aiatnell Iniucratta Stbrara Stifum. JJun ^ark BOUGHT wrTH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library PR6007.E5O4t 1921 The old man's youth. 3 1924 013 606 250 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013606250 The Old Man's Youth THE WORKS OF WILLIAM DE MORGAN JOSEPH VANCE ALICE-FOR-SHORT SOMEHOW GOOD IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN AN AFFAIR OF DISHONOUR A LIKELY STORY W^HEN GHOST MEETS GHOST THE OLD MADHOUSE ■ LONDON ! WILLIAM HEINEMANN The Old Man's Youth By William de Morgan Author of "Joseph Vance," etc. LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN PEEFATOEY 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 he 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 Church St., Chelsea. 1* CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 1 CHAPTER II THE NABKATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 18 CHAPTER III THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 26 CHAPTER IV THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 33 CHAPTER V THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN .44 f CHAPTER VI THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 49 CHAPTER VII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN ^7 CHAPTER VIII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN .70 CHAPTER IX THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 79 CHAPTER X THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 86 CHAPTER XI THE STORY . 102 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XII PAGE THE STOEY. , . 105 CHAPTER XIII THE STORY ...... 108 CHAPTER XIV THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN Ill CHAPTER XV THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN ... .... 123 CHAPTER XVI THE STORY , . 138 CHAPTER XVII THE STORY . 140 CHAPTER XVIII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 142 CHAPTER XIX THE STORY 160 CHAPTER XX THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 163 CHAPTER XXI THE STORY 177 CHAPTER XXII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 179 CHAPTER XXIII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN ....... 197 CHAPTER XXIV THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 212 CHAPTER XXV THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN .... . 235 CONTENTS • ix CHAPTER XXVI page THE STOEY 251 CHAPTEB XXVII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 253 CHAPTER XXVIII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 269 CHAPTER XXIX THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 280 CHAPTEB XXX THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN . . .... 296 CHAPTER XXXI THE STORY 316 CHAPTER XXXII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 319 CHAPTER XXXIII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 339 CHAPTER XXXIV CE JOHN . CHAPTER XXXV THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN . . . . ^. . . 362 THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN . 384 CHAPTER XXXVI THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN . 397 CHAPTER XXXVII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN ...■••' ^09 CHAPTER XXXVIII lCB JOHN . CHAPTER XXXIX THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN ....... 420 THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 4^5 X CONTENTS CHAPTER XL page THE NAREATIVB OF EUSTACE JOHN 447 CHAPTEB XLI THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN ..... . 460 CHAPTER XLIl THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 476 CHAPTER XLIII THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 491 CHAPTER XLIV THE STORY. . 503 CHAPTEB XLV THE ST08Y 508 CHAPTER XLVI THE STORY 512 CHAPTER XLVII THE STORY 516 CHAPTER XLVIII THE STORY. ., . . . 520 CHAPTEK 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 itseU 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 had a heartache nor a toothache. How could he. seeing I am the only son of ray 1 2 OLD MAN'S YOUTH parents 1 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 1 Certainly not for being unintelligible, for am / 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 T 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 iti 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 have 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 SeK 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 I 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 bnish 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 vivid 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, T was told I must be telling stories, because I 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 have 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 NAKRATIVE 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 m.ar, 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 thiTdi 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, which T can't help — her saying so made me alive to the fact that I had a friend at court, under whose segis 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, 1 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 ii^ Somerset House, past all question. She did not seem im- pressed, merely inquiring of me whether T 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 mj 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 NAERATIVE 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 ef 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, Ca»cilia, but don't try to convince me that Nathaniel's a Lawyer. 1 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 snu|F, the noiselessness of slippers, and the solitude of Chambers. I have often endeavoured to break the spell that holds these thr.ee 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 snufi 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 itseK 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- ated from the inmost heart of an unimpeachable OflBce. Even so Genghis Khaii — 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 cfise. My opinion now is that he built himself a certain reputation by sending in designs, and tendering THE NAERATIVE 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 yoimgest 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 m.other 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, reelosed 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 dovim 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 qualiiied 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'll 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 'ini, Cfecilia." 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'^ 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 father's 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 diificult 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 s — " It's no use my telling you, Nathaniel. You will only sneer." My father replied, " Oh no ! — we won't sneer at the nam^e of the gentleman that's well known in the City — will we, Eustace John? Out with it, Caecilia ! " 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." Ft 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- thoms 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 Nichlehy 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 aU 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 Nichlehy 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 responsitZe— is that it? Very good !" she merely said, afEecting reabsorption in Nicholas Nickleby, " 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 said 3—" No, I don't." My mother then, putting Nicholas Nicklehy 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 ? ' Eing 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 I ever said was — don't expect me to do it. They're inches thick in dust, and nailed down." THE NAKRATIVE 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 fulfilment 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 Nichleby. "What is the use of being unreasonable, Caecilia?" 