The Project Gutenberg eBook, From the Angle of Seventeen, by Eden Phillpotts

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FROM THE ANGLE OF SEVENTEEN

FROM THE ANGLE
OF SEVENTEEN

BY

EDEN PHILLPOTTS

AUTHOR OF

“WIDECOMBE FAIR,” “THE LOVERS,” ETC.

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1914

Copyright, 1912,

By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Printers

S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

TO

HUGHES MASSIE

IN ALL FRIENDSHIP

FROM THE ANGLE

OF SEVENTEEN

I

When the Doctor sent for me to his study, I hoped it was about the fireworks, because I was head boy that term, and, in a great position like that, there were advantages to make up for the anxiety. You bossed the fireworks on the fifth of November and many other such-like things.

But the Doctor had nothing to say about fireworks. In fact, a critical moment had come in my life: I was to leave.

“Sit down, Corkey,” said the Doctor; and that in itself was a startler, because he never asked anybody to sit down except parents or guardians.

I sat and he looked at me with a friendly and regretful expression, the same as he did when he had to tell me my father was dead.

“Corkey,” he began, “this morning brings a missive from your maternal aunt, Miss Augusta Medwin. As you know, she is your trustee until you come of age, four years hence. Your Aunt Augusta, mindful that the time was at hand when you would be called to take your place in the ranks of action, has for some time been on the lookout for you; and to-day I learn that her efforts have been crowned with success. It is my custom to require a term’s notice; but such is my regard for your Aunt Augusta that I have decided to waive that rule in your case. A clerkship in London has been secured for you—a nomination to the staff of that famous institution, the Apollo Fire Office. The necessary examination, to one who has risen to be head boy of Merivale, should prove but a trifle. And yet, since nothing can be left to chance, we must see that you are guarded at all points. In a fortnight, Corkey Major, you will be required to show that your mathematics are sound, your knowledge of grammatical construction above suspicion, and your general average of intellectual attainment all that the world of business—the great industrial centers of finance—have a right to demand from their neophytes. I do not fear for you: the appointment and its requirements are not such as to demand a standard of accomplishment beyond your powers; but, at the same time, remember that this modest beginning may lead the way to name and fame. The first step can never be too humble if we look upward to the next. I, myself, as all the world knows, was once engaged in the avocation of a bookseller’s assistant. I have already conferred with Mr. Brown as to your mathematical attainments, and, making due allowance for his generous ardour to all that pertains to the First Form, I have no doubt with him that you will satisfy your examiners. Your handwriting, however, must be the subject of anxious thought, and, as you will be called upon in the course of the examination to write a brief essay on any subject that may occur to the examining authorities, I trust that you will be at pains to state your views in careful caligraphy[caligraphy]. Again, if a word arises to your mind concerning the spelling of which you feel doubtful, discard it at once and strive to find another that will meet the case. Spelling, I have reason to know, is not a strong point with you.”

The Doctor sighed and continued.

“I am sorry to lose you,” he said. “You have been a reasonably good and industrious boy. Your faults were those of youth. You go into the world armed, I think, at all points. Be modest, patient, and good-tempered; and choose high-minded friends. I may add, for your encouragement, that you will receive emolument from the outset of your official labours. The salary is fifty pounds a year, and you will work daily from ten o’clock until four. On Saturdays they pursue our own scholastic custom and give their officials a half-holiday. Your vacation, however, is of a trivial character. The world is a task-master, not a schoolmaster. One fortnight a year will be all the holiday permitted; and since you enter the establishment at the bottom, you must be prepared to enjoy this relaxation at any month in the year most convenient to your superiors. Should time and chance allow of it, Corkey Major, I may tell you that it will give me personal pleasure to see you on some occasion of this annual vacation—as a guest. Your two brothers continue with us until in their turn they pass out into the world from the little haven of Merivale.”

The idea of Merivale as a haven pleased the Doctor. I hoped he had finished, but he went off again.

“Yes, the simile is just. You come here empty and depart on your voyage laden. You are loaded according to your accommodation--some more, some less; and I, the harbour-master—however, we will not push the image, for, to be frank, I am not sure as to what exactly pertains to a harbour-master’s duties in respect of cargo. To return, Mr. Brown will see you in his study after morning school with a view to some special lessons in arithmetic. He inclines to the opinion that the Rule of Three should prove a tower of strength, and no doubt he is right. You may go.”

