XXVIII
William Jordan’sstartling misconduct on this historic day was not lightly passed over by that distinguished circle of which Mr. James Dodson was the natural leader. They made rather a point of insisting that their accomplished friend should forego the society of the culprit for the future.
“As long as we thought he was a mere harmless lunatic, Jimmy,” said Mr. John Dobbs, “we didn’t so much mind your taking him up, although we all thought from the first that for a chap like you to do so was coming down a peg. But now that we find out that he is not a harmless lunatic at all, but a downright dangerous one, we think you owe it to yourself that you should give him the cold shoulder altogether.”
To which expression of well-meaning wisdom Mr. Dodson rejoined tactfully, “I dare say you may be perfectly right, John. I shall have to think it over.”
All the same in the inscrutable recesses of Mr. Dodson’s heart there was no clearly defined intention of acting upon this disinterested advice. Mr. James Dodson was preeminently a man of the world, “a two-and-two-makes-four” man, in his own phrase, yet a stealthy feeling had alreadytaken root within him, which somehow forbade the philosopher to follow the dictates of pure reason with the implicit fidelity that was his wont. He had nothing to gain by association with such a person as William Jordan, Junior, for even his faculty of speaking Greek like a native, had by this time become a theme for derision among Mr. Dodson’s intimates; yet when the eminent worldling and philosopher came closely to scrutinize his own personal dealings with this very odd specimen of humanity, it began to appear that he was no longer his own master.
“I feel, you know, Luney,” he confessed, in one of his moments of expansiveness, “I am behaving like a fool in taking you up like I do. I am acting against my own interests. You will never do anything; you are d——d unpopular with all my pals; you are not a bit bright or clever; you never drink or smoke or bet or make love to the ladies; you can’t hold your own even with a chap like young Davis; even when your leg is being pulled you haven’t got the sense to notice it; in short, Luney, and in a word, you are just a worm; but, somehow, there is an odd sort of something about you that I feel I can’t do without. What it is I don’t know. If you were a girl I should say it was love; and yet, my son, I’ll swear to you on my solemn oath that I don’t believe there is such a thing as love. All the talk about it, all the plays and penny novelettes about it, are the biggest bunkum imaginable.”
However, in spite of many speeches as uncompromising as this, Mr. Dodson could not bring himself to relinquish his patronage of his strange companion. Seldom can a more incongruous pair have walked together along the perilous paths of the great nowhither, since the far-off days of the Knight of La Mancha and his faithful squire. And it chanced that on the eve of the very next Bank Holiday, which befell on a stifling day in August, when the town lay choked in dust andseemed to swoon with the arid air, Mr. Dodson made the proposal to his singular friend that they should go forth on that festal day and “see a bit of life” together.
“No more Margate, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, “never again, as long as I live, will I go with you there. But we will spend a day at the Oval, my boy—they are giving Joe Cox a trial for the first eleven, and we must see what he does. Then we will get a bit of dinner somewhere, and round up the evening at the Alcazar. You have never seen Hermione in full war paint, have you? Off the stage she is a bit of all right, but on it, my son, she beats anything you ever saw. When you see her she will knock you.”
To this carefully devised programme William Jordan assented submissively. During this phase of his existence, when every day that he passed brought a further largesse of knowledge, the overpowering curiosity to see, to know, to understand all things seemed to return upon him. His mentor had taken him already into divers and strange places. He owed it to that friendly but mysterious guidance that the curtain was rolled back from many hidden recesses of the life about him, which otherwise could never have been revealed.
On that burning August forenoon he mingled with the throng about the gates of the cricket-ground, and passed through its portals and came to stand on the parched grass under the pitiless sun. All about him was a close-packed and vastly excited multitude. Yet to the young man, who was sandwiched within the very heart of the perspiring crowd of street-persons, with the skin being frizzled upon his neck, the solemn rites, of which occasionally he caught a glimpse, had no meaning for his eyes.
“Surrey’s fielding,” said his mentor, in a voice that was by no means as calm as was its wont. “See, there’s Joe standing at mid-on. Why don’t they put him on to bowl?”
“Not his wicket,” said Mr. Dodson’s neighbour, an enthusiast in a straw hat with a yellow ribbon, and dirty white flannel trousers.
“Then why do they play him?” demanded Mr. Dodson.
“The Committee have had private information of a thunderstorm to-morrow night,” said Mr. Dodson’s neighbour, who appeared to be extremely well-informed.
To Mr. William Jordan, however, these technicalities and a thousand others, which were even more recondite, proved very baffling indeed.
