Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

Chapter II

When I was about seven years of age my father died. I think the cause was aerated waters, although I remember that on being shown his body after death it looked so small that my mind hardly established any very definite relation between it and the weary, kindly little man with the abnormal waist whom I had known as my father.

My mother must, I am sure, have sorrowed greatly, but she spared my tender years any harrowing spectacle of grief and set herself courageously to the task of keeping our home together.

My father had been insured for some five hundred pounds, which brought my mother in a tiny income. The house fortunately was her own. She immediately dismissed her one servant and let the front rooms, so that we were not so badly off after all. My mother, who had hitherto superintended my education, was now no longer able to do so, as the house took up most of her time. Certainly, the school I was sent to was a very much better one than a boy circumstanced as I was could have expected to attend. It was patronised by a great many sons of the comparatively wealthy in the neighbourhood, and was by no means inexpensive. I went right through it from the lowest form to the highest.

My masters pronounced me quick, but not studious. Personally, I don’t think highly imaginative people are ever very studious in childhood or early youth. How is it possible? The imaginative temperament sets one dreaming of wonderful results achieved at a remarkably small outlay of effort. It is only the dull who receive any demonstration of the value of application.

My mother was careful that I should not be dressed so as to compare unfavourably in any way with my schoolfellows, and managed that I should always have a sufficiency of pocket-money, advantages which I hardly appreciated at the time. How she accomplished this I do not know, but I can honestly say that I never knew what want meant, and although my mother did all the work of the house herself, and cooked for the gentleman to whom our front rooms were let, we never lived in the kitchen or descended to a slovenly mode of life. We had our meals in quite a well-bred manner in the dining-room, which was also our living-room.

Our lodger was a mysterious creature who always brought me a handsome birthday and Christmas present and declined to be thanked. The first time he saw me he pronounced me to be too good-looking for a boy.

He was gruff and abrupt in manner, but the incarnation of deferential courtesy to my mother, whom I truly think he worshipped. I believe that his prolonged residence in our front rooms was not entirely due to their comfort or to my mother’s cooking.

I am sure he embarrassed her by his chronic efforts to spare her trouble. By degrees he took to dining out nearly every evening, although his arrival immediately after the dinner hour showed that he had no engagement anywhere else.

I have every reason to believe that he made her an offer of marriage, but if it were so he did not allow her refusal to drive him away. He remained, and continued to treat her with even greater deference than before.

Apart from the memory of my father, which she held sacred, her devotion as a mother would, I think, have kept her from the remotest contemplation of a second marriage. She lived entirely for me.

I was early made acquainted with the story of the Gascoyne succession, and it was with a quiet smile of indulgence that my mother told me of the interest with which my father would watch the ebb and flow of the heirs that stood between his wife and the peerage.

The idea, however, seized my vivid imagination. I got my mother to bring out all the papers and I set to work at once to see how far my claims had advanced or receded since my father’s death.

I was obliged before I could completely determine my position to have recourse to a Peerage. I was surprised to discover that I had come appreciably nearer to the succession. There were still six lives between myself and the peerage, but two branches which had formerly barred the way had become extinct. Perhaps it will be as well to give a tree of the succession from the point where the branch to which I belong came into existence. It must be understood that I do not give those branches which had died out, or the names of individuals who did not affect the succession.

It will thus be seen that there was by no means a lack of male heirs and that my chance was remote indeed. In fact, on going into the question, so little prospect did there seem of my ever standing near to the succession that I gave up taking an interest in the matter, at least for the time being.

In looking back at the development of my character, I am not conscious of a natural wickedness staining and perverting all my actions. My career has been simply the result of an immense desire to be somebody of importance. My chief boyish trait was a love of beauty, whether in things animate or inanimate. People who have possessed that intangible something which is known as beauty—that degree of attraction made up of always varying proportions of line, colour and intelligence—have invariably done something more than merely attract me; they have filled me with a burning desire to be obviously in their outlook, to move for a time within their circumference, to feel that I had left an indelible impress on their memory, and it was my early appreciation of a capacity to do this that perhaps fostered my egotism, till it had become an article of faith with me that I must be someone. I looked upon the possession of rank or renown as a useful weapon for drawing attention to myself, of increasing the number of individuals brought under my personal influence.

I was greedy of importance, because of the beauty it might bring into life. Naturally the beautiful things in life vary according to temperament. Romance was to me the chief thing. After all, it is the salt of existence. Not that I believe romance to be necessarily conditioned by rank and wealth. A real artist may create it for himself out of very humble materials. One of the most complete romanticists I ever met was a coal-heaver, who had a list of experiences that sounded in the telling like the Arabian Nights entertainment. At the same time, rank and wealth fascinate the Jew as much as precious stones. They glitter, and they have value. The Israelite is probably less of a snob in these matters than the average Englishman, but as an Oriental he appreciates their decorative effect. Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether he is ever so far dazzled by them as to forget his own interests. I most certainly was not. I should have liked to be Earl Gascoyne. It would have meant grasping the lever to so many things, and this fact dawned on me more and more as I grew up.