He waved his hand and I got up. One thing had stuck exceedingly fast in my mind and now, though I did not mean to mention it in particular, it came out.

“Am I really worth fifty pounds a year to anybody, sir?”

The Doctor smiled.

“A natural question, Corkey, and I think no worse of you for having asked it. The magnitude of the sum may reasonably puzzle a lad who as yet cannot appreciate the value of money. This, however, is no time to enter upon the complicated question of supply and demand. It will be sufficient for you to know that the Managers of the Apollo Fire Office are in reasonable hopes of getting their money’s worth—to speak colloquially. For my part, when I think upon your ten years of steady work at Merivale, I have no hesitation in saying the salary is not extravagant. Let it be your part to administer it with prudence and swiftly to convince those set in authority over you that you are worth more than that annual sum rather than less.”

I cleared out and told the chaps, and they were all fearfully interested, especially Morgan, because when I left Morgan would become the head of the school. He turned a sort of dirty-drab green when he heard that I was going; and first I thought it was sorrow for me, and then I found it was funk for himself. He didn’t care a button about losing me; but he felt that to be lifted up all of a sudden to the top was almost too much.

“I feel like the Pope felt when he found he was going to be elected,” he said. “Only it’s far worse for me than him, because he needn’t have entered the competition for Pope, I suppose, if he didn’t want; but, in my case, the thing is a sort of law of nature, and I’ve got to be head boy.”

“There are the advantages,” I said. But he could only see the responsibilities. He wasn’t pretending: he really hated the idea—for the moment.

I told my chum, Frost, too; and I told him that I’d asked the Doctor whether I was worth fifty pounds a year to anybody.

“If he’d been straight,” said Frost, “he’d have told you that you’ve been worth fifty pounds a year to him, anyway—for countless years; because you came here almost as soon as you were born, and your brothers, too.”

It was a great upheaval, like things always seem to be when they happen, however much you expect them. Of course I knew I had to go sometime, and was thankful to think so, and full of ambitions for grown-up life; but now that the moment had actually come, I wasn’t particularly keen about it. Especially as I should miss the fireworks and lose the various prizes I was a snip for, if I’d stopped till Christmas. I rather wished my Aunt Augusta hadn’t been so busy, and had left my career alone, at any rate until after the Christmas holidays.

Of course my going was a godsend to various other chaps and, though they regretted it in a way, especially the footer eleven, such a lot of things were always happening from day to day at Merivale that there was no time really to mourn. One or two wanted to club up and give me a present, but it didn’t come to reality; though of course they were frightfully sorry I was going, when they had time to think about it. They were, naturally, very keen over the various things that I left behind; but of course these were all handed over to my brothers.

Then the rather solemn moment came when a cab arrived for me and I went. But everybody was in class at the time and nobody missed me. In fact, it wasn’t what you might call really solemn to anybody but myself.

II

So I went to London, where, of course, I had always meant to go sooner or later. I had heard and read a great deal about this place, but had no idea that it was so remarkable as it really is. Perhaps the most extraordinary of all things in London is passing millions of people every day of your life and not knowing a single one. My Aunt Augusta met me at Paddington, and we drove to her home, where I was to stop for the time being. Her name was Miss Augusta Medwin, and she lived in a place called Cornwall Residences and was an R.B.A. It was a huge house divided into flats, and her flat was the top one of all. She was an artist, and R.B.A. stands for Royal British Artist. She had a little place leading out of her flat on to the roof of the building. This was built specially for her. It looked out on to the whole of the top of London and was a studio. The Metropolitan Railway had a yard down below, where the engines got up steam before going to work in the mornings. It was, of course, a far more interesting spot than any I had ever yet met with. I had a little room in the flat, and my aunt had made it very nice and comfortable. But the engines always began to get up their steam at four o’clock in the morning, and it is a very noisy process, and it took me some time growing accustomed to the hissing noise, which was very loud. There is no real stillness and silence in London even in the most select districts. Not, I mean, like the country. My aunt had one servant called Jane. She had been married, but her husband had changed his mind and run away from her. She was old and grey and like a fowl, but very good-tempered. I told her about the engines and she said:

“This is London.”

