Читать книгу The Blower of Bubbles - Beverley Baxter - Страница 3

I

Snow was falling in Sloane Square, quarreling with rain as it fell. Lamps were gleaming sulkily in Sloane Square, as though they resented being made to work on such a night, and had more than a notion to down tools and go out of business altogether. Motor-cars were passing through Sloane Square, with glaring lights, sliding and skidding like inebriated dragons; and the clattering hoofs of horses drawing vagabond cabs sounded annoyingly loud in the damp-charged air of Sloane Square.

It was Christmas Eve in Sloane Square, and the match-woman, the vender of newspapers, and the impossible road-sweeper were all exacting the largesse of passers-by, who felt that the six-penny generosity of a single night atoned for a year's indifference to their lot. People were wishing each other a merry Christmas in Sloane Square, as they struggled along under ungainly parcels. The muffin-man was doing an enormous trade.

And I looked from my window and prayed for Aladdin's Lamp or the Magic Carpet, that I might place a thousand miles between myself and Sloane Square.

There was a knock at the door.

"Enter the Slave of the Lamp," said I, and the door opened to admit—my landlady, Mrs. Mulvaney.

"Will you be dining in?" she said. Her Irish accent hardly helped the illusion of the all-potent slave.

"And why not?" I asked.

"Ach, nothing, sor. I only thought——"

"An unwomanly thing to do, Mrs. Mulvaney."

"You're afther being a strange one, dining alone on Christmas Eve."

"Then join me, Mrs. Mulvaney."

I swear she blushed, and I felt more than a little envious of the nature which could convert such a vinegary attempt at condescension into a gallantry.

"F'what would I be doing, taking dinner wid a child like you?"

I was twenty-five, but Mrs. Mulvaney looked on all men as equally immature.

"And have you not got no friends?" she went on, but I stopped her with a gesture.

"Thank Heaven—no!" I said. "I am one of intellectuality's hermits. An educated man in London is like the bell-cow of the herd—a thing apart."

"You're a great fool, I'm afther thinking."

"The foolish always damn the wise," I answered, with an attempt at epigrammatic misquotation.

Mrs. Mulvaney heaved a sigh. Its very forcefulness recalled the nautical meaning of the verb.

"You'd be a sight happier outside," she said. "Holy Mary knows I wouldn't be driving you into the streets, but I'm worried you'd get cross wid yourself at home."

To get rid of her, I put on my coat and went out. Perhaps she was right; things would have been intolerable at home. Home! Such a travesty of the word! The sickly lamplight of Sloane Square was preferable.

"Merry Christmas, guv'nor!" said the road-sweeper.

"Merry fiddlesticks!" I growled, and gave him sixpence. I tried to avoid the vender of newspapers, but he spotted my fur collar with the instinct of a mendicant, handing me a paper and his blessing.

"'Appy Christmas, milord!" said he.

I paid him a shilling for his diplomacy.

Thinking to escape the match-woman, I altered my course, but with the intuition of her sex she contrived to put herself directly in my path.

"It's a cauld nicht," she moaned in a rickety, quavering Scottish voice—"a cauld, wintry nicht. Ye'll be haein' a wee box o' matches, aw'm thinkin'!"

I gave her twopence for them, and she shivered with cold as her skinny fingers clutched the coins. I can think of no excuse for my parsimony except the fact that I didn't need the wretched box—matches were not yet a luxury of the very exclusive.

Yes—in all Sloane Square, on that damp and foggy Christmas Eve in the year 1913, I doubt if a more morose, self-satisfied, cynical human being plunged into the mists than I. I was unhappy, and reveled in my very unhappiness. If it had been in my power, I would have sent a cloud of gloom into every home and over every hearth in London. There was something splendid, something classical, in my melancholy; it was like Hamlet's, but greater than Hamlet's, for he knew the reason of his mood, while mine was born of an intangible superiority to my day!

It is not easy, even now, to write of those days. The figure that crosses the screen of memory reminds me of Chevy Slyme—a debt-paying, respectable Chevy Slyme, forsooth!—but just as sulkily swaggering, just as superior, and not quite so human; for Chevy, at least, inspired the friendship of Mr. Tigg.

II

Unconsciously following the bus route, I emerged eventually on Piccadilly, and was jostled and ogled and blessed and cursed with the greatest heartiness. Somewhere near Bond Street I collided heavily with a young man who was trying to negotiate the crowd and at the same time lose nothing of the shop windows' display.

"A thousand devils!" I muttered, recoiling from the impact.

"A thousand pardons!" he said, raising his hat. The graceful lilt of his voice was peculiarly reminiscent; his smooth brow and silky fair hair were both familiar and elusive.

"One moment——" He gazed into my face with a searching look, keeping his hat poised in the air as if the better to concentrate his thoughts. "Not the Pest?" he said.

I nodded, and, if the truth be told, felt not a little pleased at the sound of the old nom d'école earned when I was at Westminster.

"And how," I said, "is the Blower of Bubbles?"

For answer he replaced his hat at a rakish angle and shook my hand with both his for what seemed a full minute, the crowd parting good-naturedly like a wave encircling a rock.

"My dear old Pest," he said, "we shall dine together."

"I'm sorry, but——"

"There is a perfectly vile restaurant half-a-mile from here, that has the best violinist and the worst cook in London."

"My dear chap——"

"Of all the luck! Think of my running into you on Christmas Eve!"

