Historical Pictures for deserving Public
Institutions. I shall die, as I now know, much as he did, and I
trust this Institution will be the gainer.
CHAPTEK XXIX
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
IT was nearly five o'clock when I reached The Retreat, and
found Gracey watching anxiously at the gate. She ran on ahead
of me as a harbinger of tidings to my kin, to whom she imputed
solicitude about me equal to her own. I heard her joyously an-
nouncing my safe return, and was conscious that the family was
saying of course I was all safe, and it had said so all along, and
what a silly she was to get in a fuss about nothing! She was so
glad to see me that she never stopped to hear what had made me
late.
I was taciturn about what had happened, and made no reply
to, " Well now tell us all about it ! " except that I would do so
when Mrs. Walkinshaw had gone. For that lady's volubility was
audible in the drawing-room, and I not only felt a shrinking from
public life, but a strong attraction towards the dining-room, whero
the tablecloth had been doubled to reduce its area and qualify it to
pasture a solitary biped with an aftermath of Sunday dinner.
It was so late that my reason was saying: " Wait for cold supper,
at seven ! " But voracity, with strong support from Gracey, got
the better of reason, in spite of the assistance the latter received
from the moral or spiritual revolt against food a thing quite
compatible with technical hunger.
I found it easiest to surrender to Gracey, who established her-
self at the far end of the table with her chin on her hands
how well I remember that way she had ! to see justice done to
the aftermath. But I made a poor show as a trencherman, barely
quenching the hunger of eighteen, unfed for eight hours; for I
had left home early, and had walked many miles. Gracey took ma
up short, as the phrase is, over a rechauffe apple-dumpling which
I should have appreciated keenly at another time.
" What not finish your pudding, Jackey. What's the matter? "
I said, "Oh well!" and after a very mechanical renewal of
attention to the unfinished banquet, "There now! That's plenty,
in all conscience!" and pushed my plate away.
"Jackey! Something's the matter. Don't say it isn't!" She
withdrew one pretty hand from her chin, to point at me an
admonition to truth. " Mr. Gromp says your drawing's bad."
280
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 281
* No, he didn't."
"What did he say?"
" He said nothing. He c-couldn't say anything. I'll toll you
soon."
" Oh, Jackey ! Tell me now. What was it? "
" I'll tell you when Goody Walkinshaw's . . . Walkinshawed
herself out of the house." I remember perfectly using this very pe-
culiar phrase, which, strange to say, Gracey accepted as reasonable
without comment. Our terms of intercourse were on these lines.
" No tell me now ! I hear her not going. Now be a dear
boy, and don't be sprocketty." I believe I -have recalled this
family word before. It requires no interpretation takes care
of its own meaning, helped by context.
" Well I will, the minute she's out. She is going, I tell you."
" She doesn't mean to go for ever so long. That's not winding
up. She's talking in long sentences." Which showed observation
of human nature. Departures chop conversation up.
A visitor was identified by Gracey from the window. "I'll
make Monty come and make you tell," said she, and ran out Lo
capture Nebuchadnezzar. He came in, looking as Assyrian as
ever. " Do come and manage this naughty boy," Gracey said.
" He won't tell me what Mr. Gromp has said about his drawing."
"Wliat did he say, little Buttons?"
An idea occurred to me. " Look here. Cooky ! " I said, aside.
" I'll tell you alone, but I won't while Gracey's here. You tell
her to hook it, and then I'll tell you." Telegraphic exchanges
followed, and Gracey fled.
I believe the reason I found it easier to tell Cooky was simply
that my having something to tell was the first thing he heard on
entering the room. Every moment that a painful piece of news
remains untold, beyond its first communicability, is tacitly ac-
cepted as evidence of its non-existence. There was no serious
difficulty in saying, after the door had closed on Gracey, in a
mysterious undertone conveying its importance: "He's died of
heart complaint old Mr. Gromp has. Just before." Obviously,
just before my arrival. I did not want to claim too much share
in the old gentleman's private affairs, of which his death was
surely one. I added, as an extenuating circumstance, that he was
eighty-four !
"Then why couldn't you tell Gracey that, little Buttons? It
wasn't your fault, anyhow! "
" No, I suppose it wasn't. But that doesn't count."
"What does?"
282 OLD MAX'S YOUTH
" Why Goody Walkinshaw. She counts. It wouldn't be any
fun, having her know. As soon as she's bunked it, I'll tell them all
about it." I believe at this time I was beginning to speak
English to the world at large, but I retained my school-jargon
in intercourse with a school-friend.
"Why wouldn't it be any fun, having her know?"
" Because she makes believe she knew Gromp, and I know she
didn't. She'd watercart."
" What an inexplicable little ass you are, Buttons ! Suppose
she does watercart."
"Well it's rather foolery, isn't it now?" But I felt my out-
works weak. " I vote we have Gracey back, and see what she
says."
Gracey was had back I think she was just coming and she
was much concerned, on my account, at the story I had to tell;
but the fact that Mr. Gromp was eighty-four seemed to do wonders
in the way of palliating it. Besides, Gracey had never seen the
old gentleman, and that makes all the difference. She and Cooky
talked over my head, morally, as they always did. I suppose I
was very young, even then.
" Look here, little Buttons ! " said Cooky, after discussion of
the point. u I think Gracey's quite right. It was Mrs. Walkinshaw
who wrote to Mr. Gromp for you, and it's only your fancy that
she doesn't really know him "
I interrupted. " lie said he hadn't seen her since she married,
and her daughter's elderly, because I've seen her."
"What has that to do with the matter, Jackey?" said Gracey.
" Suppose in fifty years Monty was to die suddenly of heart
disease, and suppose the people at a house where I was let me
see his death next day in the papers ! . . . Well I should think
them beasts! Shouldn't you, Monty?"
" If it was the other way round? " said Cooky. " Yes beasts! "
" Very well then ! " said I. " Tell the Goody, only 7 won't come
in. She won't care. Cut along tell away!" And Gracey went
straight off to the drawing-room, leaving me with Cooky.
His face looked so still and grave it might have been marble
fresh from the completion of an Assyrian chisel. " Shall we, any
of us, be here to do any recollecting in fifty years? " said he. But
we left speculation on this point to listen in the passage to as
much of the announcement and its consequences as might reach
our ears outside.
Gracey had evidently sprung the main fact on her hearers with-
out reserve. Indeed, Mrs. Walkinshaw's almost forgotten acquaint-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 283
ance with the deceased painter apart, there was no reason for not
doing so. What we could hear was that Gracey spoke on, no doubt
giving the details that I had given ; and now and then my father's
voice struck in, or my stepmother's, asking a question. I did not
hear Mrs. Walkinshaw's at all. Presently my father's became
more insistent, and the door-handle was audible. He was coming
out. We fell back into the dining-room, but when he said, " Where
is the young man ? " I reappeared, stating superfluously that I
was there, and rationally that Cooky also was.
" Come in the library and let's hear all about it," said he. We
followed him, but as we crossed the entrance-hall I saw [Mrs.
Walkinshaw coming from the drawing-room, deprecating my step-
mother's protests against an early departure, made Society-wise.
I could not forbear lingering, so curious was I to hear if I might
do so in ambush, not otherwise what attitude the good lady
would take up.
It seemed that her gush had not deserted her. " My dear
good Helen ! " said she, with a distinct sing-song to each word.
" I ought to have been gone ages ago." I then perceived that
this and the protests were an interlude, and also thought I detected
a variant of the speaker in the way she resumed some previous
serious speech. " It is so long so long ago ! " she said. " I had
not realized, when I wrote for your boy, how long. . . . Yes, I
knew it was fifty years, but oh dear! you understand."
The girls were behind, in the drawing-room. My stepmother
understood perfectly, or said she did. I did not. She then said:
" That dear silly child came rushing in with it so suddenly. T
don't the least wonder." Then Mrs. Walkinshaw said : " I don't
think it made much difference. . . . Oh, there is the dear boy
himself ! " From my hanging-back had caught me, and I had to
go through some leave-taking. It took the form of commiseration
tempered with congratulation, or vice versa. I then went into
the library and gave my father a full account of my most eventful
day.
I catechized Gracey that same evening as to the way in which
Goody Walkinshaw had received the news of G romp's death. I was
moved to do this more by my impression that that lady had made
an unwarrantable use of a very slight acquaintance with the old
Academician, than from any conviction, derived from the few
words I had myself overheard, that this acquaintance of long ago
had ever amounted to such a friendship as, for instance, her own
and Cooky's. I see now that Gracey's views on the subject were
much more mature than my own.
284 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" I say, Gracey," said I, " what did old Walkey say when you
told them?"
"Let me see!" said Gracey, mobilizing conscientiousness for
narrative. " I went in and said that what had kept you late was
that Mr. Gromp had died suddenly."
"And that stopped her jaw?"
" Yes. She said : ' Oh, my child ! What Thomas Gromp
dead!' Just like that! "
" I see. Gaspily." For Gracey had indicated breath caught,
as by surprise or alarm.
" We-ell, if you like. ' Gaspily ' does. Then Aunt Helen said :
'Oh dear! And you knew him quite well.' Then Mrs. Walkin-
shaw sat quite still, looking at nothing. I think Papa said :
'This is very sad news. Was Jackey there?' I said you were
there, just after, and he said where were you now? To go and
talk to you, you know ! "
"And the Goody? What did she say?"
" I don't think a word, till that was all done. Then she said to
Aunt Helen, ages after she spoke: 'Yes, quite well, when I knew
him. But I was quite a girl, under twenty. It is all such ages
ago.' And she shut her eyes and sniffed at her little bottle with
the gold lid."
"Didn't she say anything else?"
"I don't remember anything else. She got starchy about it,
and began to go. She talked a little to Aunt Helen."
" For you not to listen ? "
" I didn't listen. Only I knew what I thought. From things."
" What did you think? What things? "
"What do you think?"
" The same as before. The Goody only knew him just enough
to write to."
" Oh, Jackey don't be a boy ! It wasn't that."
"What was it then?"
" I lay it was what Miss Gracey says," said Varnish, who was
present. We were in fact availing ourselves of the perfect free-
dom of speech that was normal in the Reserve. " Miss Gracey, she
knows, and you may just shut your trap, Squire!" This seemed
severe to me, as Gracey had made no statement.
I certainly expected one then. But none came. Each of them
seemed to take its substance for granted, and to think I might be
left uninformed. Gracey said : " You really do think it was that,
Varnish, now don't you ? " And Varnish replied : " I'm your way
of thinking, Miss Gracey."
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 285
I imported masculine solidity into the conversation or started
confidently on doing so saying trenchantly: "What, You, Mean,
Is that when Mr. Gromp and Walkey were " But to my own
surprise, I stopped over the choice of a word; and was even a little
relieved when Gracey struck in with : " Yes, that's what we mean.
Exactly that." But none of us put into words the thought we
accepted unspoken, that these two old people had, over half-a-
century since, been lovers, half-lovers, quarter-lovers, or say
lovers inchoate. The nearest approach to it was when Gracey
said, " Of course they were not engaged," and Varnish assented,
"Law, Miss Gracey, how ever could they be? Him an artist,
and her a lady ! "
I never knew then and do not know now, whether there was any
truth in this romance that for some reason recommended itself to
our understandings. I think I see daylight about the way we
flinched from wording it coarsely. It was a tribute to the Power
of Decay. I can imagine now, without an effort, this incident
of the early days of last century the fresh young beauty in her
Empire dress, gushing with enthusiasm, Byron-stricken no doubt,
quite open to a romantic adoration of a handsome drawing-master,
an Artist look you of Genius, no common drudge! But not a
young damsel likely to be led away by passion, which is a good
servant but a bad master; only in the former case the passion
must be some one else's, not yours. In this case, as I fancy the
relations of these two, the young lady may have combined the
luxury of a romance, including that of being the victim of a cruel
and heartless world, with the satisfaction of a substantial settle-
ment in life. She would never, at least, allow her handsome im-
pecunious drawing-master ten years her senior too! to deceive
himself with false hopes. But for all that she may have given
him such latitudes in friendship always subject to the reservation
that he was not to hope on any account as many a heartless
minx has done in a like case. She may have created a situation
which would qualify them to be torn cruelly apart, and may have
thoroughly enjoyed the wrench. He for his part may have derived
little consolation from a romantic grievance even if he nursed it to
maturity. Some men are afflicted, not secretly gratified, with
a nursling of this sort.
However, this is the way I see possibilities now, after another
sixty years' experience, in which I have known many minxes to
become hags. It was that incredibility that made us so backward
in wording a story in which Goody Walkinshaw had to figure as
the heroine. I believe that Youth can never image the youth of
286 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
its grandsires, can never really think of its grandmothers as to
put it plainly kissable. Of course, says Youth, these old fogies
had a kind of working juvenility, to justify the fewness of their
years; but that was their old-fashioned humbug. They were
overshadowed all the time by the future-perfect tense, and the
gloom of their senility to come was retrospective. Look at the
pictures of them! Read their fiction their poems! Old fogies
from the beginning, incurable ! That is what they were. While,
on the other hand We are up-to-date. . . .
Dear boy dear girl you are quite mistaken! You have no
intrinsic newness others have not had before, each in his turn,
and hers. Fogeydom of old was Modern too, in its day, and
Bucks and Dandies were once the Last Thing Out; even as Nuts,
I believe, are now. I, vanishing at last, look back forgivingly, al-
most lovingly, to the vacuous fatuities of my days of vacuum;
the then-new slang that made my father sick ; the area of incorrig-
ible crinolines; the Piccadilly streamers of the swells, and their
Noah's Ark overcoats. And they have grown to be bywords of
scorn to you, even as old Walkinshaw's claim to youth in days
gone by albeit she might be > conceived of as historically young
by us, pro hac vice was not a thing to be spoken without a
protest. It was our act of homage to the Power of Decay. The
minx had become a hag.
Strong as the impression was that I received at the old man's
death, I doubt if it v.-ould have held its place in my mind as it
has done through nearly sixty years; think of it! had it not
been for that parallel that Gracey drew, all unconscious of its
truth, between her own friendship with Cooky Moss and the one
we elected to impute to the hag and the octogenarian painter.
At the time it had no meaning to me a mere illustration! But
ten years later, reading over the letters from Cooky in India, that
my clear sister had treasured in her desk, those words of hers came
back to my memory, and set me a-thinking on that time; and then
all this story I have been telling, of my incipient studentship and
the death of old Gromp which else I might have half forgotten
was renewed so vividly that it took well hold of my mind, and
the many years that have followed have failed to deaden it. Could
I bear to read those letters now, if I had them? When I admit
regret for all the things lost for ever, is there no undercurrent of
relief that I am saved from the deciphering of any more old letters,
and the pain ? I have nothing now. and am nothing, except for a
few recollections of the Past, and one anticipation the grave.
These will soon vanish, and my nothingness will be complete.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 287
I think that I was indebted to that married niece of Gromp's
for a little cruel push quite uncalled for into the abysm of
Fine Art that awaited me. She might have kept herself to her-
self, altogether; or, even if she did feel bound to write to my father
to thank him, as my proprietor or impresario, for my activity in
communicating the sad news so promptly, she need not have in-
vented a perfectly gratuitous fiction about reports that had reached
her of her late uncle's interest in my " genius." The woman was
a liar of that I am certain. Was I her letter asked the clever
boy of whose promise her late dear uncle had so often spoken?
I knew I was nothing of the sort, if indeed any such boy existed.
For the old housekeeper, in accepting my offer to convey the news
to this Mrs. Harneck I think that was the name had said her
old master had not seen his niece for a twelvemonth, there having
been words. The clever boy's father did not analyze this far
enough to see that what her dear uncle said, if indeed he ever
said anything of the sort, must have referred to some other boy,
and not to me.
And so vanished my last chance of not being a professional
Artist. My father's feeble opposition to my wishes had to dis-
appear, though I do not believe he was ever fully convinced ; he
was far too sensible for that! I fancy he consoled himself with
the reflection that I was still so young, that a year or so spent in
demonstrating my incompetence in Art could be well spared, and
yet leave time for apprenticeship to some honest trade. I use
this phrase because I am firmly convinced that the trade of a
" Lutwyche " the " Painter who cannot paint " in Browning's
poem is the trade of an impostor; and that if he does not become
" in life a devil more than a saint," it is not because his profes-
sional conditions and surroundings do not give him ample oppor-
tunities. My recollection is well supplied with dissolute and
vicious units who made up for sheer incapacity, or strong dis-
position to leave off work at the point at which difficult begins,
by audacious attitudinizing and wholesale quackery. The wonder
of it to me has been that such men have been so often taken at
their own valuation, and have been worked up by dealerdom,
and written up by the press, until any attempt to accelerate the
natural gravitation of their " work " towards Oblivion would only
cause a recrudescence of their spurious fame, and defeat its own
object.
I was not qualified for a mountebank by nature, and should
never have scored a success on those lines. So I never became
288 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
a Real Artist. But let me get back to my story, from which
these reflections are a departure.
After the sudden death of old Mr. Gromp my studentship and
professional destiny came to be regarded as accomplished facts.
I found that being an Artist had its advantages. Whatever omis-
sion I was guilty of; whatever I neglected, whatever laziness, back-
wardness, or inefficiency I indulged in, was excused on the ground
of my being an Artist. I came down late in the morning. Never
mind! I was an Artist. I didn't answer when spoken to, nor
yet listen to anything that was said to me. Well! what did you
expect, of an Artist? I never omitted to properly brush my clothes,
or my head, or to say what I wanted sent to the Wash, or to put
out my boots to black, overnight, reasonable; or was, in short,
defective in any particular, but it was pointed out that such
shortcoming was, or had been, the distinguishing mark and
prominent characteristic of Artists from all time. I am certain
that some of these vices the specification of which I borrow in
many cases from Varnish were not new departures at all, but
were now half-excused, or half-condemned, by imputing them to
the reaction of Zeuxis, Apelles, Titian, and Michelangelo, on one
who was, after all, if Varnish was to be credited, only a Young
Squire and easy set a bad example to. For Varnish, proud as she
was of my achievements, very soon took the measure of some of
the casuals with whom I made acquaintance, and whom I accepted
with all the faults and errors of their own description of them-
selves. I, however, did not quarrel with the position assigned to
me, as it made matters easy. I afterwards found that the World-
at-large practises a similar leniency towards any one who poses
successfully as a Genius, especially if he has selected painting as
the light to illuminate his species.
I often wonder how men have succeeded in writing the story
of their lives, even when their lives have had a story. How much
harder must the task be when the writer's life, like mine, has no
story is only a jumbled phantasmagoria of miscellaneous incident,
a mere kaleidoscope or kakeidoscope as may be of half-forgotten
event. Much better not to try it, but to put down what you recol-
lect, and ask your Self is it true? as I ask mine. You will not get
a satisfactory answer, but you can discharge your memory of its
obligations to the past.
You will find that you will not always be without a motive in
your selection of things to recapture from Oblivion. I have had my
motive in dwelling so much on this story of my adoption of a pro-
fession. I have wished to exonerate my father from my own
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 289
half -blame; my own cavilling, ill-concealed from my Self, at his
irresolute attitude. But if I have told the tale truly, what could
he have done, without running counter to his affection for his
son, with very poor support from the only advisers that presented
themselves? He was mistaken, certainly, in supposing that a
profession, once chosen, could be lightly put aside for another.
But the supposition is not one in itself unreasonable. It is a
point that nothing can decide but experience.
I suppose my father must have treasured in his heart this belief
in a possible correction by Fate of her blunder in my case, or he
would have shown more uneasiness about my future. As it was,
he accepted the obvious fact which came to light as Time went
on that my Academy education led nowhere, with a sort of good-
humoured fatalism, making no effort to change the venue of my
development for one where it would be more obvious to the igno-
ramus he claimed to be, that I was really learning my trade. I
can see now that nothing else was open to him. There was no
school of Art, or at least none offered itself. I have long dis-
believed in any form of education in painting except the old one
work done in a Master's workshop, the pupil doing the easy bits
at first to save the Master mere drudgery, and then, if a pains-
taking chap, being allowed to do a hand, and so on, till at last
one day such a proud one! he would be permitted to do an
easy head, in a corner, and finally be given a canvas all to himself.
But there was no Hubert Van Eyck for me to play John to.
If there had been, I am sure my father would have said to him :
" Dear Herr Van Eyck, my boy wants to learn painting. Would
you let him have a canvas and paint a lily exactly like you are
doing now, and watch you do yours all the time? Because you do it
so well, and what you have done looks finished. Do, please, and
I will give you guelders." But any good painter of my day
there were a good many would only have answered : " Oh bother !
Send him to the Koyal Academy." So, whatever samples of my
work I brought home from Trafalgar Square my father surveyed
them, made some good-humoured remark, and acquiesced in them,
as things outside his sphere, with which he had nothing to do. I
discerned in this, that there were hard and fast lines separating
those who understood Art from those who did not, and that I was
on this side, he on that.
I suppose it was at Slocum's, in some interval of the Academy
schools, that I began to study the use of oil-paint. I did it at
the expense of a ginger-beer bottle, a water-melon, two tomatoes,
and a rabbit, which would have answered to the description of
290 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Still Life " better if the rabbit, which presently showed signs of
active mortality, could have 'eld on only just long enough for the
second painting to 'arden, and give a chance to glaze it up. I am
accepting the terse and expressive statement of 'Opkins. The work
was done at a disadvantage he rightly said because when your
principal object is took out of the group, you lose the feelin'.
Also, in my own case, because borrowed easels are not to be relied
on. Mine wound up and down quite beautiful, but it had evidently
once been disintegrated, and its reconstructor had contrived to
leave a slot in its shelf, platform or bosom, if you like to call it
so admirably suited for your Academy Board to disappear down
suddenly, just when there was no more light to go over the bad
places while still wet. This happened, and I was only revived from
despair when I succeeded in adding two big, handsome drops of
water to the tomatoes, and a blue-bottle with- a shadow to the
watermelon. They were Naturalism. But what ever can you
expect, when it's Still Life?
I was afraid to carry this result of tuition to show my father.
But Gracey did, heralding it with praise. It had quite set at rest
a doubt Varnish had expressed more fearlessly than the others of
my family, as to whether I had the power to do colours. After
such a ginger-beer bottle all hesitation must vanish. The work,
however, had a less intoxicating effect on my father than I think
Gracey anticipated. Indeed, his attention was diverted from its
value, as a. Work of Art, by its smell.
" That's nothing,'' said I. " Hopkins says it goes, if you wait."
" I'm afraid we've no choice, in the nature of things," said
my father, with resignation. " Well it's very good. I can see
what everything is, without telling; and I can't say as much, for
some pictures. That's a dead rabbit. That's a melon. Those are
tomatoes, and that and that are water-drops."
" You mustn't touch! " said Gracey, as one who knew the rules
of the game.
" Touching doesn't matter," said I, as one better informed.
My father, having my authority, touched again. " I took him. for
a real fly," said he, " and he's painted. Well there we are, you
see! Jackey's Zeuxis, and I'm the dickeybirds, and the fly's the
grapes."
l< There now! " cried Gracey, triumphantly. " See how well it's
done, to take you in like that. Here's Aunt Helen coming. See
what she says!" My stepmother was just coming in from
Thomas's brougham. She had been visiting her Circle, with Ellen.
" Oh dear ! how sick I am of People ! " said she. " What another
picture ! "
291
" Show it to your stepmamma, Jackey." A pause ensued for
critical inspection, the sort that is done at different distances,
with the head in varied attitudes. " Well what's the verdict '. "
" Why ee a ! " said Jemima, whose interjection I cannot spell
otherwise. u One doesn't like to "
" To what? What doesn't one like to?"
" To say.'' She kept her handsome head in its position to add
in a matter-of-fact, convincing sort of way: "Of course one
doesn't look at these things from a "
" From a what ? "
" Well, my dear, you know what I mean." My father evidently
did not. " It isn't exactly the same thing as if it were " But
she didn't finish her sentence. Instead, she suddenly became re-
assuring. "But it's very good indeed! Really, very, nice!" She
tried it for a moment with her head the other way on, so as to
see every aspect of the composition, and be sure she was right;
then wound up the subject. " Yes, it's very nice, Jackey very good
indeed! . . . My dear, those tiresome Elginbrods have asked us
to dinner on the fourteenth and we can't go. And now we shall
have to ask them."
I can't really recollect what Ellen said, but I find that If I, so
to speak, listen to my recollection of her, it seems to say : " It's
uo use asking me, because I don't know anything about it. I
never did know, and I never shall know anything about pictures.
It doesn't matter whether it's landscape or figures, it's simply no
use. It's only wasting time. I daresay it's my fault and I ought
to know " And so forth. Ellen always seemed much concerned
at her own useleseness as a referee, and to conceive that Europe
looked to her for enlightenment.
" Never mind;' said Gracey. " Come along, Jackey, and we'll
show it to Varnish." And off we went to Varnish, in the Reserve.
Because there was plenty of time before dinner. My old nurse's
heartfelt approbation more than consoled me for the rather cold
approval this work of Art had received from my stepmother.
Many things happened, I know, before my successful career as
a '* student from the Antique " landed me in the higher level of
admission to the Life School. But the revived smell of the new
paint on that execrable Academy Board brings back so vividly my
first experiences of what 'Opkins neck and neck with me in our
upward career called moddles, in the painting school, that I am
carried on to write my recollections of it while I have them,
although by doing so I outrun all consecutiveness such as would
be claimed by a real life-record of reminiscences.
292 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
At this moment I can shut my eyes and it all comes before me,
as yesterday. There is the pose, a real Turk with teste 'Opkins.
a reg'lar strikin' 'ed and no mistake. There also, absolutely with-
out any mistake whatever, is the fixed glare which I afterwards
learned to identify with the first release of a inoddle from the
leash perhaps that expression is faulty and which I was destined,
more often than not, to see die slowly away before the irresistible
inroads of Sleep. There is the Visitor, who is going presently.
I hope, to show me, at any rate, exactly how he paints himself.
And there are my fellow-students carrying about their easels
reminding me a little of the way ants carry about their eggs to
plant them down in the best possible point of view. I am con-
scious, as I allow the vision to proceed, that the energetic decision
shown in the choice of place and the disposition of materials flags
as soon as the first indications of the great work in hand have to
be made. Then do vague charcoal marks appear irresolutely on
new canvasses, and supply food for infinite reflection and com-
parison to their authors. Then do the said authors resolve sud-
denly to wipe out what they have begun, and do it fresh a little
higher up. Because, as 'Opkins said : " You can't be too ackerate
at the first go off."
Then one singles himself out from the multitude; the same
who had taken exception to the chronology of 'Opkins, about the
date of Fuseli's death. He has provided himself with a three-
legged easel whose two forelegs have to be dealt with cautiously;
or else, out they come! 'Opkins breathed this fact when its bor-
rower whose name he pronounced 'Untley substituted it for his
own, which had got broke somehow. Moreover, the hinge waggled,
on this easel. So it is no wonder my vision shows him to me
endeavouring simultaneously to hold its wandering limbs together,
and to get in the Turk's head ackerate. I see him endeavouring
also to avail himself of the qualities of a new mahl-stick, with
the, result that the left-hand bottom corner of his canvas flies up
and strikes his nose. No one who has ever tried to work on a three-
legged easel, with a large canvas, will need an explanation of this.
One thing I do not see, try how I may. I see no attempt to
show ignorance how to use its materials. If any one of my in-
structors knew how to paint, in the sense in which painting was
known three centuries ago, he kept his knowledge secret. If one
of them had but said to me, " You must know quite distinctly what
you want to paint; then you must make the outline perfectly
right; then you must colour it," I think I should not have been
so much at sea as I soon became under the plethora of vague
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 293
suggestions of ways to do God knows what, God knows how. I
tried with solemn earnestness to paint a face with Indian Red and
Ivory Black at the bidding of the first Visitor; with all the pig-
ments my assortment yielded, at the bidding of the second; and on
an underpainting of Prussian Blue at the suggestion of the third.
I was not directed to resort to this last diabolical performance,
but its advocate recommended it as a safe and certain way the
only one to get brilliancy in flesh. Of course that was what I
wanted to get brilliancy. And, equally of course, I didn't get
it.
All these methods, be it observed, were advanced as the only
sound practices of Art after I had involved myself in a pasty
confusion Titian himself could not have remedied. Never did
one of my guides say to me, " I see you don't know how to paint.
Let me show you ! " before I had completely destroyed all possi-
bility of guidance, even by a Vandyck or Reynolds. Each of them
waited, I suppose, to see the direction my hopelessness was going
to take, before offering any suggestion. When one came, it
seemed to me to have very little bearing on my particular difficul-
ties. It usually took the form : " What have you got on your
palette? Where's your yellow ochre; light red, raw umber, cobalt
blue, etc.? You can't expect to paint" this, that, or the other of
these. I proceeded to expect to paint with them, and cleaned up
an area to receive them on my palette. Disappointment awaited
me.
The funny part of the thing to me, now is that I never once
seem to have asked myself: "What is all this for?" I have
certainly since then seen reason to suspect that there is a diseased
frame of mind which regards Education as a thing beneficial
per se, without any reference to its objects. In no one is this
more discernible than in the advanced Art-student whose beauti-
ful humility of character binds him at the feet of an instructor,
who teaches him nothing whatever, but graciously allows him to
go on working indefinitely in a mist. " Ancora imparo " is a very
pretty sentiment for every time of life, but the motto of Michel-
angelo's old man in a go-cart meant : " Much as I know, do not
suppose that I think I am omniscient! " It did not mean : " I am
not a penny the wiser for anything I have ever learned, but I mean
to go on learning it for all that." As I understand, the general
tenor of instruction is, while leaving the student to flounder in any
and every mire of his own selection, to discourage excursions that
tend to disconnect that student from his alma mater, who. left to
herself, would never wean him. Though really the metaphor of
294 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
bringing the alumnus up by bottle would be a much truer one
in the case of the Art-student, to judge by my own experience.
However, it is likely enough that it was my own airy self-confi-
dence and youthful conceit that discouraged my seniors' attempts
to teach me how to paint. If not. . . . But my pen or pencil
flinches from the surmise that perhaps they did not know, them-
selves
I have sometimes irreverently indulged in the fancy that when
a teacher's salary is co-ordinate with the number of his pupils,
he is thereby supplied with a temptation to prolong their pupilage.
But the theory won't wash, in all cases. The interest of the 'Varsity
coach is to get the biggest score of new graduates anyhow, high
up on the lists if possible. He would sooner have half-a-dozen new
cram-pots, and pass them all, than the chance of one lasting six
years a creature whose power of converting information into
ignorance was so prompt that he would not wait for it to serve
its turn till after an examination. Bland misinformation, craftily
administered to assure the ploughing of its recipient, would only
condemn his coach, and cause the parents and guardians of other
alumni to apply elsewhere. I gathered also, in the years that pre-
ceded my retirement, that the masters of Government Art-Schools
look to the number of successful prizeholders at the Annual Com-
petitions as the criterion of their success. And so heartfelt is this
incentive to instruction, that the transfer of a master of a school
premiated in his consulship, to boiling point, has resulted in its
sudden degringolade to zero.
Another educational motive is said to influence the granting
of qualifications for practice to students of medicine and surgery,
and supposing it to exist, I vouch for nothing it is an entirely
noble one. The man of real capacity is open to a splendid maturity
of practice in the Hospitals, while the duffer only gets in the way,
and learns nothing. lie will never improve, so he may as well be
turned loose on the public at once, while he is still such a trans-
parent impostor that no reasonable person will ever show him his
tongue. Therefore, pluck all the good men, and qualify mediocrity,
or if the level of intelligence be low cretinism. The examiner is
in either case entitled to the gratitude of his species, though
scarcely so much so as if he were to refuse to grant any licences
to practise at all.
On the whole, I don't think this theory of prolonged pupil-
age holds good in any case so strongly as in the " training " of a
singer's voice. Is any case known of a voice-trainer who has
admitted the maturity of his pupil's, so long as it was prepared to
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 295
yield him ten shillings a lesson? I look rather, in my desire to
get at the mystery of the artistic chrysalis, the student-grub that
never becomes a butterfly, to the fact that an inexplicable desire
to be an Artist and have a Studio is compatible with an unfitness
for that employment which it is almost impossible to reconcile a
priori with one's estimate of the average capacity of mankind.
Add to this an epidemic humility I suppose it to date back to
Ruskin prompting the enthusiast to sit at the feet of Nature
and humbly imbibe wisdom from Authority, and the rationale
of the Art-student whose study never ends is not so very far to
seek.
This is all speculation by the way. For I was much too con-
ceited and impatient to acquiesce in such a role of life, and I was
not destined to become either a dumb waiter for an artistic de-
velop:nent that never came about, or to utilize my incapacity in
painting, as the stock-in-trade of a mountebank. Had my father
lived long enough, his indulgence might have enabled me to carry
out the former ideal, while his instinctive revolt against all dis-
honesty would have kept the latter in check. Of the two, I con-
fess that I incline to the dishonesty. It must be such fun, cheating
fools ! And after all, when we condemn a professional charlatan,
are we not blaming him for the simplicity of his dupes, for which
we really have no warrant for holding him responsible ? '' Why
slate me," said a well-known practitioner, "because Croesus likes
a sketch of mine better than five hundred and fifty pounds, and
I like five hundred and fifty pounds better than my sketch ? I've
told him candidly that I wouldn't have it as a gift." Had he been
bound to add to this piece of candour that he had just had an offer
of five hundred for the gem in question? That was how he had
landed Croesus. And after all, was Croesus any the worse ? For
Mr. Stowe, who told this story, did it apropos of Croesus having
resold his prize for twelve hundred. My father was a purist in
these matters, at least, he drew a line. " I think I should like
burglary," said he, *' but not that sort of thing." Mr. Stowe de-
precated his severity, and said that if there was to be no cheating,
it would make life very dull. It may be he was right. However,
my father never said cheating fools would not be fun. He only
compared its attractions with those of burglary.
This subject of Art has made me diffuse. It has that effect on
writers. I must try to get back to my story. For all this is
as much what I think, as what I remember. What I have promised
my Self, is to put on record as much as we can recollect, be-
tween us.
CHAPTER XXX
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I RACK my brain in vain sometimes to fix a date, and always
end by finding that I am wrong. Now and then I can catch at
contemporaneous incidents, and then my memory works the
steadier for a while. It helps me now to remember that that year,
in the Autumn of which I became an Academy Student, was the
year of the Indian Mutiny. Or, should I say, the year of its
outbreak? For certainly my recollection is that it was not sup-
pressed till two years later.
I can distinctly recollect that my stepmother interrupted a
description I was giving to my father of Slocum's and my ex-
perience of the Antique, to say: <k What's all this about the native
troops in India, Mr. Pascoe? " I don't think she ever quite gave up
addressing him by this name. It was the one she had known him
by for so long, and of course it seemed the right one to us young
folks.
" \Vh-afs all that about the native troops, Mrs. P.," said he,
asking the question back again. He then went on with what he
was saying to me: "And what did the old gypsy woman say to
Mr. Slocum?"
" Old Esther? She called him darling, and said a dark lady
was waiting for him, but she couldn't tell him where, under ten
shillings. He said what had she had to drink. Because she
wasn't sitting." That is to say, she wasn't sitting still. I remem-
ber her very well. She was a glorious sight with her white hair
and wrinkles, but her ideas of remuneration became excessive when
she was excited with alcohol. " She says she's the Queen of the
Gypsies, and "
Jemima interrupted me. " The native troops at ... Where
is it? . . . Meerut. They won't bite greasy cartridges "
" Well no more would I ! " said my father.
" It isn't that. It's because of Religion. Look at the paper."
My father took the Times, and looked at the text in a very
perfunctory way. " I saw something of that before," said he,
absently. And then he read it over again, and handed back the
paper to Jemima, saying : " We shall have to make short work of
296
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 297
that! " She took the paper, and I think read the births, marriages,
and deaths. I suppose this piece of news reached tens of thousands
of homes that day, and about the same amount of attention was
given to it.
How little we knew what was coming! I think we all believed
that this outbreak which I suppose to have been the first incident
of the insurrection, at Meerut would make it just worth while
to keep an eye on the Indian news for the next week or so, lest we
should miss the account of its prompt suppression, and preferably
the severe attitude of European justice towards the ringleaders.
Another incident fixes the date. The news of the taking of
Jhansi by Sir Hugh Rose, which we all had such sad cause to
remember, must have antedated by a very little the appointment
of the first Jewish Queen's Counsel on record. I can recall
Gracey's words to me when we read, some time later, a reference to
the appointment in a newspaper: "Oh, Jackey dearest, had he
never gone into the Army, he might have made his way at the
Bar, and we should have him now ! " For Cooky had justified a
revolt against his family's wish that he should become a lawyer,
by citing the disqualifications under which his race then suffered
in the prosecution of a legal career, as a reason for adopting one
in which apparently the obstacles were not insuperable. I have
never been satisfied that this was really the case, and indeed suspect
that he made the most of his plea because of his strong predilec-
tion for the Army. I have no means of determining this now,
without risking inquiries as to my reasons for asking the question.
My informant would catechize me. But it does not matter, as the
date is clear from what I remember. It was revived for me
recently by a press article about the Jews nowadays, which gave
the date of the Q. C. above-mentioned as June, '58. Gracey's re-
mark was of course made afterwards; as, though the events came
near together, the casualties of Jhansi were not known in England
till some two months later.
I find that putting these things on paper stimulates memory;
otherwise they are in themselves immaterial. 7 know perfectly
well what sent Cooky soldiering his temperament, and the atroci-
ties of Cawnpore. I can remember, when the news of these horrors
reached England, how my father sat reading the Times account of
them with knitted brow, bitten lip, and exclamation smothered
back, until at last he threw down the -paper, saying : " There ! I
can't read that aloud. You must read it to yourself." For my
stepmother had said to him, noting his concentration : " Some-
thing very absorbing? Give us the benefit of it." Then that she
298 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
monopolized the paper through two readings, in the end throwing
it away, to be scrambled for by eagerness on the watch with the
remark which I now see to have been a sort of bravado not
callousness or hardness of heart : " Well all I can say is, that if
\. T omen marry soldiers, and follow them into such outlandish places,
they must just take their chance! " It sounded brutal, but I can-
not believe that it was really so. For I have never thought any
worse of Jemima than that she was somewhat vain and selfish.
She was certainly not in her right place as the wife of a man like
my father, with whom she was or seemed to me unsympathetic
to a degree; but not a bad creature in the main for all that.
We others that is to say, Gracey, Cooky, and myself seized
upon that newspaper and read the hideous tale conjointly. " Oh,
Monty ! " said Gracey, looking up from it at the dark eyes fixed
upon it over her shoulder. " Can it be true ? " For she was in
possession, and he and I were reading it aslant, on either side.
He did not answer the question directly, though his manner
did. " I should like to be there," said he, and his voice caught
to say it. His set, white face showed me how strongly the news
had affected him.
" But is it true? " said she again.
He recovered his normal self-command, to say: "Ask your
father what he thinks." And then anticipated her. " Mr. Pascoe !
Gracey says is it true ? "
My father filled out the formula bad news calls for. " No doubt
very much exaggerated," said he. Then, as if he felt he had done
his duty by prescribed usage : " Well at least we must hope
that some of it is false. It sounds a little too Biblical for nowa-
days eh, Nebuchadnezzar?"
' It's Biblical all over," said Cooky. Whereupon Ellen, who had
acquired a partial knowledge of the matter in hand, but had not
had time to digest it, recognized a heterodox tone in a mere refer-
ence to Scripture, and said : " If you're going to talk like that, I
shall go." I think she went, nem: con:.
I think also my father departed, with Jemima. Anyhow, the
Club was left alone in the drawing-room. Thereupon said
Gracey : " What did you mean by saying you would like to be
there?"
" Only what I said. I should like to be there. When it's this
sort of thing, one would rather be there, not here. Wouldn't you ? "
" I could do no good."
Cooky clenched his brow for a second that describes it as
well as his teeth; then said: " I could do some good. I could but
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 299
try. Besides you know, because I told you I would sooner be
a soldier, and die, than be a Sunday citizen in wartime, and
live. . . . All right, she's gone." For alarm had flashed across
Gracey's face, lest this very indirect reference to the blessed Sab-
bath should be taken amiss by Ellen, whose departure she had not
noticed.
" But you can't, Monty," said she. " You're a Jew. Jews can't
be soldiers. I'm so glad."
" How do you know I can't because I'm a Jew ? " said Monty.
And as Gracey really had no information on the point, and I had
none, the question had to be left without an answer. Perhaps the
strong conviction we shared on the subject was only the reaction
of an all-pervading belief in Jewish Disability all round, inherited
from centuries of religious intolerance almost forgotten nowa-
days, but still active in the fifties. It was safe then to assume
tiny disqualification for a Hebrew, until the contrary was proved.
I raised the question again later, in private conversation with
Cooky, saying that I believed Gracey's view to be sound, and
indeed obviously so, for some mysterious reason not easy to formu-
late. He replied: ''You're both wrong, little Buttons, and I'm
right. Anyhow, if he puts his religion in his pocket a Jew can
be anything he likes Pope of Rome or Lord Chancellor."
"But would you ?"
"Put my religion in my pocket? Not for anything but to be
a soldier. And even then I would keep it in my pocket, buttoned
up. Why shouldn't I?" It was then that I began to be uneasy
about the lengths to which this diseased spirit of Chivalry that
was how I thought of it then, and do still might carry my friend.
But I said nothing further at the time.
I think it was more curiosity as to whether Cooky was right
about the Pope and the Woolsack, than any misgivings of the
soundness of his military visions, that made me revive the subject
one evening in conversation with my father. I asked him point-
blank wasn't Cooky all wrong?
" As to the Pope of Rome," said he, " I couldn't say offhand. I
suppose they would say there was no precedent. . . . But stop
a bit !"
I threw in : " Of course Popes are all Christians."
" I'm not sure of that," said he. " I suspect the first Pope was
a Jew. Name of Peter." He said this with such placid gravity
that I was quite taken in.
' Hooky ! " said I, intelligently. " I never knew that. How
rum he must have looked ! " For I imagined to myself a being
300 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
resembling the Wandering Jew, according to Leech, in Once a
Week, but in full pontifical uniform.
My father perceived this, and supplied reservations. " You
mustn't run away with the idea, -young man, that he resembled
what that young monkey drew, entirely with sixes, at your Art
School. Nor that he had three hats " He stopped, reflec-
tively.
" Well ! " said I. " Cooky made me draw him a Jew, all sixes,
that way, to aggravate his sister Rachel with. He said it was
just like his brother-in-law." For I thought this conventionaliza-
tion of the Semitic type it is very easy to do was responsible
for my father's pause.
"Very likely," said he. "But I was thinking of the Pope's
tiara. Is it possible that ? . . . Oh no stuff and nonsense ! "
I was not so clear about his meaning at the time as the con-
templation of sundry pictorial triple crowns has since made me.
" However," he continued, " it's a nice question, and we needn't
settle it. As for the main point, whether Nebuchadnezzar is right
or wrong, I have no reason to suppose the Woolsack is out of his
reach, on account of his race alone. If he has no objection to
being baptized, and not stopping away from Church for religious
reasons he may stop away for irreligious ones, because recusants
go scot-free nowadays I don't see that he hasn't the same chance
of becoming Lord Chancellor as any one else has who goes in for
the Law."
" That's what Cooky says himself. Only he wouldn't do it to be
Lord Chancellor."
" What consideration would he insist on ? I mean, what would
he do it for?"
" A commission in a crack cavalry regiment. Provided it was
under orders to go out to India."
" I see. Very moderate ! " said my father, tapping the ashes
out of his pipe. For this was in the library after dinner, where
we were indulging in a tete-a-tete as of old; a thing rare enough
now, as my stepmother was fond of company, so that my father
often got an affirmative answer to his question, " Are the So-and-
so's coming to dinner tonight, my dear?" with the patronymic
of the particular So-and-so's supplied. There were always con-
comitant male So-and-so's, who knew which cigar to choose, and
how to tie their white chokers. But this time there had been no
So-and-so's, as Jemima was taking the girls to three stalls at the
Lyceum, to see " As You Like It."
I think my father was even less aware than I was of how much
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 301
Cooky was in earnest. It was to come upon us suddenly, a few
days later.
I can recall the occasion vividly, for all the fifty years be-
tween. Another incident was prominent that evening. The Rev.
Irenseus Macphail had diffidently confessed to my father his
ambition to become his son-in-law, with the connivance, or at
the instance, or by the grace, or at the expense as you please
of my sister Ellen. He had dined with us that evening in ratifi-
cation of my father's provisional consent to accept him in that
capacity, had said grace, and had tenderly, discreetly, clerically
saluted the females of the family.
Is it permissible to me, at this length of time, to record what
I believe to have been the real reason for rejoicing at this arrange-
ment? It was not so much that Ellen would be provided with
a mate of her own selection, and with what I expressed as her
" whack " of devotional exercises what I said was " pulpits and
candlesticks " as that the actual scene of this whack would be
no nearer than the Isle of Man. I felt that I might get through
life, with clever tactics, without being once compelled to hear
my brother-in-law read prayers or preach a sermon. As a matter
of fact, I have succeeded; for after Ellen's marriage invitations
to visit Kirkhowlet were never pushed home, and something
always came in the way, or was dragged there. As for the
wedded couple's visits to London, they were quite a negligible
quantity.
If my father's really cordial welcome of this reverend appli-
cant for his daughter was like a right-minded prize-fighter's
salute before battle, so also was the series of feints and dodges
that followed throughout the evening like its analogies inside
the ropes. Only, their object was, on his part, to avoid landing
on theological corns; and, on the part of the clerical aspirant,
to steer clear of headlands and quicksands of Freethought. I
don't think Ellen made matters any better by kicking her adorer's
shins under the table at dinner, or making with her lips the
words, '* Don't answer ! " for guidance in his difficulties. The
worst of it was that Ellen's information was so very limited on
questions of Biblical exegesis, that she was apt to suppose that
any chance use of a phrase from Holy Writ, in the mouth of
Irreligion, was an attack of set purpose on the foundations of
Christianity.
I am sure, for instance, that my father intended no di?re-
spect to the Pentateuch when he spoke of the recent stampede of
families to the seaside as " a regular exodus." But Ellen must
302 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Lave thought otherwise, if as I suppose was the case she con-
veyed to her lover an intimation of what attitude would be safest
to assume, by one of the expedients I have mentioned. No other
theory accounts for a certain action on his part as of one who
succours or caresses the injured shin of one leg with the calf of
the other. I didn't look under the table to see. It was only
guesswork, helped by the embarrassment of the countenance con-
nected with the alleged shin.
Neither did my father intend to deride either Roman or Angli-
can ritual when he said: u Why not put down KamptuJicon? "
The nature of his misunderstanding which provoked this was
clear when my stepmother, to illuminate the conversation, said :
"Mr. Macphail doesn't mean that sort, my dear. He is refer-
ring to Early Service." To which my father said: "Oh, ah no.
of course! I beg your pardon." He really meant no harm, but
nevertheless Ellen threw dumb speech across the table, and a
fixed glare, to enjoin silence. The subject of this discipline really
became very uncomfortable; having merely said, after all, that
some of his old-fashioned parishioners had objected to " Matins "
as a designation, not as a practice. I think I understood after-
wards that Ellen had supposed " Kamptulicon," then a very recent
introduction, to be some Ecclesiastical usage she had never heard
of some observance dating back to the Council of Nice, for
instance, which Rcnan or somebody wanted to put down. I sup-
pose the Rev. Irenseus furnished her up afterwards, as when
he took her over, raw, she was certainly no bride for what was
called a Puseyite, in the fifties. The name seems to have died
out, of late years.
I think we three males were much more at our ease when the
departure of the ladies released the new incomer from super-
vision. He became, so to speak, quite human over a mild cigar
and coffee in the library, telling us how from the top of a mountain
near his vicarage you could see England, Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales all at once, which he seemed to consider a great advantage.
Also, how in the herring season all the manhood of the island
went a-fishing, and the women had to turn out and work in the
fields; and about Deemsters and Manx cats, in reply to inquiries.
I think I made as much acquaintance with my clerical brother-
in-law over Manx cats as Providence intended I should ever en-
joy; for I never got any further with him than the point at which
a knock came at the street-door, and my father recognizing it,
said: "It isn't Nebuchadnezzar's evening. What has he come
for?" I didn't know, but would go directly and see, so I said.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 303
I infer from this, and my delaying a few minutes to clear up
those Manx cats, that I had no misgivings about Cooky's errand.
My father then said : " Yes, cut along, Master Jackey," and
perhaps wanted me to go, that he might inquire what his son-in-
law proposed to aliment his wife with; and his children, if any.
For the good gentleman had mentioned that the emoluments of
his office, all told, amounted to sixty-five pounds a year. How-
ever, I, of course, heard nothing of this. I only heard my father
say, as I left the room : " It's a young Jew my boy knows. We
call him Nebuchadnezzar." To which the Rev. Irenaeus said:
"Oh dear!" in a weak uncertain way. My father may have
said : " He won't bite you." But I can't be sure of that.
I was surprised to hear voices in the drawing-room ; that is
to say, surprised that they should be so audible on rny side of
the door. I went in, and met with a still greater surprise.
" Here is Jackey," cried Gracey. u Oh, Jackey, Jackey, stop him I
Don't let him go." She was clinging to Cooky's arm, excited and
flushed. He. on the contrary, looked white and determined. My
stepmother looked startled, but with a duty towards sedateness
called for by her position. I think I heard her say : " G.racey
dear! " as though to remonstrate with a venial sin against Grundy.
Ellen murmured feebly: "Yes, Gracey, don't!"
I misunderstood the position. u Because of Elsey's parson ? "
said I. " Bother him! Why should you go because of him? "
I was so wide of the mark that they all had to stop and think.
My stepmother exchanged a puzzled glance with Ellen, as though
to ask: "What is the boy talking about?"
Cooky spoke first. "Who's Miss Ellen's parson?" said he.
"Has she got a parson?" And then Gracey said: "Yes. But
never mind him now. He'll do another time. Tell Jackey about
yourself and India, Monty."
"I say Cooky!" said I, with a minim between each word
and its neighbour. " You never mean to say you're going to '
u Yes I do. I'm going to. I've bought my commission." He
had only just announced his news, in more concrete language, when
I came in. There was no need for greater clearness, between
us. We had dealt with the position, although as an impossible
hypothesis. Such finite and incisive action as the purchase of a
commission was outside my anticipation; but the moment he
spoke of it, I saw how he stood committed.
My recollection is of standing somewhat dumbfoundered, for
a few seconds, then finding nothing better to say than : " Where
did you get the money ? "
304 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" My old aunt Hyman's legacy. I was to have it all straight
off and do just what I like with it. I liked this."
"What did your Governor say?" I was conscious that I was
asking weak questions, at random.'
" Tell you presently, little Buttons ! Anyhow, it's all settled.
I'm to join at once, and go out in the Himalaya on the twenty-
first. The regiment's there Ninth Lancers." We went on, he
and I, filling out what would else have been silence with talk about
material aspects of his sudden resolution as, whether his journey
would be overland or round the Cape, and so on; and felt, or
at least I felt, that in doing so we were stiffening the conversa-
tion with a masculine element, and keeping in check any possible
tension of female excitement. Men do this, and account it a
faculty for looking realities in the face. It is really the reverse,
and a mere means of slurring over emotion, which they think
it their official duty to keep in abeyance. My stepmother helped,
equably, as a bystander in Society, and was interested in the
arrangements of large troop-ships on the voyage out. As for
Ellen, I believe the reason she was indulging so in that practice
of pulling her lips out of shape was that a problem was perplexing
her. How was she to reconcile the presences in the same room,
possibly, within the next five minutes, of a palpable Jew and an
indisputable Christian priest? Two incompatibles, clearly ! Other-
wise, I believe Ellen was far from sorry that Cooky should depart
to the other side of the globe.
I took Gracey's concern at his departure for granted, and never
asked myself why, in the moments that followed, the first sudden
flush in her face should die slowly down, and leave it so ashy
white. One does not analyze the exact effect of a shock. I did
wonder a little this I recollect why she fell back from the group
to a seat on the sofa, and remained in silent pallor, with her
eyes always fixed on Cooky. Neither of the others appeared to
notice her.
My remonstrance with my friend for I felt one was called
for I suppose to have been the weakest effort of its sort on
record. " I say, Cooky, though, what do you want to go out
there for? Haven't they got lots of chaps already. . . ?"
" No that's just where it is. They get killed, and then some
one else has to do instead. I shan't be good for anything to
speak of, not for a twelvemonth at least. But I'm going, for
my own sake. It's the thing to do, for those that can." I felt
that as far as appearances went, only th* uniform was wanting
to make a show of fitness.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 305
I carried my interrupted remonstrance forward, on similar
weak lines. " But suppose you get killed, before you know how
to how to "
" How to ride and shoot and things ? Well till I learn a little
of my profession, I shall have to confine myself to running away,
like Feeble the woman's tailor. . . . Only a chap in Shakespeare,
Mrs. Pascoe! . . . But it's not really so bad as Buttons thinks.
When I wa^s at Grousehalton I found out I had a turn for riding
and shooting. I shall make a very tidy Ninth Lancer, in a twelve-
month." He made a show of laughing and treating the whole
thing lightly, but it was plain that it cost him an effort to do
so. I could hear it in his voice, and I noticed one thing, that he
never addressed Gracey, looking rather towards her sister and
stepmother.
Grousehalton was the great estate in Northumberland, belong-
ing to Lord Arrears; who, it was said, would have had to sell it,
if he, or his title, had not touched the heart of an incalculable
fortune, which was also that of a not very remote cousin of Cooky's.
This lady, making the acquaintance of her relative, had pressed
him to spend a holiday at Grousehalton ; that her friends might
see, she said, a good-looking example of the Jewish rising genera-
tion. There Cooky had made his first acquaintance with the saddle
and the sportsman's gun, with marked eclat. We used to rally
him at least Gracey did on an impression he was alleged to have
made on Lady Millicent Arrears, his Lordship's daughter by his
first marriage, who afterwards became Lady Rarconey. If any
student of Debrett were here, I could ask him if I have remem-
bered these names right.
So, when he said he would make a tidy Ninth Lancer in a
twelvemonth, I for one could easily believe he spoke the truth.
Saul or David would not have made better Ninth Lancers. " Of
course, I didn't mean that!" said I. "You'll do, fast enough,
as far as that goes. I only meant, suppose you were to go and
get killed right off, where would be the use of that? I say. Cooky,
don't go! Chuck it! " I was being roused to an earnest feeling
roused out of my incorrigible juvenility.
" Well, to be sure, if I get killed right off, I shall look rather
an ass ! " And then they all laughed at me in a sort of patron-
izing way, and I felt disconcerted. " No," he continued. " Don't
you be frightened, Buttons. They never kill Ensigns they're not
worth it. Time enough to think about that when I've got my
lieutenancy! You see if I don't live to be a Colonel."
" Or a Major General," said my stepmother, optimistically.
306 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Or why not a Field Marshal while we are about it? Now sit
down and let's be reasonable."
We sat down and were, I presume, reasonable. I think I eased
Ellen's mind considerably by saying that my Governor and her
parson as I called him to her face were " going in for a talk,"
which would last a week, certainly ; till Doomsday, possibly. At
any rate it would postpone that awkward collision of Christianity
and Judaism. I am not sure she did not feel happier after reflect-
ing on the respectability of the Army. Such an unimpeachable
profession was surely halfway to Christianity might prove a
stepping-stone. And in any case if the interview between her
father and lover lasted up to the point of its natural importance,
there would be no time left for either an Early Martyrdom on
the one hand, or a pogrom on the other, if Irenaeus was to catch
the last 'bus for Charing Cross.
There was no excuse for the Club to get away and talk over
its pending loss of a member, though there might have been had
his/ defection been immediate. But the Himalaya would not
sail for some weeks yet; the hour of parting had not come. It
was a bore, because the presence of the non-members was only
a gene on conversation. We only made talk, really. I endeav-
oured to murmur " Bother Jemima ! " undetected, within range
of sympathetic guesswork. Ellen counted for nothing was not
worth bothering about.
Jemima had had relations in India, and propounded them as
trustworthy authorities about a much-misrepresented climate. It
really was perfectly bearable provided you abstained totally from
every kind of drink, and ate nothing I think that's right till
after sundown. W T ater enthusiastically boiled might be indulged
in without fear of enteritis, and fruit was, of course, safe, only
it had to be eaten when peeled, sharp. The same rule applied
to fleshmeat. This last, however, would keep for twenty-four
hours, if slightly sprayed with weak carbolic acid. A friend of a
cousin of hers had kept remarkably healthy on sterilized Aber-
nethy biscuit. Some phrase of subsequent enlightenments about
Germs may have got worked into my Memory, but the text may
stand.
Cooky had no apprehensions of the climate. Besides, he was
peculiar in fact, his whole family was. " Bad climates suit
MB," said he. " down to the ground. In fact, my uncle at Sierra
Leon is the healthiest of the whole kit of us. And he says the
whole territory, where he is, is festering with zymotic disease."
Jemima said: "Dear me!" but did not quarrel with the state-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 307
ment, perhaps because it rather confirmed her own position than
otherwise.
The talk or colloquy of my father and the Rev. Irenaeus did
not last even to the end of the lesser time I had predicted for
it. Its metaphorical week was a short one under half-an-hour.
They came into the drawing-room conversing cheerfully and look-
ing satisfied. I afterwards found that this was because the rev-
erend gentleman had revealed that he was the only son of a
venerable mother who allowed him five hundred a year and would
in the course of nature die. In fact, he had a practical certainty
and good expectations. No father in his senses could quarrel
with such a settlement in life for a daughter with a passionate
Ecclesiastical turn; and the fact that she knew nothing whatever
of Church History was all so much to the good. Her mind was
a tabula rasa on which Tractarianism could be written in a good
round hand, which might, for anything she knew, be one long
clerical error in either sense from beginning to end. It would
not matter to her, and if her husband had dispositions to go
over to Rome, she could accompany him. The living was only
sixty-five pounds a year, as previously stated.
All this, however, came to my knowledge later. When my
father and Ellen's fiance came into the drawing-room, I confess
that my curiosity to see whether he and my friend Cooky would
spit and fizzle, like cats, superseded other interests. I was sur-
prised and rather relieved when, on being introduced, they shook
hands cordially, and each said he was happy to make the other's
acquaintance. Ellen became tranquillized, and let her lips alone.
I afterwards gathered that Mr. MacphaiFs only comment on
Cooky was: "A fine looking chap, at any rate! Well we must
hope." My father, who told me of this, interpreted it as a timid
expression of confidence that the Almighty would see His way
to a compromise on the subject of Damnation, in difficult cases.
u It would be a graceful act," said my father, drily, " seeing that
the difficulties_are of His own creation."
Gracey said suddenly, across the last words of the introduc-
tion: "But Monty's going to India. Papa!" My father said:
" Oh, is that it. chick ? " But I think he saw how white she was,
for he added: "He'll come back again. Mustn't be frightened! "
He then remembered my talk with him in the library, and said :
"Is this the crack cavalry regiment, and is it under orders to
sail for India?"
" It's in India now, Sir. or part of it is. I sail by the Himalaya
next month." Thus Cooky.
308 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
"Papa! " said Gracey, who had crossed the room to her father,
and was clinging to his arm.
"What, chick?"
" Stop him ! Don't let Monty go ! ... If he goes we shall
never see him again." Speaking was good to bring her colour back.
" My dear ! " said Jemima, who always seemed to hold a brief
for moderation a correct attitude! "Is not that rather ?"
My father was standing with a hand caressingly over Gracey's
shoulder. He took very little notice of Jemima only a parentheti-
cal " All right, my dear ! " Then he asked : " Has Nebuchad-
nezzar made up his mind ? " more of Gracey than of Cooky him-
self. But the latter answered : " I have quite made up my mind,
Mr. Pascoe, and I think I am doing right."
This did not receive unanimous assent, I am afraid I said,
"That's rot!" and Gracey said, doubtfully: "But are you? Is
he, Papa ? " My father, regarded as The Bench, naturally, summed
up. " Well, Nebuchadnezzar, I'm bound to say that if the belong-
ings of our able-bodied young men were to have their way in
wartime, we should have a mighty small army. Every one thinks
every one else has a relative to spare. So all I can say is go,
and good luck go with you ! " To which every one agreed. Ex-
cept, indeed, the new couple, who got away in a corner, wrapped
up in their own affairs; in doing which they were within their
rights. What others, caeteris paribus, have ever done otherwise?
My father continued: "Don't get outside more bullets than you
need they are nasty things, and quite indigestible. The better
part of valour is discretion." Then he made even Gracey look
less downcast, by pointing out that the invariable early death of
military men was quite incompatible with the myriads of old
officers one met in Society and at the Clubs. A cheerful conver-
sation followed about the meaning of the word decimated, Cooky
putting on record the view held by an aunt of his, that a regiment
decimated ten times wouldn't be there at all. I recollect also
some question of the possibility of decimating nine men, and
whether it would be more humane to cut nine-tenths off one man,
or one-tenth off each. We ceased being serius. under my father's
example; all but Gracey, who remained pale and silent, and made
scarcely any concession to a hilarity which may have been
assumed.
I am sure, on thinking it over, that on Cooky's part it was
assumed. But I am equally sure that he was quite unaffected
by the risks he was to encounter in the future. I came to know
and understand, later, what it was that caused that look of
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 309
strained determination, forcing its way through reckless levity
about war; on which subject he might have been the British
linesman as portrayed by correspondents at the front, during a
campaign. And yet this reached even my unobservant facul-
ties he scarcely looked at Gracey. She, on the contrary, scarcely
took her eyes off him, sitting close by my father, caressing the
hand that remained round her neck, and joining very perfunc-
torily, if at all, in the idle speculations of us others on matters
connected with military life. My own experience had to come,
to teach me that he dared not trust himself to look at her. His
die was cast; his future and hers were to be wrenched asunder,
and he could not be true to the resolution he had formed if he
allowed his eyes the sight of what he was renouncing. That is
how I conceive of the state of his mind, now. Poor Cooky!
Having found that I still remember so much of that evening
fifty years ago, I grudge leaving it. But it leaves me, watching
from our doorstep my old school hero and my proposed and ac-
cepted brother-in-law making so much haste to catch the last
'bus that neither a Crucifixion or a Pogrom entered into practical
politics. And once inside the omnibus, there was the conductor.