My aunt painted very beautiful pictures in oil colours, and also made etchings of the most exquisite workmanship. She was made R.B.A. to reward her for her great genius in her art. She hung her pictures at exhibitions and was a well-known painter, though she told me that she did not make a great deal of money. I hoped that she would take at least half of my fifty pounds a year for letting me live with her, and assured her that I cared nothing for money; then she said we would look into that if I passed my examination. She was a good deal interested in me, and said that I had my dead mother’s eyes and artist’s hands. She was quite old herself, and might have been at least forty. She was not yet withered, like the very old. She wore double eyeglasses when she painted. Her expression was gloomy, but her eyes were blue and still bright. I found her very much more interesting to talk to than any other woman I had met; and I told her my great secret hope for the future.

I said:

“Some day, if things happen as I should like, I am going to be an actor. It is a very difficult and uphill course of life, I know; but still, that is what I want to be, because I have a great feeling for the stage, and I shall often and often go to a theatre at night after I have done my day’s work, if you don’t mind—especially tragedies.”

She didn’t laugh at the idea or scoff at it but she thought that I mustn’t fill my head with anything but fire insurance for the present. And of course I said that my first thought would be to work in the office and thoroughly earn my fifty pounds, and perhaps even earn more than I was paid, and so be applauded as a clerk rather out of the common.

She took me to a tailor’s shop and I was measured for a tail-coat. I also had to get a top hat, such as men wear. I was tall and thin, and when the things came I put them on, and Aunt Augusta said that the effect was good, and Jane said that I looked “quite the man.” Aunt Augusta took me to several picture-galleries, and I went about a good deal by myself and made strange discoveries.

Many people seemed to know that I was new in London without my telling them. Once I was nearly killed, showing how easily accidents happen. I had dropped a half-penny in Oxford Street, as I crossed the road, and was naturally stopping to pick it up, when the chest of a horse came bang against me and rolled me over. Fortunately, I was not in my new clothes. It was a hansom-cab horse that had run into me, and the driver pulled him up so that the horse simply skated along on his shoes and pushed me in front of him. Neither of us was hurt. A policeman appeared, and the driver asked me whether I thought the middle of Oxford Street was the right place for playing marbles. He meant it in an insulting way, as if I was still a boy. And I said that I had dropped a halfpenny and couldn’t surely be expected to leave it in the middle of London for anybody to pick up.

The driver said that no doubt I was one of God’s chosen—meaning it rudely—and the people laughed, and the policeman told us all to move on. I went down a side street and cleaned myself up as well as I could. Then I found a lavatory and washed myself and got a shoeblack to rub the mud off me. London mud is very different from all other mud, not being pure, like country mud, but adulterated with oil and tar and many other products. The shoeblack charged three-pence, so it was an expensive accident for me, besides the danger.

I passed the examination though they didn’t praise me much, or give any evidence of pleasure or surprise; and then my aunt said that she thought I ought to call on the Director of the Apollo Fire Office and thank him for his great kindness in giving her his nomination for me. The Director was out, but when he heard that I had called, he invited me to dine with him. I had never been invited to dinner before and rather wished my aunt would come too; but she said that she had not been asked, though she had often been there—to see Mr. Benyon Pepys and his original etchings. He followed art in his spare time, which was considerable, and my aunt had given him etching lessons, at which she was a great dab. He was also a descendant of the great Pepys of diary fame—so my aunt told me. He was a bachelor and very fond of pictures and very rich, as all Directors must be before they can rise to that high walk of life.

“You ought to wear dress clothes,” said Aunt Augusta; “however, it is not vital. He will understand.”

“You can hire ’em for a song,” declared Jane; but my aunt decided that I should put on my new tail-coat—with a white tie.

When it came to putting on this tie, however, she didn’t care about it, and thought that I looked too much like a curate. She showed a sort of objection to curates that much surprised me; because at Merivale there had never been any feeling against them; in fact, quite the contrary. Many of the masters at Merivale used to read for the Church while they taught us; and when they had read enough, they went away and gradually became curates, as the next stage in their careers.

But Aunt Augusta didn’t want me to look like one, and for that matter I didn’t myself, having no feeling for the Church; and so I put on a dark blue tie and wore my new silver watch and chain and went like that.