And just then I noticed that we were no longer standing still, but proceeding up a side street, arm-in-arm, while his disengaged hand indicated the passing scene as if it were the most gorgeous bazaar of the Orient. He spoke with extraordinary rapidity, except in uttering certain words, when he would make a slurring pause, as a singer will let a note melt into a pianissimo, then race on again with renewed vigor. It was a fascinating trick of speech, and, added to the subtle inflections of his voice, never failed to startle one into the closest attention.

I turned to him once with some remark on my lips, and noticed that his eyes were dancing with merriment.

"What is it, Pest?" he cried. "Out with it!"

I smiled gloomily; but still it was a smile.

"Why," I said, "aren't the lamps in Sloane Square bright like these?"

He didn't answer. Probably he knew the truth would have hurt.

III

What a hole to dine in on Christmas Eve! Such waiters—such guests—such food—such wine!

I believe the proprietor owned three such establishments, each, in a triumph of irony, called "Arcadia." The very linen of the waiters drooped disconsolately, and the whole place reeked of cabbage and wet umbrellas. My spirits, which had risen momentarily from their classic depths, sank like the sands of an egg-timer.

"My dear fellow," I said, "you can't mean to dine here?"

An oily waiter ambled up to us and wrung his hands in a paroxysm of welcome.

"Your tabil, Meester Norman," he said in some nondescript foreign dialect, "iss ready."

Good heavens! The Blower of Bubbles had even ordered dinner in advance! With the feelings of an unwilling martyr, I followed my friend and his escort past tawdry millinery saleswomen, dining in state with their knights-errant of the haberdashery stores; by a table where a woman was gazing admiringly at a man with a face as expressionless as a pumpkin; through a lane of chattering, laughing, rasping denizens of the London that is neither West End nor East End—of people whose clothes, faces, and voices merged into a positive debauch of mediocrity.

When we were seated and had ordered something from the waiter, I turned to Basil Norman for an explanation.

"What is it?" I asked. "An affair with a seamstress, or are you just looking for 'copy'?"

He laughed and lit a cigarette.

"Pest," he said, "this is a caprice of mine, a tit-bit for my vanity. You would have chosen the 'Trocadero' or the 'Ritz,' with all the tyranny of Olympian and largessed waiters with whom it is impossible to attain the least pretence of equality. I prefer 'Arcadia,' where I am something of a patron saint, and am even consulted by the proprietor."

"You play to humble audiences."

"Quietly, Pest—the proprietor might hear you. He is a very Magog for dignity, I assure you, in spite of his asthma."

"I gather, then, that you are a regular diner here?"

"Hardly that. But I am a little more consistent than most of his patrons. To be candid"—he leaned towards me as if it were a secret of the first magnitude—"it's his cook."

"His what?"

"His cook. Really, I'm afraid he's hardly first class."

"I am certain of it."

"He would have made an admirable medieval Jesuit, but, as a matter of fact, I wonder Steinburg——"

"The proprietor?"

"Yes. I don't know why he keeps him on. He says the fellow has a couple of blind children, and if he were dismissed under a cloud he would have trouble in securing employment. But that's not business. The fellow's an ass, isn't he?"

Whereupon his face beamed with delight, and his gray eyes twinkled like diamonds. My comment on the matter was stifled by the arrival of hors-d'œuvre. I had no idea that one tray could hold such a variety of unpalatable things. At the table next to us a woman laughed boisterously, her shoulders, which were fat and formless, vibrating like blanc-mange.

"Ah!" said Basil Norman; "Klotz has arrived."

He indicated a low platform, where a dingy pianist, pimply of countenance and long of hair, was strumming the barbaric discords that always accompany the tuning of stringed instruments. A violinist, with his back towards us, was strangling his instrument into submission; while a cellist, possessed of enormous eyebrows and a superb immobility of pasty-facial expressionlessness, sat by his cello as though he had been lured there under false pretenses, and had no intention of taking any part in the proceedings—unless forced to do so by a writ of habeas-corpus. A fourth musician, who seemed all shirt and collar, blew fitfully into a flute, as if he realized it was an irrelevant thing, and was trying to rouse it to a sense of responsibility.

"Which," I asked, "is Klotz?"

As I spoke the violinist turned about and caught my host's eye. They both bowed—Norman cordially; the musician, I thought, with restraint. The fellow stood out as a man apart from his accomplices; his high forehead and dreamy eyes were those of an artist, though a receding chin robbed his face of strength. He was the type one sees so often—able to touch, but never grasp, the cup of success.

"Klotz," said Norman, "is superb. He has the touch of the artist about him. His tone is not always good, and sometimes he scratches; but when he is at his best he does big things. So many people can perform at music—just as so many write at words—but Klotz plays with color. His art has all the charm of a day in April. He will caress a phrase according to his mood, like a mother crooning to her child. To know how to hesitate before a note in a melody, as a worshiper hesitates at the entrance to a shrine, is Art, and an Art that cannot be taught.

"It is so with painters, writers, musicians—they must have that sense of color, that instinct that brings each subtle nuance of expression into being."

I began to feel bored.