My distant relationship to the Gascoynes was the cause of some humiliation to me at school. There was a boy whose father had just been made an Alderman of the City of London, and he was rather boastful of the fact.

“Bah! what’s an Alderman?” I asked.

Instinctively the other boys felt that it was not right that one of Hebraic extraction should make such a remark. They had the intuition of their race that a Jew is after all a Jew.

“Shut up, Sheeny,” said one.

“Now then, old clo’,” said another.

I was not the possessor of Jewish blood for nothing. Where an English boy would have struck out I remained Orientally contemptuous of insult. I merely wondered if the time would ever come when I should be able to remind Lionel Holland—the last boy who had spoken—of his insult.

“If six people were to die I should be Earl Gascoyne,” I said grandly.

There arose a shout of laughter.

“Pigs might fly,” said Lionel Holland.

I flushed. The only impression produced by my grandiloquent speech was that I was a stupid liar. Even my bosom friend Billy Statham shrank away from me. Such a useless lie offended his sense of propriety.

I was only twelve and had some difficulty in keeping back my tears.

“It’s true,” I asserted.

“How can it be true?” demanded Holland. “You are a Jew and your name is not Gascoyne.”

“It is—my name is Israel Gascoyne Rank. My mother’s name was Gascoyne.”

But whatever I said they declined to believe in the possibility of such a thing. The incident taught me, however, to hold my tongue on the subject of my noble extraction, and that was a point gained.

I don’t think I was unpopular at school, but I suffered the penalty of all marked personalities; that is to say, I was very much liked or very much detested. I was not in one sense of great importance in the school life. I should have been untrue to myself if I had been. There is perhaps nothing more remarkable than the false estimate held by boys of character. Their giants are as often as not the pigmies of after life. Our school captain at the time I am speaking of was a boy called Jim Morton. He had a pleasant face bordering on good looks, and the body, so we thought, of a young Hercules. The basis of his popularity was a sense of justice and a reticence in the display of his physical strength. He was most certainly worshipped by the entire school, including myself, although I was by no means prone to idealise those in authority. For Jim Morton I had a veritable respect, although in any case my Jewish blood would have taught me to simulate deference until I was in a position to betray my true estimate without danger to my own interests. To my imagination as a small boy he seemed to possess something Titanic, to tower above everybody else in the school immeasurably. I met him in after years, an insignificant looking man with a ragged moustache and a slouch. It was quite a shock, and I waited for him to open his mouth, sure that his power over my juvenile imagination must have been a question of intellect. I talked to him for a long time, hoping for some echo at least of a lost magic. I can safely say I never met anyone more destitute of ideas, and it seemed impossible that he could ever have had any. Perhaps had he lived among savages the primitive virtues which had made him supreme among boys—and boyish communities are psychologically similar to savage races—would have developed, and he would have remained a force. It may be so; I give him the benefit of the doubt. I am inclined to think, however, that there never had been any personality in the true sense of the word.

Billy Statham, a boy a year older than myself, I loved. Where my affections are roused—and I have very strong affections, however much people may feel inclined to doubt it—I cling like a leech. I am supremely indifferent to defects in those I love, even when they affect myself. The only thing I ask is marked characteristics; I am incapable of concentrating myself on the colourless.

Billy Statham was certainly not colourless. He was gay, emotional, and beautiful as morning. He was brilliant and indolent. In many ways he seemed to be the most backward boy in the school, but to accuse him of being ignorant would have been preposterous. I never knew him tell a lie, and I never knew him do a dishonest thing; and yet once when a boy in the school who had been discovered in a flagrant piece of dishonesty was by general agreement sent to Coventry, Billy Statham was the one person who treated him as if nothing had happened. I really think his was the most Christ-like nature I have ever met. He always seemed to hold on to the intangible something in people which is above earthly stains. Evil had at times a bewildering effect on him. I have seen him look quite blank—when a curious look of wonder did not come into his face—as other boys were discussing matters which properly belonged to a more adult stage. The impending complexities of sex into which the other lads were always taking surreptitious peeps attracted him not at all. It seemed as if he must have possessed some inward consciousness that his body would never be called upon to take part in the sterner struggle. When he was fourteen he contracted rheumatic fever, and was returned to us after a few months with the roses blanched from his cheeks and the consciousness of a weak heart. One day he told me that he had heard the doctor say to his parents that if he had rheumatic fever again he would die. On a damp afternoon in late autumn we were caught in a heavy downpour and I left him at his front door shivering. I did not see him alive again, and I have never known boys so profoundly moved by the death of one of their number. It seemed as if they realised that something spiritual and valuable had gone from them in their corporate capacity. He left behind him the recollection of a nature entirely unspoilt.