Mr. Benyon Pepys was a short, clean-shaved man and lived in the utmost magnificence in a house not far from Cavendish Square. Naturally, I had never seen such a house or such magnificence. It was an abode of the highest art. There were three footmen and a church organ with golden pipes in the hall alone; and everything was done on the same scale throughout. One footman asked me my name and another took my overcoat and top-hat and hung them up on a hat-stand, of which every hat-peg was the twisted horn of an antelope! Then the man who had asked my name threw open a door, on which were painted rare flowers—probably orchids—and announced my arrival. “Mr. Corkey!” he said in a deep voice.

I walked in and found Mr. Benyon Pepys and Miss Benyon Pepys sitting one on each side of a palatial mantelpiece, which was supported by the figures of naked girls in pure white marble. They both rose from their chairs as I walked down the room amid wonderful creations of art. They did not seem to realise the fact that they were surrounded by such amazing things. There were flowers and pictures in huge gold frames and statues on pedestals; and, strange to say, amid all this profusion they allowed a mere, live pug-dog with a pink bow tied round his neck! He sat on a rug, which must once have been the skin of a perfectly enormous tiger. It had glass eyes and its teeth were left in its jaws, which were red, as in life, and wide open. The pug lounged upon it, as though to the manner born.

“Well, Mr. Corker, so you’ve passed your examination and will join us next week, I hear,” said Mr. Benyon Pepys. He spoke in a light, easy—you might almost say a jaunty—tone of voice, though he was in full dress clothes and wore a gold watch-chain on a spotless white waistcoat. Miss Benyon Pepys was just as kind as him. There was not a spark of side about either of them. They were both of great age and Mr. Pepys was of a shining and complete baldness, as well as being clean-shaved. I told him my name was Corkey, not Corker; and he said, “Yes, yes, Corker—I know.”

“And how do you like London?” asked Miss Benyon Pepys. She was clad in some rare fabric—probably some fabulous embroidery from the Middle Ages—and richly adorned with jewels, which flashed when she moved her limbs; but she paid no attention to them, and was indeed far more interested in the pug-dog than anything in the room.

He was called “Peter,” and made a steady and disgusting noise, like a man snoring. He came in to dinner with us, and had a light meal off a blue china plate, prepared by Miss Benyon Pepys.

I was just saying that I liked London, and had pretty well mastered Oxford Street and Edgware Road, when a deep and musical chime of bells rang out and the door was thrown open.

“Will you take my sister in to dinner?” said Mr. Benyon Pepys; but I was prepared for this, because Aunt Augusta had warned me that it might happen. So I gave her my right arm, and she put the tips of her left hand fingers upon it, and I remember feeling curiously that, what with diamonds and rubies and one thing and another, her hand, small though it was, might easily have been worth many thousands of pounds.

“If the mere sister of a Director can do this sort of thing, how majestic must be the wealth of the Director himself!” I thought. In fact I very nearly said it, because it seemed to me that the idea was a great compliment and ought to have pleased them both. It would have been well meant anyway. But I found it difficult to make conversation, owing to the immense number of things all round me that had to be noticed.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t be said to take Miss Benyon Pepys in to dinner, not knowing the way. But she took me in, and it was no mere dinner, but a dazzling banquet on a table groaning with massive silver and other forms of plate. There was no tablecloth in the usual acceptation of the word; but a strip of rich fabric—probably antique tapestry from France or Turkey—spread on a polished table which glittered and reflected in its ebony depths the wax candles and silver and various pieces of rare workmanship arranged upon the hospitable board.

One would have thought, to see them, that a dinner of this kind—seven courses not counting dessert—was an everyday thing with the Benyon Pepys! It may have been, for all I know. Wine flowed like water—at least, it would have done so if there had been anybody there to drink it; but, of course, I didn’t, knowing well that wine goes to the head if you’re not used to it—and Miss Benyon Pepys merely drank hot water with a little tablet of some chemical that fizzed away in it—medicine, I suppose. It was sad in a way to see her pass the luxurious dishes without touching them. She little knew what she was missing. Even Mr. Benyon Pepys himself only sipped each wine in turn, with birdlike sips, but he never drank his glass quite empty. I expect the footmen dashed off what he left, doubtless tossing up among themselves which should have it.

I tried to talk at dinner, though there was little time, and once a good thing, full of rich and rare flavours, was swept away before I had finished it, because I stopped to speak.

