‘“Down in the West dwells my lady Clare:Blow, O balmy wind, from the West!Bathe me in odours of her hair,Bring me her thoughts ere she fell to rest!‘“Beam, O moon, through her casement bars;Bathe in thy glory her glorious hair:Keep guard over her, sentinel stars;Watch her and keep her, all things fair!”’
‘You didn’t make that up out of your own head, did ee, Paul?
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
Here was his divinity reciting the lines with which she herself had inspired him.
‘Now, couldn’t ee make a piece of poetry about me?’ she asked.
Paul’s heart gave one great thump at his breast and stopped.
‘That was about you,’ he said.
‘Why, you silly boy,’ she said, ‘you’ve got the name wrong. But oh, Paul, ain’t ee beginning very young? Askin’ for maids’ thoughts afore they go to sleep! Mine, too! You’ll be a regular gallows young reprobate afore you’re much older. That I’m sure of.’
There was a trembling wish deep down in his heart that she had left this unsaid, but how could he be so disloyal as to let it float to the surface? He drowned it deep, but it was there. She had misunderstood. She read him coarsely, not as the May of his dreams had read him.
‘Now, you write something about me, will ee, Paul?—something in my own name. Will ee?’ Paul made no answer for the moment, for the request fairly carried him off his balance. ‘Will ee, now?’ she asked, bringing her face in front of his.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he half sighed, half panted.
‘Here’s a stile,’ she said, springing forward with a happy gurgle of a laugh. The laugh to Paul’s ear was as musical as the sad chuckle of the nightingale, and as far from sorrow as its one rival is from mirth. There wascamaraderiein it, sympathy, a touch even of something confidential. ‘Now, well sit down here together, and you shall make it up.’
She perched on the stile as light as a perching bird, and drew her lithe figure on one side to make room for Paul. The stile was narrow, and there was barely room for two. Paul hesitated shyly, but she patted the seat in a pretty assumption of impatience, and he obeyed.
‘Paul,’ she said, sliding an arm behind him, and taking hold of the side-post. ‘What was it ee wanted to tell this morning?’
‘This morning?’ said Paul stupidly. It is one thing to resolve to be courageous in battle. It may be another thing when the fight begins.
‘Now, I’m sure you haven’t forgot already,’ she said. ‘Here! You catch hold of the post on my side. Then we shall be comfortable.’ She swayed forward to make easier for him the movement she advised, and her whole figure from ankle to shoulder touched him lightly. He obeyed, and she swung back again, nestling into the curve of his arm. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it? Now, what was ee going to tell?’ Paul had not a word to say for himself. If he had ever had the audacity to picture anything in his own mind like this present truth, he would have thought it certain to be deliriously happy; but as a matter of fact he was miserable, and felt himself at the clumsiest disadvantage. ‘You said,’ she murmured, half reproachfully, you’d go through fireorwater for me, Paul.’
‘So I would,’ said Paul.
‘Why? she asked, nestling a little nearer. ‘Why, Paul?’
‘I would,’ said he, rather sulkily than otherwise.
‘Why?’ She swayed forward again, and looked into his face. Her breath fanned his cheek. Her eyes were wide open and looked into his almost mournfully. ‘Why?’ Her glance hypnotized him. ‘Why?’
‘I love you,’ he said, in a whisper.
‘Do ee? she cooed. ‘Oh, you silly Paul! What for?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There never was anybody as lovely as you are.’
The words seemed to slide from him, apart from his will.
‘Oh, you silly Paul Am I lovely?’
‘Lovely? sighed Paul, and tangled his eyes in hers more and more.
‘You’ll make up that piece of poetry about me, won’t ee, Paul?’
‘Yes.’
The word was just audible, a breath, no more.
‘You dear!’ she said; and, leaning nearer and yet nearer to him, she laid her lips on his. They rested there for one thrilling instant, and then she drew back an inch or two only. ‘Make it up about that,’ she said, looking point blank into his eyes. Paul drooped his head and the lips met again, and fastened. A delicate fire burned him, and he curled his arm about her waist, and drew her to him. She yielded for one instant, and then slipped away with a panting laugh. ‘Oh, Paul?’ she said; ‘you really are too dreadful for anything! Fancy! A mere child like you. I should like to know what Mr. Filmer’d say if ever he knew I’d let ee do that.’
By one of those curious intuitions to which the mind is open at times of profound excitement, Paul knew what her answer would be, but he asked the question. At first his voice made no sound; but he cleared his throat and spoke dryly, and in a tone of commonplace:
‘Who is Mr. Filmer?’
‘Mr. Filmer’s the gentleman I’m going to be married to,’ said May. ‘He’s a very jealous temper, and I shouldn’t like him to know I’d been flirting, even with a child like you.’
It was all over.
Paul survived. He left the church, and returned with a doubtful allegiance to Ebenezer. He joined the singing-class there, for his voice had suddenly grown harsh and deep, and he conceived himself to be a basso. The parish swarmed with vocal celebrities, and he would be one of them. He made his first visit to the class, and got there early.
