Crowded Out! and Other Sketches.
by Susie F. Harrison.
PREFACE.
I present these "Sketches" in all proper fear and humility, to my Canadian public, hoping that the phases of colonial life they endeavor to portray will be recognized as not altogether unfamiliar. Some of them are true, others have been written through the medium of Fancy, which can find and inhabit as large a field in Canada as elsewhere; for, to my mind, there is no country, no town, no village, as there is no nation, no cla.s.s of society, nor individual existence, that has not its own deep and peculiar significance, its own unique and personal characteristics that distinguish it from the rest of the world.
SERa.n.u.s.
Crowded Out.
I am n.o.body. I am living in a London lodging-house. My room is up three pair of stairs. I have come to London to sell or to part with in some manner an opera, a comedy, a volume of verse, songs, sketches, stories.
I compose as well as write. I am ambitious. For the sake of another, one other, I am ambitious. For myself it does not matter. If n.o.body will discover me I must discover myself. I must demand recognition, I must wrest attention, they are my due. I look from my window over the smoky roofs of London. What will it do for me, this great cold city? It shall hear me, it shall pause for a moment, for a day, for a year. I will make it to listen to me, to look at me. I have left a continent behind, I have crossed a great water; I have incurred dangers, trials of all kinds; I have grown pale and thin with labor and the midnight oil; I have starved, and watched the dawn break starving; I have prayed on my stubborn knees for death and I have prayed on my stubborn knees for life--all that I might reach London, London that has killed so many of my brothers, London the cold, London the blind, London the cruel! I am here at last. I am here to be tested, to be proved, to be worn proudly, as a favorite and costly jewel is worn, or to be flung aside scornfully or dropped stealthily to--the devil! And I love it so this great London!
I am ready to swear no one ever loved it so before! The smokier it is, the dirtier, the dingier, the better. The oftener it rains the better.
The more whimsical it is, the more fickle, the more credulous, the more self-sufficient, the more self-existent, the better. Nothing that it can do, nothing that it can be, can change my love for it, great cruel London!
But to be cruel to _me_, to be fickle to _me_, to be deaf to _me_, to be blind to _me_! Would I change then? I might. As yet it does not know me. I pa.s.s through its streets, touching here a bit of old black wall, picking there an ivy leaf, and it knows me not. It is holy ground to me.
It is the mistress whose hand alone I as yet dare to kiss. Some day I shall possess the whole, and I shall walk with the firm and buoyant tread of the accepted, delighted lover. Only to-day I am n.o.body. I am crowded out. Yet there are moments when the mere joy of being in England, of being in London, satisfies me. I have seen the sunbeam strike the glory along the green. I know it is an English sky above me, all change, all mutability. No steady cloudless sphere of blue but ever-varying glories of white piled cloud against the gray. Listen to this. I saw a primrose--the first I had ever seen--in the hedge. They said "Pick it." But I did not. I, who had written there years ago,--
I never pulled a primrose, I, But could I know that there may lie E"en now some small or hidden seed, Within, below, an English mead, Waiting for sun and rain to make A flower of it for my poor sake, I then could wait till winds should tell, For me there swayed or swung a bell, Or reared a banner, peered a star, Or curved a cup in woods afar.
I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could not pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The shimmering mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy green, the singing birds and the shallow streams--all the country; the blackened churches, the gra.s.s-grown churchyards, the hum of streets the crowded omnibus, the gorgeous shops,--all the town. G.o.d! do I not love it, my England? Yet not my England yet. Till she proclaim it herself, I am not hers. I will make her mine. I will write as no man has ever written about her, for very love of her. I look out to-night from my narrow window and think how the moonlight falls on Tintern, on Glas...o...b..ry, on Furness. How it falls on the primrose I would not pluck.
How it would like to fall on the tall blue-bells in the wood. I see the lights of Oxford St. The omnibuses rattle by, the people are going to see Irving, Wilson Barrett, Ellen Terry. What line, of mine, what bar, what thought or phrase will turn the silence into song, the copper into gold?--I come back from the window and sit at the square centre table.
It is rickety and uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would kick anything that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a French piano is playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking if you will. But, though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place is filled with orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches.
One blind I pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp gla.s.s is cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor the pictures. The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it though I can"t feel it, it is so thin. My clothes are lying all about. The soot of London begrimes every object in the room. I would buy a pot of musk or a silken scarf if I dared, but how can I?
I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into some bottomless pit or gulf.
