Novel Notes

Fate would not hear of our having a houseboat that summer, – which was an exceptionally fine summer, – but promised us that if we were good and saved up our money, we should have one next year; and Ethelbertha and I, being simple-minded, inexperienced children, were content with the promise, and had faith in its satisfactory fulfilment.

As soon as we reached home we informed Amenda of our plan. The moment the girl opened the door, Ethelbertha burst out with: – “Oh! can you swim, Amenda?”

“No, mum,” answered Amenda, with entire absence of curiosity as to why such a question had been addressed to her, “I never knew but one girl as could, and she got drowned.”

“Well, you’ll have to make haste and learn, then,” continued Ethelbertha, “because you won’t be able to walk out with your young man, you’ll have to swim out. We’re not going to live in a house any more. We’re going to live on a boat in the middle of the river.”

Ethelbertha’s chief object in life at this period was to surprise and shock Amenda, and her chief sorrow that she had never succeeded in doing so. She had hoped great things from this announcement, but the girl remained unmoved. “Oh, are you, mum,” she replied; and went on to speak of other matters.

I believe the result would have been the same if we had told her we were going to live in a balloon.

I do not know how it was, I am sure. Amenda was always most respectful in her manner. But she had a knack of making Ethelbertha and myself feel that we were a couple of children, playing at being grown up and married, and that she was humouring us.

Amenda stayed with us for nearly five years – until the milkman, having saved up sufficient to buy a “walk” of his own, had become practicable – but her attitude towards us never changed. Even when we came to be really important married people, the proprietors of a “family,” it was evident that she merely considered we had gone a step further in the game, and were playing now at being fathers and mothers.

By some subtle process she contrived to imbue the baby also with this idea. The child never seemed to me to take either of us quite seriously. She would play with us, or join with us in light conversation; but when it came to the serious affairs of life, such as bathing or feeding, she preferred her nurse.

Ethelbertha attempted to take her out in the perambulator one morning, but the child would not hear of it for a moment.

“It’s all right, baby dear,” explained Ethelbertha soothingly. “Baby’s going out with mamma this morning.”

“Oh no, baby ain’t,” was baby’s rejoinder, in effect if not in words. “Baby don’t take a hand in experiments – not this baby. I don’t want to be upset or run over.”

Poor Ethel! I shall never forget how heart-broken she was. It was the want of confidence that wounded her.

But these are reminiscences of other days, having no connection with the days of which I am – or should be – writing; and to wander from one matter to another is, in a teller of tales, a grievous sin, and a growing custom much to be condemned. Therefore I will close my eyes to all other memories, and endeavour to see only that little white and green houseboat by the ferry, which was the scene of our future collaborations.

Houseboats then were not built to the scale of Mississippi steamers, but this boat was a small one, even for that primitive age. The man from whom we hired it described it as “compact.” The man to whom, at the end of the first month, we tried to sub-let it, characterised it as “poky.” In our letters we traversed this definition. In our hearts we agreed with it.

At first, however, its size – or, rather, its lack of size – was one of its chief charms in Ethelbertha’s eyes. The fact that if you got out of bed carelessly you were certain to knock your head against the ceiling, and that it was utterly impossible for any man to put on his trousers except in the saloon, she regarded as a capital joke.

That she herself had to take a looking-glass and go upon the roof to do her back hair, she thought less amusing.

Amenda accepted her new surroundings with her usual philosophic indifference. On being informed that what she had mistaken for a linen-press was her bedroom, she remarked that there was one advantage about it, and that was, that she could not tumble out of bed, seeing there was nowhere to tumble; and, on being shown the kitchen, she observed that she should like it for two things – one was that she could sit in the middle and reach everything without getting up; the other, that nobody else could come into the apartment while she was there.

“You see, Amenda,” explained Ethelbertha apologetically, “we shall really live outside.”

“Yes, mum,” answered Amenda, “I should say that would be the best place to do it.”

If only we could have lived more outside, the life might have been pleasant enough, but the weather rendered it impossible, six days out of the seven, for us to do more than look out of the window and feel thankful that we had a roof over our heads.

I have known wet summers before and since. I have learnt by many bitter experiences the danger and foolishness of leaving the shelter of London any time between the first of May and the thirty-first of October. Indeed, the country is always associate in my mind with recollections of long, weary days passed in the pitiless rain, and sad evenings spent in other people’s clothes. But never have I known, and never, I pray night and morning, may I know again, such a summer as the one we lived through (though none of us expected to) on that confounded houseboat.