Suddenly the orchestra became animated and burst into a waltz, one of those ageless, rhythmic compositions that might have been the very first or the very last waltz ever written. Supported by wailing strings and the irrelevant flute, the enjoyment of the diners took on fresh impetus. The lady with the shoulders became a vibrating obbligato. The pumpkin-faced man beamed fatuous delight, an electric light behind him giving the odd effect that he was illuminated inside like a Hallow-e'en figure. A girl, who might have been pretty if she hadn't rouged, took a puff from her toilet-case and powdered her nose. She felt that the evening was commencing. Over the whole scene my melancholy brooded as a ghostly presence. To me it seemed like the dominant seventh in a chord of surfeiting commonplaceness; once it was heard, the whole pitch of the evening would alter to another key.

Fortunately the dominant seventh remained unheard.

The waltz stopped, and we turned our undivided attention to dinner.

"Klotz," said my host, pouring me a glass of wine, "should have made a mark, but——"

"Damn Klotz!"

"That has been done, Pest. The Bricklayers' Union, or something equally esthetic, took exception to him for one reason or another, and prevailed upon its sister-cabal to debar him from the big orchestras. To offend your Union, dear boy, is to accomplish the total eclipse of your future. Even genius to-day is subject to regulations. Klotz is in a worse position than a clerk with a Board School education trying to secure employment in a London bank."

"Confound it!" I said, "there must be some spheres reserved for gentlemen."

His twinkling eyes steadied, and a dreamy look crept into them. "Pest," he murmured, "some day England is going to thank God for the gentlemen—who were educated at Board Schools. Listen!—the cellist is playing Saint-Saëns."

Dinner—or the mess of foodstuffs dignified by the name—was almost finished when Klotz, the violinist, started one of the rare melodies which Wagner permitted himself—the Song to the Evening Star.

It was being beautifully played—even I would have admitted that—but I could not account for the troubled look that crept into my companion's face, driving the gayety and the whimsicality from it as a cloud obscures the sunlight.

"Klotz," he said anxiously, "is in great sorrow."

"How the deuce," I muttered, with a feeling of creepiness stealing over me, "can you tell that? Do you read it in his face?"

He shook his head. "Listen!" he said; "can't you hear it? Can't you feel the tears in it?"

And in spite of myself I remained silent, held irresistibly by the double fascination of the German's artistry and the sense of mystery engendered by Norman. The last sob of the G string quivered to its finish. The crowd applauded perfunctorily, then applied themselves to the more essential things of life—food, wine and noise.

Rousing myself from the reverie into which I had fallen, I turned to Norman, and found his chair vacated. I started. He had reached the platform, and was talking earnestly to the violinist. Half-contemptuous and half-interested, I watched the pantomime as they talked. Norman's hands were emphasizing some point, and every gesture was a pleasure to the eye; the musician was protesting, but with steadily abating determination. Then the scene came to a climax, and the German disappeared.

Holding the violin in his arms, Basil Norman mounted the platform, the fingers of his left hand picking quiet, pizzicato notes from the strings.

"My friends——" His voice traveled like sound on the ocean at twilight; the room subsided into silence, and diners craned their necks to see him. The woman with the shoulders brought them to a standstill, like an electric fan that had lost its current.

"My friends"—what a charming voice the fellow had!—"I do not want to bring a note of sorrow into your happiness. You are here, like my companion and myself, for enjoyment; but Herr Klotz … his wife is very ill; she is perhaps dying; and, my friends, it is very hard that he should play while his wife is dying … on Christmas Eve … in a strange country. You are English, and I know you are kind. I have sent him home, and I promised that I would take his place, as well as I can take the place of such an artist. For you who work so hard, it is not fair to spoil your happiness on this of all nights—but you will forgive me? Good!"

And his face had a whimsical, tender look.

A murmur of sympathy rose from the crowd, but died away as he raised the violin in his hands and brought from it a tone that breathed over them like a benediction. It was Gounod's "Ave Maria," and the pianist's fingers were mothering the keys as they had not done since his ambition evaporated like a cloud on a summer day.

It was exquisite—haunting. It was a prayer to Mary, but a prayer sung in a field of daisies and violets. There was sorrow in it, but it was the grief of a girl over a shattered dream. It was mature artistry, yet was born of sunshine and throbbed with the primrose sweetness of youth. It touched one like the face of a beautiful child.

Still caressing the violin, he repeated the "Ave Maria," whistling a unison. With almost any one else it would have been commonplace; with him it was a sound more pleasing than any flute, and only accentuated his sense of emancipation from the thrall of years. He played "Still wie die Nacht," "Old King Wenceslaus," "Meditation" from Thaïs, "Intermezzo" of Mascagni; and whatever he did, or however hackneyed the piece, he surrounded it with a joyousness that trembled on the brink of tears.

I looked at my watch; it was nearly midnight, and the evening so dreaded was almost at a close. He had put down his violin with a gesture of finality, when the prolonged outburst of applause changed his decision, and, with another of those rare smiles, he took the instrument once more.

Maxwellton's braes are bonnie

Where early fa's the dew,

And it's there that Annie Laurie

Gi'ed me her promise true. …

The violin seemed to speak the words; and I'll swear there wasn't a woman in the place who wasn't recalling the sweet innocence of her first love. He had hardly finished, when the man with the face like a pumpkin jumped to his feet, and I rubbed my eyes.

The fellow had changed. His face had expression. Confound it! there was something rather splendid about his features—a kindliness—a——

"Young feller, m'lad," he was saying, "I knows I speaks for hevery one when I says we ain't 'eard music like that there since we was knee-'igh to a grass'opper, and I knows you won't take it hamiss if we was to pass the 'at and——"

I held my breath. What would the Blower of Bubbles say?

