Paul Kelver

In the vestry I met old friends. The maternal Sellars, stouter than ever, had been accommodated with a chair – at least, I assumed so, she being in a sitting posture; the chair itself was not in evidence. She greeted me with more graciousness than I had expected, enquiring after my health with pointedness and an amount of tender solicitude that, until the explanation broke upon me, somewhat puzzled me.

Mr. Reginald Clapper was a small but energetic gentleman, much impressed, I was glad to notice, with a conviction of his own good fortune. He expressed the greatest delight at being introduced to me, shook me heartily by the hand, and hoped we should always be friends.

“Won’t be my fault if we’re not,” he added. “Come and see us whenever you like.” He repeated this three times. I gathered the general sentiment to be that he was acting, if anything, with excess of generosity.

Mrs. Reginald Clapper, as I was relieved to know she now was, received my salute to a subdued murmur of applause. She looked to my eyes handsomer than when I had last seen her, or maybe my taste was growing less exacting. She also trusted she might always regard me as a friend. I replied that it would be my hope to deserve the honour; whereupon she kissed me of her own accord, and embracing her mother, shed some tears, explaining the reason to be that everybody was so good to her.

Brother George, less lank than formerly, hampered by a pair of enormous white kid gloves, superintended my signing of the register, whispering to me sympathetically: “Better luck next time, old cock.”

The fat young lady – or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter, I cannot say for certain – who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her opinion, I was worth all the others put together.

“And so I told her,” added the fat young lady – or the lean one grown stouter, “a dozen times if I told her once. But there!”

I murmured my obligations.

Cousin Joseph, ‘whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.

“You take my tip,” advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, “and keep out of it.”

“You speak from experience?” I suggested.

“I’m as fond of a joke,” said the watery-eyed Joseph, “as any man. But when it comes to buckets of water – ”

A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered for eleven o’clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph’s revelations.

“See you again, perhaps,” he murmured, and pushed past me.

What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold col-la-shon had been arranged for at a restaurant near by. I walked there in company with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I particularly desired their companionship, but because Uncle Gutton, seizing me by the arm, left me no alternative.

“Now then, young man,” commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously so soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the others, “if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away. I shan’t mind, and maybe it’ll do you good.”

I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.

“Oh, all right,” returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed. “If you’re willing to forgive and forget, so am I. I never liked you, as I daresay you saw, and so I told Rosie. ‘He may be cleverer than he looks,’ I says, ‘or he may be a bigger fool than I think him, though that’s hardly likely. You take my advice and get a full-grown article, then you’ll know what you’re doing.’”

I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.

“I’m glad you think so,” he returned, somewhat puzzled; “though if you wanted to call me names I shouldn’t have blamed you. Anyhow, you’ve took it like a sensible chap. You’ve got over it, as I always told her you would. Young men out of story-books don’t die of broken hearts, even if for a month or two they do feel like standing on their head in the water-butt.”

“Why, I was in love myself three times,” explained Uncle Gutton, “before I married the old woman.”

Aunt Gutton sighed and said she was afraid gentlemen didn’t feel these things as much as they ought to.

“They’ve got their living to earn,” retorted Uncle Gutton.

I agreed with Uncle Gutton that life could not be wasted in vain regret.

“As for the rest,” admitted Uncle Gutton, handsomely, “I was wrong. You’ve turned out better than I expected you would.”

I thanked him for his improved opinion, and as we entered the restaurant we shook hands.

Minikin we found there waiting for us. He explained that having been able to obtain only limited leave of absence from business, he had concluded the time would be better employed at the restaurant than at the church. Others were there also with whom I was unacquainted, young sparks, admirers, I presume, of the Lady ‘Ortensia in her professional capacity, fellow-clerks of Mr. Clapper, who was something in the City. Altogether we must have numbered a score.

Breakfast was laid in a large room on the first floor. The wedding presents stood displayed upon a side-table. My own, with my card attached, had not been seen by Mrs. Clapper till that moment. She and her mother lingered, examining it.