Gracey was very silent to me about Cooky's departure. Let-
ters came from him to her which she refused to show me, or left
upstairs after promising to do so, which is nearly the same thing.
I believe our old guardian Genius, Varnish, was the cause of
my opaque faculties receiving a measure of enlighteilment on
the situation.
" Miss Gracey she's in a fine taking about Master Monty," said
she to me one day when Gracey was safe out of the way. " And
I tell you this, Master Jackey, I'm 'artily sorry for her, that
I am."
I hung out a signal of imperception. " Of course, she doesn't
like Cooky hooking it like this. But then, no more do I, for that
matter. And I've known him longer than she has. Besides, I
was at school with him."
" That does for talkin', Master Jackey," said she. " There's some
things young gentlemen's sisters have to sit up and think about,
which don't fret nor worry them. And so I tell you, Squire."
"What things? I don't know any things ..." It may be
that I had misgivings that, after all. girls were not boys, because
I shied off the issue, saying: "Besides, Cooky will come back
all right. Sure to!"
"Ah, Master Jackey! Who's to say that, with the Lord Al-
mighty's eye watching of us all the while? Only I do pray on
310 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
my knees he may come back alive, with God's blessing. But then,
as I say, where are we? No better off, that I see, than if he'd
stopped at home ! "
I could not follow this, and said so. It was not a point to
elaborate clearly while threading a darning needle, so the reply
came slowly. But it came.
" It isn't anywhere like Miss Ellen's good gentleman she's set
her 'art on, and no one to say a word against it, or take excep-
tion. Your papa may call him Candlesticks behind his back, but
anyhow you put it, a Clergyman is not a Heathen, and keeps
clear of Sinnergogs and vanities." I adopt this spelling of Syna-
gogue because I feel sure that Varnish's mind spelled it so, with
a collateral sense of the wickedness of modern Israel, in associa-
tion with Turks, Heretics, and Infidels.
"Oh, I see!" said I, grasping the point at issue. "You mean
Gracey and Monty can't get married. They never said they
wanted to, that I know of. But supposing they did?"
" Law, Master Jackey, whatever are you going to say next ? "
"Well I don't see anything to -fly out about. Look at Lord
Thingummybob and Cooky's cousin that asked him down to
stay. He's a Christian and she's a Jew a she-Jew. You ask
the Governor. He told me."
"Your papa he knows, Master Jackey. so why ask him?"
Varnish may have considered that information sought for pre-
supposed* and expressed an attitude of incredulity. She accepted
my father's statement, but threw doubt on its applicability.
" Lords go their own way," said she, " and no questions asked.
' Tisn't like the same thing as a plain person. Then, I lay she
had money, bags on bags ! "
I can't remember exactly what answer I made, but its upshot
was that if any legal or sacerdotal barrier existed to the mar-
riage of Jews and Christians, the Court of Chancery and the
Province of Canterbury would drive a coach-and-six through it
for a liberal commission. Anyhow, I conceded that the cases
were different. But who was to prevent simple unqualified " per-
sons " getting married, if they liked, when Dukes did, whether
they were Jews or Christians? "People next door or across the
way" was the way I put it.
Varnish seemed to have an impression that the officiating clergy-
man art a wedding could prohibit the marriage, and would do
so if not intimidated or tipped. She exonerated the Archbishop
of Canterbury, as above temptation, but did not seem so sure
about the Lord Chancellor. Local officials were mostly open to
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 311
douceurs. I discredited these suspicions as groundless, and main-
tained that the union of Cooky's relative and her noble mate
was u all square," and that any similar nuptials might also be
rectangular. Varnish conceded the point.
I returned to my previous question. Supposing Gracey and
Cooky did want to get married, what then? I found that there
was in the background of my dear old nurse's mind a thickset
hedge of ancient prejudice on the subject. She could, and did,
love my old schoolmate for his steadfast friendship, his good influ-
ence as I see now over myself, and his chivalrous instinct that
was carrying him away to danger, possibly to death. But when
it came to marrying, all she could say was that she wished him
a loving wife of the best quality to be found in his own- persua-
sion whom I am sure she thought of as, broadly speaking, an
old clotheswoman but not our Miss Gracey. I had better ask
my pa, and see what he would say.
I warmed up to my subject. " Do, you, mean, to say, Var-
nish?" said I, in instalments for emphasis. "Do you mean
to say, the Governor would stick up for Ellen marrying a Snivel-
ling Ass like her Parson, and not like Gracey, to marry Cooky?"
" Well, Master Jacky," said Varnish, " don.'t you take nothing
I say. But just you ask your pa."
I took this advice, and the next time I was alone with my
father, broke in upon the first whiffs of his evening pipe with:
" I say, P " a variation this of the word pater, sometimes used
"why can't Jews marry Christians?"
u Do you mean whether the Christians like it or no?"
I replied : '* I'm not such an idiot as all that comes to. I
mean when the him and the her, either way on, want to be mairied,
what's to prevent them ? "
" In that case," said my father, puffing sedately, " the answer
is more difficult." He considered a little, or pretended to do so,
then went on : " If the Christian gentleman or lady, as may
be has no substantial objection to the other party, wife or hus-
band as may be, being damned, then I see no reason why they
shouldn't be married. Which may hold good vice versa."
" But suppose both of them think it's rot about Hell, and all
that sort of thing?"
" I confess that I cannot see why a couple with such broad
religious views should allow themselves to be kept apart by nar-
row-minded contemporaries. But are we not ignoring an im-
portant point? What claim would the non-Jew have to be con-
sidered a Christian?"
312 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" I thought every one was a Christian that didn't say he wasn't,
except Jews."
" A very lukewarm orthodoxy ! But I believe there is a popular
impression to that effect. Now I' was brought up to consider
Jews damned, and that it was at least unsound to think other-
wise. So if the lady or gentleman we are talking of didn't think
the gentleman or lady we are talking of damned, I doubt the
claim of the candidate for damnation to have married a Christian.
However, under your lax definition of Christianity, I can see no
reason why Christians shouldn't marry Jews as much as they
like, subject to the usual reservations. What's the case in point?
Who's the Jew? Who's the Christian?"
" Oh none in particular."
"Yes. But suppose it had been some one in particular, who
would the Jew in particular have been ? "
"Well Cooky then!"
" So I supposed." My father hung fire for a few seconds, and
then said, with his eyes resting on me, so that I felt rather in the
dock: "And are we supposed to know who is the she-Christian
Nebuchadnezzar has set his heart on?"
"Well yes!" said I, uneasily. "At least no! It's all hum-
bugging, you know! Supposing, don't you know?"
"Get on with the story! Who's the she-Christian."
" It was all talk, you know me and Varnish ! "
u You and Varnish. Quite so. And I entirely understand that
the case you were discussing was hypothetical. We're clear about
that. Now who was the hypothetical she-Christian?"
Well Gracey then ! "
" I thought so." My father was silent for a spell, in which
I made up my mind to leave the renewal of the subject to him,
being indeed sorry I had started it. Then he said: " Are Gracey
and Nebuchadnezzar supposed to be in each other's confidence on
the subject?"
I was glad to be able to reply : " They wouldn't tell me. How
should / know? It was only my idea, and I asked Varnish."
" Only your idea, Master Inquisitive Speculation ? And how
did you come by your idea? Perhaps it was only The Artistic
Mind, when all's said and done. Eh, Jackey boy? Perhaps we
don't know anything? Do we, or don't we?"
I said: " Oh well! if you come to that, of course we don't! "
I could see that it relieved him to find that I was uninformed
that there was nothing official in my communications. But I
think he credited me with grounds for speculation, as was reason-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 313
able under the circumstances. I hastened to emphasize the abstract
nature of my inquiry. " It really was only me and Varnish, talk-
ing," I said. "I just wanted to know that was all."
" And it was a question with knotty points in it," said he,
speaking more seriously. " There's this for instance. People have
families it's a way they have, and we needn't analyze it and
the families of mixed marriages have to be brought up. When a
Mahomedaii marries an Atheist, for instance, their small fry
have to be turned into little Mahomedans, or little Atheists. Which
is it to be? Jews and Christians are in the same boat."
To prove that I appreciated this, I cited an even greater em-
barrassment under which Cooky's aristocratic connections had
found themselves. The noble lord was a Conservative and his
lady wife was a Liberal.
My father received this imperturbably. "There you have it!"
said he. " The same fix, or worse ! One can fancy little Jews
and Christians, in the same nursery, practising a conventional
toleration. One can even fancy the little Jews being allowed
their little sisters' and brothers' crucifix to play with, and con-
ceding their own bags and hats as a per contra. But Liberals
and Conservatives ! " Though he turned off the subject in this
joking spirit, I could see it had caused him to think, if only by the
way he smoked on, after his pipe was cold.
Reflection lasted a little, and then he asked, as he refilled the
pipe: "Did you ever talk about it to Nebuchadnezzar? I don't
mean bringing Gracey in; only what people think Jews think,
particularly. What his family thinks, for instance!"
" Of course we've talked about it ! " I said. " We talk about
everything. We talked a lot about it that time he told me about
his swell cousin. He says he knows it would kill his old mother
if a son of hers was to marry a Gentile. He didn't say Chris-
tian."
" And naturally he doesn't want to kill his mother. Anything
else?"
" He says it's . . . it's the Chosen people . . . that sort of
game you know ! " . . .
" I know the game you refer to. Gee-up ! "
" Well that's his old mother's idea, not his. He says there
are such a lot of Chosen Peoples."
" So there are any number. And all on the same authority."
"God's?"
" No their own. As I understand, the Almighty has, sa far,
said nothing, as not being in the interest of the public service."
314 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Well Cooky says he evidently can't make up his mind and
Stick to it. I mean, God can't."
" We have to consider His Inscrutable Ways. However, with-
out courting mental disaster by tackling problems beyond our
reach, one thing is clear, that Nebuchadnezzar reveres his mother,
whatever he thinks of his Maker. He's a good boy. And he's
going to India to put a stopper on Nana Sahib ! " My stepmother
came in here and the conversation stopped.
On a later occasion, some days after this, I caught a fag-end
of a conversation which had only been, hitherto, a fluctuating
sound, between my father and stepmother. Her words, at the
end of a winding-up lull, were audible. " I don't quite follow
your meaning, Mr. Pascoe; but no doubt you're right. Neverthe-
less, I do think, and shall always think, that such marriages can
never turn out happily, and I won't pretend I am not glad the
young man is going. Not that I have anything against him per-
sonally ! " A few interchanged words were inaudible, and then
I caught the words : " They'll have forgotten all about it by
then, especially the boy."
This fragment, and similar chance gleanings, were, I suspect,
responsible for an impression I have still, of a thing most im-
probable in itself, and of which I cannot localize either place or
time namely, that my father and stepmother analyzed the situa-
tion in my hearing. Why does my mind ascribe to Jemima the
words : " Of course it isn't the same thing where there's a dis-
tinct drawback. . . . Well, I mean, if you will have it, when
a girl's leg stands in her way. I don't see any use pretending ? "
Or to my father the question, asked half of himself: "Ought it
to stand in her way?"
I cannot suppose that they ever took me into their confidence
to the extent of talking so openly in my presence. I was not
young enough to be ignored, yet scarcely old enough to be taken
into council without reserve.
Nevertheless, my mind docs not hesitate as to what the opinions
of each \vcre of the desirability or otherwise of Cooky's departure
for the East, nor to assign to the lady a much more well-defined
opinion of its advantages than to my father. My stepmother
was, I am satisfied, a thorough worldling at heart. But that is the
worst I have to say of her. Sbe regarded the separation of these
two young people as an intervention of Providence; an incident
which, brought about by a human parent and guardian, would
have been, to use nearly the same word in a more mundane sense,
the merest prudence. A marriage with an Israelite, who had
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 315
not even the quality persons of her type always ascribe to Israel-
ites, videlicet money-bags, could never be accepted as a comforta-
ble settlement in life even for a girl with a limp, who could not
expect the advantages of a complete article.
I have' also an impression that my stepmother said to my father,
on some occasion undetermined: "Leave her to me my dear!
Do you think I don't know how to manage a chit ? " and that he
replied : " I don't suppose she'll say anything. But we shall
see." Perhaps a fag-end of some conversation I stopped.
Whether these fragments of memories are an aftergrowth, of
the result of disinterments of bygones later, I cannot say. I
regard them with suspicion. All the same I am convinced that
Jemima rejoiced secretly at Cooky's departure, and influenced my
father to a half-belief that a formidable and insuperable position
would have been created had he remained. This would not inter-
fere with a view I ascribe to him, that the separation of a poten-
tial Romeo and Juliet might be a useful trial. If their nascent
passion bore the strain, well and good! Then would come the
time to befriend it. If not, so be it!
There is another thing of which I am firmly convinced. Gracey
herself would have been completely taken aback might even have
been indignant had she known the construction that was being
placed on her visible concern at Cooky's military escapade. In
this she would only have felt what many another girl of nine-
teen in England at least would have felt in the same circum-
stances. Add to this that her leg had been, as it were, pushed
home to her by commiseration from Jemima, and, as I think, by
Roberta's brutal, or at least, brusque candour. By whom she
had been told plainly that girls with limps could not expect to
marry! Was she not entitled on that very account, to a pla-
tonic friendship with an Ebrew Jew, who would one day wed
Keziah or Keren-happuch, who would be her friend, too. Gracey
said something of the kind to me once, but it hardly fructi-
fied in the soil of my crude mind. I wonder at this now. Her
comment on Keren-happuch or Keziah was : " She won't be half
good enough for Monty!" Why did that not let the cat out
of the bag? The cat stopped there, quite unsuspected by me,
whatever my father and stepmother thought.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE STORY
ONE evening, as Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe were sitting together
over their dessert, the younger members of the family having
gone with a party to the theater, Mr. Pascoe startled his wife
by asking her abruptly if she had any theory of her own as to
how Cfficilia came to take that overdose of laudanum? The
que'stion was such a totally unexpected one that Helen in her
sudden confusion dropped the glass she was in the act of rais-
ing to her lips and the ruby coloured wine was spilled over the
table-cloth. She gave a little scream and turned ashy white.
"My love, what is the matter!" exclaimed Mr. Pascoe in some
alarm.
" Oh, nothing, nothing, only you startled me and made me
spill the wine. It looked so like blood that it gave me the
shudders."
" My dear child, what a state your nerves are in ! It is that
dreadful insomnia that is telling on you," said Mr. Pascoe, look-
ing anxiously at his wife's scared white face. " I do wish you
would see a specialist about it. What did I say that could have
startled you so ? "
"Oh, nothing! nothing really! I am rather jumpy to-night,
that is all," replied Helen, nervously. " But why should I have
any theory about it? She just took the overdose by mistake, it
was all settled, she must have done that ages ago. What made
you go back upon it to-night?"
" Only I was thinking of Gracey," answered Mr. Pascoe, look-
ing uneasily at his wife.
"Thinking of Gracey! Why, what has she been saying?"
inquired Helen, sharply.
"Gracey! Oh, Gracey has not said anything, how should she?
What I was thinking was ... no blame to you, my dear. I am
sure you have always done your level best. But what I was think-
ing was this, that if her own mother had lived she in all prob-
ability would have foreseen this possible complication with Ne-
buchadnezzar and not allowed it to go so far. Taken in time,
this sort of thing can usually be prevented."
316
THE STORY 317
"What sort of thing? I don't understand."
" Why, you know Nebuchadnezzar has bought that commis-
sion in the army and is going out to squelch the Indian mutiny
for us."
" Well, but why not ? "
"Don't you see that he is merely running away because he
being a Hebrew Jew can't marry a Gentile, and that he and
Gracey are really devoted to each other? It is his mother who
objects so strongly to his marrying outside the faith, said it would
kill her if he did. So, at least, I gather from Jackey."
" Then does Jackey know all about it? " asked Mrs. Pascoe.
" Oh, dear, no! Blind as any bat on the subject! Thinks Cooky
wants to be a soldier and fight, and that that's why he is going
away."
" Well," said Helen, unsympathetically, " I suppose it is the
best thing he can do under the circumstances. They will get
over it, they are both so young. It does not really matter much
that I can see."
Something in his wife's manner jarred on Mr. Pascoe, and he
said no more on the subject, but later on in the evening, as he
sat alone over his pipe, his thoughts reverted to it. Yes, certainly,
he would have liked Cooky better if he had rebelled against that
verdict of Judaism. Was it not sacrificing two fresh young lives
on the altar of superstition?
Helen had said that they would soon forget it. But would
they? Caecilia had clearly not forgotten her first love, Jack
Emery! Would her history be repeated in that of her daughter?
If Gracey 's mother had lived all would probably have gone dif-
ferently. No, he did not blame Helen in the least, but she evi-
dently had not been alive to the danger attending this intimacy
with Jackey's chum! In fact, even now she did not take this
boy and girl love seriously! How should she? It was that
letter of Caecilia's, written years ago, that had opened his eyes
to what a youthful attachment might possibly mean in a girl's
life, and he felt confident that in this case a mother's watchful
care might have saved Gracey from a similar heartbreak. Then
his thoughts wandered back to that tragic death in Mecklenburg
Square. How came Ctecilia to have taken that overdose? Had
the pain returned with such violence that she could not even
wait to ring for Varnish to come and give her the medicine? It
was all so unlike her! She had invariably rung before when she
needed anything. ... In fact, it was her natural instinct always
to insist on being waited upon rather than do anything for her-
318 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
self; besides, to get at the medicine she must have had to get out
of bed, and the doctor's orders had been emphatic that she was
to lie quite still! . . . She had always shown herself particu-
larly anxious to carry out his instructions implicitly. No, he
could not understand it! ... Unless! ! but he thrust the idea
resolutely from his mind. No, that was out of the question, quite
impossible! She could not have wished to end her days by her
own hand. She was far too good, too Christian a woman for
that, besides, why should she? All was going well with them.
Her attack of illness, Dr. Hammond had assured them both
that very morning, was entirely of zt temporary nature, requiring
care, very great care, if it came to that! but not of a nature to
create a panic in the mind of the sufferer! . . . True, they had
had a dispute the night before, but Mr. Pascoe could recall nothing
that had taken place between them that differed very much from
many a previous discussion on the same topic. Besides, he had
never said definitely that he would not give up his post at Som-
erset House. He had merely insisted on the desirability of
retaining it. No doubt, the discussion had been bad for her
in her then condition, but as for there having been anything
whatever between them to give rise on her part to a desire for
self-destruction it was simply ridiculous to entertain the idea
for a moment. . . . No, on that score he could set his mind
at rest. But it all remained very unaccountable! very unaccount-
able, indeed! ! ! And Mr. Pascoe puffed away at his pipe! But
he got no nearer to solving the mystery.
CHAPTEK XXXII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
THE day of Cooky's final farewell was near at Hand. It was
on the occasion of his penultimate visit to J'he Ketreat that he
said to me : u Suppose we go to-morrow, little Buttons, and have
a look at your old crib ? Just an idea of mine ! I've a fancy for
it." I acceded at once, and further expressed an opinion that
to do so would be rather a lark. I had no such view, but it oc-
curred to me that it was a good thing to say. More particularly
because reference had been more than once made to the desira-
bility of putting a good face on the matter, and on no account
repining. The exact expression used was " grizzling."
Thus it came about that on the afternoon of next day our boy
at Slocum's put his head in at the school door to announce that
a party wanted Mr. Pascoe, but would wait outside. He thought
it necessary to add: "He ain't a moddle;" that being the only
way discrimination of class was possible to his lack of social
experience. This boy was generally known as Young Stomach
Ache, owing to an occasion on which he was detained at home,
when his mother, to justify his absence, produced a doctor's pre-
scription which referred to chalk.
Mr. Slocum himself was sitting on my box, looking at my
drawing, rattling currency in his breeches-pocket. He was always
rather at a loss what to say about his pupils' performances, so he
rattled the sum at his disposal in his pocket, and began whist-
ling " Molly Maloney," but never got to the second line. This
time he produced a spurious appearance of having stopped sud-
denly, by saying at the end of the first: '' That's dirt, not shadow!
You'll have to bread a lot of that out." This question, which was
dirt and which was shadow, in drawings, often gave rise to dis-
putes, and even to words. At this point Young Stomach Ache's
announcement caused Mr. Slocum to say : u Friend of Mr. Cope-
stake? . . . Yes, I meant Pascoe; I didn't mean Copestake.
"Why didn't you show him in. Reginald?" Which reminds me
that, though this boy flashed across my memory as Young Stomach
Ache, his real name was Reginald.
Cooky was then shown in, and was nodded to by Mr. Slocum,
319
320 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
who went away to discriminate dirt and shadow elsewhere. I
think it was always a parti pris -with him to hold aloof from his
students' visitors. I can't fancy him doing anything else.
I made an effort to impress Cook'y with the Fine Arts, by show-
ing him the School, and I think he made an effort to seem im-
pressed. But the Stars in their Courses fought against me, taking
to a great extent the form of my friend ' Opkins, whom I intro-
duced. For when Cooky, to make talk I suppose, remarked that
Art Chaps always seemed to him to be taking their time, ' Opkins
said with some dignity : " ' Urry is contry to the Spirit of Art."
And dignity is fatafto social intercourse. So in spite of my in-
vitations to him to say respectful things of Slocum's, Cooky
evaded the point, or only yielded the most perfunctory acknowl-
edgments of its greatness.
Beyond remarking that all the draughtsmen seemed to him to
be fishing, only that their lines had no rods, and eliciting from
me some explanation of the use and beauty of the plumb-bob,
my friend said little, seeming absent and preoccupied. He con-
tinued so as far as Russell Square, on the borders of my old
neighbourhood as my mind has always recognized it the zone of
the Foundling Hospital. It had not changed, of course. Did
it ever change, in those days? It has changed, now, I know, and
the street-lamps are incandescent; or, even worse, electric. In
the fifties they were really gas, and danced and flickered in the
wind, or showed as yellow spots through the fog-bound stillness
of the winter gloom, and were lighted by lamp-lighters, with lad-
ders. There is a railway-station now, that says it is Russell Square
Station, and I suppose it knows. When I was last there, some
twenty years since, although the Square was breaking out as
Hotels and useful Institutions, the tramp of horses was merry
in the streets, and the hansom cabmen still even as in the
days of Varnish, who attested the fact called each other bad
language from box to box, and deemed every fare too small. By
now, as I infer, the music of the horses' feet is heard no more,
and the ears of foot-passengers are jarred, and their sense of
all propriety outraged, by every variety of sound a motors bad
taste can indulge in. But I am told the streets are cleaner. That
is a set-off, although we did not complain, in my time.
But what have I, lying here awaiting the end, to do with this
new world that is without? Let me look back, a failing mind
that catches at every straw in that remote past, to help to better
memory, and write down what I may, before it fails outright. I
ought to be able to recall that last expedition to the Square our
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 321
last expedition, I should say; for I did go there again, as a matter
of fact, many years later.
Getting near the zone of the Foundling Hospital, we discerned
landmarks. " I wonder who the black statue's of, Cooky," said
I, neglecting formal English construction.
Cooky understood. " Stupid little Buttons ! " said he. " Fancy
your living close by, all those years, and not finding that out."
" I asked the Governor."
"And what did he say?"
" Said it wasn't Beelzebub."
" Well it isn't. So he was right, so far. But such a lot of
things are not. This one's the Duke that made the Square. It
takes a Duke to make a Square."
I became diffuse. ''I say, Cooky! I wonder whether the iron
roller's still in our Square, where we''re going?"
"Why shouldn't it be? Rollers in Squares don't pay to run
away with. Ask any thief. Why the iron roller?"
" Because this. An awfully long time ago, when I was a small
kid, there was a little girl."
" Instead of the roller ? "
" No shut up ! She came out of a house opposite, and Var-
nish let me play with her. Ada was her name."
" But the roller the roller ! How does the roller come in ? "
"Why look here! You know how roller-handles go? They
won't stop on the ground. . . . Well we played at seeing how
long it would go on. And one time it caught Ada's nose because
I started it too fierce, and it had to be done with plaster. Her
nose had, not the handle."
'* Well, Buttons, I won't disguise it from you. I think that
a very flat story."
" Can't help it, Cooky, it's true. I wonder if old Scammony
is going on here still." For we were in Bernard Street, ap-
proaching the doctor's house.
"Dr. Hammond? Why shouldn't he be? It isn't five years
yet, and you talk as if it was a thousand."
l< Well it seems a thousand. Suppose we go across and read
his doorplate!" A harmless suggestion, even if it had no appar-
ent purpose. I made it without anticipating any change in the
text. We found one. however. A name had been added : " Mr.
Parminter Harris, M. R. C. S." Dr. Scammony had got a partner.
I suppose we were blocking the way. as we stood digesting this
information, for a gentleman coming up behind us said. " Excuse
me ! ? ' and turning round I saw the owner of the spectacles and
322 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
the indented cheek who had come with Dr. Scammony when my
mother died he who had the stomach pump in charge. I had
only seen him then for a moment. But he was a very unmis-
takable person, all the more that 'he apparently had on the self-
same plaid wrapper.
" All right beg your pardon ! " said he. Then, on the door-
step, before using his latch-key : " What Dr. Hammond ? He's
out. Can I give you a dose of anything? You've got nothing
the matter with you."
We both said : " Nothing whatever." And I added, meaning
my remark to be conservative : " Only Dr. Hammond used to
attend on my family." To which Mr. Parminter Harris said,
" Oh ah ! " in a convinced sort of way, as if it was quite natural
and right for ex-patients to come and browse, as it were, on
the doorstep of a former medical adviser, without symptoms.
I suppose Cooky felt that illumination was called for, for he
said : " My young friend's father lived close by here, and Dr.
Hammond attended his mother when she died. About five years
ago."
"Name was ?" said Mr. Parminter Harris.
"Pascoe Mecklenburg Square. ..."
Mr. Harris jerked the forefinger of his latch-key holding hand
at Cooky, and nodded apprehension, six times at least. " I know
I know I know," said he. "Poison case!"
I quarrelled with the exaggeration, mentally. So, I think, did
Cooky, for he said in a deprecating way: "Are we a sure
we are speaking of the same case?"
"Oh yes no mistake at all! Pascoe, Mecklenburg Square.
Only stop a minute! you're right. Overdose of laudanum. I
shouldn't have said ' poison case.' Overdose of laudanum, cer-
tainly."
Cooky said, as one with great deference for the profession :
"It is important, isn't it?" And I said, in a side alley. "She
took it herself."
"Right you are! Quite right! took it herself. Careless speech
of mine more careful another time!" He spoke as if the same
thing might come about again, in the natural order of events;
then added, explanatorily : " Case would rank as a poison case
with us, you see, just the same. Toxic action identical. But
you're quite right. Very important distinction. Do you wish
to see Dr. Hammond? He may be home any time."
No, we didn't wish to see Dr. Hammond. But we tacitly agreed
that we might safely leave my father's kind regards for him to
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 323
bask in, and did so. I said good evening, and started to go on.
I felt nettled with the medical gentleman. Cooky remained
one moment, detained by a parting word.
"Rather cool, that, Cooky!" said I, as we got out of hearing.
"What was cool?"
"Why, talking about a poison case! What was that he was
saying to you ? What was he saying he ' thought so ' about ? "
For this phrase had reached me with a flavour of something like
impertinence in it.
" Oh nothing ! At least, nothing particular."
"But what?"
" He only said he had heard your father married again, and
wanted to know who. ' Wasn't it the governess ' ? " He repeated
the doctor's words.
" He is a cool beggar. What concern was it of his? I sup-
pose you told him? . . . Well all T can say is, I hope he'll
catch it hot from little Scammony, if he tells him."
" Doctors get like that," said Cooky, to dismiss him. And
I acquiesced in his dismissal.
I suppose the fact was that this Mr. Harris really remem-
bered something of the case, and wanted to make himself of
importance by seeming to remember more. I might easily have
forgotten the fact that we spoke with him that day in Bernard
Street, if this effort on his part had not caused him to use an
unfortunate phrase, which as good as suggested a suspicion of
foul play.
It was strange to stand there outside the old home T knew
so well the inner soul of, with the schoolfellow that had so
often bid me farewell on its very doorstep there before us un-
changed! and to be deprived of all right to enter, by usurpers
in possession. What right had they there? What right could
they have, compared with mine? I asked this question indig-
nantly of my friend, who suggested a view of the case that I
confess had never struck me how about the occupants who turned
out to make way for my family, or at least for its first two
members, and joint originators? "They were not born there,"
said I, rashly jumping at what seemed a plausible answer. To
which Cooky reasonably replied : " How the dickens do you
know that, little Buttons ? " I did not know it, and had to
say so.
We watched the house from the other side of the way, stand-
ing against the well-remembered Square palings of my youth,
and I tried to devise some plausible excuse for knocking at the
324 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
door and getting a peep inside. I suggested that we should do
so and ask if some one with an impossible name lived there.
Cooky said did I know an impossible name? Because one of
his sisters had tried that game. She had knocked very loud at
a wrong door by mistake, and instead of telling the truth, must
needs think to escape contumely by asking if Mrs. Marmaduke
Watkins was at home, and was horrified when the menial threw
the door wide, as for a troop of cavalry to ride in, and betrayed
her into the hands of a succession of liveries, who showed her
upstairs, helpless, into a salon, of dimensions.
"What did she do?" I asked.
" She confessed up," said Cooky. " Told the whole truth, and
was not only forgiven, but asked whether her family were Mosses
of Grindstone."
" Well, Cooky," said I, " I vote that we knock and ask if Mrs.
Marmaduke Watkins is at home, because twice is impossible."
I think I derived this idea from the man who thought his head
would be safe in the hole a cannon-ball had made. After con-
sideration, Cooky said: u Suppose we risk it!"
Agreed. He knocked genteelly; and I, seeing a brass-plate
with " Ring also," rang also. The door was answered by a cor-
pulent cook or housekeeper who protruded very nearly to us as
she stood on the threshold. A momentary qualm which seized
us both after ringing for might not the impossible have hap-
pened? was relieved on hearing that this was Mr. Hawkins's;
or Miss Trawkins's. it was impossible to say which. We breathed
freely, and could look inside.
My eyes went at once to see whether a new letter-box had re-
placed ours the one I mean where the lost letters were found,
on the day we came away. The panelling of the wainscot had
been made good, but the indeterminate owner had not renewed
the letter-box. He, or she. fell in my opinion. I saw that the
walls had been covered with marbled paper, showing to my thought
a degraded taste. Numerous water colours were dotted about, of
a class I despised, which I perceived to be, broadly, watennills,
coast scenes with trawlers going to sea, and a cattle at sun-
set. I decided that the owner was Miss Trawkins, and that
these were her production. How dared she desecrate our walls
with her rubbish?
If the ample housekeeper had not yearned to be useful to
her species, we could have begged pardon and come away. But
she was seized with anxiety to be of service to us. First, she
clung to the idea that her house was really the one we wanted.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 325
and that she could satisfy us if only we would consent to an
emendation of our text. " Are you sure the name was not 'Aw-
kins?" said she, causing me to give up Miss Trawkins as use-
less. Cooky was quite sure said it must be Marmaduke Watkins
or nothing. No compromise was possible.
Had we tried thirty-two? No we had not. Would she on the
whole recommend us to try thirty-two ? " There ain't," said she,
"no 'arm in tryin', seein' there went so little trouble just to
make the inquiry. But now she come to think of it, the name at
thirty-two was Medlicott." This was a damper, or would have
been, had our position been a bona fide one. As it was, we
stood committed to research at any house not definitely assigna-
ble to another than Watkins. Such a house, said our informant,
was number twenty-seven. Not that she had a word against the
occupants. They might be most respectable and well-to-do, but if
you come to their names, their names she could not tell, not
if you was to break every bone in her body. No such course
had been hinted at. Cooky said, turning to me: "Suppose we
try?" And so completely had I lived myself into the part, that
I replied : " Yes just this one more, and then gave it up as
a bad job."
I had nourished a hope that the ample one would be content
to dismiss us with her Blessing, and leave it open to us to depart,
without knocking at number twenty-seven. But her benevolent
interest would not permit her to leave us until she had seen
the result of our application. She came out on the pavement
even on the roadway, to get a better view and watched for the
outcome, urging us to knock very frequently, which proved nec-
essary. It was rather an embarrassing experience, to be as it
were pinioned to the task of knocking at a door we were not
correlated to. to make an insincere inquiry. At one time it
seemed as if we should continue doing so sine die, if the tenacity
of the good lady held out; but in the end a peppery edgy person
opened the door six inches and said, " Hay? Who do you want?"
and then to our question. " Does Mrs. Marmaduke Watkins live
here?" replied, "No that she don't!" and shut it with
acerbity.
I hare to account to myself for what followed, and find I can
only do it by recalling all these trivial details. As we fell away
from No. 27, hoping to shake free of our adviser, it became evi-
dent that she did not intend us to do so, approaching us and cut-
ting us off from the nearest avenue of escape. I murmured to
Cooky: "Pretend it's the wrong Square." He welcomed the
326 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
idea, and acted on it, saying we had been under the impression
we were in Brunswick Square.
No expression of intense enlightenment was ever so prolonged
as the ejaculation of the good lady. There now! If we had
only a said Brunswick she would have known where she was.
Under those circumstances untold gold would not have induced her
to conceal the fact that she was in absolute ignorance of the
names of the occupants of Brunswick Square. She seemed proud
of this ignorance, but I cannot tell why. She dwelt upon it at
unnecessary length, and would never have stopped, I believe, if
a strong smell of a chimney on fire had not asserted itself, and
taken her mind off. .
It is commonly thought, by any person who smells a chimney
on fire, that it is some one else's chimney. The stout cook shared
this impression, and was at ease. " Not but what," she said, " all
are liable, and it might easy have been ours, I do admit. Only
being swep' by contrack, by my advice and a new rule since I
come, and doubtful if satisfactory to the Missis, my ketching
chimney is out of the question, as you might say."
Nevertheless, on stepping back across the road to assign its
source to a volume of very thick, dirty white smoke which came
with a rush down the front of the house, it was perfectly clear
to us where it came from. " That's our kitchen chimney, Cooky,"
said I, and I believe the fat one conceived that this speech was
youthful impertinence. She had, however, other business on
hand the defence of her system. " Why, it was only swep' the
other day, just after the family left, and them expected any minute!
And by contrack!" The frequency of chimney-fires immediately
after the sweep's visit raises the question of whether chimney-
sweeping is a safe practice.
The good woman's policy was one of no surrender, even to con-
futation itself. She went away to acquaint next door that their
chimney was afire, and they might get the engines if they liked,
only there was no 'urry, because they always come of their-
selves if let alone. She got involved in argument with next door,
whose parlourmaid undertook to establish a negation that their
chimney was not on fire, while she herself maintained that it
must be, because of the impossibility of her own chimney being
the guilty one. At this juncture an idea crossed my friend's mind.
Why should we not seize the opportunity the fire afforded of get-
ting a sight of the interior of the old house? Fire justifies intru-
sion, or at least palliates it.
I jumped at the suggestion. Calling out to the disputants:
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 327
" It is here, and if it isn't put out you'll have the house on fire,"
we went straight in at the still open door and down into the
kitchen, so quickly that when the fat cook, who followed us,
arrived panting, and mixing protest with gratitude of a sort,
Cooky and I were standing on each side of the fireplace, holding
an outstretched square of carpet across it to stifle the draught, to
the great admiration of a young woman who seemed at first to
be the only person in the house except herself. There was, how-
ever, one other, as appeared presently an old acquaintance of
mine.
The fire-brigade came of itself, but prophylactically. It set-
tled down outside, and hatched the scene of the disaster; abetted,
or hindered as might be, by boys, who explained to one another
the details of fire-engines, being themselves unacquainted there-
with. Its representative came in and went upstairs, to make
sure the fire had kept inside the chimney.
It is, I believe, generally known that there are two schools of
fire-extinction, at least as regards chimneys. One of these schools
considers that the true aim of its operations should be to sup-
press combustion in the flue at all costs. The other that it should
circumscribe to the utmost the natural desire of burning soot
to set alight to everything else, but should fool it to the top
of its bent so long as it made no effort to get outside its allotted
field of operations. The former school will risk its life on sloping
roofs to hold a sack down over a blazing chimney; while its
acolytes, myrmidons, or casual allies endeavour to hermetically
seal the flue below with carpets or blankets or periodicals. The
succour attempted by Cooky and myself was an adoption of its
tenets. But the brigade leaned towards those of the latter school.
"That don't do any good!" was its opinion of our efforts.
" You'll only keep it on hand longer. A bit of fire in the flue
don't matter any so much, so long as there's no timber in the
chimney." Its exponent added that the upstairs wall was noth-
ing out of the way hot, and one of his mates moreover was keep-
ing an eye on it. So we discontinued our efforts, and he settled
down peacefully to make a report, after a last word : " Not the
first time this flue's been alight, by many!"
It was then that I became aware that a face I knew had appeared
out of the back wash'us, or some cellar beyond. It was a face
that made me seriously doubt whether I was not asleep and dream-
ing. It was so very strange to be in the kitchen of our old house,
with The Man, Freeman, there in the flesh before me. For there
could be no doubt of his identity. Shrunk, and abated, somewhat
328 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
redder about the nose, and shabbier in garments mysteriously
identical with those I had known him in five years ago, he was
the same Man, beyond a doubt. The same aroma, or flavour of
beer as of old clung to him, and seemed, strangely enough, to
have its share in producing the hallucination that he was sober
and steady. He was greyer, surely, since my day in the Square,
and baldness was just feeling for a place at the top of his head.
Both these changes tended to produce an impression a very
vague one that their subject was a Member of a Denomination.
It also struck me that he abased himself more than formerly, as
he addressed me, which he did as soon as I caught his eye.
" Master Eustace excusin' me if mistook only the many times
I've blacked your boots! And sim'lar Master Moss, if I might
make so bold " We both whistled astonishment and looked
at each other. We managed to say conjointly, somehow, that
if this wasn't Freeman, we were blest, or would be hanged I
forget which.
Neither was our immediate destiny. For it was Freeman, ask-
ing after The Master, meaning my father. And I became aware
that he had established himself on the same footing with the
new tenants, as formerly with my own family, by overhearing the
words : " Well, I declare if he ain't talking to The Man ! " And
yet I don't believe he had ever specifically laid claim to the des-
ignation.
I did not talk to The Man at great length, not feeling certain
how much affection I was bound to show to him. He referred
to his indebtedness to my father, to whose certificate of his hon-
esty and sobriety he owed his present position. Not but what
some might 'old he went with the 'ouse, after such a many years.
But he was making no claim, from constitutional modesty. My
fathers letter seemed to have been accepted as a guarantee of its
subject's temperance, without critical analysis. It said he had
"become a teetotaller fifteen years ago," which was true. But
it should have added that he had become a teetotaller several
times since, having, of course, each time qualified for doing so
in 'the interim.
The stout cook seemed only capable of receiving one idea at
a time, and had allotted to us the character of frustrated seekers
for Mrs. Marmaduke Watkins. So whether she knew then, or
came to know later, that the house was the home of my boyhood,
I cannot say. The fireman, after jotting down some memoranda
for his official report, said as though another fire expected him
that it was about time he was hooking it. but that before he did
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 329
so he would run upstairs and have a look at how his mate was
going on.
This was too good an opportunity for us to lose of seeing the old
familiar upper regions again; so, as no opposition was offered to
our doing so, we followed him, and were accompanied by Mr.
Freeman, who seemed to assume a proprietorship in the house; in
fact, to become a kind of representative of Mr. Hawkins, who-
ever he was.
The fireman's mate was eating an apple and looking out of
the front attic window. What he said was, " It don't work out
anywhere. I've had a look on the roof," but seemed preoccupied
with the apple. The other walked about the wall with his hands,
hunting for developments of heat. " Don't come to much ! " was
his comment.
Mr. Freeman indicated, by a succession of nods, and a visible
practice of silence, that he could disclose volumes if he chose.
The fireman invited him to speech indirectly, in the words:
" Don't holler too loud, or I shan't hear what you say." Where-
upon Mr. Freeman replied substantially, that he had been in the
confidence of that kitchen chimney for twenty years past ; and
barring once, follerin' on a new cook, it had discharged its duty
efficiently, and its smoke into the zenith, and never so much as
catched alight once. Further, he could testify that after this
exceptional lapse, the wall had been examined by a builder, to
remove a joist that had scorched, being too near the live sut in
the flue. He put in a trimmer to make good, did that builder;
and if there warn't a box stood on the place, the observant eye
might trace his handiwork by the run of the nails on the floor-
board.
The word of the senior fireman to the apple-eater was " ketch
hold ! " and the box was elsewhere instantly. I don't think the
apple was lost; it stood over. The floor proved to be as described
and the fireman admitted that Mr. Freeman was right, though by
some unaccountable accident. He departed, leaving his mate on
guard, and we went downstairs. I am pretty sure that I had not
noticed at the time an extraordinary resemblance of the box to the
celebrated box from which Mr. Freeman had unpacked Euterpe
and Calliope. But not quite sure. Because my powers of recog-
nizing it were paralyzed by the a priori subconscious certainty
that it could not be that box, strangling the entry of the percep-
tion to my mind on its threshold, that it was.
It was strange and uncomfortable to look in at old rooms
I remembered so well for I could not resist the temptation to
330 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
do so, and no one piwi-ntcd me aiul tt> perceive how they had
been transfigured by sacrilegious Hawkins, whoever he was. He
had had the impertinence to allow that fat cook to sleep in my
Chemistry Room; so I judged from its regrettable slovenliness
and a consciousness that the window had not been opened, and
perhaps from a bonnet on the bed with imperial purple ribbons.
He had covered the walls with luxuriant papers whose price I felt
certain had been nicely apportioned to the prospective occupants
of the rooms they covered, that cook's being a triumph of cheap-
ness. His ideas of furniture were beneath contempt, and he had
put all the beds and wardrobes in the wrong places. Still. I am
not sure I did not feel grateful to him for the way he had ar-
ranged, or deranged, the room my mother died in. Any similarity
would have seemed an intentional disregard of the feelings of
survivors. I only got a very hurried peep into my father's old
library, as Cooky urged despatch. " Suppose the family comes
home,'' said he, '* how shall we explain ourselves looking into the
rooms? " I saw that any excursion outside the immediate province
of casual fire-extinguishers would seem unwarrantable, and fol-
lowed him into the street, unnoticed further of any inmate
except Mr. Freeman, of whom we presently became aware, close
behind us, touching his hat. " Ast your pardon. Master Eustace."
said he, " for follerin' of you, but the opportunity seemed 'andy
to mention about them boxes."
"Which boxes?"
" Well them you see. They don't consaru me, and in course
I've work enough to do minding my own business, as you might
say. But it don't cost nothin' to mention a box or two, or maybe
three, if it comes to that."
My subconscious certainty about that box began to waver.
' Why you don't mean to say that's the same box?" said I.
" The very self-same identical Lord-love-you-as-ever-you-was-
born box, Master Eustace! Never been moved out of that very
hattick where it stood all your pa's time, and who so well as me
knows it, having unpacked it with these two 'ands?" He spread
them but in testimony. " And what is more nailed it to again, all
but a pie-god and some skeweriosities in the knife-line. Only you
was too young, Master Eustace, for to notice particulars."
" No I wasn't. At least, I was rather a kid the first time.
How comes the box to be there now? Anything else in it? Any-
thing of value?"
" Not that I could speak to. Unless it's a Horrory. But I
made bold to mention it, seein' I owe my present foot'old in the
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 331
'otise to the Master's recommendation, and the goods is more like
than not to get theirselves lost sight- of."
" But bow did they come there ? I mean how comes it they
are there still? I thought they had gone to my granny's ages
ago."
u So anybody would ! But they ain't, nor yet they won't, onless
sent for. You may put your money on that. Now, like I under-
stand it, it went this way. After the family left, this new lot
come in, 'Awkins by name, and says, they says, 'What's all these
here boxes,' they says. And some on 'em up and says, ' 'Tis the
last peoples not took 'em away,' they says. Then Governor
'Awkins, he says, ' Hind you give me a nudge, my dear,' he says,
' about these here boxes, next time I'm commoonicating with the
late owner,' be says, ' and 111 let him know to send for 'em. 'Cos /
ain't a-going to pay no carriage on 'em,' be says, ' for one ! ' It
was Huntidy Jane told me that, our 'ousemaid at the time, three
lots afore this one. And she let on the boxes was there still six
weeks after, and she mentioned 'em to the missus. And the missus
she says : * Dear me, how very neglectful ! But they can wait a
few days longer, now it's been so long! ' And then they got stood
over, and got stood over, till they just stood theirselves over and
no questions asked. And there they are. Only no 'arm in men-
tionin' of 'em, that I see." As I detected in Mr. Freeman's manner
a combative tone of resentment, quite unprovoked, I hastened to
assure him that his own conduct had been faultless throughout, in
a position requiring a rare combination of intrepidity and reserve.
He seemed partly satisfied ; but not wholly, to judge by the manner
in which he said there was a many would 'ave 'eld their
tongues.
As Cooky had spent the previous evening at The Retreat, he
did not return there with me after this expedition. But I narrated
the whole of it to my family, and was congratulated on the singu-
lar chance which had given me such a much completer entry into
our old house than I had any right to expect. My sister Roberta
and her husband were paying us one of their rare visits that eve-
ning its object was that they should become better acquainted
with their future brother-in-law, Ellen's parson and my narra-
tive gave rise to passages of arms between her and her step-
mother, which I think might have been avoided had Roberta shown
a more conciliatory disposition towards Jemima, who, after all.
had been the great friend of her early youth, and with whom
she had no quarrel except her marriage with my father, which had,
so far, only conduced to his comfort and happiness.
332 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I told my story at dinner, and no doubt was thrown on its
veracity except by Roberta, who received it coldly, and went the
length of saying across the table to her husband: " I suppose you
know that you mustn't believe above half of this boy's romances? "
He laughed uneasily, as one between two fires, but I think got
away cleverly, saying : " What not exactly Gospel eh ? " This
made Ellen uncomfortable, and I feel sure she trod on the Rev.
Irena?us' toe about it, spoiling a look of humorous condonation of
lax speech, which he would otherwise have got through safely.
Gracey took my part at once, saying: "Nonsense! Why not the
kitchen chimney on fire? And of course they went in, to help."
My father deprecated a too close examination of the story, not
to hamper the narrator.
Smoking-time in my father's library that evening only remains
in my memory in connection with his benevolent desire to estab-
lish peaceful relations between his actual and potential sons-in-
law. The attempt proved fruitless; indeed the conditions were
impossible. If they could have quarrelled and fought, Anderson and
Irenwus would have done much better. But what between the
club manners of the former and the Christian meekness of the
latter, it was a hard task to discover a modus vivendi, and my
father gave it up, and fell back on topics of the day. There was
always the Indian Mutiny. But there was nothing to prolong the
symposium beyond the duration of one pipe for my father and a
small cigar for my brother-in-law. And a condition that made
both of them anxious to shorten it was the way in which con-
versation in the drawing-room made itself felt, causing my father
to say to me, aside: " I hope they haven't come to loggerheads
again."
They had, and the fact was painfully clear to us males when
we entered the room. What had been the controversy became a
sudden constrained stillness, and Roberta, as it seemed to me,
made matters worse by saying to Europe generally: " Perhaps we
had better talk of something else." But for this, it would have
been possible to sustain a colourable pretext of faith in milk
and honey and olive branches. As it was, I was not surprised that,
when my father, having put some sotto voce question to my step-
mother, pressed for a reply to it in spite of her, " I'll tell you
presently," they should carry on aside a conversation of which
her share evidently was a version of the loggerhead we had inter-
rupted. On her part it was tearful and tremulous; on his, pacifi-
catory at first; then impressed, with a background of resolution
taking form. Nor was I surprised that Ellen should insulate her
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 333
parson to give him her version, and instruct him I suppose
in the attitude he should assume. But I was when Gracey evaded
answer to an inquiry from me as to what "the row" was, by
saying : " No, Jackey dear, I shan't talk about it. At least
wait! "
I overheard Roberta say to her husband, " It's very easy to talk,
but if you knew what I know " followed by something I could
not catch, and some under-talk between them. She was quite
white with anger, or emotion of some sort, and her words shook
on her lips. He raised his voice a little over hers, so I heard his
words: "Of course you can't say that to your father. I quite
see that. But the whole thing is nonsense sheer nonsense! " To
which she replied, in a tone of savage suppression : " We shall
see!"
The recollection remains with me as a light on the character
of Roberta, its unruly violence and utter want of forgiveness.
For what had her old friend done to be the object of such pro-
longed resentment? She had married a widower certainly not
against his will and possibly for the sake of his daughters, who
were just at the time of life when the need for a mother is most
felt. The same thing very commonly happens, under the same
circumstances. The big parson who comes here to take the duties
occasionally with whom I often get a more intimate talk than I
have had with any man for years has told me how he just
escaped having to marry his sister-in-law because his suffragan
would not allow her to live in the same house to mother over his
daughters, as she had done since his first wife died in their baby-
hood. My father's marriage with Jemima has seemed to me at
times almost as natural as though she had had a blood-kinship
with us children. I am, of course, speaking of times when my
insight into her character still remained practically what it was
at the date of what I am narrating. Roberta no doubt knew her
better than I did, but I cannot believe that she did know anything
to warrant the revengeful spirit which she certainly showed.
As Gracey had stood over comparison of notes on the subject,
I had no choice but to remain an outsider. I was very little the
wiser as to what the breeze had been about in our absence when,
after the departure of the guests, I went with my father into
the library, to sanction with my presence his deferred second pipe,
which he had sacrificed in order to appear as peacemaker in the
drawing-room. I got no enlightenment from him, for he only
said, in reply to cautious inquiry: Bert and your stepmamma
misunderstood one another. They always do.'' Then he brushed
334 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
the subject aside. " Now tell me some more about the Square.
Just fancy those boxes being there still! Are you sure they were
the same ? "
" Freeman is," said I. " But then of course he drinks. I was
only a kid."
" But you thought you did recollect the box."
" Oh yes I thought so fast enough."
" Well it's very funny. That's all I can say." He paused
a few seconds, recollecting " I wrote to your worthy Uncle Fran-
cis about them, enclosing the value of the ornaments I had
taken from the double the value, Stowe said and your uncle
sent me a formal receipt and said he noted the contents of my
letter. Nothing further transpired."
I referred to Mr. Freeman's report of Untidy Jane's obser-
vations of the attitude of the Hawkins family towards these
boxes.
" I think I see how the thing may have happened," said my
father. " Probably when your uncle took possession of the house,
to hand it over to Hawkins, who has bought the lease, he took
good care to ascertain that nothing of value was left in these
celebrated boxes, and put the lids on and left them, promising
to send for them, and forgot all about them. Purposely, I mean !
The devolution of absolutely valueless lumber to others is a lead-
ing instinct of laziness."
I could think of nothing better to say than : " I suppose you'll
have to write and say we saw them? " I wanted him to talk about
the emeute in the drawing-room.
But his mind was on those boxes. " Hardly necessary ! " said
he. " I wrote about them, and he noted the contents of my let-
ter. That seems to me to exhaust the subject. Besides, it's so
long ago." He cogitated a little, smoking; then said: "Can't
help thinking your venerable granny had a finger in that pie.
Don't I recollect something . . . something . . . ? Oh yes, I re-
member! It was Anne Tucker who had something, I forget what,
to do with the former opening of one of those boxes, and your
grandmamma objected to their being opened again in her house
because she conceived that they had been somehow contaminated
by Anne Tucker's moral character. . . . Or wasn't it something
about an insect? I forget! Anyhow, the old lady stood at bay
when the proposal was made to bring the filthy things to her
house. Consequently they were taken to the Square, and there
it seems they are still." He tapped the ashes out of his pipe, keep-
ing his eyes on them as though their past were something like
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 335
his own so I fancy now; I saw nothing then and said with a
sigh : Oh dear, twenty-five years ago now very nearly ! "
I recall all I can recollect of incident connected with those
boxes, as they played so large a part in my life till they and
I wound up our connection with one another, rather abruptly.
Gracey told me something next day of the battle royal which
we had interrupted that evening. Whether she told me everything
I cannot say. I had at the time the impression that she kept
something back.
Jemima we usually called her so when alone had said, speak-
ing of me and Cooky: "Fancy those two boys getting such a
look over the dear old house!" On which Roberta had said, dis-
agreeably: "Are you so jealous of them, Helen? Are you so
anxious to see the inside of the ' dear old house ' ? I should have
thought you would be glad to forget all about it."
" I thought," said Gracey, " that Jemima kept her temper very
well. I mean ' kept her temper ' because of the way Bert repeated
her words ' the dear old house.' You know how nasty Bert can be,
when she likes."
"Rather!"
" Well, she liked. I'm sure Jemima wanted to be conciliatory.
Only she did look very much shocked. I lost my temper with
Bert."
" She's a beast. . . . Well, she's aggravating ! What did you
say?"
" I flared up. I said { Why is Aunt Helen to be gladder to
forget all about it than you or or us ? ' I think I heard Bert
say to Anderson : ' She's only a child ! ' Meaning I wasn't worth
an answer. Why am I to be only a child? Because she's mar-
ried, I suppose."
" You're only two years younger than she is," said I. I was
trying to get outside family tradition, and see it as others saw
it. Gracey seemed to me disproportionately more my age than
Bert, who had enrolled herself among seniors, by marrying. But
if she was a child I was two years more so, and resented the in-
sult. " Didn't her Anderson husband tell her she was a
fool?"
" N no ! But I think he said I was going on for twenty. So I
am, you know. It's no use shutting one's eyes."
u I suppose it isn't. But I don't see what that has to do with
the matter. What did Jemima say?"
" Poor Aunt Helen ! She really looked very much upset, and I
don't wonder. Because I do really think, Jackey .... Oh no
336 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I daresay you don't! . . . that when she married Papa, she
was thinking a great deal about us girls. I really do. And when
Bert turned upon her in this way it was a great shock. It would
have been, to anybody. Why, Bert and she were always . . . were
always "
" In each other's pockets ? "
"I was going to say 'like sisters'. Only "
" Only Jemima's old enough to be Bert's mother ! Well she
is! She's twenty years older. Twenty does." This rather ob-
scure saying meant that mothers of twenty were no rarity. " But
what did Jemima say? M
" She said ' Yes dear Gracey is quite right. Why should I
wish to forget Mecklenburg Square any more than you do any
more than those boys?' Then Bert said with a snap: 'You
know best,' and stood looking savage at her. Aunt Helen said
keeping her temper wonderfully, I must say; I know I should
have lost mine ' I can't understand what you mean, Roberta.
What on earth is it that makes you so furious with me always ? '
And then she thought a little and said: 'Don't you think it
would really be better, my dear, if you were to speak out plainly
and say what it's all about, instead of making mysteries ? ' But
Bert wouldn't answer, and made believe to read Tennyson, and
I thought we might talk of something else. She hadn't done,
though, for she looked up in a minute and said : ' You know
perfectly well that I can't.' And when Aunt Helen said:
'Can't what?' and no wonder, for really it was so long before!
she said : ' Can't speak out plainly. There ! I won't talk any
more about it,' and pretended to read."
" I say what did she mean ? " For I could not understand all
this scrupulousness on Bert's part. Had she not denounced Je-
mima before this in good, round terms for presuming to marry
my father. For that was the head and front of her offend-
ing.
" I think I know what she meant," said Gracey, slowly. Then
to Varnish, who was there, she said quickly : u Don't you, Var-
nish ?"
" I couldn't speak to her, knowing what she meant, Miss Gracey.
But if she'd spoke it out, I lay I should have agreed with Miss
Roberta." I understood this to mean that any censure of my step-
mother would probably have been endorsed by her. For Varnish
had never forgiven the Cat, though she had for a long time
given up applying that epithet to her.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 337
" But I think I do know," said Gracey. " Only one doesn't
like the sound of it in words. She meant that Jemima had thought
over it all before we lost Mamma."
" Why, in course she had ! " said Varnish, uncompromisingly.
" Who was to stop her ? " And then she did make use of that
epithet. "A sly Cat, I say!"
"Oh, Varnish," said Gracey. "How hard you are!"
" I says what I think, Miss Gracey."
" Perhaps she never thought over it aloud ? " I took this as
a discrimination between the attitude of mind which hatches a
plot frankly, and that which shrinks from the terms of its con-
ception.
" ' P'raps ' never got upstairs, as the sayin' is," said Varnish.
I do not, however, believe that Varnish had ever heard this say-
ing, or that such a one exists. She seemed to wish to go out
of the conversation, I thought, but not before she had given
a colour to it. " I shan't say another word," said she. " Only
just you make this young Squire tell you all through what the
doctor gentleman said, outside of Dr. Hammond's in Bernard
Street. All through!" And Varnish gave her whole soul to
darning.
I did as she wished, repeating every word that Mr. Parminter
Harris used, but I confess with some stuttering over his stupid
use of the phrase " poisoning case ". I had already told this to
Varnish, in the morning; and though she did not comment, she
checked off each item of my narrative as it came, with a nod,
as in harmony with the version already given. Neither of them
seemed so much offended as I had been at the way Mr. Harris
had spoken. Dr. Scammony would correct that misapprehension.
The portion of Mr. Harris's observation that seemed to interest
them was his curiosity about my father's second marriage, and
his rather impertinent way of saying he thought it was the
governess.
"I recollect thinking him a cheeky man." said Gracey. How-
ever, we dismissed him as Cooky and I had done, and I asked
Gracey whether there was any more row after that, and she said
heaps. In the course of which it appeared that Jemima had lost
her temper, and cried and got u rather wild." at which Gracey
didn't wonder. And then we had come in. and that stopped it.
" But I really shouldn't be much surprised." said she, " if Bert
and Anderson never come here again. I really shouldn't." To
which Varnish replied : " Lard sakes, Miss Gracey, it's never as
338 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
bad as all that." Then Gracey said : " I don't think it matters,
you know. I don't think anything matters. It seems as if the
old time was all going away, and we could keep none of it."
I recollect a kind of surprise at Varnish saying : " Now you're
not to fret, Miss Gracey. He'll come back a General, Master
Monty will, and he's not the sort that forgets old friends." It
seemed such a sudden jump from the sins of Jemima and the
unforgiveness of Bert. But I understand it all now.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
THE Retreat was sadder than it was ready to admit when the
day came for Ensign Moss's last farewell to it. But it was pleased
to make believe that nothing particular was going to happen.
The only person who referred to it was Thomas the coachman
he occurs, I know, some distance back in this narrative who
addressed me from his box as I waited at the gate for my father
in the morning. I used to get the advantage of a lift to town
in the brougham occasionally, when times and seasons suited. I
need not say that Thomas touched his hat before adventuring into
the wilds of human speech.
" Miss Raynes in the kitchen was makin' mention, last evening,
that Mr. Montague was sailing by the boat, to-morrow morning, for
India."
" She's about right. He's gone into the Army, you see ! " I
was rather proud of having a friend who had gone into the Army.
" I always did think Mr. Montague had the look. There's a
many you can tell off-hand wouldn't make a soldier. There's the
reverend gentleman, Miss Raynes was a-saying, he's a lot best out
of the Army."
"Him! He's only a parson." I think now that perfect justice
might have admitted that my clerical brother-in-law-elect had
never aspired to knighthood or soldiership. He was a person
of staggering meekness, with a slight stoop, and delicate white
hands.
Thomas assented, mesmerizing his horse thoughtfully with his
whip lash, and keeping his eyes on its ears. " Only I should not
have said India was a good climate. Parties I've heard tell of
have died of it. And they're having a bad time out there now,
so they say. Howsomever, we may count on that job being done
by the time Mr. Montague gets out." He discoursed on affairs
military, taking a view like that of the father in Jabberwocky,
that the avoidance of danger was a soldier's first object to con-
sider. He was to heed well jubjub birds, and shun frumious
bandersnatches.
I expressed my conviction that Cooky would exercise every dis-
339
340 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
cretion, but would somehow distinguish himself; and, meeting
with rapid promotion, would shortly become a General of Division.
Just then my father came out, looking at his watch, and we
had to hurry away. " Who's going to be a General?" said he,
having caught the last words of our conversation. " Oh, ah
Nebuchadnezzar, I suppose! By the by, isn't he coming tonight
to give us his blessing?" I said that by the by he was affecting
a manly superiority to human emotion. We conversed about his
departure on. the same lines, and the only concession we made
to the seriousness of the position was that we so very much over-
did our certainty that this row in India would all be over before
he got there. I even made use of the expression that he would
be too late for any of the fun. My father's only censure of this
rather boyish speech was to say drily : " Queer fun, some of it ! "
We were really making believe. I have detected the same attitude
of mind since then, in much civilian conversation about mili-
tary operations. I believe it expresses somehow the readiness of
manhood to serve in the army if called upon ; an inherent fitness
for so doing being common to all Englishmen. This tone can be
indulged in with perfect security in a country where military
service is not compulsory.
Our demeanour that evening, when we were waiting to hear
our guest's knock, would have done credit to Sparta. An atmos-
phere of agreement that no one was on any account to commis-
erate anybody enveloped us. Why father, I think, just overdid the
necessary amount of cheerfulness, being a poor actor. Jemima
maintained an absolute equilibrium. But it may have included a
pretence that she was not relieved.
Gracey was silent and white. As is not unusual with me, what-
ever Ellen was, I cannot recollect it. There are, however, so many
things about that evening I cannot bring back. I cannot for in-
stance remember how or when Cooky arrived, only that we waited
for him. And what followed is a blank, until, as the female por-
tion of the party at dinner abdicates, Gracey says to Cooky:
" Don't be longer than yon need, you know ! " and then that my
mind receives the idea that it is a pity that my friend and my
sister may not possess this hour to themselves this hour that
may be their last! For, suppose a stray Sepoy bullet finds its
way to the heart of the man, will it not find the girl's heart, too?
But we have to do justice to a pretence, or should I say?
to two pretences; one, that he is sure to come back alive in due
course; another, that the interest of each one of us in his return
only differs by more and less; that of the two most affected, Gracey
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 341
and myself, being precisely the same in every particular. On no
account is concession to be made to the girlhood of Gracey and
the manhood of the young soldier. That would never do; it
would be allowing the marriage loom to weave its golden thread
into the correct long-cloth of friendship. Quite out of the ques-
tion, in this case!
