By my troth, Cony, if there were a thousand boys, thou would’st spoil them all with taking their parts.
THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE.
AT the age of twenty-four Frederic was earning twenty-five shillings a week as a managing clerk in Mr. Starkey’s office in Hanging Row. He was fairly punctual in the morning, having hired Minna to rout him out of bed at eight o’clock, and he would lounge through the morning until one o’clock when he would disappear for two hours for lunch and coffee and dominoes in a smoky cellar called the Mecca Café. In the afternoon he would work furiously from three to five so as to have something to show for his day, and in the evening he would come to life. A sort of swagger would come into his bearing and a pinkish tinge would come into his pale cheeks and a new light into his blue-green eyes. He had discovered that in winter his light tenor voice could be made to earn about thirty shillings a week, and together with a spotty-faced youth in his office who sang comic songs (with patter) he went up and down our town and district giving “I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby” and “To Anthea” and “There is a Lady Passing By,” and winning much applause which invariably went to his head and made him very drunk. He sang under an assumed name, and no one at home knew what he was doing except Minna, whom he bribed with cigarettes to hold her peace. (She used to lock herself in the bath-room and smoke them out of the window.) When occasionally his mother complained that he was never at home in the evening he used to say that he was rehearsing. At intervals he used to [Pg 51]take part in private theatricals with the spotty-faced youth or other of his friends. The pieces generally given were the farces of Madison Morton, or The Blind Beggars, or some amateur musical play. There was a Gentlemen’s Musical Society which had a little hall in Oswald Street in the centre of our town. Frederic and the spotty-faced youth were members, though the Society had fallen on evil days and its entertainments had become rather broad. For the most part they were smoking-concerts, not unlike the Caves of Harmony that used to be in London, but the air was purified occasionally by a Ladies’ Night, when the lions roared as gently as any sucking dove, and gave innocuous theatrical entertainments to which the members brought their daughters. Frederic became a shining light in the performances, and the members’ daughters fell in love with him and wrote him ridiculous letters of admiration, which he gulped down without blinking.
It was at the Gentlemen’s Concert Hall that he first met James Lawrie, the dramatic critic of our weekly newspaper who wrote under the name of “Snug,” and had some public reputation as a writer of elegant poetry, and an immense fame among journalists and actors and theatrical musicians and painters as a composer of bawdy verses. This man was a Scotsman, a hard drinker, and he was said to know every verse that Robert Burns ever wrote by heart, and also to have many poems that had never been printed. He used to write notices of the little performances in the Gentlemen’s Concert Hall, and, as he could be very scathing, the actors used to fawn upon him and flatter him. The spotty-faced youth introduced him to Frederic one night, and the old man—he was not above fifty-five, but he had always been Old Lawrie—shook him warmly by the hand and said:
“I’m proud to meet your father’s son, sir.”
That rather staggered Frederic, to whom it had never occurred that his father might be admirable. Old Lawrie saw that he was a little taken aback and he scowled and went on:
“Come, come! Not ashamed of your father, are you, [Pg 52]heh? My sons are, but then my sons are respectable. That’s what’s the matter with them, they’re respectable and safe. Safe’s a good word for a gag. You can bring your lips together on it hard.”
“I was at school in France,” replied Frederic with a flush of timidity under his paint. He had just come from the dress-rehearsal on the stage, the play being Still Waters Run Deep.
“If you like France,” said Old Lawrie, “you won’t like this cursed hole. You’ll die in it. I’ve never been to France myself, but I’ve read their books. They pull everything to bits with their brains. Nothing left. They’re a better lot than we are. Got no morals, but who has? We pretend to have ’em. They don’t. Know your Burns? It’s in print, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t speak it:
O Lord! yestreen, Thou ken, wi’ Meg—
Thy pardon I sincerely beg,
O may it ne’er be a livin’ plague
To my dishonour,
An’ I’ll ne’er lift a lawless leg
Again upon her.
Maybe Thou lets the fleshly thorn
Beset thy servant e’en and morn,
Lest he owre high and proud should turn
’Cause he’s sae gifted:
If sae, Thy hand maun e’en be borne,
Until Thou lift it.