Came in two young ladies in hoops, with pork-pie hats and hair done up in bags of chenille. The like figures may be seen in the drawings of John Leech,circa1860. Each young lady had a curved nose. One nose curved inward at the bridge, and the other outward at the bridge, and if the curves had been set together they would have fitted with precision. Came in a lean lady with a purse mouth, rather open—looking like an empty voluntary-bag. Came in a stout lady, like a full voluntary-bag, the mouth close shut with a clasp. Came in a gentleman with shining rabbit teeth, smiling as if for a wager. Came in a gentleman with a deep bass voice consciously indicated in the carriage of his head—the voice garrotting him, as it were, rather high up in the collar. Came in a gentleman with heavy movable eyebrows, which looked too big for the limited playground a very small forehead afforded. Came in a small apoplectic man, bald and clean-shaven, and red and angry in the face, like an ill-conditioned baby. Came in ladies and gentlemen who smirked and slid; ladies and gentlemen who loitered, and were sheepish when by hazard they caught an eye; ladies and gentlemen crammed to suffocation with a sense of their own importance; ladies and gentlemen miserably overwhelmed with a sense of the importance of other people.
Paul knew every one of them, and had known them from childhood; and somehow they were all transformed from commonplace, and dignified into a comedy which was at once sympathetic and exquisitely droll. His narrow world had widened; his neighbours had sprung alive. His heart was tickled with a genial laughter, and his mirth tasted sweet to him, like a mellow apple. He could have hugged the crowd for sheer delight.
The conductor of the singing-class weeded Paul out at the close of the first glee, and brought his musical ambitions to an end.
‘Theer are at least twelve notes in an ordinary singin’ voice,’ said the conductor, ‘and theer ought to be eight half-tones scattered in among ‘em, somewheer. You’ve got two notes at present, and one’s a squeak and t’other’s a grumble. I think you might find a more advantageous empl’yment for your time elsewheer.’
Paul submitted to this verdict with high good-humour. He retired to the far end of the schoolroom, and sat out ‘the practice’ with a growing sense of pleasure. He exulted in the possession of a new sense which made all these people lovable.
‘Now I’ve found this out,’ said Paul to himself, ‘I shall never be lonely any more. There’ll always be summat to think about—summat with a relish in it.’
He must needs, of course, try to get the relish on paper, and he wrote a great deal of boyish stuff in flagrant imitation of Dickens, and hid it, jackdaw-like, in such places as he could find. In the slattern old office where Paul was learning more or less to be a workman at his trade there was no such thing as a ceiling. Frayed mortar, with matted scraps of cow-hair in it, used to fall frequently into the type-cases whenever a high wind shook the crazy slates, and, to obviate this, some contriving person had nailed a number of sheets of brown paper to the rafters. Paul’s hiding-place for his literary work was above these sheets of paper, and one day when old Armstrong stood by his side, a tintack gave way beneath the superincumbent weight, and the whole bundle of scraps in verse and prose fell at the author’s feet Armstrong stooped for it, and Paul went red and white, and his legs shook beneath him. There was an upturned box by the side of the cracked and blistered old stove which warmed the room in winter, and Armstrong went to it and sat down to untie his bundle. The author had never had any confidences with anybody, and his father was one of the last people in the world to whom he would have dared to make appeal for advice or help. In his agitation he went on pecking at the case of type before him, and setting the stamps on end at random, inside out and upside down, and in any progression chance might order. The old man coughed, and Paul dropped his composing-stick into the space-box with a clatter, and spilt its contents there. Armstrong slipped the string which bound the roll of papers, and began to glance over his discovery. Paul felt as if the ramshackle building had been out at sea.
‘M’m,’ said Armstrong, with the merest dry tick of a tone which seemed to express inquiry and surprise. Paul started as if an arrow had gone through him, and dropped his composing-stick a second time. ‘Ye’re very clumsy, there, my lad,’ said the old man. ‘What’s happening?’
Paul made no answer, and the father went back to his papers.
‘“Bilsby,”’ the old man hummed, half aloud, ‘“Bilsby is fat—fat with the comfortable fatness which has grown about him in the course of five-and-forty years of perfect self-approval. Bilsby is not great, or good, or magnanimous, or wise, or wealthy, or of long descent, or handsome, or admired; but he is happy. He gets up with Bilsby in the morning, has breakfast, dinner, tea and supper with him, and goes to bed with him at night. If Bilsby had a choice—and Bilsby hasn’t—he would make no change. He has himself to feed on—an immortal feast He sits at that eternal board, before that unfailing dish, which grows the more he ruminates upon it. Fat of the fat, sweet of the sweet is Bilsby to Bilsby’s palate. What will become of Bilsby when he dies? There can be no heaven for Bilsby, for he would have to hymn another glory there; There can be no fate of pain, for even if the Devil take him, there will still be Bilsby, and that fact alone would keep him happy.”
‘What’s all this rampant wickedness, y’ irreverent dog?’ asked Armstrong. ‘This is your writing, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Paul, feeling his throat harsh and constricted like a quill.