I asked after the Pepys diaries and hoped they were successful. I said:

“I shall, of course, keep a diary in London, and I was going to get a Raphael Tuck diary; but I shall buy a Pepys now.”

Looking back, I don’t think either of them heard this. At any rate, that night when my Aunt Augusta explained about it, I prayed to God in my prayers that they might not have heard. The footmen, however, must have.

But I made Mr. Benyon Pepys laugh with a remark which, curiously enough, was not in the least amusing nor intended to be. I said:

“Of course, the business of a Director is to direct?”

Because I thought it would show a proper spirit to be interested in his great work. But he laughed, and said:

“Not always, Mr. Corker, not always! I am not myself a man of business; but a connoisseur and creator. Art is my occupation. Do not, however, think that I am not exceedingly interested in the Apollo. You will find upon the face of each policy an allegorical representation of the sun-god in a chariot drawn by four horses. I cannot claim that the actual design is mine, but the conception sprang from my brain twenty-five years ago. The creation, though severely Greek, is my own.”

He explained that he had found the greatest difficulty to get anybody to accept his nomination to the Apollo Fire Office.

“But fortunately,” he said, “your aunt, the accomplished artist, was able to help me, and I feel under no little obligation to her—and you.”

In this graceful and gentlemanly way he spoke to me. He told me that the staff was very large and included men of all ages—many brilliant and some ordinary.

“You will begin work in the Country Department,” he said; “they are a bit rough-and-ready up there, I fancy, but I speak only from hearsay. Certain adventurous members of the Board have penetrated to those savage regions, though I cannot honestly say that I have ever ventured. After signing a hundred or two policies, my intellect reels and I have to totter over to Murch’s for turtle-soup. It is a curious fact that turtle restores brain-fag quicker than any other form of food.”

“I am glad it has such a good effect on you, sir,” I said.

Miss Pepys left when the magnificent dessert was served. She never touched so much as a grape, though they were the largest I had ever seen; and after she had gone, Mr. Pepys asked me to smoke. Knowing, of course, that a cigarette is nothing on a full stomach, and also knowing that my own stomach was now perfectly adapted for it, I consented, and had a priceless box of chased silver containing rare Egyptian cigarettes handed to me by one of the footmen. With it he brought a lamp, which appeared to be—and very likely was—of solid gold. We then had coffee; and when all was over, Mr. Benyon Pepys proposed that we should again join Miss Benyon Pepys; so we returned to the drawing-room and he showed me a portfolio of his etchings. They were black and grubby and mysterious and no doubt great masterpieces, if I had only understood them. Even as it was, I rather came off over the etchings and recognised many things about them in a way that everybody didn’t. At least, I gathered so from the fact that Mr. Benyon Pepys was surprised and pleased. He said that “chiaroscuro[chiaroscuro]” was the secret of his success, and no doubt it may have been. He praised my Aunt Augusta very highly; and I was exceedingly glad to hear him speak so well of her great genius in her art.

At ten o’clock I got up to go, and a footman whistled at the door for a cab, and I luckily had a sixpence which I pressed into his hand as I leapt into the cab. But the effect was spoiled, because I forgot my overcoat and had to leap out again. The footman helped me into it, but didn’t mention the sixpence. I dare say to him it was a thing of nought.

So I returned to Aunt Augusta’s flat, and told her all about the wonders of the evening; and she was pleased and said that she hoped Mr. Benyon Pepys would some day ask me again. But no such thing happened. And, of course, there was no reason why it should. Probably they did hear what I said about the diary, but were too highly born and refined to take any notice.

III

The great first day at the Apollo Fire Office soon came, and my Aunt Augusta seemed to be quite moved as, having discussed two poached eggs, a roll, butter, toast, and marmalade, and two cups of coffee, I went forth in my top-hat and tail-coat to earn my living. Women are rum. She’d worked like anything to get me this great appointment, and yet, when I started off in the best possible style to begin, Aunt Augusta seemed distinctly sniffy! I took an omnibus from Oxford Street, having previously walked down Harley Street, which is a great haunt of the medical profession. Merely to walk down it and read the names is a solemn thing to do, and makes you thank God for being pretty well.