“Real silver!” I heard the maternal Sellars whisper, “Must have paid a ten pound note for it.”

“I hope you’ll find it useful,” I said.

The maternal Sellars, drifting away, joined the others gathered together at the opposite end of the room.

“I suppose you think I set my cap at you merely because you were a gentleman,” said the Lady ‘Ortensia.

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” I answered. “We were both foolish.”

“I don’t want you to think it was merely that,” continued the Lady ‘Ortensia. “I did like you. And I wouldn’t have disgraced you – at least, I’d have tried not to. We women are quick to learn. You never gave me time.”

“Believe me, things are much better as they are,” I said.

“I suppose so,” she answered. “I was a fool.” She glanced round; we still had the corner to ourselves. “I told a rare pack of lies,” she said; “I didn’t seem able to help it; I was feeling sore all over. But I have always been ashamed of myself. I’ll tell them the truth, if you like.”

I thought I saw a way of making her mind easy. “My dear girl,” I said, “you have taken the blame upon yourself, and let me go scot-free. It was generous of you.”

“You mean that?” she asked.

“The truth,” I answered, “would shift all the shame on to me. It was I who broke my word, acted shabbily from beginning to end.”

“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” she replied. “Very well, I’ll hold my tongue.”

My place at breakfast was to the left of the maternal Sellars, the Signora next to me, and the O’Kelly opposite. Uncle Gutton faced the bride and bridegroom. The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by flowers, so that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my ears, embellished with the mysterious significance of the unseen oracle.

For the first quarter of an hour or so the meal proceeded almost in silence. The maternal Sellars when not engaged in whispered argument with the perspiring waiter, was furtively occupied in working sums upon the table-cloth by aid of a blunt pencil. The Signora, strangely unlike her usual self, was not in talkative mood.

“It was so kind of them to invite me,” said the Signora, speaking low. “But I feel I ought not to have come.

“Why not?” I asked

“I’m not fit to be here,” murmured the Signora in a broken voice. “What right have I at wedding breakfasts? Of course, for dear Willie it is different. He has been married.”

The O’Kelly, who never when the Signora was present seemed to care much for conversation in which she was unable to participate, took advantage of his neighbour’s being somewhat deaf to lapse into abstraction. Jarman essayed a few witticisms of a general character, of which nobody took any notice. The professional admirers of the Lady ‘Ortensia, seated together at a corner of the table, appeared to be enjoying a small joke among themselves. Occasionally, one or another of them would laugh nervously. But for the most part the only sounds to be heard were the clatter of the knives and forks, the energetic shuffling of the waiter, and a curious hissing noise as of escaping gas, caused by Uncle Gutton drinking champagne.

With the cutting, or, rather, the smashing into a hundred fragments, of the wedding cake – a work that taxed the united strength of bride and bridegroom to the utmost – the atmosphere lost something of its sombreness. The company, warmed by food, displaying indications of being nearly done, commenced to simmer. The maternal Sellars, putting away with her blunt pencil considerations of material nature, embraced the table with a smile.

“But it is a sad thing,” sighed the maternal Sellars the next moment, with a shake of her huge head, “when your daughter marries, and goes away and leaves you.”

“Damned sight sadder,” commented Uncle Gutton, “when she don’t go off, but hangs on at home year after year and expects you to keep her.”

I credit Uncle Gutton with intending this as an aside for the exclusive benefit of the maternal Sellars; but his voice was not of the timbre that lends itself to secrecy. One of the bridesmaids, a plain, elderly girl, bending over her plate, flushed scarlet. I concluded her to be Miss Gutton.

“It doesn’t seem to me,” said Aunt Gutton from the other end of the table, “that gentlemen are as keen on marrying nowadays as they used to be.”

“Got to know a bit about it, I expect,” sounded the small, shrill voice of the unseen Joseph.

“To my thinking,” exclaimed a hatchet-faced gentleman, “one of the evils crying most loudly for redress at the present moment is the utterly needless and monstrous expense of legal proceedings.” He spoke rapidly and with warmth. “Take divorce. At present, what is it? The rich man’s luxury.”