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 riieaning 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 father's 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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 17 the Square, and the plane trees rising above the parapet outside its 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 houquet 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 Tio 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. CHAPTER II THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN Oh deal" — 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'^ 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 helli 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 mancEUvre 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 NAKEATIVE 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." Eor 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. " 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, 2 20 OLD MAN'S YOUTH and I'll attend to it." He became aggressivelj' 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 piy 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 Tiissaud's. THE NAERATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 21 " You might stand that on the chimney-piece downstairs," said my father. '' My dear ! " said my mother. " Afterwards I 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. JekyU. 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, Msenads 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 tjed with string, im- bedded in a corner, and said almost aside : — " Try that one." Mr. Freeman said approvingly : — " My dear ! " H« 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, 22 OLD MAN'S YOUTH comprehensible or not. I asked promptly, " Is that f aw 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, sumptibus et iypis 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 wa^ unsophisticated, not because any fault could have been reasonably found with either the nymph or the satyr, even 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 Plemisphere, 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 f oiler oil no further than what you see the fire-escape. Tben 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 writb 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 J 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 mohile. Then there was a Gardener's Chronicle, twelve bound volumes of the John Bull newspaper, bundles of MSS. frightfully curled at the comers, 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 difiiculty," 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 onder like circumstances, my father said, " Oh ah !— well, we shall see," and remained unmoved as far as Mr. Freeman's suggestions THE NAEKATIVE 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. ' OHAPTEE in 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 Carapling'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 Mm, 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 Hol- 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 NAKKATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 27 years before. In saying this, I am deferring to the popular cosmo- 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 lifel — 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 comer 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 relies 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. WTien he told me so — f oi- 1 asked him his age and he made no secret o£ 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 2* 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 harnetes 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. v^" Was he tooked off"? " I asked. I think my father's answer must THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 2f> 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, " 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 dovsm 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 miy 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 irop 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 : — " Noth'n' else at my shop. Boys, boys, boys ! What's the oflSce now, Straps?" By which I clearly understood he was inquiring about the purpose of my father's visit. " 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 comci — pounds, you know ! The leg-owner would have done the same, but would have made it himdreds. " 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 Jcnow 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 hp responsible for. But I do recollect that Mr. 32 OLD MAN'S YOUTH 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 anecdotieally, 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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE 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 Eraser, and her familiar name given above was intended to convey her provenance as weU. 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 tioii 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 njgn 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 Eraser. 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. " 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 Jenow? 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 Eraser. 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 Vami§h, 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 Eraser one morning in the Square, some weeks probably after my hansom-eab 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 CaEiope 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:— ".4. 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 till 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 " for a fabulous sud " — 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 Helicotiides " 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 Eraser 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 ier ovm 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, Csecilia, 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 gtill 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 escap'ed 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, Ctecilia," 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 ! I 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*— 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 tfie coach-house yard, about new-laid eggs, with perfect sincerity. And small boys and THE NARKATIVE 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; only 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. Eor 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. \yhen 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, Csecilia, 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. " 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. .1 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 large 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 close the eye above it. It did not improve his appearance. 