“I suppose, Jimmy,” said the young man at last, in sheer desperation, driven by the inflexible rules of politeness to speak, yet not knowing in the least what to say, “that those street-per—those gentlemen in the white suits are what you call Surrey?”
“You are positively brilliant this morning, Luney,” said his mentor. “You sparkle. Upon my word, you are nearly as bright as the sun.”
After standing two hours in that broiling heat, and as he was growing somewhat dizzy, owing to the effects of that concentrated fireball upon the back of his neck, the players trooped off the field of play in search of refreshment, whereupon Mr. Dodson solemnly instructed him to sit on an adjacent mound of withered grass to await his own return, assuring him “that he was not half smart enough to forage for himself at the Oval on August Bank Holiday.”
In the course of half-an-hour Mr. Dodson did return, bearing two corkless bottles covered with oozing white froth, and four substantial and extremely indigestible-looking pork pies.
“Catch hold,” said Mr. Dodson, handing Mr. William Jordan, Junior, his share of these delicacies.
“The pies are topping, ain’t they?” said Mr. Dodson, after his teeth had met therein with immense satisfaction to themselves.
Mr. Dodson then applied his mouth to the neck of a bottle.
“There is nothing in this world,” said Mr. Dodson, after having sucked an immoderate quantity of froth, “whatever there may be in the next, to compare with a bottle of Bass.”
Mr. Dodson returned with renewed vigour to the pork pies.
“Buck up, Luney,” he said, as he masticated the last succulent morsel. “The players will be out again in five minutes. Why, man, what the dickens are you up to! Your Bass is all over the grass, and your pies are underneath it. Luney, you idiot!—’pon my word, I do believe the wretched lunatic has fainted.”
Mr. Dodson’s diagnosis of his friend’s condition proved to be a correct one. He had to lay him upon his back and to obtain water before the eyes could be induced to re-open, and the blood to return to the hollow cheeks. Play had begun, Mr. Dodson was hot and irritable, and he was vowing freely that if he valued his self-respect he must break himself of the habit of dragging round this hopeless subject to acquaint it with “life”; yet in spite of all this, when the young man at last opened his eyes, his mentor said, quite kindly, “Was it the heat, old boy?”
“Yes—the heat,” said William Jordan faintly.
Mr. Dodson conducted his friend to the shade that was afforded by the back of an immense stand, upon which several thousands of human beings—wedged as tightly together as dried figs in a box—braved the broiling heat of the airless afternoon, craning and tiptoeing to witness a trial of skill of a curiously inconsequent and macabre kind, with whose niceties the vast majority were very imperfectly acquainted.
“You will be all right here, old boy,” said Mr. Dodson, propping up his friend, and taking off his own coat to form a pillow for his head. “Youwill be nice and cool here. Lie quite still, and I will get you a drop of brandy.”
As Mr. Dodson made his way through the crowd to an awning, upon which was displayed the word “Refreshments,” there was a demonstration of approval from many thousands of pairs of hands.
“What’s up?” demanded Mr. Dodson, as he passed along. “Is Gunn out?”
“No,” said a spectator, who was perspiring freely in spite of the fact that he wore a halo of cabbage-leaves under his straw hat. “They are putting on young Cox.”
“Time they did,” said Mr. Dodson.
For a moment a Titanic struggle was waged in the bosom of the philosopher. He could not forbear to pause a moment to watch how his friend Joe Cox fared in his hour of trial, yet even before he beheld him deliver his first ball, he bent his neck again to the stern yoke of duty. Hurriedly he went on his way for the brandy.
As he returned bearing this stimulant, he stayed again for an instant to inquire of his informant of the cabbage-leaves, how young Cox was bowling?
“Can’t bowl for nuts,” said the gentleman of the cabbage-leaves. “Gunn has just hit him out of the ground. I could bowl better myself.”
It was with a sinking heart that the philosopher handed the brandy to William Jordan, who, however, could not be induced to taste it.
“How are you feeling, old boy?” said Mr. Dodson; and he added eagerly, “Joe Cox is bowling. I wish he would get a wicket.”
“M-my m-mind is now quite clear,” said his strange companion. “P-please l-leave me to lie here. I would have you join your friends who are so—so active and powerful and high-hearted. Go to look at—at the cricket game, I entreat you. Whenever we go forth together I make you unhappy. I—I spoil your day. I would have youleave me altogether, kind and honest friend; I am no fit comrade for such as you. I—I begin to understand that I am one of other clay.”