Armstrong said no more, but rolling up the bundle and sliding the knotted string once more about it, put it in his pocket and walked downstairs. Paul hardly dared to meet him at the mid-day dinner, but he put the best face he could upon the matter—a very pale and disturbed face it was—and presented himself at table. Nothing was said. The gray man sat with his book propped up against the bread-basket, as usual, and ate without knowing what passed his lips. The meal over, he took his arm-chair by the kitchen fire, and lit his pipe, and read with the cat perched on his shoulder. Mrs. Armstrong went to mind the shop, the rest of the family dispersed to their various avocations, and Paul sat still, listening to the ticking of the clock, and awaiting the stroke of two to take him back to work. He felt as if it would be cowardice to go earlier, but he was unhappy, and would willingly have been elsewhere.
Suddenly Armstrong reached out his hand towards the table and set down his book. Then from the coat-pocket where Paul had plainly seen it bulging he drew the roll of manuscript.
‘Paul,’ said the old man, ‘I’ve been readin’ this farrago, and the less that’s said about it the better. I obsairve that the main part of it’s devoted to the exaggerated satire of your neighbours. That’s a spirit I’m sorry to notice in ye, and I regret to see that ye’re already looking sulky at rebuke. The vairse,’ pursued Armstrong, ‘is mainly sickly, whining, puling stuff, as far away from Nature and experience as it’s easily possible to be. Now, I invite ye. Listen to this.’
He began to read with a fine disdain:
‘“Come not when I am deadTo drop thy foolish tears upon my grave.”’
Paul averted his head, and set one hand before his face. Months ago, when May Gold’s perfidy was a new thing, and the whole world was darkened, he had copied these lines from the Poet Laureate with tears, and they had seemed to him a perfect expression of himself. The old man ground out the lines with increasing scorn, and Paul began to grin, and then to shake with suppressed laughter. Armstrong went on to the end unyieldingly.
‘I’m not denying,’ he said, a moment later, ‘that I’ve found here and there a salt sprinkle o’ common-sense. Butthat, my lad,’ banging a hand on the manuscript page before him, ‘is simply unadulterated rubbish. It’s the silliest thing in the haul collection.’
Paul’s reverence for his father’s judgment in such matters was a tradition and a religion. ‘Old Armstrong’ was the parish pride as scholar and critic. The Rev. Roderic Murchison, who was a Master of Arts of Aberdeen, sat at the gray little man’s feet like a pupil. Armstrong had none of the minister’s Greek and Latin, but he was his master in English letters. In spite of this awful prescription of authority Paul spirted laughter.
‘It’s Tennyson!’ he spluttered. ‘It’s the Poet Laureate!’
‘Then,’ said Armstrong, ‘the Poet Laureate’s a drivelling idiot, like his predecessor.’
‘What?’ Paul asked, underneath his breath. He had never listened to such blasphemy.
‘In my day,’ said Armstrong, ‘a poet laid a table for men to eat and drink at. We’d Sir Walter’s beef and bannocks, and puir young Byron’s Athol brose. Wha calls this mingling o’ skim milk an’ treacle the wine o’ the soul a poet ought to pour?
‘Scott and Byron!’ cried Paul, amazed out of all reverence. ‘Why, there’s more poetry in Tennyson’s little finger than in both their bodies.’
‘Hoots, man! hauld your silly tongue,’ cried his father.
‘Have you read “In Memoriam”?’ cried Paul.
‘No,’ returned Armstrong curtly, ‘I have not.’
‘Then,’ Paul stormed, ‘what’s your opinion good for?’
The old man’s eyes flashed, and he made a motion as if to rise. He controlled himself, however, and reached out a hand to the hob for the clay he had relinquished a minute or two before.
‘The question’s fair,’ he said; ‘the question’s fair—pairfectly fair, Paul. I misliked the manner of it, but the question’s fair.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Paul.
He could have knelt to him.
‘They’ll be having Tennyson at the Institute Library?’ the old man asked. ‘I’ll walk over for him.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Paul, ‘but Tennyson——’
‘Ay, ay!’ said Armstrong, ‘age fossilizes. It’s like enough the man has a word to say. I’ll look at him.’
He took his rusty old silk hat from its hook beside the eight-day clock, and went out quietly.
For the first minute in his life Paul truly loved him.
‘It would ha’served me right,’ he mourned, ‘if he’d ha’ knocked me down. It’s a lot better as it is, though; but it’s hard to bear.’
That afternoon, and for many a morning and afternoon for months, old Armstrong shuffled swiftly along the weedy garden, and took his seat on the upturned box beside the stove, and there studied his Tennyson and smoked his pipe. These were halcyon days for Paul, for the old man was not long obdurate, and began to halve the delight of his own reading.
‘Ay, ay!’ he said, by way of making his first admission, ‘“in My Father’s house are many mansions.” This chap has the key to the organ-loft’ Then, a little later: ‘It’s clean thinking, and a bonny music’ Later still, with a long, slow sigh on the word: ‘Eh!’ and then, unconsciously: ‘Deep waters, lad, deep waters.’