To me his death was a profound grief. I have never experienced so great a friendship for anyone since. At the time, I was unable to understand why he chose me as his Jonathan, excepting that, as I have already said, he had the instinct of great minds for grasping the essentials in human nature and allowing a man’s actions to remain a matter of opinion. He seldom argued with me. He was content to influence, and in this he displayed another trait of great natures, which let fall here and there a truth, but are not prone to discussion. I have often thought that he might have been the remnant of a great consciousness, having somewhat, but not a great deal, to expiate in human form. His goodness seemed to stretch out, invisible, beyond himself.

When he died I was fourteen, and the firmest of friendships are not at that age sufficiently strong to leave an inconsolable grief. My next great friend was a boy of very different character. Grahame Hallward was the son of a fairly well-to-do City man. They lived in comfortable style, albeit they were a somewhat uncomfortable family. Wherein their uncomfortableness lay it would have been difficult to say. They all had a more than usual share of good looks, and this possibly was their first attraction for me. Indeed, two of them, Grahame and Sibella, were quite beautiful to look upon. The family constituted a very aristocracy of physical gifts, and, despite their peculiar natures, I was always at my ease among them. It is true that they were inclined to patronise me, but the qualities of my race enabled me to endure this without resentment, and even with dignity. It was, however, only natural; for although I was always neatly dressed, the position of my mother was well known, and had it been otherwise, the house and street in which we lived would sufficiently have revealed the truth. In matters of this sort I was not a snob; besides, I had too quick an instinct for things well-bred not to realise that my mother was gentlewoman enough to hold her own with the very best.

One day I took Grahame Hallward home to tea. I think he felt a little nervous, wondering if tea in the house of such poor people would be a very uncomfortable affair. I realised from the way in which he accepted that he was a little surprised at the invitation. He always had beautiful manners, and he said that of course he would be delighted to come. The two words “of course!” were a mistake, however, and I resented them, although I was secretly amused.

He came one day after school, and when we reached the house my mother was already seated before the urn. There were flowers on the table, and the linen was spotless. There was a silver teapot and sugar-basin given to my mother by our lodger on the occasion of his having completed two years’ residence in the house. His ingenuity in finding occasions whereon it might be considered suitable to make my mother and myself presents was quite remarkable. I was entrusted with the task of calling him in the morning. Hence it became necessary for me to have a watch, entirely, as he explained, to suit his convenience. In the same way a piano arrived one day—our own had been sold at my father’s death—and our lodger explained that it had been left to him by a distant relation. I gazed at it longingly as it disappeared into his sitting-room. After a day or two he said that he believed it would be spoilt unless it were played upon, and asked me as a favour to do so. Then, having come home once or twice as I was practising hard, he declared almost irritably that it was inconvenient and that he really thought considering the time he had been with us we might oblige him by having it in our sitting-room, but that of course if my mother objected there was nothing more to be said. He would have sold it had it not been in his cousin’s house for so many years. Needless to chronicle that the piano stood henceforward in our sitting-room. Our suspicions were somewhat aroused when the man who came to tune it gave as his opinion that the instrument could not be more than two years old, if that; in fact, he should have said it was brand-new.

My mother was pleased for my sake that she was able to greet my friend from behind a silver teapot and sugar-basin. I was secretly conscious of the effect she produced on Grahame. He had, I am sure, believed—despite all my assurances to the contrary—that my mother was a Jewess, and he was not a little surprised to find a well-bred Englishwoman with a reserved and quite distinguished manner. Tea being over my mother kept us seated, whilst, almost unobserved, she placed every article from the table on the tray. She was full of manœuvres for minimising the bustle consequent on the want of a servant. I was rather nervous of the moment when she would rise and bear forth the tray. I had set her on such a pinnacle before my friend that I could not bear that he should see her otherwise than enthroned. I was painfully conscious that there is no snob like a boy. My mother, however, had foreseen everything.

“Israel dear, Mr. Johnson has brought home a beautiful old Chinese cabinet. I am sure Mr. Hallward would like to see it.”

Mr. Hallward—barely fifteen and a half and very flattered at being referred to as Mr. Hallward—expressed himself as most anxious, and we adjourned to the front room.

Short as was the time we were gone, on our return all signs of a meal had disappeared, and my mother was seated before the fire as if she possessed ten servants instead of her own ten fingers.