"You're a brick, sir!" His voice was a mellow contrast to the other's. "My friends, this gentleman has suggested that we pass the hat for our poor friend Klotz."

"I didn't neither," protested the benefactor. "Leastways——"

But the woman of the shoulders cut him short by placing two shillings beside him. It was tactful of her, a kindly thing to do, and again I was amazed. There was a womanly, motherly look about her as she turned away, and her eyes were radiant like stars in a mist.

I think I gave ten bob—it must have been a considerable amount, for the girl who would have been pretty if she hadn't rouged looked straight into my eyes and said something that sounded like a blessing. I hope it was; she made me think of a little sister I once had.

And then we were walking together again in the street, and the crowds were thinner than before. I cannot remember what we talked of, but I know I said to him, "Where did you learn to play like that?"

And he answered, "My dear old boy, music must be loved, not learned."

Then we were in Sloane Square, at my flat, and I was thanking him, or he was thanking me—I forget which; and he promised to call at noon next day to take me to Klotz's home. … And the lamps in Sloane Square seemed duller than before.

Selfishness does not die in an hour, but the bachelor who looked from his window that night was a different man from the one who had spoken to Mrs. Mulvaney. He was thinking … and much is accomplished in itself when a man is made to think.

A distant clock struck one.

IV

I have never known any one to change so little with the cycle of years as Basil Norman. When he came to Westminster, at the age of twelve, he had an easy nonchalance, a delightful insouciance, that never left him. He went from form to form, trod the stone-flagged passages as others did; but the youth of seventeen that left Westminster bore the same smiling, detached personality as when he entered. The atmosphere of tradition interested but did not drug him; the Elizabethan pancake impressed him less than did a contemporary Edwardian soap-bubble.

Conscientious form-masters recognized his extraordinary abilities, and gave him the benefit of well-worded and impressive homilies on achievement. Sometimes for effect they quoted Latin. Norman would counter with a "Greek remark." He never studied, but more than one scholar owed success to the eleventh-hour coaching of Basil Norman. Learning, like everything else, came to him as a needle to a magnet.

With a curious air of detachment he watched the panorama of schoolboy life, noticing with a discerning eye the various strata upon which public-school morality is founded, assigning the relative importance of scholarship and cricket, and nodding knowingly as the process of standardization brought similarity of speech, accent, thought, and vocabulary to all his fellows.

He was like a Puck who had never been really young, but who refused to become a day older.

For a few weeks he played cricket, but without reverence. During a match he kept up (sotto voce, of course) a running commentary of philosophy which, according to our ethics, was vulgar. I shudder to think what he would have done if Westminster had adopted baseball.

On one occasion the captain of the eleven took upon himself to point out to Basil Norman the error of his ways. The worthy demigod deplored Norman's habit of lying on the grass during practice and inventing couplets on the various members of the team. The captain also said that, providing he would take the game seriously, there was a future for him as a cricketer. Whereupon Norman, from his recumbent position, misquoted most of the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, unblushingly attributing Hamlet's indecision towards living to his doubts of himself as a cricketer. When he finished he rose to his feet, and our comments were frozen at the sight of his face.

His cheeks had a ghastly pallor and his eyes were brilliant, but with a fixed, glaring intensity. And as we looked his expression changed—the color returned with a glow of warmth to his skin, and his eyes were gray and humorous. Being boys, we forgot about it as quickly as it had happened.

The next Saturday we played Charterhouse, and though the score was heavily against us, Norman gave the finest exhibition of batting I have seen in public-school cricket, scoring a century and winning the match for us. He was frail but lithe, and with an air of aplomb batted the offerings of Charterhouse to all points of the compass. At the finish of the game we crowded around him, but he smiled a little wearily, and shook his head.

"I am finished with cricket," he said.

Bewilderment, then anathema, broke like a thunder-shower upon the head of Basil Norman. We pleaded; we argued; we threatened; then we used language which possessed the merit of forcefulness and frankness. We called him a swine, a rotter, a skunk, and an absolute cad. Some one ventured the opinion that he was a perfect stink, and we all stood about him like the Klu Klux Klan trying a negro malefactor.

"Gentlemen," he said—and there was a delightful touch of irony in the word—"you have come to bury, not to praise, me; yet, unlike Cæsar, I am not ambitious."

"Swine!" said Smith tertius (or was it quartus?).

"In spite of the witty comment of me learned friend," said Norman, after the manner of the leading counsel of the day, "I have always held the opinion that life is a thing to be sipped, not drunk. I have played cricket—veni, vidi, I scored a century! I would not spoil me appetite, milords, by overgorging."

"Your conduct," said Grubbs, the captain, "is rotten. It shows that you don't give a fig for the honor of the school. If you want to be a pig, you can wear the cap of one." (We all knew what he meant, and admired him frightfully for his venture into the quagmire of metaphor.) "We will send you to Coventry until you come to your senses."

The culprit bowed airily.

"You will lose much more by my silence than I by yours," he said—and it takes considerable courage to make such a statement to a tribunal of schoolboys.