He read slowly, for the dialect was new, and he was bent on mastering it. His occasional difficulties seemed strange to the boy, but then, Paul had been suckled at this fountain, and could make no allowances for the prepossessions of age, and the distaste of an old palate for a new flavour. An occasional question startled him, the answer was so obvious and simple.
‘“Or where the kneeling hamlet drainsThe chalice of the grapes of God,”’
Armstrong read out ‘D’ye find the meaning of that, Paul, lad,’ he asked.
‘Village church,’ said Paul ‘Holy Communion.’
‘To be sure,’ said the old man, ‘to be sure. It’s tight packed, but it’s simple as A B C.’
There were questions Paul could not answer, and he and the old man puzzled them out together. They drew closer and closer. The boy dared to reveal his mind, and the father began to respect his opinion. By the time the warm weather was round again they were fast friends. They tramped up and down the path of the neglected garden arm-in-arm, and talked of literature and politics and the world at large. Paul had dreams, and sometimes he gave his father a glimpse of them. Armstrong preached humility.
‘L’arn, my lad,’ he would say, almost sternly, ‘l’arn before ye try to teach.’
Paul had turned public instructor already, but that was his secret There was a sort of treason in it, for Armstrong’s rival, a young and pushing tradesman, had started a weekly paper, and Paul was an anonymous contributor to its pages. This journal was called theBarfield Advertiser, and Quarry-moor, Church Vale, and Heydon Hay Gazette; but it was satirically known in the Armstrong household as theCrusher, and its leading articles (which were certainly rather turgid and pompous) were food for weekly mirth. But one day this was changed.
‘Why, William,’ cried Mrs. Armstrong, ‘this fellow’s turned quite sensible. You might ha’ wrote this yourself. It’s simply nayther more nor less than you was sayin’ last Wednesday at this very table.’
Paul’s coffee went the wrong way, and his cough caused a momentary diversion. But when Dick had vigorously thumped him on the back, and he had resumed his seat at table, Armstrong read the article aloud.
‘Ay, ay!’ he said at the close, ‘it’s certainly my own opinion, and vary cleanly put.’
Paul’s coffee went the wrong way again, and again Dick thumped him on the back. When the paper had gone the round of the household the anonymous writer stole it, and carried it, neatly folded beneath his waistcoat, to the office. He knew it by heart already, but he read it insatiably over and over again. He was in print, and to be in print for the first time is to experience as fine a delirium as is to be found in love or liquor. The typed column ravished his senses, and the editorial ‘we’ looked imperial. He was ‘we’ in spite of shirt-sleeves and ink-smeared apron of herden. In those days theTimescould uproot a Ministry, but its editor in his proudest hour would have been a dwarf if he had measured himself by Paul’s self-appreciation. Sweet are the uses of a boy’s vanity, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
The dreamer in his mountain eyrie felt his heart warm with a sort of fatherly pity over these bumpkin raptures. The lad blows a bubble of foolery, and it glitters and floats and bursts, and who is the worse for it? The man carves folly in brass, and breaks his head on his own monument; or forges it in steel, and stabs his own heart with it. The vanities of youth are yeast in wholesome ale. The follies of later life are mildew in the cask. The lad who never tasted Paul’s intoxication may make a worthy citizen, but he will never set the Thames afire.
Paul went on writing, and thundered from the editorial pulpit weekly. He gave theCrushera policy. Castle Barfield was to be a borough at the next redistribution of seats. Its watchwords were ‘Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform.’ It was to uphold the traditions of Manchester in a curious blend with the philosophy, or the want of it, of Thomas Carlyle. It assailed the Vicar of All Saints’ for the introduction of a surpliced choir, and it showed a bared arm and a clenched fist to Popery.
The Jovian wielder of theCrusher’slightnings got used to being discussed at the Saturday morning table, and encountered praise and blame there with an equal countenance. In his own unplummeted depths he was Scott before the discovery of the authorship of the Waverley series; he was Junius; he was S. G. O. And not a soul ever guessed at the truth, for just as Paul had resolved to reveal his identity and claim his fame theCrusherdied.
Then for a long time he was voiceless, and, having no paper balloon to float him, he went about in his own thoughts, quite like a common person. A year later, routing out the whole series of printed articles from one of his jackdaw hiding-places, he was inspired by an intense disdain, and burned them in the office stove.
All the time the world he lived in was the world he took least heed of. Until Ralston crossed him—Ralston, his man of men, and king, and deity—the only real creature was the gray old man who had begotten him. Father and son had grown to a curious sympathy, in which age never domineered because of age, or youth presumed because of youth. Armstrong the elder was a poet, though he had never printed a line; and he and Paul brought their verses to each other. They used to print at times the productions of the local bard, and their first bond of genial and equal laughter (which is one of the best bonds in life) came of their joint reading of one of his effusions. Paul had given it the dignity of type. Armstrong was his own proof-reader, and Paul read the MS. aloud, whilst his father, with balanced pen, ticked off the lines. They were headed ‘Lines on a Walk I once took in the Country,’ and they opened thus:
‘It was upon a day in May When through the field I took my way, It was delightful for to see The sheep and lambs—they did agree.
