Читать книгу Unchanging Quest - Philip Gibbs - Страница 4

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AUL and Katherine came to my house sometimes to tea and supper, and my family approved of them. My sister Clare approved especially of Paul, who made her laugh hysterically because of what she called his “funny ways,” and shocked her dreadfully and delightfully by his free-and-easy speech as a medical student at Bart’s. My father, who always had a quick eye for a pretty face, became devoted to Katherine, and treated her with a chivalrous and rather pompous deference which secretly amused her, as I could see by her humorous lips.

That winter we arranged some private theatricals, and Katherine, protesting her lack of talent, consented to play the chief part in a romantic drama I had written for the purpose. Paul wanted to play the funny man, for which he was perfectly suited, and, as it was bad form, I thought, to act my own hero, I accepted Paul’s suggestion that his friend, Hugh Evesham, was just the man for the part, being a good-looking fellow and a first-class amateur with an Oxford reputation. He arranged to bring him up to Romilly Hall one night, so that Katherine and I could look him over.

It was at the beginning on one of those social evenings that Paul arrived with his friend. They had been to dinner together, and I could see that Paul had drunk not wisely but too well. He was a little unsteady on his legs, and laughed noisily at the door before bringing in Hugh Evesham—Lord Evesham’s son and heir—who was to play my hero. Slightly older than Paul, this young man was astoundingly good-looking, with blue eyes and a little fair moustache, and a delicate, good-natured mouth. I could not deny that he was exactly suited to the part suggested for him, though I felt an instant pang of jealousy. He was everything that I should have liked to be, so fine and tall and elegant, so easy and confident as he came across the room to be introduced to Katherine.

It seemed that Paul had taken a box at the Empire for a “leg show,” as he called it, vulgarly, and he wanted Katherine and me to “chuck the menagerie”—his name for Romilly Hall—and join them in a merry evening. I was keen to go, especially if Katherine would come, but she shook her head, and protested that England expected every girl to do her duty. She was also alarmed, though amused, by her brother’s flushed face, suppressed laughter, and noisy whisperings during an address on “the Religious Beliefs of Primitive Races” by a Cambridge don.

“Better go to bed, Paul,” she said, raising a reproving finger. “You’re a disgrace to the family.”

“We shall be horribly disappointed if you don’t come,” said young Evesham in a gallant way. “Besides, it’s wasting a good box.”

“Hush!” said a young man, listening to the address on the religions of primitive races.

Paul turned on him savagely, and spoke above a whisper.

“We decline to be hushed. I regard all this flapdoodle as a degradation of the human intellect, utterly unscientific, and pandering to superstition.” He had some difficulty with that last word. “If you say ‘hush’ again, I’ll bash your blooming head, sir.”

“That’s all right,” said the earnest young man, undismayed by this threat, and slightly amused. He happened to be the future Prime Minister of England, though nobody guessed it, except himself.

But Paul’s outburst had disconcerted the lecturer and attracted the attention of his father, who had already given up his son as a hopeless case, and looked confirmed in that belief. It was Katherine’s tact which saved a painful situation. She agreed to go to the Empire with her inebriated brother, to save further argument.

We took the Underground—not yet electrified—from Aldgate to Charing Cross, and, later, Paul fell asleep on my shoulder in a hansom cab—there were no taxis in those days—after singing “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!” in a rich baritone. Already I felt completely cut out, as far as Katherine was concerned, by the noble presence and elegant manners of Hugh Evesham. They drove ahead in another hansom, and by the time we were sitting in the box at the Empire Evesham had secured her confidence and esteem. I envied him for the easy, gracious way in which he helped her off with her cloak, the nonchalant manner in which he ordered one of the girls to bring him a programme, the ease, and wit, and brilliance of his conversation between the scenes.

Once or twice I tried to interpolate a remark, but blushed under his supercilious smile, which seemed to rebuke my boyish ignorance of life and literature. He spoke of his admiration for the work of Oscar Wilde and the art of Aubrey Beardsley. He quoted one of Henley’s poems, and a line or two of Swinburne. He touched a little on his own ambitions and ideals. He would rather write a good sonnet, he said, than be Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. He had an idea of going into Parliament and advocating increased wages for working-girls, and free theatres—at which only the noblest plays should be produced—in the slums of our great cities. His own people, he told us, were hopelessly reactionary—crusted old Tories—and that was why he had such a tremendous admiration for Canon Lambert and the idealistic spirit of Romilly Hall.