Conversation appeared to be drifting in a direction unsuitable to the occasion; but Jarman was fortunately there to seize the helm.

“The plain fact of the matter is,” said Jarman, “girls have gone up in value. Time was, so I’ve heard, when they used to be given away with a useful bit of household linen, maybe a chair or two. Nowadays – well, it’s only chaps wallowing in wealth like Clapper there as can afford a really first-class article.”

Mr. Clapper, not a gentleman in other respects of exceptional brilliancy, possessed one quality that popularity-seekers might have envied him: the ability to explode on the slightest provocation into a laugh instinct with all the characteristics of genuine delight.

“Give and take,” observed the maternal Sellars, so soon as Mr. Clapper’s roar had died away; “that’s what you’ve got to do when you’re married.”

“Give a deal more than you bargained for and take what you don’t want – that sums it up,” came the bitter voice of the unseen.

“Oh, do be quiet, Joe,” advised the stout young lady, from which I concluded she had once been the lean young lady. “You talk enough for a man.”

“Can’t I open my mouth?” demanded the indignant oracle.

“You look less foolish when you keep it shut,” returned the stout young lady.

“We’ll show them how to get on,” observed the Lady ‘Ortensia to her bridegroom, with a smile.

Mr. Clapper responded with a gurgle.

“When me and the old girl there fixed things up,” said Uncle Gutton, “we didn’t talk no nonsense, and we didn’t start with no misunderstandings. ‘I’m not a duke,’ I says – ”

“Had she been mistaking you for one?” enquired Minikin.

Mr. Clapper commented, not tactfully, but with appreciative laugh. I feared for a moment lest Uncle Gutton’s little eyes should leave his head.

“Not being a natural-born, one-eyed fool,” replied Uncle Gutton, glaring at the unabashed Minikin, “she did not. ‘I’m not a duke,’ I says, and she had sense enough to know as I was talking sarcastic like. ‘I’m not offering you a life of luxury and ease. I’m offering you myself, just what you see, and nothing more.’

“She took it?” asked Minikin, who was mopping up his gravy with his bread.

“She accepted me, sir,” returned Uncle Gutton, in a voice that would have awed any one but Minikin. “Can you give me any good reason for her not doing so?”

“No need to get mad with me,” explained Minikin. “I’m not blaming the poor woman. We all have our moments of despair.”

The unfortunate Clapper again exploded. Uncle Gutton rose to his feet. The ready Jarman saved the situation.

“‘Ear! ‘ear!” cried Jarman, banging the table with the handles of two knives. “Silence for Uncle Gutton! ‘E’s going to propose a toast. ‘Ear, ‘ear!”

Mrs. Clapper, seconding his efforts, the whole table broke into applause.

“What, as a matter of fact, I did get up to say – ” began Uncle Gutton.

“Good old Uncle Gutton!” persisted the determined Jarman. “Bride and bridegroom – long life to ‘em!”

Uncle Sutton, evidently pleased, allowed his indignation against Minikin to evaporate.

“Well,” said Uncle Gutton, “if you think I’m the one to do it – ”

The response was unmistakable. In our enthusiasm we broke two glasses and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task. Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to assign to him the duty.