‘And as I went forth on that day I met a stile within my way, That stile which did give rest to me Again I may not no more see.
‘As on my way I then did trod, The lark did roar his song to God.’
There they laughed, with tears, for this was not a jest of anybody’s purposed making, but a pinch from Nature’s pepper-castor, and it tickled the lungs to madness.
‘Paul, lad,’ said Armstrong, coming to a sudden serious end of laughter, and wiping his eyes, ‘it’s not an ungentle heart that finds it delightful to see the fleecy, silly people o’ the fields in harmony. And the reflection on the stile’s a fine bit o’ pathetics. “I’ve been happy there,” says the poor ignorance; “and I may never see it more.” It’s the etairnal hauntin’ thoct o’ man in all ages. “We’ve no abiding city here.” “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth.” “Never, never more,” says poor Poe’s raven. Listen, m’n! Ye’ll hear Shakespeare’s immortal thunder. The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces dissolve with the great globe itself and all that it inherits. It’s all there, Paul. It’s in the hiccoughing throat of him. Puir felly! Well just put him into decent English, and see that naebody else shall laugh at him.’
So they trimmed the local bard, and made him sober, and even mildly sweet; and when, with their joint amendments, they sent the poem home, the bard refused to be edited, declined the parcel, and took his trade elsewhere.
But the tinkering of the poor verses brought Paul and his father finally together, and from that hour onward they were friends.
And now the mind of the Exile turned to the episode of Norah MacMulty—grotesque, pitiable, laughable.
Paul had pssed his seventeenth birthday, and reckoned himself a man. He was in love again, but tentatively. He had read ‘Don Juan,’ and had learned a thing or two. He conceived that he had rubbed off the first soft bloom of youth, and the idea, natural to his time of life, that he was aged and experienced had taken full hold of him.
He was not wholly certain that he adored the pretty girl at the bonnet-shop. He had never spoken to her, for one thing, and had only seen her from a distance, but she did well enough to moon about, and made an excellent peg to hang verses on.
He had been away on a lovely summer evening’s ramble into the quiet of the country. He had been verse-making or verse-polishing, and was in a high state of mental exaltation when he reached the darkened main street of the town about ten o’clock. He turned the corner, and walked straight into the arms of a woman, who hugged him with a drunken ardour. Her breath was fiery with gin, and the coarsely-sweet scent of it filled him with an impulse of loathing.
‘Let go,’ said Paul
‘Deed I’ll not let go,’ the woman answered, in a drunken voice. ‘Ye’re just sent here be Providence to see a poor lonely little craychure home.’
‘Let go,’ said Paul again; but she clung and laughed, and, in a sudden spasm of downright horror, he put out more strength than he guessed, and wrenched himself free. The woman tottered backwards, swayed for an instant, and then fell. The back of her head came into sharp contact with the corner of the wall. She lay quite still, and Paul grew frightened. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take my hand. Let me help you up.’ He had not expected her to answer, but her continued silence seemed dreadful. He kneeled to look closely into her face. She was quite young—not more than two or three and twenty at the outside—and she had a quantity of light auburn hair, which, though untidy, had a soft beauty of its own. Her eyes were closed, and her face was white. ‘Now, don’t lie there pretending to be killed,’ said Paul, in an unsteady voice. She made no movement, and he rose and looked about him in dismay.
There was not a creature in the street, and the public lamps were never lighted in the summer-time. A long way off the windows of a gin-shop cast a light upon the road, and nearer, on the opposite side, a red lamp burned. With a lingering glance of fear and pity at the recumbent figure, Paul sped towards the red lamp as fast as he could lift a leg. In his agitation he gave such a tug at the bell that it clanged like a fire-alarm. The doctor’s assistant, a dashing young gentleman whom Paul knew from afar, and who was remarkable to him chiefly for an expensive taste in clothing, came briskly to the door.
‘There’s a woman at the corner,’ said Paul, ‘badly hurt; I thought it best to let you know.’
The assistant snatched a hat from the hall table, and came out at once.
‘Where is she?’
Paul pointed, and they ran together. The assistant had the quicker turn of speed, and reached the corner first. He was kneeling beside the woman when Paul reached him.
‘Got a handkerchief?’ he asked
Paul lugged half a square yard of turkey-red cotton from his pocket. ‘That’s the ticket,’ said the assistant. He folded the handkerchief.. ‘Now, hold her head up whilst I get this under it.’
Paul obeyed again, but the hair was all in a warm wet mesh of blood.
‘What are you shaking at?’ the assistant asked him. ‘You’re a pretty poor plucked un,’ he added, as he tied the bandage tight across the woman’s forehead.
‘I’m not used to it,’ said Paul, choking with nausea and pity.
‘That’s pretty evident,’ returned the other. ‘Now, get her shawl round her head whilst I hold her up. That’ll do. We must get her down to the surgery. Take her by her shoulders; there. Get your arms well under her. Heave ho! Wait a minute till I settle her dress and get a good hold of her knees. Upsy daisy; march!’
