"Why! Why, because you"re such a funny chap. You say such funny things."
It struck me like a slap in the face. I had thought to reach popularity upon the ladder of heroic qualities. In all the school books I had read, Leonard or Marmaduke (we had a Marmaduke in the Lower Fifth--they called him Marmalade: in the school books these disasters are not contemplated), won love and admiration by reason of integrity of character, n.o.bility of sentiment, goodness of heart, brilliance of intellect; combined maybe with a certain amount of agility, instinct in the direction of bowling, or apt.i.tude for jumping; but such only by the way. Not one of them had ever said a funny thing, either consciously or unconsciously.
"Don"t be disagreeable, Kelver. Come with us and we will let you into the team as an extra. I"ll teach you batting."
So I was to be their Fool--I, dreamer of knightly dreams, aspirant to hero"s fame! I craved their wonder; I had won their laughter. I had prayed for popularity; it had been granted to me--in this guise. Were the G.o.ds still the heartless practical jokers poor Midas had found them?
Had my vanity been less I should have flung their gift back in their faces. But my thirst for approbation was too intense. I had to choose: Cut capers and be followed, or walk in dignity, ignored. I chose to cut the capers. As time wore on I found myself striving to cut them quicker, quainter, thinking out funny stories, preparing ingenuous impromptus, twisting all ideas into odd expression.
I had my reward. Before long my company was desired by all the school.
But I was never content. I would rather have been the Captain of their football club, even his deputy Vice; would have given all my meed of laughter for stuttering Jerry"s one round of applause when in our match against Highbury he knocked up his century, and so won the victory for us by just three.
Till the end I never quite abandoned hope of exchanging my vine leaves for the laurels. I would rise an hour earlier in the morning to practise throwing at broomsticks set up in waste places. At another time, the sport coming into temporary fashion, I wearied body and mind for weeks in vain attempts to acquire skill on stilts. That even fat Tubby could out-distance me upon them saddened my life for months.
A lad there was, a Sixth Form boy, one Wakeham by name, if I remember rightly, who greatly envied me my gift of being able to amuse. He was of the age when the other s.e.x begins to be of importance to a fellow, and the desire had come to him to be regarded as a star of wit among the social circles of Gospel Oak. Need I say that by nature he was a ponderously dull boy.
One afternoon I happened to be the centre of a small group in the playground. I had been holding forth and they had been laughing. Whether I had delivered myself of anything really entertaining or not I cannot say. It made no difference; they had got into the habit of laughing when I talked. Sometimes I would say quite serious things on purpose; they would laugh just the same. Wakeham was among them, his eyes fixed on me, watching me as boys watch a conjurer in the hope of finding out "how he does it." Later in the afternoon he slipped his arm through mine, and drew me away into an empty corner of the ground.
"I say, Kelver," he broke out, the moment we were beyond hearing, "you really are funny!"
It gave me no pleasure. If he had told me that he admired my bowling I might not have believed him, but should have loved him for it.
"So are you," I answered savagely, "only you don"t know it."
"No, I"m not," he replied. "Wish I was. I say, Kelver"--he glanced round to see that no one was within earshot--"do you think you could teach me to be funny?"
I was about to reply with conviction in the negative when an idea occurred to me. Wakeham was famous among us for one thing; he could, inserting two fingers in his mouth, produce a whistle capable of confusing dogs a quarter of a mile off, and of causing people near at hand to jump from six to eighteen inches into the air.
This accomplishment of his I envied him as keenly as he envied me mine.
I did not admire it; I could not see the use of it. Generally speaking, it called forth irritation rather than affection. A purple-faced old gentleman, close to whose ear he once performed, promptly cuffed his head for it; and for so doing was commended by the whole street as a public benefactor. Drivers of vehicles would respond by flicking at him, occasionally with success. Even youth, from whom sympathy might have been expected, appeared impelled, if anything happened to be at all handy, to take it up and throw it at him. My own social circle would, I knew, regard it as a vulgar accomplishment, and even Wakeham himself dared not perform it in the hearing of his own cla.s.smates. That any human being should have desired to acquire it seems incomprehensible.
Yet for weeks in secret I had wrestled to produce the hideous sound.
Why? For three reasons, so far as I can a.n.a.lyse this youngster of whom I am writing:
Firstly, here was a means of attracting attention; secondly, it was something that somebody else could do and that he couldn"t; thirdly, it was a thing for which he evidently had no natural apt.i.tude whatever, and therefore a thing to acquire which his soul yearned the more. Had a boy come across his path, clever at walking on his hands with his heels in the air, Master Paul Kelver would in all probability have broken his neck in attempts to copy and excel. I make no apologies for the brat: I merely present him as a study for the amus.e.m.e.nt of a world of wiser boys--and men.
I struck a bargain with young Wakeham; I undertook to teach him to be funny in return for his teaching me this costermonger"s whistle.