Then I played. This was not entirely a novelty; I had often been shown off at the Hallwards’ house. Indeed, my musical abilities were, I fancied, often made an excuse when the Hallwards felt that the presence of my humble self in their mansion occasioned surprise. In Clapham, residence was everything, and the leading families were a little suspicious of anyone who lived in a house as small as our own. Had they been generally aware of the lodger they would have considered themselves entirely justified in deciding that I was not socially eligible!

I walked part of the way home with Grahame Hallward.

“I say,” he burst out, “your mother is rippin’.”

If Grahame Hallward said so I knew he meant it. His chief enemy in life was his tongue. He always had an uncontrollable habit of speaking his mind.

Sibella Hallward exercised an irresistible fascination over me from the first moment I saw her. She was undeniably lovely even at an age when most girls are at their worst. Her hair was deliciously silky and golden. Her eyes were large and blue, with dark-brown brows and lashes. Her cheeks were the petals of a blush rose. Her mouth was perfect and petulant, and the one imperfection with which Nature invariably salts the cream of the correct was her nose; it was a little tip-tilted, and seemed to have been made to match her voice, which was curiously childish and treble, with an acerb complaint in it that was indescribably delightful. She allowed me to play at sweet-hearting with her, and then one day when we quarrelled called me a horrid little Jew. I was possessed by my love for her from that day. My obsession has never been defensible. She was no excuse for any man’s love excepting that she was beautiful, and I loved her because such beauty would confer distinction on the man who won her.

She was vain and shallow, but with a will of her own which was somewhat remarkable, combined with her other characteristics.

I was constantly at the Hallwards’ house. I was always quarrelling with Sibella and declaring that I would never visit them any more, but she invariably managed to lure me back without in any way apologising or admitting herself to be in the wrong.

At this time she was a shameless little flirt and permitted me to make love to her, which I did with all the precocity of my semi-oriental nature. Her parents were a good-natured, indulgent couple, and they usually alluded to me as Sibella’s sweetheart.

It was not a household where principles counted for much, and most of the inmates possessing, like Sibella, very strong wills the result was chaotic. At the same time, they were sympathetic in an egotistical way. To anybody who like myself was able to hold his own, and also to put up with them, the household was tolerable and enjoyable. Woe, however, to any luckless person who found them too fascinating to avoid and too strong-minded to be battled with! Such an one was ground to powder by the sheer weight of their egotism.

I suppose it was this egotism that made Grahame Hallward somewhat unpopular at school. He always bore himself with an extraordinary pride; not aggressive, but the sort of innate aloofness and condescension which might have been expected from the member of a reigning house. It was natural to the family, and even shallow Sibella possessed it. At times it gave one the impression that she had dignity, when in reality it was only an aspect of her vanity.

Amongst other things which Grahame Hallward and I had in common was a dislike of Lionel Holland. We had both suffered from his superior physical strength, and with Grahame even more than with me this was an unpardonable offence. Lionel Holland was not deficient in head; he had great intelligence of a certain kind, and almost a genius for displaying his mental wares to the best advantage. It was commonly reported that his father had begun life as a newspaper boy, and certainly his son’s wit and repartee were of the gutter order notwithstanding their veneer of middle-class suburbanism. He was slightly older than either of us and of an altogether stronger type. We found a means, however, of putting an end to his tyranny. We engaged in a defensive league, not verbally agreed upon—Grahame would have been much too proud to admit that such a thing was necessary—but we got into the way of standing by one another when he commenced to annoy us. Candour compels me to admit that he was almost a match for both of us, but we managed to inflict sufficient punishment to make him consider that the entertainment of baiting us had its risks, and finally he left us alone.

It was Lionel Holland’s ambition to be captain of the school. He considered that his brilliance at certain sports entitled him to it, but somehow he never reached the position he aimed at. The boys did not trust him. He was deficient in those very qualities that make a boy’s hero, and they were not to be deceived by the easy insolence of his manner. I never knew success in the cricket and football field carry a boy such a little way into his comrades’ hearts. He was a handsome lad enough, embryon of the flashy, brilliant brute he afterwards became. I think, but for Grahame and myself, he might have been elected to the post he coveted. He had more money than any other boy in the school and spent it freely where he had an object in view. My friend and I, however, were determined that so unsuitable an election should not take place. The captain of the school had large powers, and we had no mind to see ourselves in Lionel Holland’s hands. Our brains were more astute than his when it came to a real tussle of intellect. We discredited him in every way possible, and he endured the humiliation of defeat. A psychologist would have been interested in noting how, when Lionel Holland’s defeat was an accomplished fact, the different characteristics of Grahame’s nature and my own displayed themselves. Grahame, having attained his object, was sorry for his antagonist. I was unfeignedly glad, and rejoiced in his humiliation to an extent which was very unpleasing to my friend. We had quite a quarrel over the matter; and Grahame, whose plain speech never failed, told me that I was exhibiting the worst faults of the Old Testament, in that I showed unsportsmanlike exultation over a fallen foe. I ought perhaps to mention that Lionel Holland had attempted to win me to his side by asking me to go with him to the Crystal Palace and there treating me to all the side shows. I enjoyed the outing but took the liberty of continuing to distrust him; another method of which Grahame disapproved most strongly. Certainly Lionel Holland would never have attempted to bribe Grahame. The crudest of perceptions—which his was not—would at once have seen the futility of such an attempt.