Ideas that last a lifetime sometimes date from a particular
moment. I think it was just when Gracey said: "Don't be
longer than you need, you know ! " and I saw hex face, that the
idea was borne in upon me that when the human race allows its
dark and foolish faddles about the Unknown, which I can see no
reason to suppose is not the Unknowable, to sway the ordering
of its lives, it is only surrendering without a protest to its col-
lective egotisms, and cowering at the feet of an insensate graven
image a nightmare indigestion of the sleep of Ignorance. I am
sure that I have held since then a sincere conviction of the wick-
edness of intruding on the lives of others our guidance or coer-
cion masquerading as guidance based on thoughts beyond the
reaches of our souls. I have never found that this conviction
has quarrelled with another equally strong, that there is no more
creditable motive for personal conduct than the one which impels
us to fall in with the general scheme of Creation. Those who
choose to phrase this as obedience to the Will of God may do so,
for anything I care. Provided always that they do not forthwith
proceed to interpret the Will of God, and impose their interpre-
tation on slaves they own, or dupes they make.
I suppose the world never to have been more savagely scourged
than by the religious conviction of kindled egotism that its sin-
cerity confers the right of dictating the lives of others. I remem-
ber now that Cooky once expressed admiration for Torquemada,
for his obvious honesty and his deep sense of duty. Was not his
logic inexorable? Here were Jews galore, all damned, axioinati-
cally. If roasted now, the undamned inheritance would be at its
minimum; there would, in fact, be one damned soul in Hell, in
place of the prospect of an indefinite number. And was not the
worthy Cardinal just as convinced of hellfire for Jews as the earth-
measurer of old was that two straight fences would not enclose a
field? And Euclid is true, anyhow! Come now! Therefore, said
Cooky, this conscientious Inquisitor was only striving to correct
an oversight of Omniscience, and to limit its consequences as
much as possible.
I was quite ready with a tribute to the single-mindedness of
the Holy Office, and of deep religious conviction generally. But
342 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I looked at the matter from the point of view of the personal
inconvenience it occasions its victims. Why torture Jews and
Heretics to death, for anything short of a certainty? Even Euclid,
strong as his conviction must have been that two straight lines
cannot enclose a space, try how they may, never would have given
way to the temptation to burn a fellow-creature who denied that
the squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle are together
equal to the square on its base. Then, to be sure, Euclid never
had a Divine Revelation of the truth of Axiom 10. He may even
have had misgivings about the flatness of the ear. No doubt,
however, an equivalent existed in Greek for the useful adverb
practically. He would have consoled himself with the reflection
that this planet is " practically " flat. How the two straight lines
would have crowed, if each could have produced itself all round
the world, with a double intersection, to be able to " point out,"
to Euclid, that they had actually gone one better than his challenge,
and enclosed him two whole spaces instead of one, as stipulated!
Would Euclid have sanctioned a marriage of his son into a
family that affirmed the rotundity of the earth? Probably, be-
cause it wouldn't have been Religion. Cooky's old mother, whose
heart he shrank from breaking by asking her to accept a Gentile
daughter-in-law, was more certain that her people were the Chosen
of the Lord than Euclid was about those two straight lines far
more certain, because it was Revelation. So overwhelming is the
force of tradition, so unassailable are instructions delivered per-
sonally by the Creator of the Universe the longer ago the better
that both retained their influence over a mind that rejected them
on their merits my friend's mind. It had done this, I am con-
vinced; but the dark cloud of an ancestral belief, combined with
affection for his mother to warp his natural instincts, and drive
him to a desperate expedient to escape from a position whose em-
barrassments must needs grow worse as time went on. That way
madness lay.
This is all retrospect, it shows the position as I see it now. In
what I have written hitherto I have tried to recall only what
seemed real to me then. Probably any one reading it only no
such perusal will ever take place would receive the impressions
I had myself, which indeed had a most unsubstantial character
up to the very moment of Cooky's farewell. Let me get back of
it, and recall all I can. It may shake my faith in my own later
inferences, but I doubt it.
I do remember, as I have said, that a nascent indignation against
the obsession of Life by Creed stirred in my mind when Gracey
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 343
hinted that, in view of the circumstances, Cooky and I might trans-
pire in the drawing-room at the earliest moment usage would
warrant. It was something in Gracey's look that started it, and
it had come to stay; but with very little luggage, so far.
" Don't consider yourselves bound to stop here, you two boys ! "
said my father, who was probably alive to what was going on. I
looked at Cooky, and he at me ; and each look said to the other :
" Suppose we make it five minutes ! " It would have been too
brutal to take immediate advantage of my father's suggestion.
We disclaimed hurry, verbally, and made some parade of the un-
usually normal character of the occasion. My father persisted in
recognizing its exceptional feature, recurring to it candidly. " And
if the regiment remains in India, how long will it be before we
can come back on leave?" said he, meaning by "we," of course,
Cooky. Who replied, I think, three years. " Very well then,
Nebuchadnezzar, we shall be on the lookout for you in three years'
time." We might have believed the Ninth Lancers invulnerable
to powder and shot, for any hint that was given of his never
coming back at all.
We made it five minutes, filled out with talk of this kind. I
suppose we were all aware how hollow the conversation was, and
that it was only maintained like so much conversation to keep
in abeyance the gist of what it professed to deal with. I doubt
if it had reached the end of the short existence we had allotted
to it, when my father cut it shorter still, saying, " Now, sup-
pose you go ! " and we looked at each other, and got up uneasily.
He softened our departure by adding: "It's not good-bye. I
shall see you again presently."
The gas in the entrance hall was flaring, and I stopped to
adjust it, letting Cooky precede me into the drawing-room. When
I followed, I was exasperated to find that Ellen's parson had
managed to get in, unheard by us in the library, and was shaking
hands with Cooky, with a subacute benediction in his manner.
He could forgive Calvary, in Society. I hope I did not touch his
meek conciliatory hand too abruptly. I doubt if I succeeded in
concealing the feeling which manifested itself as unalloyed relief
ten minutes later, when Gracey said to me privately: "Get
Monty into the dining-room, and I'll come." I welcomed the
suggestion, and in spite of a sudden violent solicitude of my step-
mother lest the fire should have gone out in the proposed haven,
succeeded in forsaking the Rev. Irenaeus, who pretended to be
sorry, and wasn't.
"I shall catch it from Aunt Helen tomorrow," said Gracey,
344 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
following us very shortly after. " But I don't care. I must have
Monty the rest of the time. Oh dear, it's such a little time now ! "
Cooky said nothing, but kept looking at the fire, which hadn't gone
out. Then Gracey made an effort, and cheered up. " Never
mind ! " said she. " We can be the Club for more than a hour
yet. Let's be the Club ! " So we made up the fire, and were reso-
lute to forget the shadow of the coming parting. I felt the strain
on my courage; but, as I see now, was strangely blind to the
much greater stress that was must have been felt by both my
companions.
I think they found it a relief to make believe that 7 was the
principal sufferer. "Poor Jackey!" said Gracey. "Whatever he
will do without you to look after him and keep him in order,
I can't imagine."
" Poor little Buttons," said Cooky, commiseratingly. " Hell
have to scrat on." He changed his tone to reassurance. " Oh
he's going to set the Thames on fire. I shall expect him to have
a picture on the line at the Academy by the time I come back. . . .
Well three years is time enough for that. I shall turn up again
in three years, you'll see! I shall be a lieutenant."
"Lieutenant Moss. So you will!" said Gracey. "And Nelly
will be ... Let's talk of how it will be. I like to "
I interposed an impromptu forecast of Ellen's future. " Ellen
will be a she-Parson, in the Isle of Man. With fifty little Par-
sons, always tumbling off the Isle of Man into the water." I
don't think I should have ventured on this phase of possibility,
if it had not been sanctioned, as it were, by Ecclesiastical asso-
ciation.
Cooky rounded off and softened my indiscretion for me. " They
always do have large families," said he, " but "
I said: "Well not fifty perhaps; but lots, anyhow! And
Jemima will be losing her looks."
Gracey objected. " That's spiteful, Jackey ! Fancy Aunt Helen !
She won't lose her looks for another ten years, if she does then.
Isn't she a wonderful woman for forty-four, Monty?"
"You don't mean to say she's that! I thought she was thirty-
nine."
"So she was, once. But do you remember where that was?
That was just when we came from the Square, outside in the
garden. She hasn't kept thirty-nine." This was harking back
on the early days. These ways of putting things were under-
stood by the Club.
Thinking over it now, it seems to me that Cooky must have
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 345
flinched from memories of the past. That would account for the
strain that seems to come on the face that I fifty years later
recall as his at that moment. It seems to shake off something
with an effort, as he says : " Your Governor will have chucked
the Office by then, little Buttons, and taken his pension."
"And Bert? How about Bert?" said Gracey.
" Bother Bert!" said I. "She doesn't matter."
" Well me then ! " said Gracey. " / matter."
"Rather!" said Monty. "Only it's prophesying!"
" Not more for me than for Papa or Aunt Helen or Jackey.
Now prophesy, Monty! Don't be frightened. Be a gipsy. You
look rather like one, you know ! "
Cooky gave an uneasy laugh. His answer was an escape from
a difficulty through an exaggeration. " You'll have married a
Duke," said he.
"Shall I?" said Gracey. Neither of them looked at the other
both at the fire. I remember wondering why she, so pale a
moment since, should flush red. Surely that was not the fire-
light? She went on after a pause of silence: " No Monty! The
Duke will have to wait till you come home. Do you think I could
marry a Duke, or anybody, without first knowing what you thought
of him?"
I have a theory about the meaning of this speech, formed since.
It meant: " We may not love we cannot marry. Cold friendship
is our starvation allowance, but our souls are our own, and mine
is yours." This was too much then for my boyish capacity, and
I took all they said for joking a kind of joking.
I wonder that Cooky's pale set face, as he looked up from the
fire, had no meaning for me. " It would be no use consulting
me. It wouldn't be fair to the Duke. Give the poor beggar a
chance." So he said, and I failed to see that the thin veil of mock-
ery in his words and hers was only a working pretext for a hint
at the truth. How each longed to say: "I love you, but we
must part, before the stupefying necessity of a world-old super-
stition." And yet which of them could speak the word first.
Not the girl, certainly. And how could the man say to her:
" I fear my love for you, and must fly from it, as I cannot face
my own world and its usage of centuries?" For, dwelling on
the question later, I certainly have suspected Cooky of a sort of
cowardice his only cowardice and I cannot think he was much
influenced by official ignorance of Gracey's feelings towards him.
It was, no doubt, correct to say to himself that possibly she looked
on him as an object of unqualified and flavourless friendship, but
346 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I suspect the perfunctory recitation of this formula had very little
weight with him.
I believe that that fictitious Duke was made the stalking-horse
if one may put it so of a compact between them. In the con-
versation that followed, at that last meeting of the Club, I remem-
ber his saying, in the same half -jesting way: "Now mind you
write and tell me when the Duke turns up." Whereto Gracey
replied, with every appearance of meaning what she said : " Yes
I can make that promise." Then the conversation went off sillily
to some joke about the Duke's being his Grace, and her being his
Gracey. When, many, many years after that, I found the letters
Cooky wrote from India, in a drawer where she had put them
with other old mementoes, I read in them his inquiries about this
Duke, and knew what they meant.
If I had had more tact, I think I should have left them alone.
What harm could it have done, to give them that last hour to
themselves? The die was cast, for him. He could not go back
on his undertaking to join his regiment. And that necessity would
have been equally binding on her to say good-bye to him. So
I might just as well have had now the satisfaction of thinking
that the shortness of their last interview was not due to my boy-
ish stupidity. I was, however, not destined to be de trop through
the whole of it.
For after half-an-hour's conversation, weighed always with their
superfluous semi-jocularity, I thought I heard Varnish afar, in-
quiring for Master Jackey. " Suppose you go and see what she
wants, little Buttons!" said Cooky.
I went, and found Varnish on the landing, who threw open
the door of her private den so conclusively, that I walked in.
" I was just upon putting out my light, Master Jackey," said she.
" Because Raynes, she's gone down to the kitchen. So just you
come along in, and tell me ! Where's your pa ? "
" Finished his pipe and gone into the drawing-room. I heard
them all jawing, just now. The Archbishop sneaked in some-
how, while we were in the library, and he's there now, looking
like a fool."
"Where's Miss Ellen?" said Varnish.
" Sitting on the Archbishop's knee," said I, boldly.
"Get along with you, Master Jackey! Both of them know bet-
ter than to. And the family all there looking and seeing! "
" There was only Jemima, when I came out. She's nobody."
" She don't think so herself, I lay. But where are Mr. Monty
and Miss Gracey then?"
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 347
" In the dining-room. There's a fire. We all three hooked
it out of the drawing-room to talk. Cooky's not coming again
you know? At least not till he's back from India." The only
reason why I was so positive of his return, was that any other
issue was altogether too bad to entertain, or at least to recognize
officially.
A satisfied look came on Varnish's face. " There now, Master
Jackey," she said, ''just you leave them be. They can do with-
out you for a bit."
" Oh yes they're all right." I felt that I could safely re-
assure Varnish. " They're not much in the dumps, either of
them. You see, he'll be six weeks on the rbad, and by the time
he gets there all this row will be over. I'm, not in a funk about
Cooky." I believe that in saying this I conceived that I was
offering manly assurance to female timidity soothing the panic
of an alarmist. I don't suppose that Varnish took the slightest
notice of my well-intentioned efforts in the interest of her nerv-
ous system,
"Miss Gracey and Master Monty," said she, "they're very old
friends by now."
" Rather! " said I. " Why I was a small kid at school that time
Cooky came home with me, and the Governor christened him
Nebuchadnezzar. Cooky said Nebuchadnezzar wasn't really King
of the Jews, only it didn't matter." I did not further revive
the controversy that took place at the time, because the author-
ity for the Kingship of the Assyrian monarch over Judah and
Israel occurs only in a poem the censorship should have sup-
'pressed. I continued : '' Oh yes awfully old friends ! Gracey
doesn't half like his going. But that's only because she thinks
he may get killed."
" Miss Gracey and Master Monty," said Varnish, looking at
me with a curious attentive look, " won't be in any hurry to
forget one another." She waited, to hear my answer.
It came, decisively if not lucidly. "Who wants them to?"
" Ah you may say who, Master Jackey ! "
"Well who, then? The Governor doesn't. Sure he doesn't!"
"He's one, doesn't. And Miss Ellen, she's another p'rhaps!"
" Oh Ellen doesn't count. You mean Jemima."
"Well, Master Jackey, suppose I do?"
I reflected. " She oughtn't to count. She isn't in it. How
does she make out it's any concern of hers?"
Varnish was unfavourable to consecutive reasonings, analytical
processes, discrimination of cause and effect. She preferred her
348 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
own unsullied conclusions, arrived at without data, or fuss of
any sort. '* She don't want Master Monty back again, your step-
inar don't," said she, decisively.
"Not if he marries a she-Jew?" said I. .
" Not anyhow. Now, Master Jackey, you bear in mind the ex-
pression I called Miss Evans when I could take the liberty of
speaking. You remember that expression ? "
"Cat!" said I, uncompromisingly. u Sly cat!"
" Sh sh, Master Jackey ! Whatever it was, I called it her then,
but you never hear me call her nothing now."
"Why not? / don't care."
" Any lady your papa marries, Master Jackey, I could wish to
speak well of. And calling Cat is not respectful, say it who may.
So I say nothing, now. But she don't want Master Monty back
again, for all that, and she has her reasons. But it's not for me
to say anything."
Varnish was ascribing to Jemima no reason for wishing to
get rid of Monty except that she thought further development of
his attachment to Gracey undesirable; or, if so, she said nothing
explicit about it to me. I for my part took her enigmatical man-
ner to be warranted by the reluctance I was then beginning to
notice, and have noticed a good deal since, to say nothing what-
ever, plainly, about a love-affair. It is made up for, to some
extent, by a great alacrity in waggery, a ready supply of nods
and winks and lip-telegraphy short of whispers, an instantaneous
reciprocal understanding that puts bystanders at a loss. All this
may be supplemented by archness. But did any one ever say
pointblank: ''John loves Jenny, and Jenny loves John, and
they want to get married." Oh dear, no! he always says he
suspected something there has done so for a long time. And
he and his accomplice in tattle seem mightily amused at this
something!
No doubt Varnish thought me just too young to be alive to
the seriousness of that mystery, Love. It was no accepted con-
vention as to its treatment that made her speech obscure; but as
I suppose, a wish to suggest something to my unreceptive mind
to help it to a complete understanding of the situation. I had
shown a feeble receptivity in that surmise that a change would
come about if Cooky found a mate among his own people, and
Varnish was ready with a handful of seed for the ground half-
tilled.
Nevertheless, unless my memory is at fault, her manner was
odd. I am ready, however, to suppose that my recollection of it
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 349
colours, or discolours, what she seems to me now to have said
at the end of this short interview, before I rejoined Gracey and
Monty downstairs.
For she seems to me, after repeating a second time that it's
not for her to say anything, to continue thus: "Anyways, I
know what Miss Roberta would say, speaking her free mind like
she does, and can, being at Roehampton." This local reference
was not what puzzled me, being nothing but a daring omission of
explanation. It was what followed : " What now was the name
of the doctor you saw ? Dr. Partner Harris ( "
" Mr. Parminter Harris, with a plaid scarf and giglamps. But
he's Dr. Scammony's partner." This was to extenuate Varnish's
misreading of the name.
She nodded an assent to some thought of her own, and said,
quite or nearly inexplicably: "And Master Monty living in
Doughty Street, close handy. That's what Miss Roberta would
say, anyhow! "
" You mean," said I, fishing for illumination, " what he said
about Jemima being the governess?"
" That's the bit you heard," was the reply. And my powers
of recollection serve me no further. We certainly talked a minute
or so longer, making a foundation for a superstructure I built
afterwards, to the effect that Jemima would welcome any dis-
sociation from such as had known her at the Square, and also
their dissociation, so far as it was possible, from one another.
Or at least that my married sister, " Miss Roberta," would say
so; that being, as it were. Varnish's stalking-horse from which
to promulgate this view of the subject. She reined it up sud-
denly to say to me : " I lay it's time for you to be going back.
Squire!" I thought it might be, for anything I knew to the
contrary, and went.
I stopped earnest conversation in the dining-room; and, strange
as it seems to me now, did not see why I should not do so. They
had had their innings, according to my ideas. And here was
Cooky, going away for good, in less than an hour's time! I was
beginning to be awake to the uncomfortable reality of parting.
They were not close together, and I think I understand that
now, when I look back and see what their relation really was
at that moment. She so afterthought on the matter tells me
had been, for longer than he knew, the ruling force of his life,
although the correctitudes of nationality and creed had forbidden
him to think her so. He had been the same to her, but more
safeguardedly, under the reserves every girl has to make to-
350 OLD MAX'S YOUTH
wards any man who has not laid his heart open to her. Her
course of conduct had only been the one hundreds of women have
to put in practice; indeed, my own suspicion is that most women's
experience teaches them at least sympathy with those who have
to practise it. He had presumed a little or had he not? on the
claim the superior creature Man makes to priority of action,
which it has pleased him to determine is a fundamental essential
of human nature. Poor Cooky ! If he had done so he had been
over-confident of his own self-mastery. And now the terrible
moment had come, when all his fortitude was to be put to the
test. I can see now plainly why he dared not go too near the
lips he was not to kiss. But courage! if he could counterfeit
friendship for another hour, it would be all over, and it would be
open to both to make believe that they had kept their hearts
bolted and barred against Love.
The two earnest voices died down as I came down into the
room, and the only words I caught were, " Well we shall see,"
from Gracey. I asked her afterwards what they had been talk-
ing of when I came in, and she said, " Oh nothing ! " and she
had forgotten.
As I remember, we sat silent, or said very little. It was the
first and only time the Club had found itself tongue-tied. Cooky
might have been stone, so still was his face and so white, as
he stood with his elbow against the mantelshelf, his free hand
making some pretence of using the poker to economize a coal
which had to maintain the character of the fire, doomed to short
life by an empty scuttle. I was fool enough to be glad to note
that. Gracey's large blue eyes were free of tears, to which I had
at that time of my life an amazingly strong objection. But I
was not clever enough to understand why her lips moved so un-
easily, nor why her fingers interlaced and caught, convulsively. I
know now, and know what she felt, and why.
I thought, in the silence, I had never heard the black marble
clock on the mantelpiece tick so loud. Indeed, as a matter of
fact, I had never noticed that this clock did tick, though I had
known it from babyhood. I had accepted it as a fact, that would tell
the time, and that went. Some one else always wound it up, in the
nature of things; but, as for its tick, it was always there, and
had gone on steadily in vain as far as I was concerned. I felt
now as if it had become vociferous, and was shouting that it was
a quarter-to-eleven, our official day's end. And I was not grateful.
Cooky looked suddenly at his watch, and broke the silence.
" I tell you what," said he, " I shall go into the drawing-room
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 351
again, and get my good-bying done, and then come back here."
This postponed the evil climax, if only a few minutes, and was
welcome.
"What were you and Varnish talking about upstairs, Jackey?"
said Gracey, when Cooky had left the room.
I had to stop a moment to consider what. Varnish really had
been saying, so enigmatical had her share of the conversation
been. I decided on, '' Pitching into Jemima," as a good, safe,
general inference. Then I qualified it : " Or, at least, saying
what Bert would say, only she means she agrees."
u What did she say Bert would say ? "
It was one of my misfortunes, in youth, that I never could stand
cross-examination. I was sorry I had said so much, and tried
to back out. " Oh well she doesn't really mean it, you know."
" But what doesn't she really mean ? Don't bottle up, Jackey
darling! Tell me right out."
Then I saw how really anxious Gracey was to know. And how
could I have any secrets from Gracey? ''She's got hold of an
idea," said I, " that Jemima isn't sorry Cookv's going."
"But why?"
I felt my difficulties. I had to manage confession, somehow,
without direct reference to the thing I had to confess. I was
not prepared to admit that any iendresse, or anything beyond cor-
dial friendship, had been ascribed to my friend and my sister.
But I was beginning to feel the nature of the position. I an-
swered : '* I suppose it's because Cooky's a Jew."
Gracey seemed to accept this as an unfinished speech, waiting
as though to hear more. Then she said interrogatively:
" That . . . ? " as though asking me to complete my sentence.
" That what ? " said I.
"That he ought to go and get killed in India? . . . Monty
ought ?"
" N no ! That Jemima doesn't cotton to him."
But Gracey was not to be put off with a makeshift. " Why
doesn't Aunt Helen cotton to Monty because he's a Jew?" said
she. That meant, why did Jemima allow herself to be influenced
by racial and religious considerations in a case where the person-
ality of their subject cancelled them at sight? Indeed, I had heard
her admit, in controversy with Gracey, the extreme improbability
of Cooky taking part in orgies wherein the blood of young Chris-
tians was decanted for unholy purposes, whatever the practice
of St. Mary Axe and Palestine might be.
I was hiding one aspect of the case from Gracey, and I knew
352 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
it. And yet, why should there be secrets between us. This was
contrary to nature, surely. I bethought me of an indirect way
of grappling with the subject, which had served me well before.
" I don't expect," said I, " that Jemima would be so fierce about
it if Cooky was engaged to be married to a she-Jew."
Then I saw how that restless working of her fingers grew,
and heard the tremor in her voice as she said : '' Oh. Jackey,
do you mean that Monty is going to India to be killed because
of me?"
I said : " That's not the way to put it. Cooky's going to
India because he wants to be a soldier. Perhaps if he was en-
gaged to Miss Solomons, Jemima wouldn't be glad he was going.
That's about all. It's only Jemima."
"Jackey darling, be a good boy and talk seriously. Look now!
It isn't as if Monty and I didn't both know. We know we can't.
I see we can't. You see we can't ? "
" Oh, I understand quite well. Because of this beastly Chris-
tianity " I was stopped by the want of the word Judaism, not
one familiar to my lips, and had to find a substitute. I added,
after a pause: "And Jewification."
Gracey was not Ellen, and tolerated my language, taking no
notice of it. " That's right. That's how it is. But we can't
help it. We can't alter things. What must be, must. But why
must we lose Monty because we cannot be ... because of ...
because of that?" I noticed or my memory notices now that
an excruciation came in her voice whenever it flinched from speech
about Love or Marriage. Also I think now that she found it
easier always to speak of our joint affection for Monty than of
her own alone. Mine was sponsor for hers, and all that I felt
at his departure she had an unquestioned right to feel.
I think I half-understood this then; for, after attempting, trans-
parently enough, to revive an ungrounded confidence in the early
extinction of the Mutiny, and the security in the near future of
the Ninth Lancers, I ventured on an unwarranted forecast: "I
say, Gracey, how do we know they won't have put a stopper on all
that rot by the time he's back? It may be three years, you
know ! ' I don't know who were the " they " I was referring
to. But I was giving them short allowance of Time, consider-
ing the strength of the convictions they would have had to sur-
render.
'Silly Jackey!" said Gracey. And then, hearing the drawing-
room door open and close, we let the subject drop, for Cooky
was coming. The moment was at hand terribly near now! I
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 353
could see how ashy white both my companions were, and could
feel how their hearts beat, as indeed mine began to do, too.
For I was getting to a fuller understanding of their position
rapidly.
"Is the Governor coming out?" said I, to break the silence,
which was oppressive; all the more so that Cooky came into the
room almost as one enters a sick chamber, closing the door
gently.
' I think not," said he, and his voice was husky. " I didn't
ask him not to, but I fancy he won't." Then he made an effort
to speak more unconcernedly, and seemed to find a relief in a
subject with a smile in it. " The Archbishop is just gathering
up to tear himself away. He knows he mustn't stop after
eleven." I helped with a rather perfunctory laugh.
Gracey ignored the Archbishop, without a smile. " When shall
we get our first letter?" said she.
He made a great effort to pull himself together. " I shall
have a long letter ready, in case we put in at Madeira," said
he. and his would-be cheerful tone was as bad as any depres-
sion. " Anyhow, I shall send a line from Southampton. They
say the weather's going to be good. Of course, it will be a bit ^
rough in the Bay. It always is. But it won't hurt me. The
sea doesn't. Some of our officers are going overland to Suez.
I don't envy them I would sooner go the long way. Only they
will have forgotten all about the Mutiny by the time we get
there."
" I hope they will," said Gracey. But she made no response
to his attempt at cheerfulness, and it would have been useless,
with that white face and that tremor on her lips. He stuck
bravely to the task he had assigned himself, the playing out his
part to the end, and chatted on about how, when he came back,
it might be through the new canal, which at this time was
discredited in England as rather a canal in the clouds, so that
his reference to it was scarcely serious. But it did not help him
much; his pleasantry over it was too mechanical. I was not
sorry when Gracey said: "Hush, don't talk! There's the Arch-
bishop going. They'll hear us." Whereupon we were silent, and
sounds of dispersal and departure followed, ending up with some
bed-room candlestick finalities in the lobby, and a retreat to
roost, complicated with the appearance of the household, or some
of it. to shut up. Then silence without, and Cooky saying
huskily, through a long-drawn breath : " Well I shall have to
go in the end. Better make it now, and get done with it!"
354 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
What follows is strong in my memory. As Cooky takes his
farewell clasp of my hand, his lies on my shoulder. " Good-
bye, dear little ehap," he says, speaking to me always as though
I were still the very small schoolboy in need of protection. I
am aware that Gracey's side-face, as she turned away, has a
bitten underlip; but I am thankful to feel that she will not break
down. Indeed, my great anxiety is that we may all comport our-
selves immovably, like Hurons or Iroquois. My own belief is
that many male cubs share this mental attitude. Emotion is the
one thing to avoid.
I am further relieved when Cooky says Amen to our particular
farewell, utilizing as I now conjecture a slight noise in the
passage to terminate it. " See if that isn't your Governor, not
gone to bed," he says. I go, to see.
The noise was my Governor, pausing doubtfully, with a bed-
room candle near the stairfoot. " I hear the Knight Errant
hasn't gone," says he. " I mean Nebuchadnezzar."
" Oh no Cooky's there, all right enough. He'll be going
directly." ^
" Yes go in here," says he, pushing the library door. I have
made no suggestion to that effect, but I accept his. " I told
Raynes not to wait up to lock up," he says, and I perceive his
compressed meaning. He keeps the door ajar as he stands there
listening for the final farewells in the room opposite. He may
have heard more than I, for he says : " I thought so," to him-
self, although my hearing it was immaterial.
I can hear no more than that the two voices are strained,
and that there are tears in Gracey's. Then, at last, that he is
going, and the door is opened, making words here and there
audible. For all that their tension is so palpable, I can dis-
tinguish this that up to this moment neither has played ill the
part conventions have dictated. They are two friends, look you,
still! No more than that two friends whose journey is along
roads apart, for awhile yet, but who will meet again when the
roads meet, three days hence; or weeks, or years, as may be.
And from their voices in the passage I can tell that each is
bravely struggling to play out this part to the last. They are
almost making a parade of their farewell, being but as other
farewells an unusually normal one even!
I wanted to follow them, or at least to be in time to catch
Cooky and walk with him so far as he went afoot, for I clung
to the last moment. But my father said, " No stop ! " and
remained, listening. Presently he said: "I said good-bye to
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 355
Nebuchadnezzar. But the Father of the Church was there, and
we didn't exactly have it to ourselves. Just you peep out, and
report progress. When they're done, I'll come out and say good-
bye again."
I stole out cautiously towards the front door, hearing as I
went the words " Good-bye " from her, in a breaking voice, and
from him "Yes now good-bye," very huskily spoken. But his
speech ended in an audible gasp, and there came a cry from her :
" Oh, Monty, Monty, we shall never see each other again ! " Their
resolution had broken down, just at the last moment.
To find whether I might legitimately join them, to stop his
running away without me, and also to say that the Governor
was just coming out, I looked furtively round the corner of the
door. It was no surprise to me that they should be fast locked
in each other's arms. The other way round would have been the
surprise to hear a cold good-bye of any sort, a mere conventional
valediction ! What is strange to me now is that I remember so
distinctly a feeling of grievance that my manhood and Cooky's
stood in the way of my hugging my farewell into him also.
Think of what he had been to me for so many years !
It may be that the words I overheard then did more to show
me what I had not understood before, than anything that pre-
ceded them. ''Dearest forgive me I could not help myself!
Oh, I must go I must go I have to go!" My impression is
that Gracey said : " Dear Monty, forgive you kissing me ! Oh,
why not ? " But as he repeated, with a voice that caught. " I
must go," I, fearing that he might go without seeing me, called
out to stop him, saying he should wait to say good-bye to the
Governor. He would not wait, and Gracey came in and passed
me quickly, stopping a second to put up her cheek to her father,
who only said, as he kissed it: ''Poor child, good-night."
" I'll catch Cooky and walk a little way with him," said I,
hurrying into my great coat. M'y father said : " Well take the
door-key." And then, as this involved some lock adjustment and
delay: ''Never mind trot away! I shan't be going to bed just
yet. Only don't be too long." So I got away as quick as I could.
But I did not catch Cooky, and his first letter told us he had
jumped into a hansom just outside the gate into King's Road;
so it was little wonder.
I think I ran as far as the ironmonger's expecting to overtake
him, but only overtaking the previous omnibus and seeing he was
not in it. I went back and found my father finishing a letter, and
we locked up and said good-night on the landing. I did not
356 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
catch what he said to my stepmother, who said something to him
as he entered his room. But I am pretty sure her reply was:
"Oh, my dear, what nonsense! Girls must sometimes, whether
they like it or no. Why it would have been simply awful!"
I could imagine a context, but I see no object in doing so.
Whether I heard Gracey crying in her room as I passed the
door, or only thought she must be crying, I do not know. Fifty
years is a long time, and I often doubt if what I seem to remem-
ber so well is not a mere fetch of Memory an effort to assuage
the hunger of Oblivion.
I know the news came in the Spring the news of his death,
I mean. I am all at fault now about the story of it the phase
of the Mutiny that was active at the time. If I had to guide any
historian to accuracy of place and hour, there is nothing I could
swear to except that it occurred very shortly after the death of
Havelock. But then I am equally certain that Cooky was killed in
the attack on Cawnpore. And had not Havelock taken Cawnpore
in the Summer, so that we had the news of it shortly before Cooky
sailed in the Autumn? I have got the whole thing inextricably
muddled. But, after all, what does it matter?
I only remember the coming of the news. It came the day after
Ellen's wedding. I have reason to believe that my father connived
at the shortness of his eldest daughter's engagement, in order
.that he might be released the earlier from the respectful visits of
the Archbishop, who came up from the remote Isle of Man not
less than three times. Of course he came every day to the shrine
of his Goddess; puzzling me extremely, for said I to myself
what he wants so much of Ellen for I can't imagine! I have seen
couples both of the constituents of which have appeared to me
repugnant to human nature, and have marvelled why they have not
been so to one another. Without saying so much of this pair, I
certainly felt impressed with the Wisdom of Providence, which
had presumably incited their mutual flame, as a setoff against the
indifference of the remainder of mankind to both. Anyhow,
wedded they were, at St. Luke's Chelsea, and got rid of in a
shower of three-pennyworth of rice and one old slipper. After
which, a survival of wedding guests, dispersing gradually, disguised
the fact that the remainder of the day had been destroyed for
any useful purpose, at least so far as the bride's family were
concerned. The said guests were better off, at least in so far as
that they were able to shake free of a sort of spray of crumbs and
cake, pulled crackers and sugar plums; to say nothing of two
very young bridesmaids one of whom ate too many macaroons
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 357
whose nurse was bidden to come for them, but could not find the
house to take them home as appointed. There were other afflic-
tions, to wit, a respectable man who came out on jobs of the
sort, and devoted himself to preventing the guests getting what
they wanted, and which is what is called waiting; and a modern
version as I suppose of Sneak's noise, which cited the Past as a
justification of its unwelcome presence, but thought ten shillings
too little, and got more.
However, Ellen's nuptials only occur to my mind because they
fix a date. Next morning found the four survivors of the previous
day mysteriously eager to see the announcement of the ceremony
in The Times, each attempting to capture the advertisement-sheet
when Raynes brought it in out of the wet into which a miscreant
called The Boy had flung it over the garden gate. It seemed a
consolation for yesterday's sufferings, but I don't know why. I
feel certain that even my father shared this feeling; though, to
do him justice, he concealed it. " I can't imagine," said he. " why
you want to see the blessed advertisement. Aren't you convinced
they are married? "
<% I'm not, for one! " said Gracey. " One likes to see it in print,
anyhow. Let me look, Aunt Helen, you've got all the paper."
She ran through the text half-aloud, ending audibly: "'Ellen
Wigram eldest daughter of Nathaniel Pascoe ' that's you !
' Esquire.' But you haven't put when she was born."
" My dear! " said my stepmother. " What nonsense you are
talking! You're thinking of funerals." Gracey denied this, and
affirmed that of course advertisements of weddings always gave
the ages of the couple. But she retracted, after a short excursion
among the other announcements, saying: "Well it was a mis-
take."
My father maintained a show of stoical indifference, but I
noticed that when The Times was ultimately yielded to him, he
glanced at the advertisement sheet en passant in folding it back
so as to get at the latest intelligence. He could do this without
prejudice to his self-respect, as the task of adjustment was com-
plicated. Then he got at the leaders and the summary, and be-
came absorbed.
" It's all very well to talk." said I, continuing the conversation
the advent of The Times had interrupted. " But I saw Nankivell,
with my own eyes, carry away a bottle of champagne two-thirds
full, and bring in a full one that had just popped. And Varnish
says Raynes says Thomas had to see him home. So there!"
Nankivell was the respectable hireling, over whom Thomas, his
358 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
friend had endeavoured to draw a veil, saying he had never
known him touch anything, or he would not have spoken for him.
I think Thomas had better have stopped at that, and not tried to
whitewash Mr. Nankivell further by saying it was his eyesight.
Amblyopia does not cause inarticulate speech, nor ill-judged jocu-
larity.
" One has to allow them a little latitude at weddings," said
my stepmother, looking handsome, and eating nothing. She had
had a bad night, as I understood. This habit of sleeping ill
seemed to grow upon her, and my father worried over it a good
deal, I am afraid. " We shan't have any more of them, that's one
comfort ! "
" Respectable men ? " asked my father, showing consciousness
of public affairs, although deep in Lord Palmerston and Mr.
Disraeli.
" No ! Weddings." .
" I don't see how you can know that, Helen." I saw that my
father was a little froisse by this classification of Gracey for
it amounted to that both by his tone and by the way he felt for
the outline of one of his cheekbones. " Have you been at Gracey's
horoscope again ? "
"Dear Gracey!" said Jemima then; as I thought, offensively.
" I really quite forgot Gracey. Oh no! we haven't been horoscop-
ing, this time." And she made her speech still more offensive by
patting Gracey's hand down on the tablecloth. Gracey was for-
giveness itself she always was and not only left her hand in
pawn, but said: "Come, Aunt Helen, you know it didn't show
at all yesterday in the Church, and nobody saw it. Varnish says
they didn't."
I can't say that any one, before the wedding, had gone so far
as to suggest that Gracey should abdicate as bridesmaid in favour
of an undisfigured sample; but a flavour to that effect had got in
the air, and had certainly touched my nostrils, and perhaps my
father's. I waited for some expression of indignation from him,
but none came, and then I saw that something in the newspaper
had engrossed him, and that he had probably not caught Gracey's
last words, which were the key to the inner meaning of the pre-
vious conversation. I myself was in a great hurry to get off to the
Academy, and only noticed further that my father, when applied
to for "some of" The Times, said: "Yes presently! You
shall have it all directly." Which might quite well have meant
nothing unusual, for our family tradition was that its head was
not to surrender The Times one moment sooner than he chose,
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 359
however clamorous the demands for it might become. It was a law
of Medes and Persians. I did, however, suspect something when he
refused a second cup of coffee, and withdrew into his own room
somewhat abruptly.
I had all but started when I heard him speak to my stepmother
from his library, and her reply : " Yes I'll come in a minute or
two." Then that he came to the door to say : " No come now !
I have something to tell you." His voice meant that the something
was a bad something, and the broken interchange of speech that
followed on the closing of the door, that it was worse. I guessed
that it was Indian news.
Gracey came halfway down the stairs from her bedroom she
had gone up to get ready to go out and said: "Is anything
wrong? I thought I heard them talking." For voices would
penetrate floors in some parts of the house.
I answered, uneasily and huskily enough, that some news had
come. She became white, and looked very hard at me. " I know,"
said she. " It's Monty hush ! " She waited, listening to the
voices in the library. " I wish they would come out and say at
once, instead of talking."
The voices stopped, and my stepmother came out, cautiously.
"Have you seen your sister? . . . Oh, here she is! ... Both
of you come in to your father. . . . Yes he has found some news."
She did not go back, but waited. Nor did I at once follow Gracey,
who went in, without hesitation. She did not cry out when her
father said to her as she told me later; I could not hear what
he said : " I have some news from India, darling bad news ! "
She said: "Yes go on!"
Then I too followed, in time to catch his words : " He has been
rery badly wounded, at Cawnpore."
I did not see what Gracey saw at once, that this was only prepar-
ation foi the truth. And indeed I still hoped she might be mis-
taken, when she turned to me and said : " Oh, Poor Jackey !
What will you do? Monty is dead! " My father said nothing.
How many years older did I grow in the minutes that followed,
I do not know. But I know that I mustered manhood, then and
there, to break down without disguise, and cry like a child. It was
a step on towards maturity.
Looking back now, I still see my cubhood in this, that I scarcely
thought of Gracey. I had, as it were, her sanction for a selfish
surrender to my own grief; and I certainly took advantage of it.
All my memories of my dear schoolboy friend and one knows
how deav school-friendship can be came rushing through my mind
360 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and knocking at my heart. Not only memories of himself, but of
all things he had part in. I could see again that repellent wash-
house at the school, and that incorrigible bully Nevinson, beaten to
pulp and mad with entire defeat, trying to wash away the stains
of the combat. I could smell the yellow soap and circular towels,
and hear the bleating of the unhappy washer's wrath. Then next
day Cooky's voice, speaking to me for the first time, while his
strong hand ruffles my head, as an expression of pure goodwill:
" Ain't you the little beggar he was sitting on ? I like you. I think
I shall call you Buttons." Then how I boasted of Cooky to Gracey,
and she said : " You must bring him home and show him to us."
And how I resented the presumption that so great a creature could
be brought home at pleasure. But he came, after asking was I
sure my Governor would "stand it"; which my Governor did, and
christened him Nebuchadnezzar.
And now the end of it all had come. I knew it by my father's
silence when Gracey said: "Monty is dead." And for the mo-
ment I was stunned into knowing no grief but my own. I was
deceived too by her apparent calm, for there was no change in her
beyond her extreme pallor. My father was not taken in, but I was.
Or perhaps I should say that I found it easier to be taken in, and
welcomed the deception. He, I have no doubt, accepting her self-
command as a wish that none not even he should pry too closely
into her heart, had to be content with silence. I think both of them
found a kind of relief in ascribing prior rights of grief to me, as
having known its object three months longer. Even so a cente-
narinn still feels the seniority, that was his in youth, over a
brother of ninety-nine.
.Memory loses a few moments and then is aware that my father
has left the room and is speaking with my stepmother in the pas-
sage. Gracey has gone upstairs, to her room probably. What is
that Jemima is saying of her, outside^
'* My dear you will see it will be exactly as I told you. She
is taking it most sensibly. But of course, apart from anything
of that . . . that sort, it is the loss of a friend." Then their
voices fall, and I hear nothing but that he will leave me alone for
a bit, and then come back and tell me about it. And then I have
an impression, probably a false one, that there are symptoms in
Jemima of that serene optimism, resignation to the troubles of
another. A hazy fancy about a person on the other side of a nearly
closed door is not worth much.
I knew all about it before my father came back to tell me, for I
f?ot at The Times. Cooky had volunteered to go with two or three
361
others on a hazardous mission to bring in the wife of an officer
then in hospital in Cawnpore, who was said to be in concealment
with her young child, at some outlying compound in a district
still in the hands of the insurgents. I repeat the story just as I
recollect it; but, it may be, inaccurately in some points. The lady
and child were brought back safely by the officer in charge, but one
officer and two privates of his regiment, and three Sikhs, were
killed or taken prisoners in covering their retreat from a party
of pursuers. The success of the rescue was due, said the survivors,
to the intrepid daring of the covering party, the leadership of
which had fallen to a young officer, a subaltern who had joined
recently, of whom the only survivor said, that had it not been for
him. not one of the party would have returned to Cawnpore. That
young officer's name was Ensign Montague Moss, of the Ninth
Lancers.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I AM ashamed to have to write it, but do so with a sense of
confession and absolution, which is not without its compensation.
I never really cared one straw for the employment I had embarked
upon. My motive for adopting the Fine Arts as a profession was,
so far as I can analyze it, entirely one of personal vanity.
No one suspected this at the time least of all myself. Indeed
there was a kind of substratum of modesty in my delusion which
misled me. The thought that such an insignificant unit as myself
should be endowed with the divine fire that had burned in the
souls of the great painters of past ages was a consolation for that
insignificance which I could scarcely be expected not to lay to
heart. It was not because I was self-satisfied, but because I was
self -dissatisfied, that I jumped at the decision of Jacox in which
the simplicity of my soul never detected the sneer that I was
manifestly a dab at that sort of thing. That was the spark that
kindled my egotism, which really was at the time neither greater
nor less than that of any other crude boy of fair ability.
Mrs. Walkinshaw fanned the flame, so far as I can guess, from
sheer unqualified love of gushing. She was, you see, all soul!
She intoxicated me with the names of great Italian Artists of by-
gone time, the mere repetition of which is enough to make the
divine fire aforesaid glow in any bosom that is respectably sym-
pathetic. The resonance of Leonardo and Michelangelo had much
to answer for with me, long before I knew enough of either to
discriminate between their respective works.
But of all the fatal influences that worked for my destruction, I
do believe none was worse than the letter of that lying married
niece of old Gromp, who had not a particle of justification for her
statement that he had said anything whatever about me and my
drawings. I can even believe that my Evil Genius killed Gromp,
to prevent his telling me unpalatable truths; or would have done
so if the Nature of Things had permitted of his own existence.
For my father, much at a loss about me and my vocation in life,
always had that unfortunate piece of false information to fall back
upon. Had not a real live Royal Academician, applauded my
362
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 363
work? He clung to this as self -justification. My conscience once
prompted me to hint that Gromp had seen too little of my work
to form a judgment. " The less the better! " said my father. " It
shows how strong his impression was. Perhaps if he had seen a
few more portfolios full, he would have said you were Michel-
angelo ! " I cannot blame myself for having made no further
protest, to correct a mistake which seemed to me in my own in-
terest. I was nevertheless convinced that that married niece was
a liar.
However, there I was an Art Student! It was a safe anchor-
age, this Art Studentship, involving me only in the practice of an
easy dilettantism, intersected by amusement. I managed some-
how to steer clear of the slime which hung, metaphorically, about
the garments of many of my fellow-students. But then I had an
advantage over them. I had to look my father in the face when I
returned home after work. What sort of fathers, I wonder, had
they to keep them in check? The paternal influence, like that of
Uncle Remus's mud-turtle among the animals and beastisses, was
powerfully lacking, so far as I saw. And besides, they may not
have had such a sister as mine, or any sister at all. That would
make an enormous difference.
I find myself thinking of my twentieth year, and unable to dis-
tinguish any great difference from myself of two years before.
The loss of my old school-friend had made a difference a great
difference at home; but, at the Academy! what shall I say?
Suppose I put it that my education continued, with the proviso
that no one ever taught me anything. As far as the time it lasted
went, it certainly was a good education a liberal education, in
one way. If I had only been taught something! that was all
that was wanted. The only instruction I received was negative.
The visitor or Curator would glance over my shoulder en passant
and say, " You'll never do anything that way ! " and would pass on
to his appointed task of neglecting some one else. What he said
was true beyond a doubt. But there are so many ways of paint-
ing a head wrong. If it had been humanly possible to try them all,
no doubt I should have lighted on the right way at last. Even
so the performer in the game called " Magic Music " is made to
solve his problem in the end. Yet even he has an advantage which
I had not. Nobody played loud, triumphantly, when I came within
range of sound drawing or sane colour. The visitor might have
said to me. for instance, " That nose is the right length," or, " red
enough," as might be, and I should have left it alone, and gone
on to some other feature.
364 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
There was one fatuity that I engaged in at this time which,
though it did not make an Artist of me as why should it?
made a fool of me. Or shall I rather say made me make a fool
of myself? Whichever way I put it, it comes to the same thing;
it certainly made me, for awhile, a greater fool than it found me.
However, I may have been the wiser for it after. Who
can say?
The fatuity in question was miscalled copying Old Masters at
the National Gallery. It was at the National Gallery all right
so far, and the picture I set about to reproduce was old four
hundred years old, I believe and the work of a Master. Of how
consummate and stupendous a Master you will know when I
tell you it was the Doge Loredano. No less! But the erroneous
part of the description is in the word " copying." I take it that
my delusion that I could " copy " the miraculous picture was dis-
tinct evidence that I literally could not see it that I was in fact
as blind as a bac! However, I prevented some one else "copying"
it for three months that is some consolation !
Of course I did not interfere with the young lady who was at
it already. I took a place that was just vacated by her sister, who
had actually been copying the Doge in pastels! I did not see the
work, but I saw the dowry of pulverized washerwoman's blue and
chrome yellow she had bestowed on some yards of floor round
about, and wondered which part of the picture had been painted
with it.
The sister on the contrary appeared to practise a great modera-
tion in materials. She only had a chair, and worked on a block
in a sketch-book. She was a water-colourist, with too little water
and a very small box of half-pans of colour which were always in
extremes; either parched and curling up; or glutinous, like her
gamboge, which was running over into her ultramarine, and was
presumably the cause of my scraping acquaintance with her.
It was not on the first day of my affront to John Bellini, as I
remember that the sister's polychromatic residuum had vanished
before some washerperson in the employ of the State. I remember
this because the sister, coming back like a ghost from another
world, and said audibly: u Oh, I see they've cleaned up after me."
A speech which, very mysteriously, remained in my head, the rest of
the day, being supplied also with a figure to speak it, whose grace
remains vivid still in my imagination, though I have no doubt
time has exaggerated it, as well as the beauty of the dark eyes
that glanced slightly at me as their owner spoke, under cover of
the pretext supplied by the reinstated floor-boards. I don't sup-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 365
pose that those fine eyes squinted, nor may they have intended to
look scornful, as I was such an utter stranger, and contempt
would have been so unprovoked. But they did something that
must have been squinting, as they gave the impression that they
thought the tip of her nose better worth looking at than me. And
the fine eyelids seemed to imply, by only rising just high enough,
that the eyes were not on duty, but could be, on occasion shown.
This young man was not an occasion, and if his image was blurred
by fine long eyelashes, what matter? The droop of rippled hair
over those eyes was not a fringe fringes proper came later
but a compact between two friends a comb had parted, to hide
as much brow as the neighbourhood supplied. I doubt whether
Adeline that was her name, heard afterwards had any forehead
to boast of, and this arrangement not only slurred over the de-
ficiency, but claimed damages for any libellous doubt thrown on
the subject.
I was not an impudent young man enough to get more than a
furtive glance at this beauty, but what I got seems to have re-
mained with me. In fact, after fifty years I do not find that her
image has paled in the least, though its import for which I can
find no other name has collapsed altogether. I do not condemn
her now for the effect she produced on me. It was only an uncon*
sidered fraction of the effect she wished to produce on the whole
of male mankind, young and old, married and single. I have no
doubt that a large proportion of its members came to think, in the
end, that she never should have looked at it so, had she meant it
should not love her. I really believe I did, in the end. But is it
not hard on a young woman who has a fine throat, and bones
enough and no more in her face, that she may not use a hair-
wash, and droop her eyelids slightly, and leave her mouth ajar,
because her doing so will stir the blood of some fool?
I need not say that, even as the vaccinated subject feels no more
than a pin-prick until the virus makes up its mind to take, or
otherwise, so I carried home with me or rather was accompanied
by the eyes, the hair, the throat, the adequate cheek bone, and
their mode of co-existence in the same image, without attaching
any weight to the momentary effect on me of my first introduction
to them. But the vaccine must have been at work by the time I
got a talk with Qracey in the evening, because I was beginning to
be conscious of two opposing forces; one, an indisposition to
answer questions about my neighbours at work at the National
Gallery, the other, a qualified impatience with my family for not
asking them. I wanted a tangible occasion for denying that the
366 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
owner of the eyes and hair that produced an impression on me,
without myself inaugurating conversation about her.
I thought Gracey showed penetration when she asked me, as
soon as we were alone together, what the lady was like who was
copying the same picture. I had only mentioned the fact that
such a person existed. " A party ! " said Gracey. " Of course she's
a party ! But what sort of a party? Is she an old party, or a young
party? Is she ugly, or pretty, or stuffy, or what?"
I pretended to weigh her claims to good looks. "I shouldn't
call her stuffy, exactly," said I.
" Then if she isn't ugly, she's pretty."
I was very transparent. "Oh no, she's not pretty," said I.
" Then somebody else is," said Gracey ; as I thought, with super-
human insight. " Who was it ? "
" Well Adeline. At least ; her sister called her Adeline. I
didn't above half see her. Only her back."
" Then she's elegant."
" I don't see that. Everybody has one."
" One what ? "
" A back."
" Yes only nobody remembers them when they're men. Then,
their backs are manly. It's when they are women they have elegant
backs. Come now, Jackey! What was hers? Don't be shy about
it."
I thought Gracey's power of getting behind the curtain of my
mind was almost uncanny. I evaded her question, and got off
this sub-division of the subject. "Bother her back!" said I, dis-
missing it. " I did get a squint at her mug, you know," I ad-
mitted, my excess of slang being really dust to obscure the eyes
of Europe, represented by Gracey.
Gracey refused to be blinded. " Did she squint back at you ? "
said she.
I lost an outwork. " She doesn't exactly squint," said I. " It's
only a sort of look she has."
My stepmother was within hearing, but credited with being
asleep. My father, reading BoswelFs Life of Johnson, on the
other side of the fire, had just said to her, " My dear, you're spoil-
ing your night's rest;" and she was, I suppose, making mental
notes of our conversation, for she repelled the accusation by saying
with alacrity: "No, I was listening to those young people. Who
is it has a sort of look ? " She raised her voice to ask this ques-
tion, without turning her head or opening her eyes, to prove her
case the better.
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 367
" Only a young lady of Jackey's, at the National Gallery. She's
lovely and interesting. You had better ask him about her."
Gracey was looking malicious, or at least amused.
" Who is the young lady, Jackey ? " said Jemima, melodiously,
without looking round. My father looked across the top of Bos-
well, also amused.
" It's all Gracey, not me," said I, explanatorily. "I don't know
who she is."
" Now you're backing out, Jackey," said Gracey. " Look here
what he told me, Aunt Helen. Her stuffy sister is copying his
picture, and she's Adeline. And she's very beautiful and fascinat-
ing and graceful. And he got a squint at her mug. Don't say you
didn't, Jackey, because you know you did."
"Well suppose I did!" Both Gracey and Jemima said, I
think, that it only showed what "goings on" there were at the
Gallery.
My 'father showed a disposition to interpose on my behalf. " I
must say," said he, " that I think the ' goings on ' are a little . . .
constructive. What did this young lady say to you, Jackey?"
" Never spoke ! " said I, feeling rather rescued. " Nor me to
her!"
" Oh, Jackey, you are backing out. At any rate, you did hear
what she said to the stuffy sister." This was Gracey, in an injured
tone.
" Of course I did. Only I didn't say the sister was stuffy."
" Oh she's a beauty too ! . . . Well what is she then ?" Be-
cause my expression had negatived this.
"Oh her! Well, I should call her comme il faut. At least,
the female of comme il faut." I reflected on the intricacies of the
French tongue, and added: "Comme elle faute I suppose!"
" The question before the House," said my father, temperately,
"I take to be what did Adeline, the beauty, say to her comme elle
faute sister?" He did not quarrel with my new departure in
French merely paused on it a moment, and passed it.
" She only looked at where she'd been sitting "
" Where you were, you know! " said Gracey.
" Where I was at work. And said they had swept up after
her. Because she had left a lot of coloured chalk behind. Where
she'd been sitting, you know ! "
" Like a hen," said my father. " Only hens I believe have no
use for coloured chalks."
"Was it then you got a peep at the young lady's face?" said
Jemima, not to encourage my father's choice of a simile. For, as
368 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Mrs. Walkinshaw always said, Mrs. Pascoe's taste was absolutely
perfect. She did not wait for an answer, but began a yawn, out of
the end of which a resolution to go to bed took form in words.
And the World, which didn't seem to think the young lady need
be wound up like a Company, said oh yes! it was actually five
minutes to eleven !
I don't think the young lady named Adeline, nor her back
which I presume shared her name, somehow interfered in my
dreams that night; but I am sure she stood between me and a
measurable amount of sleep. It ought to have been a large amount
to judge by the length and breadth of the waking dreams that
took their place. These included rescues, by the dreamer, of the
said Adeline from mysterious and vague dangers, not common in
civilized Society; the running up of scores against the said Adeline,
to be paid in devotion to the dreamer, during a long residence in
palatial domiciles best described as Chateaux; the unhappy termi-
nation of an almost truculent reciprocal passion by the suicide
of the dreamer and the said Adeline, the provocation to which
was very dimly outlined, if indeed it could be said to have been
indicated at all. I think this last eruption, or rash, of my youth-
ful imagination was the most gratifying of the lot. As I write
this I do not feel ashamed of having been such a young jackass
on so small a provocation, because I believe nine men out of ten
would make some similar confession if they were writing as I am,
without any anticipation of a reader. Autobiography is generally
written with judicious reserves, whereas I write for my Self alone
for his and my amusement. Not that that word precisely de-
scribes my motives !
The eruption call it "first love," if you choose developed
favourably during the five days that had to elapse before I could
renew my studied insult to Doge Loredano. The morning of the
fifth day found me confronting this effort and comparing it with
the original; not entirely without self-congratulation, I am sorry
to say. I recognized in it a good preparation. I perceived that
when I came to the glazing I should get the Quality. Also the
Expression.
I was confirmed in this forecast by my Academy friend, 'Opkins.
He mentioned a third essential, the Feelin'. But that always came,
with the Work. What you wanted to keep your heye upon in the
early stages of a copy was the getting of it in the right place
on the canvas. Once do that, the rest would follow. If you made
a good 'it with your first shy at this important object, you might
feel 'appy about the Expression and the Feelin'. The great thing
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 369
was to have your canvas too big. And his advice was, the minute
you had got your work marsed in ackerate, redooce it. Then, when
it was reg'lar dry, and no mistake, you took it up and worked in the
Expression. The Feelin' would come of itself. There was a
School which preached that the Renderin' had a good deal to do
with the Feelin', but he didn't 'old with it. Depend upon it, the
Feelin' was an idear, and had nothing to do with the Treatment.
Al tor the Quality, you couldn't expect that. These old beggars
all had Time on their side, and we poor Moderns were helpless in
the hands of Contemporaneousness.
I listened in silence to this young man's illuminations, with a
furtive eye on the door through which I expected to see approach
the two sisters, whom I thought I had identified, by their last
week's signatures in the attendance book, as M. and A. Roper.
I was a little nettled by the name, which seemed to me not in
harmony with one of its bearers. But it could not be helped, and
might have been worse. Just consider it might have been
Simpkins! There was no other obvious entry of sisters in the
book, except a brace of Trotts, from whom my soul recoiled. I had
to school it to accept Roper.
'Opkins was waiting for a canvas, and remained by me to talk.
It was surprising what a number of devotees of ancient Art were
waiting for materials. The gentleman who was sitting with his
back to his own copy of Gevartius, talking to the young lady who
was doing the Rubens, was not idling. Far from it! He was 'ung
up for Indian Red. He had rashly begun Gevartius with some
Indian Red of a rare and peculiar tint; and, when he had run
through his toob, he went for more and found there was no more
to be had, without you send to some impossible place was it
Erzeroum or Trebizond? and he would lose more time in the end
by 'urrying than by waiting with patience. A spacious matron who
kept her bonnet on to work was in real distress for Genuine Amber
Varnish, without which her Francia was 'reg'lar at a standstill.
So she conversed with a man with a skull-cap, whom 'Opkins
thought a 'umbug. He never said why, and I find myself now,
fifty years later, curious to know why, without the smallest chance
of ever finding out. Was he a humbug, and why?
'Opkins's canvas came, and he examined it narrowly. He tight-
ened the wedges with caution and subtlety, and then bore it away
to the place beside the Indian Red man, who conversed loudly, in-
cessantly, with the young lady who was at work on Rubens. I
could just see him. through the door between the rooms, engaged
in the getting of Gevartius on the right place in the canvas; mak-
370 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
ing a good hit, I trust, with the first shy. I had not got rid of him
quite, though, for he came back a minute later for a piece of char-
coal that would mark. " I don't believe," he said, " that mine is
wilier charcoal at all. Some cheap substitoot." He dwelt upon
its imperfections, one of which was the presence of minute foreign
bodies, as 'ard as haggit.
I trace the sensitive condition in which I was, in the relief I
felt that his accent was out of hearing when the two sisters made
their appearance, in charge of or abetted by a young woman who
scorned Italian and Flemish Art, whom they addressed as Atkin-
son. I discerned in this that they belonged to the Better Sort.
Therefore, possibly Roper; certainly not Trott!
I got so ostentatiously out of the way of the comme ellc faute
sister made such acres of room for her in my desire to show
that I was ready to oblige; and she, for her part, was so almost
hysterically anxious that I should not make any concession at all,
that even the spacious matron might have found room between us
to concoct a new insult to John Bellini, had she been minded to do
so. A period followed of indication, by jerks, of overwrought un-
willingness to interpose on the slightest impulse either showed to
trespass on the neutral territory. It lasted till it was time to go
out to lunch.
I tried, some fifty years later, to discover the Court where we
used to feed in those days, and could not identify it. We students
went there, I believe, under an impression that it was rather
like Boswell's Life of Johnson to do so. There could have been
no other temptation. The young woman who attended on us did
not deserve 'Opkins' eulogy; that is, if I rightly understand the
word " scrumptious " to be a distorted equivalent of sumptuous.
Also, her hair came down, and had to be reinstated in connection
with her professional services to customers. That is a delicate way
of hinting at the thinness of this dining-room's veneer of Civiliza-
tion. We students certainly paid heavily for our desire to feel
in touch with our ancestors. This Court, however, has nothing
to do with my concurrent memories of the moment. It crossed my
mind as I cut my pencil, and claimed a word or two. It may
do so again. I cannot say.
I returned to find that the sister's chair, with her apparatus on it,
had moved to the front of the Doge. I felt that I was face to face
with a problem. Gracey said to me afterwards, on learning par-
ticulars: "Why didn't you push it back again?" I thought it
seemed obvious enough that this would have been presumptuous.
Fancy pushing a chair on which had sat the not unworthy sister
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 371
of so much beauty; a beauty which my imagination of last night
had enshrined in Chateaux, of which I was somehow the lord and
master including of course the said beauty! I never entertained
the idea for a moment : I and my easel shrank into themselves, and
found them a tight fit.
I was considering what to do next to my work being destined
to spend many hours that way before it was finished and was
wondering whether the time hadn't come for indicating the ex-
pression, when an incident occurred which left me speechless.
'" Oh dear! " said a female voice belonging to a rustle I had not
looked round at. " How exactly like my sister! I suppose she
thought you were not coming back." It was actually the beauty
herself, in wash-leather gloves the worse for pastels, and a pinafore
to match, covered with chrome green and lemon yellow. I found
afterwards that she was " doing " a Landscape with Cattle, by
Vander Somebody.
I began stammering that it did not matter the least, that the
one thing I really found a satisfaction in life was making room
for other people in Public Galleries, and so forth, when I was sud-
denly plunged in the deepest confusion by the Beauty saying un-
concernedly, "Oh nonsense! She mustn't jam herself up against
you like that. Perfectly absurd! " and moving the intrusive chair
to its original position. Having done which, she absolutely floated
away, graceful figure and all, without bestowing a fraction of a
look on me! Evidently, her dreams, sleeping or waking, had been
nowhere near those Chateaux.