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 / 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 unpereeived 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 sosienuto 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 anjrthing 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 jad 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 NAREATIVE 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 literalaess 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 g^reatness 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 Skidney 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 wouldjn'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 aU 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 dovm 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 NAKEATIVE 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 ajiead, 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 ! •Not 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 Bulimy, 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. CHAPTER 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 NAERATIVE 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 himseK, 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 considerin' cap on, I lay," was the way she put it. There vanishes that flash. Even so an inch of Magnesium wire bums 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, Caecilia." 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, Ca3cilia — don't tell me! Your husband's a man I look at all round, Csecilia. 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, Caecilia,"'— 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 seei — 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 NAKEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 47 lister Ellen was showing her governess over the estate, this lady laving come with us this time instead of Varnish, making four in ;he fly. Her name, Helen Evans, was a constant perplexity to me, )wing to Varnish's habits in religious imprecation' — of a mild iort, you understand. " Merciful 'Evans, Master Eustace, wherever ;an you expect ? " associated itself, with this young lady quite as nuch as it did with the final home of subservient and mean- spirited little boys, who always meet the convenience of their juardians. A reaction from this association tended to prejudice me against ier; 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 E,vans, 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 en 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 NAEEATIVE 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 rnost 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 Eoom. I had heard his name since then ; it was Mr. Seth Boethius, of the banking firm of McOorgnodate, 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 desjiair 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, Csecilia, 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- fnent, 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, " Tou 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 NAERATIVE 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 mother 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 gpod. 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 oiEcial 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 3 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 ibeadles 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 andl 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 ! " 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 diverted 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, I 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 NAEKATIVE 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 I 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 World. 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 Eight 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 davm 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, myseK, 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 diflSculty 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 ' 3en 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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 55 \da ; for her mother, who played the piano, and her father, who was it the Bar, were human, and subject to human impressions and veaknesses. My inquisitiveness one day found in the china dish heir cards, two Mr. Montague Erasers quite flat, and one Mrs. \Iontague Eraser doubled back at the knees, or thereabouts. They ;aused my mother to say to my father — for I heard her myself*. — ' Those Eraser people have" called from across the Square. I iuppose I shall have to return it." Whereupon my father said o me, hanging on his shoulder : — " There now, Eustace John. STow you'll be allowed to play with Adaropposite again." But my nother saw exception to be taken to this : — " I have never said so, Nathaniel. But I suppose it must be as you say." She then idded, discontinuously : — " For my part I always thought the )eople gave themselves airs. However, just as you please!" My 'ather said, eonciliatorily : — "Well, my dear! Montague F.'s a •ising man at the Bar, and knows no end of good stories. And lis wife plays the piano." My mother said: — "Then as you wish t. Nathaniel, I will call, in the brougham, tomorrow afternoon." ?or my parents had by this time become proprietors of a one- lorse vehicle, and I knew it by its name. It lived in a ^table which ■eally belonged to our house, and which in our soberer days had )een let to an affliction who never yielded up his rent except under hreat of ejectment. A frantic scheme for dressing up Mr. Free- nan as — suppose we say, speaking broadly — Tattersall, and entrust- ng him with this vehicle and its horse, fell through in favour )f the appointment of a young man of superhuman calmness, lamed Mapleson, whose mechanical respect for his employers eemed only used to cloak his scorn. My father endeavoured to lombat this by adopting with him the manner of a Master of foxhounds, and only intensified it. My own opinion is that it is iseless for a Human Creature to struggle against a Groom. Whether the rising man at the Bar and his wife who played he piano had been mesmerized by Mr. Mapleson and the brougham ' cannot say. I'only know that when next I perceived Adaropposite n 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 aid with a painful candour: — "I don't like you." I rejoined, with a strong common sense which other young men n like circumstances might do well to reflect on : — " Then I shan't ilay." Yet we did not part then and there, as an older couple night have done, but stood in undisturbed mutual contemplation or some considerable time. I was anxious, however, to bring ay 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 stifif 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 craftsperson'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 somethingH-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 3* eo 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, Caecilia, 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 Viimself for each successive repentance in the intervals. Each time „iis 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. Varnish 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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 61 haracter of identity ; a wavering of' the rock-bed of existence, to 'hich she felt bound to make concession, in order that her relation the officially Imputable should remain intact. But her vis mmutatrix naturae was not contagious, for all the other servants -only really I can recollect very little about any of them — varied ike Scientific finals; but with this difference, that no decision of icience is ever rescinded until a new one is ready to take its place ; rhile on the other hand no substitute for a new cook or housemaid ras ever sought for — by my mother, at least — until the outgoing one ad had a month's warning. I think, though, that Anne Pershore, r Persia, or Jumpey, left us to marry a Professed Trousers-Maker, nd a cousin of hers took her place. But for some reason Jumpey id not go on the day her cousin came; so they overlapped, and I m sorry to say quarrelled. So do the views of Science when the Id certainties and the new overlap. Jumpey and her cousin may be orgiven. How