I fancy that I was constantly disappointing my friend, and he was impatient of any point of view which he was unable to sympathise with. It was therefore the more remarkable that he should have remained so staunch. I think that at times his friendship for me was living on his capital of loyalty, of which he possessed an inexhaustible store. His loyalty tended to make him very inelastic in argument, but he was altogether an unexpected person and would on occasions display a susceptibility to logic which was amazing in one so young.

He was, what most people who knew him superficially hardly suspected, sensitive to an extraordinary degree. His impassivity deceived them. He had a horror of death, and Billy Statham’s end affected him more as a practical example of the inevitability and ruthlessness of bodily extinction than with regret at the loss of a schoolmate whom like all of us he had really loved.

He did not believe that my fear of death was not equal to his own, and concluded that my indifference was affected and mere bravado. In after years when I explained to him that without having any particular religious opinions, I regarded this body as a more or less useful vessel in which to perform part of the voyage of mental evolution, I found him quite unable to follow me and still possessed by just the same dread of death. The mere idea terrified him. The sight of all dead things, even when they happened to be the corpses of quite low forms of life, filled him with repulsion, and the idea of making him a doctor, which his father had entertained during his childhood, was abandoned.

I used to find a certain satisfaction in raising the question of death in order to see the colour fade out of his cheek. He was too proud to say that it frightened him, but it did. Fear was so little in his character that I came to the conclusion that it lay partly in the extraordinary value he and his family placed on personal appearance, and that in addition his terror might have its roots in some such cause as made Catherine de Medici faint when she saw an apple, even if it were a painted one in a picture.

As a boy I forbore to make him a confidant of my passion for his sister. Perhaps I realised that he would resent it. I think he believed that his sisters were fit matches for the most exalted, and was secretly astonished and disgusted when the eldest married a struggling young solicitor.

Once, when Sibella had taunted me and teased me past bearing, I threw the Gascoyne pedigree in her face. I shall never forget the silvery and maddening laugh of disbelief with which she received the announcement. She did not even ask me for proof but went on laughing till I could have struck her. At the moment I hated her. It was on a half-holiday. I had been asked to tea, and was making love to her in the schoolroom, waiting for Grahame and his brother to come in from football.

“When you laugh at me like that,” I said tersely, “I feel as if I could kill you.”

“And when you tell stories like that,” she said, mimicking my intonation in her childish treble, “you are simply ridiculous.” She took another chocolate from the bag of sweets I had brought her. I used to save up my pocket-money for two or three weeks until I had sufficient to buy sweets worthy of her acceptance. It is very certain that had she considered them other than the best she would have told me so.

“Yes,” she continued, “you are simply ridiculous. Just as if you could ever be a lord. I don’t believe it! If six people died!” she concluded, with a laugh which made me feel what I was capable of. I could have killed her where she stood but for the consequences.

If I held human life cheap I was still possessed of the caution of my race, and even at that age I loved her. Even at that age indeed! Looking back at my boyhood I am astonished at the insanity of passion of which I was capable. There is nothing more narrow than the scepticism with which older people treat the love-sickness of the young. Boys love even better perhaps than men ever can. Romeo was, I am convinced, not more than seventeen or eighteen—that is to say, as Shakespeare conceived him.

I felt humiliated by her disbelief. I had been anxious to give myself some importance in her eyes, and instead she treated the whole thing with absolute derision. That day was to be in every way one of bitterness. She was standing at the schoolroom window drumming on the glass, when suddenly she gave a little shrill cry of surprise.

“Oh what fun! Grahame is bringing someone in to tea, and father is with them.”

I looked out and saw to my annoyance Lionel Holland accompanying Grahame and his father up the drive. What was the meaning of it? Surely Lionel Holland had not succeeded in winning Grahame to friendship! It was hardly likely.

“And I do believe it’s that good-looking boy who won all the prizes at last year’s sports,” continued Sibella. “Yes, it is!”

I had, even at the age of sixteen, a very genius for the analysis of character—although analysis is hardly the word. Characters have always had a way of displaying themselves before me at a bird’s-eye view. From the first I mistrusted the effect of a handsome and confident piece of physical splendour on a nature like Sibella’s.

In the hall I could hear Lionel Holland apologising for his mudstained appearance, and Mr. Hallward’s breezy voice laughing away his scruples.