I was puzzled, and hurt, at her taking such an impersonal view
of me; though well aware that had she done otherwise, I should
have sunk into the ground from sheer bashfulness. I felt that it
was rather a deliverance not to have to speak to so glorious a
creature. I did not feel that I could not speak to the other sister,
who appeared a few minutes later; interviewing the Cattle by the
way, and encouraging their copyist. I could hear the critical
remark that there was a " beautiful tranquillity " somewhere. Also
some undertones, with a laugh. They related to me. Then my
neighbour returned. " I'm so sorry," said she. " I didn't mean
to push you out. I thought perhaps you wouldn't come back.
Sometimes young men go away and don't."
I didn't approve of her patronizing tone, and looked dignified.
" I'm not a young man," said I. " I mean I am not that sort of
young man."
" I see," said the sister. " You are studious, and have aspira-
tions and things. Dear me! how interesting that is!" She
372 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
took a new sable brush out of a tidy parcel and rinsed it in water;
then put the end between her lips to make a nice point, at the same
time looking critically at me. " Do you read books? " said she.
" Some sorts," I replied. " Not all.".
" Young men sometimes read none," said she. " My brother
Shafto never looks at a book, on principle. What are you reading
now ? "
"Dante," said I, compendiously. I was inclined to be short
with her, for I did not altogether approve of a certain benignity
of manner, akin to condescension.
" Dear me! " said she, speaking as if the point was not important
enough for incredulity. u Dante himself ? Or a translation ? "
I answered a little stiffly, not without pride: " Dante in Italian.
My sister and I read the Inferno in the evening." This was the
case, and I felt that it gave me an advantage, and would war-
rant superiority. I proceeded on well approved lecturer's lines:
" Dante's poetry is often very obscure. We find Gary useful, but
of course refer to him as little as possible."
A moment later I was sorry. For who should come our way
but the Beauty herself, all her powers of fascination at their dead-
liest. She wanted " the knife." It seemed they had only one, and
shared it. Now I had two. To save the moist-water-colour sister
an excursion into an obscure pocket, I offered the more lady-
like of my two penknives, not without tremulousness, to the
Beauty. She merely took it, saying : " You're very good." And I
thought she treated my offer of it much too cavalierly. I did not
certainly expect a tempest of gratitude. But to be told I was
very good!
I think it occurred to her sister that I deserved to be stroked.
For she said: "This young gentleman is a student of Dante."
The Beauty only said, " No really ! " and went away, carrying off
my knife. I found myself wondering whether she was heartless.
After all those Chateaux! Was it possible that such loveliness
should enshrine I could not exactly say what ? "A callous dis-
position " seemed to overstate the case. May not her obvious
indifference to my Dantophilesque pretensions have been due to her
clear insight into their groundlessness? It did credit to her
understanding. Her moist-water-colour sister had, however, over-
drawn my own claim to profundity. I felt bound in honour to
remove this misapprehension, in the interests of Truth.
" We haven't done any Dante to speak of, you know, me and my
sister," said I. " We've not got to the end of Canto II, after all."
I believe I blushed over this admission.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 373
The young lady laughed, and said : " What a good truthful
young man we are ! " Then, as I suppose she saw that I was
nettled, she went on to soothe me. Was my sister older or younger
than I? Was she very fond of reading? Where did I live? Was
Chelsea a nice place to live in ? Wasn't it rather out of the way,
across all those fields and gardens? And so on. I began to feel
that I was getting quite intimate with this sister. Only it was
the wrong one!
How very awkward it would be, if any misapprehension were to
occur about who was to be the destined mistress of those Chateaux!
To be sure this moist-water-colour one might be utilized as a
stepping-stone to an ascertained position of acquaintanceship,
which might be made a base of operations. But would that be
strictly honourable ? I firmly believe that the moment this thought
crossed my mind, I became colder in my demeanour towards my
neighbour. I shrank from entangling her young affections, know-
ing as I did that her case would be a hopeless one. She must
have thought me a very odd young man.
And I should now think that I must have been a very vain one.
But I was nothing of the sort. I might have been if the thoughts
I have indicated had really entered my mind. They never did.
Call them rather specifications of the thoughts that the hall-
porter of my intelligence had distinct instructions to say " Not
at home ! " to ! I was forced to describe them, to enable him to
keep them out.
I perceived that I had to steer cautiously between the Scylla of
tenderness and the Charybdis of downright rudeness. Probably,
in my anxiety that the rock should vanish behind the offing, I
went much too near the whirlpool, without perceiving that my
awkward navigation was amusing the young lady extremely.
Nevertheless we got on fairly well to all outward seeming, as when
I saw 'Opkins at the day's end, he said: "You keep one hcye
open, Parscoe! Don't you let her get too familiar. The atten-
tion is apt to be took off by a good-looking gurl. And the 'and
don't benefit, either. You take my word ! ' I am bound to say
that 'Opkins's professional earnestness was a beautiful and
edifying spectacle. If only it had been, backed by a perceptible
ability, in any branch of Art! But his perfervidum ingmium lived
on itself, unsustained by any skill or discrimination of the soul
it dwelt in, or any prospect of development of either in the years
to come.
The dv following was a day of discomposure for me. For
374 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
the moist-water-colour sister kept on imperceptibly gaining ground,
however much I might conceal the fact from myself. There is
no sense in pooh-poohing the burr that creeps up one's sleeve; and
before I was aware of it, she was metaphorically too far up mine
for me to be able to reach so far, arid always metaphorically
to drag her down. What was irritating was that this growing
intimacy seemed to place the real object of my admiration on the
other side of a quickset hedge, in the cultivation of which I was
compelled to share, very much a contre cceur. I was especially
chagrined towards the latter end of this day, when she invited me
for the first time to inspect the small copy she seemed to be spend-
ing two days of every week on, without getting any nearer to the
end of it.
The block-book she was using was too large for me to take
over bodily without putting down my own palette and mahl-stick,
so I dismounted from a high stool I was perched on, to inspect it.
She accommodated it towards me on her lap; and I went closer,
respectfully, to see.
I don't know that I agree with those who hold that " a food
copy" is a contradiction in terms, like a white negro. But I do
seriously think that copyists make very bad copies, and that
all the world except the Artists Colourmen would be very little
the worse if no one ever made another. I suppose the idea was
nascent in my mind, or I should have been able to say something
more encouraging about that moist water-colour. As it was,
I am afraid what I did say amounted to a judgment that it might
be quite perfect if it was done all over again by somebody else on
a new sheet of paper. I was mixing it with abstract admiration,
as one conceals a pill in jam, when I was pware that some one was
waiting, with aggressive patience, for an opportunity of speech in
my place. It was the sister the Beauty herself; and, in spite
of those Chateaux, her proximity was so alarming to me that I
jumped away electrified, stammered incoherently, and turned Rose
Madder.
"Oh pray! don't stop on my account," said she, with a
mischievous suggestion in her voice that her sister and I had
been deeply engrossed with our subject or each other, preferably
tho latter. She made it worse by adding : " I won't interrupt
you more than a second, and then you can go on exactly where
you left off." What she had to say to her sister was a warning
to her to bear in mind that the Lochkatrines, or some such name,
were five o'clock, and they were not to be late.
I must say that the coolness of the moist-water-colour sister
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 375
took me aback. I thought that a reproof of such levity would
have been in much better taste. She actually only said: "You
ought to be more careful, Adeline. . . . Now mind you give Mr.
I don't think I know your name? back his knife."
"Pascoe," said I. And I think the Beauty said, "Pasport?"
interrogatively to her sister, as the latter repeated, "No! Pas-
coe! " as if she were gratified with the first syllable but under a
moral obligation to the second. She may have repeated it.
Anyhow, the Beauty repeated it. " Oh, Pascoe, yes ! I see.
I'm so sorry Mr. Pascoe," pausing as if she had already had
time to lose the name "I really was forgetting all about the
knife. So good of you ! " Then she went back to the Lochkatrines,
goading her sister to punctuality. " It's half -past three already,
and I hate a drive last thing . . . I'll send the knife. It's in my
bag. . . . You can have twenty minutes more." With which she
swept or floated away.
Having written down her remarks in cold blood, I have to con-
fess to my Self that I do not now detect in them delicate raillery,
originality of expression, subtle humour, acute sense of moral
obligation ... in fact, I don't detect anything! I did,
then.
Gracey found me out about the Beauty, and surprised me by
what I fancied showed shrewd knowledge of Human Nature.
When I reached home that evening, I found Mrs. Walkinshaw's
well-known conveyance standing at our gate, keeping its heart
warm with hot-water bottles, and making a parade of its indiffer-
ence to the sufferings of its Agent, on the box. Gracey was just
bidding adieu to Mrs. Walkinshaw ; who, perceiving me from afar,
hailed me with a prolonged cry, halfway between a yell and a coo.
Its greeting took verbal form as: "Oh, here is our young hero!
How is Filippo Lippi ? How is Andrea del Sarto ? " And then
with a dropped voice of most offensive empressement, " And how is
SHE ? " in capitals of outrageous magnitude, so that I really felt
that the horse turned his head to catch the reply. I asked who was
she, but I don't think I made a very strong defence The attack
was unexpected, and so unwarranted! Mrs. Walkinshaw's re-
joinder was: "That's what we want to know; don't we, Gracey
dear?"
I suppose I muttered something and passed on into the house.
I imagine now the good lady saying to Gracey: " Why-y-y! it's
re-eally serious. I had no idea we were on such delicate ground.
Now good-night good-night groorf-night! I must fly. It's posi-
tively seven o'clock." But I cannot have been within hearing of all
376 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
that after reaching the street-door. Imagination forges thess
speeches.
However, I am quite safe in my memory that Gracey came into
the house saying to me in a most apologetic spirit : " Just fancy !
Old Walkey had been wound up and set going by my saying that
you had seen an awfully pretty girl at the Gallery!"
I said rather warmly that Walkey's intelligence was defective
and her flavour pronounced. Gracey said I shouldn't call " stink-
ing idiot " my exact expression ! but . . , but . . . how
was Adeline ? I then " pointed out " to her that she was com-
mitting precisely the same error against good feeling and good
taste as Mrs. Walkinshaw. That was what I meant when I said :
" You're as bad as her ! "
" Oh, Jackey darling ! you transparent boy," said Gracey.
'' What is there to be so conscious about ? She's only a person,
after all ! Why you don't know her surname ! "
" Yes, I do. At least, if it isn't Roper, it's Trott." I had noted
these as the only two duplicated names in the entry book.
" Oh dear ! " said Gracey in a discouraged tone. " Roper !
Trott! What perfectly detestable names! . . . Are you sure
you're not mistaken ? " This with a gleam of hope.
J shook my head. " A book in an entrance hall can't be mis-
taken," said I with conviction. I cannot account for the survival
in my mind of this belief, after fifty years. It is as strong now as
it was then.
" But you may have pitched on the wrong names altogether,"
said Gracey. "That's the point I"
" That's no go ! " said I. " Roper and Trott are the only two's,
and one of them's A, in both." So for the remainder of that day,
and indeed for all the days that followed, till my next visit to
John Bellini, I had to submit to raillery about an admiration
I could not deny, for a young lady spoken of freely as Adeline by
Gracey and my stepmother, but provisionally named Miss Roper
or Trott by my father, who was much amused at her existence.
Next Students' Day at the Gallery Thursday, I think found
me doing more 'arm than good to the Doge. I am quoting 'Opkins,
who added : " Lots of good work gets made gormy through not
leavin' alone. You're spoiling the moddling of the chin. That
heye was a lot better before. You're losin' the feelin' of the noars-
trils. Keep your 'ands off's pretty nearly always a safe rule."
He enlarged on the theme in this sense, until the practice of
leaving canvasses untouched seemed to be the safest for the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 377
Artist, and the one which promised him most distinction in his
career.
I acquiesced, saying that I would remove my last hour's work
with a little oil on a bit of rag, and await a happier mood; mean-
while concentrating my energies on the pattern. I said this partly
to disfranchise 'Opkins, as I saw Adeline's sister approaching.
So I felt a little impatient when he continued: " Another idear!
Gurls next door make 'ay of any man's work. Don't you let this
one get round you. You keep her at harm's length. 7 think, my-
self, they ought to be kep' separate, if any work's to be got through.
They might allow 'em two of the public days. The Trustees ought
to take it up, and put a step to all this millinery." I was aware
before this that 'Opkins regarded Woman as chiefly Modes and
Robes.
I replied to him with some dignity that I was not an ass. I
understood, and could deal with, the most puzzling wiles of the
Artful Sex which underlay the millinery he took so much objec-
tion to. Besides, this young lady, whom I called Miss Roper on
speculation, was more dignified than Trott, had very nearly done,
and was going to make a sketch of the Memling. quite out of my
range. 'Opkins breathed freely, and said : " Ah, now you'll get
some work done ! "
What a noble ideal was 'Opkins's! If only it had not been his
lot to exemplify absolute incapacity in Art, what a future he might
have had before him! The ballast was all there, but the ship was
unseaworthy.
The moist-water-colour Miss Roper or Trott greeted me a? quite
an old friend. I really think that reunion after parting cements
more intimacies than the heaviest mitraiUe of introductions at the
first go-off. In fact, I have known the latter, when overdone, to
produce an almost murderous hatred in the bosoms in which they
were intended to sow the seeds of a lasting friendship. In this
case there had been no introduction; little more than distant
recognition. But our resurrection after five days might have
caused us to fly metaphorically of course into each other's arms,
if I had not been on my guard against any inroad of this sister
into the territory in my affections which I had dedicated to the
lovely Adeline.
" It really is quite a pleasure to me to find you here." ?aid the
young lady. " I was afraid you might not come." I buttoned
up the pockets of my soul, so to speak; closed its lips, and for-
bade it the use of my eyes. This would never do. But a word
more relieved me. " Because of your knife ! Do you know. Mr,
378 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Pascoe, my sister forgets everything! But here it is! I made her
give it up to me, to make sure."
I relaxed, and protested subject to such restraint as convention
demanded that all I had was at the disposal of the said sister
Adeline. Or very nearly. I suppose what I said worked out as
hyperbolical civility, for the young lady merely said equably, as
she handed me my knife : " You're very good ! " I said I wasn't.
Then she seemed to me to accept the position that the time had
come for causerie intime, for she remarked, while doing abso-
lutely nothing, very carefully, to the Doge, and varying the posi-
tion of her head to see the result: "So you are really to be a
professional Artist, Mr. Pascoe? How nice that is!"
" We-ell my Governor says I may, if I can ! "
" Oh how right ! " The speaker seemed stricken with a kind
of rapture, which she paused to enjoy. Presently she dismissed
it, and mixed with Human Life again. " Oh dear ! " said she.
" If only all other young men's . . . Governors were like yours ! "
" Wouldn't there be an awful lot of Artists ? "
"Could there be too many, Mr. Pascoe?" This was said re-
proachfully, and I felt humiliated and ashamed.
" Well of course not!" I made amends, but felt that some
reservation was necessary. " Only some chaps can do Art such
a lot better than others. Hadn't the duffers better shut up?"
The young lady sighed. " That seems to me," said she, " to
wrap up the whole question in a nutshell. To epitomize it, as
it were ! Who is to presume to condemn . . . the persons whom
you so picturesquely call duffers, as unfit to practise Art, when,
it may be that it is only their own Critical Faculty that is de-
fective? Surely, Art is on a higher plane than mere mechanics
or business in the City." I suppose I mentioned here that I could
produce duffers of a very high quality from the Academy Schools
where I was studying, for the young lady's next words were, " Oh,
but is there not this terrible possibility? May not your duffers"
she emphasized the word as a protest against its slangy char-
acter " may not they be suppressed prophets yearning to unburden
their inner souls? "
I hesitated, having in mind certain fellow-students. "A ...
I think you wouldn't think so if you saw them," I said. I decided
that 'Opkins, having expressed such unfavourable views of what
I feel might get called in the modern Press " female Art-influ-
ences," did not deserve to be left without critical examination.
" That chap I was talking to " said I, tentatively, to introduce
him.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 379
" The gentleman who looks a little like a grown-up baby ? "
"Does he? Well . . . perhaps
''With the complexion, and a grubby collar?"
I recognized this supplementary estimate of my friend's appear-
ance. " Yes," I said. " Same chap ! Do you think he's yearning
to unburden his inner soul ? "
" I should say. . . . Is he a good friend of yours ? "
" Middling. Say anything you like about him."
" Well since you give me leave I should say he was a vulgar
little man that drops his H's, with thick boots."
"Not a ... suppressed Prophet?"
" I don't think I should say anything else about him." This
was said rather stiffly, and made me a little afraid of pursuing
'Opkins as a topic. I, however, felt that I was absolutely bound to
assure this enthusiastic Jady that 'Opkins's inner soul, whatever his
outward seeming life might be, was deeply devoted to Art, and
that nothing would drag him from her Shrine. But conscience
compelled me to add that he couldn't draw nor paint. Perhaps he
could sculp. I had never seen him try.
" If he can't draw or paint," said his critic in a chilly manner.
" I can't see that he has anything to complain of." Which seemed
to me unfair to 'Opkins, seeing that neither I nor he had put in a
statement of grievance on his behalf. Then she added, with an
inconsistency I could scarcely have believed possible in the
sister of a Beauty: "Why he's got a mouth like a rab-
bit!"
I could not defend 'Opkins's mouth, nor did I consider myself
bound to do so. It was that sort of mouth that is more useful to
crop herbage than to sing or laugh. I thought it quite fair that
the moist-water-colour sister should censure it, after its utter-
ances about her as a member of a Sex. and wondered what she
would say if she knew them. What would her incomparable sister
say? . . . But hold! would it not be against Nature that Her
lips should utter a word about 'Opkins? A creature who, in spite
of his earnest soul, was unfit to black Her boots !
I hope I was not unjust to 'Opkins. But his attitude about
Woman had exasperated me. To show that I was really in sym-
pathy with my critical neighbour, I without saying anything
produced a pocket sketch-book I had instituted to enable me to jot
down Nature as she arose, and therein added a sketch of 'Opkins's
sleepy face to the caricatures which were rapidly absorbing every
leaf. I had developed a habit of caricaturing everything, and was
considered a dab at it by my fellow-students. I myself thought of
380 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
this faculty at that time as the merest hors d'oeuvre in the banquet
of Art, not a piece de resistance.
" Let me see, when it's done ! " said my neighbour, rather as one
speaks to a child, indulgently. But she took a very different tone
about it when I handed her a spirited sketch of 'Opkins, as a
rabbit, sitting at an easel sketching landscape. Her enthusiasm
about Art had struck me as artificial, but no laughter was ever
more genuine than hers when she took my sketch-book and looked
at this production. It was perfectly splendid, she said. Why John
Bellini? why the Doge Loredano? when such vigorous original-
ity as this was possible. I need not say that I was gratified, though
I should hare been more so had these raptures been provoked by
my Doge. It showed her want of tact, that she did not hail me as
a Universal Genius.
A quarter of an hour later I was walking in St. James' Park,
a dejected and humiliated I might almost say maddened boy.
For what had exactly happened was this. I can see it all can
feel it all over again, as I write. And it all happened fifty years
ago, and I see it across a long, long lifetime, full of real inci-
dents, of real joys and real sorrows. And yet it looms out large
and makes my old heart beat again as though it too were reality,
here in the Ward where I shall die, in the Infirmary of Chelsea
Workhouse.
" You must let me show this to my sister," said the moist-water-
colour young lady. " There is nothing she enjoys like humorous
caricature. She dotes upon it ! "
And who so ready as I that it should be shown to the object
of my remote adoration? Yet I can hardly call the state into
which the proposal threw me one of rapture. My heart thumped
too savagely for that, and the consciousness of scarlet in my
cheeks was absolutely painful. I endeavoured to stammer that I
was awfully glad and flattered, in the most approved manner of a
Man of the World.
" I shall take it and show it to her at once," said my apprecia-
tor. "Oh . . . won't that do?" For alarm and protest were
in my countenance, I presume. "Why, not?"
" He's there close by 1 Hopkins is."
" So he is. I didn't think of that. You might go and tell her
to come here. . . . No I don't think that will do either. Stop
a minute I know! Atkinson! Do you think you know our maid
when you see her? . . . Yes? well, she's somewhere about.
Just find her and say I want her. She's in the next room some-
where."
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 381
I went off to find Atkinson. Oh, how unconscious I was of
what was coming!
Atkinson was a young woman whose sole object was to scorn
the persons she spoke of freely as her betters. She spurned alike
their Arts and their Sciences, their intellectual aspirations and
their mechanical dexterity. These visits to the National Gallery
had given her a rare opportunity of asserting this individuality at
the expense of the great ones of old gone by. To be at the
National Gallery for five hours on two days of every week, to
ignore such a multitude of masterpieces all at once, and in the
very same breath to peruse a thrilling tale in the Family Her-
ald, was an enormous gratification to Atkinson.
I am afraid that my summons aroused her from something
specially interesting in the story, as she clung like a drowning
woman to the end of a paragraph, and never took her eyes
off it for a moment until she could actively ignore the Choice
of Paris of Rubens, of which her back only had been taking no
notice hitherto partly, I conceive, on the score of delicacy.
" Oh Atkinson ! Tell your mistress I want her here for a
minute. I've something to show her." I might have taken a
hint from this speech, for it did not seem to apply to a lady's
maid in the joint employ of sisters. But my mind, alas, was
closed to hints!
The blow was to fall, here and now. For Atkinson was one
of the earliest disciples of the Modern School of servants, that
says " Madam " every ten seconds, and calls its mistress " missis "
no longer. " Tell her Ladyship ? " said she, tartly, as a protest.
The reply showed that the speaker was one who would stand
no nonsense, even from an Advanced Liberal. " Certainly ! "
said she.
" Tell Lady " I failed to catch the name " that I have a draw-
ing I want to show her. Make haste and don't stand there talk-
ing ! " Atkinson departed.
My experience of the mystic ways of Debrett was small, but
my father knew a lady in the country who was called Lady Sarah
because her father was the Earl of Sportlydown, I think. I
felt I must know more, at whatever cost. " Is your sister," said
I, hesitatingly " is she Lady Adeline?" It was the only way
I could see of mooting the point.
"Oh dear, no! We're not such swells as all that." I felt a
relief. But it was not to last. The inhuman speech that fol-
lowed came with a hideous carelessness, as the speaker was bent
on subduing to her will some moist-water-colour that was out-
382 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
witting its tinfoil. " My sister is called Lady Coolidge because
her husband is Sir Montague Coolidge. He's sitting for Kidder-
minster. But you don't care for Politics, I see."
I did not care for anything.
I don't know how this historical calamity came to be known
to my family, as was most certainly the case. At the time, I
thought they did not know, and that the facts were hermetically
sealed in my bosom, never to be dragged out into the gaudy
glare of day. I am now convinced that no silence so profound
as that which enshrouded my ill-fated passion after this date
could have resulted from anything but circumstantial knowledge.
I am sure that if any lingering ignorance had remained that I
was, so to speak, blighted, some accidental remark would have
betrayed it. But the topic was never alluded to, nor any jocose
remarks made at my expense, rallying me on my penchant for
this unknown beauty. Is it possible that Gracey guessed the
facts from anything in my manner when I returned home that
evening ?
I thought I acted my part so remarkably well. I was quite
resolved that no one, not even Gracey, should know what an
effect the discovery of this member for Kidderminster had had
upon me. I would have sworn that my demeanour was normal
by the time I returned home and found her alone in the house,
my father having been delayed by some Committee, and my
stepmother by keeping her name on somebody's visiting list. Had
I not tramped half over London to be equal to the occasion?
" Is that you, Jackey ? I'm all in the dark, and nobody's back.
How's the National Gallery? How's the Doge of Venice ?" ....
"I haven't been at the Gallery."
"You haven't been at the Gallery!"
" Went for a walk. ... I was there all the morning, of course."
"Don't run away upstairs for a minute. Or are your feet
wet? All right! Go and get dry."
" Oh no I'm dry enough, for that matter. . . . There's a nail
sticking up. ... Oh no it won't hurt for a minute or
two."
" Well why didn't you go to the Gallery in the afternoon ? "
" / don't know. The Doge hadn't dried . . . didn't get on ...
so I went for a walk."
"How's Miss Koper or Trott? How's Adeline?"
" She isn't Miss Roper or Trott. ... Oh yes she's Adeline,
I suppose. She's Lady Something . . . Culvert or Colvin, or
something I don't know! Coolidge perhaps."
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 383
" Lady Adeline Coolidge, I suppose. But can Earls or Mar-
quises or that sort of people ! be named Coolidge ? "
" She's got a husband " the odious word may have stuck a
little " I suppose it's after him. I'll go and get my boots off
and then come back."
"But oh, Jackey a husband! What sort? What's his name,
I mean ? "
I muttered something to the effect that he was a " House of
Commons-ey chap, and was Sir Montague Coolidge." And
further that he was " Member for some beastly town, somewhere."
" But. Jackey, why didn't you look to see if she had a wedding
ring?"
" It was no concern of mine. Besides, she'd got on wash-
leather gloves an inch thick, to do pastels in." And I departed
upstairs for my boots. That was all!
CHAPTER XXXV
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
ABOUT a fortnight since my dear friend, the matron of the
Infirmary, forgot me and my need of writing paper, and went
away on leave for a change. I didn't like to ask my other friend
here, the Rev. Mr. Turner, to make good the deficiency, because
he would have been curious to read what I was writing. I shall
not the least mind his doing so when I am redistributed among
the elements; not so very long now, I hope.
That suggests that I should rather like him to read what I
have written, ultimately. How can I manage that? I shall have
to make him my executor.
However, I was afraid to say to him that I wanted writing
paper, as his supplying it would have brought him prematurely
into my confidence. I had to await the return of Miss Ensoll,
when my wants were most liberally attended to.
In that interval I lost the thread of my narrative, and began
writing again with the first memories that occurred to me, which
happened to relate to my fine-art experience of some two years
after I first went to Slocum's. I am very uncertain about dates
and periods, having nothing but my own failing Memory to
go by. Just think not a document! I ask my Self questions
about the Past, but only with the result that I throw discredit
on his answers.
That incident of the young woman at the National Gallery,
which has kept my pencil busy since I started on my fresh quires
of foolscap, is one of my most vivid recollections of this time.
Trust a sense that one has made oneself ridiculous, or has been
so without any effort of one's own, to keep Memory green in
our souls, quite as much as the tear that we shed, though in
silence it rolls, or more so!
Not that I was conscious of any absurdity in my own be-
haviour at the time! That consciousness was to come later. But
it did come, and came upon me while every detail of my first
experience of the shafts of Cupid was still fresh on the tablets
of my heart; or, perhaps I should more rightly say, my imagi-
384
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 385
nation. For, looking back on it all now, I fail to see that my
heart, in the sense I have ascribed to the word, had anything
to do with the matter.
I believe it was imagination, pure and simple, that made me,
after the collapse of that castle in the air, take so kindly to
desolation. I need not say that I resolved that I should never
wed. That resolution is the common form of unappreciated
Love at first sight I mean unpublished love, not what is gen-
erally understood by unrequited love. Perhaps the greatest word
ever written on this subject of the tempestuous dawn of passion
in youth I mean, of course, Shakespeare's would have had quite
another climax if it had turned out that Rosaline was already
Another's. I doubt if Romeo would have had any eyes for Juliet
if his transactions with his previous charmer had been on all
fours with mine and the lawful spouse of the member for Kid-
derminster. If he could have kindled a flame on so slight a
provocation as mine, his amour propre would have kept it alive
as mine did. But I think any one who studies the text of the
play carefully will agree with me that Romeo and Rosaline must
have if I may say so come to the scratch rather emphatically,
for Romeo to have such clear insights into the young woman's
private sentiments. However, things were very different in Ve-
rona, in those days.
Anyhow, that occurrence at the National Gallery plunged me
provisionally in misanthropic gloom. I made a merit in my in-
most heart of not committing suicide. No doubt a natural dis-
taste for the dagger and the poison-cup contributed to the adop-
tion of this merit, but its services remained unacknowledged. I
discerned also an element of self-denial in my voluntary self-
dedication to celibacy, insomuch as it pointed to the joint lives
of my Self and Gracey, respected and blameless, being passed in
an extremely comfortable home with a mammoth Studio attached,
wherein works of European fame would grow slowly, anticipated
by the Press. Very curiously, this day-dream did not run counter
to a sort of Greek Chorus; a girl of great penetration and sym-
pathy, with no looks to speak of, but with a very good figure,
who read my story in my prematurely grave demeanour, and
formed an attachment to me which I was unable to requite.
Under such circumstances could I act otherwise than as I did?
I generously bestowed my hand upon her everything else in my
gift having been blighted; and the large apartment, formerly
occupied by Gracey, was assigned to my Self and the Chorus;
she herself taking possession of the one I had occupied, twenty
86 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
feet by fifteen, with the view over the Earl of Somewhere's Park.
I paid detailed attention to all these points.
It gives me pleasure to write one satisfactory memory in this
welter of Egotism. All my day-dreams presupposed that the
status quo was to come to a natural end. My father had to die,
universally lamented, of what the American called " plain death."
Imagination recoiled from a scheme which would send me to live
apart from my father, and no variation of it made it possible
for The Retreat to accommodate me and the Chorus, especially
as we proposed to become the parents of a very large number
of athletic boys and beautiful girls. My dreams assigned to
my father a good, long life, and the Chorus had to wait.
It gives me another pleasure, and a great one, to recall how
that dearest sister ever man had yet, made effort after effort to
discover that Chorus, and to reconcile me to my lot. But the
candidates for my affections that she produced never answered
to my dream-forecast, in any particular. Indeed, I am afraid
they were never so good-looking, in spite of express reservations
on the subject of beauty, made lest I should have been supposed
by my Self, I presume still susceptible to its influence.
I am quite sure that Sophy Curtis, who was Gracey's first experi-
ment on the blighted sensibilities of her brother, was a very
poor sample of looks, as compared with the Chorus of my dream.
I can't remember what she was like, only that she was plain.
She had sterling qualities, and was worthy of esteem. She
dressed in sober colours, and could be identified through a sub-
stantial door panel by the sound of her boots. I fancy she must
have been a Thinker, in embryo, because she lent you books,
though she was barely nineteen. There was no harm in that;
on the contrary, it was obliging. But there are ways and ways
of doing things. Persons who converse earnestly on topics, and
then lend you books, ought not to put book-marks in them to
show the place. It ties you down. I would not ask the well-
informed to build golden bridges to favour escape from the
perusal of Sound Literature, but I do feel that catechism on
passages should be a statutable offence.
Miss Curtis's individuality may have been made in Germany.
She had been sent there to be educated by two credulous parents
Who had accepted the Teutonic estimate of its own intellectual
Btatus; the sum-total of which has no doubt grown of late years,
but which did credit to Germany's powers of self-estimation fifty
years ago. Her performance on her own trumpet has been for-
tissimo accelerando since then.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 387
The Hanbury Curtises that is the sort they were had to
take the consequences of Leipzig, where their Sophy was sent
to school. For she came home omniscient. They had, in fact,
constructed a Frankenstein Monster, using for raw material an
ordinarily stupid daughter, such as one would impute to people
of their name, comfortably off and well-connected. She came
back after two years of Kultur, quoting Lessing. Gracey was
immensely impressed with her solidity and reality, not unaccom-
panied by geist. Do say she's clever, Jackey, at least ! " said
Gracey, after I had declined to admit that she had any looks
whatever; and had, in fact, suggested that she had been bitten
by a hausfrau, and that the virus had permeated her system
and altered her appearance.
" How do you know what she talks is really German, and not
make-up?" said I. To which Gracey replied: "How can it
be anything else, when she's been at Leipzig ? " I endeavoured to
put into words an impression my first introduction to this young
lady had given me, to the effect that she looked as if she believed
you were already confuted in some discussion ; and would be next
time, so had better not offer opinions. I did not succeed, getting
no further than: "Why does she always look as if she had
come in in the middle, and knew better ? " Gracey only called
me Silly Jackey, so I conclude that she saw truth in the description.
I suppose it was just as well that I should treat this young
woman with undisguised scorn, as my doing so prevented Gracey
forming any false hopes of success. I am afraid I was moved
to reject advances on her behalf by what may have been honesty,
but certainly was not modesty. I am convinced now that young
men need not be so very much on the alert to prevent young
women falling in love with them. If they will postpone their
super-sensitiveness till later in life, and not run into the oppo-
site extreme of taking for granted that forty-odd, for instance,
gives carte blanche to friendship with feminine juniors, their
essays towards conscience will, to my thinking, not be wasted.
Mine were, in this instance; and Gracey's hopes that I had
found a haven would in any case have been disappointed. For
the haven a dry dock would be a better metaphor was already
occupied by a German ship. In other words, Miss Curtis had
been for some months plighted to a Professor with seven con-
sonants and one vowel in his name. The nearest I can go to
it now is Spretsch. Very likely it is wrong.
Gracey was so convinced that sterling worth and a well-informed
mind were what were needful for my happiness that she clung
388 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
to Sophy Curtis with tenacity to the very last. She never could
bring herself to believe that I regarded the young woman with
. . . Well ! I will not say abhorrence . . . but with if the ex-
pression can be permitted startling indifference. So far as I
could resent anything done by Gracey, I resented her choice of
such a prudent and right-minded and clear-sighted person as
the partner of my soul. I did not want a plain pudding, how-
ever well-made. I wanted raisins, and sudden unsuspected lemon-
peel, and citron.
I really was relieved when one day Gracey came home from
the Curtises not exactly boiling with indignation, but with heat-
bubbles throwing out hints that she might ultimately do so. The
Teuton, Spretsch, had been there, and Sophy had actually taken
her aside to say with triumphant mystery : " I see you have
guessed our secret ! " Whereupon my dear little sister, taken
aback, had said, grammarlessly : "Who's us?" To which the
reply was : " Why, of course, the Herr Professor and myself,
dear Gracey ! Who should it be ? "
My reception of this intelligence justified an expression I
have used, for my indifference did really startle its hearer. I
drew a German Professor, with a phrenological forehead and a
piercing gaze, on the last empty page of my pocket sketch-book;
and Gracey was interested, as she always was in my caricatures,
though she recognized that my mission was loftier. This time,
she only remarked that Sophy's Professor wasn't the thick sort;
but was just as intense, or intenser.
I do not consider that Gracey played fair when she tried to
prove that visible admiration of her Curtis on my part had sug-
gested our adjustment as a couple. It was all very well to deride
Sophy now, she said, but I hadn't done so the first time I saw
her. On the contrary, I had offered to lend her James Lee's Wife,
to prove my position that Browning was obscure, and, indeed,
unaware of his own meaning. To avoid acknowledgment of any-
thing whatever, which might have weakened my position, I treated
Browning's intelligibility as the point under discussion, and said:
" Well I was quite right, anyhow. You know you don't know
what he means, or any one else." However, this red herring failed.
" You perfectly well know," said Gracey, " that you did lend it
to her, so it's no use pretending you didn't." I said, with warmth :
" Very well, then ! I suppose one's spooney about every girl
one lends James Lee's Wife to, no matter how dried-up she is."
It was some time before Gracey submitted another sample for
my approval. Or, perhaps I should say she was timid in the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 389
selection of candidates, and did not push their claims resolutely
enough. Now that I think over the time, I see that the whole
of it was chequered with Gracey's friends, and cannot help sus-
pecting what never crossed my mind then, that every separate
one of these very excellent young women was weighed in the
balance, carefully considered, and either accepted or rejected as
qualified for the headship of that household with the mammoth
Studio, or its equivalent in my sister's mind. On my side, the
rejection of the accepted ones was vigorous and decisive, and I
have reason to believe that the only one that found any favour
at all in my sight was still in the balance when I was introduced
to her, and was found wanting in the course of a very few days.
Her name was Cynthia Lowndes, and she was a large coal mer-
chant's daughter. The adjective here qualifies the father, but it
was not inapplicable to the daughter. So it seemed to me
when I entered our drawing-room only knowing that Gracey had
a friend there, but with a sidelong curiosity to see what the friend
was like.
The uncertainty continued after I had entered the room. For
it was half-dark, and I could not see the face of the occupant
of our sofa, who was therefore, to all intents and purposes, a
skirt, gloves, and a parasol. Gracey was at the end of the sofa,
outside it. Otherwise she would have had to sit on the skirt,
for these were the days of voluminous crinolines; and a side-
fling on a fauteuil, covered in thereby, was an attitude much
affected by fashionable elegance. I was in its presence, evidently;
and touched the glove it extended to me with some trepidation
on being introduced as Gracey's brother Eustace to Miss Cynthia
Lowndes, who said Gracey, was so very kind as to offer us two
places in a box at the Opera, because the Nickensons had dis-
appointed her. It was very tiresome of Kate Nickenson, who
might have known that her sister-in-law wouldn't pull through.
I was still at that time pursuing a policy of morose isolation,
which I assigned in my own inner consciousness to that misad-
venture at the National Gallery, but which was probably only
a crotchet of an inexplicable egotism a young man's craze which
would have taken some other form if I had never crossed the path
of the fascinating Adeline. I therefore suggested that Gracey
had better get Jemima- to go, as I had an engagement and a
cold, and never went anywhere in the evening when the Life
School was on, and so forth all feeble excuse-mongering.
" Oh, nawnsence ! " said Miss Cynthia Lowndes, who drawled.
It amuses me to spell her pronunciation literally. " You mast
390 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
calm, aw we shahn't have a gentleman. We must have a gentle-
man. Yaw broth'rawt to be ashamed, Miss Pascoe, to try to put
us awf with Je maima! .... Oh, I'm sawry, but how was I
to know?"
" How could you know ? " said Gracey, who had murmured that
I meant Aunt Helen. She added that I really ought to take care
what I said before visitors.
" Oh, thank you so march," said Miss Lowndes. " Visitahs
is so march bettah than strainjars. Of cawce, visitahs." I took
a shrewd glance through the gloom at the lips that spoke, and
perceived that they were shall I say fruity? Also that they
harboured white teeth. I made concession, saying : " Isn't it
rather rot to be so particular ? " The net result of this tended
towards the dispersal of Miss Lowndes's strangership.
"Well!" said Gracey, with her chin in her palms, and her
elbows on the end of the sofa, outside which she was kept by
her visitor's expansive skirt. " The point is, Jackey, will you
go to the Opera on Wednesday, or will you not ? " I said of
course I could chuck the Life for one evening, if you came to
that. Gracey said: "Very well, then, that's settled! You're to
chuck the Life." I remember thinking, then and there, that
in consideration of my sad experience, Gracey might begin to
treat me a little more like a man. I did! not think long, be-
cause Miss Lowndes was hurrying away, and I wanted to see
her face under the gas lamp in our entrance hall. Who could
know she was not that Greek Chorus?
" What did you say your friend's name was, Chick?" said my
father to Gracey the evening after the Opera.
" Cyn Lowndes," said Gracey. " Cyn's short for Cynthia." I
was rather taken aback when she added : " I'm not sure that I
like her. I don't know."
"Short for Cynthia, is it? That's why I asked. Who was to
know that it wasn't short for Eve and the Serpent and the
Garden of Eden? But why don't you like her, Chick? Don't
other people's chicks like her?" My father was evidently curious
about the young woman, whom he had only just caught sight of
on the previous evening.
But Gracey was cogitating over the name. "Why Eve and
the Serpent?" said she. Then she fructified. "Oh, I see! But
it's not spelt the same." She evidently could not find reason
for her verdict of dislike. But she repeated it, with reinforce-
ments. " Well I'm not sure that I do. In reality, I'm not sure
that I'm not sure that I don't like her." I think she repented a
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 391
little of her style, for she counted her negatives on her pretty
finger tips, to see if they were right.
"Won't it wash?" said my father, waiting. To which Gracey
replied: "Don't talk and I shall be able to see. . . . No, it never
comes right when once it seems wrong. Anyhow, I don't well
I don't love her! "
'' I think it's a jolly shame of you to back out, G.," said
I. " You were such nuts upon her at first. Anyhow, she did
take us to Covent Garden you must admit that ! "
" Jackey's epris," said Gracey, maliciously. " It was the rose-
coloured satin with the eiderdown facings." I did not condescend
to reply. " Or perhaps it was the pearl necklace. Or the throat.
Or the shoulder-traps. Shoulder-straps go a long way."
Gracey's penetration was unaccountable. My stepmother's at-
tention was attracted by the shoulder-straps. " I thought them
bad style," said she. "Perhaps I'm old-fashioned." I saw that
the shoulder-straps had a good deal to answer for. I said, lying
deliberately, that I had not taken particular notice of the shoulder-
straps, and Gracey looked incredulous. They were the sort that
are said to have had a large share in the consolidation of Anti-
Vaccination.
We never saw very much of Cynthia Lowndes. She creeps into
my recollections because she was the only young person in whom
Gracey discerned a suitable partie for myself because I am sure
she did so, in the very first hours of our acquaintance and for
whom I personally entertained any sentiment except one of stolid
indifference, sometimes with a flavour of antipathy as slight as
the suspicion of onion that a skilful cook produces by rubbing
a clean-cut bulb on the interior of a cooking vessel. Whether it
was the shoulder-straps that made one of Cupid's shafts graze me
in an otherwise wasted flight I no more know than I do what
part it was of Cynthia's behaviour at La Somnanibula that made
her stand lower in my dear little sister's good opinion. It may
have been that she felt that the young lady's drawl could not be
endured sine die. Or that the drawler's male acquaintances
faultless in broadcloth, spotless in linen, reminiscent of half-
crown cigars so evidently wondered who the devil Mr. and
Miss Pascoe were, when that young lady and gentleman were
introduced pro forma; and excluded them from their knowing
conversation about who that was in the Royal box, and how
Trebelli wasn't up to her usual mark tonight. I don't think
these swells as I suppose they were destroyed our enjoyment of
the Somnambula, but I think we felt out of our element.
392 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I suppose the fact was that Miss Cynthia's chaperons had
failed her suddenly, and that she could not suit herself with a
substitute at a day's notice; so had to fall back on that harm-
less little Miss Pascoe, that limped, whom she had met at the Choral-
Society. The other gentleman of the party was Sir Somebody,
but he took no notice of us, and I have forgotten his name.
It goes without saying that the meteoric passage of this young
lady across the sky of my imagination left no trace behind. My
self-respect at that time was involved in the maintenance of a
constellation, the memory of the National Gallery beauty. Amour
propre, like the shoulder-straps, goes a long way only in the
opposite direction in steadying the unreal fancies of a dreamy
youth. That is what I was, for many years. I was unreal in
my choice of art as a profession unreal in my vacillations on
the outskirts of Love. The two chance samples of the latter fire,
divine or otherwise, that I have referred to, both had exactly
the same character, that the tinder caught almost before the flint
showed a spark.
I am not sure that that dear sister of mine was good for
my prospects in this very important department of life. If it
had been the decree of Fate that I should have sons and daugh-
ters, I should have besought and enjoined the daughters not
to meddle with the love-affairs of the sons. They would have
been in no danger of interference in theirs. Their insignificance
would probably have protected them; or, perhaps I should say ;
their brothers' absorption in their own greatness, and confidence
that their sisters would never have penchants for that idiot Brown,
that booby Jones, or that ass Robinson. But I would have said
to those daughters : " At least, when you detect a germ of inter-
est in some young lady on your brothers' part, do not call out to
them across the room that you perceive they are falling in love
with Zenobia or Semiramis or Jtfary Ann, as may be! See noth-
ing, but do not announce that fact, and urge Zenobia and your
brother to go on and never mind you ! " I would have pointed out
to those daughters, that whoever wishes to fan a flame should do
it very gently at first, and not like a Whitehead torpedo; and
that it is better, on the whole, to leave the nascent spark alone,
to live or die as the fuel and the atmosphere decide. But no son
or daughter of mine ever grew up, so I have had no chance of
saying all this to any one.
There were two sides to my susceptibility to Gracey's influence.
The reason that I was so contented with my home life, and
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 393
sought so little or rather, not at all the alleviations that so
many youths find in a succession of fruitless flirtations and engage-
ments, was that Gracey's own companionship went so far to make
these alleviations unnecessary. I know that no sister's love can
make good the total absence of the other sort from a man's life.
Yet it may stand between him and an active consciousness of his
deficiencies. That was one reason why Gracey steered my boat,
and why I never looked ahead to guide it.
The other was connected with a vision that, do what I would,
haunted me at intervals Gracey forsaken in spinsterhood, and
even kept away from me by the very marriage she herself had
promoted. I found that whenever I " offered in " an image of
one of Gracey's nominees as sole mistress of the house attached
to the mammoth Studio, some untoward domestic problem was
to the fore, of which Gracey and the said nominee propounded
different solutions. I tried Miss Sophia Curtis in an inexplicable
dress which I thought suited her, and expressed generally the terms
of our marriage. Videlicet, toleration on my part; and on hers
penitence for the views' she had entertained of Lessing, who
figured in my dream as a sort of personification of all things Ger-
man geist for instance. She had not wedded the Leipzig Profes-
sor yet, so my dream involved no outrage on morality. In my
air-castle she and Gracey did not " hit it off " at all. I found my
hypothetical Self, while I always took Gracey's part, pointing out
to her that it was really she that was to blame, for bringing about
a union between her brother and one who, with the highest moral
qualities, had no soul whatever, and was if the truth must be
spoken little better than a dried up prig, an opinionated doctri-
naire, without personal attractions that might have compensated
a loving husband for her spiritual shortcomings. Gracey, the
hypothetical, wept; and acknowledged, now that it was too late,
the rash presumption of the officious bystander who interfered
with and thwarted the decrees of Providence and Destiny, who
had evidently said to one another that Eustace Pascoe, R. A.,
whose ideal had unfortunately wedded the sitting member for
Kidderminster, would cultivate his rare genius best as an un-
married man, whose devoted sister would keep his house and darn
his socks, and sit admiringly at the feet that awaited them. I
have observed since then that Proridence and Destiny are weak
characters, whose little plans are always being upset by meddle-
some outsiders.
When, instead of the image of Miss Curtis, I supplied that
394 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
of Miss Cynthia Lowndes, the denouement of the drama was more
exciting, and had more the character of a Problem Play. What
happened was entirely the fault of this image, which threw it-
self at my feet, or did something too pointed for me to over-
look. I am not sure that it did not underline the words tf Upon
that hint I spake " in Othello on our drawing-room table at The
Retreat, and hand me the rolume open. That weak character,
Destiny, then managed to get one of her Decrees attended to,
and an ill-assorted union was the result. The husband soon
wearied of the shallow superficial nature to which he had been
blinded by shoulder-straps or by Bad Style, suppose we say
and became more and more absorbed in his Art, which the shal-
low superficial nature could not the least understand. The image
of his sister, always devoted to him, endeavoured in vain to stem
the rising tide of connubial indifference. He retired morosely
to his Studio, where lunch was brought to him on a tray. Nat-
urally, the superficial one, thus deserted, flashed her effulgence
on Society, with the result that the Better Sort thereof looked
askance at her. She didn't care, because her beauty, which was
undeniable, ensured her a following of devoted admirers; chiefly
I believe, Baronets, half-pay Officers, and Wits. I am at a loss
to account for the selection now, but I certainly remember it.
The Better Sort of Society then went a step further and declined
to meet her. The dream, which was like the mixture that may
be taken before, during, or after meals, terminated variously
at different times. Sometimes it was a Guilty Couple. Some-
times the curtain fell on reconciled misunderstanding, amid the
execrations of baffled Baronets; sometimes on magnanimous for-
giveness by my own image, which I am inclined to think was
ill-executed; and penitence, by that of the principal female char-
acter, which certainly was uncalled for, if the Mrs. Spooner whom
I met thirty years later had really been Cynthia Lowndes. How-
ever, she vouched for it, and must have known. I did not men-
tion the dream.
It was a dream that pleased me to dwell on, but I doubt if I
recognized the reason of my satisfaction at the time. It was
that it was open to such a gratifying end; the return of Gracey
banished by the Superficial Nature, to my desecrated hearth.
The solace, renewable at will, of commiseration from Gracey's
image, far in excess of my deserts, was indescribable. My own
image, I need hardly say, posed as that of a generous martyr,
and accepted homage from Gracey's in such plenty, that I marvel
now that I never detected my imposture. I never did. I con-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 395
sumed, in any quantity in which I chose to supply it, the coarsest
food that ever was offered to the palate of egotism by its own
unchecked cook.
I confess to feeling angry with my Self, that he never sug-
gested to me an explanation of Gracey's devotion to her silly
young brother. He might at least have said to me : " Stupid
boy, can you not see how much less active your sister's interest
in your affaires de coeur would be if she had any of her own ? "
He would not have needed to force home to my mind the cause
of her ready acceptance of spinsterhood. I recognize it clearly
now, as I look back, but I am very sure I did not see it then,
and indeed very unsure that she did. I see now that she tacitly
accepted the effect of Monty's death, but I doubt if she scheduled
the terms and conditions of her own life. She did not say to
herself, " T shall never marry, because I shall never love any man
as I loved Monty," for the simple reason that her affection for
that friend of her girlhood had never been officially defined as
Love. I can almost find it in my heart to write that it was just
plain affection, unstained by Love; but strong enough to wound
to the quick, and leave an uneffaceable scar. I conceive that she
may have worded the matter in her own mind thus : " If I were
another sort of girl, with admirers and no limp, and one of them
was breaking his heart about me, I might marry him to be
obliging. And I daresay he would be a very good boy in his own
way. But it never would be the same as if. ..." And there
thought would come to a cul-de-sac, or hark back a year or so
to the old days, and that last parting, and their only kiss.
But none of this reached my mind through its panoply of
selfishness, and I continued to accept as my due Heaven knows
why ! my sister's constant thought for my well-being, and to give
unquestioning acquiescence to her own version of herself that
she didn't matter! I did not takg her word for it, for she gave
me none. It was, somehow, an understood thing; the understand-
ing of which was partly due to a kind of docility on my part,
which mignt I hope have varied had Gracey's inner conviction
that she scarcely counted for anything had a less mesmeric effect
on me. This disposition on my part did not vary, or rebel against
the absurdity of that misunderstanding, and I am afraid I cul-
tivated it for the sake of the benefits that accrued. Anyhow, I
was too little on the alert about the inner life of a sister whom
I nevertheless really loved, to be alive to the undercurrent of
her history.
Sometimes, in writing all this, I hope I am too severe on that
396 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
crude silly Self that I look back on now, fifty years later, know-
ing that it was mine, and hoping that it was no worse than
the averages Selves of its fellow-units of the same age and sex.
Oftener, that hope becomes a certainty, and then follows the
reflection that that certainty is not worth having. For, think
of the standard of manhood it sets up! How can old age retain
any self-respect at all, if its youth has been no better than the
male average? It is such a meagre satisfaction, to think that one
has been, after all, no worse than anybody else.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
IT is easier for me to write recollections at random to tell mere
events; anywhere, anywhen than to fix dates and assign prior-
ities, without a clue or a document for guide. I could not write
at all if it were not that now and again a fact jumps out with
an indisputable numeral and clears chronology.
This happened when I wrote about that visit of Cooky and
myself to our old home in Mecklenburg Square. The year of this
was the first year of the Indian Mutiny, for was not my friend
just on the edge of departure? The news of his death came in
the beginning of '58. I remember as a fact, referred to at the time,
that this was in our third Chelsea year. We must have been
there just over two years since the end of '55. But the date
I am especially referring to, which these evolved, is that of a
letter my Uncle Francis wrote to my father on the occasion of
the renewal of his three, five, and seven years' lease to his tenant,
Mr. Hawkins. This was necessarily '62 and I was not yet twenty-
three.
I remember the letter, and the mention in it of Mr. Hawkins's
short lease, which he wanted to rejuvenate as a long lease. Also
that Mr. Hawkins had laid some stress on the removal of some
goods belonging to his landlord, as he declined to warehouse them
any longer. The letter seemed to imply that this gentleman had
made their removal a condition precedent of the new lease. I
am clear about this. But I cannot remember enough of the
other substance of the letter to be sure of my Uncle Francis's
reasons why the removal of these celebrated boxes in the top
attic of our old house should be undertaken by my father rather
than by himself. I have an impression that he cited some super-
subtle legal reason why, founded on the law relating to marriage
settlements. How he worked this out I have now not the dimmest
idea, but I suspect that his reason was simple enough. He was
lazy and did not want the trouble of deciding what was to be done
with the goods. My grandmother, who was over ninety, but more
truculent than ever, had put her foot down, and flatly forbidden
that they should be brought to her residence at Highbury. His
397
398 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
own chambers in the Temple were out of the question, and I
rather think he was not at the time on speaking terms with my
Uncle Sam, or he might have asked him to provide warehouse
room for them.
I am not sure whether I do or do not recollect hearing some-
how that my Uncle Sam had refused to have anything to do
with chemicals; for that was the description always given of the
contents of the two unopened boxes unopened, I mean, on that
momentous occasion of the discovery of the Heliconides. I con-
jecture that they had been examined since then sufficiently to
determine the nature of the contents. My ascription of this
refusal to Uncle Sam may, however, only be due to the reaction
on my mind of subsequent events. Shall I, I wonder, live long
enough to relate them ? On the whole, I hope not. I shrink from
the telling of many things that must be told, if I carry out my
scheme of writing all I can recollect. For I would very gladly
forget many of them.
" What makes your worthy uncle so keen that I should see
to these boxes ? " said my father. " He seems to have unpacked
and removed the one or two things of any value, and it appears
that nothing is now left but bottles of chemicals with no label.
Now if there is any useless possession in the world, it surely is
a chemical without a label. Why can't he throw the contents away,
and sell the bottles?"
However, my Uncle Francis got his way, whatever it was that
made him so tenacious. It is possible that one thing that in-
fluenced my father was my suggestion that at any rate it would
give Freeman a job. I advanced it not so much because I loved
Freeman, as because he had always seemed to me part and parcel
of Mecklenburg Square a kind of guardian genius almost. To
employ any one else on a job at " the Square " would have been
playing fast and loose with an unwritten obligation. To have
disallowed Freeman in this connection would, I am sure, have
seemed to my father to be taking a mean advantage of the fact
that no obligation whatever existed. He therefore wrote to Free-
man, enjoining him to call for the boxes and bring them to The
Retreat, making such arrangement about a cart or truck as he
might judge best, and enclosing a letter explaining the applica-
tion to Decimus Hawkins, Esq., easily identified in the Directory.
Therefore also it was that, some five or six days later, our servant
Raynes appeared spontaneously to my stepmother and Gracey, and
addressing the latter because she was only licking a postage-
stamp, whereas Jemima was writing a letter, said : " If you
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 399
please, Miss, The Man has brought the boxes." In which I dis-
cerned, when Gracey told me of it afterwards, the mystic influence
of Mr. Freeman's atmosphere; his style, title, and mission hav-
ing been unquestioningly accepted from him by Raynes, who had
never seen him before, and who, by the by, had come to us in
Chelsea, and had never known the Square.
" I said they were to go in Thomas's loft over the stable," said
Gracey. " That was right, wasn't it ? "
" I suppose so," said I. " Only I'm not sure the Governor
didn't want to have a look inside them and see if there was noth-
ing else."
" Oh well ! " said Gracey. " Thomas will have to get them out
again when they're wanted." Then she seemed alive to some
observance due, not to be lightly neglected or passed by. " Hadn't
you better see The Man?" said she. "I believe he's still in the
kitchen." So he was obligate so to speak and I felt it my
duty to go and speak with him, as representing the Family.
Now, there was not a particle of reason why I should go and
confer with Mr. Freeman. But Gracey had asked the question
with such confidence that I should have felt it almost irreligious
not to comply. He met me halfway, owing to intimations re-
ceived of my approach. I have no means of knowing whether
he was the worse, or better, for the last half-pint hospitality had
yielded him. The former, I hope, for the sake of his antecedent
condition.
"Good evening, Freeman," said I, articulately; no slurring
of syllables such as social equality would have countenanced!
" You've brought the boxes ? "
" Yes 'ere ! I was told to fetch 'em 'ere, and 'ere I fetched
'em. You can count 'em yourself. Or any man." He appeared
to be needlessly on his guard against some insidious attack, and
to suspect me of being a scout.
" I expect they're all right," said I, groundlessly. " Did you
explain to .... the Gentleman at the House?" For I had
forgotten the name of Hawkins, and it was not essential.
" I made a p'int. I says to him, allow me to 'and you this here
letter, I says. Which will acquaint you. And I 'ands him the
Master's letter, wrote with his own 'ands."
"And he read it? And what then?"
Mr. Freeman seemed still obsessed with that idea that I wished
to outflank him, and it was not without triumph that he re-
sponded : " Nothin' then ! "
"What did he say? He must have said something!"
400 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Never said nothin' to me ! "
I saw an opening. " He said something to somebody. Whom
did he say it to ? "
" Now you're a-gettin' at it, Master Eustace. He says to Miss
Sylvear, who was reading of a volume aloud where I was shown
in, being allowed upstairs like once in a way, and not being fre-
quent above the basement, comin' in by the airey steps of morn-
ings. . ." He felt about in vain for the idea he had deserted.
" Well she was reading a book. What did he say to her ? "
" Right you are, Master Eustace ! Peroozin' of it through aloud,
as they say. Regarding of what he says to her : ' You'll excuse
me, my dear Sylvear,' he says, that bein' his pecooliar way of
haxentuating of her, bein' he's one of these here mealy-mouthed
characters. ' Would you oblige me by listening to this here let-
ter ? ' And she says : ' Since you wish it, certainly,' she says,
and shuts in the paper-knife, for to keep the place."
" And then he read the letter, and said you might take the
boxes. Go ahead ! " For I wanted to be washing up for dinner.
But Mr. Freeman's condition and method forbade hurry. " Ask-
in' your pardon, Master Eustace, he said no such a thing. What
he did say was this here ree-quired consideration. Then her and
him they had it up and down, and the lady she won't have chim-
icals in boxes carried downstairs over her carpets, and very likely
destroy the wall-papers as well."
" Did the Governor say anything to these parties about chem-
icals?" I asked because I had heard very little about chemicals,
and did not know where the idea came from. I may have pro-
nounced the first syllable too clearly, for Mr. Freeman seemed
to have heard the word for the first time, and to be unaware
that he had just uttered it himself.
" Chemicals ! " said he. " I never heard no mention of any
such. Her word were kimmy culls, spoke plain, and she wouldn't
have any such acrost her stair-carpets, not if she knowed it. Then
her brother which he is and no use his denyin' of it he says,
meek and oily, which is his way, there ain't no way down from
the articks only just the staircase, unless she means by climin'
down a ladder, outside. Then does he take her for a fool, she
says, seein' one ladder wouldn't above half reach up, and would
have to be double the length? Likewise she says, if the Port
Admiral was tryin' explosives, who could say they might not
fall on the Public's head, and explode spontaneous, and who would
be held responsible? So I says I'd go and attend to my boots,
the whilst they come to an understanding . . . ."
THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 401
" Well the boxes are here now . . . ! "
" Ho yes ! They're here now fast enough, now I've got 'em
here. Some mightn't have. Only Miss Silver Ear she see to old
newspapers being laid all down the staircase, she's that nice and
partic'lar over the 'ousehold. ..." Mr. Freeman's clearer speech,
unencumbered by obligation to report accurately, defined the lady's
name. I cut his story short, seeing that Raynes was ringing an
admonitory bell just close to my head, and went to get ready for
dinner. I heard him intercept my father, who was just coming
in, from whom he probably exacted a tribute.
I asked my father that evening what Freeman had meant by
the explosives, and he said it must have been a fancy of my Uncle
Francis, because Helen had heard something of the sort at High-
bury. I should mention that my stepmother never lost touch with
my grandmother and uncles, paying intermittent visits which
remained unreturned, except indeed by my Uncle Sam, who had
apologized himself out of his family's condemnation of my father,
and maintained a position towards The Retreat compounded of
Christian Forgiveness as a lubricant to social intercourse, admira-
tion for Jemima as a fine woman, and I think some genuine affec-
tion for Gracey. Now my stepmother had conversed on the sub-
ject of these boxes with. Uncle Francis and his truculent mamma;
so, naturally, my father referred to her about the meaning of The
Man's obscure allusion to explosives. We were in the drawing-
room at the end of the day when he did so he and I beginning
a game of Chess ; she and Gracey busy over Patience.
" I told you," said she, " and you've forgotten. The old Ad-
miral was supposed to be an authority on explosives, and I believe
he was going to make a great discovery, when he died. They
said so. And Mr. Francis says those bottles are full of his inven-
tion, but they are all safe as long as no one touches them."
" Just like Francis ! " said my father. " Why the bottles are
full of a sort of treacley stuff. Who ever heard of explosive
treacle? However, nobody means to touch them ... I can
castle it's not across a check." The explosives lapsed.
A crisis was afoot in the card game also. " No it's a dead-
lock. Begin another!" said the official player. But the other
said : " No look here ! Queen on King, Knave on Queen, ten
on Knave, nine on ten, eight on nine ..." and so on. And
as players of Patience are always carried away by a visible climax
ahead, the explosives were forgotten, and remained forgotten for
some years to come. At least, I remember no further mention
of them.
402 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I think a discussion as to whether a King can castle across
a square that has been under a check, and is now free, may have
helped the oblivion. The King can, of course. A check does not
linger like magnetism in steel. But I should have been so very
glad that my father should have been unable to castle, in that
game, that I was strongly biassed towards an honest belief that
it was at least an open question. I cannot account to my Self
who reproaches me with forgetfulness for my ability to recall that
position on the board, and my uncertainty as to how the explo-
sives were lost sight of. But what can I do? This is a record
of what I do remember, not what I ought to remember.
The Student of Human Nature really ought to turn his atten-
tion to that curious subject, Matrimony. As I understand, he
has been so busy with Love and Infidelity especially the latter
that he has postponed the investigation of the effects of mere
unqualified marriage, apart from complication of personal affec-
tion. I mean marriage considered as harness the subjugation
of a pair, irrespective of their desire to submit to it, or their
ability to endure it.
Fully to grasp the nature of the questions raised, in the absence
of this Student who would probably be of no service, if present
we have to constrain the Actual within the limits of a hypothesis.
First we have to conceive of a couple absolutely indifferent to
one another, free from any bias whatever, whether of Love or
Hatred. You will say if you ever exist, which I doubt that
this is an impossible hypothesis. I shall reply that there is no
such thing as an impossible hypothesis. The supposition that a
hypothesis is possible is an integral factor of its existence. There-
fore the phrase "impossible hypothesis" is a contradiction in
terms.