In due course I arrived at my destination, in Threadneedle Street in the very heart of the City of London. First you come to the Bank of England—an imposing edifice quite black with centuries of London fog—and opposite this is the Royal Exchange, whose weather-vane is a grasshopper covered with gold and of enormous size. Often and often, from the Country Department of the Apollo I used to look up at it and long to be in the green places where real grasshoppers occur so freely.

But, to return, I walked into the Apollo, which comes next to the Bank of England, and found there was a book on the first floor of the office, in which every member of the staff had to sign his name on arriving. When the hour of ten struck, a clerk came forward, dipped his pen into the red ink, picked up a ruler and drew a line across the page. This was to separate the clerks who were in time from those who were late. If you were under the red line more than once or twice in a month, you heard about it unfavourably.

There was an amazing record of a wonderful old clerk who had worked in the office for forty-five years and never once been under the line! But at last there came a day when the hour of ten rang out and the old clerk had not come. Everybody was very excited over it, and they actually gave him ten minutes’ grace, which was not lawful, but a sporting and a proper thing to do in my opinion. However, all was without avail; for he did not come, and the red line had to be reluctantly drawn. Everybody almost trembled to know what the old clerk would do when he arrived to find the record of forty-five years was ended; but the old clerk never did arrive, because a telegram came, a few minutes after the drawing of the line, to say that he had died in his sleep at his wife’s side, and therefore could not get up at six o’clock, which was his rule. It was rather sad in a way.

To show, however, that everybody didn’t feel the same rare spirit of punctuality as the old clerk, there was another interesting story of the red line and a chap who arrived late on his very first day. He actually began his official career under the red line. He must have been a man like the great Napoleon in some ways. A very self-willed sort of man, in fact. He only stopped in the Apollo a fortnight, and then was invited to seek another sphere of activity. He was a nephew of one of the Directors and died in the Zulu War. A pity for him he had not been of a clerk-like turn of mind.

I signed the book in full:

“Norman Bryan Corkey.”

and then a messenger, who wore a blue tail-coat with a glittering disc of silver on his breast, showed me up to the Country Department. It was at the very top of the edifice—a long room with desks arranged in such a way that the light from the stately windows should fall upon them. About thirty-five men of all ages pursued their avocation of making policies in this great room. The Chief had an apartment leading out of this, and usually he sat in great seclusion, pondering over the affairs of the Department. He was a big and a stout man, with a florid face and a beard and mustache of brown hair. His eyes were grey and penetrating. They roamed over the Department sometimes, when he came to the door of his own room; and he saw instantly everything that was going on and noted it down, in a capacious memory, for future use. Everybody liked him, for he was a kind and a good and a patient man, and his ability must have been very great to have reached such a high position; for he was much younger than many other men who were under him. He welcomed me with friendliness and hoped I should settle down and soon take to the work.

He said:

“Be industrious, Mr. Corkey, and let me have the pleasure of reporting favourably when the time comes to give an account of your labours to the Secretary.”

I said:

“Yes, sir, I will do my best.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“A great promise,” he said. “To do your best, Mr. Corkey, is to be one man picked out of a thousand.”

I had no idea, then, that it was such a rare thing to do your best; but he knew. And I found afterwards that it is not only rare but frightfully difficult, and no doubt that is why so few people do it.

Mr. Westonshaugh, for that was the name of this good man, called a subordinate, and a fair, pale clerk in the prime of life, with a large amber mustache and a high forehead, responded to the summons.

“This is Mr. Corkey,” said the Chief. “He goes into your division, Mr. Blades. I need not ask you to look after him and indicate the duties. He passed a good examination and is quite ready to set to work.”

I followed Mr. Blades and walked down the great room. There were two desks apart in one corner at which old, bald, spectacled men sat, and at the other desks, already mentioned, the full strength of the Department was already busily occupied.

I found an empty desk waiting for me beside Mr. Blades, and I could see by his manner, which was kindly but penetrating, that he was considering what sort of clerk I should make. Others also looked at me. One man said “Legs!” referring to mine, which were very long. There was a strange and helpless feeling about it all. I dimly remembered feeling just the same when I first went to Merivale. Mr. Blades called a messenger and bade him bring pens, fill the ink-bottles and fetch blotting-paper and paper-cutter, a ruler, an ink eraser, and other clerkly instruments.