often her place had been refilled during this five ears I cannot say. As my world enlarged — as, for instance, those reat beings my schoolmasters came into it — the world of early abyhood grew small and dwindled. I learned to despise it then, ly old age is vexed to' remember no more of it. Written for its writer's sake, mere reminiscence, rich in trivi- lity, does not pall. For its reader it is another matter; he must reaiy of it, sooner or later. I have throughout assumed his non- xistence, to justify an attempt to disinter so much of my childhood rhile its memories are yet pleasant to me. As the store — or the ontents of the sepulchre, if you will — begin to fail me, I flinch rom the writing of what follows, though in a sense it is easier to 7iite. Easier, because events cease to be mere flashes of vision, een through a mist, and become the thread of a record that is tidelible from my mind, whether I write it or not. If I were to ^rite it now in full, would it thereafter, I wonder, weigh less upon le. At least it is worth the trying. I have always had a lenient eeling towards confession, but as a mental luxury only, soothing one's egotism ; not with any view to absolution. As time went on, and my eyes opened on the world about me, I ame to be aware that, somehow or other, my father got richer and icher. It was not only that all the appurtenances of life grew aore costly; indeed that alone might have failed to reach my nderstanding, as I had always conceived — like most boys, surely -that my father's resources were essentially equal to any strain ipon them, though he might disburse reluctantly. Other inferma- 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 forgotten, 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 Eoom 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 tjie 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-supplj' 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-tjns, 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, driven 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 b&eks, 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 Nevinson, 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. " Yoicr governor, little Bloxom," he said, " is a stinking purveyor of goat's milk to the Royal Family. It stinks. Your 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. " Your father," he shouted to Nevinson, " is a stinking potato salesman." " Yours" replied Nevinson, with an affectation of serene superi- ority, ■' 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 Paseoe, 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 to 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 its taint af blood — for I could see how the basin-water had been stained- — 30 hideous the swelled lips and discoloured eyes of its only occu- pant, inarticulate with pain and mortification ; so hideous above all [lis 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 Sghting. I suppose that any person on whose stomach the recipient of a shallenge 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 afiair 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 li^e you can ? " "He? — not /le/ He can't learn up three lines in an hour. I said mine yesterday. Eive hundred lines of Ovid's nothing." And Cooky began reciting with fiendish rapidity, " Spargere quae fratris lacerata per agros," and got through a hundred lines in no time, ihecking each off on his fingers, and coming to " emeruitgue ?irum," " ten " — and so on up to a hundred, when he stopped, iaying : — " It's all like that. ■ You'll see when you come to do Dvid." I was impressed, but was sick at heart to think of the fate of S'evinson, 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. " Every day. And if he doesn't do it this term he'll have to )egin again next. Poor beggar ! " "But I say, Cooky, that's not fair — • — " I hesitated, unable to lefine the vdcked injustice. of the penalty in three words. " Oh yes, it is," said my new friend. " Because he called my ather a stinking old clothesman, and I only called his a stinking )otato salesman. Stinking was the same for both." By which le meant that the expression might be written off both sides of the iccount, not that the aroma of both parents was identical. No anguage could do justice to the- absolute gravity and good faith fith which this point was discussed. Boys are miraculous reatures. " Is his father a potato salesman ? " I asked. " Not he ! At least, I don't know anything about him." OLD MAN'S YOUTH " I say, Cooky- What, little Paseoe?" 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; 11 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 Paseoe," 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 OLD MAN'S YOUTH 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 conversatioil 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 3T 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 ^.rst 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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 69 I suppose one becomes unduly suspicious — or, perhaps, ill-tem- )ered — in old age; and that is why I find myseM doubting whether Hooky's motive was unmixed good-nature. Was there no vainglory n it? After all, what a splendid position it would land him in, :o 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 ibout 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 .(Ethers 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 .^ther 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 ricketer of my years, and well up in my classes; though that was matter of less importance. Varnish and I, however, were on jrms of mutual devotion that no addition of distinction to my wn position could shake, and may be said to have been in the leart of each other's confidence on all subjects. Also at this time a change was made in my sleeping apartment, ?hich brought me very much indeed into the pocket of that of ay parents; more so perhaps than they themselves would have pproved, had they been fully aware of it. At least they would not lave talked so loud, had they rightly appreciated the audibility of onversation carried on in their own bedroom, which looked out on he Square, through the wall of my corresponding back room, which ooked out chiefly on cats and their habits. I wasn't eavesdropping t all, in the dishonest sense; indeed I used frequently to boast o my father of how much I had heard of their talk, repeating lassages as proof thereof. I must suppose, therefore, that when hey spoke audibly they were either indifferent as to whether I leard or not ; or believed me asleep. At times, no doubt, they forgot ne as either would now and then respond with a dropped voice to he shish-shish, or suchlike pianissimo direction, of the other. It pas generally my mother who entered protest, saying, " You needn't hout," or, " I can hear you perfectly well, Nathaniel," in a cold uggestive manner. Whenever voices became inaudible in this way, ' always went under the bedclothes conscientiously, until I con- eived, from a change in tone, that Europe was at liberty to over- lear. The weak point of the system was that at late hours they vere apt to take it for granted that I was asleep. It was after a recess of this kind, occasioned by a rather warm liscussion becoming veiled, with a subacute indication of strained elations, that I came up to breathe, as speech became normal, and leard my mother say : — " Very well, Nathaniel, very well ! Consult : lawyer by all means but letme go to sleep." At which broad lint, my father held his tongue. I surmise that he held it tighter than was absolutely necessary mder the circumstances. He might have said good-night, or made ome sign of a conciliatory nature. As it was, I could not have een more morally