Here is my opera. This is my _magnum opus_, very dear, very clear, very well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly altogether, by _her_ side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird! You could flush under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you were not for me, you were not for me!--My head droops down, I could go to sleep. But I must not waste the time in sleep. I will write another story. No; I had four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London! To love you so, only that I may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored, forgotten.
But to-morrow I will try again. I will take the opera to the theatres, I will see the managers, I will even tell them about myself and about Hortense--but it will be hard. They do not know me, they do not know Hortense. They will laugh, they will say "You fool." And I shall be helpless, I shall let them say it. They will never listen to me, though I play my most beautiful phrase, for I am n.o.body. And Hortense, the child with the royal air, Hortense, with her imperial brow and her hair rolled over its cushion, Hortense, the _Chatelaine_ of _Beau Sejour_, the delicate, haughty, pale and impa.s.sioned daughter of a n.o.ble house, that Hortense, my Hortense, is n.o.body!
Who in this great London will believe in me, who will care to know about Hortense or about _Beau Sejour_? If they ask me, I shall say--oh!
proudly--not in Normandy nor in Alsace, but far away across a great water dwells such a maiden in such a _chateau_. There by the side of a northern river, ever rippling, ever sparkling in Summer, hard, hard frozen in winter, stretches a vast estate. I remember its impenetrable pinewood, its deep ravine; I see the _chateau_, long and white and straggling, with the red tiled towers and the tall French windows; I see the terrace where the hound must still sleep; I see the square side tower with the black iron shutters; I see the very window where Hortense has set her light; I see the floating cribs on the river, I hear the boatmen singing--
Descendez a l"ombre, Ma Jolie blonde.
And now I am dreaming surely! This is London, not _Beau Sejour_, and Hortense is far away, and it is that cursed fellow in the street I hear!
The morrow comes on quickly. If I were to draw up that crooked blind now I should see the first streaks of daylight. Who pinned those other curtains together? That was well done, for I don"t want to see the daylight; and it comes in, you know, Hortense, when you think it is shut out. Somebody calls it _fingers_, and that is just what it is, long fingers of dawn, always pale, always gray and white, stealing in and around my pillow for me. Never pink, never rosy, mind that; always faint and shadowy and gray.
It was all caste. Caste in London, caste in _Le Bos Canada_, all the same. Because she was a _St. Hilaire_. Her full name--_Hortense Angelique De Repentigny de St. Hilaire_--how it grates on me afresh with its aristocratic plent.i.tude. She is well-born, certainly; better born than most of these girls I have seen here in London, driving, walking, riding in the Parks. They wear their hair over cushions too. Freckled skins, high cheek-bones, square foreheads, spreading eyebrows--they shouldn"t wear it so. It suits Hortense--with her pale patrician outline and her dark pencilled eyebrows, and her little black ribbon and amulet around her neck. _O, Marie, priey pour nous qui avous recours a vous_!
Once I walked out to _Beau Sejour_. She did not expect me and I crept through the leafy ravine to the pinewood, then on to the steps, and so up to the terrace. Through the French window I could see her seated at the long table opposite Father Couture. She lives alone with the good Pere. She is the last one of the n.o.ble line, and he guards her well and guards her money too.
"I do remember that it vill be all for ze Church," she has said to me.
And the priest has taught her all she knows, how to sew and embroider, and cook and read, though he never lets her read anything but works on religion. Religion, always religion! He has brought her up like a nun, crushed the life out of her. Until I found her out, found my jewel out. It is Tennyson who says that. But his "Maud" was freer to woo than Hortense, freer to love and kiss and hold--my G.o.d! that night while I watched them studying and bending over those cursed works on the Martyrs and the Saints and the Mission houses--I saw him--him--that old priest--take her in his arms and caress her, drink her breath, feast on her eyes, her hair, her delicate skin, and I burst in like a young madman and told Father Conture what I thought. Oh! I was mad! I should have won her first. I should have worked quietly, cautiously, waiting, waiting, biding my time. But I could never bide my time. And now she hates me, Hortense hates me, though she so nearly learned to love me.
There where we used to listen to the magical river songs, we nearly loved, did we not Hortense? But she was a _St. Hilaire_, and I--I was n.o.body, and I had insulted _le bon Pere_. Yet if I can go back to her rich, prosperous, independent--What if that happen? But I begin to fancy it will never happen. My resolutions, where are they, what comes of them? Nothing. I have tried everything except the opera. Everything else has been rejected. For a week I have not gone to bed at all. I wait and see those ghastly gray fingers smoothing my pillow. I am not wanted. I am crowded out. My hands tremble and I cannot write. My eyes fail and I cannot see. To the window!