But after all, does this hypothesis strain possibility so seri-
ously? Look at the Whittakers, whom Varnish had lived with
a many years before ever she come across my pa and ma. She
always introduced them into conversation thus, and developed their
individualities later. Mr. Whittaker rose early and caught the
'bus. He was that took up with business that he was always
home late not once, but always ! And, Sundays, you would hardly
believe it, but he always went to his mother's- at Rickmans-
worth. If Mr. Whittaker had any other characteristic whatever,
Varnish remained reticent about it; hence it continued unknown,
she being the only informant. He never was presented to me
otherwise than as the husband of Mrs. Whittaker, pure and simple;
THE NAREATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 403
his existence and its whereabouts and whenabouts being the only
facts communicated. Mrs. Whittaker, on the other hand, welcomed
the Spartan simplicity of her lot, and saw to the housekeeping. She
had enough to do ordering dinner, and keeping an eye on things, to
be able to dispense with human intercourse; and she had never
held with men in the house, so that the necessity for Mr. Whit-
taker's presence in the City did not distress her. When he did
return home to the banquet, whose preparation had absorbed her
day, he just swallowed it down and went to sleep in his armchair,
and his wife did not complain; besides, she had to see the cook.
That really contains all the information Varnish had to give
about her former Master and Mistress, and I think it warrants
me in speculating 011 the existence of a married couple, absolutely
unbiassed by either Love or Hatred, and as such presenting a
proper subject for the Student of Human Nature, if he can
persuade himself for awhile to forego the luxury of solving rec-
ognized problems, -which do not arise until one of the subjects
conceives an unholy or holy passion for somebody else. What
would he make of Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker; supposing that addi-
tional information had confirmed the impression I had from Var-
nish's description of them?
But really these amiable and respectable persons have no place
in a record of my recollections, unless indeed it is that the mar-
ried couple that set me off thinking about them was my father
and stepmother. This does not the least mean that the cases were
alike. If it had been the other way round if the Whittakers
had made me think of them I grant that there might have been
a similarity. As a matter of fact, it was a marked dissimilarity
in their case that was foremost in my mind when I caught myself
recalling the amusement I gave Gracey by a grotesque sketch I
made of Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker, as imagined from Varnish's
account of them. I had said to myself: " Suppose the Governor
had been like that, I wonder how Jemima would have stood it ! "
This and similar problems about marriage, always suggested
by the permanent puzzle of my father and his second wife, very
often exercised my speculative powers in those days. But I kept
them to myself, not even taking Gracey into my confidence. Per-
haps her never seeking it influenced me. It may be that she
always retained a girl's view of the constitutional ignorance of
a boy to understand the private affairs of the heart, an ignorance
which often lives till the coming misinterpretations of Manhood
warp and distort every sacred truth. Most girls are like that.
They know all about it, all along. They have a singular faculty
404 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
for combining an intimate knowledge of the important points of
the subject with an almost complete ignorance of the secondary
ones. In this connection the views of Mrs. John Anderson claim
consideration.
I most earnestly hope now that my father never felt handi-
capped by the presence of his children in his demeanour towards
his second wife. It was certainly not demonstrative. He, however,
fell far short of what may be called the cultivated indifference
of Mr. Whittaker as described by Varnish. I cannot assign to
the image I retain of that gentleman any such solicitude about the
sleepless nights of Mrs. Whittaker, if any, as my fathers about
my stepmother's. It was so permanent and real a trouble to him
that I could always tell by his appearance at breakfast whether
Morpheus and Jemima had hit it off. Not that her insomnia
disturbed his night's rest. He slept through it and got his infor-
mation afterwards.
He often talked to me of this plague when we sat and chatted
over our experiences of the day, after dinner in the library. It
was, he said, a most grievous affliction ; and it was very hard that
it should visit one pillow- so persistently. Why could he not have
his share of it, instead of sleeping like an Ephesian? When he
said this in the hearing of the sufferer, she would say, " Oh,
heavens, no! At any rate, not that!" so emphatically, that I once
gave way to wonder at her manner, in my father's presence, loud
enough for him to overhear. " Why does your stepmother pitch
it so strong?" said he, echoing my words. "Well, I'll tell you.
She says she talks in her sleep, and doesn't want me to know all
her secrets. I limit myself strictly to snoring, I believe never
utter a word, with a meaning or without!"
"I know about that," said Gracey. "At the Square. Bert
said Miss Ev ... I mean Aunt Helen "
" Stick to Miss Evans, Chick ! " said my father. " She was Miss
Evans in those days. Quite correct."
" Well, then, Bert said Miss Evans used to talk in her sleep,
and Bert knew if any one did."
"Very good then there we are! If Miss Evans talked in her
sleep, we may be pretty sure Mrs. Pascoe does. But Mr. Pascoe
doesn't hear her, I'll answer for that."
" Bert used to lie awake," said I, " like five-and-twenty weasels.
I know, because I used to hear them quarrelling about it, next
day."
My father said with gravity : " Are you^ure you got the num-
ber right?"
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 405
I explained that the analogy of the weasels was not to be taken
au pied de la lettre, being merely my rot. One weasel was enough,
and would be just as wide awake as a regiment. But I could
cite instances of Bert and Jemima becoming warm in discussion
of expressions said to have been used by the latter during sleep
in fact, of their going at it hammer and tongs all the morning.
The particular occurrence that came readiest to hand was once
when Miss Evans denied as too absurdly impossible that she had
said, "Not guilty, my Lord!" several times, being sound asleep;
on the ground that at the moment of waking, a moment later,
she had come out of a dream of hot-cross buns, which she had
to wash her hands with instead of Windsor soap. " I remember
that," said I, "and lots of things like it; and Aunt Helen always
stuck to it, that what one talked in one's sleep must work in one's
dreams, and Bert was inventing."
The reason I called her Aunt Helen was that I was not cer-
tain she would not hear. For she was on the sofa, reputed asleep
in consequence of her last night's vigil, and we were speaking
low not to disturb her.
Gracey recollected the absurd dream of the soap, but could not
remember anything about " Not guilty, my Lord ! " My father
merely said : " Doesn't sound very likely, but dreams are rum
things." I was going to narrate other instances of sleep-speech
recorded by my sister Roberta of the then Miss Evans, when that
lady started up on the sofa as one who wakes suddenly, crying out,
and saying: "Yes. What? Why did you wake me?" quite
unreasonably. She anticipated something my father was going
to say, with: "No! I am not spoiling my night's rest. I could
sleep for a week after last night."
I think that, with a little persuasion from my father, she said
good-night, and retired, to inaugurate that week's sleep, I sup-
pose. I recollect no further, except that my father was very much
inquiete about Jemima, saying he wished she would see Sir This-
this, or Sir That-t'ther about this insomnia. It was wearing her
out.
I feel sure that Mr. Whittaker, who was the cause of my recol-
lection of this incident, would never have shown such a solicitude
about /its wife. In fact, the only light that Varnish ever threw
upon his character in this connection goes all the other way. He
was represented, when Mrs. Whittaker mentioned that she felt all
bones not a symptom to be trifled with, surely! as awakening
for one moment from his after-dinner nap, to say: "Take a
dose! " Which appeared to me unsympathetic, though it was cited
406 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
as an example of his sterling commonsense, and practical way
of dealing with the difficulties of Life.
But not on this occasion. Varnish's references to Mr. Whit-
taker were earlier were traditional, in fact, at the time. We
did, nevertheless, converse about Jemima's sleeplessness, especially
in relation to the worry or werry, which I suppose is the same
thing that it caused my father. This writing about it brings
back to me that I described this incident to her, and that she
did not show the commiseration that I should have expected. In
fact, she said, rather abruptly : " She only has herself to blame
for it."
Now, Varnish knew that Jemima and I had, as I expressed it,
" made it up " without particularizing what it was that was made
up and that her own Christian forgiveness had hung fire. At
least, that is how I accounted for her seeming to speak to herself
rather than to me when she said this. I tried to say a word in
extenuation of Jemima, with whom I was by this time on very
good terms. " Don't be so crusty, Varnish dear," said I. " I'll be
hanged if I can see how Jemima's to blame, any more than "
At which point I suddenly felt that what my speech was on the
way to was not a thing to speak in cold blood or warm, for that
matter.
But Varnish would not let me off. "Any more than who?"
said she.
I could have backed out, I suppose. But it would have been
sheer poltroonery. So I said: "Well, then, the Governor, if you
will have it ! "
"Oh, Master Jackey, your pa!" The words were few, but if
Varnish had talked like the people in the end-chapters of novels,
where the plots are explained, she could not have said more. I
retracted everything, not without using the golden bridge of a
Pickwickian sense, or some equivalent thereof. Varnish, how-
ever, readily forgave. " You took me wrong, Master Jackey," she
said, " to fancy I could blame your pa." She was so contrite and
hurt that she felt about so T thought for some excuse for a com-
pensating leniency to her old bete noire. " And for your stepmar,
my dear, we must place our hopes, and rely. If I'm wrong, I'm
wrong. Never you mind nothing I say. Such things wasn't meant
for boys."
I cannot remember any talk later than this one with Varnish,
into which Jemima entered as a culprit on account of her mar-
ringp with my father. So I hope dear old Varnish felt more len-
iently towards her before she died.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 407
As for my stepmother herself, I really have very little fault to
find with her indeed, the only definite indictment I can bring
against her is that she obdurately refused to see either Sir This-
this or Sir That-t'other, or to take any reasonable measures
against her insomnia. If she had ever followed any advice at
all, and given any treatment a fair trial, I can understand that
she might have rejected it on its merits. But to combine rebel-
lion against all experience with reckless and dangerous sporadic
remedies, recommended by quack advertisements and offered for
sale by any and every apothecary this did seem to me at the time,
and does still, a most ill-judged and in a certain sense selfish prac-
tice. It implied indifference to a pain and discomfort she occa-
sioned my father, to which she may have been honestly blind, of
course. I don't believe she was. She was dishonestly blind, man-
aged to shut her eyes to it dishonestly deaf, for both Gracey
and I urged upon her that even if medical attention could do
her no good, it would be an immense relief to her husband's mind
to know that the best had been done that was to be found for
her. I do not feel severely censorious about her conduct now,
having since then had fifty years of opportunity to observe how
rarely the sufferer puts the mind of bystanders at ease by accept-
ing medical experience, his own case being always unlike previous
cases. Still, I am surprised that she should have made no con-
cession to my father's anxiety. She might at least have inter-
viewed ^Esculapius, even if she threw his medicines away.
As to those panaceas which Jemima always bought a trial sam-
ple of whenever she saw a new label in a Chemist's and Druggist's,
on the counter with the toothbrushes and nail-scissors. Their
name was Legion, and their bottles were no use for anything but
their First Love if one may borrow that simile to indicate their
first contents, described on undetachable labels or with ineradi-
cable enamels; or embossed upon the glass, and perfectly blatant
about the Nemesis in store for their imitators. But I believe
they were only encouragements to imagination, and perfectly in-
operative and harmless, though they were usually thirteen-pence-
half penny. For which last fact I can only say God forgive the
patentees and the Patent Office.
There were some, however, which were not harmless, but deadly;
notably, Formodyne, or Dynoform I forget which, and I am
even uncertain about both. Either will do, for now say For-
modyne. The fiendish deep blue bottls, with embossed letters and
a poison label, must have made its first appearance at The Retreat
about this time. For I remember my father examining it with
408 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
suspicious eyes, saying: " What's this new abomination, Helen? I
can't have you taking stuff in blue bottles, with ' Poison ' on them."
And my stepmother replying : " That stuff ? Oh 1 shan't take
that! I only bought it because I had to buy something, when
Mr. Modicum had been so obliging about the cat. 7 shan't take
it. Give it to me and I'll have it thrown away." My father
weakly surrendered it. But he had not seen the last of it.
Everything brings something else back! I had quite forgotten
that cat and Mr. Modicum the Apothecary, who so obligingly
poisoned it for our Cook, who objected to giving a shilling to
The Dust to take it away, on Humanitarian grounds; as they
or it would have thrown it in the rirer, tied to a brickbat.
Whereas Mr. Modicum guaranteed that his poison would give no
pain at all, and undertook to poison it himself. No one knew
anything about Physiological Laboratories in those days, so no
one doubted Mr. Modicum's intention to poison this cat. How-
ever, he was as good as his word in one particular, I doubt not.
That cat's pain was not due to that poison.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I FIND myself thinking very little as I write this of the knack,
or faculty, which during my active life of manhood supplied me
with an occupation and the sinews of War. Probably this is
because I still think of caricature as a thing quite outside Art;
and even now account the latter a sacred Cult, the Priesthood of
which is only open to a privileged few. That view was the ac-
cepted correctitude in my time; and still lives, I believe, among
a select circle of devotees, who regard photography much as a
French Royalist regards Republicanism an ephemeral fancy, of
a rather long day !
Even now, I cannot bring myself to think that the camera has
driven a coach-and-six through any Art that is not purely optical.
I can see that the end has come of a lucrative profession the
production of pictures absolutely without invention simply be-
cause snapshots are better. But I cherish a hope that there is
still a day to come for the Artist who has something to say, in
spite of my old friend 'Opkins's condemnation of what he called
littery Art. He learned this phrase very many years after the
date I am writing of, and his use of it made me feel that the
group called the Fates in the Parthenon Sculptures, that were
in front of us at the moment, had had its day, and might go. But
this passed, and Phidias lived again as soon as Time had helped
me to forget 'Opkins. This, however, has little or nothing to do
with the point I have wandered from.
Caricature, to wit. I cannot say exactly when I found out this
knack, or faculty. I only know that I never ranked it as Art.
Art was when you had a moddle. 'Opkins said so. I may, or
may not, have left behind in these miscellanea a statement that
T made an imaginary sketch, when my sister Ellen's little eldest,
Polycarp my father christened him Polly Tittlebat afterwards
inaugurated the long perspective of clerical babies which made
their appearance later, one at a time. Anyhow, I did make such
a sketch, with ink and a crowquill; and very funny it was, though
I say it that shouldn't!
'Opkins's verdict was confirmed, for only two views were ex-
409
410 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
pressed about it; one, that the viewster hoped I should not be led
away from the serious study of Art by this dangerous and seduc-
tive rival; the other, seeking rather to know why I continued to
kneel at the feet of the former, when the latter seemed so well-
disposed towards taking me to her bosom. The question of which
charmer was to enchain me must have been raised for the first
time on the occasion of this sketch, as I remember very clearly
Mrs. Walkinshaw's rerdict on the subject. I can see her recep-
tion of the sketch a condescension as towards the trivial side of
Art; an indulgence of human weakness. I am aware that she
takes her seat on our sofa to examine the drawing, tendered for
her inspection as a portrait of the Mona branch of our family.
'* And has our Young Artist our coming Correggio actually
contrived to portray his sister and her truly sacerdotal husband
from Memory? That is, indeed, marvellous. . . . No, dear Mrs.
Pascoe NOW WAIT! and let me get out my eyes, which have
slipped to the bottom of the bag! I must look at this . . .
deliberately. Who can say that Our Young Artist is not a Second
Reynolds ? " She recovered a wandering pince-nez, and devoted
her soul to inspection.
I felt rather deceptious, and that it was inhospitable to hoax
one's visitors even Walkey, whom I hated! Indeed, I felt a
sort of relief when the good lady signalized the advent of illumi-
nation not with a war-whoop certainly, but with some sort of
whoop; say a peace-whoop fraught with amazement, protest, and
a keen appreciation of humour. I feel that if I were German, I
could tell my fellow Teutons in one word.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh-oh-h-h-h-h oh!" The last a short, com-
pacted protest-snap. " No-no, don't take it away. I must see
every line. And did Correggio really unbend to do this? Oh,
but it's exactly like the Reverend Gentleman."
I remarked, appeased by flattery, that I was satisfied with my
own portrayal of the Archbishop's umbrella. It wasn't half bad.
Gracey said it was perfectly lovely.
Mrs. Walkinshaw could not see, off-hand, who was referred
to. "The Archbishop?" said she. "Oh Archbishop of Canter-
bury, of course! My dear! young men will say anything. Abso-
lutely anything. And that that! is your sweet, your lovely
sister Ellen. My Elaine! Oh, brothers, brothers! And the long
perspective of little children!" She melted away in a paroxysm
of appreciation.
Some insight had to be shown, in confidence with Jemima, over
the heads of us juveniles, into the technical absurdity of so huge
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 411
a family. That done, Mrs. Walkinshaw struck a higher note.
" But, after all," said she, " this is trifling." She went on to
recall the fact that even the most admirable fooling should not be
our Life-Object. I borrow her expression. Nevertheless, as long
as I kept before me the Image of True Art, as a Beacon, I might
safely gratify the sense of humour which evidently, in my case,
welled from every pore. In fact, to fail in doing so would be to
fly in the face of the manifest intentions of the Almighty, and
might get me into difficulties in high quarters.
I don't know whether this homily of Walker's had any influence
with me. It may have acted in support of a conviction that I had,
that I owed it to my father to prove that he had not done unwisely
in allowing me to adopt the Image of True Art as a beacon. It
would never do to turn aside to follow this Jack-o'-Lantern's farth-
ing rushlight; and neglect the cult of real Art, with moddles.
The collective wisdom of all my advisers in my family agreed
on this verdict, and I kept my eyes dutifully on the aforementioned
Beacon, and blundered on through the mire of Education; never,
so far as I can recollect, receiving an intelligible instruction on
any point.
My fellow-students at the Academy did not support my family's
decision, with the exception of 'Opkins. " The leadin' idear of
Art," said he, " is seriousness, and the 'ole duty of the Student is
to keep that end in voo, and foller up. The Student of Art
who loses sight of his Mission may every bit as well shut up.
Cuttin' jokes is not the Mission of the Artist." It is fair to
say that I did not hear this myself. It was repeated to me by a
reprobate of the name of Bartholomew whose nature was em-
phatically not serious. He was, in fact, given up to dramatic
recitations and songs, which were considered equivocal, or un-
equivocal, according to the straitness of the considerant's lacing
an expression which impresses me with the liberty the unread
writer enjoys. He reported to me the above reflections of 'Opkins.
and I straightway drew a portrait of 'Opkins uttering them. I
suspect that it was very funny indeed, by the appreciation it re-
ceived when passed from hand to hand for inspection.
" I should chuck painting, if I were you," said Bartholomew,
" and go in for black-and-white." And the student public expressed
approval, saying that there were too many Artists by a long chalk
meaning thereby, real Artists, with studios. Nowadays things
are changed, about a fortieth part of the present Christian Era
having elapsed unobserved since then. That chalk has doubled,
trebled, quadrupled its length; and a shorter chalk but one long
412 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
enough in all conscience is metaphorically justified to express the
superfluity of unreal Artists without Studios; Artists who can
do Art in a common room, one understands. And all through the
last thirty years or so of this epoch, Art Schools have germinated
and Art teachers have multiplied, Art Educators fostered by Art
Education, each one the fruitful instructor of a hundred more,
until no house is complete without its Studio. But nobody wants
pictures.
Just about the time of which I am writing an Artist of any
ability at all who never sold a picture was looked upon as a butt
of the exceptional malignity of Fate. Such a one's friends were
never tired of wondering why a certain lack of interest in Bubble's
work, or Squeak's, should doom those capable and painstaking
artists to monotonous neglect, considering the raptures a vulgar
and superficial Public surrendered itself to over the shocking daubs
of Nip and Tip and Gobble and Popple! Bubble was a stoopid
feller in himself, and everybody knew that Squeak's poverty of
imagination was enough to stand in any man's way, but if you
came to that, how about the other instances cited? No the fact
that neither Bubble, who could draw, beyond dispute, nor Squeak,
who was no mean colourist, could either of them get a dealer to so
much as look at their pictures, could only be accounted for as a
freak of the fickle goddess of Fortune. Whereas nowadays no-
body ever thinks it necessary to wonder at anything except a sale.
Certainly a hazy idea stirs in my mind that Squeak and Bubble
would have looked upon taking to book-illustration as a con-
fession of failure. Memory may be at fault, or may be biassed by
some conspicuous chance instances, of which I have let slip the
details. But my efforts to account to my Self for the repugnance
I felt to crying off Real Art, and utilizing my faculty for pen-
skill and pencil-craft, need some backing. I find it in recollec-
tions of expressed opinion, that to resort to black and white illus-
trations would be a falling off from a high ideal of Life the ideal
incorporated in The Artist's portrait of himself, with a palette on
his thumb that looks as if you would get all over orange vermilion
if you touched it, and a most masterly beginning on the easel.
How well one knows his thoughtful brow, his penetrating gaze, his
cultivated neglect of the human hair-brush! Fancy that great
being climbing down, and devoting himself to humorous caricature,
with a quill pen or lead pencil !
I get a little backing also from a clear memory of a thought that
haunted me, that I was bound to justify my father's yielding to my
professional bias. I talked to Gracey on these lines, in the hope
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 413
that she would encourage a secret wish on my part to " chuck "
Academical education and discover something more fraught with
colour and excitement some road at least that would lead visibly
somewhere. To my disgust, Gracey refused to accept my sug-
gestion that she should press me to do so against my will. That
was really what I wanted advice to struggle against this mad
determination of mine to climb the higher slopes of Parnassus,
curb my ambitious aspirations, and submit my proud soul to endure
the humble style and title of an illustrator. I had paved the way
to this dissuasion by a hint of profits reaped by the groveller ; while
the Theban Eagle, for instance, pays the penalty of soaring by a
chronic emptiness of pocket.
But Gracey took no notice of my hints, and encouraged me in
a most trying way not to be disheartened by the difficulties in
my path. Patience and superhuman application were all that was
needed for a success in Art, to include a world-wide fame and
potentates struggling to become the possessors of one's immortal
pictures. I was tired of work and wanted a holiday, that was all.
I was obliged to make believe that I was setting my teeth with
a firmer determination than ever to storm Parnassus, and that
my remarks had been dictated solely by my consciousness that I
ought to be earning something.
" What nonsense ! " said Gracey. " As if Papa had not said
hundreds of times that it doesn't matter if you don't earn a penny
for the next ten years! Besides, why shouldn't you show some
of your funny little quick sketches to . ... to the proper people,
and see if they can't make use of them ? "
" That's an idea," said I, consoled. " I might just as well have
a shy, as not. But I shall tell the Governor."
"Why, of course tell the Governor! Why not?" This was the
merest chat, which I should have forgotten if Gracey had not
said, a moment later, in an odd roice : " Oh, Jackey ! "
I looked up, and Gracey was pale for no reason that I could
fathom. "What is it?" said I.
"Oh, nothing!" said she. "I know nobody spoke."
" Nobody did," said I, feeling eerie. " What's the fun?" For
a certain alarm in her voice seemed to me to call for bravado.
" Nothing, darling boy ! Go on drawing. Draw more." I was
at the time adding a sketch to a. book merely full of grotesques,
and we had been talking the while. " What's that ? You must
know by this time." I replied that the figure in question was a
Duke, but that I couldn't say where he was Duke of.
"Why is he up in a tree?" said Gracey.
414 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" He's talking to a bird."
" What sort of bird ? "
" I don't know. A tree-bird. Any bird. I say, Gracey "
"What, Jackey darling?"
" What made you sing out just now? "
"Did I sing out?"
" Well half out. What made you say nobody spoke ? "
" Because nobody spoke. All the same I felt " here Gracey
dropped her voice as for speech about the dead " I felt exactly as I
should have felt if I had heard him speak close to us, now."
"What Cooky?"
" Why, of course ! It was just after you said you should tell
Papa . . . about the idea, you know. I felt exactly as I should
have felt if he had said, ' Don't be an ass, little Buttons ! ' here,
quite close to us. Only of course I heard nothing."
" Xo because there wasn't anything to hear." Nevertheless,
I recall that I proceeded, as it were, to justify myself against a
misconstruction that might have been placed on my words by the
speaker who had never spoken. I was a little hurt that it would
have been so exactly what Cooky would have said if he had been
there to say anything. Of course I never should have dreamed of
doing anything without speaking to the Governor first, except to
give him a pleasant surprise. Then I felt nettled with myself
for taking to heart words that might have been spoken, but were
not. So much so that I almost resented Gracey's detecting my
pique, and saying: "It wasn't real, you know, Jackey darling."
I suppose this to have been in late Autumn or early Spring, as
I recollect sitting by the fire with Gracey, after it became too
dark to draw Dukes, talking of Cooky and the days gone by. He
had been dead a couple of years or more, then.
" I wonder," said I, " what he would have said about my going
on. Going on with Real Art, I mean."
Gracey made no reply, beyond, " Silly boy! " and accommodating
my head on her lap. For I was lying on the hearthrug, at her feet.
" I wonder," I repeated, " would he have said the same the
same as just now? "
" He didn't say it just now."
" Well you know what I mean. The same he didn't say just
now."
"'Don't be an ass. little Buttons!' Yes that is what he
would have said." Then I think we agreed, she and I, that there
was no need to give up " Real Art " merely because of an excursion
into illustration-making for books or periodicals. As to which
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 415
should have the greater share in my future, that was Destiny's
lookout. The future might shape itself.
Therefore it was that I said to my father at the next convenient
opportunity given by an evening conclave : '' I say, Pap, Bartholo-
mew says there's no end of money to be made out of illustrations."
" What is the date of your authority ? When did Bartholomew
write ? "
" He's not an authority. He's a chap."
My father puffed tranquilly at his pipe, with his eyes affection-
ately fixed on me, and enjoyed a phase of amusement before he
said : '* Expressions are funny things. I find I accept yours in
spite of the obvious fact that a human creature may be both a
chap and an authority." He considered yet a little more, and
added : " It's curious, but I can't shut my eyes to it, that
Bartholomew not being an authority, but being a chap pre-
sents himself to my mind as a fellow-student of yours at
the Academy."
" Why, of course he is ! Why should he be anything else ? "
" Many other people are. But let's take him for granted, and
hear what he says about no end of money."
" To be got by making illustrations. That's what he says.
I was thinking there would be no harm in having a shy at it."
" Have the shy by all means. . . . But, Jackey boy "
" I know what you're going to say."
"What?"
" That I mustn't neglect painting real work. Well I won't."
" I wasn't going to say exactly that. But I must confess I
don't see why the shy should involve any serious neglect of
painting. No, my dear boy, I was going to say don't be dis-
appointed if nothing comes of it. In the course of my life I
have heard of so many things there was no end of money to
be made in. But they have all had one quality in common."
I had brightened up at the beginning of this, but felt mis-
giving towards the end, and asked somewhat hesitatingly what
it was this quality in common.
'' What was it ? " said my father. " Why, other people had
always got the money, not the people who told me. However,
have the shy, by all means, and we shall see what comes of it.
How are we going to set about it ? "
I explained the tactics I proposed to adopt. The effect of
the scheme was that Bartholomew should write a humorous poem,
and I should make what I called thumbnail marginal notes
little sketchlets of intense appropriateness to each verse. That
416 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
the result should be offered as a contribution to the new humor-
ous journal, Momus, and the proceeds divided equally between
the poet and the illustrator. Bartholomew would call at the Office
and leave it himself. He had the cheek. I hadn't.
4< It doesn't matter which," said my father. " The result would
be the same. That is, if I am rightly informed as to how these
things are worked. Billions of contributions are offered to jour-
nals. These are examined by tens of thousands of illiterate
clerks at low salaries, who clear out what they think rubbish,
and throw it into waste-paper baskets of prodigious size. Thou-
sands of persons of average capacity study what is left, and
throw what they reject into much smaller waste-paper baskets,
and so on. At last only a few hundred jeux-d'esprits and thought-
ful monographs remain, and these are examined by persons of
penetrating intellect, who pass on a final selection to the Editor.
I think the system a wrong one, myself."
" Which way ought it be done ? "
" The other way round. The penetrating intellect is required
to say what should be quashed outright. Any fool can decide on
publishing what will be forgotten on its merits in a day. Any-
way, if you send them your drawings, you'll never see them
again. Your friend's rhymes don't matter. He can keep a
copy."
My father's little lecture had a purpose behind it. He went
on to say that he had heard that an old college fellow of his had
started a new weekly, of a comic sort, and that this might be
this identical Momus. If so, he could write to him about me,
and send him some of my drawings. That would be much more
likely to get attention to them.
On inquiry next day of my friend Bartholomew the identity
of this editor was established, and some correspondence with him
led to my supplying some dramatic initial letters, which were
approved. They were the precursors of a long development of
grotesque woodcuts, for which I became well enough known in
my day, and which supplied me with resources in proportion
to my industry in producing them until well until I was com-
pelled to discontinue its exercise. If I live long enough, I
shall come to the telling of that.
As to poor old Real Art, my first love, it must not be sup-
posed that I discarded her altogether. On the contrary, I kept
the fiction alive for a considerable time by beginning new
" studies " twice a month I think that was the rule and neglect*
ing them twice a month with steadfast punctuality. I had to
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 417
begin them, or I could not have been thwarted in my desire to
complete them, but it was entirely a matter of form. I had reason
to believe so far as being told anything by Bartholomew was
a reason for believing it that 'Opkins shed tears over my defec-
tion. He said, according to my informant : " Parscoe ain't the
first by a many that's neglected the 'igher objects of Art for
the Dagon of Commerce. I 'old, myself, with makin' rumination
secondary, and on no account proarstitootin' gifts above the aver-
age to a fixed salary." This was a reference to an offer I had
accepted of a very small rumination, or remuneration, for a
stated output of vignettes or initials delivered punctually on
Monday morning. I think Bartholomew exaggerated 'Opkins's
style. I have noticed that Satire is apt to exaggerate its provo-
cations; and that when we seek to hold our fellow-men up to
ridicule, we dress him grotesquely in a garb of our own devising.
When we condemn him to death, we leave his crimes unexag-
gerated. This is owing to our confidence in a hereafter. He
will be properly seen to never fear! We hang the man, and the
Devil does the rest.
I think 'Opkins held off from me from this date, accounting
me no longer worthy to be called his pal. I understood that he
spoke of me as a backslider from the true fount of Art, and
destined to reap an inevitable Nemesis. These metaphors were
obscure, but Bartholomew, who told me how 'Opkins had described
me, and supplied his own commentary, saw no reason to suppose
his heart was not in the right place. It would, he said, make one
inclined to quarrel with the decrees of Providence, that a man
should not only have been deliberately created with a displaced
heart, but should have been compelled to be 'Opkins into the
bargain. He added, however, that he never gave way to his
combative inclinations ^n this direction, being a prudent man,
awake to the fact that one's attitude towards Omnipotence should
be subject to the consideration of which side one's bread was
buttered. He was really, if the truth was known, a time-server,
and had no doubt that beyond the tomb he should be an Eternity-
server. For where was the use of trying conclusions with a
Deity who was omnipotent by hypothesis, was not open to argu-
ment, and had the authorized version of the Scriptures at his
finger's ends, and was besides without any sense of Humour
whatever. All the same, he said, it was an Awful Choice that
was placed before us, poor tremblers at the Seat of Judgment ;
considering that so far as he could see, Heaven and Hell were
six of the one and half-a-dozen of the other. In fact, he would
418 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
personally prefer the latter, because of the company, more espe-
cially since he understood from Liberal members of the Church
of England that it was quite an open question whether Dissenters
went to Hell.
It has been said that amusement could riot be derived from
incongruities if it were not for the prior acceptance of an absurd-
ity as a reality by the mind. Bartholomew's mind had been pre-
pared for such amusement by his religious education. He had
to thank two Evangelical Aunts for the gratification he derived
from ridiculing the early materials of Salvation by Faith that
they had afforded him.
'Opkins may have contributed something to the feeling I had
that it would never do to forsake Real Art for such an ephemeral
employment as woodcuts in periodicals. Mrs. Walkinshaw's atti-
tude, on the contrary, made me feel that if it were not for my
family nothing would give me greater pleasure than to throw
up the Academy for good, and addict myself solely to my new
vocation. For I hated Wall\ey, and my soul was in rebellion
against all her rules of life and moral precepts.
There was a topic the good lady was never tired of dwelling
on the impression my first visit to Italy was going to pro-
duce on me. My whole inner being, she announced was going
to be hushed silenced in the Living Presence of a Mighty
Past. I didn't feel at all sure that I should be pleased at this,
but I went so far as to say that I supposed that sort of thing
did make a chap sit up and think. In fact, I had heard a chap
say as much; a chap, that is, who had himself sat up and thought.
I certainly recall that I did mention that 'Opkins, whose ideal
of Art Education was the Royal Academy Schools for ever and
ever, had rebuked the chap and denounced study in Italy as
an 'oiler sham.
"' The Ideal of Art-Earnestness," said Mrs. Walkinshaw, sitting
upright on our sofa with her eyes shut, to emphasize the fact
that she was soaring above 'Opkins, " is to be found in Michel-
angelo. To work in Italy, at the very shrine of his achievements,
is to partake of his atmosphere. We must be content with noth-
ing less than a course of study in the very shadow of the Sistine
Chapel."
I feel certain that the emphasis which faulty oratory threw
on the word shadow made my stepmothers mind reel, and bred
an idea in it that the advantages of studentship in Rome were
circumscribed and localized, as suggested. For she said, depre-
catingly : " Perhaps we shall not find an empty Studio." And
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 419
Gracey made the point clearer by asking pointblank how big the
shadow was.
Mrs. Walkinshaw was nearly through a laugh before she opened
her eyes with the exclamation : u Oh, but you are such literal
dears 1 Fancy 'how big'! Our dear Gracey 1" She endeav-
oured to entangle my sister in an embrace, but Gracey got
cleverly away, falling back behind me as a support. Then Mrs.
Walkinshaw cleared up the position, saying briefly : " I spoke
metaphorically." She then resumed the subject with a species
of rapture, clasping her lavender kid gloves to say : " Oh, but I
see it. A Studio in Rome, and receptions! Oh, my darling
Gracey how small we shall feel ! " My memory must be at
fault here. It must have created an image of this excellent lady
endeavouring to dodge round me, to gloat over or otherwise
gushily molest Gracey. I can't remember whether Gracey escaped,
or fell a victim and had to be coiled round. I remember dis-
tinctly making drawings to this effect next day, and it may be
that my drawings, remaining in my memory, have substituted a
false effect for the reality.
Further than this, I can only add to my disjointed recollec-
tions an image of the patient forbearance of my father, whose
love for me bore me out in this new departure of illustration-
making, as I believe it would have done in any new course that
had taken my fancy even an absurd one in the belief that I
should one day steady down into some reasonable and perhaps
profitable vocation. And if I did not, would he not be able to
leave enough to his survivors to put absolute poverty out of
the question?
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
WHAT a long time my father held on at Somerset House after
that narrow escape, just after my mother's death, of throwing
up his situation prematurely and losing his pension! He might
have resigned, and claimed it, many years before he did so. But
the fact was that he was on that occasion obeying an impulse
against the grain, and letting his respect for my mother's wish
run counter to his own prudence, and perhaps to his reluctance
to say good-bye to the post he had filled for so many years. He
was one of those people who think that everything ought to go on
for ever, and would do so, if it were not for the difficulty-mongering
of every one else.
As a matter of fact, I had degringole from my Higher Art In-
stincts Mrs. Walkinshaw's expression and been at work as an
illustrator for some months at the time of the incidents which
led to my father's farewell to Inland Revenue. These two words
are still so familiar to me that I cannot really understand their
meaning. I can, of course, assign to them mechanically the inter-
pretation that my mind has received since childhood ; but that's
another thing. I caress the idea of my infancy, that they ex-
pressed a great something that never could be known to me, and
can reconstitute pro hoc vice the frame of mind which associated
them with what I was told was a Revenue Cutter, at the seaside.
My father's avocation was Inland, that was all. This vessel could
cut only Revenues that were met out at sea; as fish, sea-gulls, or
otherwise. But both forms of Revenue were beyond me, and I
accepted them without inquiry.
This passive acceptance in childhood of a Government Depart-
ment that I could not in the nature of things know anything
about must have clung to me through life. For more than once,
when I had occasion to seek my father out at Somerset House,
for the delivery of a message or what not, I felt unable to approach
its mysterious interior in the same spirit as that in which I
should have explored any other great Institution in London, even
the Mansion House. Surely the latter ought to inspire awe. Yet
when I went there once to get the Lord Mayor's name and seal
appended to a Colonial document that refused to be content with
420
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 421
anything less I trod the sacred precincts without misgiving, even
with confidence. It was quite otherwise at Somerset House. There
my whole soul felt hushed by the thought that I was here here
in the very place that had co-existed with me from all time, that
I had thought of as an unvarying background to my father, but
whose interior was as unknown to me as any Thibetan shrine ; and
whose purpose was inscrutable, though guaranteed unimpeachable
by my father having something to do with it. I wonder whether
any other than myself ever had so strange a relation with another
Institution as mine with Somerset House was ever conscious of
such a one as a Fact, without details, through so long a term
of years; and yet made no inquiry, as I made none, that would
have brought it down from the realm of almost abstract ideas
to the concrete conditions of a Public Office, where you can go
in at the wrong door, and ask your way a great many times, and
have to wait a very long time for answers? Also, where there are
places you can take a seat in till Mr. So-and-so is disengaged,
and would you like to see this morning's Times? where your
letter that introduces you and explains your business is caught
in a whirlwind and borne away, and you think you are lost in
Chaos till the young man comes back and says Mr. So-and-so
will be able to see you presently; where pigeon-holes have broken
out in eruptions on the walls, and classification seems to have
become an irresistible habit, like Alcoholism. I am only men-
tioning a few of the characteristics of such places in the con-
crete, at random, to emphasize my recollection of the idea, Som-
erset House, as it was first instilled into my baby mind, and was
retained there, as an abstraction, till well on into manhood. That
idea had nothing in common with these banalities. It was above
them extensive, continuous, and dignified, but quite above func-
tions and duties and objects and things, that mortal men fulfil,
or don't.
It was my father himself who first found out the fact that the
time had come for his resignation. And the incident that set
him a-thinking first over that fact was one that I still remem-
ber well; I suppose because subsequent events made me recall as
much as I could of it, to illuminate them if possible. It hap-
pened in this wise, one afternoon in the Summer when I was return-
ing from a sketching expedition.
Gracey was just passing in at the garden gate when I turned
into the lane, and she did not see me coming. So I had to
knock at the door independently. She knew my knock and opened
to me, having stopped to look at the directions of letters. I heard
422 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
her tell Raynes, while I was still outside, that it was only me
and she needn't come. Why she thought it needful to stop
Raynes's career I don't know. Exercise was good for Raynes.
"Any letters?" said I, for no reason. For I saw there were
none for me. One does see, very quickly, the absence of one's
own name from a post.
" Nothing of any interest," said Gracey. " They're all for
Papa and Aunt Helen." But she kept on looking at one of
them.
I also looked at each in turn, to verify this. Again, without
reason. For I trusted Gracey's word. She kept on looking at the
one she held. " What's the matter with that one ? " said I.
" Only that it's so odd," said she. " Look at it, and see what
you think! . . . Now isn't it odd?"
I cast about for a negative attitude, but could find nothing bet-
ter than : " I don't see anything odd in that. Some chap's hand-
writing is like the Governor's. Well ! lots of people write exactly
alike."
" No, Jackey dear that's just what they don't do. Every one
writes his own way, and nobody else's." I pooh-poohed this, which
indeed may be a little overstated, and went upstairs.
But I had only just reached the landing when my father's latch-
key clicked in the door. " There's the Governor coming ! " said
I, over the stair-rail. "You ask him if he thinks it odd." I
waited to hear, though; for I did not feel so very sure, after all.
"What's the rumpus?" said my father, coming in. "Who
thinks what? What do we think? Any letters? " The first ques-
tions called for no answer. They only emphasized general com-
munion.
Gracey answered the last. " Three for you two for Aunt
Helen none for me none for Jackey ! Who's this from ? "
"Why?"
" Because it's so like your writing." Gracey handed the odd
letter to my father, who opened it, assenting to her view after
glancing at the direction, with the remark : " So it is. Some
chap's done it for a lark. It seems to me a very mild lark." I
fancied that he seemed nettled at the presumption of this cor-
respondent, and that he opened the letter with something like im-
patience. A glance at the signature, which came foremost, pro-
voked a sudden exclamation: "Well but but ... I wrote
this ... I wrote this yesterday." Then he turned to the direction
on the envelope, saying in great bewilderment : " But what but
why ? " Then he collected himself, to say emphatically : " Some
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 423
stupid mistake ! Mine, I daresay ! Yes, probably mine ! '' My
stepmother's knock at the street-door broke into any possible ex-
planation, and I thought my father seemed relieved to be able to
thrust this mysterious epistle into his breast-pocket, and to say
to her that it was, " Oh, nothing ! " with such an obvious wish
to extinguish the topic, that Gracey and I were silent about it.
Nevertheless, Gracey came into my room, and sat on the bed
while I changed my boots, all about this letter. " What was it
upset Papa so?" said she. "Because he was upset, Jackey, and
it's no use saying he wasn't."
Then I began to see that there was a problem awaiting solu-
tion. My first contribution to it was : " Somebody put the Gov-
ernor's letter in the wrong envelope."
" I don't care about the letter," said Gracey. " What I want
to know about is the envelope. Who directed it ? "
''The Governor, of course!"
"Yes but why? People don't direct letters to themselves."
" Oh yes, they do, though ! " I plunged into a maze of im-
probable supposition, of a person at a place of business who had
left the address of an unknown correspondent at home, and whom
to make it more sure that his answer should be forwarded when
he returned in the evening, and not forgotten, had done as my
father appeared to have done. It was ingenious, but did not
bear examination.
Gracey took the most salient point. " If it was that," said she,
" why was Papa surprised ? "
I began, " Well you see ! . . ." weakly, and got deeper in the
mire. So Gracey laughed at me and called me a silly boy, whiefe
I deserved. Then she ran away to get ready for dinner.
I heard no more of the letter until my father and I were smok-
ing in the study after dinner. Then he referred to it, as I knew
he would, without any suggestion on my part that he should do so.
" Now, Master Jackey," said he, " I want you to turn your pow-
erful mind to the solution of a practical problem. What do you
make of that ? " He held out the empty envelope to me as he
spoke, and I felt as I took it from him somewhat as a super-
stitious person feels who is offered a thing warranted bewitched,
and fights shy of handling it. I pretended indifference, however,
and looked inside it for the letter. " There's nothing in it," said
I. "No letter, I mean."
"Precisely," said he. "I sent the letter on, to get it off my
conscience. Also to catch the next post; Mr. Westrop will get
his letter, only twenty-four hours late. It's not a hanging mat-
424 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
ter. But how about the envelope? What do we make of that?
Who wrote it ? "
" Why," said I, seeing no escape, " you wrote it. Or some beg-
gar who writes exactly like you, anyhow!"
" 7 wrote it," said my father, gravely. " And the question is
why? Why did I write it?"
Of course this question, and the way he waited for an answer,
was embarrassing. I think I changed colour and hesitated.
" Didn't you know why ? " said I. I could not say : " Don't you
know w,hy?" It would have been rude.
" I did not even know that I did it. It was done unconsciously.
1 could understand writing my own name instead of some one
else's, if the first syllables were the same. Then if one forgot to
go on thinking about what was to come next, one's hand would
not write what was to come next; one's hand would write what
it was most accustomed to write. That does happen. But "
"But what?"
" But to write Nathaniel Pascoe, Esquire, instead of Thomas
Truman Westrop, Esquire just consider! Thomas Truman Wes-
trop . . . Thomas Truman Westrop. ..." He went on repeating
the name, as though to catch some point of resemblance to his
own, that would furnish a clue to his aberration.
I turned fatuously to the task of discovering a resemblance
between the names. I traced each letter of Nathan complete, to
my surprise, but was upset by the third syllable. I gave it up,
with the remark that I was afraid that cock wouldn't fight.
" He's a very poor bird," said my father, and went on smoking
thoughtfully. As for me, I felt that I had really nothing to say,
and held my tongue.
Presently my father said, as though his cogitations had borne
fruit : '' One thing is pretty clear this may happen again ! "
" Suppose it does ! "
" ' Suppose it does ? ' You're a nice son and heir for a public
servant. However I'll tell you. That letter was written to
Thomas Truman Westrop whoever he is; 7 don't know to tell
him that his letter would be laid before the Board. And it doesn't
matter a brass farthing whether he gets it today or tomorrow, or
next week. But the one I wrote just after that was to assure
the Secretary of State that I would wait upon him next Monday
as appointed, and bring all the necessary documents. That hap-
pened to be a reply by bearer, to make the thing a fixture. But
it might have gone by post, for all I can see. Now, suppose I
had sent that letter to Thomas Truman Westrop who's a man
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 425
with a grievance he might have avenged himself on the Official
World by throwing it in the fire. I think I am not exagger-
ating when I say that that would have been a pretty kettle of
fish, seeing what the alternative appointment was."
" Couldn't you have made it hot for what's his name, Thomas
Truman Westrop, if he burnt your letter ? "
" My dear boy, I'm glad you're an Artist, not a detective. How-
ever should I know that he had burnt my letter?"
I reflected, and found no answer. I could only see my way to
a vague optimism. " But no harm has come of it, so what does
it matter?"
" No harm has come of it this time," he replied, with even
more of gravity in his manner. " Indeed, some good may have
come of it, for I think I can make sure that it never will happen
again. We shall see." I said no more.
This incident had a good deal to do with my father's decision,
made shortly afterwards, to resign his position at Somerset House;
although, so far as he assigned reasons for doing so publicly, no
reference was made to anything but his long term of service, and
his feeling that old stagers should clear out and make way for the
rising generation. This, however, was some months later.
He took me quite into his confidence; no one perhaps so thor-
oughly. For he told my stepmother as little as he could about the
misdirected letter and the cause of his alarm. Indeed, although
he told her of the incident and this he could scarcely avoid doing,
as she had come upon him at the moment of its occurrence he
did not inform her of the resolution he formed in consequence.
He admitted that the curious misdirection implied something
abnormal in his state of health, but laid it down to stomach, the
optimist's scapegoat.
To me he was quite explicit. When we were alone together
a few evenings later, in the garden this time this was in the
Summer, and after-dinner smokes were frequently out of doors
he referred to the subject again.
" It's the writing on the wall, my dear boy ! " said he. " Only
this time the same actor is cast for the part of Belshazzar and
the Prophet. I shall burn out." He was looking at the match
he had just used to light his pipe, which was flickering on the
ground at our feet.
" I shall burn out," he repeated. " Without spitting and fizzing.
I hope. It's one of the quarrels I have with my Creator whom
I presume, without definite reason, to have been everybodiy's
else's that with all the unlimited resources of Omnipotence,
426 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
he could not contrive some less awkward and repulsive way of
winding up Life than Death. And to make matters worse, one
is decently interred. It is no use pretending that God did not
make undertakers, because they have just as good a claim to be
considered His Creatures as Members of Society."
I am pretty sure this is sound recollection, not plausible recon-
struction. What I said in reply ignored the theology, as I
was more interested in the prediction that had led to it. " But
why burn out, Pap dear? Why more than any one else, I mean?
We all burn out, I suppose sometime. ... I say, Pap !"
"What, for instance, Intelligent Offspring?"
"What did Dr. Scammony say?" For I knew he had been
to consult the little man, but had so far only a very imperfect
report of the medical verdict. "I don't believe he only said
' Diet.' "
" That's all that concerns the General Public. The remainder
is shrouded in mystery. But it's no secret that he said I should
see Rayson; or that I didn't twig, and said I never knew he was
an Irishman. He twigged, and said: 'No not reason, Rayson
Sir Alcibiades Rayson. He's the man for this sort of job ' . . . I
think it would be best that you should repeat nothing I say to
your stepmamma, or perhaps to anybody."
'"I shan't repeat a single word," said I, rather proud to know
something more than the General Public, especially as my step-
mother seemed to belong to it. "He's a Big Wig, I suppose?"
" As large a Wig as the subject admits of. ... No I can't
see my way to a Baronetcy, in this connection ! " He seemed
to turn the advancement of this gentleman over in his mind, and
to decide that knighthood met all the needs of the case; then
resumed : " However, I daresay I shall go and see him, for little
Scammony's sake. He doesn't like the responsibility. If Sir
Rnyson puts me on charcoal, and forbids meat and fish and wine
and eggs and butter and cheese., I can remain on the charcoal
in theory, and prey upon animals and vegetables ad libitum like
Violante in the pantry, gnoring of a mutton-bone." My father
seemed to derive great satisfaction from this prospect of sur-
reptitious evasion of doctor's orders.
I got back to the main point. " But about the writing on the
wall. Do you mean that . . . ? " I hung fire over saying the
thing I meant.
He had no such scruples and accepted my meaning with per-
feot equanimity. " Mean that I shall die one day, and that the
disorder I shall die of is identified ? That was my meaning. It
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 427
would be infinitely more correct to make believe that I was im-
mortal, as properly brought-up people do, in Christian communi-
ties. . . What! do you mean that they don't? Why, when some-
one near a hundred is on his deathbed, don't the newspapers say
' the worst is feared ' ? And people are ' not expected to live '
no one is ever so candid as to say he is expected to die. Really,
the proverb ' Never say die ' gets obeyed all round."
I said something about how words didn't count. But I don't
think it meant anything.
" Well," said my father, cheerfully, " facts count, and I drove
little Scammony into a corner, and made him speak as nearly
plain as a human General Practitioner could be expected to do.
He said that if I developed sundry symptoms, he, if he were I,
would make my Will. I told him that if he were me, he would
have done that years ago. We got a little perplexed over an ob-
scure hypothesis."
" He wasn't so very plain, that I see. He only said if you
developed . . . what was it ? "
" I forget the exact name of the complaint. It doesn't matter.
I long ago gave up paying the slightest attention to diseases'
names. There are really only two sorts, those that kill, and those
that permit of a modus vivendi. I prefer the first. The modus is
never a comfortable one for their .... client suppose we say
however satisfactory to themselves. What fun it would be to be
a pain in the head of somebody\one hated ! How one would come
on, and get worse, and never yield to treatment ! "
I don't believe he had forgotten the name of the complaint.
At another time I should have listened with pleasure to my
father in this mood, as I always did. But the importance he had
seemed to attach to that insignificant affair of the misdirection,
and the fact that he had certainly paid Dr. Scammony a visit
in consequence of it, lent weight to those unpleasant words of his
about the " writing on the wall." Otherwise I might have thought
them nothing but vague moralizing, suggested perhaps by the short-
lived flame of that match on the gravel path. I did not feel any
real alarm about him, because real danger, in the case of any one
so intrinsically permanent as he, was impossible per se. Death
lays his icy hand on Kings; but then they are public characters,
and History has to be considered.
So I only felt a little passing discomfort at his reference to
Daniel, and allowed my natural optimism to take its course.
" You're all right, Pater dear!" said I. ''You've only got not
to develop something with a Latin name. It had a Latin name,
428 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I suppose?" I said this with a view to getting at the name, and
asking questions of a young medical man I had come to know,
the brother of an Artist whom I met first at the Academy Schools.
" Not a Latin name this time," said my father. " Greek. It's
just as easy not to develop a disease in Greek as in Latin, even
when one knows as little Greek as I do. However, I know enough
to know this was a Greek disease, not a Latin one. But it went
in at one ear, and out at the other. . . . There I've forgotten
it! " He withheld the name, which was what I expected. As far
as I know, it was never mentioned again between us. One is shy
of giving its name to a disorder, in speech with its victim.
But some words he had used on the occasion of that mis-
directed letter hung in my head, and vexed me into asking their
meaning pointblank. "Why did you say some good might come
of the mistake on the letter?" said I.
"Some good? When did I say that?"
" At the time. You said you might make sure that it should
not happen again."
" I shall, as far as business letters are concerned ; unless, indeed,
something happens before next Christmas. Private correspond-
ence will have to take its chance, after that."
"How do you mean?" I asked, not because I had no guess,
but as an expression of official ignorance. Because he had not
then declared any definite intention.
" Next year, my dear boy, the Inland Kevenue and I shall part
company, except for periodical reminders of its existence which
I shall receive in common with all persons with whom it is on
visiting terms. It never forgets its old friends, though it scorns
the poor and lowly." He tapped the ash out of his pipe and
refilled it, after which he became less metaphorical. " I mean
I shall resign, and retire on my pension. That misdirected letter
did the job. It won't do to run the risk of blunders like that. I
shall be in a state of constant anxiety until I know my last letter
has been delivered to the proper person." This was a prosaic
pause, between the old pipe and the new. A whiff of the fresh
tobacco made him himself again. " And Scammony says I must,
above all things, avoid anxiety. Unless I particularly want to
develop those symptoms, to see what they are like! I don't think
I care to do so. They seem uninteresting."
" Shall you tell .... ? " I began.
"Your stepmamma? Why no! At least. I shall tell her I
mean to resign. But there are plenty of reasons for that. Thirty
years is a good stretch of public service. She won't connect it
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 429
with the visit to Scammony. I shan't tell her anything for another
six weeks. Time to forget a dozen doctors! Two per week."
I saw that, having said as much as he meant to say seriously,
he was relaxing into his former tone. He was soon speculating
as to whether, if Dr. Scammony had seen Belshazzar's tongue,
he would have been able to check that monarch in his downward
course, and enabled him to put on moral flesh enough to cut a
better figure in the balance.
" Now mind, Master Jackey," said he as we wound up our gar-
den smoke and went to join Jemima and Gracey in the drawing-
room they had a visitor who would not come out because of the
night air " now mind you don't say a word of this to either
of them. They'll know all about it in time. Only I don't want
them to know it yet, or they'll connect it with Belshazzar."
So I kept my own counsel, stimulated and supported by my
sense of my important position of confidence. I did not even
speak of it to Gracey.
But I needed the stimulus and support, for it became a little
difficult to maintain the confidence, seeing that I was at best
a bad hand at any sort of concealment. My stepmother devel-
oped suspicions about my father's reasons for paying a visit to
Dr. Scammony, having only an imperfect knowledge of ,the
affair of the misdirected letter; indeed, she had given very slight
attention to it at the time. My father had, however, in an un-
guarded moment, let out about his visit to Bernard Street, hav-
ing said heedlessly that he had been in the neighbourhood of
" the Square " and had found it none too easy to restrain himself
from going to see how it was looking. " I could just as easily
have walked round that way," said he, " as waited for little Scam-
mony, who broke his appointment; but I suppose it was just as
well. It wouldn't have made me cheerful."
My stepmother looked up from the fashionable marriages in
the Personal column of her newspaper, to say: " You did not say
you had been to Dr. Hammond! What on earth took you to Dr. .
Hammond ? "
My father perceived his mistake, but no immediate chance of
correcting it. He took refuge in a misprision of the obvious
meaning of the question, and replied : " A hansom cab. I've
forgotten the number, but I formed a good opinion of the driver."
Gracey said "Why?" cutting across Jemima's: "Nonsense
about hansom cabs. You know perfectly well what I mean."
He preferred to answer Gracey, who seemed interested in the
cab-driver. " Because when I gave him one and sixpence, he
430 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
said he wanted half-a-crown. I pointed out that the legal fare
was a shilling, and he said he was quite aware of the fact, but
that he wanted a half-crown for all that from natural cupidity,
not as having any claim for it. He said : ' You ask any beg-
gar of uncommonly moderate means if he don't want half-a-grown,
and if he don't say yes he's a liar! ' So I formed a good opinion
of him, as he seemed to be truthful and clear-sighted."
"And, of course, you gave him the other shilling?" This
was Gracey, while Jemima waited almost audibly for the end of
this nonsense. It was not her sort. My father eluded the point
of whether the cabman got the shilling of course he did get it
by going back to the previous question what on earth took him
to Dr. Hammond's? "Well anyhow! the cab took me to Ber-
nard Street. But I suspect you mean why did I go ? "
" Of course I meant why did you go ! Why was it ? Is any-
thing wrong ? "
" Nothing whatever. Never was better in my life." But my
father was over-stating his case, and courting suspicion. I saw
it in my stepmother's eye as she dropped the subject; dropped it
as it were on the ground, and looked another way. Catechism
was useless so she evidently decided and enlightenment had
to be sought elsewhere. I had a prevision that " elsewhere " would
be in my neighbourhood.
" Ask Jackey ! " said Gracey, as I entered the drawing-room an
hour later. It was on a Sunday morning, and she and Jemima
were having a pre-Church chat, slightly tinctured with letter-
writing.
" Ask Jackey what ? " said I. " Only cut along quick, because
I'm just going out.''
My stepmother, as usual, good-looking and well in hand
her own hand was not disposed to give way to coercion. " Xot
if you are in such a hurry. Another time will do quite as well."
She took up the Observer and pretended to be interested in it.
" Do tell Aunt Helen what she wants to know, Jackey, . and
don't be silly!" Thus Gracey, causing me to take a chair osten-
tatiously, as one who anticipates a prolonged interview.
"I can't do any telling until she says what it is," said I, with
aggressive meekness. But Aunt Helen was not well disposed
towards concession under pressure. She addressed Gracey with-
out taking her eyes off the Observer. " Never mind now, Gracey
dear! Another time will really do just as well. Let him go
now."
Gracey accepted this as tactics, making no comment. She took
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 431
upon herself the part of parlementaire. " Aunt Helen wants to
find out," she said, " why Papa went to Dr. Hammond. Is any-
thing the matter he isn't telling us about ? "
As I did not know what he was telling them about at least,
officially a way out of the difficulty seemed to present itself.
" How should I know ? " said I. But the question was not bona
fide, and I was not clever at this sort of thing. I proceeded to
develop embarrassment for myself, adding needlessly : " How do
I know what he's told you 1 "
That was fatal. My stepmother laid the Observer down, say-
ing to Gracey, exactly as if I had not been in the room: " You
see how it is, dear. There is something, and he hasn't told us! "
Gracey accepted any negligibility, making me feel that I wasn't
wanted. " Suppose we were to go us two this afternoon, and
call on Dr. Hammond. He would tell us."
Jemima flushed up quite angrily; and, indeed, this was very
unusual with her she was not given to changing colour. " Any-
thing but that ! " she exclaimed. And I think Gracey was as
much surprised as I was. She looked quite puzzled for a minute
at least. Then she said deprecatingly : "But why not? He's
a very old friend. And at any rate, he knows."
' Does he? Well, Gracey dear, since you think so much of him,
you go and see him yourself. I shall certainly not go."
" Suppose you and I were to go and talk to him, Jackey. It
couldn't do any harm now, could it?"
I did not fancy this. I think I wanted to nurse my disbelief
in my father's gloomy forecast about himself. So I said, with
masculine importance, that the Governor wouldn't like that. My
sister surrendered the point, rather as though she thought there
might be truth in what I said.
"Of course not!" said our stepmother, who seemed to have
become quite heated on the subject. " Your father would dislike
it extremely. I cannot tell what possesses him to pin his faith
on that absurd little G. P. But he does, and nothing I can say
is of any use. The best thing you young people can do is to per-
suade him to see a Specialist some man of standing if he really
suspects there is anything the matter. But do anyhow try to
persuade him against that little humbug Hammond. If he comes
down here to see him I shall simply leave the house." I don't
think I ever saw Jemina so emue against any one.
Since our migration to Chelsea, my father's very old friend,
Dr. Scammony that is, Hammond had remained his medical
adviser, in spite of the low opinion Jemima had of his capabilities.
432 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I never could understand on what this was founded. It was
quite unimportant so long as my father continued a model of
robust health; indeed, so long as one's medical adviser is not
called on for advice, a night-bell and a thermometer for tempera-
tures, as insignia, are all that is professionally necessary. Even
so a submarine mine may do as well on cottonwool as on gun-
cotton, as long as navigation goes another way. It is when one
is called on to explode or prescribe, in the doctor's case that
weakness of qualification is apt to show itself.
I suppose that Jemima was in the right when, after a grudging
admission from my father that he had felt some uneasiness about
his own health, she protested against his leaving it entirely in
the hands of Dr. Scammony, and urged him to consult a specialist.
My father was at least unconvincing when he replied that that
was precisely what Hammond had said himself, and he should do
nothing of the sort. It seemed such a non-sequitur. But I under-
stand what he meant that Dr. Scammony's advice was a suffi-
cient proof of his professional integrity, which my stepmother
had foolishly impugned, saying that he was an incompetent little
prig, who only wanted to keep all the fees for himself. If she
had been content to treat the question as one of medical skill
only, and not mixed it up with another, of personal character,
I believe my father would not have felt in honour bound to take
up a defensive position. Gracey said about it, talking apart to
me : " Of course Papa sticks up for Dr. Scammony. He was
sure to do so."
This was in the frequent, if not invariable, conclave held to
discuss any matter of great public interest by myself. Gracey,
and Varnish. For man and woman as we were by now, my sister
and I still held firmly to the tradition that Varnish's presence,
as an assessor or umpire, was an essential to the highest consid-
eration of family concerns. If the status quo had lasted another
ten years, I believe these debates would have still gone on, un-
changed. For the weight of one's first and only nurse's authority
is not a thing one's life parts with easily, and Varnish was a sur-
vival of the early days at the Square.
*So that this speech, apart to me, of Gracey's about Dr. Scam-
mony was no correction of what Varnish had just said about
Jemima, but rather justified or confirmed it. We both knew
that Varnish could not express opinions in cold blood when any-
thing our stepmother had said was before the House. The speech
ehe had just made was coloured by her eentiments towards her
enemy, and both of us knew we might ignore these as mere com-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 433
mon form. She had said : " Some has their reasons, and some
they do without. And whether or not, Dr. Scammony he's not
in favour. Not with your stepmar. Your pa's contrariness itself
to that." To which Gracey's answer, as recorded above, would
have been no more than an obvious comment, had it not been
for a certain hesitation of manner, which might only have been
due to doubt if my father's partiality for Dr. Scammony was
reasonable. Varnish understood it to imply something else; at
least, I thought so. For she took no notice of Gracey's text, and
returned to Jemima. " What was the names she called the doc-
tor your stepmar ? " said she.
4< Aunt Helen didn't call him any names," said Gracey, at
a loss.
" No more than what you told me, just now with your very
own lips, Miss Gracey. Jeepee's names, to my way of thinking."
" Oh no, it wasn't, Varnish dear, G. P. is initials." Varnish
looked incredulous. " It stands for General Practitioner. G
for general, and P for practitioner."
" Initials was of no account in my time," said Varnish. " Words
was plain words, and what one stands for, one as good as says,
and on way out. So your stepmar's no call for to brazen of it
out that way. Only more honest to say what is it? General
Prack Thingummy right off! Anyhow, she said he wanted to
keep all the fees for himself. That was nice, to lay at his door!