certain that he shut his lips abruptly, if his nouth had been a trunk, and the lid had come suddenly down. J^aturally my mother was not prepared to acquiesce in this. Nothing 3 more offensive than to be taken at your word when you don't lean it. And you cannot go to sleep while exasperated. But I don't believe her wish for sleep was a sincere one. Unless ndeed 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." '* No 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 I 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 — 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 oi settled property, should by rights have been invested THE NAEEATIVE 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 Peekham Eye 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 ray 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, Csecilia," said my uncle to my mother, as lie 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 1 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 h\s 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 withoiit risk is surely a lesson we may leam»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, an8 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 hu^and, 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, sotto 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 Nathaniel 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, Caecilia ? " He then proceeded to eulogize Mr. Skidney, or Little Tommy, as he called him. He wasn't showy. He wasn't one of your new- fangled Bayswater 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 saidj Caecilia, when I told him my views, tliat 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 : — " 1 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 famil.y 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 ilAN'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 myseK 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- on 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, Csecilia, 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." My mother did not say: — ^"Tou 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, caef em 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 soriy 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 Kesearch to come. But I was THE NARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 83 Iso concerned for the fame of Berzelius and Davy. " That's othing ! " 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 appened in the days when boys, and even gi-own men, said Crikey! " to relieve astonishment, or express admiration. It is to le, if not a solemn, at least a strange thought, that unless there hances to be living some veteran, not brought up to date, who till says " Crikey ! " there must have been a moment in these jst years that have fled, when " Crikey ! " was actually said for the ist time. Think of it! — if we had been there and could have nown it! A little landmark, but a clear one, in a journey that ad left youth behind ! But if ever these words are read, will he 'ho reads them even recognize " Crikey ! " ? I suppose there still are survivors of Chemistry, as I understood t; superannuated lecturers in long extinct Institutions, perhaps, ,'ho do not in their inmost hearts believe but that Carbonic Acid ?as really Carbonic Acid all along, not merely Carbon Dioxide. It nakes me half glad to be so far from the madding crowd, that I lare to write of Bisulphide of Carbon without fear of rebuke, know- ng that it is really something else all the time. It smells just IS nasty now — that's one comfort! Varnish never smelt it, so far as I know. Had she done so, I im sure she would have been ready with a tribute, of some sort, o the memory of Berzelius and Davy. But her experience of my ater researches had made her suspicious of precipitates and reac- ions generally, in spite of their plausible appearance and frequent ipathy. My earlier ones, which followed the lines indicated in a vork called The Boy's Own Book had been countenanced by ler on the ground that nothing ever come of any such silliness, ind how ever could any one expect it? Her view that the details if experiments supplied in this work were on the face of them nendacious misdirection, published to mislead the credulous with )romises of concussions and sudden unwarrantable changes of lolour that never came off, was not quite without justification, as vitness my earliest essay towards following them out. The text )oldly stated that such persons as placed a cork impaled by a short ube in the mouth of a bottle, having previously introduced " caout- ;houc " into the said bottle, would be rewarded for their labours by ;he appearance of a jet of flame, burning at the end of the said :ube, of course on application of -a lighted match. My sister jfracey and I were on the tiptoe of expectation when all the ar- rangements were complete, but as was to be expected the fragment 4 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 bpfore 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 " eaoutchou- 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 suddten explosion an advantage, „nd 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 smeU 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 st-opper-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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 85 lie 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 Eoom," 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 wondel-, mind you, at the like illuminations of my babyhood ! There was a dense 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 Jiad 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 kitehenwards, 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 Vamish, 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 rriamraa ill ! " 1 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 tablespoonfuls 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 vas 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 1 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 ohsonium, 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 frgm 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 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 Gower 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 NAERATIVE 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 leading 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 / 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. " 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- difierence, " 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 the 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. " 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 GooTc!" 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 ! " "Has Christian name's Monty," said I unconscious that mj 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 you«" mamma. Go quietly, I'll talk to THE NAEEATIVE 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 Are, 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 silenee^ 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 94 OLD MAN'S YOUTH room as noiselessly as I had come. My fatbeF I knew would bfe 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 much. I do not wonder at this now, for I have heefi 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: — " WJiat 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 NARRATIVE 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. I 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; all 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 1 " "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 Tcnow, 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 Eoyal 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 day 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 NAEEATIVE 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 FuUalove — 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 faitfi 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 riiy 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 leng-th, 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 T, 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, sHmily; 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 ho 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, offsher!" 