They went staggeringly, not because of the weight, but by reason of the giddiness which assailed Paul. He thought it had suddenly grown foggy, for there was a mist between him and all the dimly visible objects of the night There were coloured sparks in the mist by-and-by, and when once they had got their burden through the open hall and had laid it on a plain straight couch in the surgery, Paul was glad to sit down uninvited.
‘Take a sniff at that,’ said the assistant, pressing an un-stoppered bottle into his hand.
Paul obeyed him. The pungent ammonia brought the tears to his eyes and took his breath away, but it dispersed the fog and stilled the wheel which had been whirling in his head The assistant had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and was going about his task with professional dexterity and coolness.
‘How did this happen?’ he asked.
He was Paul’s senior by three years at most, but he had as magisterial and assured a manner as if he had been fifty.
Paul told the story just as it happened.
‘Well,’ said the assistant, ‘this is a pretty grave old case, and so I tell you. You may find yourself in trouble over this.’
‘Find myself in trouble?’ said Paul. ‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ said the assistant; ‘you.’
‘You’ve got better work in hand than talkin’ rubbish,’ Paul retorted; ‘stick to it.’
‘Ah,’ said the budding surgeon, ‘well wait till the woman’s conscious, if ever she is, and see what sort of a tale she has to tell.’
‘It’s the simple truf he’s tould ye,’ said the patient, in a feeble voice. ‘What do ye be tryin’ to frighten him for?’
‘Oh, you’re coming round, are you? asked the assistant; ‘didn’t expect it. That’s a pretty nasty crack you’ve got.’
‘Twill take more than that to kill Norah MacMulty,’ said the young woman, struggling into a sitting posture, and beginning mechanically to arrange her disordered dress. ‘The MacMultys is a fine fightin’ famly, and it runs in the blood to take a cracked skull quite kindly. I’ll be takin’ a glass at the Grapes, and then I’ll be goin’ home, but not till I’ve thanked ye kindly. Has anybody seen me bonnut?’
‘I shan’t allow you to go to the Grapes to-night, my good woman,’ said the assistant. ‘Where do you live?’
She named her address, a wretched little row of tenement houses some ten score yards away.
‘What’s your trade?’
‘Me trade, is it?’ she answered, with a feeble, good-humoured laugh. ‘Tis not much of a trade, anyhow; I’m a street-walker.’
She made the statement wholly commonplace in tone, and gave it with as little reluctance or embarrassment as if she had laid claim to the most respectable calling in the world.
The assistant stared and laughed, but she caught Paul’s look of amazed horror.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘why wouldn’t I be? I’ll go to hell for it, av coorse, for that’s God’s will on all of us. Tis hard lines, too, for ‘tis none so fine a life when ye’ve tried ut. Thank ye kindly, both of yez. I’d pay ye for ut, but ye’d not be takin’ a poor girl’s last shillin’, I know, from the good-tempered purty face of ye.’
‘You’re sweetly welcome,’ said the assistant, busily washing his hands at the sink, and looking sideways at her. ‘You’re a queer fish, any way.’
‘’Tis a queer fish I am,’ she answered, ‘an’ by-an’-by they’ll have the cookin’ of me. Fried soul,’ she said, with a faint laugh. ‘Begobs! that’s funny; I never thought o’that before. Fried soul!’
‘How old are you?’ the assistant asked.
‘Faith,’ she said, ‘I’m just past two-an’-twinty. ‘Tis an agein’ life, an’ I look more; but ‘tis God’s truf I’m tellin’ ye.’
‘Very likely,’ said the assistant, towelling his hands.
‘I’ll go now,’ said Norah MacMulty. ‘I’m a trifle unsteady with the shakin’, but the drink’s out of me, worse luck! and I’ll be able to walk.’
‘No calling at the Grapes, mind you,’ said the assistant ‘You’d better look in at the infirmary about eleven o’clock to-morrow.’
‘I’ll do that,’ she answered. ‘Will ye be lendin’ me your shoulder as far as the dure, young man? I’ll be better in a minute.’
Paul did as she requested, but he crawled with repulsion beneath her hand. The touch inspired him with loathing. He had lived a sheltered life, and had never seen an open abandonment to shame. He wondered why God allowed the degraded thing to live, and his heart ached with pity at the same time. He led her to the door, and then across the road. The assistant sent a curt ‘Good-night’ after him. He answered it, and the door dosed.
‘Can you walk alone now?’ he asked.
‘I’ll try,’ she said, and made a staggering attempt at it.
Paul caught her, or she would have fallen.
‘Take my arm,’ he said to her, hardening his heart with an effort.
He blessed the darkness and the quiet of the street, but before they had gone a score of yards a door opened in a house he knew, and Armstrong came out of it.
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the old man would have gone by dreaming, but he was alert enough at odd moments, and this chanced to be one of them. He saw Paul arm-in-arm with a bandaged drunken woman, and as he recognised his son the pair reeled together.
‘Paul!’ he cried. ‘Good God!’
‘I’m glad it’s you, father,’ said Paul. ‘This poor creature fell at the corner yonder and cut her head terribly. I fetched young Marley to her from Dr. Hervey’s, and he has seen to her. She wants to get home.’