The lights of Oxford St. once more; the glare and the rattle without, the fever and the ruin, the nerves and the heart within. Poor nerves, poor heart; it is food you want and wine and rest, and I cannot give them to you.
Sing, Hortense, will you? Sit by my side, by our dear river St. Maurice, the clear, the sparkling. See how the floating cribs sail by, each with its gleaming lights! It is like Venice I suppose. Shall we see Venice ever, Hortense, you and I? Sing now for me,
Descendez a l"ombre, Ma Jolie blonde.
Only you are _pet.i.te brune_, there is nothing _blonde_ about you, _mignonne_, my dear mademoiselle, I should say if I were with you of course as I used to do. But surely I _am_ with you and those lights are the floating cribs I see, and your voice it is that sings, and presently the boatmen hear and they turn and move their hands and join in--Now all together,
Descendez a l"ombre,
It was like you, Hortense, to come all this way. How did you manage it, manage to cross that great water all alone? My poor girl did you grow tired of _Le bon Pere_ at last and of the Martyrs and the Saints and the Jesuit Fathers? But you have got your amulet on still I hope. That is right, for there is a chance--there is a chance of these things proving blessings after all to good girls, and you were a good girl Hortense.
You will not mind my calling you Hortense, will you? When we are in _Le Bas Canada_ again, in your own seignieury, it will be "Madamoiselle," I promise you. You say it is a strange pillow, Hortense? Books, my girl, and ma.n.u.scripts; hard but not so hard as London stones and London hearts. Do you know I think I am dying, or else going mad? And no one will listen even if I cry out. There is too much to listen to already in England. Think of all the growing green, Hortense, if you can, where you are, so far away from it all. Where you are it is cold and the snow is still on the ground and only the little bloodroot is up in the woods.
Here where I am Hortense, where I am going to die, it is warm and green full of color--oh! Such color! Before I came here, to London you know London that is going to do so much for me, for us both, I had one day--one day in the country. There I saw--No! They will not let me tell you, I knew they would try to prevent me, those long gray fingers stealing in, stealing in! But I _will_ tell you. Listen, Hortense, please. I saw the hawthorne, pink and white, the laburnum--yellow--not fire-color, I shall correct the Laureate there, Hortense, when I am better, when I--publish!--It is dreadful to be alone in London. Don"t come, Hortense. Stay where you are, even if it is cold and gray and there is no color. Keep your amulet round your neck, dear!--I count my pulse beats. It is a bad thing to do. It is broad daylight now and the fingers have gone. I can write again perhaps.--The pen--The paper--The ink--G.o.d. Hortense! There is no ink left! And my heart--My heart--Hortense!!!
Descendez a l"ombre, Ma Jolie blonde.
Monsieur, Madame and the Pea-Green Parrot
CHAPTER I.
I am an Englishman by birth. Having however lived for fourteen years out in America or rather in Canada, I am only half an Englishman. All the love for the dear old land which I am now revisiting is still there, deep in my heart, but from so long a residence in another country certain differences arise of character, habit and thought, not to be easily shaken off. I was in the Civil Service in Canada and did very well until I meddled with literature. Discovering that I had a faculty for verse and story-telling, I was ambitious and at the same time foolish enough to work so hard at my new pursuit that I was compelled to "cut" the service, in other words to resign. Some other Englishman got my post and I found myself, rather unexpectedly, it is true, free to write to my heart"s content.
I got off a number of things, poems, sketches, etc., but my great work turned out to be a comedy. I slaved at this all day and amused myself by rehearsing it in my lodgings all night. I incurred the odium of the landlady by coaxing the maid of all work to learn a part and act it with me. Finally I resolved to take a great step. I would go down to New York and get my comedy produced. That was exactly five years ago and though the comedy was _not_ produced, I am still sanguine that it yet may be, and perhaps not in New York after all, but in a much more important creative centre.
I was at the time of my visit to New York perfectly unacquainted with the ways of a metropolis, and it was fortunate for me that I possessed one friend there who if not exactly a friend _at court_ as we say, was in truth a much more useful person to me, as, having once been young and inexperienced himself, he knew the ropes well and handled them thoroughly to his own satisfaction and with an eye to my comfort and safety.