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 " I 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 NARRATIVE 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 liay 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. CHAPTER XI THE STORY Ox that foggy morning of the Old Man's Youth, Miss Evans the governess sat by herself in the sciioolroom 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 teen 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 STOEY 103 nantelpiece. Yes, she was lovely! there was no mistake about ;hat, 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 sj'mptoms, 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." " Well, I am not up to arguing about it," says Mrs. Pascoe, peev- iehly. " 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." "AU 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 Xn THE STORY Thp: 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 o%'er- tumed the small invalid table near the bed and the medicjne 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 sinell 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 Csecilia 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. CHAPTEK XIII THE STORY Op 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 he 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 beeft 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 Cseeilia 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! He 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. MaeCorquodale'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. Paseoe 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 that! 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. Anj-way, information was forthcoming. My father repeated, "What was vp! What next?" as much as to say, "This it is to have a promising son, and this is modern education." But he continued : — " 1 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 espressicii under protest. Ill 112 OLD MAN'S YOUTH Well." he 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. 1 doubt, however, if at that time I 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. 1 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. I 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. 1 never tnastered 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 MacCorquiodale, Boethius. and Tripp left my father, who had bought up most of the shares, with practically nothing but my mothers settlement money to live upon, except of course his own earnings after the affair was wound up. I cannot even feel sure that his years 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 fannily 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 grcat failure, I only know how ruinous its effects were, and how nay father's opulence was changed by it to what was relatively poverty. THE NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 113 I think the milliner's bill for all that mourning, seeking a cash settlement on deliTery, was the first awakening we — and perhaps my father himself — had to the full seriousness of the position. I can well remepaber 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 ! — No use at all!" 1 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. My 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. I cannot vouch for anything but crude memories, fifty years old, 1 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 settlementeering which followed, endeavoured to compel him to pay back this amount into the settlement fund. My father replied to them, perfectly correctly as I believe, that ray 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 settlementeering might not have assumed so vicious a form as it did later. Where there is goodwill among all the parties to a settlement, Iheir 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 <;o-trustees or cestui-qui-trusts — 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 aflEairs 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 father's 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 have? 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 Staepoole'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 yow 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. T 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 5 116 OLD MAN'S YOUTH next year ? Come now, be reasonable ! Come to the OflSce for another twelvemonth ! " "Six months!" " Well — make it a compromise ! Go on to the end of the year. . . . All right? — very well then, let it go at that! . . . Oh no! — I'm not fancying you'll change your mind. Nothing of the sort ! " 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 Eevenue 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 sight 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 fourteen-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. Eor 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 Road, Chelsea, on a glorious summer evening. In those (Jays you could walk from Putney to Chelsea through fields all the way, by keeping oflE 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 shuifles 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 " 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 resideuces 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 hijou 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? J 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. " 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 cf 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 adniiration 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 Tip ! " He looked towards the backs of new houses that were asserting themselves crudely along the King's Eoad. 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 NAERATIVE 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 Income 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. CHAPTEE 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 niy 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 nov^ 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 right 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 5* 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 announcament 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 NAEEATIVE 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 myseK; 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 Eev. 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 Eev. 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 been 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, " 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 Eev. 