Starting with a somewhat uninstructive history of his own career, he suddenly, and for no reason at all obvious, branched off into fierce censure of the Adulteration Act. Reminded of the time by the maternal Sellars, he got in his first sensible remark by observing that with such questions, he took it, the present company was not particularly interested, and directed himself to the main argument. To his, Uncle Gutton’s, foresight, wisdom and instinctive understanding of humanity, Mr. Clapper, it appeared, owed his present happiness. Uncle Gutton it was who had divined from the outset the sort of husband the fair Rosina would come eventually to desire – a plain, simple, hard-working, level-headed sort of chap, with no hity-tity nonsense about him: such an one, in short, as Mr. Clapper himself – (at this Mr. Clapper expressed approval by a lengthy laugh) – a gentleman who, so far as Uncle Gutton’s knowledge went, had but one fault: a silly habit of laughing when there was nothing whatever to laugh at; of which, it was to be hoped, the cares and responsibilities of married life would cure him. (To the rest of the discourse Mr. Clapper listened with a gravity painfully maintained.) There had been moments, Uncle Gutton was compelled to admit, when the fair Rosina had shown inclination to make a fool of herself – to desire in place of honest worth mere painted baubles. He used the term in no offensive sense. Speaking for himself, what a man wanted beyond his weekly newspaper, he, Uncle Gutton, was unable to understand; but if there were fools in the world who wanted to read rubbish written by other fools, then the other fools would of course write it; Uncle Gutton did not blame them. He mentioned no names, but what he would say was: a plain man for a sensible girl, and no painted baubles.

The waiter here entering with a message from the cabman to the effect that if he was to catch the twelve-forty-five from Charing Cross, it was about full time he started, Uncle Gutton was compelled to bring his speech to a premature conclusion. The bride and bridegroom were hustled into their clothes. There followed much female embracing and male hand-shaking. The rice having been forgotten, the waiter was almost thrown downstairs, with directions to at once procure some. There appearing danger of his not returning in time, the resourceful Jarman suggested cold semolina pudding as a substitute. But the idea was discouraged by the bride. A slipper of remarkable antiquity, discovered on the floor and regarded as a gift from Providence, was flung from the window by brother George, with admirable aim, and alighted on the roof of the cab. The waiter, on his return, not being able to find it, seemed surprised.

I walked back as far as the Obelisk with the O’Kelly and the Signora, who were then living together in Lambeth. Till that morning I had not seen the O’Kelly since my departure from London, nearly two years before, so that we had much to tell each other. For the third time now had the O’Kelly proved his utter unworthiness to be the husband of the lady to whom he still referred as his “dear good wife.”

“But, under the circumstances, would it not be better,” I suggested, “for her to obtain a divorce? Then you and the Signora could marry and there would be an end to the whole trouble.”

“From a strictly worldly point of view,” replied the O’Kelly, “it certainly would be; but Mrs. O’Kelly” – his voice took to itself unconsciously a tone of reverence – “is not an ordinary woman. You can have no conception, my dear Kelver, of her goodness. I had a letter from her only two months ago, a few weeks after the – the last occurrence. Not one word of reproach, only that if I trespassed against her even unto seven times seven she would still consider it her duty to forgive me; that the ‘home’ would always be there for me to return to and repent.”

A tear stood in the O’Kelly’s eye. “A beautiful nature,” he commented. “There are not many women like her.”

“Not one in a million!” added the Signora, with enthusiasm.

“Well, to me it seems like pure obstinacy,” I said.

The O’Kelly spoke quite angrily. “Don’t ye say a word against her! I won’t listen to it. Ye don’t understand her. She never will despair of reforming me.”

“You see, Mr. Kelver,” explained the Signora, “the whole difficulty arises from my unfortunate profession. It is impossible for me to keep out of dear Willie’s way. If I could earn my living by any other means, I would; but I can’t. And when he sees my name upon the posters, it’s all over with him.”

“I do wish, Willie, dear,” added the Signora in tones of gentle reproof, “that you were not quite so weak.”

“Me dear,” replied the O’Kelly, “ye don’t know how attractive ye are or ye wouldn’t blame me.”

I laughed. “Why don’t you be firm,” I suggested to the Signora, “send him packing about his business?”

“I ought to,” admitted the Signora. “I always mean to, until I see him. Then I don’t seem able to say anything – not anything I ought to.”

“Ye do say it,” contradicted the O’Kelly. “Ye’re an angel, only I won’t listen to ye.”

“I don’t say it as if I meant it,” persisted the Signora. “It’s evident I don’t.”

“I still think it a pity,” I said, “someone does not explain to Mrs. O’Kelly that a divorce would be the truer kindness.”