“Nonsense, my boy, nonsense, I like to see it. It shows you have been enjoying yourself in a fine, manly way. Grahame, take your friend upstairs and let him wash his face and hands.”

Mr. Hallward always took pleasure in the display of jovial hospitality. In reality he was a somewhat bad-tempered man, but when he was in the mood for a little display of amateur histrionics there was no one more genial or hearty.

Sibella was flushed with excitement and I was inwardly fuming.

“What is his name?” she demanded, turning to me as Lionel Holland’s voice died away upstairs.

“Lionel Holland,” I answered, as cheerfully as I could, determined that, if possible, I would not betray my annoyance.

“Do you like him?”

“Oh, he is all right.” I might just as well have said plainly that I disliked him, for Sibella was not deceived. She had a Jezebel’s gift for detecting antagonisms between those of the opposite sex and playing upon them. I believe this characteristic invariably differentiates the woman who uses her sex power for evil from the woman who uses it for good.

“You don’t like him,” she answered at once. “You are jealous of him.”

“Jealous! Why?”

“Because he plays games better than you do.”

I laughed. It was the last thing that was ever likely to make me jealous. She saw that the taunt had failed and tried another.

“And also because he is so much better looking than you are.”

I laughed again. From Sibella the absolutely untrue was not convincing.

But Sibella had a way of thrusting till she thrust home.

“You needn’t laugh—because it’s quite true, and you are also jealous because he is so much more manly than you are.”

I knew what she meant. Lionel Holland’s flamboyant animalism and sex assurance stood in her eyes for prime qualities. She was superficially feminine and loved a brute. The woman of delicate upbringing, who astonishes her friends by her inexplicable infatuation for a boaster who is obviously a cad and a bully despite his physical advantages, is twin sister to the lady of the slums who worships the brute who blackens her eyes and kicks her as an amusing conclusion to the week’s work. The poor slut flatters herself that it is evidence of a strength which he would not fail to use in her defence, forgetting that a bully is only occasionally a brave man.

I saw what was coming and grew sick at heart. One thing comforted me; Sibella was a snob, and despite his riches she would never be able to taunt me with his superior caste.

“I shouldn’t show my jealousy if I were you,” she concluded.

I looked at her quietly.

“You ought to be killed.”

I said the thing I knew would bludgeon her into silence. She shared Grahame’s fear of death, but in her case it was more ignoble. I believe if Grahame had been condemned to death his pride would have overcome his fear. I could imagine Sibella whining and fawning at the executioner’s feet.

She looked at me with distinct apprehension, and at that moment Grahame entered the room accompanied by Lionel Holland. Sibella immediately began to exercise her fascinations and to concentrate the attention of the visitor on herself. I have often thought since that Lionel Holland must have manœuvred his invitation to the house, for he seemed already to have made up his mind how to proceed with Sibella. He flattered her vanity, said that he remembered her perfectly on the day of the sports, and declared that he should certainly not have tried so hard had she not been there.

The younger members of the Hallward household had tea in the dining-room, and on Saturdays were privileged to bring in their friends, so that there was generally a large gathering. The tea itself was a sumptuous affair, and as the elders were seldom present it was as a rule very enjoyable. Cynthia Hallward, one year older than Sibella, poured out.

Lionel Holland seemed supremely unconscious that Grahame was not very pleased at his presence.

I was of course unable to express my displeasure until I was given a lead. Grahame lingered a minute or two in the school-room with me.

“I wish the Guv’nor would mind his own business,” he said sulkily.

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“Is it likely? He insisted on walking home with me, and just as I was saying good-bye to him the Guv’nor met us and said ‘Bring your friend in to tea.’ Friend indeed!” And Grahame snorted.

When we reached the dining-room Sibella had arranged so that Lionel was on her right and a girl friend of her sister’s on her left. I verily believe she wanted me to sit opposite to her in order that she might enjoy the spectacle of my chagrin. She should have known me better. I betrayed not the least sign of the hatred and wounded vanity that were surging within me. I was measuring my chances against Lionel Holland. I was better looking than he was, but not in the way likely to appeal to Sibella. He was rich; I was far cleverer. It appears to me on looking back that I quite understood, even at that early stage, that the incident was the prologue to a drama which would develop itself in after years. Most boy and girl romances might be ephemeral, but ours had the promise of permanence. This was the more curious in that two out of the three, Sibella and Lionel, were entirely superficial.

I joined in the conversation and laughter with very fair success, but Sibella was in her most aggravating mood. Cynthia Hallward asked Lionel Holland what he wanted to be. Apparently he did not quite know, but some cross-questioning from Sibella elicited the fact that his only definite ambition was for riches.