But, Lord, remember me and mine
Wi’ mercies temp’ral and divine
That I for fear and grace may shine
Excell’d by nane,
An’ a’ the glory shall be Thine,
Amen, Amen.
Old Lawrie was a fine man as he declaimed the verses. His eyes flashed and his voice came big from his chest, and when he had done he turned to Frederic and said:
“That’s Burns, and out of Shakespeare there isna a healthier spirit in the world. Burns and Shakespeare—both [Pg 53]of ’em poor men and straight from the earth, and ’ll give ye all the cultured dandies in the world for a farthing gift. So you’re playing at play-acting, young man? That’s what nine-tenths the world is for ever doing in its daily life. They ca’ me a disgusting old man, but they should hear what I ca’ them when my tongue’s loosed and my mind’s eyes seeing visions. I live in Hell, but I’ve a Heaven in my brain. . . . Your father’s a good man to go his own way with the dirty Lutherans and the filthy Puritans yelping at his heels. You’ll not be going in for the professional play-acting?”
“No,” said Frederic. “I sing.”
Old Lawrie clapped his old silk hat on his head, took his blackthorn stick in his hand and gave a shout of laughter. He patted Frederic on the shoulder, pursed his lips and hummed through them strangely and vaguely as though he were turning over a morsel of music on his tongue, and then he broke into verse and said:
O youth it is a pretty thing,
A wild rose in the bud.
But it must die with the passing Spring
All trampled in the mud.
We’ve heavy feet in our town,
Rough shod with iron bands.
Virginity goes toppling down
Befouled with loutish hands.
O Spring is smoked in our town,
And life’s a dirty scrum,
The angels weep to see God’s frown
And we make Hell to hum.
He turned away after this impromptu and joined a bibulous-looking individual with white hair and an enormous face, Joshua Yeo, his editor, and the nearest approach to a friend that he had.
Frederic turned to the spotty-faced youth and found him grinning vacantly.
“Quite balmy,” said the spotty-faced youth.
“I think he’s splendid,” returned Frederic, amazed at his own enthusiasm.
[Pg 54]
“Wants a new coat,” said the spotty-faced youth. “He’s worn that ever since I’ve known him, and it’s green with age. He gets fighting roaring blind once a month, and his sons lock him up. I know one of them—Bennett Lawrie—a bee-yooti-ful young man, High-Church and all that. May have been to your governor’s show. The old man’s a Presbyterian as much as he’s anything. He used to be in a bank, same bank that Randolph Caldecott used to be in. But he quarrelled, quarrels with every one.”
“Do you think he made that up—about youth and our town?”
“Comes easy to him. When he’s drunk he talks blank verse. He was run in once, and he harangued the beak like Mark Antony at C?sar’s funeral.”
They were called back to the stage, and Frederic found that he was not nearly so pleased with himself in his part as he had been. He began to think the play foolish and shoddy.
After the rehearsal he had an appointment with the spotty-faced youth to meet two girls on Kersley Moors, a high, dark, treeless common just outside the northern suburbs. From Kersley the road ran into the town past the bishop’s palace, and here nightly young men and maidens foregathered and stalked each other and exchanged mysterious greetings, sometimes stopping and talking, sometimes passing and disappearing down the dark lanes that enclosed the bishop’s huge garden. The spotty-faced youth, who had been impressed by Frederic’s braggadocio of the things that were much better done in France, had introduced him to this exchange and mart of foolish emotions and transitory affections. They went there in search of pleasure and adventure, and they generally found them, though more puny and debased than they were prepared to admit. They went there now only half believing that the girls with whom they had made their assignation would turn up, for they had seemed so superior to the usual quarry. They did not know their names or where they lived. It was enough for them that both the girls were pretty and responsive to such wit as they could produce.
[Pg 55]
The spotty-faced youth’s father was a doctor, and he had three brothers, and on the way he regaled Frederic with tales of their escapades and the narrow squeaks they had had, and the great score it was to have a father who was a man of the world and understood these things. He became so foul-mouthed that Frederic stopped him.
“If you don’t shut up I shall go home.”
“Right ho!” said the spotty-faced youth. “Only I did think you had a better sense of fun. You didn’t seem to mind Old Lawrie talking about Burns and Meg.”
“That’s different. That’s poetry.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Like ‘Lucrece’ and ‘Venus and Adonis.’”