After Mr. James Dodson had turned away his face in order that he might register the enigmatic aside, “I am afraid it is quite true that the poor cove is absolutely balmy,” he said to the pallid figure in a voice of cheerful kindness, “Rot! Rubbish! You are talking through your hat. It is only in fun that I call you Luney. I tell you candidly, my son, that if I could speak Greek like a native, the same as you do, I would see a chap like James Dodson d——d before I would even nod to him in the street.”
“You cannot deceive me, Jimmy,” said William Jordan, with a forlorn smile. “Fate has not made me the equal of you and your friends. I—I b-begin now to understand that I am one of other mould and texture. All these myriads of street-persons whose loud voices are all around me, whose seed is as profuse as the leaves of the forest, have received some high gift from Fate which has been withheld from me. I entreat you to leave me, good friend; such as I can only make you contemptuous; I would have you consort with your kind.”
It was not, however, at the behest of William Jordan that his mentor left him, but in obedience to a mighty roar that arose from twenty thousand parched throats.
“It is a wicket, I’m certain,” cried the philosopher, with an excitement of which few would have suspected him to be capable.
“Who’s out?” he demanded, of the nearest group of spectators.
“Gunn.”
“How?”
“Caught at the wicket.”
“Bowler?”
“Young Cox.”
The philosopher returned to the pallid figure upon the grass, with a demeanour that was curiouslyout of key with the dignity of his natural character.
“Luney, old boy!” he cried, flinging his hat in the air, “Joe Cox has got out the great Gunn.”
Although this thrilling announcement had no significance for him whose head was propped upon a coat against a brick wall, a gentle smile crept across the gaunt features.
“I am sure that must be—must be very nice, Jimmy,” he said, “very nice indeed.”
“Nice!” exclaimed the philosopher, almost fiercely, “what a word to use! To say, Luney, that you set up to be a scholar you do use the rummest lingo. Joe Cox gets out the great Gunn, and you call it ‘nice’! James Dodson don’t pretend to be a scholar, my son, but he knows better than to call Homer ‘nice’!”
William Jordan suffered this rebuke in a melancholy silence. He seemed to understand how thoroughly it was merited.
He lay for the better part of that stifling August afternoon propped up within the shade of the brick wall. In spite of his earnest entreaties Jimmy Dodson could not be induced to forsake him. His mentor would climb up on to one of the neighbouring coigns of vantage, and standing on tiptoe would snatch a few brief, but inexpressibly sweet glimpses of the solemn ceremonial that was being enacted. But ever and anon he would return to see how his stricken companion was getting on.
Rest, and the mellower influences of the late afternoon served to place William Jordan on his legs once more; and although his brain roared as though it contained the waves of the sea, and his limbs ached, and his whole frame shook so violently that it was as if he had been smitten with a palsy, he declined to admit that he was other than restored completely to health and vigour. He was fearful lest he should wreck the plans of his mentor more completely than he had already done;therefore summoning every spark of resolution to his aid, he vowed, even if he were to perish in the effort, that he would accompany his kind friend to the restaurant; and thereafter to the Alcazar Theatre.
He dined in state at a gorgeous house of polite eating, yet it was scant justice he did to the sumptuous fare. Mr. James Dodson was frankly disappointed at this further manifestation of his companion’s shortcomings, yet he dissembled his feelings in an elegant preoccupation with six courses. To the repeated inquiries as to how he felt, Mr. William Jordan returned assurances which, if allowed to pass muster, could not in any sense be said to carry conviction. And at last Mr. Dodson was fain to exclaim, “Look here, my son, if you don’t eat something soon, you can’t possibly go to the Alcazar.” And although Mr. Jordan was not in the least desirous of going to the Alcazar, he made quite suddenly a superhuman attack on a banana in order to save himself the humiliation of being a source of further disappointment to his mentor.
The young man felt himself to be a little more resolute, and a trifle more composed by the time he found himself seated in a balcony of the Alcazar Theatre. In spite of the circumstance that the great garish building was thronged with many hundreds of street-persons, the majority of whom appeared to be emitting most acrid and penetrating fumes from their mouths, the air was much cooler there than it had been anywhere else that day.
The curtain was up, the band was playing, the stage was a blaze of light, and a lady of Amazonian proportions was singing a song, not a word of which was intelligible to William Jordan. But as he lay back in the purple velvet cushion of his fauteuil, reclining almost pleasantly, and looking up at the ceiling, upon which, in crude tints, somewhat obscured by the all-pervading fumes oftobacco, was a not particularly reticent presentment of the Muses. In a circle round these was painted in large and unmistakable letters the following names: Shakespeare, Jonson, Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Tupper, Wordsworth, Macready.
“We can hardly see John Dobbs from here,” said Mr. James Dodson, who reclined by the young man’s side. “He is the third chap playing the fiddle down there in the well, but I can only just catch the top of his head.”
