"As good as a book, ain"t he?" was the tribute most often paid to me.
"As good as a play," one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer, went so far as to say.
Already I regarded myself as among the Immortals.
One girl, a dear, wholesome creature named Janet, stayed with us for months and might have stayed years, but for her addiction to strong language. The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the barge "Nancy Jane," trading between Purfleet and Ponder"s End, her conversation was at once my terror and delight.
"Janet," my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up instinctively to guard her ears, "how can you use such words?"
"What words, mum?"
"The things you have just called the gas man."
"Him! Well, did you see what he did, mum? Walked straight into my clean kitchen, without even wiping his boots, the--" And before my mother could stop her, Janet had relieved her feelings by calling him it--or rather them--again, without any idea that she had done aught else than express in fitting phraseology a natural human emotion.
We were good friends, Janet and I, and therefore it was that I personally undertook her reformation. It was not an occasion for mincing one"s words. The stake at issue was, I felt, too important. I told her bluntly that if she persisted in using such language she would inevitably go to h.e.l.l.
"Then where"s my father going?" demanded Janet.
"Does he use language?"
I gathered from Janet that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of hearing her father could ever again take interest in the feeble efforts of herself.
"I am afraid, Janet," I explained, "that if he doesn"t give it up--"
"But it"s the only way he can talk," interrupted Janet. "He don"t mean anything by it."
I sighed, yet set my face against weakness. "You see, Janet, people who swear do go there."
But Janet would not believe.
"G.o.d send my dear, kind father to h.e.l.l just because he can"t talk like the gentlefolks! Don"t you believe it of Him, Master Paul. He"s got more sense."
I hope I pain no one by quoting Janet"s common sense. For that I should be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in sloughs of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of immeasurable Folly glibly explaining the eternal mysteries, has it comforted me to whisper to myself: "I don"t believe it of Him. He"s got more sense."
And about that period I had need of all the comfort I could get. As we descend the road of life, the journey, demanding so much of our attention, becomes of more importance than the journey"s end; but to the child, standing at the valley"s gate, the terminating hills are clearly visible. What lies beyond them is his constant wonder. I never questioned my parents directly on the subject, shrinking as so strangely we all do, both young and old, from discussion of the very matters of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my need, contented themselves with the vague generalities with which we seek to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs. But there were foolish voices about me less reticent; while the literature, ill.u.s.trated and otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a fiery furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could turn to the accompanying ill.u.s.tration, and see at a glance how you yourself would writhe and shrink and scream, while cheerful devils, well organised, were busy stoking. I had been burnt once, rather badly, in consequence of live coals, in course of transit on a shovel, being let fall upon me. I imagined these burning coals, not confined to a mere part of my body, but pressing upon me everywhere, not s.n.a.t.c.hed swiftly off by loving hands, the pain a.s.suaged by applications of soft soap and the blue bag, but left there, eating into my flesh and veins. And this continued for eternity. You suffered for an hour, a day, a thousand years, and were no nearer to the end; ten thousand, a million years, and yet, as at the very first, it was for ever, and for ever still it would always be for ever! I suffered also from insomnia about this period.
"Then be good," replied the foolish voices round me; "never do wrong, and so avoid this endless agony."
But it was so easy to do wrong. There were so many wrong things to do, and the doing of them was so natural.
"Then repent," said the voices, always ready.
But how did one repent? What was repentance? Did I "hate my sin," as I was instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to h.e.l.l for it? Because the latter, even my child"s sense told me, was no true repentance. Yet how could one know the difference?
Above all else there haunted me the fear of the "Unforgivable Sin." What this was I was never able to discover. I dreaded to enquire too closely, lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the terror of it clung to me.
"Believe," said the voices; "so only shall you be saved." How believe?
How know you did believe? Hours would I kneel in the dark, repeating in a whispered scream:
"I believe, I believe. Oh, I do believe!" and then rise with white knuckles, wondering if I really did believe.
Another question rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings I had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most disreputable specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him. Our first meeting had been outside a confectioner"s window, in the Commercial Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against the gla.s.s, a mere palpitating Appet.i.te on legs. He had seized me by the collar, and hauled me into the shop. There, dropping me upon a stool, he bade me eat. Pride of race prompted me politely to decline, but his language became so awful that in fear and trembling I obeyed. So soon as I was finished--it cost him two and fourpence, I remember--we walked down to the docks together, and he told me stories of the sea and land that made my blood run cold. Altogether, in the course of three weeks or a month, we met about half a dozen times, when much the same programme was gone through. I think I was a fairly frank child, but I said nothing about him at home, feeling instinctively that if I did there would be an end of our comradeship, which was dear to me: not merely by reason of the pastry, though I admit that was a consideration, but also for his wondrous tales. I believed them all implicitly, and so came to regard him as one of the most interesting criminals as yet unhanged: and what was sad about the case, as I felt myself, was that his recital of his many iniquities, instead of repelling, attracted me to him. If ever there existed a sinner, here was one. He chewed tobacco--one of the hundred or so deadly sins, according to my theological library--and was generally more or less drunk. Not that a stranger would have noticed this; the only difference being that when sober he appeared constrained--was less his natural, genial self. In a burst of confidence he once admitted to me that he was the biggest blackguard in the merchant service. Unacquainted with the merchant service, as at the time I was, I saw no reason to doubt him.