“Your first duty,” he said, “is to copy policies into the books. Here is a pile of policies and they are numbered in order. There are no abbreviations on the actual policy; but abbreviations are allowed in copying them into the books. This saves many hours of time. For instance, the word ‘communicating’ occurs over and over again. So, in copying it, we reduce it to three letters, namely ‘com.’ I will now copy a policy and you can see how I do it.”

Mr. Blades was kindness itself and, indeed, from that day forward I blessed his name. He was a brick. He was fierce certainly, and if angered, as sometimes happened, would utter dreadful imprecations, such as I thought were only to be heard among pirates and other story-book people; but he had a big heart and a very heroic mind. He feared nothing and, though a small man, exhibited great courage on many occasions in his private life, of which he told me when I knew him better. He was married and lived at Bickleigh and had offspring.

I settled to the work and nothing much happened, though I had very often to refer to Mr. Blades. He never minded and was always ready with his wide knowledge, which, of course, extended far beyond the copying that I had to do. In fact, the Department teemed with men of the greatest ability, and not only did every one of them exhibit perfect mastery of the complicated art of drawing-out of insurance policies against fire, but many of them, as I found gradually—in fact, almost every one—had some remarkable talent which was not wanted in their official tasks. Some could draw and some could play various musical instruments; some were very keen sportsmen and understood cricket and football and other branches; and some were great readers and knew all about literature. Some, again, were gardeners and cultivated most beautiful exotics, which they brought to the office to raffle from time to time. Others, again, arranged sweepstakes on horse-races and brightened up the dull routine of official life in this way. Others were volunteers and very keen about soldiering. I hoped that I might find somebody interested in the stage, but curiously enough, though many went to the theatre, none ever wanted to become professional actors.

When the luncheon interval arrived I was allowed to go out for refreshments, and I went and walked about in the City of London. But I did not go farther than the huge figures that beat time over a watchmaker’s shop in Cheapside. It must have been wonderful mechanism, and I should like to have had it explained, but there was no time to go into the shop. And, in any case, I shouldn’t have had the cheek to ask. By a funny chance, near the Royal Exchange I found the identical Murch’s shop, where Mr. Benyon Pepys used to go and have turtle-soup after the labours of signing policies; so I thought that if it suited him so well, it might suit me also. With great presence of mind, however, I first asked the price of a plate, and on hearing it, made some hurried excuse and went back into the street. Turtle-soup is out of the question for beginners in the City of London. I had a Bath bun and a glass of milk instead and then went back to work.

It was after returning that the first thing that I really understood and enjoyed happened at the Apollo. Up till then I felt rather small and helpless and strange. Here was I, like an ant in a nest, but I felt a fool of an ant—good for nothing but to make mistakes and worry Mr. Blades. The huge whirl and rush of business dazed me. I almost heard the thunder of machinery; but I knew really that all the machinery was going on inside the heads of those thirty-five able and industrious men. I expected that they were working for their wives and children and their old, infirm mothers and so on. It was real grim life. It is true there were a few boys there besides me; but they also were able and industrious, if not brilliant, and they were all doing their part in the great machine. Even the messengers were. They were nearly all old, brave, wounded soldiers. I felt the solemnity. I seemed like a mere insect in a solemn cathedral where a mighty service was going on and everybody was doing their appointed part but me. I had spoiled several large sheets of paper and felt a sort of sick feeling that I was not earning my fifty pounds a year, and should soon be told so. I made a calculation on my blotting-paper to see how much money I ought to earn each day. The amount discouraged me and, besides that, I had another sort of animal feeling that I wasn’t getting enough air to breathe. Then, in this dark and despairing moment, there happened a thing that bucked me up and put new life into me. Suddenly I got a terrific smack on the side of the face, and an orange, about half sucked, fell from my cheek upon the page spread before me. It was like a pleasant breath of Merivale. I understood it; I knew how to handle it. For a moment I no longer felt like an insect in some vast cathedral. I was deeply interested and hoped that the man who could do a thing of this sort in a solemn scene like the Country Department of the Apollo Fire Office, might be a real friend to me. It happened that, as I came back from lunching, I had seen a young man with the lid of his desk raised. His head was inside and he was sucking this identical orange that had now hit me in the face. I felt at the time that the man who could suck an orange in the midst of this booming hive of industry must be out of the common. And so he proved to be. He was dark and clean-shaved, with broad shoulders and a purple chin. I knew, therefore, when the orange arrived, who had chucked it, and could not help feeling the purple-chinned young man was a jolly good shot, whatever else he might be. I laughed when the orange hit me, and looked over to him; but he was writing very busily and not a muscle moved. I didn’t dare chuck the half-sucked orange back, for fear of making a boss shot, the consequences of which might have been very serious, because at least three men of considerable age, and one grey, sat between us. So I picked up the orange and got off my stool.