Katherine listened attentively, with now and then a little humorous remark which seemed to show that she was not altogether convinced by all this noble thought. But I saw her admiration as she turned her eyes shyly to Evesham’s good-looking face. Apart from his chivalrous sentiments and democratic faith, which accorded with her own, the physical beauty of this young gentleman attracted her, as I observed with increasing and poignant jealousy. He looked so much more noble than the earnest young men from Limehouse and Bermondsey, even than Paul’s usual type of undergraduate friends, with their noisy slang and careless clothes.

Paul became rather restless with so much high-toned conversation between the acts, and suggested a little liquid refreshment. Leaving Katherine and Evesham in the box, we went round to the “promenade,” which was familiar to Paul, though I went there for the first time.

“The heart of the Empire!” said Paul grandiloquently. “Where virtue and vice rub shoulders. See that bronzed fellow with the little black moustache, standing next to the fat old cow in the picture hat? That’s young Butler, just back from Central Africa, having a look at civilisation again, like some of the others from our far-flung frontiers. They all come back to the dear old prom!”

“Do you call this civilisation?” I asked bitterly, as I strolled round after Paul, morbidly unhappy because of that handsome lad in the box with Katherine.

The promenade was crowded with flashy, painted women, whose roving eyes invited the attention of the men who stood in groups smoking and laughing, or leaning over the balustrade sucking silver-knobbed sticks or cheap canes which were called “wangees.” The atmosphere reeked with coarse scent, stale tobacco, and the fumes of beer from the bar near by. The old “Empire” promenade!—thronged, as Paul said, with the men who had come back from adventures in Empire-building.... Egypt, India, Africa, Canada, Australia, ... with the younger sons, the wasters, the sporting crowd, the bad hats, the “mashers,” the good fellows, the future heroes of England. Well, most of them have gone across the great river now, and the old “Empire” which was their rendezvous exists no more as it was then....

A lady in a picture hat leered at Paul and said: “Hullo, dearie!” But he winked at me, and said: “Perhaps we’d better get back to that box! This is no place for a lily-white soul.”

Katherine and Evesham were still talking, and Paul suggested that he had had enough of watching the waving legs of the ballet girls.

“Can’t we go somewhere else and see a little life?” he asked.

“Come round to my rooms,” said Evesham. “There’s not much life there, but I’d like to show your sister my little sanctuary.”

It was not a very exciting proposition, as far as Paul was concerned, but he yielded to the idea when he heard that Evesham had some very special port wine. Katherine didn’t yield so easily. As a young lady of the late Victorian era she was not quite sure whether she ought to visit a bachelor’s rooms at that hour of the evening, even with her brother as an escort. I saw the hesitation in her eyes, and then her surrender, as Evesham said: “For half an hour! I’d love to show you my prints. They’re rather good.”

I hated the man who was to play the part of my hero—he had agreed to that willingly—and yet I remember that he fascinated me too, and, in spite of my ridiculous jealousy, I was compelled to admire his elegance and style, and was grateful when he turned to me and said: “You’ll come too, Chesney? One of these days I want your opinion about some of my foolish verse. One or two little things——”

Evesham’s rooms were in the Albany, so we walked from the Empire, and Katherine was good enough to put her hand on my arm, little knowing the thrill she gave me, while her brother walked ahead with his friend.

“He’s rather wonderful,” she said, alluding to Evesham, with a queer catch of excitement in her voice. “I think it’s splendid for a young man like that to have such high ideals. Not like Paul, who scoffs at everything.”

“I prefer Paul,” I said grumpily.

Katherine laughed, and said: “Dear old Paul!”

Evesham’s rooms were furnished in an æsthetic style, and there was a little marble figure of Aphrodite on his piano, which seemed to me very daring for an unmarried man. On the walls were some beautiful mezzotints and old sporting-prints, and some original drawings by Aubrey Beardsley.

Evesham was a charming host, as I was bound to admit, and Paul found his port wine excellent, but became rather bored when Katherine was prevailed upon to play some Chopin, which she did charmingly, instead of the rowdy choruses which her brother preferred. Evesham stood near the piano with his arms folded, and a mystical look on his face, and not a crease in his immaculate clothes—which made me feel like a tramp in my blue serge suit. It was half-past eleven before Katherine sprang up with a cry of dismay because of the lateness of the hour. Girls of a slightly later era would not have been so conscience-smitten.

“Oh, Paul! Whatever will father and mother say?”

Time had gone swiftly for her in the company of a young man whose high ideals and exquisite manners had put a spell upon her.