Each of us strove conscientiously to impart knowledge. Neither of us succeeded. Wakeham tried hard to be funny; I tried hard to whistle. He did all I told him; I followed his instructions implicitly. The result was the feeblest of wit and the feeblest of whistles.
"Do you think anybody would laugh at that?" Wakeham would pathetically enquire at the termination of his supremest effort. And honestly I would have to confess I did not think any living being would.
"How far off do you think any one could hear that?" I would demand anxiously, on recovering sufficient breath to speak at all.
"Well, it would depend upon whether you knew it was coming," Wakeham would reply kindly, not wishing to discourage me.
We abandoned the scheme by mutual consent at about the end of a fortnight.
"I suppose it"s something that you"ve got to have inside you," I suggested to Wakeham in consolation.
"I don"t think the roof of your mouth can be quite the right shape for it," concluded Wakeham.
My success as story-teller, commentator, critic, jester, revived my childish ambition towards authorship. My first stirrings in this direction I cannot rightly place. I remember when very small falling into a sunk dust-bin--a deep hole, rather, into which the gardener shot his rubbish. The fall twisted my ankle so that I could not move; and the time being evening and my prison some distance from the house, my predicament loomed large before me. Yet one consolation remained with me: the incident would be of value to me in the autobiography upon which I was then engaged. I can distinctly recollect lying on my back among decaying leaves and broken gla.s.s, framing my account. "On this day a strange adventure befell me. Walking in the garden, all unheeding, I suddenly"--I did not want to add the truth--"tumbled into a dust-hole, six feet square, that any one but a moon calf might have seen." I puzzled to evolve a more dignified situation. The dust-bin became a cavern, the entrance to which had been artfully concealed; the six or seven feet I had really fallen, "an endless descent, terminating in a vast and gloomy chamber." I was divided between opposing desires: One, for rescue followed by sympathy and supper; the other, for the alarming experience of a night of terror where I lay. Nature conquering Art, I yelled; and the episode terminated prosaically with a warm bath and arnica. But from it I judge that desire for the woes and perils of authorship was with me somewhat early.
Of my many other dreams I would speak freely, discussing them at length with sympathetic souls, but concerning this one ambition I was curiously reticent. Only to two--my mother and a grey-bearded Stranger--did I ever breathe a word of it. Even from my father I kept it a secret, close comrades in all else though we were. He would have talked of it much and freely, dragged it into the light of day; and from this I shrank.
My talk with the Stranger came about in this wise. One evening I had taken a walk to Victoria Park--a favourite haunt of mine at summer time.
It was a fair and peaceful evening, and I fell a-wandering there in pleasant reverie, until the waning light hinted to me the question of time. I looked about me. Only one human being was in sight, a man with his back towards me, seated upon a bench overlooking the ornamental water.
I drew nearer. He took no notice of me, and interested--though why, I could not say--I seated myself beside him at the other end of the bench.
He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man, with wonderfully bright, clear eyes and iron-grey hair and beard. I might have thought him a sea captain, of whom many were always to be met with in that neighbourhood, but for his hands, which were crossed upon his stick, and which were white and delicate as a woman"s. He turned his face and glanced at me.
I fancied that his lips beneath the grey moustache smiled; and instinctively I edged a little nearer to him.
"Please, sir," I said, after awhile, "could you tell me the right time?"
"Twenty minutes to eight," he answered, looking at his watch. And his voice drew me towards him even more than had his beautiful strong face.
I thanked him, and we fell back into silence.
"Where do you live?" he turned and suddenly asked me.
"Oh, only over there," I answered, with a wave of my arm towards the chimney-fringed horizon behind us. "I needn"t be in till half-past eight. I like this Park so much," I added, "I often come and sit here of an evening."
"Why do you like to come and sit here?" he asked. "Tell me."
"Oh, I don"t know," I answered. "I think."
I marvelled at myself. With strangers generally I was shy and silent; but the magic of his bright eyes seemed to have loosened my tongue.
I told him my name; that we lived in a street always full of ugly sounds, so that a gentleman could not think, not even in the evening time, when Thought goes a-visiting.
"Mamma does not like the twilight time," I confided to him. "It always makes her cry. But then mamma is--not very young, you know, and has had a deal of trouble; and that makes a difference, I suppose."
He laid his hand upon mine. We were sitting nearer to each other now.
"G.o.d made women weak to teach us men to be tender," he said. "But you, Paul, like this "twilight time"?"
"Yes," I answered, "very much. Don"t you?"
"And why do you like it?" he asked.
"Oh," I answered, "things come to you."
"What things?"
"Oh, fancies," I explained to him. "I am going to be an author when I grow up, and write books."
He took my hand in his and shook it gravely, and then returned it to me.
"I, too, am a writer of books," he said.
And then I knew what had drawn me to him.