In the morning we would be awakened by the rain’s forcing its way through the window and wetting the bed, and would get up and mop out the saloon. After breakfast I would try to work, but the beating of the hail upon the roof just over my head would drive every idea out of my brain, and, after a wasted hour or two, I would fling down my pen and hunt up Ethelbertha, and we would put on our mackintoshes and take our umbrellas and go out for a row. At mid-day we would return and put on some dry clothes, and sit down to dinner.

In the afternoon the storm generally freshened up a bit, and we were kept pretty busy rushing about with towels and cloths, trying to prevent the water from coming into the rooms and swamping us. During tea-time the saloon was usually illuminated by forked lightning. The evenings we spent in baling out the boat, after which we took it in turns to go into the kitchen and warm ourselves. At eight we supped, and from then until it was time to go to bed we sat wrapped up in rugs, listening to the roaring of the thunder, and the howling of the wind, and the lashing of the waves, and wondering whether the boat would hold out through the night.

Friends would come down to spend the day with us – elderly, irritable people, fond of warmth and comfort; people who did not, as a rule, hanker after jaunts, even under the most favourable conditions; but who had been persuaded by our silly talk that a day on the river would be to them like a Saturday to Monday in Paradise.

They would arrive soaked; and we would shut them up in different bunks, and leave them to strip themselves and put on things of Ethelbertha’s or of mine. But Ethel and I, in those days, were slim, so that stout, middle-aged people in our clothes neither looked well nor felt happy.

Upon their emerging we would take them into the saloon and try to entertain them by telling them what we had intended to do with them had the day been fine. But their answers were short, and occasionally snappy, and after a while the conversation would flag, and we would sit round reading last week’s newspapers and coughing.

The moment their own clothes were dry (we lived in a perpetual atmosphere of steaming clothes) they would insist upon leaving us, which seemed to me discourteous after all that we had done for them, and would dress themselves once more and start off home, and get wet again before they got there.

We would generally receive a letter a few days afterwards, written by some relative, informing us that both patients were doing as well as could be expected, and promising to send us a card for the funeral in case of a relapse.

Our chief recreation, our sole consolation, during the long weeks of our imprisonment, was to watch from our windows the pleasure-seekers passing by in small open boats, and to reflect what an awful day they had had, or were going to have, as the case might be.

In the forenoon they would head up stream – young men with their sweethearts; nephews taking out their rich old aunts; husbands and wives (some of them pairs, some of them odd ones); stylish-looking girls with cousins; energetic-looking men with dogs; high-class silent parties; low-class noisy parties; quarrelsome family parties – boatload after boatload they went by, wet, but still hopeful, pointing out bits of blue sky to each other.

In the evening they would return, drenched and gloomy, saying disagreeable things to one another.

One couple, and one couple only, out of the many hundreds that passed under our review, came back from the ordeal with pleasant faces. He was rowing hard and singing, with a handkerchief tied round his head to keep his hat on, and she was laughing at him, while trying to hold up an umbrella with one hand and steer with the other.

There are but two explanations to account for people being jolly on the river in the rain. The one I dismissed as being both uncharitable and improbable. The other was creditable to the human race, and, adopting it, I took off my cap to this damp but cheerful pair as they went by. They answered with a wave of the hand, and I stood looking after them till they disappeared in the mist.

I am inclined to think that those young people, if they be still alive, are happy. Maybe, fortune has been kind to them, or maybe she has not, but in either event they are, I am inclined to think, happier than are most people.

Now and again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat its own purpose by prematurely exhausting itself. On these rare occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of fresh air.

I remember well those few pleasant evenings: the river, luminous with the drowned light, the dark banks where the night lurked, the storm-tossed sky, jewelled here and there with stars.

It was delightful not to hear for an hour or so the sullen thrashing of the rain; but to listen to the leaping of the fishes, the soft swirl raised by some water-rat, swimming stealthily among the rushes, the restless twitterings of the few still wakeful birds.

An old corncrake lived near to us, and the way he used to disturb all the other birds, and keep them from going to sleep, was shameful. Amenda, who was town-bred, mistook him at first for one of those cheap alarm clocks, and wondered who was winding him up, and why they went on doing it all night; and, above all, why they didn’t oil him.

He would begin his unhallowed performance about dusk, just as every respectable bird was preparing to settle down for the night. A family of thrushes had their nest a few yards from his stand, and they used to get perfectly furious with him.

“There’s that fool at it again,” the female thrush would say; “why can’t he do it in the daytime if he must do it at all?” (She spoke, of course, in twitters, but I am confident the above is a correct translation.)

After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and then the mother would get madder than ever.

“Can’t you say something to him?” she would cry indignantly to her husband. “How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things, with that hideous row going on all night? Might just as well be living in a saw-mill.”

Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call out in a nervous, apologetic manner: —

“I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn’t mind being quiet a bit. My wife says she can’t get the children to sleep. It’s too bad, you know, ’pon my word it is.”

“Gor on,” the corncrake would answer surlily. “You keep your wife herself quiet; that’s enough for you to do.” And on he would go again worse than before.

Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the fray.

“Ah, it’s a good hiding he wants, not a talking to. And if I was a cock, I’d give it him.” (This remark would be made in a tone of withering contempt, and would appear to bear reference to some previous discussion.)

“You’re quite right, ma’am,” Mrs. Thrush would reply. “That’s what I tell my husband, but” (with rising inflection, so that every lady in the plantation might hear) “he wouldn’t move himself, bless you – no, not if I and the children were to die before his eyes for want of sleep.”

“Ah, he ain’t the only one, my dear,” the blackbird would pipe back, “they’re all alike”; then, in a voice more of sorrow than of anger: – “but there, it ain’t their fault, I suppose, poor things. If you ain’t got the spirit of a bird you can’t help yourself.”

I would strain my ears at this point to hear if the male blackbird was moved at all by these taunts, but the only sound I could ever detect coming from his neighbourhood was that of palpably exaggerated snoring.

By this time the whole glade would be awake, expressing views concerning that corncrake that would have wounded a less callous nature.

“Blow me tight, Bill,” some vulgar little hedge-sparrow would chirp out, in the midst of the hubbub, “if I don’t believe the gent thinks ’e’s a-singing.”

“’Tain’t ’is fault,” Bill would reply, with mock sympathy. “Somebody’s put a penny in the slot, and ’e can’t stop ’isself.”

Irritated by the laugh that this would call forth from the younger birds, the corncrake would exert himself to be more objectionable than ever, and, as a means to this end, would commence giving his marvellous imitation of the sharpening of a rusty saw by a steel file.

But at this an old crow, not to be trifled with, would cry out angrily: —

“Stop that, now. If I come down to you I’ll peck your cranky head off, I will.”

And then would follow silence for a quarter of an hour, after which the whole thing would begin again.

CHAPTER V

Brown and MacShaughnassy came down together on the Saturday afternoon; and, as soon as they had dried themselves, and had had some tea, we settled down to work.

Jephson had written that he would not be able to be with us until late in the evening, and Brown proposed that we should occupy ourselves until his arrival with plots.

“Let each of us,” said he, “sketch out a plot. Afterwards we can compare them, and select the best.”

This we proceeded to do. The plots themselves I forget, but I remember that at the subsequent judging each man selected his own, and became so indignant at the bitter criticism to which it was subjected by the other two, that he tore it up; and, for the next half-hour, we sat and smoked in silence.

When I was very young I yearned to know other people’s opinion of me and all my works; now, my chief aim is to avoid hearing it. In those days, had any one told me there was half a line about myself in a newspaper, I should have tramped London to obtain that publication. Now, when I see a column headed with my name, I hurriedly fold up the paper and put it away from me, subduing my natural curiosity to read it by saying to myself, “Why should you? It will only upset you for the day.”

In my cubhood I possessed a friend. Other friends have come into my life since – very dear and precious friends – but they have none of them been to me quite what this friend was. Because he was my first friend, and we lived together in a world that was much bigger than this world – more full of joy and of grief; and, in that world, we loved and hated deeper than we love and hate in this smaller world that I have come to dwell in since.

He also had the very young man’s craving to be criticised, and we made it our custom to oblige each other. We did not know then that what we meant, when we asked for “criticism,” was encouragement. We thought that we were strong – one does at the beginning of the battle, and that we could bear to hear the truth.

Accordingly, each one pointed out to the other one his errors, and this task kept us both so busy that we had never time to say a word of praise to one another. That we each had a high opinion of the other’s talents I am convinced, but our heads were full of silly saws. We said to ourselves: “There are many who will praise a man; it is only his friend who will tell him of his faults.” Also, we said: “No man sees his own shortcomings, but when these are pointed out to him by another he is grateful, and proceeds to mend them.”

As we came to know the world better, we learnt the fallacy of these ideas. But then it was too late, for the mischief had been done.

When one of us had written anything, he would read it to the other, and when he had finished he would say, “Now, tell me what you think of it – frankly and as a friend.”

Those were his words. But his thoughts, though he may not have known them, were: —

“Tell me it is clever and good, my friend, even if you do not think so. The world is very cruel to those that have not yet conquered it, and, though we keep a careless face, our young hearts are scored with wrinkles. Often we grow weary and faint-hearted. Is it not so, my friend? No one has faith in us, and in our dark hours we doubt ourselves. You are my comrade. You know what of myself I have put into this thing that to others will be but an idle half-hour’s reading. Tell me it is good, my friend. Put a little heart into me, I pray you.”