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 ah Homine, which is as had 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 oiEce 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 necessaiy 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, I like it very much. And the boy is ofi 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 anless 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 iind 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 Eoberta 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 knock 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 Parmer 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 sistsr 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 eniichement 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- plo5nment were sneaks. Wearers of shiny boots with thin soles n«ere 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 chances 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, " I — I beg your pardon ! " " No, really not 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 toq many of skirt that hun'g 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 can be no doubt that at the time he meant it. He added after reflection : — " No, no — ■^e 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 JOPIN 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, sotto 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 gtrained 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 s(;ijtcheon, 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 afiix 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 casrt. 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 formtd 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 appreeiators 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 NAERATIVE 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 'Toj 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 ray 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, ^s 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 Miss 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 wearfng 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. " Now, 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 Eoom, glanced in, and reloeked 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 Eoom? 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 cheeked 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 neck-and-neck v?ith, 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 jve 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 prpjeet 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 brovni 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, te 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 cootents, 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 NAEEATIVE 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 Sny share in my father's whiteness, and almost tremulousness, as we rode home — for now The Eetreat 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 Csecilia'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 down 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, Csecilia had kissed Nathaniel Paseoe 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 Csecilia was the mother of his children and had been a good and faithful wife to himi 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 boj' 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 STOEY 141 foot down and stop this craze for ' perpetual acting. What Miss Evans feared was, that a girl like Eoberta, 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 ahout 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? Eortunes 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! Eoberta 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 Eoberta 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 th^ 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 should 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 — oul" 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 NAERATIVE 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 I 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 Eraser and Strachan. And Addison was neither Partridge nor Eraser nor Strachan. It only showed how little we 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 bad 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 hearf 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 catahallative 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 wpre, 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 NABKATIVE 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 Eoad, 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. Eurther, 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 teasonable hour in the morning — why, fowls by all means ! " So we had fowls. When I made that last expedition to The Eetreat, 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 tenens 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 comer in it and thought ourselves well off. There was room THE NAEKATIVE 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? 1 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 6 148 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 never 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 NAEEATIVE 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 ease 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 psft- 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 hy Boz. " If she only buttons his coat " began Gracey, who seemed melined 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. " ] 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 Miss Evans has her share, I willingly admit. But what I look at 360 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 deeeitfulness 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 pervei-sity 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 e.x- 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 father's 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 mother's 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 NAERATIVE 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, 1 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." " ] 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, 1 found I couldn't word it when challenged to do so. I can now. 1 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. 1 think 1 answered Gracey by an unintelligible attempt io explain this, and she treated it as it deserved. 1 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 1 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 other's 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 mother's death. For I could well recollect the dissensions between ^hem, 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 simimed 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. Ho 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- — here 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 the 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?" " Ob — then he said : — ' Helen Evans, inquisitorial offspring.' You know the Governor's way." "Didn't he 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 boyhood, 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 he 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. I 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 Cremorne 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 my 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 NAIiRATlVE 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 cluckful subordinations of the main theme, count as having been really overheard? I say not. Anyhow, 1 think I was excusable for holding myself only academ- ically aware — so to speak — of one or two fragments of speech that detached theniselves 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 inc. witli 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 musl needs risk speech in despite of him. They need not have been so supereautious, 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 ray 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 I went round by the side path in the garden into the drawing-room, wondering when Jemima would have done — so ran soliloquy, through a yawn. 