‘I’ll take the other side,’ said Armstrong, and the three lurched slowly along in the dimness.
‘Ye’re good people,’ Norah MacMulty said when they had brought her to her door.
A slattern woman answered Armstrong’s knock, heard the news with no discernible emotion, and helped the arrival in as if she had been a sack of coals. Armstrong and Paul went home with few words. ‘Don’t be startled when you see me,’ Paul said at the door. ‘I helped to carry her to the doctor’s, and she bled horribly.’
It was not meant for an exaggeration, but he was unused to such scenes, and the woman’s language more than anything else had helped to scare him from his self-possession. The hour was late already, reckoning by his custom. He washed, and went upstairs, but not to bed. He threw the window open and let in the soft, heavy night-air. Strange thoughts made a jumble in his mind. From his attic he could see, over the roofs of the houses opposite, the outlines of the Quarrymore Hills, clearly defined in the light of the rising moon. Half way between him and them the air was dimly red with the glow of the unseen furnaces in the valley. He heard the loud roar of the invisible fires, and now and then the clank of iron. His thoughts were not on these things, but he was vaguely conscious of them.
He had taken his earliest look at the real tragedy of life. The peril of the woman’s soul was the first thing to emerge clearly from the chaos of his thoughts. Her flippant, reckless acceptance of the certainty of her own damnation horrified him. Out of the streets, out of the bestial degradation of that life of shame and drink, into sheer hell? No chance? No hope? Surely Christ had died! But only for those who owned Him, and called upon Him! No, no, and a thousand times no! It was not to be believed, not to be borne. It was hateful, horrible, monstrous. The poor degraded thing had punishment enough already. She was in hell already.
The bruised reed, the smoking flax! He fell upon his knees, and his soul seemed to melt in a flood of anguished pity. He wept passionately, with an incoherent clamour in his heart of ‘God—God—God!’
The storm wore itself out, but he knelt there long, with his hands on the window-sill, and his face buried in them. He had been too agitated to find words, and now he was too tired and empty even to wish for them. His eyes were dry, and his lips were harsh and salt with his tears.
He looked up, and the whole night had changed. The moon rode high, and was nearly at the full. The skies were spangled with thousands on thousands of glittering stars. He thrust out his head and looked upward into the vast blue of the night Out from the stainless sky fell one warm, heavy drop full on his upturned forehead. To his worn thoughts it was like an angel’s tear. He nestled beside the open window, and gazed from star to star, seeming idly to trace an intricate winding road of blue amongst them. Peace came back to him, an empty peace, no more than a mental languor. He slept at last, and awoke stiff and chill to find the light of morning creeping along a clouded east.
All that day one purpose was present to his mind. When the day’s work was over and he was free, he dressed and walked into the street He roamed up and down it from end to end, and several times he diverged from it to pace the road in which Norah MacMulty lived, and to linger about the house into which he had helped her. He had something to say to Norah MacMulty, but he caught no sight of her. He went home, and to bed. Next evening he paced the streets again. There was still no sign of her, but he encountered the assistant, who nodded to him in passing. Paul stopped him.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Is there any news of that poor woman?’
‘Yes,’ said the assistant. ‘She’s in for a touch of erysipelas. They kept her at the Infirmary to-day. If they’d left her at large she’d have killed herself.’
‘How?’ said Paul.
‘Drink,’ returned the assistant, and went his own way.
So Paul ceased his wanderings for a while, and a fortnight had passed before he saw the woman again.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and he was off for his customary lonely ramble. Armstrong always went upstairs for a nap after Sunday’s dinner, and Paul was left without companionship.
The woman was a mile away from her home, and was sitting on the lower steps of a stile by the side of the highway. She was tidily attired, and sober. Her recent illness had left a pensive look upon her face.
‘You’re better?’ said Paul, stopping in front of her.
She looked up in some surprise.
‘Oh,’ she answered. ‘’Tis you? I’m better, thank ye kindly. There’s not many cares to ask.’
‘Do you remember,’ Paul demanded, with a face whiter than her own, ‘what you said at the doctor’s the night you were hurt?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘What was it?’
‘The doctor asked you what your trade was,’ said Paul.
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I mind it now.’
‘Did you mean it?’ Paul asked.
‘Ye’re a trifle over-young to turn parson,’ she responded. ‘Go your ways, child, and don’t be bothering.’
‘Don’t ask me to go yet,’ said Paul ‘I’ve something I want to say to you.’ His voice stuck in his throat, and she turned her glance towards him in a new surprise. ‘You said,’ he went on with difficulty, ‘that you were sure to go to hell.’
‘I’m that,’ she answered dryly, drawing her shawl about her shoulders.
‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘you shan’t. I’m not going to let you.’ She laughed oddly with a mere ejaculation, and stared along the road. ‘Do you ever think what hell is like?’ he asked.
‘Would I drink if I didn’t?’ she answered without looking at him.
‘You can’t put it away by drinking.’
‘I know that,’ she answered, with a sudden sullen fierceness. Then, ‘Ye mean well, I dare say, but ye’re wastin’ time. Go your ways.’