“Well. They’re pretty hot.”
“Oh! Shut up.”
Frederic did not rightly understand why he was so indignant with his companion. He was conscious of a difference between the two things—frank acceptance and fumbling—but he could not put his finger on it, nor could he discover why for the first time in years of folly he should feel a sense of shame. It grew on him as they walked up the Kersley Road and, by the second lamp-post past the bishop’s gate, saw the two young women arm-in-arm pacing slowly in front of them.
“Bags I the tall one?” said the spotty-faced youth.
Before Frederic could reply they had come up with the girls and his companion had greeted them with a tag from the pantomime of the last winter.
“We thought you wouldn’t come,” said the tall girl.
“No fear,” said the spotty-faced youth. “Trust me when I’ve spotted a winner.”
Frederic set the pace and they walked briskly up the road to Kersley Church. He hardly said a word, but his companion kept up a running fire of facetious chatter. At the church the tall girl and Haslam (that was the spotty-faced youth’s name) walked on and disappeared into the darkness of the moors after arranging to meet again at ten. Frederic was left under the lamp-post with the other girl. She was very little and slight, and she was [Pg 56]rather poorly dressed. She looked shyly up at Frederic, and he said:
“You’re very pretty.”
“I like you better than the other one.”
“You see,” said Frederic, “I was at school in France.”
“Oh! France. Are they very wicked in France?”
“It depends what you mean by wicked. No more than they are here.”
“I suppose you won’t tell me your name.”
“I don’t mind,” said Frederic, with a sudden flow of honesty. He had so often been Snooks and Jones and Walker. “It’s Folyat. Fred Folyat.”
“Mine’s Lipsett, Annie Lipsett. It’s a silly name.”
It seemed such a silly name to Frederic that he could find nothing to say, and there came a dead silence between them. She was offended at last and moved away and he had almost lost sight of her in the darkness of the moor when he ran and caught her up. They passed through the posts that filled the entrance to the moor, and Frederic put his arm round her hard little waist. She stopped. He stopped and kissed her and they walked on.
There were lovers (and worse) everywhere, and as they crept slowly forward they heard sighs and silly giggles and voices murmuring. It was very dark and the clouds hung low and the wind was a little cold. They found a place to sit where through trees they could see the lights of the houses. Frederic sat a little away from her and with his cane prodded into the ground.
“I wonder where the others are,” said Annie Lipsett.
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
They were silent for a little, then Frederic remembered old Lawrie, and he pursed up his lips as the old man had done and crooned a little to himself. Then, suddenly, he asked:
“Are you happy?”
He did not wait for her to reply but went on:
“I’m wondering why we mess about with it. What’s the good of it, all? Who are you? I don’t know. Who am I? You don’t know. We live in a beastly dirty [Pg 57]town and we wander about like lost souls. And because we be lost souls we take anything that comes along—you me, I you. Is it good enough? It’s all wrong. But what’s right? . . . It’s fun, I suppose. Fun! . . . But what else is there?”
He took the girl’s hand.
“I tell you what. I’m damned sorry for you.”
“Of course,” said Annie Lipsett. “Of course, you’re a gentleman.”
And Frederic laughed. He told himself that he was an idiot, and that all that was not his affair. He had brought this girl here, just as all the other young men in the place had brought all the other young women, to forget, to escape for a little while, to lose all thought of the beastliness of life down below in the town. It was beastly. Everything was so dirty, and everybody was so poor and so tired. . . . He took the girl in his arms and held her very close and whispered silly talk to her, and soon she was sighing and lying and nestling to him.
They were ten minutes late in their return to the lamp-post by the church, and Haslam and the tall girl were very ill at ease and silent. Annie Lipsett clung to Frederic’s arm and they walked down to the bishop’s palace. There they parted. Frederic kissed her and she clung to him. The tall girl led her away and they vanished into the night.
As they turned their faces homewards Haslam said:
“Gawd! I have had a rummy time. I couldn’t touch her without her starting on the crying game. Sha’n’t see her again.”
“No. I suppose not,” said Frederic.
Haslam looked at him.
“Well. You’re a caution, you are!”
“I’m a bit of a swine, the same as you,” retorted Frederic.