If Norman suffered from our aloofness, he took it with the same nonchalance as he had taken our plaudits. Oddly enough, he had no intimate friends, and all of us, partly out of resentment against his pose of onlooker, and more from the love of torture which links the schoolboy to the savage, performed our duty of silent punishment with a zeal which deserved a better inspiration. We forgot how he had made friends with the misfits whose square personalities were being drawn through the round hole of public-school life. Little chaps he had taken in hand on arrival when they wanted to weep for loneliness turned from him as if he held contagion. All the sensitive, shrinking ones about whom he had thrown his cloak of vivacity, and who were now grown bold and self-reliant, let him pass from the Little Dean's Yard to his house and through the ancient passages, a lonely debonair figure that always smiled. … And no one spoke to him. I, whom he had named "The Pest," thus turning my naturally perverse sulkiness into a subject of jest and good-humor, took a special delight in watching the man who had been sentenced by his peers to solitude in the midst of a crowd.

His peers? … Was it Smith tertius (or quartus) who used the word "swine"?

Two weeks had passed, and we were to play Winchester a decisive match on our grounds, which, as land near the cathedral is rather difficult to obtain, are almost a mile from the school.

The stage was set. Youthful scholars of ten and twelve walked in their gowns, their brows knit with thought, their eyes blinking from over-study. Little chaps struggled under the responsibility of silk toppers, and conversed solemnly on the deterioration of the tuck-shop; and the Olympian creature who was the head-boy of the school lounged outside the scoring-booth as if he were "fed up" with nectar, and would like some brown October ale for a change—a pose much favored by the best people in England. There was an excellent audience of the secondary sex, composed of proud mothers and apologetic sisters, whose presence was necessitating a sort of Jekyll and Hyde attitude on the part of their schoolboy relatives, who were endeavoring to be polite to their "people" and at the same time give the impression to their confrères that the women were mere acquaintances—accidental dinner partners, as it were.

No schoolboy of twelve likes to admit to a mother.

Surrounding the field there is a high iron fence, through the railings of which, or on top, a motley collection of gamins cheer on their wealthier brethren of the silk hats. Naturally no notice is taken of these uninvited guests. It is quite all right for them to shout for Westminster if it gives them any pleasure, but what has a silk hat in common with a red kerchief and a slouch-cap?

On the day of the match they seemed in larger numbers than usual, and the top of the fence was covered with urchins, who retained their position of vantage as though the law of gravitation were no concern of theirs, keeping up a shrill chorus as Winchester went out for a moderate score.

With the odds all in our favor we went in to bat, Grubbs, the captain, and I leading off. The first ball was wide, but to feel the play of my muscles I took a perfunctory swing at it with my bat. The effect was extraordinary. … The crowd of Cockney youngsters raised a volume of sound as if my bat had been a baton and they a chorus.

"Gow it, Pest!" "That's the style, Gloomy!" "Troy t' other hend, Bluntnose!" "Gee, he's got odd socks on!" "Nah then, Spiderlegs!" (The blunt nose and the legs I admit to, but the accusation of odd socks was pure malice.)

The next ball, with no twist at all, bowled me clean, and I walked off the field to the tune of high-pitched shrieks of delight, and with a face that flushed a dark red. My place was taken by Smith tertius (or quartus), whose appearance caused an even greater furore than mine.

"'Ooray for Bones!" greeted the lanky youth as he emerged—"'im as his the loife of the school!" (He was the most morose of boys.) "'I, Bones, 'oo did you crib from this time, eh?" (A subtle allusion to an ancient offense which had almost earned him expulsion.)

The first ball came for Smith with an inviting hop. He watched it—went to strike at it—changed his mind—reconsidered his decision, and swung at the air as the ball passed over the bails by an inch, a feat which seemed to gratify our enemies on the fence immensely.

"Nah then, Bones, non o' that there contortionizing!" "'It the ball, Bones; don't miss it!"

And he did—a miserable little pop into the air; the chap in the slips didn't have to move a foot to gather it in.

Mr. Smith then added his proof that Shakespeare was right when he said in this world we have our exits and our entrances.

The next six batters went out for a score of eleven, bowled clean by the most intimate volume of abusive chaff ever endured by a cricket team. Skeletons were not only being taken from their closets, but paraded brazenly before the eyes of the world. The secret history of Westminster was screamed from the fence-tops.

It was after the loss of our eighth wicket that Grubbs and I, who had stolen round by the street, stalked and discovered their ringleader.

"That's him," said the captain hoarsely—the situation was too tense to permit of the niceties of grammar. I followed the line of his accusing finger—and gasped. There was no mistaking those gray twinkling eyes, although they were almost hidden behind a huge bandage, presumably for mumps. He was dressed in a rough coster suit, with a villainous cap on one side of his head and a bandit's red kerchief about his neck.

"It is him," I said dramatically.

"I thought so," said Grubbs, and cleared his throat. "Norman," he cried. "Kid—Norman."

The young rascal, who was sitting on top of a post, more like a Puck than ever, swiveled about and solemnly winked one eye. "Do I understand that the ban of silence is lifted?" he said from behind the mumps bandage.

Grubbs considered, and then made a tactful and instantaneous decision. (Small wonder that a few years later he was entrusted with a war mission to Washington, of the utmost delicacy.)

"You've had your revenge," he said, "and the joke is on us. Call your mob off, will you?"

"You're quite sure you wouldn't like us to encourage the remainder for a change?"

"Quite sure."

"So be it, my captain."

He blew a whistle through his fingers, and in a moment the fence was denuded of mortals like a tree smitten by an autumn gale. The Blower of Bubbles removed his bandage, and presented a stocky youth with three shillings.