‘It’s no use asking,’ said Paul; ‘I can’t do it.’ She looked up at him again, and he hurried on, with a dry husk in his throat: ‘I can’t rest for thinking of it I can’t eat I can’t sleep. I can’t think of anything else.’
A slight spasm contorted her lips for a mere instant, but she looked down the road again, and answered drearily:
‘That’s a pity.’
There was a tone of tired scorn in her words, but this, as it were, was only on the surface. There was something else below, and the sense of it urged him on.
‘You have a good face,’ he said. ‘You were not meant——’
He checked himself.
‘Me poor boy,’ she answered, with another motion to arrange her shawl, ‘ye can’t tell me anything I don’t know.’
‘I can tell you something you’ve forgotten,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t care what you’ve done; you’re God’s child, and while there’s life there’s hope.’
‘Ye’re not a man yet,’ said Norah MacMulty; ‘but if ever ye mean to be one, hould your tongue an’ go.’
‘I don’t mind hurting you if I can do you any good by it.’ ‘Ye can do me no good, nor yourself neither. Here’s people coming along the road, and it’s ten to one they’ll know ye. Ye’ve no right to be seen talkin’ to the likes of me at your age.’
‘I don’t care for the people,’ he answered. ‘I don’t care for anything but what I’ve got to say.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you don’t care, I’m sure I don’t. ‘Tis no odds to me what anybody thinks.’
The people who approached were strangers, two men and two women of the working class. They passed the pair without notice, talking of their own affairs.
‘I’m only two days from the hospital,’ said the girl when they were out of hearing, ‘and me legs gives way underneath me. If ‘twas not for that, I’d not stay here. Go now; I’m tired of ye.’
‘Look here,’ said Paul, with the dry husk in his throat again, ‘you don’t like your life.’
‘Faith, then,’ she answered, ‘I do not.’
‘Then why not leave it?’
‘Ye’re talking like a child. How the divvlecanI leave it?’
‘Leave it with me,’ said Paul.
That was what he had meant to say from the first, and now that he had spoken his word his difficulties seemed to fall away.
‘I can’t earn full wages yet, but I can get two-thirds anywhere. I can make eighteen shillings a week, and I can live on half of it. You can have the other half, and there will be no need, then—— You will find something to do in time—sewing, or ironing, or something—and then it will be easier for us both.’
‘Ye’re mad!’ said Norah MacMulty.
‘No,’ said Paul, ‘I’m not mad. I’m going to save your soul, Norah.’
She looked at him fixedly.
‘Ye mean it?’ she asked.
‘I mean it,’ he answered. ‘I mean it in God’s hearing.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m mightily obliged to ye.’
‘You’re coming, Norah?’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Armstrong—Paul Armstrong.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ she said. ‘Good-bye to ye, Paul Armstrong.’
‘No,’ said Paul, ‘you will come to me. I shall go to look for work to-morrow, and as soon as I have found it I shall send for you, and you will come.’
‘D’ye want me to live with ye?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he answered with a strong shudder. She saw that clearly, and her colour changed. The swift distortion showed itself about her lips again. It passed away in an instant, but it left the mouth trembling. ‘I want you to be away somewhere where nobody can say a word against you. I want to see you and talk to you sometimes, and know that you are going on prosperously.’
‘I’m mightily obliged to ye,’ she said again. ‘Ye’re a good little fool, but a fool you are.’
‘I am not a fool for this, Norah. Nobody is a fool who tries to do God’s work.’
‘Anybody’s a fool that tries to do God’s work that way,’ she answered.
‘You say you are going to hell, Norah.’
‘And so I am, but not for ruinin’ a child that’s got hysterics. I can face the divvle without havin’ that on my conscience. And I’ll tell ye somethin’ that’ll maybe turn out useful when ye grow older. Ye think because I folly a callin’ that no decent woman can think of and because ye know that I drink, that I’ve no pride of me own. Ye’re mistaken, Paul Armstrong. If ye were ten years older, and I me own woman, I’d set these in your face. D’ye mind me now?’ She shook her hands before her for an instant, and withdrew them under her shawl again. ‘Ye mean well, I think, but ye’re just in-sultin’ past bearin’, an’ so you are! Would I live on the ‘arnin’s of a child? Oh, Mary, Mary, Mother o’ God!’ ‘she burst out, ‘look down an’ see how I’m trodden in the mud. Go away, go away; go away, I tell ye! I know what I am. Right well I know what I am. But d’ye think I’m that?
Black misery on your—— No. Ill not curse ye, for I believe ye meant well. But if ye’re not gone, I’ve a scissors here, an’ I’ll do meself a mischief.’
The outburst overwhelmed him. The man of the world who could have stood unmoved against it would have needs been brave and cool. The torrent of her passion swept him like a straw.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he stammered; ‘I beg your pardon with all my heart and soul.’
‘Go!’ she said.
He obeyed her, and the episode of Norah MacMulty came to a close.
‘Paul,’ said the Solitary, waking for a moment from the dream in which these old things acted themselves again before him, ‘you were always a fool, but the folly of that time was better than to-day’s.’