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! Se 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 NAERATIVE 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 I — 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 " fledglings " impertinent remarks. It seems so odd — the way the whole thing comes back as I dwell on it ! For instance, how Miss Evans spoiled the good impression of her laugh, and her vast redundance of spring muslin dappled with a leaf-l)roken 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 Eev. 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 NAEEATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 159 followed her eommuiiication 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 ! " 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. CHAPTEE 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 suificient 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 STOEY 161 Paseoe, 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 Eoberta 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. Paseoe fetched a bottle of champagne from the cellar and tried to be Tiilarious, 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 Eoberta her head resting on her old nurse's knee. Eoberta had been crying, and Varnish made no attempt at consoling her, on the coritrary 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 Eoberta. " 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 Eoberta, 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 Eoberta. "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." Eoberta gave a sudden start and turning sharply round looked up into Varnish's face, and said almost in a whisper: " 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 Eoberta 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! I " 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 jn 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 16.3 164 OLD MAN'S YOUTH that. I was embarrassed nevertheless, and he did nothing to relieve my 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 ? Eound 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 fjamed 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 til! 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 lips. 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 Graeey," he went on, using the form of speech he always preferred, for some reason unknown to me, " your sister Graeey 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 1 " 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: — " Eemember what it is the girls are thinking of. Don't let us be hard on them! " THE NAERATIVE 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 band. 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 16C 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 aflBrmative. " 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 ivhole! 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 XARRATIVE OF EUSTACE JOHN 167 were valueless; aud 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 Jcnow 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 marrjing i "' And, indeed, as Jemima had " stuck on " for the last eighteen months, the question did seem to arise. ITy father only smiled benignantly. '"' There are more little niceties in Heaven and earth. Master 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 expres'sed my readiness to do so, or indeed anything else, and he continued : — '" Some of these days, when you are a pian, and I'm not a man any longer, — which will 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 " I was absolutely sure that I understood it ; much surer than I am now that some of the foregoing conversation has not been invented 16S 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, 1 will write it in, in its place. There must have been more, for 1 remember plainly that when 1 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 Eoberta, whose afi'ection 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 1 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 o\(iier 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. I 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 T 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 ifow 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. 1 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 I 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, however, was not 110 OLD MAN'S YOUTH what. I wanted to kick her for, 1 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. 1 think 1 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. 1 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. 1 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 sisters conversation to Anderson Grayper. He was the young man who had played Charles to Bertie's Maria at the Hazels at Roehampton, two years before, and whom 1 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 Ee- treat; sometimes uninvited, with an inadequate pretext. This was all very well so long as I regarded the entichements of young persons of opposite sexes as, broadly speaking, tomfoolery. But a new light had reached my mind. Boused 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 lettre 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 wo 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." I 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. " Of course, I 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 I " 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." Wliich 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 father's 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 Graeey 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 Graeey. 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 Graeey." said he. For Ellen was always Miss Ellen, and Bert Miss Eoberta, 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 Graeey 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 Graeey." " 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 NAREATIVE 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 loiow 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. H 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 very 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 174 OLD MAN'S YOUTH a quarrel. I went back on my resentment against any indeter- minate brother-in-law. " 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 sjaeaking 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 days, 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 ease. I helped it with nods, and the gag came off. " 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 compaot 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. " 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 am this tiiup. Heaven only knows; but I am certain that if I bad 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 vias — had been hooked. Nevertheless, when I rejoined Society, straightened out, I was deeply impressed with the efErontery of that couple, vrho were ignoring one another at difierent 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 liiy 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. CHAPTEE 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 Eetreat. 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 Eoberta 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 ease 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 Eoberta 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 marfy 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 Ellen and Miss Gracey have been out all the after- noon; they have not come in yet, but Miss Eoberta 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 c^p 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 Eoberta watching her every movement, and seeking to pierce her innermost thoughts, and Helen shuddered, and turned sick! CHAPTEE XXII THE NAERATIVE 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 t