"Buy sweets for the crowd," he said, "and mind—play fair."

"Right you har', guv'nor"; and the mob disappeared. And thus ended the riot of the slouch-cap against the silk hat. To-day, if you are passing the field during a match, you will see that the gamins are still there, but they shout only for Westminster.

We were just turning away, when Basil Norman laid his hand on Grubbs's forearm, as a girl might do, and his eyes had a wistful look.

"Before I change into more fitting garb," he said airily, then paused. … My breathing seemed to stop at the sight—his face had gone suddenly white, and his eyes were glazed.

"Grubbs!" he cried, and his voice sounded hollow. "Don't you understand? … Oh, you damned fool, can't you see it's my heart?"

V

After Westminster I went to Cambridge, and succeeded in cultivating the Oxford manner, by which all Cambridge men are known. When I emerged from there I offered myself to the highest bidder (a sudden bankruptcy of my father having made an occupation essential).

A London newspaper was the fortunate winner in the mad race for my services, though it would have been difficult for it to lose, as there was but one entry.

I became a writer of power—not quite so much so as the gentleman to-day who wields his pen as he would a bludgeon, and succeeds in writing a powerful article each week; but still I was a writer of strength. I damned the present, doubted the future, and deplored the past. I became an honored member of the group of London writers whose entire genius is exhausted in criticism. I secured a bowing acquaintance with Bernard Shaw, and always spoke of H. G. Wells as Mr. Wells. It was obvious to me that to achieve literary success in England one must abuse England—but especially any one who tried to change her.

Some of my confrères sided with Bernard Shaw and attacked middle-class morality and patriotism. Mr. Arnold Bennett had a certain following, though we agreed that his Five Towns stories were not really critical, but merely observant. We did not know at the time that he had it in him to write The Pretty Lady, which was to be neither. For myself, I was drawn towards Mr. Wells, and hit at everything like a blindfolded pugilist.

We agreed with Granville Barker that Irving had reduced the value of Shakespeare by over-staging; and we endorsed the opinion of a dramatic critic, known to the public as "Jingle," who said that Shakespeare's lines were often worthy of an Oxford undergraduate.

For pastime we abused Lord Roberts as a monomaniac, and Winston Churchill as a kleptomaniac with a passion for stealing the thunder of others. We even argued that the Church had lost its grip, and wrote eloquently on the value of doubt. With admirable esprit de corps we refrained from attacking the public-school system, though we realized that one could always get a hearing by so doing.

And every year those schools were turning out their thousands and the universities their hundreds; every year our number was strengthened by well-routined brains that took to destructive criticism like a German to barbarity.

Somebody was writing our puerile dramas; some one was producing the trash which flooded our book-stalls; some brain was conceiving the tawdry stuff which was educating the millions in the cinemas. … But we thanked Heaven that we were not as other men. We were England's educated class. For the education of England fails to teach one that a country's art and literature are as vital to the nation as speech to the individual.

I took a flat in Sloane Square and read Russian novels. Whenever I discovered a new Russian author, I quoted him as if I had known him all my life; it used to pain me to find how unrecognized he was by my fellows. I attended the opera only on Russian nights, and I became a devotee of the Russian dancers. I used to quote Russian in my paper, and brought down the curse of a hundred typesetters upon my head.

I think every writer has his Russian period.

Once or twice I heard of Basil Norman, though our paths did not cross. Some one claimed that Norman could have been a great violinist, if—— Another told me that Punch had published a delicate little sonnet of his that had the quality of tears about it. There was no question (he said), if—— An artist I met had painted one landscape that defied criticism—even ours—and I spoke of the exquisite coloring and detail of the foreground.

"I could not have done that," he said, "but for Basil Norman, who brooded over me like an inspiration. The work is mine, but the conception his. If——"

Yet the world did not know of his existence. He remained a detached personality, treading lightly where sorrow was, singing his song of the sunlight wherever ears had become dulled with discouragement. A fantastic, gentle, twinkling-eyed prince in a kingdom of butterflies and violets. Try as I would, I could not refrain from contrasting my life of literary vivisection with his primrose youth that seemed eternal, springing from a genuine joy in living, a youth that was as perfect as a melody of Chopin's.

"The happiest of Christmases, old Pest!"

The subject of my thoughts was standing before me, and the bells were clamoring exultantly on the frosty air.

I gripped his hand, and something in his eyes told me the truth. … He had come for me because I was lonely and needed him.

And the message of the bells took on a new meaning.

VI

We walked into the brisk, vibrating sunshine of a glorious Christmas morning. He had taken my arm, and was chatting gayly on everything from "cabbages to kings." Sometimes his nostrils dilated, and he would look up as if he were actually drinking in the ozone of the air; and he seemed younger than ever, with a joyousness born of sheer intoxication with life. We walked for a mile, and all the time his mood was as happy and stimulating as the sunshine sparkling in the December air.

Turning down a street, we passed a church from which the worshipers were emerging, and a mother with two sons on the brink of manhood held our attention for a moment. The lads had a gentleness of feature, an unconscious grace that sometimes is the attribute of adolescence, and their mother walked between them, proudly—they were her masterpieces. For some time Norman chatted amiably, but I could see that a pensive shadow was steadily creeping over the brilliancy of his spirits.

