Came in two young ladies in hoops, with pork-pie hats and hair done up in bags of chenille. The like figures may be seen in the drawings of John Leech, circa 1860. Each young lady had a curved nose. One nose curved inward at the bridge, and the other outward at the bridge, and if the curves had been set together they would have fitted with precision. Came in a lean lady with a purse mouth, rather open—looking like an empty voluntary-bag. Came in a stout lady, like a full voluntary-bag, the mouth close shut with a clasp. Came in a gentleman with shining rabbit teeth, smiling as if for a wager. Came in a gentleman with a deep bass voice consciously indicated in the carriage of his head—the voice garrotting him, as it were, rather high up in the collar. Came in a gentleman with heavy movable eyebrows, which looked too big for the limited playground a very small forehead afforded. Came in a small apoplectic man, bald and clean-shaven, and red and angry in the face, like an ill-conditioned baby. Came in ladies and gentlemen who smirked and slid; ladies and gentlemen who loitered, and were sheepish when by hazard they caught an eye; ladies and gentlemen crammed to suffocation with a sense of their own importance; ladies and gentlemen miserably overwhelmed with a sense of the importance of other people.
Paul knew every one of them, and had known them from childhood; and somehow they were all transformed from commonplace, and dignified into a comedy which was at once sympathetic and exquisitely droll. His narrow world had widened; his neighbours had sprung alive. His heart was tickled with a genial laughter, and his mirth tasted sweet to him, like a mellow apple. He could have hugged the crowd for sheer delight.
The conductor of the singing-class weeded Paul out at the close of the first glee, and brought his musical ambitions to an end.
‘Theer are at least twelve notes in an ordinary singin’ voice,’ said the conductor, ‘and theer ought to be eight half-tones scattered in among ‘em, somewheer. You’ve got two notes at present, and one’s a squeak and t’other’s a grumble. I think you might find a more advantageous empl’yment for your time elsewheer.’
Paul submitted to this verdict with high good-humour. He retired to the far end of the schoolroom, and sat out ‘the practice’ with a growing sense of pleasure. He exulted in the possession of a new sense which made all these people lovable.
‘Now I’ve found this out,’ said Paul to himself, ‘I shall never be lonely any more. There’ll always be summat to think about—summat with a relish in it.’
He must needs, of course, try to get the relish on paper, and he wrote a great deal of boyish stuff in flagrant imitation of Dickens, and hid it, jackdaw-like, in such places as he could find. In the slattern old office where Paul was learning more or less to be a workman at his trade there was no such thing as a ceiling. Frayed mortar, with matted scraps of cow-hair in it, used to fall frequently into the type-cases whenever a high wind shook the crazy slates, and, to obviate this, some contriving person had nailed a number of sheets of brown paper to the rafters. Paul’s hiding-place for his literary work was above these sheets of paper, and one day when old Armstrong stood by his side, a tintack gave way beneath the superincumbent weight, and the whole bundle of scraps in verse and prose fell at the author’s feet Armstrong stooped for it, and Paul went red and white, and his legs shook beneath him. There was an upturned box by the side of the cracked and blistered old stove which warmed the room in winter, and Armstrong went to it and sat down to untie his bundle. The author had never had any confidences with anybody, and his father was one of the last people in the world to whom he would have dared to make appeal for advice or help. In his agitation he went on pecking at the case of type before him, and setting the stamps on end at random, inside out and upside down, and in any progression chance might order. The old man coughed, and Paul dropped his composing-stick into the space-box with a clatter, and spilt its contents there. Armstrong slipped the string which bound the roll of papers, and began to glance over his discovery. Paul felt as if the ramshackle building had been out at sea.
‘M’m,’ said Armstrong, with the merest dry tick of a tone which seemed to express inquiry and surprise. Paul started as if an arrow had gone through him, and dropped his composing-stick a second time. ‘Ye’re very clumsy, there, my lad,’ said the old man. ‘What’s happening?’
Paul made no answer, and the father went back to his papers.
‘“Bilsby,”’ the old man hummed, half aloud, ‘“Bilsby is fat—fat with the comfortable fatness which has grown about him in the course of five-and-forty years of perfect self-approval. Bilsby is not great, or good, or magnanimous, or wise, or wealthy, or of long descent, or handsome, or admired; but he is happy. He gets up with Bilsby in the morning, has breakfast, dinner, tea and supper with him, and goes to bed with him at night. If Bilsby had a choice—and Bilsby hasn’t—he would make no change. He has himself to feed on—an immortal feast He sits at that eternal board, before that unfailing dish, which grows the more he ruminates upon it. Fat of the fat, sweet of the sweet is Bilsby to Bilsby’s palate. What will become of Bilsby when he dies? There can be no heaven for Bilsby, for he would have to hymn another glory there; There can be no fate of pain, for even if the Devil take him, there will still be Bilsby, and that fact alone would keep him happy.”