One night in a state of intoxication he walked over a gangway and was drowned. Our mutual friend, the confectioner, seeing me pa.s.s the window, came out to tell me so; and having heard, I walked on, heavy of heart, and pondering.
About his eternal destination there could be no question. The known facts precluded the least ray of hope. How could I be happy in heaven, supposing I eventually did succeed in slipping in, knowing that he, the lovable old scamp, was burning for ever in h.e.l.l?
How could Janet, taking it that she reformed and thus escaped d.a.m.nation, be contented, knowing the father she loved doomed to torment? The heavenly hosts, so I argued, could be composed only of the callous and indifferent.
I wondered how people could go about their business, eat, drink and be merry, with tremendous fate hanging thus ever suspended over their heads. When for a little s.p.a.ce I myself forgot it, always it fell back upon me with increased weight.
Nor was the contemplation of heaven itself particularly attractive to me, for it was a foolish paradise these foolish voices had fashioned out of their folly. You stood about and sang hymns--for ever! I was a.s.sured that my fear of finding the programme monotonous was due only to my state of original sin, that when I got there I should discover I liked it. But I would have given much for the hope of avoiding both their heaven and their h.e.l.l.
Fortunately for my sanity I was not left long to brood unoccupied upon such themes. Our worldly affairs, under the sunshine of old Hasluck"s round red face, prospered--for awhile; and one afternoon my father, who had been away from home since breakfast time, calling me into his office where also sat my mother, informed me that the long-talked-of school was become at last a concrete thing.
"The term commences next week," explained my father. "It is not exactly what I had intended, but it will do--for the present. Later, of course, you will go to one of the big public schools; your mother and I have not yet quite decided which."
"You will meet other boys there, good and bad," said my mother, who sat clasping and unclasping her hands. "Be very careful, dear, how you choose your companions."
"You will learn to take your own part," said my father. "School is an epitome of the world. One must a.s.sert oneself, or one is sat upon."
I knew not what to reply, the vista thus opened out to me was so unexpected. My blood rejoiced, but my heart sank.
"Take one of your long walks," said my father, smiling, "and think it over."
"And if you are in any doubt, you know where to go for guidance, don"t you?" whispered my mother, who was very grave.
Yet I went to bed, dreaming of quite other things that night: of Queens of Beauty bending down to crown my brows with laurel: of wronged Princesses for whose cause I rode to death or victory. For on my return home, being called into the drawing-room by my father, I stood transfixed, my cap in hand, staring with all my eyes at the vision that I saw.
No such wonder had I ever seen before, at all events, not to my remembrance. The maidens that one meets in Poplar streets may be fair enough in their way, but their millinery displays them not to advantage; and the few lady visitors that came to us were of a staid and matronly appearance. Only out of pictures. .h.i.therto had such witchery looked upon me; and from these the spell faded as one gazed.
I heard old Hasluck"s smoky voice saying, "My little gell, Barbara," and I went nearer to her, moving unconsciously.
"You can kiss "er," said the smoky voice again; "she won"t bite." But I did not kiss her. Nor ever felt I wanted to, upon the mouth.
I suppose she must have been about fourteen, and I a little over ten, though tall for my age. Later I came to know she had that rare gold hair that holds the light, so that upon her face, which seemed of dainty porcelain, there ever fell a softened radiance as from some shining aureole; those blue eyes where dwell mysteries, shadow veiled. At the time I knew nothing, but that it seemed to me as though the fairy-tales had all come true.
She smiled, understanding and well pleased with my confusion. Child though I was--little more than child though she was, it flattered her vanity.
Fair and sweet, you had but that one fault. Would it had been another, less cruel to you yourself.
CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THERE COMES BY ONE BENT UPON PURSUING HIS OWN WAY.
"Correct" is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe Doctor Florret and all his attributes. He was a large man, but not too large--just the size one would select for the head-master of an important middle-cla.s.s school; stout, not fat, suggesting comfort, not grossness. His hands were white and well shaped. On the left he wore a fine diamond ring, but it shone rather than sparkled. He spoke of commonplace things in a voice that lent dignity even to the weather. His face, which was clean-shaven, radiated benignity tempered by discretion.