"They tell me," he said in subdued tones, breaking suddenly from the topic in hand, "that both my parents hoped for a girl when I was born. And sometimes I have thought that there is a little of the feminine in my nature. I love the pretty things of life, and there are times when I have an unmistakable sense of intuition."

I waited silently, but it was some moments before he resumed.

"Somewhere ahead," he said dreamily, "in months or years to come, I see a vision of a woman in black, coming from church alone, and her head is bowed with grief——" He passed his hand over his brow with a weary, querulous movement, and shadows appeared beneath his eyes. "Where—where are the two sons? Not dead?"

He smiled wistfully and replaced his hand in my arm.

"The picture we saw just now," he said, "is my conception of England—the real England of noble mothers and noble sons. But something tells me that the woman in black is England too, mourning for her sons who will never—come back."

With an effort he squared his shoulders and forced a laugh from his lips.

"Pest!" he cried, "I should be burned as a witch. Heigho! it's a pretty go when one has to turn lugubrious on a Christmas morning. Cheer us up, Pest. Tell me about yourself—whom you are in love with, and your dreams for the days to come. Let's blow bubbles—shall we?—and see what fresh beauties we can find in this charming adventure called life!"

And I laughed with him, exchanging philosophies light as air; but the chimes that rang out all about us had still another meaning. There was a warning in the pealing discords that broke on the quiet air; there was a requiem in the notes that lingered like an echo, then murmured ominously to silence.

I shivered as though I had a chill, for something of Norman's spirit had seized me, and I felt that both the warning and the requiem were—for England.

VII

At the head of a stairway which one reached by going through a tobacconist's, Herr Klotz greeted us with guttural cordiality. We asked after his wife, and were told that she was a little better, though very weak, and had insisted upon seeing her guests before they left, if they would be so kind as to visit the sickroom.

On the contents of an enormous hamper sent from "Arcadia" (and, I am certain, paid for by Norman) the German and the two of us lunched with all the bonhomie of bohemians. Basil Norman was in the best of spirits, so much so, in fact, that Klotz was constantly overcome with laughter, and on three occasions was forced to rush away to acquaint his wife "mit der amuzing veet of zee altogedderillustrious Herr Norman."

By no means least in importance, Klotz's little son of about four years of age sat in a high chair and chuckled knowingly whenever he deemed the humor had reached a necessary climax.

Though he was not unlike his father in the shape of his head, his chin did not recede, and one could only assume the mother had supplied the qualities lacking in the father. Never for a moment did the child lose interest in the proceedings; he followed throughout the facial expression and the play of conversation of his elders. His face interested me so intensely that I found myself glancing at him whenever his interest in the others gave me a chance; there was so much of promise and heredity about him.

"And what," I said, during a momentary lull in the merriment, "is Master Siegfried to become?" We had learned his name a moment before.

"Siegfried," said his father, "tell zee gentlemens vot you to be already intend."

The little chap smiled, but without self-consciousness. "A conducthtor," he lisped, "like Herr Nikith."

Klotz crossed his hands upon his ample waistcoat and beamed paternally.

"Your baton bring," he said, "und der score Tristan."

With profuse apologies for this display of juvenile precocity, the violinist hurried after the boy, and reëntered a moment later with his violin and a music-stand, which he proceeded to set up.

Siegfried followed close on his heels with the full orchestral score of the last act of Tristan and Isolde, which almost obscured him from sight. Placing it on the stand, he retired in a dignified manner; and Herr Klotz, taking a chair, seated himself at the left of the stand, and proceeded to tune his fiddle to pitch, varying the proceedings with imitations of French-horns, vagrant clarionets, and irresponsible trombones in the mélange of discord which always precedes the entrance of the conductor. Norman, who had been enjoying the scene to the full, suddenly rose to his feet.

"Herr Klotz," he said sternly, "I protest."

The tuning ceased, and the violinist looked anxiously at his guest. "You do not like dis, zumtimes?" he faltered.

"I object," cried Basil, "to being left out.—Herr Siegfried!" He raised his voice. "Herr Siegfried!"

The little chap walked solemnly in, a baton in his hand. "Yeth?" he said.

"Mein Herr, my friend and myself desire to join your orchestra."

The youthful conductor considered, ruminatingly. "You blay goot?" he said.

"Wonderfully. I was comb-and-tissue-paper-player in the Cascade Steam Laundry Orchestra, and my friend——"

"He ith goot alzo?"

"Pest, speak for yourself."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Far be it from me to brag," I said, rather lamely, "but I was first violinist to His Majesty the King of Diddle-doodledums."

"Ah, yes," cried Norman; "and you were dismissed because of your unfortunate habit of playing an octave flat." He leaned over and put his lips to Siegfried's ear. "Let him play the drums," he said in a stage whisper.

Amidst roars of delight from the older Klotz, the youngster left the room, and returned in a minute's time, carrying an immense tin dishpan and a broken broom-handle, which musical impedimenta he entrusted to my tender mercies, and then sedately stalked from the scene once more. With mixed emotions I carried my pan and stick over to the extreme right, and placed a chair beneath the spot where the stage-box would be, calmly surveying the assumed audience with that look of waggish melancholy one associates with gentlemen of the drums. Norman, whom Klotz had armed with the combined ingredients of his instrument, placed a chair halfway between the conductor's stand and myself, and together we joined Herr Klotz in a two-minutes' orgy of discordant preparation. With a desire to increase the variety of my percussion effects, I conscripted an extra chair into service, placed it back towards me, and prepared to use my cane as an auxiliary drumstick.