“My father wasn’t always rich,” he announced; and, to do him justice, his pride in the fact that his father was self-made was the pleasantest trait in his character. “He began without a shilling, and he says that money is nine-tenths of everything, and he ought to know. I wouldn’t give twopence to be anything which didn’t bring in money.”

“Wouldn’t you like to be a lord?” said Sibella, looking at me mischievously.

“It’s quite easy to be a lord if you’re rich enough,” said Lionel.

“Oh, but Israel is going to be a lord. That is to say, when six people die,” laughed Sibella. And there was that peculiar quality in her laugh which when it was turned against myself made me feel cruel towards her.

Lionel Holland laughed too, delighted to assist Sibella in teasing me.

“Israel is always telling us that at school,” he said.

“I’ve only said so once,” I answered, keeping my temper by a violent effort of self-control, “and it’s perfectly true.” I think there must have been something in my voice that warned them to desist, for the subject was allowed to drop.

After tea we adjourned to the school-room. Sibella’s appetite for sweets was insatiable, and she took the most comfortable seat by the fire and proceeded to finish the box of chocolates I had brought her.

“Do you like sweets?” I heard Lionel ask. He was sitting by her side.

She handed him the box and he helped himself.

“Awfully.” Sibella’s English was extremely slipshod.

“I’ll send you some. What kind do you like best?”

“Chocolate nougat.”

“Very well. I’ll send you a much bigger box than that.”

Sibella laughed appreciatively. “That will be jolly of you,” she said, perfectly aware that I could hear. She was evidently entirely dazzled by her new admirer, but was too much a born flirt to let me go even if I had had the least intention of retiring from the contest.

Just before I left the house she sidled up to me.

“You’re not angry, are you, Israel?”

I made a faint attempt at a smile as I answered:

“Angry? Of course not. Why should I be?”

Finding me inclined to fence, she assumed her most childish treble.

“I don’t know, I’m sure, only you have been looking so dreadfully cross.”

I very nearly shook her.

Lionel Holland left the house a few minutes before I did. Grahame walked with me as far as the gate.

“I say, Israel, what’s that about your being a lord some day?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to go into the matter. Everybody is so beastly rude about it.”

“Is it true?”

“Of course it is. I’ll show you the papers if you like.”

“I don’t want that. If you say it’s true, of course I believe you.”

But I was secretly determined that Grahame should see the papers, and I took the earliest opportunity of showing them to him, for I knew that though he liked me too much to say that he disbelieved me, he felt that there must be a mistake somewhere.

I explained the whole thing to him and showed him our genealogical tree.

I fancy he was more surprised than he appeared to be, for although he had always been very kind to me there had been just the faintest suspicion of patronage in his manner. It was perhaps only natural. A semi-Hebrew lad, in humble circumstances, with no prospects to speak of, was not in the ordinary course of things the most natural companion for the son of a successful city merchant.

I knew he told Sibella, for she condescendingly informed me that I was not such a story-teller as she had thought, adding, however, that it wasn’t very much to boast of, as the six lives between me and the peerage would probably be sixty-six before very long, and it was quite evident that the Gascoynes did not even know of my existence. She became quite friendly again, but when I tried to kiss her she refused to allow me to do so; or rather, she attempted to prevent it and was really furious when I did so by force. I detected in her resistance that I no longer occupied her thoughts. Indeed, I was soon made aware that I was expected to be content with the place of an ordinary friend. Lionel Holland managed to be constantly at the house. Grahame had expressed his disinclination to bring him, but Sibella and her sister evidently had an understanding by which they were to meet him by appointment on Saturday afternoons and bring him back to tea. Mr. and Mrs. Hallward were too easy-going to notice these manœuvres, and would have treated them quite good-naturedly even had they done so.

The Hallward children were allowed to do pretty well as they liked, with the result that careful mothers of the neighbourhood, resentful of their extreme good looks, made Cynthia and Sibella the subject of much spiteful gossip and whispered inuendoes which I verily believe had little truth in them. Compelled to stand by and watch Lionel Holland’s triumph, I suffered terribly, and my mother grew quite anxious at my appearance, but attributed it to overwork.

Once, and once only, did I implore Sibella to have pity on me. She laughed in the most silvery manner, and frankly said she was tired of me. I recall my abjectness with humiliation. Lionel Holland’s was a nature quite devoid of sympathy for his own sex, and where another lad might have decently veiled his triumph from his rival, he displayed it on every possible occasion. His manner was insufferably self-complacent. He had the natural contempt of all Westerns for anything Jewish, and he had not the breeding to disguise the fact. He told a mutual friend that ‘it was just like a beastly little Jew to make up to a girl like Sibella.’

I affected indifference because I knew the remark had been repeated to me with the object of goading me into fighting him; and that was a matter which required thinking out. At the same time I planned the first attempt of my life to deal a secret blow at an enemy. It was crude, but youth and inexperience must be my excuse.