And him as often as not forgetting his bill at Christmas, unless
remonstrated."
I remarked that Dr. Scammony was far from being a greedy
little cuss, and Varnish seemed appeased. But she matured and"
confirmed her position. " Anyway, as I say, the doctor's not in
favour, and your stepmar she has her reasons." I might have
fancifully ascribed this to any tiff in the past between Jemima
and Dr. Scammony, had not Varnish continued : " So she would
any one that could rake up. She don't like talk."
I never should have thought it possible to resent a marriage
with a widower as Varnish resented the Sly Cat's with my father.
I believe, however, that had the latter never known nry mother,
my old nurse would have been less ferocious towards her. Now
/ should have said that " the Departed " would always prefer any-
thing to a perfect stranger, as a successor. But I know differ-
ence of opinion exists on this point.
I think my father's mind was much easier when he had taken
the final step, and sent in his resignation. No mishap occurred
434 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
in his correspondence, so far as I knew, between then and Christ-
mas; and if it had, the fact that he had acted so quickly on a
first mistrust of his own business powers, would have absolved
him from blame. He grew sad and grave as the time came on for
his final farewell to the Office, where he had worked for over
thirty years. I see now that I was wanting in sympathy, but
the truth is that Somerset House had been for me, all my life,
so much a mere matter of course, that I failed to regard it as hav-
ing any qualities whatever. I believe this is intelligible to my
Self. If I had to make it so to another person, I should try ask-
ing him to analyze his sentiments towards the Lion and the Uni-
corn, as a work of Art.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
SOMEWHERE about this time I can see, looking back, that I
must have crossed the frontier of manhood, and left the region
of youth that one is so eager to see the last of, and regrets all
the rest of the time without encountering so much as a douanier
to hint at a boundary on the map. A sharp line was drawn, for
me, at the end of boyhood, by the death of my old friend, Nebuch-
adnezzar. It ended a period distinctly, but I am not clear where
the next began. However, succinct delimitations are not of the
essence of my contract with my Self. I have only promised to
write all I can recollect, as nearly as may be in order of its
happening.
At the end of that year I was still subject to intermittent at-
tacks of Art; that is to say, Art proper, with moddles. When
my work on wood-blocks ran short, I was well disposed towards a
spasmodic visit to the Academy Schools. These recrudescences
of nude and draped figures, of rickety easels and canvasses that
pulled asquint if rashly overwedged, of old familiar smells of dryers
and megilp, of new tubes of colour so tenderly reclosed after the
first squeeze, so soon neglected and corner-cricked, revealing to
the rash squeezer the meaning, for instance, of Prussian Blue
under the finger-nails these and a many others were so much res-
urrection from the past, even then.
Or, it may be that I was Rip Van Winkle, or even Lazarus,
though I did not get the welcome that Mary and Martha have
been supposed to give their brother. On the contrary, suspicion
and reproach were visible on the faces of my fellow-students. My
reappearance this time as I suppose in January was greeted
with a collective look askance from an assembly of more faithful
votaries of Art Education, and a general remark : *' We thought
you weren't coming back.'' The implication of manner was that
they were downcast at the discovery of their mistake. The nearest
approach to a welcome was from 'Opkins, who said: "Back in
your old 'ornts, I see," in a tone which left it open whether he
was pleased to see me or not. It was not without a sort of pride
that he said : " You'll find us exactly the same. We don't go in
for change here." I can fancy the Matterhora saying this, of
435
436 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
himself and his brother Alps, not without dignity; but 'Opkins
had scarcely the same excuses for pluming himself on his immu-
tability. The condition of his wristbands alone would have dis-
qualified him.
Of course, the " study " I began was a farce, for this was the
last sitting but one of the moddle. I made a parade of its slight
masterliness its momentary character. It was so slipshod had
so little reference to the head it was " dashed in " from, or any-
thing else; and was, moreover, so unsupported by any evidence
of imaginative misinterpretation on the artist's part, that noth-
ing but Time say a couple of decades stood between it and the
honours of Impressionism. It is a mystery to me, which will last
my time, why, the moment that I soared into the realms of Real
Art painting heads from Nature, to wit, especially I said fare-
well to accuracy and decision. And even more so that I wel-
comed, and was welcomed by, both, when I came down from the
dizzy heights of Parnassus to the humbler regions of book-prints
and initial letters for Momus. I wonder if any artist has ever
had a like experience.
There was at this time studying in the school a man who after-
wards made a reputation with his books on Art. It was generally
predicted of him that he would do so, seeing that he had drawn
in the Antique School a foot with six toes. " And shaddered 'em
up, too!" added 'Opkins, when he told me of the incident. He
went on to say that he thought it was an 'ereditary pecooliarity
in the heyesight of this gentleman. But, he said, he could read
'Orace, and even trarnslate that author. This "but" appeared
to have some relation to a mysterious system in 'Opkins's mind
which showed him the relative value of human deficiencies, and
their compensations.
I suppose that the reason I have forgotten this artist's name
is that he was always spoken of as " Pope Sixtoes." in conse-
quence in this error in Arithmetic. It was not Silbermann. but
it was somehow the equivalent thereof. I am content to accept
Silbermann.
He was a superior person, sitting at the feet of Art in company
with a lot of crude youngsters, out of sheer humility. He was
very boastful about his humility, and brandished it in a way
that made every one else seem bumptious. He always made it
understood that his inability to draw or paint anything whatever
was a kind of compensation for or rather Nemesis of a supreme
knowledge of the theory and history of Art. That he did not
scruple to lay himself open to the finger of scorn, by coura-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 437
geously mixing with the students at the Academy as a student
himself, was a proof how humble he was. But he ran no risk
of loss of caste, for he knew all about the quattrocento in Italy,
and could knock you down with the name of a Tuscan town or
artist, or the date of a Grand Duke, and leave you helpless, with-
out turning a hair. He always hung out an Italian word or
two on first acquaintance, as a ship at sea shows colours. Not
that his nationality was Italian. He was an Art Critic. That
was all.
Thus it was that when he and I were almost the last two to
depart, after the sitting of the moddle had come to an end, Mr.
Silbermann's departure was delayed a moment, and a pince-nez
was requisitioned from an inner pocket to enable him to see my
masterly production. He hoisted his flag, so to speak, as he fished
for it, with the inquiry "Permesso?" in a tone of tentative
courtesy.
My Italian went that far. " By all means," said I. " But it's
a flukey piece of rot."
The Art Critic cooed a protest against this harsh judgment.
" We must not say that," said he, deprecatorily. He repeated
this two or three times, slower and slower, as he polished the
pince-nez up to critical examination point. That done, he bal-
anced it on a nose accommodated to a safe level, reminding me
of the conjurer's chin arranging for a plate-spin. But the glasses
were still fulfilling their mission. in life, while none can dine off
a centrifugal helping.
He contemplated my abortion calmly, ostentatiously without
prejudice, while second hands ticked unseen. Then without dis-
turbing his conjurer's balance, he turned his eyes round to the
Artist, asking with decision: u May I say?"
" Don't bottle up on my account," said I. Or did I say it, or
only think it? Perhaps the latter. I am certain, anyhow, that my
attitude was one of cordial invitation to criticism. " Do please
tell me anything you see ! " was, I know, the substance of my
reply.
Mr. Silbermann, keeping his eyes on me, threw up the fingers
of both hands before my study, and pushed its subject back, theo-
retically. He would have stickled himself with new paint, prac-
tically. " That is what it wants," said he.
" I see," said I. But I didn't see.
" More mystery! " said he. He fixed me with his eye.
I pleaded that I had nursed an intention to put in the mystery
at the end.
438 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
His intelligent countenance teemed with a maxim. " Art
Postpones Nothing," said he, in three distinct words. " Do it
at once ! "
I looked at my watch. " It's getting late/' I said. " And the
light's going. And they are coming to lock up."
" Well well well ! " said he, softening the harshness of that
maxim. " We must not be too literal. Suppose we say as soon
as possible 1 "
"All right!" said I. "Next go." I then bethought me of
the uncertainties of life, and how I might get an order for comic
vignettes and initials to some " Ballades " my friend Bartholo-
mew had offered to Momus, and added: "If I ever touch the
thing again! Don't suppose I ever shall."
This, it seemed, was very sad. My new acquaintance shook a
slow, reproachful head, and resolved its thoughts into another
maxim. " Art Completes Everything ! "
A vision passed across my mind then, and recurs as I write
these words, of serried ranks of unfinished canvasses hiding their
faces against the walls of Studios whose owners' names Fame
and I have forgotten Studios that have been the witnesses of
more lack of purpose during the last half-century than would have
been needed to undermine and break up every contemporary scheme
of diabolism, all those years and more! What a pity it could not
have been employed on something political!
For the moment, I drew no inference except that Mr. Silber-
mann had not lived among Artists. I found that this was a mis-
take, before we parted half-an-hour later. For it turned out that
we were going in the same direction, and before we had crossed
St. James' Park he had expressed surprise that I was unfamiliar
with the inside of the Studios of as many Artists whose work
was recognized by the Public as I could count upon my fingers.
He had also dwelt at length on several Avenues of Art Thought
I borrow his own expression among others, the Necessity for
Mystery, the Genesis of Vulgarity, the Problem of the Intense,
and the Function of the Unintelligible. I felt that I was in
the presence of an Analytical Intellect.
I am writing all this about Mr. Silbermann to justify my Self
in my own eyes for its subsequent conduct towards him. Other-
wise, he does not come into my story.
We parted very good friends, to all appearances, in Sloane
Square. And we were very good friends, as far as I was con-
cerned. I think that, if anything, my feeling was the more cordial
towards him owing to the germination of an Idea which sug-
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 439
gested his individuality as a good subject for caricature. I felt
that he was going to be of service to me, and was grateful to
him by anticipation.
I drew him that evening, for Gracey, under a variety of cir-
cumstances which were not likely to arise. They were all more
or less developments of the Idea which I was going to submit
to Bartholomew for treatment in verse according to the manner
of his contributions to Momus at that date.
Gracey remonstrated. " But, Jackey darling,'' said she. " If
that is really like this gentleman that one I mean whose nose
is horizontal, in a line with his forehead "
' That's the most like him. He has to do that, to keep his
glasses on."
''Well if he recognizes it, won't he be in a great rage?"
"I should think he would most "likely. But he doesn't know
he's like that. He thinks he's like this a thoughtful, philosophi-
cal bloke." I drew him rapidly, in another aspect.
" But won't he be in a rage with that, too ? "
"In another rage? I should say he might. But it won't be
such a ... such a wicious one." I distorted my adjective, as
more expressive of its acquired meaning, of spite or revenge.
" Well, now ! " said Gracey. " I think if I was in Mr. What's-
his-name's place I should be in twice as great a rage about the
philosophical one. It's much more insulting." I expressed my
doubts, and we agreed to leave the point unsettled.
Next day I took these sketches to show them to Bartholomew.
He lived in a small set of chambers, at the top of a house in
Clipstone Street, that had seen better days. I may have dreamed
a good deal of this house, that I now think bona fide recollection.
I wonder whether there was a bust of Minerva in a helmet in the
pediment over the street-door, or was it on the top? Or was
the pediment split, so that it came through? The more I think,
the more doubtful I get. But, oh! how long ago it seems!
It had snowed in the night, and the snow had softened the
hard heart of a frost, in order that little boys should have first-
class ammunition. I am glad now that one of them landed a
shot on the middle of my back, as I stood ringing the top bell
of a vertical regiment. I am glad, because he was a very bad
little boy, and enjoyed his success so. I did not like it then, be-
cause some snow got inside my collar. Now I find myself hoping
that that bad little boy's grandchildren are like him. and always
hit when they aim. It is odd to think that probably no power
on earth could identify now, for him, that trivial incident that
440 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I remember so well, so many years ago. And he may have been
run over by a cart and killed, half-an-hour later.
The street was musical with scraping shovels, and the wielder
of one of them, a hoarse person with no shirt, but with a neck-
handkerchief to throw dust in the eyes of impertinent curiosity,
took the expression of public opinion on himself. What the oar-
thorities were about he couldn't think, allowing these here young
nippers all the street to theirselves, and no notice took, whatever
enormities they were guilty of. It was all very well that an easy-
going optimism should indulge in dreams of safety due to the
soft character of compacted snow, but now supposing a piece of
jagged iron, a broke bottle or a hopen razor if you come to that,
had been embedded in it by malice. Them boys and their artful-
ness! He would challenge the shrewdest foresight to predict what
they would be at next. In that quarter, disastrous failure awaited
Prophecy. Only, whatever happened, let no man turn round and
say that he, the speaker, had kept silence. I had an impression
that he continued in the same strain, through the ringing scrape
of his contemporaries' shovels, long after I had been admitted by
a magic click, and found my way up an empty stairway with
a consciousness of the Unseen keeping its eye upon me to see
where I was for. I am aware that the language I ascribe to
the Unseen is elementary.
My identity was unsuspected* by my friend within, who called
out to me to put the can inside. I observed that the independent
door at the stairtop, which shut him and the World apart, was
ajar and wavered suggestively, as though string-pulled. I called
out might I come in? and took the answer for granted. I was
met by a small figure with a mass of rough auburn hair and very
bright eyes, and a dressing-gown which he was lashing together in
front in a hurry, having evidently just jumped out of bed. " Hook-
ey I " it said. " I thought you were The Milk, late. Thought
the cow had refused to yield milk, when milked. ... If you are
familiar with the vulgar tongue, you will understand me when
I say that I am Not Up."
I understood the vulgar tongue, and remarked: "What a lazy
beggar you are. Bat! This time in the morning."
He replied with dignity: "You are mistaken, worthy Sir!
You are mistaken, good Gentleman! You are no doubt under
the impression that the Average Man, whom you have seen sam-
ples of this morning on his way to business, has a greater claim
to be considered industrious than myself. Don't deny it."
" Well it certainly does look. . . "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 441
" Do not be deceived by appearances! The Average Man, almost
without exception, postpones work till after breakfast. Stop the
next example of him in the street, and ask it. Tax it with idle-
ness, and convince yourself that what I say is true.'' As he spoke,
the little man was gradually getting back into bed again, and
ended as a head on a pillow a singular, rather cockatoo-like head,
to which the rough auburn hair made a crest. It continued, mak-
ing the most of the rim of its coverings, but leaving speech free :
" During the mistaken period which has come to an end I refer
to my career as an Artist I found it difficult to work in bed.
Having now finally adopted Literature as a profession, I am at
liberty to give the rein to my natural desire for activity. Ob-
serve the scattered copy ! And don't tread upon it ! "
" That means that you've quite chucked Art, I suppose ? "
" Absolutely. I believe I have chucked it because the mouth
of What's-his-name your friend at the Academy "
"Hopkins?"
" That's the character. Because his mouth or what he calls
his mouth so closely resembles my own. Two stars keep not
their motion in one sphere, and there is no room in the same
profession for two such individual upper lips." He brought his
chin clear of its integument for me to see, and I certainly per-
ceived the resemblance to 'Opkins's. In both cases the upper
lip overhung. But the difference in their import! Solemnity
in 'Opkins was secured by what bespoke impishness in Bartholo-
mew; a moral maxim reproaching levity in the hearer was replaced
by some ridiculous paradox or perverse misinterpretation of palpa-
ble fact. The joys of disrespect, not to say impiety, took in
Bartholomew's countenance the place that aggressive duty, fraught
with boredom, held in 'Opkins's. And yet the upper lips were
the same. I sympathize with Lavater's difficulties.
I accepted Bartholomew's position as indisputable, but felt
that to throw up a profession after giving so much time and
labour to it was an extreme step. " Couldn't somebody assassi-
nate 'Opkins?" said I. "Let him take his upper lip to Jericho."
" No, Aristaeus," said my friend, addressing me by a name
I had never heard him use before. It was like him to do so, but
though I was curious about his selection of this name, I accepted
it provisionally in silence, and he went on: "Consider what
Society must be in Jericho. Consider the class of persons that
have been sent there, and spare Jericho 'Opkins. Besides, I may
have been influenced by mere gain. I don't know. Literature
seems to hold out a prospect of emoluments to which Art is a
442 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
stranger. Moreover, in Art either your work doesn't dry, or
stinks of a penetrating nature abound. So consider that I have
chucked Art. You have done so yourself, so you needn't
talk!"
'' I beg your pardon, Bat. I have done nothing of the sort. I
intend to go on studying Art real Art at intervals. I was at
Trafalgar Square only three days ago, and made a study. There
was an idiot there, by the by, I want to talk about. . . . But
why did you call me Aristffius?"
This seemed to require reflection. It ended, and an answer
came. " It was inspiration, pure and simple. It seemed to me
that you were taking Industry under your protection. Now,
broadly speaking, Industry is bees."
" What's that got to do with Aristaeus?"
" Much. Aristaus had to do with bees, and was the father of
Action. Lempriere. He became a Divinity. Ditto. . . . Tell
me who the idiot is ... the one you spoke of just now."
" Oh Silbermann ! Yes, to be sure. I've made a drawing of
him. He's a good idiot to draw. You've seen him? at the
Schools. He seems to be an old Student. Comes now and then
to sit at the feet of Nature. That sort of thing! I feel he ought
to be drawn, and published. I want you to write something for
him in verse preferred. A sort of ballad. Make him an Art
Critic. That's his game. You should have heard him criticizing
my study. That's him, with the glasses." I handed my note-
book, open at the place, for inspection.
" I've seen the beggar but not there at the Club ! Yes I
must get some letter-press for this chap. Is this another of him ( ''
" Yes, in another aspect. More philosophical. Less superior.
Which would work best, do you think?"
" I was thinking. . . . No it's no use. I must have them
both. They are too lovely to lose, either of them. . . . Stop a
bit! I think I know." He flung out of bed suddenly, and was
off in the next room the sitting-room without stopping for his
slippers, and hunting through a mass of print and manuscript.
I remonstrated, because of the cold, which of course I did not
feel as I had my overcoat on; moreover, I had been walking. He
paid no attention, but hunted till he found what he wanted a
. MS. Then he rushed back to bed, quite blue, with his teeth chat-
tering, and shivering intentionally, as a comment on the ther-
mometer. " I say, young feller," said he, " suppose you make
yourself useful ! While I look through this to see what I can
find, just you look behind the coal-scuttle in the next room. There
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 443
you will see what was in the heyday of its youth a brown paper
parcel containing one dozen Patent Fireballs. One is left. Only
one ! . . . Makes one cry, doesn't it ? " . . .
" What's it for? to light the fire?"
" Exactly. Instructions what to do are on the label. Follow
them, and you will find so I am assured that it will cause the
fire to ignite spontaneously. When I was at school my old mas-
ter used to flog all the boys who didn't obey him of their own
accord. It seems to me that the spontaneity is equivocal in both
cases. But that won't matter so long as the fire burns."
I found the lonesome Fireball and started the fire as requested.
Then, returning to the bedroom, I suggested that if I knew where
breakfast was to be found, I could prepare it. Bartholomew com-
mented on the readiness with which I adopted conventional phrase-
ology. " If breakfast is to be found," he said, " why prepare
it ? " He was not confident that it could be found, his relations
with his tradespeople being very uncertain. " But," he added, " I
very seldom take breakfast, in the sense in which that term is
generally used, or abused. My industrious habits detain me in
bed until anything beyond a cup of coffee would prevent my
lunching with a friend at the Club, which is within five min-
utes. I should be sorry to deprive any friend of the pleasure of
giving me lunch, by a too recent indulgence of voracity. More-
over, this regime stands between me and extravagance in house-
keeping. Of course I regret, my dear friend, that I am not in a
position to offer you anything. Otherwise I cannot say I resent
the high-handed behaviour of the Milk, in not coming. It would
only have gone sour, as far as I am concerned. I believe that
your familiarity with the vernacular will show you my meaning
when I say that I shall pay its account, and withdraw my custom.
It might be obscure, to a foreigner. . . . Here's the thing I was
looking for."
I explained that my anxiety about breakfast was on his ac-
count, not mine. The MS. he had found was my interest. I held
out my hand, saying : " Let's have a look ! "
" Stop a bit ! " said he. " It needs explanation. It is a tale
in verse rather juvenile verse of a pair of twins. Their name
was fortunately Binns, to rhyme to twins. These things happen.
They had good and noble characters, but erred in the choice of
a profession. They devoted themselves to mistaken objects."
"What did they go in for?"
" Felony. One of them took over a practice in the West of
England, as a Highwayman. The other of a thoughtful turn,
444 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
more a student than a man of action addicted himself to For-
gery."
" I don't see how that cap fits Silbermann ? "
"Not Silbermann considered as twins? Look upon this pic-
ture and on this ! " He indicated the two portraits of the Art
Critic the thoughtful and the active version. " Mr. Silber-
mann is not twins per se, but he is their equivalent. His duality
is inherent in his unity. I might cite a parallel case, but my
Keverential Spirit stands in my way. I am celebrated for my
Reverential Spirit."
" But we can't make him out either a highwayman or a forger."
" No. But I can alter the poem to meet the case. Nothing
easier. I see my way plainly." He paused reflectively, then
added : " Not one Art Critic, but two Art Critics ! " From
which I inferred that his Reverential Spirit was deserting him,
" Suppose you read me the poem as it is, Bat ! " said I. For
I didn't feel sure that the change suggested would tell against
the identification of its subjects, but the contrary. He then read
me the verses, lying as completely in bed as the need of two hands
to hold the manuscript permitted.
I can remember him, reading, better than I can remember what
he read; though I may do that gradually, if I try. His mop of
auburn hair and his gleaming eyes would have made him an in-
dividuality without his peculiar upper lip, whose resemblance
to 'Opkins's had according to him modified his destiny. I re-
collect feeling that one of his nicknames among his friends,
" Flittermouse," had a sort of fitness in it. But this may have
been due to the last syllable. One knows the massive forehead
of a mouse. Of course, however, in him the name was a mere
amplification of Bat, short for Bartholomew.
I have tried since I stopped writing yesterday to recollect a
full sample of Bartholomew's ballad of " The Twin Felons," but
I can only recover a scrap here and there. I recall the opening,
plainly enough. Here it is:
August in and Angustus Binns,
To whom these lines relate,
Commenced a joint career as Twins
In eighteen forty-eight "
The author seemed gratified with this, and, having read it
twice, looked round at me to say : " Reads easily, Aristaeus ? "
I assented, but remarked on the date. It was rather a late
period for highway robbery, with holster pistols and jack-boots,
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 445
which struck me as essential. Bartholomew replied that the
Poet's first obligation was towards rhyme, his second to metre,
his third to meaning; while as for chronology, he was not sure
that it came in at all. He could, however, make it twenty-
eight. But the word twenty, just after " twins," sounded poor
and mincey. I said it didn't matter, and he continued:
" Their parents when they came to choose
Their infants' Christian names
Espoused antagonistic views,
And justified their claims. ..."
After which I only remember scraps. The substance, however,
remains with me. The father considered that twins being alike
by nature, to confusion-point, their parents should distinguish
their names as widely as possible. He suggested " Timothy "
and " Napoleon " for these two. Their mother was very posi-
tive in the opposite direction, maintaining substantially that
as the same thing was always called by the same name, things
exactly resembling one another should be called by names as
nearly as possible alike. She was not quite sure that the names
should be more distinguishable than their owners, but yielded
to convention on this point. She insisted on the adoption of
the two names, Augustin and Augustus, which are just short
of identity.
The children so named grew to be young men of great prom-
ise, but were ill-advised in the choice of a profession. For
though all went well for a while, disaster overtook them in the
end, and they were tried and convicted at the same Assizes. A
doubt arising as to which was which, the presiding Judge de-
clined to pass sentence. If the names had been accidentally
reversed, he said, the forger might be hanged, and the high-
wayman sent to penal servitude. If the sentences required by
Law were the same in both cases, it would be immaterial. He
could then pass sentence on them as twins, and they could suffer
as twins. As it was, there was nothing for it but to defer sen-
tence until it was settled which was which. And the culprits,
who alone knew, refused to make any statement.
" I left it at that," said Bartholomew when he had got thus
far. "I don't see what else there was to be done with them."
" Commit them for Contempt of Court ? " I suggested.
" There was none. Each had answered to his name, so all
demands of Law had been complied with, and it was owing
to the stupidity of a gaoler that they got mixed. He ought
446 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
to have earmarked them on the spot. Of course each tried to
convince the Judge that he was the highwayman, as the career
of a forger is at best an inglorious one; let alone the preference
every right-minded man has for hanging, as against penal servi-
tude. Moreover, it was obvious that only one of them was claim-
ing a false identity, and it would have been most unfair to the
truthful man to throw doubt on his reputation as a murderer,
in favour of the unconfirmed statement of his brother, whose
business habits must have predisposed him to mendacity." Bar-
tholomew paused a moment ; then said thoughtfully : " The sub-
ject bristles with difficulties and pitfalls. What a curious thing,
when you come to think of it, that anything should bristle with
pitfalls ! "
I assented. But I did not see how this story could be adapted
at least without great labour, amounting to rewriting to the
career of two Art Critics; more especially because, in our pres-
ent imperfect state of civilization, Art Criticism was not a stat-
utable offence.
" Perhaps you are right, my dear Aris," said the Poet. " Sup-
pose we run the risk of hurting Silbermann's feelings. We won't
let McMomus have it unless he takes all responsibilities of pub-
lication. . . . Oh yes hell want it fast enough, I'll answer for
that!" For I had begun to speculate on the possibility of rejec-
tion by the journal.
One thing that has made me revive so much of this talk with
my literary colleague is his sudden and whimsical application
to me of the name Aristaseus, abbreviated to Aris. He called
me by it again once in the hearing of 'Opkins, with the result
of course that he called me 'Arris, expressing his surprise that
Bartholomew should drop an H, with his education. For 'Opkins
was indignant when he was told he dropped his own, conceiving,
I fancy, that the image of the letter in his mind would be audible
to his hearer owing to his own goodwill towards it. I got used
to the name as a nickname, at the. Academy, but never elsewhere,
as it chanced; and when I came here it occurred to me to be a
good one to assume, as I did not wish to be known. The people
here want a name to speak of me by, and this one does as well
as another. So I am " Old Harris," even to the Eeverend Turner.
He will not count it as deception, though, for he said to me once :
" A Pseudonym is quite excusable, if it is only meant as a dis-
tinctive name in a crowd."
CHAPTER XL
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
MY rough sketches of the highwayman and the forger were
greeted by the Editor of the comic weekly Momus with acclama-
tion. He went by the name of McMomus; inevitably, as his
name was McMurrough. I had entertained some idea that I
might somehow abate the individuality of the Twins, to avoid
personality, and was rather disconcerted when Mr. McMurrough
stipulated for close identification with their original; which was,
he said, half the battle. The said original was claimed by him
as an intimate friend; but none the less, as a fool; a triumph
of the handiwork of his Creator, whose status as a maker of
Fools the grossest materialist could not dispute.
I felt quite guilty when I was next greeted by Mr. Silbermann.
at the Academy. For was I not actually engaged in portraying
him both as a highwayman and a forger. I should have felt
grateful to him if he would have been rude and disagreeable,
so as to justify the appropriation of his image. He was, on the
contrary, irritatingly courteous; and when in the end he asked me
to come and lunch with him at his club, I felt that the position
was becoming formidable.
In my embarrassment I sought advice from Gracey, who at
first refused to treat the matter seriously, which perhaps was my
own fault, for although I wanted advice to get me out of my
deadlock it seemed humiliating to confess it, and I endeavourgd
to make light of my position even while I was anxious to lay
stress on its difficulty. She, however, soon 'read between the lines
of my communication, but not by the help of anything I said.
Her blue eyes detected something in my countenance, and I can.
see her face again now, as pity comes into them suddenly, and takes
the place of mere unconcerned laughter.
" Why, you poor darling, silly boy ! " she said. " I do really
think you're feeling it in your tummy." Which was an old famil-
iar mot de famille, which may have been indigenous. Its mean-
ing goes painfully home to me now, all the more perhaps that
I have never heard it since those days, so long ago.
'' Well ! " I said, with as much admission as consisted with
male superiority. "It is an awkward fix, now isn't it?"
447
448 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Gracey's commiseration for me became quite as active as could
be countenanced by dignity. "Yes, darling!" said she, kissing
me and ruffling my hair. " It is rather a fix. Suppose we ask
Papa what he thinks ? "
" Suppose we do ! " said I, magnanimously ignoring what I rec-
ognized as a slight elder-sisterliness. I gave Gracey leave to
broach the subject in any way she chose.
" What sort of chap is Mr. Silbermann ? " said my father that
evening, when the case had been laid before him. "Is he the
sort of chap that sees a joke? "
. " No," I replied. " That's just it. He's one of your solemn
beggars."
" I think he must be some one else's," said my father. " Be-
cause I don't stock the article. However, I understand that he
is not the sort of man you can take into your confidence. Other-
wise that is the course I should have suggested."
" I can't fancy myself doing it," said I, after a moment's reflec-
tion. "Besides, look at this! Suppose I show him the drawings
and he flares up. I should have to back out, and do others in-
stead."
" I see," said Gracey. " You would stand committed to doing
so, by asking him. I should say don't ask him, but brazen it
out."
I shook my head. "You wouldn't say that, G., if you saw
what a dignified sort of bloke he is, and what good manners he
has." This evidently puzzled Gracey, so I tried elucidation. " Well
he's a sort of grown-up person! You know what I mean."
Gracey evidently didn't, nor did my father. I concluded : " His
giglamps alone are too many for me."
" Your line of description," said my father, " suggests an
irtiage to the mind. The only question is is it the image you
mean to suggest ? " He picked up my sketches of Mr. Silber-
mann, and considered them. " I see a certain consistency be-
tween the two. But it strikes me that when you omit his gig-
lamps, as you call them, you will be quite safe. I don't
suppose he will recognize himself without them, or any of his
friends."
I shook my head continuously and emphatically. " No, go ! "
I said. " Not the ghost of a go ! I meant to leave them out on
the highwayman's nose, but Bat and McMomus said it would
spoil everything. They had seen the first sketch with the glasses
on, and were nuts on it. They said a short-sighted highway-
man was half the battle. And you must have the Twins alike
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 449
in all respects, except that one must b.e dressed like a highway-
man and the other like a forger."
" How do you propose to dress the forger ? " said my father.
" It seems to me you may find it difficult to make him recogniza-
ble. Do all forgers dress alike? Costume was never a strong
point of mine."
" I think," said I, " that I should dress him like a parson that
had been turned out of the Church."
li Do they all dress alike ? "
" Well perhaps not exactly. But you know the sort of thing
I mean? Not like a Squire, nor a Lawyer, nor a Doctor. Much
more like a squelched Parson, only not so threadbare. Don't
you think so, Gracey?"
Gracey compared the models, mentally. " I'm not sure," she
said. " Oughtn't he to look more prosperous ? Because if forg-
ing didn't pay, nobody would ever go on ^ith it. Besides, as
Papa says, they would not all dress alike or not necessarily."
" I didn't mean," said my father, " to speak positively. Merely
a surmise ! Do Murderers dress alike, as a rule ? "
We looked at each other doubtfully. No one could speak from
experience. " What does Aunt Helen think ? " said Gracey. My
stepmother was deep in the daily press, not joining in the con-
versation.
"Yes," said my father. "What do you think, Helen? Do
Murderers dress alike male Murderers ? "
Now I think the reason I find all the foregoing so authentic
for very little of it can be called reconstruction is that the inci-
dent which followed was vivid enough to fix its antecedents in
my recollection. Even at this distance of time the scared look
on my stepmother's handsome face is fresh in my mind as she
drops the Post in her lap and exclaims, with large, frightened
eyes fixed on my father: "What on earth are you talking of,
Mr. Pascoe? . . . Yes who said Murderers?"
" God bless me, my love ! " said my father. " What's all the
shine for? / said Murderers. Why shouldn't I say Murderers?
We've been talking about Murder in connection with some of
Jackey's drawings. Nobody has murdered anybody, at present.
Nobody's mare's dead."
" 1 beg your pardon," said Jemima, apolgetically. " I didn't
mean, what set you off on such an unpleasant subject? Oh dear;
I wonder what has made me so nervous and fanciful ! " She
pressed her fingers on her closed eyes, and took them off to look
at, as if she thought the lids might have come off on them. " I
450 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
wasn't listening that was all! ... No my pulse is all right.
But feel it, by all means, if you want to." For my father had
gone across to her, and appropriated her wrist, with intent. I
should have seen that this upset about nothing made him very
uneasy, even if he had not recently talked once or twice to me
about his misgivings that my stepmother would injure her nervous
system with some anodyne she had been indulging in to get
sleep. His investigation of the pulse ended in his saying : " No
that's all right. Quite normal. You're a queer customer," and
going back to his armchair. She said : " I told you so ! " and
took up the Post again. But I don't believe she read it.
A freak of Memory cuts events short at this point, and I can-
not remember how we settled about the Twins. I am even with
her again an hour later, in my father's library over a wind-up
smoke. He can only talk of Jemima's nervous system, and the
previous speculations over Murderers and Forgers are forgot-
ten.
"Your stepmamma, Jackey, is a very foolish woman. I can.
tell you that. This all comes of her getting no sleep o' nights.
And if I could only get her to take advice, a few shillingsworth
of doctor's stuff would set her all to rights in no time. Instead
of which it appears that she buys any chance abomination she
sees on a chemists' counter, and takes it without my knowing.
Scammony says those things are the very devil. . . . Yes I've
talked to him about her.
" Just what I tell you that those sleeping draughts and ano-
dynes give temporary relief, and make matters ten times worse
in the end. Then the nerves break down altogether, and the
constitution breaks up altogether, as like as not. I wish to
Heaven she would see some one. Not Scammony, as she has
some fancy against him, but some proper man for a case of this
sort."
"Has he any ideas about the cause of it?"
" Dr. Hammond ? He may have, but he won't say anything.
He's a cautious bird, for all that he looks as if butter wouldn't
melt in his mouth. However!" This was a way my father had
of dismissing a subject, and he further showed that he had
done so by embarking on an abstract speculation as to whether
an incautious bird would look as if butter would so melt, and
how it would show itself.
I gathered that he had been seeing Mr. Scammony, probably
i about himself. So I asked him what professional experience had
been telling him about his own health.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 451
" Oh I'm, all right ! I'm to go on with the diet, of course."
" Because why ? "
" Merely as a prophylactic. Merely as a prophylactic."
" Oh merely as a prophylactic ? "
" No I really am perfectly right. I could do with much less
sleep than seems inevitable nowadays. I never used to sleep so
ferociously at the Office in the old days. I suppose it is only
that I had so much more to keep me awake in the old days. I
tell you this, Master Jackey, and you may as well keep it in mind,
in case you are ever an influential man. No Government arrange-
ments will ever be perfect until some way is invented of employ-
ing men who are no longer fit for work some sort of carts for
horses to pull that have to be taken out of harness. One doesn't
take kindly to doing nothing, even when one is not fit for doing
anything else."
I could not help feeling that perhaps the harness had been
thrown off prematurely in his case. But I had not the heart to
say so, as it certainly would not have bettered matters. I could
only take refuge in general sympathy, and a vague indictment
of all Governments as idiotic.
" I wouldn't go so far as that," said my father, laughing. " But
I can't help thinking that instead of giving pensions, it would
be a good thing that an official should die out gradually, with
a lessening salary and diminishing responsibility. I know there
would be difficulties, because it's no easy matter to convince an
old cock that he doesn't know better than everybody else. But
it ought to be possible to quench him slowly, for his own sake.
I could make a very good abstract now, or throw another man's
rough sketch of a letter into working form, quite as well as when
I was a juvenile with a low salary. And I shall be good for
copying clerk's work for years to come. Why should I be com-
pelled to enjoy a leisure I don't the least appreciate, simply be-
cause I am no longer fit for a leading part? An old actor dies
in harness, if only as a walking gentleman. Old doctors old
dentists who ever hears of their retiring, short of ninety-odd?
Did any one ever know of a Judge being interrupted by senility?
\Vhile as for Bishops! surely a superannuated Bishop is a con-
tradiction in terms. The more venerable, the more episcopal!
No nobody ever retires, except Officials, and soldiers and sailors.
And Officials are the worst off of the three, because they are ex-
pected not to swear. The two other sorts may swear, and do. I've
heard 'em."
My father ran on, dwelling on the drawbacks of retirement,
452 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
but always in a good-humoured strain, without bitterness. I had
before this observed that he was very sleepy through the day, and
became chatty in the evening. The theory that office-work, in old
times, kept him awake, would hardly hold water. His sleepiness
in the day had a well-marked character of its own ; it never yielded
to any rousing influence. Mere desoeuvre laziness does more; it
welcomes it. Just before bedtime, over his last pipe, he would
be more himself than at any other hour of the day. I suppose
that at this time I was beginning to feel more uneasiness on his
score than previously, as I associate with this evening a conscious-
ness that this fact was borne in upon me, then and there. I con-
templated an alliance with Jemima, in her efforts to induce him.
to see a specialist, which she persevered in, while refusing to con-
sult one about her own sleeplessness. It occurred to me that I
might prepare the way. " 1 say, P," said I, " would it be such
a bad idea if you were to let that bigwig have a look at you Dr.
Scammony's bigwig that he talked about? It couldn't do any
harm, and he must know something about the matter." I re-
garded this as a generous concession to a profession whose igno-
rance of Therapeutics is proverbial.
" Sir Alcibiades Rayson ? I would do so with pleasure, my
dear boy, if it were not for a conviction, founded on long ex-
perience, that no man survives a consultation with a specialist
more than a twelvemonth. If the specialist calls in another
to help, I should say the probable duration of the patient's life
would be six weeks at most. A third would mean sudden death.
No at present I am not developing any symptoms whatever; in
fact, I am neglecting my opportunities. All I say is, don't hurry
me, and I shall live to a ... well perhaps not to a green old
age! Suppose we say a whitey-brown old age, and let it go
at that!"
I did not like his way of envisaging his own mortality, and in
my eyes the only question was about the colour of that old age.
I wanted badly to pooh-pooh Death, in his particular case. I could
not go so far as that. But I could shift the venue of the conrer-
sation. I began saying: "Jemima "
" Your stepmamma," said he, with very slight protest.
" Grizzles awfully about it," said I, finishing my sentence to
suit either designation. " She says you are sacrificing yourself
to an absurd prejudice against medical advice."
"Oh, that's to be the way, is it? Well; next time she says
that, you tell her that stepmammas that live in glass houses
shouldn't throw stones. If she will let Scammouy prescribe for
THE NARKATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 453
her, and take his medicine, I'll see Sir Alcibiades. You may tell
her that, Master Jackey. Understand ? "
I gathered that discussion of the point by the principals con-
cerned was, in his view, no longer efficacious to any good end,
and nodded my acceptance of the embassage, saying briefly,
" All right I'll say so next time," meaning next time talk gave
me a chance. No particular opportunity came about, and it
seemed easier, as it turned out, to take Gracey into my confi-
dence. A male who does not see his way always consults " the
weaker sex."
Gracey said at once: "What a good idea! We shall kill two
birds with one stone. Now, Jackey, you let me manage Aunt
Helen. Don't you cut in and spoil it." As I did not feel at
all sure that I should manage Aunt Helen, I gave the under-
taking asked for.
Varnish was always pessimistic about anything that involved
her bete noire, so I was not surprised to see silent incredulity in
her face when Gracey, sitting on the table before the fire in her
sanctum for this was during a Parliamentary Debate spoke
with such confidence of her own ability to influence her step-
mother. I was a little surprised when, Gracey having been called
away, she allowed a personal feeling to influence her speech about
Jemima's peculiar antipathy to medical treatment. I told her
flatly that I thought the Governor was just as bad, or worse.
I think I can write the conversation that followed, word for word,
beginning with Varnish.
" No, Master Jackey, all wrong you are ! In your pa's eye,
a medical man's a medical man, and comes when sent for. Your
stepmar goes by its being Dr. Scammony, and partick'lar."
" Do you suppose then, Varnish, that Jemima would let another
doctor have his whack? Is it only because her back's up against
little Scammony?"
Varnish was waxing a thread on beeswax held in her teeth. She
stopped seesawing it in the groove it had cut and stopped also
the counter-seesaw of her head to nod the latter and say through
the wax: "And Dr. Partnership that he's took up with. Only
not so bad. Dr. Scammony he's the one gives offence."
" I know she hates the old boy. But Wliy ? "
"Ah why and wherefore? Well, Master Jackey, I'm saying
no more than I've said twice and once, afore this. So I say it
again. A doctor gentleman sees more than he says, coming in
and out of a house, and making free. And when it's between
Dr. Scammony and not Dr. Scammony, your stepmar she says
454 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
soonest not. That's the most I say, Master Jackey. And you'll
see. You'll get her to have another doctor, if that will satisfy
your par. But not Dr. Scammony ! Not she ! "
I never could understand at that time why Varnish should
always fight shy of a clear indictment of the' Sly Cat. The real
reason may have been the same -s mine for leaving unspoken
a speech I could have formulated, somehow. I could have said:
" I suppose you mean that Jemima wanted to marry the Gover-
nor all along?" But it stuck in my utterance by anticipation.
It was not from delicacy towards the Sly Cat at all, but an unde-
fined respect for my father. Yet I wanted Varnish to be explicit,
as I see now unreasonably, while I shrank from expressing the
same idea myself. She was more mysterious than ever, this time.
And, indeed, I did not find that lapse of years made speech about
my mother's death, and the incidents that followed it, any easier.
A day or two later, as I entered the drawing-room where Gracey
and my stepmother were alone together, Gracey said: "Here he
is. Ask him yourself, Aunt Helen." Which caused Aunt Helen,
who was reading the Comhill tentatively, turning the leaves to find
an interesting passage, to close the number and give attention to
current event. " Ask him what ? " she said. " Oh yes I remenv
her! Gracey says, Jackey, that your father has promised to see
Sir Alcibiades Rayson if I consent to letting that odious little
Hammond man prescribe for me. She says he said so to you,
in the library."
"That's what he said. Only he meant you were to take the
prescriptions. No cheating!"
"Of course! Silly boy!" said Jemima, absently, looking hand-
some, but vexed and perplexed. And Gracey said: "Of course,
Jackey, that's part of the game."
" Well ! " said I. " How was I to know? " The point dropped.
My stepmother said, still with that perplexity on her face:
"Did he really mean a promise, or was he only talking?"
" He was quite in earnest, if that's what you mean," I said.
" If you would see Scammony, he would see Sir Alcibiades What's-
his-name." I was stopped by Gracey saying: "Hush there he
is ! " And thereupon my father came in, and as her ears had been
sharp and detected him in time, we succeeded in talking about
the Confederates and Stonewall Jackson plausibly, so that he
did not know he himself had just been on the tip of our tongues.
I saw no reason why we should not have tackled the subject then
and there, but took Gracey's word for it.
However, a few days later, she said to me: " I shouldn't wonder
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 455
if that was Dr. Hammond." She referred to an indisputable
doctor's carriage which was being sent on from the opposite
house to ours. " He's never been here before, you know," she
continued. "Isn't it funny?"
" Well, no ! " said I. " Considering how Jemima hates him.
I suppose she and the Governor have squared it."
" I don't know if that's the way to put it exactly," said Gracsy,
looking through the window at the doctor, now arriving. " Any-
how, Papa has committed himself to see the specialist. I .hope
Aunt Helen means to be good, and follow Dr. Hammond's treat-
ment. I'm afraid, you know, she'll only promise and then throw
away his medicines "
" That's her little game," said I, confidently. This was in
the upstairs room, formerly Roberta's and Miss Evans's. I had
converted it to a workroom for myself, and called it my Studio.
But though I had established an easel there, to be for a sign,
I had never used it for any Real Art. I had not, however, been
able to ignore my connection with it altogether, and had covered
the lower half of the window with an opaque blind, just high
enough to compel Gracey to stand on tiptoe to see Dr. Scam-
mony's arrival. Her image comes back to me now, with its
circle of sunny brown hair against the light, and brings back
the green baize screen, whose mission was to keep alive the
memory of Michelangelo, neglected for caricatures that could
have been executed just as well without it. At the time I was
drawing Augustus Binns, forging. I was shutting my eyes to
the mauvais quart d'heure in store for me when the time came
for publication.
Gracey, who, when at home, fluctuated between this work-
room and the drawing-room, where the piano was, went away
to show cordiality to the doctor. " I can't trust Aunt Helen
to be civil to him," said she. " At least, she'll be lofty and
freezing, and the little man doesn't deserve it." And off she
went.
She returned later and told me of the interview, of which I
saw nothing myself; for I knew I should not be wanted, and
kept away. Besides, I was busy. So was Augustus Binns so busy
that he was unconscious that the police had come for him.
Gracey was a very good narrator of event, and I think I can
resume her story. She had gone straight to the drawing-room,
and found Dr. Scammony reading Wordsworth. He put this book
back with its fellows, she said, as though he had been caught
plagiarizing.
456 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Not seeing my way to anything original," she continued,
" I took refuge in the fact that Aunt Helen would be down in
a minute; only I didn't say Aunt Helen I said Mrs. Pascoe.
I urged him to sit down, as if delay in doing so might have
serious consequences. When I had got him safe on a chair,
stroking his chin and staring at me as though I were a sort of
specimen, I thought I would venture on a bold flight, and said :
' You are not looking a year older, Dr. Hammond.' He replied :
'Who me? well! I looked a good age, certainly, seven years
ago. I haven't grown younger, though, with time. ... Yes, it's
nearly eight years since your mother died. You haven't seen me
since those days.' I had it in my head to say that this was be-
cause I had never been ill. But he was looking serious, and I
felt kept in order.
" Then it crossed my mind that he would not necessarily identify
Aunt Helen. . . . Oh yes I know it was a mistake; but I made
it, for all that. I said bluntly: 'I suppose you know that my
stepmother she'll be down in a minute is the same as Miss
Evans, our governess ? ' He answered : ' Oh, of course, of course ! '
rather as if he meant did I take him for a fool. Then he sat
looking at me reflectively, and presently said : ' Let me see !
you were Gracey, and one of your sisters had gone away with
Miss Evans, to some play-acting, somewhere.'
" ' Yes,' I said. ' To Roehampton. To the Graypers'. That is
her name now. She was the heroine, and she married the hero.
They live at Kingston.' I felt rather offended with the little
man for not showing more interest in this.
" Then he seemed hard up for something to say, and kept on :
' Yes Miss Evans. Miss Evans yes,' in a idiotic sort of way.
However, he thought better of it, I suppose, and pulled him-
self together, saying all of a sudden: 'Mrs. Pascoe has had
nights your father tells me?'
" ' She can't sleep a wink,' said I, and began talking about
Aunt Helen's lying awake; merely for something to say, because
he was bound to have it all over again as soon as she came. He
sat and nodded like a Mandarin, until he heard Aunt Helen
coming, and stopped. ' There she is,' I said, ' coming down now.'
" She was rather stiff and short with him, I thought, seeing
that it was no fault of his that Papa sent for him. . . . Well,
I can't recollect exactly what she said, but it was what I should
call miffy."
"What sort of miffy?" I asked. For I was curious to know.
" Much-enduring miffy," said Gracey. " Acquiescence-under-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 457
compulsion miffy. I've-got-to-answer-and-I-suppose-I-must raiffy.
That sort of miffy ! "
" I see," I really did, being accustomed to complex adjectives of
this sort. "And what did little Scammony say?"
" All the usual things."
" Pulses tongues I know. But didn't he say something about
the Governor? "
" Not a word. But I fancy he was just going to, when he
thought of something else."
"What was that?"
" When he'd got his sheet of note-paper to write his prescrip-
tion, he pretended he had forgotten something, and looked up. I
said: 'Isn't there ink?' He said there was plenty of ink, only
he supposed perhaps he ought to mention. Aunt Helen said men-
tion what? and he finished writing his prescription. Then he
said : ' Only a matter of form in this case. At least, I hope so.
Mental uneasiness. Frequent cause of insomnia. Any mental
uneasiness? '
" Only Mr. Pascoe's health,' said Aunt Helen, rather reproach-
fully. And I think the little man deserved if, for he might have
known. He saw that, for he began excusing himself out of it."
"What did he say?" I asked. Not that I was very curious to
know. I was in fact very much engaged on Augustus Binns, and
was talking slackly.
But Gracey took my inquiry in earnest. "What did he say?"
said she. " I think I can recollect. I know I thought it capital
excuse-making. . . . Oh, I know! First he said Papa was all
right, and Mrs. Pascoe needn't fidget about that. Then he tried
for something better. He said " Here Gracey became con-
scientiously thoughtful.
" Cut along," said I.
" He said : ' Besides, I understood that this sleeplessness was
of very old standing. Mr. Pascoe's is quite a recent trouble.'
Aunt Helen said : ' Quite recent. But I did not say of very old
standing.' He said and I think it was this put Aunt Helen's
back up: 'I beg pardon. I thought I understood it was as old
as when you were in Mecklenburg Square.' Aunt Helen quite
snapped at him. Oh dear, no! it was nothing of the sort. ' Who
told you that, Dr. Hammond ? ' He didn't look frightened I sup-
pose he gets used to fierce patients and said : ' I had it from Mr.
Pascoe. He quoted his married daughter, Mrs. Grayper, as his
authority, and told me a funny story about your talking in your
sleep. . . .'"
458 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" Of course," I said. " I remember that. I mean I remember
Bert talking about it. I told the Governor don't you recol-
lect ? when Jemima was on the sofa. . . ."
Gracey remembered this conversation, which I feel sure I have
written down in this narrative, or some of it: " What about the
hot-cross buns being Windsor soap ! " said she. " Yes I rec-
ollect. Well, Papa must have told Dr. Scammony about that.
And it made Aunt quite angry."
"Because it made her look like a fool, I suppose?"
" No silly boy ! Because it looked as if Papa had been saying
she always had bad nights, and it's only just lately. At least,
I suppose that was it. Anyhow, Aunt Helen was quite annoyed
about it."
" And he didn't look scared, or apologized ? "
" No he sat looking at Aunt Helen as if he was considering
her."
" What a cheeky little beggar he is, after all ! "
" I shouldn't put it that way, Jackey. It was only a mistake.
. . . This one's the last picture of the lot, isn't it? What are
those things on the shelf ? "
" Those ? Bottles. Bottles of stuff used in forging. Are they
indistinct?"
" I didn't make out what they were. I see now."
"The woodcutter will make them a little clearer, if I explain
them. She's very clever at that. I always tell her she could do
just as well without anything drawn at all. I shall take this one
myself to the shop, and explain it."
"Are they all girls that cut the blocks?"
" This one's a girl. A. Addison. That's her name. There
are two others, only one of them isn't a girl she's a female
what one understands by a female."
"What a ridiculous boy you are! What's A. Addison like?"
" I don't see that it matters. What is she like ? " I had to
cogitate over this, and at last saw my way to : " Well her
hair comes down and gets in her way when she's at work."
"Is that all?"
" No her nose is marked."
"On the tip?"
" Well not so far off, if you come to that." I had not touched
my own nose to locate A. Addison's disfigurement, but to bring
noses as it were on the tapis. " It's not a bad mark, but you see it
when you look for it, for all that ! "
" Oh you do look for it then ? " I suppose I evinced discom-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 459
fiture scarcely resentment or Gracey would not have said, as I
distinctly recollect her doing: "There! he shall have his little
A. Addison, he shall, and he shan't be teased! Only, Jackey dear,
do tell me what colour her eyes are?"
I began to say, somewhat warmly : " She hasn't got any eyes."
But reservation was necessary. "At least, not in that sense!
They aren't any colour in particular."
"Grey, I suppose?"
" Oh yes grey if you like. Anything."
" I suppose she's got hands ? "
Now the fact was I had called more than once at Knotter's
workshop, on fair enough pretexts perhaps, but always, after the
first time, with a distinct prevision of A. Addison's hands, which
were comely, and deft to put back hair that got in her way when
she was at work. So I had a sneaking desire to talk about one of
them at least the left one. " Of course she's got hands," said
I. " Two. One of them to keep her hair out of her eyes ! "
" That's the one," said Gracey, with that curious insight into
my mind which I fancy I have referred to before. Then I recol-
lect that Varnish's voice inquired for Miss Gracey without, where-
upon Miss Gracey called to her that she was in my room ; and,
when she appeared, continued: "Do come in, Varnish, and hear
about A. Addison, who has a mark on her nose, and whose hair
comes down and gets in her way."
" Law there now ! " said Varnish. " If I didn't think it was
going to be Miss Featherstone Haw ! " I write the name thus
because this was, I am sure, Varnish's way of spelling it mentally.
"Oh no, Varnish! Why she's freckled! You don't care for
Lucy Featherstonehaugh now do you, Jackey?"
"Which is Lucy?" said I. "The boniest, or the boniest but
one?"
" Xow you're pretending, and I shan't talk. . . . No do
tell Varnish about A. Addison, and don't be sprocketty."
I itemized my account of A. Addison, but without greatly in-
teresting Varnish, who was preoccupied. She said to Gracey,
across my particulars: "Your stepmar she's put out with the
doctor, and she don't think she's coming down to dinner to-night,
and it's odds but she'll go to bed." Gracey's attention was taken
off A. Addison, and she said : " Oh I was afraid." To which
Varnish replied : " Yes. He's disagreed with her he has."
And they talked of something else.
CHAPTER XLI
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
MEMORY takes me back to those days of my early manhood, with
its fiction of anchorage to a rock I had split upon, in the ocean
of High Art; its reality of a successful embarkation in a much
less pretentious vessel, on a sea that I affected to consider a mere
duck-pond by comparison. Or, perhaps, I should rather say an
estuary into which I had drifted on. the high tide of a chance
good fortune, for the turn of which I must watch, to be carried
back to the fulfilment of my true destiny, the use of oil-paint
on colossal canvasses, the interpretation of Mythology and History,
Acis and Galatea, and Henry the Eighth and Cardinal Wolsey
that sort of thing!
I am sure I had no misgiving, as I walked up Long Acre the
day after Dr. Scammony " disagreed with " Jemima, that the tide
of that estuary would never turn me back to the sea of that
vague world-fame I had conceived myself entitled to, backed by
Mrs. Walkinshaw. I regarded the wood-blocks of my pictorial
additions to Bartholomew's tale in verse as incidents by the way,
things the World would laugh at and forget. Until one day the
biographer of a great painter would discover their back number of
Momus in a British Museum exploration, and discern therein the
hand that afterwards gave us something or other he would be
polysyllabic about to his heart's content. Whereupon the World
would wonder at the insignificance of the twig the bird clung
to, and, if in a right-minded mood, would marvel at the mysterious
ways of Providence.
I suppose it was one of them that took me to Knotter's, the wood
engraver's, that morning. Only I cannot see that any other way,
leading to totally different results, would have been a particle
less mysterious. Some of the intelligible ways of Providence
ought to be scheduled, for comparison. However, that has no
connection with the matter in hand. I did go to Knotter's, bearing
in my hand the wood-block I had just completed of Augustin Binns
forging, because I had some instructions to give the cutter that
could not be conveyed in writing. I must needs laugh at my Self,
or my Self at me, as I write these words. Is it true, then, that
it was quite impossible to give my instructions in a letter?
460
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 461
Knotter's was in the middle of a fog, when I got there; and the
fog was making Knotter choke, in the person of his representa-
tive. He himself, whoever he was, had, I believe, long been beyond
the reach of London fogs, however much he may have suffered from
Stygian gloom a poor substitute at the best, not the real thing
at all ! '
Mr. Straight, the representative, could not tell me, for choking,
whether I should find Miss Addison at work. But I took a move-
ment of his pen towards the penetralia beyond to mean at least
that I could see for myself, and I found my way over a cat
towards the most inaccessible stairway I have ever known, before
or since. It was like the turret stair in a Norman ruin that weak
characters allow guides to goad them up to see the views. Only
that, in that case, when the tread-corner is worn away to the
diagonal of its section, and what was a stair has become a slide,
the fact that it is solid stone accounts for what is left; while,
in this, speculation was at a loss to supply imagination with any
better foothold than empty space. It was, however, substantial
enough for some hammer in a hand long dead to have driven
tacks into; for oil-cloth of incredible age covered in what once
were treads and risers, and left speculation and imagination to
make the best they might of the support beyond. If this were a
book, I should not feel free to write so much about an old stair-
case, but it pleases me to do so because it expresses what I have
so often longed to express about the means which I have been
supplied with for getting upstairs, and coming down.
I got up these, with a stumble or two, and found a door-panel to
knock at. I can distinctly remember standing there in the dark,
hoping, without admitting it, that A. Addison was there, hand
and all. I felt that Miss Procter, her supervisor in the cutting
of blocks, would be a wet blanket; even though equally competent
indeed more so to take an exhortation or instruction as to a
method of rendering.
" Come in ! " cried a girl's voice from the other side. It was
not the sort of voice one expects to come out of a London fog.
Also, it wasn't Miss Procter's. I knew that. But it might be
one of the apprentices one of the alumna of the art of block-
cutting. I hoped not, because it was a voice I should have liked
A. Addison to have. ITot that I admitted it. I was inwardly dis-
claiming any interest in A. Addison, all the time, without sus-
pecting my disclaimer of being self-accusation. I opened the door
furtively, and the voice said again, " Come in ! " with a sort of
elongation of the words, as though to add force or encouragement.
462 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
or finish to a rough sketch. I went in, and there was A. Addison,
by herself 3 She was intent upon her work, and I suppose thought
I was some sub-auxiliary who had been told always to knock.
I began, "I beg your pardon ' and- she looked round,
startled; and, doing so, overturned the small standard gas-lamp, fed
by an elastic tube, which had been concentrating its Cycjops eye
on her field of vision.
" Never mind ! " said she. " Nothing's broken." And as she
reconstituted the lamp, the glare of it crossed her oval face, with
the eyes that were no definable colour, and the loose hair that
got in them. As Gracey was not there to convict me, I looked
without scruple for the mark on her nose. There it was, sure
enough! Only it was a very small scar, much smaller than my
first memory of it. I preferred not to admit to myself that I was
glad. Discipline had to be maintained.
"What a thundering light!" said I, with a bad choice of
language. For the light had swept across my face. I never sus-
pected A. Addison of taking a peep at me. It is extraordinary
what non-human creatures some young men credit girls with
being.
A. Addison stood and looked inquiringly at me, merely deflecting
that wandering hair into its place. If I had been told, then, that
I was glad that rounded girlish figure had kept so upright in spite
of constant stooping over wood-blocks, I should have repudiated
the accusation with angry contempt. Now, I am not sure that I
was not. " Were you looking for Miss Procter? " said A. Addison.
" Well I was ! But I expect you'll do just as well. I wanted to
say something about this block." I busied myself untying the
string of its parcel, and was awkward over it.
" Let me do it," said A. Addison. " I shall do it quicker than
you. . . . There ! " The very pretty hand that had nestled into
a corner of my memory, helped by another as deft as itself, had
taken the package from me and got at my block before I could
vouch, untruly, for the relenting of the knot. " It wasn't just com-
ing." she added. And we both laughed, and I began to like A.
Addison very much. She was answering my expectation. Why
had I an expectation? I know, now, fifty years later.
I began a long lecture on the exigencies of block-cutting; how
on no account was any shade to be expressed by hatching; even
if I hadn't drawn every line; how the lines must be cut to their
full width, and not fiddled away and refined. In fact, if there was
a feeling of sniggles and jags now and then, as if they had been
done with a chopper, I should be just as well pleased. Likewise
THE NAKKATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 463
I expressed an abhorrence of tint-cutting, and spoke as if tint-
cutters would all come to a bad end.
" All right ! " said A. Addison. " Won't you sit down ? "
I felt a little embarrassed. What was I to sit down about, so
near as I was to exhausting my subject? However, I was relieved
when she continued : " Because if you will, I'll ask if the proof
isn't ready of your other block it must be yours? the highway-
man in spectacles, you know."
I confessed to the highway man, and sat down with a clear con-
science. A. Addison departed down the rickety stairs, and I sat
there and thought how pretty her feet must look going down them.
Presently she came back with the proof. She was so sorry, she
said, that Kate Somebody I think the name was Haggerdorn
wasn't there to hear my criticism. " She cut it, you know . . .
Oh no, 7 didn't. But I daresay I shall cut this one, because she's
going to marry a man named MacDonald." I perceived that this
did not point to any special influence of this name, but only to the
probable preoccupations of the lady's approaching nuptials. I
found as much fault as I could with the print, and expressed an
ureasonable expectation that I should find A. Addison's own work
much more sympathetic. Meanwhile the fog got thicker. No
other woodcutter appeared, and I thought it* would be becoming to
express regret at the absence of the ruling spirit, Miss Procter.
I was really very glad she wasn't there. What did I care for Miss
Procter ?
" She'll not come to-day," said A. Addison. " She's kept away
by the fog. So are the others, I suppose. I get here easily, be-
cause the omnibus passes my door."
" Then you have to walk up from Charing Cross ? "
" Then I have to walk up from Charing Cross." I felt un-
grateful to the omnibus, which seemed to have carried the con-
versation into an insipid country. But a rescue was at hand.
" I shall get home quicker walking, if this fog keeps like this,"
said the girl. I felt really indebted to that fog.
" How far have you to go ? " I asked, quite naturally. Indeed,
the question called aloud for asking; it would have seemed almost
uncivil not to want to know.
"To my house?"
" To your house."
She stood considering, with the two hands that were of so
much interest to me resting their fingers in company on the back
of the chair she had not taken, but hiding the thumbs. , What
little things I find I remember! She was bent on not overstating
464 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
that distance, apparently. "It isn't three miles," said she.
" Because it's only four to Putney."
" Then it's an awfully long way," said I. Which seemed to me
a legitimate conclusion, though I don't see why, now.
" Perhaps the fog will clear." She accepted my standard of
consecutiveness.
" But suppose it doesn't ! "
" Oh I shall, get home all right."
The thought that hovered on the outskirts of my mind was
a daring one. So daring that it only remained there a few seconds.
It flew in and took possession. " I say," said I, " I am going
exactly the same way."
" I've been out in much worse fogs than this." A. Addison's
indescribable eyes looked straight into mine with perfect frank-
ness. " But it would be nice, of course. Usually, there's Kate,
and we go together, because she lives with her mother at Putney.
But now it's nothing but Captain Macdonald." I should put in
little explanatory bits, for plausibility, if this were not an exact
record of a talk I remember well written down to please myself,
not for any one else to read.