William Jordan continued to recline in reasonable surcease from bodily pangs for several hours. Further, he was able to evade Mr. Dodson’s repeated and pressing invitations to accompany him to the refreshment buffet. And at last, towards the hour of ten, the chief event of the evening, the War and Peace Ballet, was heralded by a fanfare of trumpets and loud crashings of music.
“Now then, my son, sit tight,” said Mr. Dodson. “We are going to see Hermione.”
The curtain rose slowly to reveal Hera, the white-armed goddess. She was clad in dazzling robes of mail and a massive helmet, with ear-pieces dangling about her golden locks. William Jordan gave a gasp of bewilderment; pain and pleasure contending for mastery swelled his veins with intolerable pangs. This was the goddess, this was she. His eerie pilgrimage to the evening party flooded back into his thoughts. Yes, this was the goddess whose hand he had touched. And now, as she stood clothed in her robes of mail and bearing her sceptre, with wonderful lights playing around her majestical calm, she appeared to the young man’s rapt gaze the first of the goddesses, and, therefore, the most beautiful, the most chaste, the most exalted creature, of which fact or fable was cognizant.
“Ain’t she a stunner!” said the voice of Mr. Dodson, breaking upon his reverie. “If I hadn’t decided that all women are alike, as far as a rising man is concerned, I’m hanged if I wouldn’t havea cut at her myself. She is a bit of all right though, Luney. I think we’ll trot round to the stage-door and see her after the show.”
Such words as these, however, were unintelligible to William Jordan. Who shall say to what magic clime his thoughts had been transported! It had been given to him to touch the hand of this divinity, to hear the words that fell from her lips. The subsequent clashings of the loud music, the feasts of garish colour, the undulations of the swaying forms, the bursts of applause, the laughter and gaiety, excited the young man to a fierce happiness that was almost intolerable.
He seemed to lie in a swoon of pleasure on the purple cushions in that vast music-hall. For one brief but enchanted hour he knew strange joys that he had not thought the great world out of doors could offer. There had been a time when he had almost ventured to despise the dreary existences these street-persons led, which he conceived to be so remote from the life of heroic freedom as depicted in the pages of the ancient authors. But how great had been his ignorance! These street-persons, who spoke such a curious language, who ate such queer foods, who performed such odd acts, how reticent they were in regard to those incomparable pleasures to which they could always turn, and how chastely they enjoyed them!
These street-persons, whom he had almost ventured to despise, could go to the sea in the course of an hour, that sea which in its noble reality so far transcended the most wonderful descriptions in the pages of the ancient authors. They had their exquisite landscapes, whose sweet yet accessible grandeur almost made Virgil seem harsh and lacking in dignity; they had their goddesses who walked their streets in a frank admission of their kinship, who rejoiced with them, who sat with them at meat. Yet all these things which were so much rarer, so much holier, so much more explicit than all the wonders the ancient authors could contrive,how calmly they took them! To them they seemed the commonplaces of every-day life.
He had never realized so clearly as now that he lay in these delectable cushions feasting his intense imagination on the peerless and chaste beauty that made his eyes grow dark, that these millions of street-persons, whom, in his incomprehensible blindness, he had come so nearly to despise, were the true Olympians. And he himself, he whom he had presumed to identify with the proudest name in Elysium, was the common and spurious clay who had walked the bountiful earth with a closed heart, a veritable groveller in the gross mud of the dreadful chimera-city, which was no more than the embodiment of his craven fears. He had not understood that the fair mountains, the multitudinous seas, the divine heroes, the ravishing goddesses were all about him; he had not understood that their presence was a fact so common to the experience of all these millions upon millions of true Olympians who were their peers, that they were received without comment and even made to serve their needs.
When the curtain descended again and the great audience began to disperse, and that incomparable hour of existence was at an end, he said as he moved through the doors with his mentor, “I—I am marvelling, Jimmy, how w-wonderfully you have kept the secret of my birth.”
“The secret of your birth, my son,” said Jimmy Dodson, “the secret of your birth! Why, you cuckoo, it is you, not I, who have kept the secret. You never told me, you know, although I think you ought, because my old aunt Tabitha is always questioning me about you every time I see her. The old girl declares you come of a county family.”
“No no, Jimmy,” said the young man, “you must have known from the first that I was not—not of the blood royal.”
“Not of the blood royal, my son!” said Mr.Dodson, with frank astonishment. “Not of the blood royal! Why, what will you be saying next? I don’t mind telling you I should have been mighty surprised had I known you were. I don’t think Octavius would have had you long on that stool, wielding that pot of paste. At the very least he would have had you under a glass case in his private room.”