But the other, full of the lust of criticism, which is civilisation’s substitute for cruelty, would answer more in frankness than in friendship. Then he who had written would flush angrily, and scornful words would pass.

One evening, he read me a play he had written. There was much that was good in it, but there were also faults (there are in some plays), and these I seized upon and made merry over. I could hardly have dealt out to the piece more unnecessary bitterness had I been a professional critic.

As soon as I paused from my sport he rose, and, taking his manuscript from the table, tore it in two, and flung it in the fire – he was but a very young man, you must remember – and then, standing before me with a white face, told me, unsolicited, his opinion of me and of my art. After which double event, it is perhaps needless to say that we parted in hot anger.

I did not see him again for years. The streets of life are very crowded, and if we loose each other’s hands we are soon hustled far apart. When I did next meet him it was by accident.

I had left the Whitehall Rooms after a public dinner, and, glad of the cool night air, was strolling home by the Embankment. A man, slouching along under the trees, paused as I overtook him.

“You couldn’t oblige me with a light, could you, guv’nor?” he said. The voice sounded strange, coming from the figure that it did.

I struck a match, and held it out to him, shaded by my hands. As the faint light illumined his face, I started back, and let the match fall: —

“Harry!”

He answered with a short dry laugh. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said, “or I shouldn’t have stopped you.”

“How has it come to this, old fellow?” I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder. His coat was unpleasantly greasy, and I drew my hand away again as quickly as I could, and tried to wipe it covertly upon my handkerchief.

“Oh, it’s a long, story,” he answered carelessly, “and too conventional to be worth telling. Some of us go up, you know. Some of us go down. You’re doing pretty well, I hear.”

“I suppose so,” I replied; “I’ve climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and am trying to stick there. But it is of you I want to talk. Can’t I do anything for you?”

We were passing under a gas-lamp at the moment. He thrust his face forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.

“Do I look like a man you could do anything for?” he said.

We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that might seize hold of him.

“You needn’t worry about me,” he continued after a while, “I’m comfortable enough. We take life easily down here where I am. We’ve no disappointments.”

“Why did you give up like a weak coward?” I burst out angrily. “You had talent. You would have won with ordinary perseverance.”

“Maybe,” he replied, in the same even tone of indifference. “I suppose I hadn’t the grit. I think if somebody had believed in me it might have helped me. But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself. And when a man loses that, he’s like a balloon with the gas let out.”

I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment. “Nobody believed in you!” I repeated. “Why, I always believed in you, you know that I – ”

Then I paused, remembering our “candid criticism” of one another.

“Did you?” he replied quietly, “I never heard you say so. Good-night.”

In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood of the Savoy, and, as he spoke, he disappeared down one of the dark turnings thereabouts.

I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick steps before me for a little way, they were soon swallowed up in the sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel stands, I had lost all trace of him.

A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made inquiries.

“What sort of a gent was he, sir?” questioned the man.

“A tall thin gentleman, very shabbily dressed – might be mistaken for a tramp.”

“Ah, there’s a good many of that sort living in this town,” replied the man. “I’m afraid you’ll have some difficulty in finding him.”

Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I should never listen for their drawing near again.

I wondered as I walked on – I have wondered before and since – whether Art, even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted in her behalf – whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.

Jephson arrived about nine o’clock in the ferry-boat. We were made acquainted with this fact by having our heads bumped against the sides of the saloon.

Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard, without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him. This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking along the passage at the moment, and the result to her was that she received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on the right.

She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double knock annoyed her: so much “style” was out of place in a mere ferry-boy. Accordingly she went out to him in a state of high indignation.

“What do you think you are?” she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his ears first on one side and then on the other, “a torpedo! What are you doing here at all? What do you want?”

“I don’t want nothin’,” explained the boy, rubbing his head; “I’ve brought a gent down.”

“A gent?” said Amenda, looking round, but seeing no one. “What gent?”

“A stout gent in a straw ’at,” answered the boy, staring round him bewilderedly.

“Well, where is he?” asked Amenda.

“I dunno,” replied the boy, in an awed voice; “’e was a-standin’ there, at the other end of the punt, a-smokin’ a cigar.”

Just then a head appeared above the water, and a spent but infuriated swimmer struggled up between the houseboat and the bank.

“Oh, there ’e is!” cried the boy delightedly, evidently much relieved at this satisfactory solution of the mystery; “’e must ha’ tumbled off the punt.”