Anyhow, neither party, at the time, suspected unintelligibility.
It seemed quite plain bailing, a few minor points calling for ad-
justment. A. Addison was not due to depart, and the fog might
clear. Very likely the sun would be shining in an hour, and
then the buses wouldn't be crawling. This, I said, would exactly
suit me, as I had to call at a shop in Holborn to buy some joint-
dividers. This purchase had nothing to do with butcher's meat,
but belonged to one of those shagreen outfits that are called com-
pass-cases. I had dropped my " pair of compasses," and it had
stuck in the ground and spoiled both its points. This side issue
seemed somehow to make my arrangement with A. Addison con-
crete and definite, while a solemn compact that if the sun came
out I should consider the programme cancelled, put an end to any
idea or would have done so had any such idea been conceivable
that anything in the personnel of A. Addison was responsible for
my offer of an escort. I was to be very obliging; that was the
keynote of the performance. And we were both bound over to
prayer that the fog might clear, that I might be relieved from
the irksome duty of going back to well! not to a martyrdom,
certainly, in view of those hands and other items already scheduled,
to say nothing of a pair of lips I had just taken stock of, and the
two rows of teeth that lived behind them.
Oh, how I broke faith about that prayer, and prayed that that
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 465
fog should become absolutely solid ! How anxious I felt once when
a gleam came, and whips began to crack and wheels to take heart
of grace ! Not that I admitted my anxiety. Oh dear, no ! I was
even hypocrite enough to hope that Miss Addison wouldn't have to
wait long for a 'bus. I hoped it aloud, in order to allow of no
doubt about my sentiments.
However, the fog had only cleared a little to get a fresh start,
and by the time I had bought my joint-dividers and reached Drury
Lane on my way back, it was most gratifyingly rich and juicy,
and I was overjoyed to see the public suffering from strangulation.
Its bronchial cough left no doubt in my mind that my offer to see
A. Addison safe on her way home had its origin in pure philan-
thropy. I could not be expected to exclude such finger-tips and
eyelashes, and so on, from the benefits of a good-natured impulse,
merely because they belonged to a young lady whose name I hardly
knew. I regret to have to write that I sheltered myself from my
conscience behind that slight scar on A. Addison's nose. I re-
called to mind that Adeline, now a memory of a remote past, had
an unblemished nose. How could a worshipper at the shrine of
Adeline be materially affected by a nose with a flaw on it?
Its owner, in a grey merino dress and a warm fur jacket, was
just coming out of Knotter's as I turned down the Court. "I was
on the point of giving you up," she said. " Only it stopped clear-
ing and got black again. You see, it's just as I said. The omni-
buses will have to crawl. Besides, there won't be any room at this
time of day. All the people are going home at once."
It was Saturday, and we all know what that means. In those
days there was no District Railway to Sloane Square. Even the
Metropolitan was only an unfulfilled promise.
"Where do you really live?" I said. For I had never had
definite information.
" Parsons Green. That's how I came to know that you were
the son of Mr. Nathaniel Pascoe, at The Retreat."
" I didn't know you knew."
" Because I didn't tell you. I'm sorry. Now you'll have to take
my word for it. I knew because of this. When they sent us the
first block to cut for Momus I heard it was drawn by ...
a gentleman of your name. Well! it's not a common name
now is it? "
" I suppose it isn't. But I'm so used to it, you see.!'
" I wonder if everybody's name sounds exactly the same to them.
It ought to." This was a thoughtful speculation by the way, which
the speaker's lips dropped a conversational smile to consider.
466 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Her next words were : " Take care don't let's get run over." For
we had to negotiate St. Martin's Lane, and nothing was visible ten
feet off. But we could only have been walked over at the best, or
worst. Responsible horses seemed to be sending their frivolous
drivers on in front, with detached carriage lamps to attract the
attention of other responsible horses coming the other way. Link-
boys happy in the possession of a piece of tarred rope were catch-
ing joyously at opportunities of misleading wayfarers for two-
pence. Waifs, who did not know where they were, were supplicat-
ing strays to tell them, and were only eliciting a sort of analysis
of Space from the latter, when disinclined to admit ignorance.
It is very hard to determine one's whereabouts a priori.
However, we got across alive, and I picked up the lost thread of
our talk. " You were saying," I said, " about Parsons Green,
and why you knew my father lived at The Retreat."
" Why of course ! " said A. Addison, stopping to say it, and look-
ing at me. " Because I was thirteen when the new people went to
live at The Retreat; when my grandfather gave it up."
lt Your grandfather ! "
" Yes only he isn't really my grandfather. He's my great
uncle. We can't call him that. So we always say grandpapa.
Well when I told him you had drawn a block for us to cut the
last one, you know ?"
" The highwayman ? "
" In spectacles. Yes. We talked about whether it was that
Mr. Pascoe. And he said not very likely, because that Mr. Pascoe
was in Somerset House. . . . Oh, he can talk quite clearly, and
remembers things! Only he is over ninety."
" You hadn't seen me then ? "
" Xo or I could have told him what you were like. But he
said he thought he recollected you. He called you " She hung
fire for a moment. " He called you the boy."
So this girl was the grandniece of old Mr. Wardroper. And
it was then and there, in the fog in Cranbourne Street, that the
memory came back to me, in a flash, of how Cooky and I had
once walked to Parsons Green to leave a letter for Mr. Wardroper
that had been sent to The Retreat. I found I remembered very
little of the visit, though I contrived to image my admission at the
front garden-gate, and fancied that the housemaid who opened it
had said that Mr. Wardroper could not see any one, but perhaps
Mrs. Harrison could. I saw now that she must have said Addison.
We stopped a couple of seconds to look at each other and laugh.
" I was the boy," said I. " I was quite a youngster the last time
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 467
I saw him. I saw your mother too. I came about a letter that
had been opened by mistake. That was your mother, I suppose? I
think the old gentleman called her Zillah."
" That was my mother's name," This was spoken in a minor
key.
" I am so sorry ... I didn't mean "
"Oh, how could you know? Besides, why should 7 mind?"
" If I had known I should have asked differently. That was
all." For names only become things of the past when their owners
join the majority. We flagged for a moment, for I did not feel
intimate enough for sympathy about a mother's death. I thought
I should do best to leave the revival of the conversation to the
young lady. It was not long coming.
" Yes my mother and father christened me Adah with an H,
after Lamech's other wife. You remember her ? "
" Oh dear, yes ! We were talking of her only the other day."
Which was true. For Bartholomew, by a catechism on Gen. I,
had entrapped me into a statement that Abel killed Cain, and I
had endeavoured to beguile my father in the same way. He had
refused to be taken in, saying that if Cain was killed, it must have
been by Lamech. Lamech was the Second Murderer in the drama
of Creation.
" Just as if you met her in Society," said A. Addison. A laugh
at this was interrupted by Leicester Square, or by the intensifica-
tion of fog which denoted it. We had to feel our way across two
slow processions of vehicles through pea-soup, one each way.
" Never mind!" said I, and added groundlessly : "It's sure to
be better when we've passed Piccadilly. But Lamech's wife?"
This was to recover a lost thread.
" Well that's why I was called Adah. Because mamma's name
was Zillah. It wasn't logical, but poor Papa was not a logician
whatever he was." The way she said " poor papa " puzzled me.
It implied allowance made for something; not for defective intel-
lect perhaps, but for some deficiency. Her words left an image
in my mind of a man who was nobody's enemy but his own, as
the phrase goes. I wanted to ask more about him, and then it
occurred to me that I did not know if he was alive or dead.
I could not light on any better way of asking than : " Are you
an orphan \ " It seemed less rough than : " Is your father
dead?"
Her answer took me aback. " I don't know. I can't say." Then
she seemed to think a minute, before adding : " Need I talk at all
about Papa ? " It was scarcely a question asked of me ; rather, a
468 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
passing thought that had found her speaking, and got itself ut-
tered unawares.
However, I replied to it: "I'm sorry. I didn't want to be
inquisitive. Don't tell me things ! " I spoke in the compendious
speech I should have used to Gracey, and she seemed quite to
understand it. For she answered, " Yes, I won't then ; " but
presently seemed to decide that she had been too abruptly reticent,
saying in a subdued sort of way : " I have not seen Papa since
I was quite a child."
So, there was some mystery about her father some curtain I
was not to see behind ! So I left him alone. For what right had
I even to feel curiosity, on the strength of an acquaintance not
yet three hours old? Piccadilly Circus helped the dismissal of
the subject, for there we lost our orientation in the fog, owing to
the number of wrong ways open to us, and had to seek help from
a policeman. When asked, "Which is Piccadilly?" he answered,
" That was Piccadilly, over that way, but whether it's 'oldin' on is
more than I can say. You might in-quire. Only foller straight
across straight as you can go." A bus-conductor at the corner
replied to the same question, " 'Ope it is ! Fares won't get home
if it isn't;" and walked on in a cloud of illuminated steam as a
horse-herald.
" You'll see," said my companion, " we shall get home twice as
quick by walking." And even as she spoke, the line of vehicles
we were already outstripping became a stoppage, and one knows
what that word meant in Piccadilly in the early '60s. I sup-
pose that stoppage came to an end ultimately, but it was still an
undisguised stoppage when we arrived at Hyde Park Corner. We
left it submitting, with derision, to the terms of its existence,
and branched off through Belgrave Square. I can recall nothing
after this except of course the two great main facts, the girl I
was walking with and the fog I was walking in until we were
nearing The Retreat, when the fog lightened and I became dimly
aware of a possible embarrassment. Suppose I were to meet one
or more members of my family, how should I account for A. Addi-
son?
Now if I had been a very different sort of young man, I should
never have asked myself this question. If I had been less home-
bred, more at ease with the world and its ways, I should have seen
how easy it would be unless indeed I was prepared to brazen out
A. Addison to wish her good-bye abruptly with, " I see some of
my people. . . . They'll be looking for me. . . . You'll soon
be home now," or some such speech. Then, if I had been subtle
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 469
and deceptions I could have represented her as a wayfarer, lost in
the fog, who had inquired the way to Putney, and would get there.
There were many excellent openings for the practice of duplicity,
but they were not in my line. I was not a duplex young man.
If I had been, as things turned out, the circumstances might
have outclassed me. For when we came abreast of The Retreat,
my companion said, as I expected she would, that here we were,
and now I mustn't go any farther.
I said : " All right ! I'll only go a few inches farther and then
turn back."
She said : " No, indeed you won't, Mr. Pascoe. I won't hear of
it. You're home now. Thank you so very much for protecting
me against the fog. It's lifting now, and I shall be all right. Bt
I should still be in that omnibus in Piccadilly if it hadn't been for
you. I should have been frightened into it oy the fog. And oh,
the stuffiness and the choking ! So now good-bye, please ! "
She was so positive that I had no choice but to obey. But
just as I was on the point of taking the hand she held out not
without misgiving that I ought to touch it very formally, on so
slight an acquaintance I saw how she glanced beyond the closed
gate of The Retreat, and I suppose showed that I noticed her
doing so. For she said : " It hasn't changed the least."
" You knew it quite well, of course ? "
" Oh dear, yes ! When I was a child, every Sunday. But I have
never dared to go in and look at it, because the gate is always
shut."
" Come down and see it now." Could I have said less ? We
entered and the gate swung to behind us.
" Do the giant hemlocks grow as they used to in the Summer? "
said she. " They used to get to such a size, all along the paddock."
I felt that the place really belonged to her and hers, and that
we had turned both out. I could not propose reinstatement, so
I vouched for the hemlocks. " They'll be good this year," said I.
" Because they were bad last. They take it turn and turn about."
" Will they go on doing so for ever ? I am such a bad Botanist.
I never know these things." I believe I pledged myself to the giant
hemlocks, in aeterniun.
/
Was that poor stunted remnant of their ancient glory that I
saw in the strangely altered home I still could recognize as The
Retreat, when I visited it for the last time was it the last of its
race?
These snatches of the past fragments of memories of forgotteu
470 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
times and things strengthen from their mist of oblivion for a
moment, then pass away, or grow dimmer as I almost cry aloud
to them to stay but for one moment more that I may link them
with their sequel. Even so I seemed to see but now the image of
A. Addison, standing there in the clearing fog gazing at the
house-front she had known so well, and almost visibly thinking
how she might ask to be admitted to its interior. I knew that,
but a sort of gaucherie about how I should explain her stood be-
tween me and any effort I might else have made to pave the way
to the request. I was furtively glad she would never make it ; glad
of my own confidence in her reserve. I wonder now if, supposing
that an indifference I had found it necessary to mention to my
Self an indifference to that oval face and soft thoughtful eyes, to
that stray lock of rebellious hair now safe in bondage, to those
gloved hands I knew the whiteness of, even to that fur tippet that
might have been keeping any other throat warm suppose that this
transparent effort of self-deception had been genuine, should I not
perhaps have faced the music, and given my companion the in-
dulgence I knew she was longing to petition for? Should I not
have given Gracey leave, mentally, to chaff me to her heart's con-
tent, rather than suppose we say ! disappoint this amiable young
person I had been good-natured to? I hope so.
But I did not, for reasons best known to my Self; and the last
of that image I can conjure from the Past has a wistful, thwarted,
slightly disconcerted look as it holds out a hand I am intensely
conscious of, to say good-bye. What! not be unconscious of a
hand one takes! How conscious is one of nine-tenths of the
hands one takes those of visitors, for instance; real visitors, who
leave cards before their victims' eyes?
We did not part as a consequence of that veiled reciprocity
about the crossing of our threshold. I remember, dimly, making a
sort of incident of showing the young lady over the rest of the
property; and she assented to it and identified things asked who
our neighbours were now, and so on. Then she fled, saying how
late she would be at home, and how Grandpapa would think she
was lost in the fog.
And as for me, I still suspected nothing! Even though I found
that I was, on the whole, not best pleased that the young woman
should have shown such a vital attention to The Eetreat, on
account of a vested interest in it that antedated Me ! I am sure I
spelt my pronoun, subconsciously, with a capital M as I went
upstairs to my workroom.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 471
There, in a sense, I met Nemesis. Gracey, attired as for going
out. or just returned, her face brimming over with suppressed
raillery, coming from the Studio. And I immediately was aware
that she had been looking through the rift in the baize blind at me
and A. Addison.
" Oh, you subtle, secret Jackey ! " said she. " Now tell me who's
the Beauty! I'm dying to know." But she kissed me to show
there was no malice.
I affected a doubt as to whom she meant, but made a very poor
show. " Stuff and nonsense, Jackey ! " said she. " Don't pretend !
Who was your lovely companion ? Outside our gate just now ? "
' Who ? Her ? " said I, as though I had to turn over in my
mind a number of lovely companions to select from. " She's Miss
What's-her-name. She cuts blocks you know Miss What's-her
name "
"You know, and I don't! No, Jackey, it's no use. I'm not
going to guess, and you'll have to tell."
" Very well, A. Addison then, if you must know ! She lives over
at Parsons Green."
" And you were coming the same way. 7 see."
" Well there was such a beastly fog. And the omnibuses were
crawling "
" Quite right ! "
" And she was going to walk by herself "
"Precisely!"
u Because her friend that used to walk home with her is going
to marry Captain O'Horrigan or Medlicott, I forget which."
" Captain Fiddlestick ! And now she's gone home to Parsons
Green. Why didn't you walk the rest of the way with her? "
" Well you see she said the fog was clearing, so "
u So there was no more pretext ? "
" She didn't say it that way. She only said I wasn't to come
any farther. ... I say, Gracey, who do you suppose she is?
Really, though ! "
" There I won't chaff him any more ! Who is she ? 7 don't
know." So I then told her, we being on a footing of reality, of
A. Addison's relationship to old Mr. Wardroper; but she was very
little impressed by this, as she herself had never seen the old
gentleman. She was, however, very much amused at something
that hung about my relations with this new young lady acquain-
tance. What she saw to be amused at was more than I could tell,
as I was under the impression that I had successfully concealed
every suspicion of sensibility; although I was beginning to admit
472 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
that a little might be found in some back cavern of my heart
if very careful search were made .for it. But really no one
not even my sister Gracey had any business there except myself.
I was to feel grateful an evening later, to my stepmother for
being a Woman of the World. This sort does not chaff and rally
and disconcert young men who are or have been grazed by some
stray arrow of Cupid. Kather, it takes for granted, that a man
is in Love until the contrary is proved; and it is much too well-
bred to press for particulars. This indicates the attitude I ascribed
to Jemima in respect of the information she received from Gracey
about any affaire de coeur of mine. And I knew she had been
informed about A. Addison as soon as circumstances permitted,
one of the circumstances being her mood of resentment at the visit
of Dr. Scammony, which lasted well into next day. Which day
being the day of my more matured introduction to Miss Addison,
and our walk home together, was of course Saturday. So it was on
the Sunday afternoon following that Jemima addressed me, speak-
ing over Gracey's head in a we-understand-one-another way that
was very gratifying to me in view of its visible influence on a
twinkle of anticipative chaff that hovered over Gracey's counte-
nance.
" By-the-by, that Miss Addison, Jackey," said she, with a mo-
mentary negligence of her topic to secure a wristband.
" A. Addison ? " said I, with a parade of indifference. " What
about A. Addison?"
The wristband did, at least so the lady decided, now. She
returned to the topic which she had left, as it were, waiting. She
became luminous and business-like about it. " Are you sure the
name is Addison ? " said she.
"Absolutely certain," said I. "Why?"
" Because of old Mrs. Illingsworth something she told me about
old Mr. Wtfrdroper's grandniece that came to live with him." This
was an old lady, our near neighbour at The Retreat, with whom
a visiting connection had been maintained by my stepmother and
Gracey, although a more self-sustaining communion between the
two families had died a natural death after my elder sisters mar-
ried and departed. I fancy I have elsewhere referred to the fact
that there were two young Mr. Illingsworths. Concerning whom
tradition, handed on by some one who slept in front of the house,
said that one fine morning the Milk, in commune with a friend,
had been heard to say : " There's two young ladies in this here
house, and two young gentlemen in that, and what more do yer
want ? " To which the friend, an older person and more dis-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 473
creet, had replied : " You 'old your tongue, my man." I resusci-
tate this from oblivion to give stability to old Mrs. Illingsworth.
" Of course," said my stepmother, the Woman of the World,
" Mrs. Illingsworth came here a very short time after Mr. Ward-
roper, and knew all about what was going on. ... Oh dear, yes !
she knew Mrs. Wardroper intimately." Then she went on as
folk do who turn over contemporary History, somewhat as they
read letters aloud, more for themselves than their audience:
" Only I can't make out who the people were. I am sure if there
had been an Addison in Mecklenburg Square, your father would
have known. . . . Yes thank you ! the little screen, please."
For I, perceiving that her fingers were extended to shade her face
from the fire, was offering the big screen.
" But what had Mrs. Illingsworth to say about it ? " Gracey and
I asked conjointly.
" Well of course it must have been another grandniece, not
this Mrs. Addison. . . . Oh what did she say? Why his
grandniece was married to a barrister, who lived in Mecklenburg
Square, and did something disgraceful. Only the name was dis-
tinctly not Addison."
"Now remember, Jackey!" said Gracey, holding up a warning
finger to me, " you mustn't say a word about barristers or
Mecklenburg Square to your A. Addison. Recollect ! "
" Come, I say, G. ! " said I. " I'm not altogether an idiot."
"Then, don't!"
My stepmother substituted a less truculent version of the same
advice, which recognized my non-idiocy. " Perhaps it would
be better to say nothing to the girl," said she, moderately.
I did not condescend to give a new guarantee of my own dis-
cretion. I perceived the desirability of prudence, with nods, but
briefly asked if Mrs. Illingsworth had furnished no other par-
ticulars.
Mrs. Illingsworth said Jemima had been very reticent about
the accusation brought against the father. She had- only said it
was something very disgraceful. I was so minded to think that
it was intrinsically impossible that the father of two such hands,
such a stray lock of warm brown hair, such lips with such a smile,
and such a gravity, such eyes, such teeth, such a total! could
be guilty of anything actually disgraceful, that I dismissed this
barrister in Mecklenburg Square as quite untenable. All the
same, I could not but recall uneasily that equivocal way in which
A. Addison herself had spoken of h^r father.
Then I remembered that when we first came to The Retreat,
474 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
a relative or connection of old Wardroper had interviewed my
father about the lease, and had spoken of his sister-in-law, a widow
named Addison, whose husband he had never seen. But the entry
of this in my book of memory was so ill-written that I went to my
father to help me to decipher it. I was quite satisfied with my first
interpretation, but later rejected it in favour of the idea that I
must have recollected the name as Addison, because of the recent
appearance of that name on the tapis.
My father's memory was very hazy about it. " Are you sure the
name wasn't Ridge?" said he. But he recanted Ridge before I
had time to reject it. "Oh no, I remember! Ridge was the old
chap's son-in-law who brought me the lease. . . . No I couldn't
say. Perhaps it was Addison."
I don't think that this was any sign of incipient mental decay
in my father. Forgetfulness of a name mentioned in an interview
seven years ago ! what does it amount to when all is said ?
Besides, he remembered plainly enough some things I had for-
gotten, but knew at the time. " Ridge was a very close-shaven
customer with a shiny hat," said he. " Did he tell me he and
his wife's family were at daggers drawn? . . . Well perhaps
not exactly that, but something like it."
" Perhaps he said so when I wasn't there," said I, qualifying a
look of incredulity.
"Maybe!" said my father, and smoked placidly for awhile.
Then he gave me the benefit of his reflections. " I think I've got
it. Mr. Moberly Ridge. Mr. Moberly Ridge said his sister-in-law
and her deceased husband before his decease of course had lived
opposite to us, in our Square. All I can remember about her
name is that no one I ever heard of in the Square was called by it."
" I recollect. And The Man had never heard of any such a
name." I could recall, and did, as I saw it amused my father,
how Mr. Freeman had thought it necessary to reinforce his testi-
mony as to the absence of Addison from the records of the Square,
by a groundless incredulity of the existence of any such a name,
as an English patronymic. If we had said Handerson, or Ander-
son, he might have been able to meet us halfway. But when it
come to Addison, he could only ask what you was a-going to say
next. This he did not justify by any production of a resident
Anderson, now or at any time. His remarks turned entirely on the
a priori recommendations of a name.
" I should have so much liked," said my father, " to be Mr.
Freeman for five minutes, to see what it felt like. I suppose,
however, if one had the chance of being somebody ejse, it would
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 475
be wiser to jump at the opportunity to be some one with a larger
horizon Shakespeare or Beethoven or the Editor of the Times."
We then endeavoured to recall names, plausible or otherwise, of
dwellers in the Square in our time, but could not find an Addison.
I would not have believed that so large a number of names totally
unlike it existed. " Probably," said he, " old Wardroper had got
mixed up about the name of the Square. However, ask your
friend Miss Addison pointblank? next time you see her. That's
what I should do if I were you, Jackey." And then we talked of
something else.
Generally speaking, I used to follow my father's advice. This
time I found myself, on reflection, disposed towards my step-
mother's and Gracey's view that I should do well to hold my
tongue about this mysterious vanished parent; possibly a criminal,
either in durance or evading the law. " Something very disgrace-
ful," had such an unsavoury sound about it.
CHAPTER XLII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
" 'OLD on's the motter," said 'Opkins one early Spring day
shortly after this. " Nothin' like it, nowadays ! "
" I don't see " said a dreary student, and stopped. A profli-
gate student near at hand, one who respected nothing in Creation,
masculine, feminine, or neuter, said promptly : " G'yup, Pepper-
mint; what don't you see? Get it sput out, and ha' done with it ! "
Whereupon the dreary student said again, " I don't see " and
stopped again, as before. His intonation of his last two vowels
produced a well-executed echo from the mocker, and an apprecia-
tive laugh from his admirers.
" Will you be silent, me boy, and let us hear Mr. Pethersole ? "
The student who said this spoke with an indication of reverence for
the opinion of Mr. Pethersole, miscalled Peppermint, in which
there was a trace of ridicule.
The profligate student, in compliment to the speaker, assumed
an exaggerated Irish accent. " Will I howld me tongue thin, to
oblige the O'Flanigin ? " Sure and I will, be Jasus. Arrah thin,
Pippermint darlin', spake away and lit the jontlemen hear your
melothious accints." And so forth, until invited by a collective
appeal to shut up.
The dreary student then, having the rostrum to himself, went on
where he had left off, drearily :-*-" I don't see how you do without
Genius."
" Ah now ! " said Mr. O'Flanagan. l< Give your attention to
Misther Pithersole, Hopkins. The wurruds of wisdom! How
will ye do without Janius?"
" Poor beggar ! he's got to," said the mocker, whose name was
Nixon. "Never mind, 'Opkins my boy! Cheer up, 'Opkins! All
in the same boat at this Academy, 'Opkins ! " He dropped his con-
solatory tone for a merely business one. " Anybody here a Genius?
Let him speak now or be for ever silent. Don't all speak at once."
But every one kept his conviction, if he had one, to himself.
If this were a book, I should have to explain that the profligate
student's licence of speech was safely practised by him owing to
a physical deformity. It was a universally conceded privilege.
476
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 477
'Opkins felt it incumbent on him to justify his position.
" Genius," he said, " is a gift, bestowed by Providence."
" On me," said that diable loiteux, Nixon. " What will yon
stand?" This was an interruption without warrant from its own
subject-matter.
'Opkins ignored it with dignity, and continued: ". . . in
fulfilment of Destiny, on worthy recipients 'avin' the correct quali-
fications. Persons endooed with Genius are rarer avisses not
frequently come across. 'Umbler capacities have to make good by
perseverin', which goes a long way. So I say 'Old on's the word."
I happen to remember this scrap of conversation on the occasion
of a sporadic appearance of mine at the R. A. The remark of
'Opkins that it opened with was made in response to a felicitation
of 'mine on his steadfastness and persistency. He was not able
to compliment me in return, for I must have seemed a flaneur
without a purpose, coming in as I did just as the model was going
to abdicate to come down off of the throne was her own exact
expression. 'Opkins was kind enough to suggest that perhaps I
ought to be described though not as a rara avis or person endowed
with Genius as an instance of exceptional aptitood in a particklar
line, and indeed of no mean merit. He himself posed as of a
humbler capacity, but with a nobler aim.
I think my conscience found a palliative for its uneasiness over
a factitious necessity for a visit to Ivnotter's wood cutting atelier,
in this looking in at the Academy to bring away marine stores that
had no place among my present working tools. By an odd coinci-
dence I was getting a wood-block finished at the end of the next
week, which called imperiously for a personal interview with the
cutter. For the making of this programme plausible, I kept the
eyes of my soul open to the fact that the cutter need not of
necessity be A. Addison. If it should happen to be that young
person, well and good! It was no fault of mine. But I was not
going to admit the truth that I was going to Long Acre with a
subcutaneous purpose, concealing a possibility of a walk home with
a particular pair of hands ; and that my seizing the opportunity for
a flying visit to the Academy had as little to do with the matter
as had indeed the wood-block itself.
Nevertheless I had the effrontery to utilize the Academy in con-
versation -with Gracey; who, I felt, had her eyes upon me.
" Which are you going to first ? That's the point," said she.
" Is it to be the Academy, or is it to be A. Addison ? "
" Just whichever is most convenient," said I, evasively. *' I
hadn't thought." This last was not evasion it was mendacity.
478 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
Gracey recognized it as such. " Oh, you story ! " said she, can-
didly. " As if you could leave A. Addison walking up and down in
Trafalgar Square while you went in for old brushes, which you
don't want and never use."
" Miss Addison has absolutely nothing to do with the matter,"
said I, freezingly. " She may be there, or she may not."
" We wash our hands of Miss Addison," said Gracey, her eyes
twinkling aggressively. " I see. And she may be there or she
may not! Precisely. But, Jackey dear "
"But cut along!"
" If by any improbable chance Miss Addison should be there, and
the consequences were "
" I hate that idiotic game."
" I don't . . . and the consequences were that you walked
all the way home in Miss Addison's pocket, like last Saturday "
" What bosh ! "
" Very well bosh then ! Just as you like. Only if it happens
bosh or no bosh! do bring the poor girl in and show her the
garden. I tell you I saw her longing to come in, through the
window-curtain. Now don't be a goose, but do as I tell you."
My present favourite psychometry is that we have not only
a subconscious self, but several subconscious selves any number!
and that one or two of mine laid their heads together and
decided to follow Gracey's behest. Three or four noisier ones,
however, insisted on my believing that my instructions would be
given to some one else than A. Addison, and that my sole com-
munications with that young lady would be limited to wishing her
good-morning. A good large group expressed their repugnance
to this possibility, and I am not sure that one in a corner a poor
Lalf-hearted self did not try to remind me of that waning Adeline
of two years since. Anyhow, my subconscious selves were very
active all through my journey to town that morning, and only sub-
sided when I reached the Academy, where of course I went first.
Then it was that some remarks upon my intermittent character led
to the conversation on Perseverance and Genius which I have just
recorded.
The small parcel of unnecessaries I brought away with me helped
to keep my subconscious selves in abeyance for the rest of my
journey to Knotter's. Arrived there I was disgusted to hear that,
as a compliment to me, the last block I had left the week before
had been taken out of the hands of Miss Procter's department
which was of an educational nature, although her pupils turned
cut some very fair work and taken over by Mr. Shrapnell ^lim-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
self. I longed to assassinate Mr. Shrapnell, and was obliged to ex-
press myself flattered and delighted. The thought also oppressed
me that this great man would cut my block secundum artem; and
would refine my drawing, and even to borrow an expression used
by 'Opkins in our chalk-drawing days at Slocum's " 'atch up
shadderin'," a thing I particularly wished to avoid.
However, there was nothing for it but to affect rapture at my
good fortune, and I hope Mr. Shrapnell himself was taken
in.
I felt horribly non-suited as I walked out into Long Acre with-
out having so much as set eyes on A. Addison. I concentrated all
my faculties on pretending I didn't care, and perhaps forgot that
Long Acre did not care whether I cared or not. I doubt whether
any man-in-the street whom I passed noticed the whirlwind of
indifference which I was putting into practice.
The question I now had to consider was how to repass the en-
trance to Knotter's unintentionally just at the moment at which
Miss Addison had started for home last Saturday. Simply to go
for a walk and return in half-an-hour would lay me open to con-
viction in the Court of my own conscience. That would never do.
A lucky thought! There was my Artist Colourman, close at
hand. Not only could I spend any length of time I chose in select-
ing a purchase, but I could fill out a cool ten minutes in deciding-
what it was to be. For I was quite xinconscious of being in want
of anything. The fact is, that the designer in black and white
wants but little here below, and cannot make his bill for materials
otherwise than short. Wood-blocks were my piece de resistance
in those days, as I drew direct on them with Indian Ink; but a
wood-block is always perfect, and the most fastidious could not
spin out the choice of a wood-block, even if blocks of every propor-
tion known to Geometry were habitually stocked. They are, how-
ever, always bespoke, like boots. It takes such a short time to
order anything of two dimensions only. Wood-blocks would not do.
How about a sketching-block, with some unnegotiable peculiar-
ity? An Indian Ink bottle incorporated in its structure in some
subtle way, and incapable of departing from the perpendicular!
Some one of my many subconsciousnesses vouched for having seen
such a one advertised. How fortunate that it should cross my
mind, just as I got to the shop! I elected to be in serious want
of it.
I walked some distance down the shop shops have no end, one
knows! and came to an anchor with my back to the entrance, so
that I saw no incomer. I inquired for this peculiar sketching-block,
480 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and to my surprise was told that no doubt it was the Non-absorb-
ent Trapezodium I meant. One was produced but mine was
evidently some other Trapezodium, not the Non-absorbent variety.
I then inspected more examples of facilities for making Sketches
from Nature than the number of Sketches -from Nature that I
had seen, worth looking at, appeared to justify. I carefully de-
scribed the contrivance I had in view, and my friend across the
counter promised to keep a sharp lookout for it for me. I doubt its
ever having come into the market. According to my recollection
it would have been possible only to some adaptation of the gyro-
scope, which is said always to keep a ship's head right, be the
steersman never so drunk.
I was inspecting, I think, a recent patent which enabled the
artist to cook a light luncheon without suspending work, when a
girl's voice, behind me, asked if that was not Mr. Pascoe. I
claimed his identity with unparalleled alacrity.
" I saw your back and thought it must be you," said A. Addison.
"I thought you would like to hear. So I came to tell you Mr.
Shrapnell himself fell in love with your block. And he's taken it
away to cut himself. There!"
" Oh well ! I suppose I ought to be very much honoured and
so forth. But I would sooner you should have cut it."
" Oh ! But why ? " A sudden grave perplexity unsettled her
safe expression of geniality towards an unconsolidated acquain-
tance, almost a stranger. This was such an unprovoked expres-
sion of faith on my part. " But of course you're very kind to say
so."
Young gentlemen cannot be too cautious about the emphasis
they lay on the pronoun "you," when addressing recent young
lady acquaintances. Of course, when it's Opera, you may do it in
your very first bar. But then, in that case you will be pressing
the lady's hand to your bosom before the duetto part comes. It
was quite different that day fifty years ago, in the Long Acre
colour-shop. I felt I had made a mistake, and was not at all
sure that the lay-figurecarefully shrouded, all but her expressive
face, in green glazed calico had not detected it. But it was im-
possible to explain that nothing personal had entered into my
speech. I never was a dab at excuse-mongering, and my attempt
at one this time was lame. " I I suppose I should have said
'your department.' In order to keep one style all through, you
know! But, however ! " This was dismissal of the grievance,
and acceptance of the decisions of Destiny.
A, Addison immediately made the most of my explanation.
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 481
" Oh, I see ! you're quite right. The styles oughtn't to clash, and
I hope they won't."
I wanted to soften this Spartan definition of the position. But
it was quite impossible to weave in a thread of preference for the
young lady's own work, because I had seen so little of it that a
bias towards it could not seem impersonal. So I stuttered and
lost myself, and I am certain that lay-figures set me down as a
weak young man.
"Good-morning, Mr. Pascoe! I must run, or I shan't catch'
my omnibus." This was how A. Addison cut short a conversa-
tion which had very little to say for itself, and was halfway up
the long shop before Despair and Resolution had settled between
them what was to be done.
Resolution had the best of it, and was rewarded by help from
an unexpected ally. So obviously was my start from the back-
shop a pursuit of the young lady, that a solemn shopman in charge
of the more exoteric counter discerned in me a family friend of
hers, to whom a mission of delicacy might be safely entrusted. tl I
think," said he, pointing to an entity on the counter, but ignoring
its nature, " the lady is leaving something behind. Perhaps you."
He seemed content to stop here, and I was content to accept his
punctuation. I caught up a palpable button-hook with nothing
about it that wanted a veil drawn over it and pursued its owner
down Long Acre.
I seem to have to throw Memory back so vividly does this inci-
dent of fifty years ago come to me now to summon from the
past my last slow progress down that street, some two years since
at most. But it comes, and I am again an old man young enough
for his heart to break a little still at the past that comes back to
him then the past of his early manhood, when all the fulness of
his life was still to come. Some passerby may have wondered then
why tears were running down a chance old face. I wonder too a
little now what does it all matter? What did it matter then?
Just one life, and one past, among millions. And so soon one
utter blank, among billions; one oblivion, lost in a boundless
void.
And yet how strange is the thread of memory that brings back
the self-same recollection that came back to me then of that
button-hook, and made my heart ache with a pain I shall never
feel again. For I am daily nearer to the end, and each day am
readier to praise any Creator that can be authenticated, for his
creation of Nothingness and Peace.
482 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I caught A. Addison just opposite a coachmaker's, with a
magnate choosing a barouche for his wife visible through the
plate-glass window. My recollection is of embossed letters claim-
ing that the coachmaker was Coachmaker to Her Majesty. But
I find I cannot recall any instance of one who was not. Perhaps
it is only my failing memory.
" It must be mine. It looks very like it," said the young lady,
"when taxed with the button-hook. " Stop one moment, and let me
see if mine isn't here." She referred to the interior of a little
wallet or reticule, while both of us accepted apparently the sugges-
tion of a scheme of Society, in which button-hooks were frequently
met with, shed sporadically by careless units, as legs by grass-
hoppers or locusts. "Why of course it's mine! " said she with a
delightful laugh, after examination. " How could it be anybody
else's?"
That laugh of hers intoxicated my heart; and Resolution, who
had shown signs of wavering, reasserted herself. " I was coming
after you to tell you ... to say " I began, and then felt it
easier to transpose my key, " The chap in the shop gave me that.
He saw I was coming to catch you up."
" It must have tumbled out of my bag," she said. " But what
were you going to say ? Tell me."
" Oh, nothing. Only my sister saw us outside th gate the
other day. She said she was sure you would have liked to see
inside the house, and the garden and why didn't I bring you in ? "
" Oh your sister! " She glanced at me with a doubtful gravity,
as though some new light had broken. " Should we find your
sister on the way back, now ? "
" Well we migli t." I really thought probably not, but the
context of circumstances pointed to what I wanted, videlicet more
A. Addison, somehow; and I did not feel tied to the apron strings
of Veracity. After all, if Gracey was out, it would not matter.
We walked on; with the question, I should say, unsettled by
tacit consent. Presently my companion, with an odd gravity that
had got possession of her, said abruptly : " It would not take so
long, just to see round the garden?"
I looked at my watch, and compared it with St. Martin's Clock,
just visible. " Half -past twelve," I said. " One has to consider
lunch. That's what you were thinking of, isn't it?"
"Not mine! " said she. " I was thinking of yours."
" We are always late on Saturday," said I. Then a reckless
inspiration seized me. Would a hansom be absolutely out of the
question ?
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 483
To my surprise and satisfaction the answer to this was : " If
you'll let me pay my half." But I could not fathom the speaker's
manner. It was not exactly colder than on the previous Saturday;
perhaps '* more cautious " would be nearer the mark. I see now
that there had been no time to consider a demeanour when we had
that first interview.
It told, in the cab. I suppose there is no truer test of frank
unconsciousness towards a personality than the exact place one
occupies beside it in a hansom. It is impossible to bisect your own
half of the seat impartially. if you love or hate that personality.
And any little rule of demeanour that one has to enter on life's
programme has its effect, pro rata. A. Addison flinched towards
her side of the cab, past all shadow of doubt. But she wasn't rude
to me; on the contrary, she was perfectly cordial. Something con-
vinced me, for all that, that had a cab Keen practicable on the
previous Saturday, there would have been no South Pole magnet-
ism in either fare.
We conversed oh dear, yes ! all the way to Chelsea Vestry
Hall. That is what it was, in those days, when Borough Councils
were undreamed of. I remember what follows of the conversation.
" Your sister won't thank me for rushing in in this way, just
before lunch."
"Why not?"
"Well it stands to reason. She's human, I suppose?"
"J should say so. But do inhuman persons thank people for
rushing in ? "
" Just before lunch ? I should say they might. Only I shouldn't
call them inhuman. I should say angelic. Because there are
limits."
"What to?"
" Visitors."
I thought of saying it depended on who they were. I decided
that it would not be impersonal enough in a hansom cab. I
doubt if the driver's experience would have ascribed my standard
of delicacy to fares as a rule. I did say : " I'm sure Gracey will
be awfully glad to see you." I made it " awfully." as I felt " very "
would not carry conviction. Then I smothered possible analysis
of my grounds for certainty by a practical tone. " She may not
be back. She'll be sorry to miss you." Impersonal enough for
any cab, that! even for a four-wheeler.
"I shall be sorry to miss her. Vert/ sorry!" I was glad Miss
Addison should be so very sorry to miss my sister, but with just
a leaven of misgiving about the reason why. There was the
484 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
flavour of an enigma in her tone of voice slight, but perceptible.
She looked grave too, as one who considers outcomes.
" My stepmother will be there perhaps Mrs. Pascoe."
" Oh, indeed ! Yes, of course ! "
" She's quite a nice person, you know."
" Oh ye-es ! handsome, isn't she ? " This was evidently for
the sake of saying something, to avoid saying nothing. At least
that was what I took it to be, at the moment.
" I suppose she is, but I don't know. I'm so used to her. You
see, she's been on since I was a child."
"On?"
"Well yes on! I mean going. She was the girls' governess,
and my father thought it would do if he married her. So she's
Mrs. Pascoe."
"But she's nice? you like her?"
" She's not like one's idea of a stepmother, if that's what you
mean."
A. Addison considered the point, gravely. " I suppose perhaps
I did mean something of that sort," said she. "-"One has an idea
of stepmothers. But what I mean is is she the sort of person to
be afraid of?"
" Oh dear, no ! Jemima certainly not ! "
"What's that you call her Jemima?"
"A sort of nickname. Not to her face, you know!"
" But it's a name one always . . . always laughs about. Only
I can't think why. What made you call her it?"
" Well you see her name was Evans, before she married my
father. Now she's Mrs. Pascoe. The name Jemima had caught
on, and it stuck."
"But why Jemima?"
"Because her name was Evans, don't you understand?"
"I certainly don't. Job's other name wasn't Evans, was it?"
Her puzzled face arrested my absurd assumption that the two
names would seem to her to belong to one another, as they did to
me. Then I found I was by no means sure why they did so, and
had to go back to find out.
" Let me see! " said I, gradually recalling. " When did Jemima
come in? ... Oh, I remember I've got it! It was in.
Sketches by Boz Miss Jemima Ivins and Miss Jemima Ivinses
friend's young man. Fancy my having forgotten that!"
" That was quite natural. One does forget how things began.
But about this lady your stepmother. Is she not thought very
handsome? "
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 485
"I don't know. She may be. Only who told you? I mean
where did you hear it \ "
The answer followed reminiscence. " I think it was an old lady
named . . . Malkinshaw, I think."
"Walkinshaw?"
" Yes Walkinshaw. I think she called her her beautiful Mrs.
Pascoe, and her Helen of Troy."
" That's her name Helen. Fancy old Walkey! What a joke! "
" But are you sure you are not wrong, and Walkey, as you
call her, isn't right ? "
" Perhaps she is. Perhaps she's right when she says my ecclesi-
astical sister is like Elaine, and my quarrelsome sister like Joan of
Arc. I should say she was rather a flighty sort of old party. Did
she say this to you ? "
" I don't know her. It was repeated to me by a friend, a gentle-
man I know." I have often been reminded since then of the way
in which A. Addison said this, by young ladies who have not
courted catechism about some collateral gentleman-friend.
I felt I should like this one cleared up classed and located.
I suggested that perhaps I knew his name, if he was a friend of
Mrs. Walkinshaw's. But the name Bretherton, drily admitted, left
me no wiser. And the young woman's not being quite certain Mrs.
Walkinshaw was not some sort of connection was no help at all.
That old lady's ramifications were endless. So I had to leave him
unravelled, as we had arrived at The Ketreat.
On the whole I was not sorry that it was my stepmother to
whom I had to present my young lady acquaintance. I felt the
management of the position was so much safer in her hands.
" You must feel as if we had no business here, Miss Addison,"
said she, taking the visitor quite as a matter of course.
'* I'm not sure that I don't," was the answer, with a whimsical
expression of protest. "Do you mind my feeling tolerant, if I
don't say so ? "
" How very nicely you put it ! " said my stepmother. " When I
was a child I was taken to an old house of ours, and I believe I
wanted to bundle the new tenants out. But I love going back
into a den one has lived in. I felt quite jealous once when this
young man got in at our old house at the Square, and saw all
over it."
A. Addison was just asking what Square was that, when I became
aware of Raynes. fraught with a communication to me. I said yes
what was it? It was Mr. Stauffer, come to try on. I showed
486 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
impatience, but Jemima said : " Nonsense, Jackey, you told the
man to come. Go and be tried on. I'll take Miss . . . Addison
into the garden." The pause on the name was just enough to
show that the speaker, though moved by courtesy, was not con-
cerned with the identity of her guest, though technically quite
aware of it. I went away to be tried on.
When Mr. Stauffer had drawn enough French Chalk memo-
randa on an accidental sartorial pourparler he had brought with
him, to enable him to construct a definite misfit, I returned to the
two ladies, expecting to join them in the garden. I was rather
surprised to find them conversing, apparently with interest, on the
sofa in the drawing-room.
" Oh here he is ! " said my stepmother.
"Were you talking about me?" said I.
" There now ! isn't that exactly like a young man, Miss Addi-
son? They are so vain they think that no one can think of
anybody else." This seemed to me unfair, as Jemima's words as
I came into the room were a reference to me. She continued:
" Oh dear, no- we were talking of some one much more interest-
ing." She underlined these words, so to speak, that Europe might
understand that the interest involved a young lady and gentleman.
She appeared to check her speech in response to a half -appealing
deprecatory look from her visitor, saying in extenuation : " Oh
no 7 shall not say a single word more. I am discre-
tion itself!"
I think A. Addison was just beginning, " Not on my account! "
when the door-knock fructified, and Gracey came in and was
pleasant. But she afterwards said to me : " Why was your new
ladylove so discomposed? She was what Cook calls 'all of a hur'.
But she's a dear, I quite agree."
We went in the garden, and Miss Addison identified landmarks
of her early days. Still, there was a chill of some sort ; and in my
mind a horrible misgiving, which I was fighting off as best I
might; keeping always in view, as the necessity of the moment, the
pretence that no such misgiving existed. I think I must have been
improving at this date, for I remember an interlinear wish in my
mind's manuscript a desire to protect Gracey from a disappoint-
ment on my behalf.
I had not long to wait for my own. My stepmother had the
situation well in hand, and I can still think with gratitude of the
way she managed it. A. Addison departed, with a cordial shake
of the hand for each of us, and a word or two more of congratula-
tion to me on the great good fortune that had befallen my wood-
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 487
block, promoted to the honour of being cut by Mr. Shrapnell Him-
self. Much I cared!
Gracey said, after her words just put on record: "Tell me
about her afterwards, Jackey darling. I must go and wash now
furiously, or I shan't be fit for lunch, because of those children."
This referred to sundry National Scholars, for the education of
whom she had taken service as a volunteer. They were, she said,
good but stuffy; and called for soap and water in earnest, to
wash them off.
My stepmother, unsaturated with school children, could take her
time. She was tainted with nothing worse than shopping among
the better sort. New fabrics, to grace that sort, have a flavour
certainly, but it is a flavour of cleanness.
She did not look at me, after Gracey's departure to scour, but
grappled with some hook-and-eye difficulty she had to keep her
chin clear of to liberate her throat; a throat Time had not ravaged,
so far. The perverseness of this fastening called for intermittent
censure throughout a fragmentary conversation on our recent
visitor.
"Oh dear! girls and their love affairs! . . . Really the
people that make these things are downright idiots "
" Suppose you let me try. You can't see."
" No you'll only make it worse. There's nothing for it but
patience. . . . Fancy that girl telling me !" The hook-
and-eye had the best of it here, but it was of service. It gave
me the opportunity of showing no curiosity, ostentatiously; and
Jemima the machinery for betraying no suspicion that I had any
cause for it. Neither of us was deceived, but each was at liberty
to ascribe faith in successful dissimulation to the other. That did
as well.
I concentrated on the peccant hook, or eye. " It's flattened," I
said. " It wants a knife to open it."
"Thank you!" said Jemima, "and cut my throat! . . .
There! it's come at last. . . . What was I saying? Oh fancy
that girl telling me all about her engagement! "
"What! A. Addison? Who's A. Addison engaged to? Who's
the lucky man? " I think this last question was a failure. It was
too ambitious. It did not matter. My stepmother's accepted
role was that of blindness.
For all that, I caught her eyes resting on me for a moment.
" Nobody one knows," said she. " I can't remember the name. I
daresay I shall directly. Carry my cloak up for me, that's a good
boy! ... 'NoI'll take the parcel. You'll crush it."
488 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
And we both of us felt at least I am sure / did that we were
doing it beautifully!
The frame of mind of a young man who, conceiving that he
has just lighted on a prey for his Soul, finds he has been pro-
posing to devour another man's banquet, has no name for it that
I can supply. I do not repent of this description of the state of
unreasoning perturbation into which I was thrown by discovering
that a girl whom I had a fancy for wasn't for me, but for some-
body else. The strangest thing about it was, that up to the moment
of this discovery, I was quite in the dark about the degree of her
importance to me. She had leapt into imperial power over my
heart, absolutely unconsciously to herself, in the course of one
or two interviews; and the fatal truth had been sprung upon me
that the hand that had dwelt in my memory, the wandering locks
it had kept in their proper place, the long-lashed eyes whose colour
I could find no name for, the lips that made each unconsidered
trifle of speech a thing to recollect that these things one and all
were my Universe; and that all that I had counted mine before
was but as dust in the balance, mere flotsam in the stream of life.
And yet, up to that moment, had I been told of what was in store
for me, by Omniscience itself, I should have discredited my in-
formant, and told him or it to mind his or its own business.
I could now understand, plainly, that psychological moment in
the Artist Colourman's, when my expression of regret that my
block had been given over to a master hand by A. Addison produced
on her face that sudden unsettled look of doubt I could see that
a new light had broken on her, causing her to say to herself,
probably: "Oh dear! here's another. How is this deserving
young man, whom really I scarcely know, to be headed off in
time to save me from responsibility for his peace of mind ? " I
could see that the readiness with which she accepted the gloss I
then made use of to cover my speech was no more than a working
expedient to lubricate chat and avert a catastrophe of mutual con-
sciousness. I discerned further what that "Oh your sister!"
had meant. She had seen a possible way out of the wood. How
much easier to breathe the truth to an aspirant's sister than to
himself! It was all accounted for that stinted acceptance of her
position in the cab, and all !
I have since come to the knowledge that girls have little difficulty
in warning off young men who approach them with discretion and
caution. When the repulse is gradual, it is always doubtful which
is responsible, and no one's amour propre suffers. When on the
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 489
contrary a young man begins making love I am repeating words
since used to me by a young lady like a Mad Bull, and not like
a Reasonable Christian, what can one do? I am afraid that I
perhaps erred in the direction indicated. Fancy saying " You "
with a capital letter, to a girl on so short an acquaintance! But
was it possible for A. Addison to say : " Keep your pronouns to
yourself ! I love another ? "
Gracey, freed from the flavour of her National School, was on
the lookout for me, merely rinsed, by comparison, when I came
down to lunch. She was resplendent and full of expectation.
" Well!" said she, with heartfelt emphasis.
I was glad to have a case for well-defined dissimulation. " Well
what?" said I. " Cut along in. There's lunch."
" No there isn't. At least, Papa's not come out of his library.
Tell me things about A. Addison. How did you get her here ? "
" In an ordinary human cab. You must ask Jemima about
her. She's got something to tell you you'll be interested in." I
think I succeeded in speaking in the empresse way which advertises
a sub-intent of this particular sort.
"Oh, Jackey, there now! Don't tell me you're going to say
that A. Addison's engaged to be married!''
" Get along in to lunch ! Here's the Governor."
Again, I thought I had done it very well. And perhaps I had.
For Gracey afterwards admitted to me that at the time she had
no idea I was "so bad" about. . . . Well! about the girl I
afterwards married. My pen hung fire over writing it, just as if
I had been writing a story, with a plot and a denouement.
"Who was the very nice-looking girl, who went out about
twenty minutes ago?" My father spoke, at lunch. But I think
he wanted to change the conversation, which had turned on his
persistent inobservance of the regimen the great specialist had
sentenced him to.
" She's a Miss " My stepmother looked to Gracey for help.
Not that, I suppose, she had forgotten the name Addison, but that
she was not disposed to admit her recollection of it.
"Addison, but is she engaged or not? That's the question.
What did she say to you. Aunt Helen ? "
" My dear, I hardly recollect. Something about some gentleman.
There always is a ... Do take the potatoes away from your
father, Gracey. They are directly contrary to Sir Alcibiades
Rayson's orders. . . . Well! don't let him have two, anyhow.
There always is a gentleman."
490 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
My father said : " It would be rather flat for the lady, with-
out one a flat engagement!" And Gracey said: "Do try and
recollect his name, Aunt Helen." I think that for a young man
whose nerves were all on edge to hear the next word I succeeded
in showing indifference very cleverly. I still think it was clever in
mo to say : " She mentioned some chap, in the cab."
" That was him, of course," said Gracey. My father asked,
pertinently : " Do ladies only mention gentlemen they are en-
gaged to marry, in cabs?" Gracey replied that this turned on
what was meant by mentioning. There were ways and ways of
mentioning people, and she had understood me to refer to a par-
ticular sort. "You meant that, Jackey, didn't you?" said she.
And my stepmother made a slight note of interrogation with her
eyebrows, and acknowledged my general assent with a we-under-
stand-one-another nod. " Can't you remember the. name ? " she
asked.
Of course I could, perfectly well. But I pretended I couldn't.
However, I deemed it advisable a few moments later, when the
conversation had wandered away somewhere else, to say sud-
denly: "Was the name Bretherton?" As if it had just occurred
to me.
My stepmother turned to me to think if I was right for her
conclusion was : " Yes, that was it, Bretherton."
" Say it again ! " said my father. When we had both done so,
he said hm! but otherwise let Bretherton drop. Then the con-
versation provided itself with other topics, for the moment. But I
saw by a certain watchfulness in Gracey's eyes that she meant to
have an explanation from my father, after that hm! of why he
wanted the name repeated. And sure enough, no sooner had
Raynes died away finally than Gracey revived Mr. Bretherton.
" Did you know somebody of that name, Papa ? Because you said
hm! You know you did."
" One may say hm! " said my father, " and yet not know a
person of the name of Bretherton."
" Nonsense, Papa, you know what I mean."
"Well there was a fellow of that name, who got the sack at
the Office. I can't say I knew him. He wasn't any good. Some
years ago now. . . . Never mind him! Impossible he should
be the same man! Why that fellow must be going on for fifty
now, if he hasn't come to the gallows. Not unlikely."
I think we all felt that, in view of A. Addison's visible early
twenties, we might discard this Mr. Bretherton as her possible
fiance.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN
I SAW very little alteration in my father about this time, and
what I did see I ascribed to his change from active employment to
that very unsatisfactory condition, a life of leisure. He was
desoeuvre, and had nothing to fall back upon. After his resigna-
tion he kept up for awhile a pretext that now at last he could find
time to attend to sundry jobs that had been awaiting him for
years past; but none of them seemed to bear examination, unless
perhaps it was what he called getting his books in order. He had a
fair number of books, and I have never felt my indebtedness to
Literature more than when I saw that years of classification might
be devoted to the arrangement of a very small library, with a due
observance of Method a proper attention to System. Given both,
a folio Classic published at Lugdunum Batavorum, and never
opened since it came to Augusta Trinobantum, could quite well
be made the subject of a day's industry. There is nothing like
System.
I always fancy that there exists a class of venerable gentlemen
I think of them broadly as Rural Deans ; but that may be due to
a low standard of Ecclesiastical knowledge who lead blameless
lives in the most fascinating Rectories with an unflagging smell
of honeysuckle at most times of the year, and Churches with
tumbledown pews and no Memorial Windows, and what is better
no Funds for a Judicious Restoration; which one hopes, for
Heaven's sake, is a source of joy in Heaven. These lives are lives
of leisure learned leisure, what's more! and these veterans lead
them, with smiles and frequent quotations, and a cellar of rare old
wine in the background, in spite of the fact that nothing can
organize perfection further. They have all the works worth read-
ing, and each has enjoyed a place to itself for a century. They
never read any other works. I hope they won't.
These Rural Deans may be a dream of mine, or like stage-
coaches and roadside inns, and The Waits may have existed once,
and now have vanished for ever. The latter, I think; for I find
that in the land of my imagination, Dr. Johnson and Boswell go
to call upon them, and are received with open arms. That is it,
491
492 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
depend upon it! Learned leisure is a thing of the Past, and has
no place at a date that everything has to be up to, if it wants to be
Modern. But this date of which I write was still a long half-
century ago, when Electricity was little more than a Scientific
Recreation; when Research had to cut Subjects up alive in secret,
and Flying Machines were very interesting, but couldn't go up
in the air; when Punch was almost unsullied with advertisements,
and London hadn't got to Putney.
My father was unable, in the nature of things, to enjoy Learned
Leisure in its fulness, like a Rural Dean, for want of the happy
faculty that class or my image of it had of recollecting appro-
priate Passages, and supplying Elegiacs to meet almost any
emergency. But he could and did make a considerable amount of
occupation for himself out of getting his books in order.
It was a pastime with a drawback, which seemed to me a serious
one. There was so often a volume wanting. The moment the
deficiency was established, the long line of unread volumes, with
indistinct lettering on the backs, that had from Time immemorial
occupied their shelf or shelves, and been an unmixed joy to Igno-
rance, bocame a thorn in the side of Erudition, who had only
herself to blame for looking inside the said volumes. Their
previous appearance behind glass was above suspicion, and ac-
quired force from the fact that the bookcase was locked. But the
moment that Erudition took more suo to examining title-pages,
and lighted on Vol: n of a work of which only n~l volumes were
visible, all the fat was in the fire; and she was thereafter unablr
to look upon the same edition of the same work, complete, in
possession of a rival bibliographer, without rankling envy and
an unholy desire to bone only just one volume, to fill up the gap
in her own bookshelf. I recall one absentee in particular, which
my father was inconsolable about one of a series which I am con-
fident had never been read by a living man, until he opened on the
title-page of the third volume and looked for the second. Xo T
am sure that large quarto Rapin Histoire d'Angleterre had lived
on bookshelves, from the day it fivst found a place on one, till its
reader, the only one it had known, discovered that it was im-
perfect.
Varnish's views on our library were a sort of refinement and
intensification of those of any hardened librarian. " Why your
par do that pret and that fuss, my dears, about on'y one book in
sixteen, and no consideration that there wouldn't be room for it
back again, if found, that is more than T can say or ever shall.
However another be ok could be got in he don't give a thought to ;
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 493
and I say, let alone and be thankful ! " The doctrine implied, that
books are the contents of libraries, seems to me to be pure unadul-
terated Bibliography. I had less sympathy with Varnish on this
point than on that of the volume chosen. " If they'd 'a took the
one at the far end, or the right," said she, " it wouldn't have
unevened it anything like. But taking out of the middle was
done for spitefulness, anybody can see."
I mentioned this view to my father, to make talk, on the evening
of that discovery of A. Addison's position in or out of the
marriage market. That is what set me off writing all this about
his library. He agreed with Varnish. " That's perfectly true,"
said he. " The thief knew he was taking the edge off fourteen
volumes, while if he had abstracted Vol. 15 he would only have
spoiled Vol. 16. The reader could have pretended the writer Had
died just in the nick. Besides, History always gets stupider and
stupider, and nobody ever reads more than halfway."
I recognized this as a fundamental truth of the human mind.
" Of course ! " I said. " Edward the Confessor is heaps better fun
than George the Third. We used to like doing Anglo-Saxons and
the Norman Conquest."
" Very clearly put ! " said my father. " At the same time I
read between the lines that you regard History as a thing boys
do at school. That is a popular view of the case, and one I in-
cline to, myself. All the same, I wish I could remember some of
it."
"Can't you?"
My father shook his head slowly, stinting an unqualified assent.
At last he conceded the point, without reserve. " No," said he,
abruptly, " I can remember nothing, nowadays. I believe it's
Sir Thingummybob's medicine. Or the diet."
" You're as bad as Jemima, Pap ! She's more sleepless than ever
so she says since she has been taking little Scammony's
stuff."
My father was just like every one else about doctors. They
were good for other people, bad for him. " That's because she
doesn't take it regularly," said he. " Sometimes she misses a
whole day. I shall not try the same way with Sir Alcibiades. Be-
cause it isn't playing fair, and I'm not a lady."
"Don't ladies play fair?"
" Oh dear, no ! They only play a very little fairer than we do
five per cent at most. But I didn't mean that. I meant that
if I was caught cheating, I could not carry it off so gracefully as
a lady. I should look sheepish." Then after a few moments of
494 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
amused reflection, he said suddenly : " But what set us off upon
this ? "
" Your memory."
" To be sure. And Sir Alcibiades' medicine. But I can re-
member nothing, nowaday^. It's quite true. I've been trying ever
since lunch to remember what it is I recollect about that
man that's engaged to that girl at least with the same
name."
" Which girl ? " I pretended I didn't know ; then made believe
I had suddenly recalled which, saying : '* Oh yes, I know A.
Addison. What was the fellow's name Blatherwick ? " This was
deceptions, as the name was burnt into my understanding, and
indelible.
<: Xo not Blatherwick Bretherton. You see, Jackey, he's on
my conscience. One doesn't like to say a man's a shady customer,
and then to feel that one hasn't got particulars, if applied to for
them."
" You won't be applied to. It was only us."
11 Meaning that it was inside the family circle. I hope that's
sufficient. You said she had mentioned his name to you. Didn't
she tell you anything about him ? "
" Nothing whatever. His context what brought him in was
old Walkey. He had repeated something she said, about us."
"Complimentary, of course?"
" Oh dear, yes ! all butter. I understood he was a friend of
hers; some sort of connection, I think."
My father remarked absently that that old lady was " a family-
wamily " sort of person, which appeared to me expressive. He
seemed to be trying to revive some recollection, for he once or
twice began asking: " What was that ? Who was that ? "
and hung fire over the question. Gracey came into the room, and
looked for a book and found it, and then leaned on the back of his
armchair. She picked up the last scrap of the conversation, to
come into it. " Who was what. Pubsy darling? " said she. For we
were like that, at home. Every one was always supposed to be in
every other's confidence.
" Nobody you know, Miss Inquisitive Chit. Some people op-
posite us in the Square, a hundred years ago. That's what it
seems like a hundred. . . . Let me see though you must have
been about eight "
' That's all right. I'm just a hundred-and-eight next birthday.
[Who were the people opposite us in the Square?"
" I was trying for the name. They used to call and leave cards.
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 495
The woman played the piano. The man was at the Bar; it's his
name I'm trying to get at. It was this little girl's name Addison
put him into my head. I remembered your dear mamma saying
that Mr. whatever his name was ! had married a Miss Addison.
Now I shan't be comfortable till I can think of his name. What
the deuce was it?" His inability to recollect was so evident a
discomfort to him, that both Gracey and I cast about for names
borne by early denizens of the Square, without any success. I
wonder, now, that I did not hit upon it at once. In the end
Gracey, seeing that he was really plagued by this elusive name, said
she should go and ask Varnish.