“I mean, Jimmy,” said the young man, “of the same blood royal as yourself, and all these happy and vigorous and beautiful street-persons—I see now, Jimmy, that they are all beautiful—who are walking forth into their native air.”
“I give you up, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, with an indulgence born of three whiskies and sodas. “I can only say one thing, and that is that a mere vulgar commoner, like James Dodson, is simply incapable of following you at even a respectful distance.”
“But you are not of the vulgar at all, Jimmy; it is I, William Jordan, who have considered myself to be of the kin of heroes, who am the plebeian.”
“Have it as you please, my son,” said the eminent philosopher. “You are altogether beyond me to-night, you are altogether over my head.”
He linked his arm through that of his excited companion.
“Come on, old boy,” he said, “round to the stage-door. We might be able to get a word with Hermione Leigh.”
“Y-you m-mean Hera, the white-armed goddess.”
“Yes, my son, I mean Hera—or Diana—or Joan of Arc—or Jane Cakebread—or Mother Hubbard, or any other bit of skirt.”
“Yes, he is a true Olympian,” muttered the young man, “he is so imperturbable. And I—and I, who would run and shout with the fever in my veins, O pious gods, what misbegotten carrion am I?”
“I never saw the poor chap so absolutely balmy as he is to-night,” said Mr. Dodson, also speaking his thoughts aloud. “The poor cove is not used to a day in the sun.”
At the stage-door they waited patiently for the apparition of the goddess. Various divinities, whose immortal qualities were effectually dissembled by straw hats and tailor-made costumes, came forth and went their way. Some of these had a nod for Mr. Dodson, whose finished manner, general air of friendliness, and openhanded liberality “when he was in brass,” made him a welcome addition to any society which he chose to enter.
“Did you notice the fairy who nodded, my son?” said Mr. Dodson, with an air of pride, which his companion felt to be natural. “That was Vi Nicholson. A bit of mustard is Violet. She will be on at the Hilarity soon.”
“You mean Briseis?”
“Yes, my son, I mean Briseis—or Mother Brownrigg—or Lady Jane Grey. Hullo, here’s Hermione.”
As the divinity approached, with her straw hat tilted with serene indifference over her eyes, and her skirt sweeping the dust of the narrow alley which led to the stage-door, William Jordan clutched the arm of his mentor fiercely. He felt his excitement to be overcoming him.
“Hullo, Jimmy,” said the divinity, with the particular wave of the hand that then happened to be fashionable.
“Is the Bart about?” inquired Mr. Dodson.
“No,” said the divinity. “He has gone to Cowes with his ma.”
“Well, I can’t spring more than stout and oysters,” said Mr. Dodson. “Don’t get many winners these times. Are you taking any?”
“Don’t mind,” said the goddess, with easy condescension.
“Come on then, round the corner.”
“Why,” said the goddess, “if that ain’t our poet, our own live little, tame little pet poet. What will mother say that her boy has been out so late? Been to a naughty place, too.”
“How—how—how do you do?” stammered William Jordan hoarsely, as he removed his hat and bowed low.
“Oh, chuck it!” said the goddess, “or the crowd will think you are doing it for money.”
As they entered the saloon, in which they proposed to partake of supper, Mr. Dodson said to the goddess, “Kid, I’ll lay you a shilling you can’t make the poet tackle stout and oysters.”
“A bet,” said that good-natured divinity.
On the appearance of these robust delicacies, Mr. Dodson laid a dozen oysters, a pint of stout, and a plate of brown bread-and-butter before Mr. William Jordan.
“Now then, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, with a wink at the goddess, “show Hera what you can do.”
A shudder of horror invaded the young man’s frame as he cast a glance of appeal at that stern deity.
“Not a bit of use, Mr. Tennyson,” said the relentless one, “you don’t leave this table until you have taken your whack.”
Although unable to comprehend the precise terms in which the goddess embodied her mandate, the despairing young man understood its purport only too well. In spite, however, of a sustained effort that approximated to real heroism, he had only swallowed half an oyster, two pieces of bread-and-butter, and sipped a small quantity of an ink-coloured beverage, of which the goddess availed herself freely, by the time Mr. James Dodson and the white-armed Hera had concluded their own exertions, which had appeared to afford them immense satisfaction.
Thereupon the goddess conceived it to be her duty to hold each oyster in its turn on a fork andcompel, by the exercise of her own imperious will, “the poet” to swallow these delicacies. When this task had been fulfilled she said, “Now, Alfred, set about that stout as if you meant it, and then I’ll touch Jimmy for a bob.”