Lionel Holland was training for a mile handicap, and I knew that in the evening he used to go to the school sports ground, with a friend to time him, and train till after dusk.

The track, half a mile in circumference, ran round the entire ground, skirting the backs of houses, and bounded at one part for the length of about a hundred yards by a hedge. I conceived the idea of throwing him as he was running. The track was hard, and he might hurt himself seriously or not at all. There was at any rate the chance of a full retaliation.

I chose a spot about midway along the hedge opposite, where on the inner side of the track, just upon the grass, and facing the cricket pitch, was an iron seat firmly fixed to the ground.

One evening I followed Holland and his friend to the sports ground and, having seen them go in, reached the back of the hedge by a circuitous way. There was an aperture just large enough for me to crawl through. I waited. In about ten minutes I heard his measured stride on the hard asphalt. He passed me going at a good pace. As he disappeared in the dusk I crept swiftly through the hedge, passed a cord I had with me round the upper part of one of the legs of the iron seat, and, holding both ends in my hand, crept back. In a few moments he came round again. I pulled the cord as tight as I could. He tripped, fell full length and lay still. I hauled in the cord and stole away.

My sensations are worth analysing. At first I felt a certain elation at having thrown an enemy. Then I experienced disappointment. What I had done was somewhat pointless. Unless I had spoilt his looks—which was hardly likely—I could not be said to have scored any advantage, unless—I stopped, and my breath came quickly. Was it possible I had killed him? I had heard of people dying from as slight a cause. I felt terribly uncomfortable. I grew afraid of having the cord in my pocket. I went swiftly home and burnt it, a small piece at a time, lest my mother should come in and find it being destroyed. Afterwards I was ashamed of my want of nerve. Even if he were dead nobody on earth could connect me with the accident. I had always heard that murder will out, but I was strong-minded enough, considering the circumstances, to doubt whether it was possible in this case.

Anxious as I was to know the upshot of the affair I slept quite well and started for school not a minute earlier than usual. I was in the same class as Holland. When school began he had not arrived and neither had the boy who was his time-keeper. Five minutes late the latter walked in with a note in his hand.

“Holland has had an accident, sir.” He handed the note to the master.

“Indeed? I am sorry to hear that.” He opened the note and began to read, his face growing more serious as he read on. “Concussion of the brain! Mr. Holland does not quite seem to know how it happened.”

“It was on the cricket ground, sir. It had just got dusk and I was timing Holland for the mile. The second time he did not come round, so I went to see what had happened and found him lying on the path insensible. I had to leave him there whilst I went for help.”

“Has he recovered consciousness?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did it happen?”

“I can’t think. He must have tripped. The doctor says he is not to be asked any questions and that he is to be kept quite quiet for the next few days.”

“Quite so. I suppose you will be going round there, so you can let us know how he is getting on.”

“Yes, sir.”

The boy went back to his seat. The class had been listening intently. The master looked up and caught sight of my face.

“Why, Rank, you have turned quite pale.”

Everybody looked at me in surprise. The lack of friendliness between Lionel Holland and myself was generally known, and it certainly astonished them that I should have turned pale out of sympathy for him.

He came back to school in about a fortnight looking none the worse for his accident. He was as confident as before and as irritating to me as ever.

I heard him explaining the incident in the playground afterwards.

“I’ll swear,” he was saying, “that something caught me just above the ankle. I don’t see how I could possibly have tripped otherwise.”

“What could it have been?” asked Grainger, the boy who had been timing him.

“I can’t think, I am sure, but I’m certain something tripped me up all the same.”

“I expect you turned giddy,” said a member of the Lower Fourth.

“Giddy? Never was less giddy in my life;” and Holland turned a withering glance upon the small boy that made him retire into the background.

He had a way of twisting the arms of small boys, and holding their elbows while he brought his knee sharply into contact with a soft but sensitive part of their bodies, besides many other little devices for making them wish it were possible to grow up suddenly into a strong man with a strong fist.

I have always resented cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and petty tormenting with no object in view has invariably impressed me as being supremely silly. It is quite another matter when one is obliged to take a strong step in support of a logical line of action. The end must justify the means. The Jesuits are quite right. All around, Nature teaches us the lesson. An infinite amount of apparent evil is being done that good may come, and even if the end be not a particularly elevated one that surely is a man’s own affair; especially if he be prepared to pay the penalty of supporting his own opinion with action which is against the moral sense of society in general.

Sibella’s solicitude during Lionel Holland’s illness was an ample revenge for the latter had he known it. It tortured me. At one time I calculated my chances in a stand-up fight with him supposing I should train for the event. I decided after careful thought that the odds would be against me, and I had no intention of fighting for honour’s sake with the prospect of leaving him more triumphant and complacent than ever.