Varnish always remembered the minutest particulars of the
life of Mecklenburg Square, in our day. My father showed how
confident he was of a profitable result by calling out after
Gracey : " Tell her the people who were at forty-six before the
Matheisons came." I suggested that probably my stepmother
would remember. He replied : " She might, or might not. But
Varnish is sure to."
We smoked peacefully, listening to the colloquy afar, which
was quite audible, as Gracey had left the door open. The tone of
it spoke of full details and elucidation, interwoven with expressions
of surprise from Varnish that any quarter of Europe should be
uninformed as to the names and dates of all residents in Mecklen-
burg Square during its palmy days, videlicet our own; which
were to her what the days of the Caesars were to the Roman
historian.
Presently Gracey returned, triumphant and full of information.
She came into the room with the name sought for on her tongue's
tip, and uttered it promptly, that it should not remain forgotten
a moment longer than was necessary. "Fraser!" said she em-
phatically, adding: "I knew I should know it the minute I
heard it." And my father said : " Of course : that was it ! The
Frasers." He seemed relieved.
Gracey gave us a resume of Varnish's communication. An
obstacle had delayed her revelation of the name; to wit, her con-
viction of the impossibility that any sane person, of the Augustan
period aforesaid, should have suffered a lapse of memory on a
point so important. " There now, Miss Gracey ! " she had said.
u You'll never be telling me your par can't remember who it was
at forty-six!" To which Gracey had answered: "Well I can't,
Varnish, anyhow." The reply was : " No, Miss Gracey, and good
reason, too, by token you wasn't out of the nursery when the lady
at forty-six visited with your mar. Why, you was not to say
496 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
lengthened when the least of forty-six was took over by the
Matheisons."
"I feel perfectly certain," said Gracey, "that Varnish thinks
the lease of a house has a T in it. There is some idea, I fancy,
that it is the least period the landlord will let it for. I know she
thinks of him as a sort of ogre who has his tenant'in a trap. . . .
Well I ventured to say I could recollect many things before I
was lengthened, but the people at forty-six didn't happen to be
among them. I think Varnish preferred the view that girls'
Memory begins with their grown-up skirts. But if mine did go
back to those early days I surely must remember Adaropposite."
"Remember what?" said my father. "Is it a thing or a
person ? "
" It was a little girl, and a very pretty little girl, it seems.
I fancy I recollect her nurse bringing her into the Square from
forty-six, and that she was the Frasers' little girl. Only I think
she liked little boys best, and didn't care to play with us girls. You
ought to recollect her, Jackey, for Varnish says you banged her
iiose with the garden-roller handle, and it left an awful scar. So
after that she wasn't allowed to play with any of us either girls or
boys."
li Oh yes! " said I. " I remember Adaropposite. I took it to be
her christened name, and had to be undeceived."
" What was it ? " said my father. " Oh I see ! Her name was
Ada, and she lived opposite on the other side of the Square.
How exactly like Varnish ! I fancy I remember hearing about
that at the time." He dwelt on his amusement at an absurdity,
but I could see how the memory of the epoch it belonged to mixed
in with it and made his face sad.
For the moment some concern at this held me; but it passed,
leaving my mind at odds with some strange complexity of ideas
I could not define. The image of the very pretty little girl with
the composite name, long forgotten, come back to me, but rather
as the recollection of a recollection. For it had scarcely entered
my mind when its place was usurped by that of my school-friend
of old. I could see him as he stood by the unchanged iron railings
that kept the Square sacred, listening to my narrative of this
very incident of the roller and the nose, and evidently looking
forward to his condemnation of it as a flat incident. This 'was on
the occasion of that valedictory visit of ours to the Square when
he was on the point of departing for India.
Then came an inexplicable, chaotic intermixture of past and
present, for which I could find no reason then, and can find no
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 49?
reason now, unless I am to suppose an undercurrent of suspicion
in my mind, which the very fact of my prompt dismissal of it
condemns as untenable. The face of A. Addison, just as it looked
at me in the cab, would intrude itself on the revived image of my
little victim of over fifteen years ago would as it were flicker
across all continuity of Memory, and make a re-arrangement of the
incidents that followed impossible. How was I to formulate recol-
lection of a past I had clean forgotten, when a vivid present
flashed into it the moment it seemed on the way to become intel-
ligible? That this was not the result of that scar on the intruding
face I am convinced, for I should at once have jumped at it as a
solution of perplexity. As a matter of fact I never consciously
connected the two things together, and I am still at a loss to
account for the phenomenon, except indeed by making a dive into
Psychology or something else beginning with Psycho where I
should be out of my depth. It is moreover a subject which, in
conclave with my Self, I have, so to speak, sworn off, because ex-
cursions into it flever leave me a penny the wiser. Is the experi-
ence of others, I wonder, so very unlike mine?
My disjointed dream lasted until Gracey's, ''Well, Jackey?"
showing that she expected comment from me on the roller incident
of my infancy, caused me to shake free of this intrusion of A.
Addison, and to set it down as part of my general obsession of
her image. I roused myself to say : " I suppose she was Ada
Fraser. Only I doubt if I knew it at the time. I may have,
though, for I remember mixing her up with the things that came
in the milk you know? what we used to call frasers, when we
were kids in the nursery."
Gracey accepted this memory with gravity, as a thing perfectly
natural. u Yes of course they were frasers ! " Then, as if she
doubted the word for the first time: " They are, aren't they?"
"Not in the dictionary!" said my father. "I think I can
answer for that, without looking."
Gracey seemed hurt. " But they are frasers," she said. " Natur-
ally. One only has to look at them, to see."
I confirmed this; and, against two such rooted convictions, my
father could say nothing. I continued, a little touched in con-
science I suppose, by my recollection of a past enormity: "I
wonder whether Ada Fraser's nose came to rights."
"Must have!" said Gracey. "Think what an age ago it was I
She's outgrown it by now, anyhow."
" I'm not so sure of that," said my father. " Scars stick, some-
times. But about her parents! The little nosey girl's, I mean.
498 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
I recollect Mr. Fraser, and I recollect your mamma saying he
married a Miss Addison. Now suppose she christened her little
girl after herself, what was her name before she married? There's
a conundrum for you."
I was just going to utter the name, when an apparently un-
warrantable coincidence stopped me. I simply could not utter the
syllables in the face of it.
Gracey was under no such restraint. " Ada Addison," said she
pointblank. But in an instant, the oddity of that coincidence had
possession of her too, and crept out through her puzzled blue eyes.
" Weil that is queer ! " said she.
"What is?" said my stepmother, who had come into the room
unnoticed by me. " You all seem very much interested. I came
to see what all the talk was about." Being told, it seemed to me
that she showed less interest than would have been warranted by
the circumstances; appearing, however, anxious to get the facts
accurately, asking for them twice over and so forth, but yawning
slightly over the prolixity she had brought upon herself. When
Gracey, as prolocutrix, had ended up, she said drily: "Certainly
a curious coincidence. But one sees the name is a coincidence,
because of the nose. If the one, why not the other?" Then she
inveigled Gracey away to the drawing-room, urging us not to be
so late as we were last night.
My father commented on the attitude of mankind towards Coin-
cidence, calling her Incredulity's maid of all work. She purified
the Intellectual Atmosphere of Superstition, but at the risk of
disestablishing Cause and Effect. He drew a picture of The
Cautious Inquirer on his birthday, " pointing out " that we should
suspend our judgment as to the sun being the cause of the dawn.
The appearance of the two at the same moment might, for any-
thing we could know, be a fortuitous coincidence. He would
condemn his parents' testimony as to the frequency of the phe-
nomenon, as worthless, saying we ought to hear professional wit-
nesses, before jumping to conclusions. Ought we not to take a
leaf out of the book of The Cautious Inquirer? Here now was
a case in point. What did it amount to? A young woman had
the same name as a little girl, and the same surname as the
little girl's mother before she married. Well what of that? Why
shouldn't she?
Why not. indeed? Put that way, I became alive to the fact that
there was really nothing to account for. Then, clearly my sense
of mystification ought to have disappeared on the spot. But it
didn't. Something kept it alive, and I couldn't tell what. It was,
THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 499
however, at liberty to make believe it was extinct, and did so with
a fair amount of success. We said nothing further, having got the
coincidence pooh-poohed, but I carried it into the drawing-room as
a subcutaneous puzzle a fourmillement under my spiritual epi-
dermis.
I felt sure, as we came in, that Jemima and Gracey stopped an
earnest conversation, just as one of them said: "I say say
nothing ! " and the other replied : " So do I." Of course this
caused inquiry as to what nothing was to be said about. The
reply was that it was nothing that concerned either of us, and
that men were so curious.
It gives me pleasure, when I get on a line of revival of the past,
to resuscitate the smallest particulars. The foregoing is an in-
stance of an effort in this direction, made without regard to the
number of words it called for, or indeed of the chances of their
intelligibility to any one except the writer. Not that I can guar-
antee that every sentence in it, if re-read by my Self, would be
comprehensible.
I take it that my father certainly, Gracey probably, and my step-
mother possibly, were in the dark about the effect upon me of my
short acquaintance with the young woman whose name had been
the indirect cause of this conversation. One knows, or says one
knows, how a momentary image of a Juliet a mere glimpse
will light a consuming fire in the bosom of a Romeo. Yet very
few of us have known a shaft of Cupid to reach its mark with
such a deadly precision. We are generally content to suppose, each
one of us, that undying passion is possible to our own nature, owing
to a certain Divinity which we are pleased to recognize in both.
But we ascribe it with a good deal of reserve to some one else.
Nevertheless and it is odd that it should be so the greatest
readiness to believe in the possibility of a grande passion is not
found in minds one thinks of as angelic; no youth if he had to
choose between an Arthur and a Lancelot with a little consolatory
Devil in his heart would make confession to the blameless king. I
found that I suspected my stepmother of seeing through me, while
I credited my father with being quite in the dark. I cannot trace
this to anything but what I describe to my Self as a complete ab-
sence of angelhood in the character of Jemima. As for Gracey, I
doubt now whether she was not much more alive to the position
than I thought at the time; but decided not to talk to me about
A. Addison, simply from tact. It is much more probable that I did
500 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
not understand her than that she was in the dark about me. The
chances are that I was more transparent than I thought.
Anyhow, the upshot of this incident of my enthralment by a
conscientious syren who had headed me off the rocks none too
soon was that the form of forgetting all about her was gone
through successfully by me; and the form, perhaps, of pretending
there was nothing to forget, by my family.
I had not the slightest doubt now of the meaning of her con-
duct after the incident in the colour shop. It was that slight
accent I had laid on her pronoun that provoked it, and I could not
see my way to blame her, or to devising a wiser course than the
one she took. To say to me, on so slight an acquaintance, " Hands
off. young man, I am another's " would have been taking too much
for granted. On the other hand, to breathe the fact of her engage-
ment to any one of my womankind, who would be certain to com-
municate it to me. would clinch the matter, whether sister, sister-
in-law, or stepmother. She may have hurried the disclosure with
a little nervous precipitation, but what of that? I suppose that
my manner was too pointed, my impulse too transparent, to allow
of wavering or delay. The alarm of fire was too palpable to justify
the lo~s of a moment in despatching the engines.
What was it that had happened, that a young person who but a
few days since was no more than a new acquaintance should have
wormed herself into the very vitals of my soul ? I knew what
began it. and I know now. It began with that hand, which its
unconscious owner had used to influence hair to keep out of eyes
I had never seen; for their lids and lashes were at that moment
mounting jealous guard over thorn, as they followed the little
spiral* from the wood-block. I left my wood-block with the guard-
ian genius of the Studio, and came away without being able to
report upon the colour of those eyes; and yet that hand, without as-
sistance from them, had power to entangle my thoughts, and in-
sidiously suggest the desirability of another sight of it. If the
owner of the hand had been consciously angling for my capture
a wild improbability that would have been the moment when
the fish bit. He was caught by a hook against which no fish ever
struggles in earnest, in a sport indeed where every fish connives at
his own landing. But it was Fate in this case or my Guardian
Angel; what do I know? that played the line; not A. Addison
herself, to whom I was merely a person on business, that had
come to speak to Miss Procter.
Howerer, there were the facts. There was I, who as Tennyson
worded it in the poem which goes further to describe this frame
THE NAKRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 501
of mind than anything else in English, or out of it who in this
stormy world had found a pearl, a counter-charm to Space and
hollow sky; who did not accept my madness at all, but resented it,
and had much ado to conceal it. For was not the pearl, even by her
own will or consent, to pass into the treasury of an interloper, an
outsider, of whom I had no knowledge at all; and about whom I
had no convictions, apart from the general one that Man has
about his successful rival, that he could not be anything but an
Outrageous Snob? But I did, I believe, succeed in keeping the
turmoil of my emotions to myself.
It was rather ridiculous, but it was true, that I was helped in
this, in the principal quarter in which concealment was difficult
videlicet my sister by the memory of my absurd boyish passion
for the National Gallery beauty. My self-respect shrank from
the publication of a second unrequited attachment. Anyhow, I did
make a very successful concealment. I am sure of it. At least, I
am confident that though Gracey may have detected my love-fever,
she perceived that I believed her unconscious of it. All the work-
ing conditions of Oblivion were complied with.
I think also that I was indebted to the ballad of the Highway-
man and the Forger as a shield against detection of my state of
mind at this date. I made the most of misgivings I felt and I did
feel some that I should be involved in an embarrassment when
the caricatures of a gentleman I was ostensibly o'n the best of
terms with made their appearance. What made matters worse was
that their unconscious original had taken a strong liking to the
Artist, of course without a suspicion of the infamous way in which
he was shortly to be dished up for the amusement of the readers
of Momus. It was to some extent my own fault, for I had been
weakly trying to hedge against the storm of indignation which
I was anticipating, by affecting an interest I did not feel in Mr.
Silbermann's utterances on Art. It would have been much better
policy to quarrel with him and if possible, set up a grievance-
against him.
" What I want to know," said Gracey, who was very much in-
terested in this dilemma, of the caricatures, " is what attitude are
you going to take up? You can't pretend to be surprised at his
detecting a likeness. Come now ! "
" I'm not so sure about that," said I, after reflection. " It may
be a way out of the difficulty. I shall talk to Bat about that. It's
his lookout, just as much as mine. He's implicated."
" When are you going to bring me your Bat to see? I've never
seen him, you know, and I want to. He must be amusing/'
502 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" He is very amusing. But he hates women."
" They don't appreciate him, I suppose. That's men's usual
reason for hating women. But won't he come, because of that ? "
" I've never tried it on."
" Well be a good little Jackey, and try it on. To please me ! "
I made no promises, but I didn't say I wouldn't.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE STORY
ADAH ADDISON had been engaged to be married for the past
three years to her cousin Bob Bretherton. They had been play-
mates ever since she could remember and when he entered the
merchant service, and was to sail on a long cruise to the West
Indies, the evening before he left to join his ship Adah had
promised that she would marry him on his return. It was very
much of an impromptu affah*, fostered by the excitement of the
moment and though recognized as a future possibility by Adah's
mother, she flatly refused to allow the engagement to be announced
on the ground that both Adah and Bob were far too young and
inexperienced to be sure of their own minds, and that they must
wait till the latter returned home again, when after being separated
fof a certain length of time they would be better able to judge
how far they were indispensable to each other's happiness in life.
So Adah Addison wore no engagement ring and was considered
by her family to be unattached, but by herself as betrothed, for
had she not given Bob her sacred promise to be his wife?
Bob's voyage had proved an extended one. He had been de-
tained first at one port and then at another, and now at last he
had written to say that a good business opening had offered itself
in Shanghai, that, consequently he proposed to quit the Merchant
Service and settle there. He feared there would be no likelihood
of his being able to return to England for some time to come, so
would Adah be prepared to come out and marry him? He had
added that he should quite understand it were she to hesitate
about taking such a decided step, and that what he wished was,
that she should consider herself absolutely free and unfettered by
the promise she had made him. She must decftle, and everything
should be as she wished. And Adah had decided, she had written
to say that she had thought it all well over, and that she felt that
under the altered circumstances it would be wiser for both of them
to give it up. The correspondence that followed had been entirely
amicable, and Adah breathed a sigh of relief as she read and
re-read Bob's last letter acquiescing in all her views, and she
knew herself to be free again. Yes, they had both come to see
503
504 OLD HAN'S YOUTH
that it had all been a mistake from the first. There was no harm
done, no broken hearts, nothing to regret, and then Adah fell to
speculating whether that nice Mr. Eustace Pascoe would be likely
to look in at the office that morning.
But Eustace John did not look in that morning, nor for many
mornings to come. Ever since his stepmother had performed her
part and dextrously let out the fact that A. Addison was engaged
to be married, the disheartened Eustace John had kept scrupu-
lously away, timing his visits at the office so as to avoid the sight
of those beautiful hands and eyes.
A considerable time elapsed and still no Mr. Eustace Pascoe!
It then occurred to A. Addison, she being the soul of truth and
uprightness, and not, mark you, actuated by any other motive
whatsoever, that having told Mrs. Pascoe of her engagement to her
cousin she was now in duty bound t tell her that it was all at an
end.
Accordingly, one day, she suggested at the office that she could
as easily as not leave those blocks for Mr. Pascoe at The Retreat,
she was actually passing the door, and it would save him the
trouble of calling for them.
No objection being raised to this arrangement, Adah sallied
forth, armed with the blocks in question, hoping she might be
lucky enough to find Mrs. Pascoe at home.
Now it so chanced that Helen had had a very dull afternoon.
Gracey had been out since lunch and no visitors had called, so
that when the servant inquired " if she would see Miss Addison,"
Helen jumped at the interruption to her solitary musings, and A.
Addison was received with open arms. Tea was ordered and
Adah found no difficulty in confiding the story of her broken-off
engagement to Mrs. Pascoe. In fact the visit was in every way a
great success.
Not so the blocks however. So serious were the corrections
required that Adah found Eustace John actually waiting for
her outside the office door when she got tliere on the following 1
morning. In fact those blocks required so much alteration that
hardly a day passed without a long consultation with A. Addison
on the subject, and in addition to that, other pressing work of
Mr. Eustace Pascoe's caused him constantly to be passing her
door of the office just as Adah was leaving off work, so that he
could not help but see her home.
In the course of these walks it transpired that Adah really was
the Adaropposito of the old Mecklenburg Square days. Her real
THE STORY 505
name was Fraser, Atklison being her mother's maiden name. Her
father, it seemed had been mixed up in a most unfortunate money
transaction, according to his daughter, he had been more sinned
against than sinning, but in consequence of the whole dreadful
liusiin-ss, he had had to leave England and go to America to start
life afresh under an assumed name. It had not been possible
for her and her mother to accompany him, though her mother had
alvraj's cherished the idea that at some future time they might be
able to go out and join him. All -this had taken place when
Adah was quite a little girl, and it was years since she had heard
anything of her father. She did not now know where he was,
nor in fact if he were still living. Her old grandfather Mr. Ward-
roper would never speak of him. and now that her mother was dead
all possible link with him severed.
And so the stream of Eustace John's courtship flowed gently
on, peaceful and uninterrupted. Meanwhile what of the other
inmates of The Retreat? What of good or of ill did the passing
days bring to them ?
Mr. Pascoe had fondly imagined that when leisure came it
never could be irksome to him. There were so many untapped
sources of interest, so many things he had always longed to do.
; . r ni'ver had the time at his disposal to do them in. But like
IMMIV another, now that leisure had come and he was no longer
in harness, he felt quite stranded, and found great difficulty in
settling down to any fixed employment. Also, there could no
longer be any shadow of doubt now about the reality of the head
trouble; the fear of which had made him relinquish his post at
Somerset House. It was certainly increasing! He found it
hard to concentrate his thoughts, and his memory constantly
failed him to a very painful degree, and he dreaded becoming :!;<
burden to others that he already was to himself. As for Helen
with her constant thirst for excitement, and her craving for
Society, she found the trend things were taking most
trying.
It was clearly undesirable to encourage many people to come
to the house. The strain of conversing with visitors was a pain-
ful effort to her husband, and moreover distinctly injurious to
him so the doctor had said ; and the constant presence of Jackey
and Gracey in the house, made it impossible for her to disregard
the medical verdict in this respect, however much, if left to her-
self, she might have been tempted to do so. There was no way but
to submit, and in her overpowering desire to escape from herself
she sought relief in incessant church-going; so much so that her
506 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
stepson and daughter christened her the " P. L. P.," which is
being interpreted the Pious Lay Person.
Since that last row royal with Roberta, Helen had seen little
or nothing of the Graypers. Shortly after that stormy encounter
with her stepmother, Roberta and her husband had started for the
continent, the ostensible reason being that Mr. Grayper, who had
retired from active work at the brewery, had undertaken some
literary correspondence that made touring in foreign parts a neces-
sity, and Roberta who loved travelling, was delighted at the
arrangement.
They had been away a long time, wandering about in France,
Italy, and Spain, and now at last they were setting their faces
homewards, and Roberta had written from Paris to say that they
should be back in less than a week from the date of her letter,
nr.d would both turn up the following Sunday to lunch at The
Retreat.
Helen's first impulse had been on reading the letter, to dis-
cover that she was lunching out on that day, but on second
thought she felt ^that she had much better be there, ready to
defend herself if necessary. Besides, it was all such a long while
ago now. By this time Roberta might be in a very different
frame of mind, and quite ready to be friends, in fact she might
have forgotten the whole thing! No, better kill the fatted calf!
Let bygones be bygones and receive her stepdaughter with open
arms. If only Roberta would ! ! !
But lunch time came and went, that Sunday and no Graypers
appeared. Only a short note sent later in the day from Roberta's
husband to say that she was ill and he had not liked to leave her
and come by himself. He would write again when he could tell
them more, but he feared she might be sickening for some illness,
as she had been ailing before they left Paris. Another letter
arrived the following morning to say that Roberta was no better
and that the doctor now thought she might be sickening for typhoid
fever, but he could not be quite certain for a day or two. Mean-
while Mr. Grayper was very anxious about her or he would have
turned up in person at The Retreat to report progress.
Gracey promptly announced her intention of going to see for
herself what was wrong. " She was not to see the patient if any-
thing infectious was feared," so said Helen; and Gracey promised
not to, and took her departure.
That evening Gracey returned with the news that it was typhoid;
that a nurse had been engaged, but that Bert had begged that
Varnish might come and be with her. Gracey had offered to stop
THE STORY 507
but was not considered experienced enough to be of any real use.
" Of course Varnish can go, better go at once," said Mr. Pascoe.
" Wait a minute, Nathaniel," and Helen stopped him as he was
leaving the room to interview Varnish on the subject. " Just
remember Varnish is of the greatest use in the house. You would
not be nearly so comfortable if she went."
" As if that mattered in the very least," answered Mr. Pascoe,
impatiently.
"Yes, but she has no real knowledge of nursing, at all events
not of fever cases, and I have. Varnish and Gracey can look
after you and the house, and I will go and nurse Roberta. Indeed.
I am right. That is the best arrangement, I am confident of it."
And Helen was so persistent that Mr. Pascoe gave way and did
not attempt to argue the point. In fact it pleased him that his
wife should be so anxious to go herself.
Helen decided she had better start at once. Roberta might
easily become delirious, in fact delirium was bound to occur as
the fever ran its course, and then there was no knowing what Bert
might not say. Yes, it was certainly far safer that she should be
there! She could get rid of the nurse if necessary, and watch
her herself till the danger was past ; and Helen gave the order for
the brougham to come round as soon as possible. Then she went
upstairs to get ready. In less than half-an-hour she had packed
all she would be likely to need into her handbag, and calling a
hurried farewell to Mr. Pascoe, ran downstairs. She had heard
the scrunch of wheels on the gravel in front of the house and knew
that the carriage must be there.
As she reached the hall she saw that the front door stood open,
and to her amazement a figure passed out in front of her, entered
the carriage and before she could reach it slammed the door in her
face.
" Varnish, what is the meaning of this? " exclaimed Helen, for it
was Varnish's face that peered out at her from the inside of the
brougham. "You are not going! It is I who am going to nurse
Mrs. Grayper, you are to stop and look after things here."
" I shall not leave Miss Roberta to your care, Miss Gracey said
it was me she asked for," then looking straight into Helen's
startled face, Varnish added with grim significance, " One in a
family is enough! Had you not better tell Tom to start, M'am,
or are you coming too ? "
" You can drive on," said Helen to the coachman, and she turned
back into the house. But her knees were shaking under her.
CHAPTEE XLV
THE STORY
ABOUT ten days later the family at The Retreat were thrown
into a great state of anxiety about Roberta. The reports of the
patient's condition grew increasingly alarming, and finally cul-
minated in a telegram delivered late one evening urging them to
come at once as she was hardly expected to live through the night.
Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe, accompanied by Gracey started immedi-
ately for the Graypers' House at Kingston. Eustace John was
expected in shortly and instructions WOTS left for him to follow
on at once.
Since Roberta's illness Helen had avoided, first on one pretext
and then on another, going to the house. She had always sent
to inquire but had never been herself. Now her going was un-
avoidable, and she thought with a sickening terror of a possible
fresh encounter with Varnish.
The drive from Chelsea to Kingston is a long one, and though
the horse was- urged on to his quickest pace it was a good hour
before they reached their destination.
Haggard and white, Anderson Grayper met them at the door.
They were too late he said, and his voice broke. She had passed
away quite peacefully very shortly after he had sent off the tele-
gram. No one had anticipated such a very rapid sinking. He had
sent for them directly the doctor had told him he had better do so.
She was quite unconscious at the end and would not have known
them even had they been in time. It was all over now! They
would like to go upstairs presently. He would go and see if they
might come, and he showed them into the dining-room and left
them.
Mr. Paacoe sank into the nearest chair and buried his face in
his hands while poor Graeey broke down and sobbed quietly to
herself in a corner of the room.
And Helen, what of her? Her face was white and set, as she
rested her elbows on the dining-room table and shaded her eyes
with her hands to hide no not to hide her tears but to hide
the gleam of triumph that shone in those dark eyes of hers. Death
had been her friend, and those lips on which had hovered that
fell accusation, would never again threaten the foundations of
508
THE STORY 509
her life. She felt safe now! True, there wag still Varnish to be
reckoned with, considering her strange behaviour the other day,
but Varnish, without Roberta to back her was not so much to be
feared. Besides, something might turn up, some way of getting
her pensioned off away from The Retreat, and Helen's thoughts
indulged in the prospect of a future freed from the dread, not
of conviction, for that was not possible, but freed from those
vague hints that struck terror to her guilty soul.
Silence pervaded the room, no one uttered a word and the tick-
ing of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to Helen's overwrought
fancy to grow louder and louder. And as it ticked it appeared to
her to say: "Your time will come! . . . Your time will come!
. . . Your time will come ... ! " Oh ! would nothing stop the
ticking of that dreadful clock! And Helen felt as if she must
scream out loud.
At that moment the door opened and the nurse came in.
" They might come upstairs now, all was ready," she eaid.
Mr. Pascoe followed by Gracey left the room, Helen had motioned
to them to go first. She wanted to ask the nurse a few questions,
she explained, and would come up presently.
" Y.OU wish to speak to me," said the n'urse, seating herself on a
chair on the opposite side of the table to Mrs. Pascoe. She looked
very tired but otherwise unemotional. Her collar was white and
rigid, and her starched apron rustled and crackled as she sat down.
" You wish to speak to me," she repeated, sleepily.
" Oh, only," said Helen, nervously. " Oh, only just, I wanted
to know if dear Mrs. Grayper suffered much?"
" At the end you mean ? Oh no, she went comatose and just
slept away. They do you know."
" But I mean before that, was she ... I mean was she very
delirious?"
''Delirious? Of course she was! They always are you know,
with high fever like that."
" But . . . but -" inquired Helen, "was she very delirious?
You know sometimes one can judge of the degree of suffering that
way. Did she rave much ? "
u Oh dear, yes," answered the nurse. " raved at intervals all the
night. That's what they do when the fever runs up."
" Was it you who were with her when she raved so violently ?
Of course you would know so much better what to do than her
old nurse Varnish."
" Mrs. Varnish? Oh, she was there at times, but of course all
the work was on my shoulders, couldn't be off it ! "
510 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
" And what was done ? " ... asked Helen.
" What do you mean ? " said the nurse, sharply. " All the proper
things were done! The doctor's orders were carried out to the
letter. I can answer for that "
" Oh, I know, of course that would be the case ! " replied Helen,
soothingly. " I have every confidence that all was done that could
be done. What I meant was . . . What I really wanted to ask
you! . . . was if the raving was very bad in her case? . . .
If it implied great mental suffering?"
" Oh, it's just the fever does it," and the nurse yawned. " They
mostly talk rubbish and kick and toss about when the temperature
is 104 to 105, then if it runs up it kills them."
"But do they all talk the same rubbish?" persisted Helen.
" Why, good gracious, no ! " and the nurse gazed at Helen in
astonishment. Here was a simpleton and no mistake ! !
" You don't remember of course," continued Helen, " what dear
Mrs. Grayper raved about I suppose? Not that it really matters
now that she is at rest. Still, details about any one one loved are
interesting ! Always must be ! "
" Well, as far as I can call to mind . . . but you see I nurse
so many, and I never really take much count of anything, they
say when the temperature is up, well, I had to hold her down so
hard, she struggled and fought to get up ! Said there was a figure
in white holding out its arms to her at the foot of the bed, that
she must go to her."
" Anything more ? " asked Helen.
" Oh, lots of wild stuff. Shouted murder and something about
some one having been poisoned! Then she shouted Jemima! I
think that was the name! or Ellen was it? I really did not pay
much attention. It was such a job to hold her!'
"And were you alone with her at the time?" inquired Helen,
with as sympathetic a tone of voice as she could muster.
" Yes," said the nurse, " Mrs. Varnish had gone to bed, and I
thought Mrs. Grayper was settling down quiet for the night, but
the fever ran up suddenly. I could not even leave hold of her
to get at the bell to ring for some one to come and help me with
her! Not that that mattered much. You see we are accustomed
to this sort of thing, we nurses!"
"And was that the worst night you had with her? I mean
was she ever so delirious again?"
" Oh, I think that night was about the top of it. After that she
became comatose, and never rallied ! '
" Poor darling," said Helen, pensively. " She always loved thea-
THE STORY 511
tricals." But Helen's face was ashy white " And h*i
nurse Varnish/' she continued. How hafshe tatn H if?" **
" I 1 ; 1 !! h> She SemS Very much * "P> Poor old
, replied the nurse. I persuaded her to go to bed and try
THE STORY
POOR Mr. Pascoe was very much upset by the death of his
daughter, and Gracey always delicate seemed to be more ailing
than usual, so Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe thinking change of air and
scene advisable, decided to shut up The Retreat and take a house ,
in the country for a few months, leaving Eustace John to shift
for himself in London; this arrangement enabled Helen to carry
out her plan of getting rid of Varnish. She skilfully manipulated
that Varnish should go north and assist Ellen with the manage-
ment of her ever-increasing family during their absence from
town, rightly foreseeing that once there, Ellen would not readily
relinquish her valuable services in the nursery, and that the
chances were that Varnish would probably remain on permanently,
which eventually proved to be the case, thus relieving Helen of the
dread of her constant presence in the house.
In the Autumn they all returned to town for Eustace John's
marriage with Adaropposite deciding, however, to spend the Winter
at Bournemouth, so that life at The Retreat did not resume its
normal course till the following Spring. Meanwhile, an attractive
house in Chelsea overlooking the river, with a large studio at-
tached to it, had been secured by the young couple, and Eustace
John and Adah had settled down to a happy domestic life. The
former had plenty of work to do, the only drawback being that
the nature of his employment involving weekly or sometimes
daily publication, often kept him at his drawing half through the
night and was a considerable strain on his powers, but there was
no help for it; he had to bow to the inevitable and do the best he
could with his art under such unfavourable circumstances.
Eight years have passed, prosperous happy years for Eustace
John, marked only by the birth of a baby daughter and the longed-
for release of poor old Mr. Wardroper, who, deaf and totally
blind, expired at the age of ninety-si's.
Meanwhile what of The Retreat; what of good or of ill had those
eight years brought to its inmates?
A sort of greyness seemed to have covered them in, Helen's rest-
512
THE STOKY 513
less spirit found less and less in their daily life to satisfy her
craving for excitement. Her nerves were bad, though all fear of
detection had long since vanished from her mind, but her self-
tormenting ego destroyed the days that passed. As for Mr. Pascoe
his memory failed him more and more and his condition was a
source of constant anxiety and incessant watchfulness to his wife
and daughter. He could not be trusted out alone as the chances'
were that he would forget where he lived and not find his way
home. Not infrequntly he forgot his own name, yet he resented
being looked after, so that the task of guarding him from mis-
adventure was not always an easy one. And Gracey ! poor little
Gracey with her limp and the wound in her heart that had never
healed ! Still young the heavy mantle of middle age seemed to
wrap her round and she accepted the dulness of her life without
a murmur or complaint but without any striving for upward
growth! No talents were hers, nothing to stimulate the brain, and
open out the alluring vistas of the intellectual world. In another
walk of life where her daily bread would have depended on
personal exertion on her part, she would have been far better
off; as it was she lived in a cage built round her by circumstance
and had neither the power nor the inclination to break open the
door and set herself free. Love had come to her, a great strong
love in the first bright freshness of early youth, but Cooky's
mother with her narrow creed and inordinate love of power had
barred the way, and the dignified Jewish lady with the thick lips
and the ropes of pearls, who drove daily round the park in her
well set up equipage, was blind to the fact that she had herself
dug her own son's grave in far-away India, and blighted the life of
the girl, who but for her would have been his wife.
Now it so happened that one Sunday afternoon in the latter half
of May, Eustace John looked in at The Retreat. Ada, he said, was
coming round later in time for tea, but he wanted to have a chat
with Gracey first. " Had she by any chance any sort of an old
dress made with a sack; he wanted some kind of seventeenth cen-
tury get up for a drawing he had on hand." Gracey seemed doubt-
ful, and Helen who was reading by the window looked up from
her book and suggested that perhaps there might be something of
the sort in those old boxes up in the loft over the stables, that came
from Mecklenburg Square.
" I thought they only contained jars full of the old admiral's
experiments in explosives," paid Eustace John.
" Oh, but there was a lot of all sorts of rubbish in them as
514 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
well," replied Helen. " You might find something that would be
of use, anyhow there can be no harm in looking." And she went
back to her book.
" I say, Gracey, suppose you come along and help me to turn out
those boxes."
But Gracey demurred at this, she had on her Sunday clothes.
** Would it do another day ? " she asked.
" No," said Jackey, " I am in a bit of a fix for something to
help me out with drawing, and it has to be sent in tomorrow."
" Well then," conceded Gracey, " I don't mind holding the candle
for you to see by, but I shall keep a long way off, and you must
do the hunting."
A wooden staircase led up to the loft which had no windows
in it, so that in order to throw light on the boxes, Gracey had
to stand at the top of the stairs and hold the candle high up above
her head.
Eustace John had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt
sleeves in order to face the accumulated dust of years. " It can't
be so dirty inside the boxes as it is out, that's one comfort," he
remarked as he proceeded to undo the cord and lift the lid of the
box nearest to him. It was, as he anticipated, packed with jars
containing some sort of chemical substance.
" If there are any old clothes," said Gracey, " they would be
under the jars, the man Freeman did say there were a lot of old
rags, now I come to think of it, right at the bottom of the boxes
put there to keep the jars from shifting."
" Well, let's see what we can find," and Eustace John began
carefully lifting out the jars one by one and placing them on
the floor of the loft. Then sure enough here was an old coat moth
eaten and tattered, then another, and glory be, something of a
woman's torn and faded silken attire.
" Hooray," cried Eustace John. " Here we are at last, I must
just shake it out though, it's so crumpled I can't make out if it is
a cloak or a skirt." And taking the garment in both hands he stood
up and gave it a vigorous shaking regardless of the jars at his
feet; a corner of the drapery caught on one of them knocking it
down, and it broke as it rolled on the floor letting out a stream
of dark brown liquid with a curious odour.
" Oh, Jackey don't, you are smothering me with dust," yelled
Gracey, and the lighted candle fell from her hand. A loud report
followed, and by the time the alarmed inmates of The Retreat
arrived on the scene the smoke that had accompanied the explo-
sion had escaped by a big hole blown through the roof, Gracey had
THE STOKY 515
been flung to the bottom of the stairs, fortunately not much the
worse for her fall, but Eustace John lay insensible on the floor of
the loft. Medical aid was promptly summoned and he was carried
into the house, restoratives were applied and after some consider-
able time he recovered consciousness. He was suffering mostly
from shock the doctor said, and his hands and head were some-
what severely injured. He would get all right in time, but he
feared it might be rather a long job. And so there was an end
JLO Eustace John's efforts in the fine arts for many weeks to
come. And thus it came about that those fateful boxes again
asserted their baneful influence on the family that harboured them,
for when Eustace John ultimately recovered, it was to find that,
not only had all his regular work for periodicals passed into other
hands, but that though his sight was in no way injured, his eyes
were weak and got very easily tired, so that it was most unadvisable
for him to undertake any sort of drawing by artificial light.
Indeed, the practice of the Fine Arts in any form was undesirable.
Therefore, when an opening offered itself for land surveying in
Australia, he jumped at it, rather welcoming the idea of a new
life in a new country, and flattering himself that there would be
frequent opportunities of returning to England, and that he had
no need to fear losing touch with those he left behind him.
And thus it came about that the Eustace Pascoes wound up
their affairs in London, and said good-bye to their friends and
that Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe accompanied by Gracey went down to
Southampton to see them off. And that as the big steamer ma-
jestically moved away to the mournful strains of the band playing
its adieus to England from the upper deck, Eustace John with his
wife and child stood by the gangway waving their handkerchiefs in
farewell to the small sad tender that was taking his father, step-
mother, and Gracey back to shore, and away out of their lives,
though they little thought it, for ever.
And here we too must bid farewell to Eustace John for the
present, for this story is the story of the old man's youth and
the young man's old age. It is not concerned with his years of
strong manhood and prosperous middle life. When we meet him
again his tale will have been all but told, and the sands of his
glass all but run out.
The great, floating hotel that is bearing him and his family to
the other side of the globe is already a mere speck on the horizon,
and now it has passed out of our sight.
NOT long after the departure of Eustace John and his family
for the Antipodes, Helen decided to take the plunge and join the
Roman Catholic Church. The prospect it held out to her of con-
fession followed by absolution was alluring. She would try it
and see what it would do for her. Could she but drink of the
waters of Lethe and forget ! Then she might rest and enjoy the
day that passes. She persuaded Gracey to follow suit, and the
two new converts spent much of their time at the oratory attend-
ing all the services there were to attend, and faithfully obeying
every injunction to godliness that their newly installed guides
and instructors prescribed for them.
And the confessional, what of that?
Yes, Helen confessed her sins, confessed them regularly, but
of that foul murder committed years ago, she said never a word.
Again and again she tried to make up her mind to speak, confess
her crime and snatch the promised pardon. But the words would
not come.
" Have you nothing more to eay, my daughter," asked the con-
fessor, from behind the screen of the confessional one day.
" Nothing, absolutely nothing," ejaculated Helen, with a vehe-
mence that betrayed her.
And again, and yet again she left the church thankful that
she had not yielded to the impulse to lift that dark burden from
her mind, and tell the story of her crime.
After all was the confessional really as sacred as they said?
Was not her secret far, far safer in her own keeping? Besides,
was she heartwhole in her faith? Did she really believe in the
power of Holy Church, to unlock the gates of Heaven and let the
sinner pass? No, better waitl Some day nearer her end perhaps,
when she knew she was actually dying! Then would be the time
for confession, not now, when who knows? The priest might,
probably would, identify her. After all, he was but a human being !
And could any human being be trusted ? In time her faith might
grow stronger, he might come to believe in the reality of the
absolution of sins, and accept the claims of the Church, to the
possession of binding powers over Heaven and Hell.
516
THE STORY 517
Yes, it was best to be cautious! Best to wait! And meanwhile
she would do all that lay in her power to encourage the growth
of that faith she longed for, and then when faith grew strong,
then would be the time to confess. It would be easy enough, could
she only believe, but till then let the dark secret be hers and hers
alone.
And Helen never told the foul story of her guilt.
Life went on its uneventful course at The Retreat and the years
passed. Poor Gracey flagged and grew more and more ailing. It
was tuberculosis, the doctor said, and he recommended Bourne-
mouth. Helen would have preferred to try the Riviera, but Mr.
Pascoe's health made a long journey, and residence abroad unde j
sirable. Eustace John wrote eloquently about the healing virtues
of a long sea voyage, and the advantage of the Australian climate.
But before his letter reached England all that remained of poor
little Gracey lay buried under the trees in the Bournemouth
churchyard, and her earthly career was ended.
Mr. Pascoe lived on for some years yet. His spirit imprisoned
in a half-dead shell, found no outward expression. He did not
suffer, so the doctor assured his wife, but who shall say when the
bodily mechanism is paralyzed what torture the caged spirit may
not be enduring.
At last the release came suddenly and unexpectedly, and Helen
found herself free! She had nursed her husband patiently and
faithfully through these long dreary years; occasional visits from
Ellen and her children enlivened the dulness of life at The Re-
treat, but these visits were few and far between, and since Gracey's
death Helen had led a very lonely life. One by one friends and
acquaintances had dropped off or died. Eustace John's Work had
never allowed of his leaving Australia for his long looked-for
holiday in England, and there had been little to break the mo-
notony of Helen's existence. She had clung with all the tenacity
of the proverbial drowning man to the straw, to the forms and
dogmas of her religion, but she had failed to slay her dark ego.
No real uplifting faith was hers, and the peace she craved for was
as far off as erer.
Now that she was free, now that no home duties tied her she
would try conventual life, not the death in life of a contemplative
order, that she could not face, but a working sisterhood that would
give employment to her restle?? spirit whilo lifting all personal
responsibility from her shoulders. Ye?, unquestioning obedience
to rules and ordinances framed by the saints and the great founders
518 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
of the religious life, that would be her salvation. That would make
her clean and rest her soul, and bring her peace. And so Helen
joined the community of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and was
known in the convent as Sister Agnes.
The year of her novitiate passed and still Helen doubted, but
there was nothing else, no other refuge left for her to fly to; it was
the safest thing for her to do, and so she made her vows and took
the veil.
Day after day, as she read her breviary and told her beads,
and fulfilled the tasks allotted to her, she thought to herself:
"Yes, I have surely done the wisest thing, all this charity giving!
All this implicit obedience to the mandates of the vicar of God
on earth, must be counted to me as righteousness. Whatever
awaits us all in the great unknown this life I am leading will make
me safe. It is impossible that now I should have anything to
fear."
And as time went on the devout, patient Sister Agnes came to
be regarded somewhat in the light of a saint.
One day after a long weary round of visiting the poor, in
pouring wet and cold, Sister Agnes returned to the convent too
tired and ill to do anything but lie down and rest on the hard
small bed in her cell. When the bell sounded for vespers she
tried in vain to rise and drag herself to the chapel, her limbs
refused to move and Helen became aware that she was very ill.
Then followed long days of acute suffering, patiently borne,
then a sudden strange easement from pain, and the sister who
was attending her bent low over her head and asked her if now
she should summon Father Bentham? And then Helen knew that
her last hour on earth was approaching, and a great terror seized
upon her.
" How long have I to live? " she inquired, in a voice that shook.
" Not many hours," replied the sister. " It cannot be long now
before your sufferings are over, and you will taste of the joys
of Heaven. A saint like you, Sister Agnes, can have nothing
to fear."
" Yes, fetch Father Bentham," whispered Helen.
And now! Now the moment had come, and in a weak, trembling
voice Helen made full confession of her crime.
The priest listened, and deep down in his heart he doubted the
truth of her story. " This saintly woman, in her self-searchings
has accused herself of a crime she could never have committed.
An exaggerated memory perhaps, of some error she had been
guilty of in tending the sick had given rise to the whole improb-
THE STORY 519
able fabrication; but a crime! No, not a crime, it was impos-
sible," so thought Father Bentham as he gave her the full absolu-
tion that she hungered for, and administered the last sacraments
of the Church, breathing words of hope and forgiveness in her
dying ears.
Father Bentham had departed and all was quiet in the cell !
The sister in charge settled herself down to watch through the
night; she was to call the mother superior at the first sign of
any change in the patient, but that was not likely to be just yet,
she thought, not, probably before the dawn, and she crossed herself
and told her beads.
A dim lamp burnt before the crucifix placed at the foot of the
bed where the dying woman could see it if she wished without
raising her head from the pillow, but Helen lay with her eyes
closed, her lips still moved as if in prayer, and for the first few
moments after the departure of the priest she felt as if a great
wave of Peace and forgiveness had passed over her, encircling her
in warmth and light.
And then a great horror overtook her, and she felt herself sink-
ing sinking away into utter darkness and desolation of spirit.
. . . She tried to speak, but her tongue would not utter, and
then in her terror she recognized the truth! It was all of no
avail. To no purpose had she laid bare the blackness of her
soul. The talisman had not worked! She was alone. Alone in
the great shadow of death with the heavy burden of her sin weigh-
ing her down . . . down into everlasting night. She tried to
scream for help, but no sound came. Her dying body could no
longer obey the mandates of her spirit and she struggled and
fought in vain. Then it was that a great dazzling light struck
her, scorching and burning that dark ego, and Helen woke! Woke
to grow in pain and all the bitterness of self-knowledge. A fierce
burning love and pity for her victim consumed her. And Helen's
soul took flight in the great agony of her upward growth.
In the cell all was quiet. So quiet that when at length the
tired watcher approached the bed and leant over the motionless
figure that lay on it, she found that all was over. That deep sleep
was the sleep of death.
" She passed away peacefully," the sister said to the mother
superior, " so peacefully that though I never took my eyes off her
I was not aware she had gone."
" Ah, she was a saint indeed," said the reverend mother, cross-
ing herself. And she knelt clown by the bedside to pray.
CHAPTER XLVIII
AND Eustace John? What of that young man's old age? For
old age with the steadily advancing years had overtaken him.
They had been long prosperous happy years in the land of his
adoption. As time went on he had given up the land surveying,
and had become the Editor of a Melbourne paper which brought
him in a comfortable income, though he was by no manner of
means a millionaire. All went well with him and his devoted
Adah in their well-appointed home; one great sorrow had been
theirs, the baby daughter they had brought with them from their
English home had not long survived her transplanting, and no
other child had come to fill her place.
Now in the late Autumn of his life Eustace John was to experi-
ence the great overwhelming grief of parting from the wife who
was all in all to him.
Suddenly, and without any note of warning, as they sat together
in their veranda enjoying the cool evening air after the Jong hot
day, Adah leaned back in her chair with a sigh and was gone.
" Heart failure," said the doctor summoned with all possible
haste. " A most merciful and happy ending," he added in his well-
meant attempt at consolation.
True for her perhaps! but how about the stunned and stricken
Eustace John ? The shock for which he was totally unprepared did
not deprive him of his reason. Outwardly he bore his loss with
composure and apparent resignation. But his mind had become to
a certain extent unhinged. A deep-rooted idea took possession of
him to the effect that now he was but a waif and stray cut adrift
from all his moorings, and that it was not possible for him any
longer to have a fixed habitation or home of his own. His work,
though he was still as capable as ever of doing it, held no interest
% for him and in his disordered fancy it seemed to him that he, the
wa.if and stray, bad now no right to continue it. Was he not a
different entity? He was certainly not the same Mr. Eustace
Pascoe who successfully edited that paper. It was only right
that he should go, and in spite of all remonstrance from his friends
he retired from the editorship, sold his house, transferred his
520
THE STOEY 521
money to a London bank and decided to return to England. He
thought if he could only revisit the old haunts of his youth he
might find his real self again and cease to be a waif and stray,
and, above all, lose that horrible sensation of drifting away. It
was always there just at the back of his brain. Other people
stood still and had firm foundations to their lives, he had none.
Xo, he must go; it was the only thing to be done, and he took
his passage to Southampton.
It was the end of April when Eustace John embarked. He would
arrive, they told him, in time to taste of the severities of an
English spring. He must take plenty of warm clothes with
him his friends urged as the English summer would strike cold
and damp after his long sojourn in Australia.
The voyage was a fine one, and Eustace John spent the greater
part of his time lying full length on a deck chair pretending to
read and as far as possible avoiding intercourse with his fellow-
passengers.
After landing at Southampton and undergoing the long weary
formalities of the custom house he found himself at last steaming
away in the train to London, the London that he had not seen
since he left it full of hope and enthusiasm in the fresh vigour
of his early manhood. How small and grimy the huge city seemed
to him now as he drove to a private hotel not far from the
neighbourhood of Chelsea. He would deposit his luggage there he
decided, have some lunch and after resting a little, he would
wander out and revisit some of his old haunts.
Then a strange impulse came over him. He had just entered his
name at the Hotel as Pascoe and secured his room when he
suddenly felt that he dared not remain there.
He must first find that other pelf, the one he had lost, till then
he had no right to the name of Pascoe. Why, he was not Eustace
John Pascoe at all, he was a waif and stray. Besides in all the
bustle of hotel life he might meet people, people who might ask him
questions! questions about himself, no, that woura never do, he
must find some quiet lodging, where he could remain hidden, and
then he could face the problem, solve it perhaps!
He had transferred his money to a bank in the Fulham Road;
he would go there first, draw out a sufficient sum to last him for
some months; then, when he had found himself he would know
better what to do. Meanwhile, he remembered a little Square
somewhere off the King's Road, not far from The Retreat, yes,
there used to be rooms to let there, that was the place to go to!
Eustace John had no difficulty in finding his way to the Bank,
522 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
and after providing himself with a substantial sum of money set
out to hunt for the Square, but all the landmarks were gone, and
he found himself wandering about among a lot of unfamiliar
houses built to meet the artistic requirements of the day. The
Retreat had vanished! Ah yes! he recollected now, it had been
pulled down and the garden built over. This must be the Square
he was looking for; there was nothing changed here, the Square
was the same Square he remembered, the same plane trees with their
bark peeling off, behind the same dingy black railings; then you
went down a street and came to the river, and there was the
house that lost self of his had lived in with Adaropposite, that was
the brass knocker on the door, Adah always knew his knock and
used to run downstairs to let him in. What had he done with
his latch-key? He must have left it behind! and mechanically
Eustace John felt in his waistcoat pocket. Ah, now he remem-
bered, of course no key could be there. It was not his house
any longer, he was just a waif and stray wandering about to look
for rooms, and he turned back into the square and rang the bell
of the first houses he came to with " apartments to let " on a card
in the window.
On inspection the rooms would suit him he thought, besides,
what did he care, if he could only be in that neighbourhood, that
was what he wanted! So paying a month's rent in advance and
giving his name as Mr. John Harris, he told the landlady he
would be back in an hour or so with his boxes.
On returning to the Hotel the first thing he saw was his own
pile of luggage standing in the entrance hall with the large
printed ship's labels and the name " Eustace John Pascoe, pas-
senger to Southampton " staring him in the face.
Eustace John stood there puzzled and perplexed as to what he
should do. Clearly he must first find that self he had lost, till
then he had no right to those boxes. Why, they were all labelled
" Pascoe " and now he was " Harris " and a waif and stray!
"Do you wish all the trunks taken up to your room, Sir?" in-
quired the porter.
."No, no," hurriedly replied Eustace John, "I am not stopping
on here, and I will call for the boxes another day, let me have
my bill please," and then he reflected that he must take something
with him, the landlady at those lodgings he had taken would expect
it. Well, how about that old black bag? There was no label on
that, and it only contained some old boots and slippers. That
would do and he could easily buy a few necessaries on his way back
to the Square; and, as for the suit he had on why that was worn and
THE STORY 523
travel-stained and hardly counted, everything else he could leave
till he found that lost self, then the things would really be his
own again, and he could come back and claim them. So Eustace
John settled his account and left the Hotel carrying with him
only the old black bag.
Once settled into his new quarters he commenced his daily
wanderings in the neighbourhood. He wished to find the exact
spot where The Retreat had stood but the blocks of new houses
bewildered him; once he thought he saw behind some buildings a
black poplar tree that struck him as familiar. It stood alone
hemmed in with palings and fences, on a piece of land still to be
built on. Could that tree be one of the poplars with the rustling
leaves that grew at the end of the garden ? Then what had become
of the two big mulberry trees, and the fig tree? All gone! all gone!
Oh, if only he could get nearer to that poplar tree! if only he
could hear the rustle of its leaves, that might help him, but he
could not, it was hopeless it was much too far off, and Eustace
John retraced his dejected steps back to his lodgings. Anyhow, that
Square was the same, nothing had changed there, it retained its
pristine squalor, even his landlady belonged to the type of land-
lady indigenous to Chelsea. He seemed to know it all so well!
Was it a dream? He could not tell, but he fancied he had once
knocked at pretty well all the doors in this very square in search
of a model of a fair-haired girl who had left him in the lurch with
a drawing unfinished, but that must surely have been when he was
himself! How he longed to overtake that lost self but it always
eluded him ! He must be patient and still go on hunting, he could
never give it up ! But as time went on that self he was so anxious
to recover seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer and he wandered
aimlessly about day after day till even the memory of the thing he
was seeking for faded, and he' became in truth a waif and stray
drifting he knew not whither.
The dreariness of the climate though he was not aware of it,
did much to increase his malady. There were a few warm days
that summer when the inhabitants of the Square groaned aloud and
lamented the tropical heat of London. Then back again to cold
and pouring rain, the exceptional nature of which, if the natives
were to be believed, was entirely phenomenal and unprecedented.
Poor Eustace John shivered through the few short months of
so-called summer, he was feeling very tired and weak, and as the
days shortened into autumn, he spent most of his time sitting by
the window watching, watching for something to come, something
to happen, he did not know what!!
524 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
He began to fear that his money would not last him much
longer, he knew he had plenty more at that Bank in the Fulham
Road, but there was some reason why it was impossible he should
get at it, some reason connected with that self he had lost. In vain
he tried to gather up the broken threads of his memory and un-
ravel them, he was lost, quite lost, nothing but a mere waif and
stray !
One day early in December he felt too ill to go out and get his
lunch as usual at the little restaurant on the embankment, so he
went without it. When dinner time came he felt much worse
and instead of going out for his dinner he went to bed, it was no
use, he could not face that freezing December night !
The next morning he was too ill to get up, and his landlady
was urgent that the doctor should be sent for; Eustace John raised
no objection, only remarking feebly that all he really needed was
to be left quiet. The local G. P. was accordingly sent for with
the result that he pronounced him to be suffering from pleurisy,
with possible complications, and recommended his prompt re-
moval to the Chelsea Infirmary. He understood the patient had no
friends or belongings, and it was impossible he should receive
the care his critical condition needed where he was.
Eustace John rather welcomed the idea, so the doctor made all
the necessary arrangements for the ambulance to fetch him away
without loss of time, and before mid-day the old man found him-
self lying in the ward at the Infirmary with a nurse endeavouring
to prop him up with pillows to ease the pain he experienced in
breathing.
For many weeks Eustace John lay hovering between life and
<leath, and when at last he was pronounced out of immediate
danger, it was only to find himself a confirmed invalid with the
sands of life slowly but surely running out.
" He might live a year or more," the doctor said, " or he might
fro off any moment. The state of his heart was critical and it was
just a chance, it might go either way."
And his mental condition ? How had this long fight of his
tired worn body with death affected that? It had not changed, he
was still the waif and stray with a consciousness of a lost self that
he tried in vain to reach out and grasp, but that invariably eluded
him.
And the strange thing was that in all this weary time of pain
and suffering, he never once thought of, indeed hardly seemed to
remember, that beloved wife whose sudden death had been the
source and origin of all his trouble.
THE STORY 525
As the days grew warmer they placed him on a couch near the
window where he could enjoy the air and sunshine, and as his
bodily frame became weaker, a sort of soothing sensation came over
him, and he seemed as he lay in a half-dozing condition, to be
conscious of a girl, a girl who was somehow very dear to him.
She appeared to emerge in a shadowy way from a great blank
space that he could not account for. When he tried to conjure
her up, she did not come. He could only watch and wait, and long
for her.
One night as he lay in the dimly lighted ward, listening to the
heavy breathing of the patient in the next bed, he fancied that
that girl's face that he seemed to know so well, bent over him
and two most beautiful hands were pressed gently on his forehead,
and then he slept, such a sweet sound deep sleep.
" Milk my cows, Judy. Milk my cows, Judy." What was that?
It woke him with a start. Why, a wood pigeon of course. They
had such a lot of them at The Retreat, and Gracey always declared
that was what they said! One got down the chimney once and he
and Cooky got it out. How black it was to be sure! And how
they laughed as it flew about the room scattering the soot over
everything, and Jemima was so cross, because of the new chintz on
the sofa.
There it goes again! And the wood pigeon outside the window
of the Infirmary repeated its song of " Milk my cows, Judy " and
Eustace John listened again, and as he listened he awoke to the
memory of his past, and the full possession of his present. All
was clear to him, that trouble in his brain had vanished and his
lost self was found.
He lay quite still with a sort of strange happiness stealing over
him; he understood it all now, and that dreadful feeling at the
back of his head was gone, quite gone! But, oh horror of horrors,
supposing this was only a lull, a lull before some mental storm
that would return with perhaps greater violence than he had yet
experienced ?
Well, if so let him enjoy the oasis in the wilderness while he
could, and Eustace John resolutely thrust his fears from him.
What should he do? He was not a pauper! Had he any right
to remain in the Infirmary now? Then he thought now dreary it
would he for him to leave it. There was Sister Dora and Xurse
Aveling, how kind they had been to him, then there was that man
in the next bed, the one who had been a cabman, such a nice fellow,
526 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
no he did not want to go away and leave them all. They were his
friends. True he had a sister still living and a lot of nephews and
nieces, but he had never had anything in common with Ellen, and
she lived a long way off, up in the north. As for the nephews
and nieces, why, he did not know them, they would probably
regard an old invalid uncle in the light of a terrible infliction,
No, the nurses and the patients in the Infirmary were his friends
and he would stay with them. He might offer to pay, but then
that would spoil it all, besides, he did not know if such an arrange-
ment would be possible. In a hospital yes, but surely not in an
Infirmary. Ah, he had it! he would make his will, and then
after his death none of his friends should be the loser by his
sojourn amongst them. His friend Turner the clergyman would
help him with that. Meanwhile he would ask the Matron to give
him writing materials. Now that he had found his past, he was
not going to let it slip again, he would write down all he could
remember from the very beginning, just for his own satisfaction,
and in order to be sure of retaining it. It could be burnt after
his death, or stay, he would leave it for Turner to read; he liked
that man, and would trust him to make the right use of any
confidences he might place in him. But that would not be yet
awhile, for the present he would remain the same John Harris,
who entered the Infirmary, now four months ago. And he turned
over on his other side to sleep and the cooing of the wood pigeon
mingled with his dreams.
" Harris seems much brighter today," remarked Sister Dora
to the Matron when some hours later she came into the ward.
" He is asking for writing materials, it would give him something
to do so he says."
Thus it came about that all through the Summer days Eustace
John lay by the open window writing the story of his past life.
"What are you so busy with, Harris?" inquired the Rev.
Cuthbert Turner as he came to pay him one of his frequent visits,
for the old man interested him and he felt curious about his past
history.
" You shall see it all one day, Turner," he replied, " but I must
finish it first."
The summer merged into autumn and as the days closed in
Eustace John became visibly weaker. His writing was an unfail-
ing source of interest to him, but now with the near approach of
winter he began to fear he might not live to finish it. After all
did it matter much ? He was writing it purely for his own delecta-
tion, and in that great hereafter to which he was tending, who
THE STORY 527
knows but that all his life with its failures and many shortcomings
would not be spread out before him like a map traced by the
unerring finger of the recording angel. If so, why make any undue
effort to tell his own tale, he was very tired, he would rest, and
that afternoon instead of writing he slept.
The next day he felt rather better and the thought of his still
unwritten will recurred to him, " Yes, that he must see to," and
when the Matron next came round the ward he inquired of her
when Mr. Turner was likely to come again to see him.
" I think, he said he was going away for a few days," she re-
plied, " did you want specially to see him ? "
" I shall be glad when he comes," said Eustace John, and he
sank back into a doze.
"Do you think he will come today?" asked Eustace John of
one of the nurses, the following afternoon.
"Who? the doctor!"
" No, Mr. Turner, I am very anxious to see him before it is too
late."
" Matron sent a note round yesterday to ask if he was back,"
replied the nurse, " they said they were expecting him home al-
most directly, and that he would be sure to come as soon as he
could."
That night Eustace John was much worse. " I doubt his living
through the night," said the doctor, and he ordered him a stimu-
lant.
The stimulant revived him considerably and he again asked for
Mr. Turner.
" Was there any chance of his coming that night? You see," he
added, ." I may be gone by the morning."
" He is sure to come and see you as soon as he gets back," re-
plied the nurse, "but I can easily send for the chaplain if it is
that you want," and the nurse glanced mechanically at the card
hung on the wall at the head of the bed.
Name, John Harris.
Age, 70.
Disease, cardiac affection.
Address of friends, none known.
" Oh no, no, it is Turner I want to see," said Eustace John
with more energy than the nurse had believed him capable of.
"Is there any message you would like to leave? I mean in case
he does not come, anything you would like me to tell him? "
"Yes, those papers! My recollections! Give them to him! I
wish to be buried . . . not as Harris . . . my own name
528 OLD MAN'S YOUTH
. . . Pascoe ... he will find it all there." And the eyes of
the dying man closed and he lay quite quiet for a few moments.
Then he roused himself again and speaking with difficulty said:
" Paper . . . give me something to write with . . . my will
... I want to write. Turner could have done it. Let me try ! "
" Shall I try and do it for you," said the nurse, and the tone
of her voice showed that she believed herself to be humouring
the feverish fancies of the dying man. But Eustace John could
not be put off like that; he made a supreme effort and half -raising
himself in bed, asked her " for the love of God to give him pen and
paper."
The nurse startled and awed by his manner, hurriedly went to
the locker at the side of the bed and taking out a writing pad
placed it before him.
" Give me ... pen . . . ink "... but this time the
voice was barely audible.
The nurse dipped the pen in the ink, and placed it in his hand,
he gripped it for one moment, then his dying fingers relaxed their
hold, his head fell back on the pillow, and Eustace John had passed
iuto the great unknown.
THE E.\D
DATE DUE
CAYLORO
'MINTED IN U.S. .
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
V
III!
A 000 822 550