By common consent we achieved a moment's unanimity of silence, which was seized by Herr Siegfried as the auspicious moment for his entrance. Without the least loss of dignity he clambered onto his chair, as we applauded, perfunctorily, by hammering our alleged music-stands with non-existent bows; and, turning to the audience, he bowed with the restraint of genius—a feat of condescension which appeared to delight the throng hugely, for he was constrained to turn about and acknowledge their plaudits a second time before they would allow him to proceed.

As drummer I assumed an air of morose boredom.

The noise of the audience having subsided, the conductor opened his score and nodded to his Concertmeister, Herr Klotz, who carefully found the required place in the orchestration.

"Blay der 'Liebestod' music," said he in his most professional manner to us. We nodded knowingly, and found the required part in the last act of our scores, after turning over a vast number of visionary pages.

"Do we begin at the beginning?" asked Norman.

"Yes," I answered, "and leave off at the end." After which sally I laughed immoderately, and began to understand the instinct which causes a humorist to enjoy his own wit more than any other's.

A rap on the stand brought my mirth to a close. Both arms were extended in the air—a last look at both sides of the orchestra (there must have been a hundred of us)—the left hand slowly poised to indicate "piano"—the right hand gently raised—and then the strings were brought into action. I had intended, as another excellent jest, to give a tremendous crash on the pan at the start, so as to bring down the leader's wrath, but something in the little chap's attitude stopped me. This was not play to him—it was real; and, to my amazement, it seemed no less vivid to my fellow-burlesquers. Herr Klotz was playing the chromatic development of the opening as if it had been Covent Garden and the real Nikisch conducting. The Blower of Bubbles was giving one more proof of his amazing versatility. In some manner he was imitating a cello, and he knew the music. Where he had learned it one could only conjecture—but when did he learn anything?

Silently I watched the serio-comic development. The boy was conducting remarkably, with unerring artistry, sustaining the exact Wagnerian tempi, and, with little exaggeration, indicating the crescendo and diminuendo which colors all the great master's composition. How much of it he knew or whether he was following his father's violin I could not make out, but his earnestness fascinated me; and suddenly his eyes turned towards mine. I gripped the broom-handle—but no, it was merely a warning that my time was imminent. I think my breath came short as I waited. Then his eyes sought mine once more, and inclining towards me, his baton called for the drums. It was I he was conducting, and no one else! And I vibrated the broom-handle against the dish-pan, only to stop instantaneously as his baton moved to subtler instruments. He never failed to warn me with that preliminary glance, and when the magic wand followed I gave him all I had. The little beggar was a hypnotist.

Towards the climax I could have sworn the whole orchestra was there. Klotz was playing superbly, and Norman was roaming from one instrument to the other with a remarkable combination of accuracy and imitative versatility. As for me, I supplied dynamic effects that would have satisfied even the great Beethoven, who once asked for guns.

Then it was over.

Herr Siegfried bowed twice to the audience, indicated his entire orchestra with an all-embracing wave of the baton, and ended by solemnly shaking hands with his father, who stood up to accept the honor. After that, with a self-conscious wriggle, he became the boy once more, and removed his spell from us. With roars of delight we gathered about him, making a circle by joining hands, and dancing extempore, we sang a chorus consisting of constant repetitions of "Hilee-hilo! Hilee-hilo!" That may not be the correct spelling, but then we were singing, not writing it—which is one advantage music has over literature.

Before we went, Herr Klotz took us into the room where his wife lay ill, and by her eyes—for she was too weak to speak—she thanked us for our part in making the day a festival one for their lonely little household. With an instinctive gentleness that a woman might have shown, Norman spoke of the things she wanted to hear about: how her husband had been missed at the restaurant, of the desire of every one to make a little present to them, of the great future that lay before their son, and of the genius of Herr Klotz that would some day be recognized. With the cheeriest of good-byes, he lightly touched her shoulder with his hand and said he knew she would soon be well again.

He lied. In half of what he said he lied. He was blowing bubbles that the woman stricken with fever might see in them some little compensation for her life of drudgery.

With the guttural good wishes of Herr Klotz still in our ears (we had pledged eternal friendship in three foaming mugs of beer), we sought the street, to find that dusk was settling over the city. For some moments neither spoke, but feeling that perhaps I had descended too abruptly from my pedestal, I cleared my throat and ventured on a remark.

"A decent fellow," I said patronizingly, and felt my dignity reasserting myself; but Norman failed to hear me. He was lost in some memory. Now that I look back, I wonder was it the picture of the sick woman he saw or his vision of the mother with her two sons; or, with his gift of intuition, could he see, less than a year ahead, Klotz, in a German soldier's uniform, marching through Belgium with an army of lust and rapine, gorged like gluttonous, venomous beasts?

I wonder.

VIII

It was from an aunt of mine that I first heard of Norman's attachment to Lilias Oxley.

Whenever I received a letter from my relative, I had first to realize that its mission was to educate, not to entertain. She was a woman of strong ideas, and, as my mother died very early in my life, she seldom lost an opportunity of impressing a moral—like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. In her correspondence, and to a large extent in her conversation, my aunt was given to dashes, underlines, and exclamation-marks. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that she was a single woman.

I received the letter two months after Christmas; it was dated from the Beacon at Hindhead.