“It is difficult to decide,” argued the Signora. “If ever you should want to leave me – ”

“Me darling!” exclaimed the O’Kelly.

“But you may,” insisted the Signora. “Something may happen to help you, to show you how wicked it all is. I shall be glad then to think that you will go back to her. Because she is a good woman, Willie, you know she is.”

“She’s a saint,” agreed Willie.

At the Obelisk I shook hands with them, and alone pursued my way towards Fleet Street.

The next friend whose acquaintance I renewed was Dan. He occupied chambers in the Temple, and one evening a week or two after the ‘Ortensia marriage, I called upon him. Nothing in his manner of greeting me suggested the necessity of explanation. Dan never demanded anything of his friends beyond their need of him. Shaking hands with me, he pushed me down into the easy-chair, and standing with his back to the fire, filled and lighted his pipe.

“I left you alone,” he said. “You had to go through it, your slough of despond. It lies across every path – that leads to anywhere. Clear of it?”

“I think so,” I replied, smiling.

“You are on the high road,” he continued. “You have only to walk steadily. Sure you have left nothing behind you – in the slough?”

“Nothing worth bringing out of it,” I said. “Why do you ask so seriously?”

He laid his hand upon my head, rumpling my hair, as in the old days.

“Don’t leave him behind you,” he said; “the little boy Paul – Paul the dreamer.”

I laughed. “Oh, he! He was only in my way.”

“Yes, here,” answered Dan. “This is not his world. He is of no use to you here; won’t help you to bread and cheese – no, nor kisses either. But keep him near you. Later, you will find, perhaps, that all along he has been the real Paul – the living, growing Paul; the other – the active, worldly, pushful Paul, only the stuff that dreams are made of, his fretful life a troubled night rounded by a sleep.”

“I have been driving him away,” I said. “He is so – so impracticable.”

Dan shook his head gravely. “It is not his world,” he repeated. “We must eat, drink – be husbands, fathers. He does not understand. Here he is the child. Take care of him.”

We sat in silence for a little while – for longer, perhaps, than it seemed to us – Dan in the chair opposite to me, each of us occupied with his own thoughts.

“You have an excellent agent,” said Dan; “retain her services as long as you can. She possesses the great advantage of having no conscience, as regards your affairs. Women never have where they – ”

He broke off to stir the fire.

“You like her?” I asked. The words sounded feeble. It is only the writer who fits the language to the emotion; the living man more often selects by contrast.

“She is my ideal woman,” returned Dan; “true and strong and tender; clear as crystal, pure as dawn. Like her!”

He knocked the ashes from his pipe. “We do not marry our ideals,” he went on. “We love with our hearts, not with our souls. The woman I shall marry” – he sat gazing into the fire, a smile upon his face – “she will be some sweet, clinging, childish woman, David Copperfield’s Dora. Only I am not Doady, who always seems to me to have been somewhat of a – He reminds me of you, Paul, a little. Dickens was right; her helplessness, as time went on, would have bored him more and more instead of appealing to him.”

“And the women,” I suggested, “do they marry their ideals?”

He laughed. “Ask them.”

“The difference between men and women,” he continued, “is very slight; we exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he is, Norah’s ideal? Can’t you imagine him? – But I can tell you the type of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart.”

He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his eye.

“A nice enough fellow – clever, perhaps, but someone – well, someone who will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will appeal to the mother side of her – not her ideal man, but the man for whom nature intended her.”

“Perhaps with her help,” I said, “he may in time become her ideal.”

“There’s a long road before him,” growled Dan.

It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara’s elopement with Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed. His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked boastingly: Had I seen the Post for last Monday, the Court Circular for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a Grand Duke? What did I think of that! and such like. Was not money master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made to acknowledge it!

But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.

“No children,” he had whispered to me across the table; “that’s what I can’t understand. Nearly four years and no children! What’ll be the good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?”

It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was the talk of the town for the next day – and the following eight. She had heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and see her.

“I thought you would rather hear it quietly,” said Norah, “than learn it from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her.”