“Sit down! don’t take any notice,” said Mr. Blades, who was trying not to laugh and failing; but I felt that perhaps he didn’t quite understand a thing like this, having passed the stage for it and being married and so on; whereas no doubt the purple-chinned young man, if he could chuck an orange, could also get it back without taking it in the wrong spirit.

A good many chaps watched me and some thought I was going to take the orange into Mr. Westonshaugh; but I just went casually up the room, and when I got to the purple-chinned young man, who was writing away like mad, I stopped and turned suddenly.

“A ripping shot,” I said. “I funked flinging it back for fear of hitting the wrong man.”

Then I squashed down the orange hard on the purple-chinned young man’s head and hooked back to my desk.

“You long-legged young devil!” he shouted, but he wasn’t angry, only surprised. There was rather a row then, because a good many chaps laughed out loud and Mr. Westonshaugh came to his door.

“Not so much noise, gentlemen, please,” he said, and then went in again.

Half an hour afterwards the purple-chinned young man, whose name was Dicky Travers, came up to my desk.

“It’s all right,” he began. “It was a fair score; but how the devil did you know that I threw it? I’ll swear you didn’t see me.”

“I didn’t,” I admitted; “but when I came in from lunch you were sucking it with your head in your desk, so I guessed.”

That man turned out one of my very best and dearest friends in the Apollo Fire Office! He proved to be an athlete of world-wide fame and a member of the London Athletic Club. He had won countless trophies and cups and clocks and cellarettes and salad bowls, and was simply tired of seeing his name in print. He was a champion walker and had on several occasions walked seven miles inside an hour; and two miles in fifteen minutes was mere fun to him!

So ended my first day of work. At four o’clock a good number of the clerks prepared to leave and Mr. Blades told me that I could go. Of course I thanked him very much for all his kindness during the day.

“That’s all right,” he said; “and to-morrow bring an office coat with you and keep that swagger one for out of doors. Let it be a dark colour—in fact, black for choice. It’s better form. And to-morrow I will show you how you can keep your cuffs clean by putting paper over them. Now you put your work into your desk and lock it up and go home. You have made a very decent start.”

I thanked him again and cleared out.

I walked back and spent a very interesting hour looking into the shops and so on. There was a place in High Holborn full of models of steam engines, and I rather longed for one. But it cost three pounds. Besides, I was now, of course, past childish things and thought no more of it. I stopped, too, to see some Blue Coat boys playing “footer” in a playground that was railed off from the street by lofty railings. It was somewhere near the General Post Office, I believe. Some of the chaps, despite their long coats, which they strapped round their waists, played jolly well. I felt it would have been fine to have gone in and had a kick about. But, of course, the days for that were past. It was rather sad in a way. But, there it was—I’d grown up. I had to keep reminding myself of this, and now and then my beastly top-hat fell off and reminded me again. Only it takes a bit of time to realise such a thing. In fact, I’ve heard grey-haired men say that they don’t feel a bit old, though they may be simply fossils really, to the critical eye; so, no doubt, it was natural even for me not to feel that I had grown up, and had now got to face things and run my own show, as well as I could, for evermore. To rub it in, as it were, I had my first shave on the way home. Mr. Blades had advised this course.

Aunt Augusta showed a great deal of interest in the day’s adventures, and next morning I took a dark blue “blazer” to the office. It had the badge of Merivale first footer team on it; but, of course, I made my aunt cut that off. Because, though it meant a good deal at Merivale, to a man earning his own living in a hive of industry, it simply counted for nothing at all.

IV

When I heard that there was a cricket club in connection with the Apollo Fire Office I was glad, and still more so when I found that the team played other Fire Offices; for the Apollo is by no means the only one in London, though easily the best. Of course I never thought that in an office full of grown men I should be able to play in matches; but Dicky Travers explained to me that I might hope, if I was any good, as only a comparatively small number of the clerks actually played, though a large number patronised the games with their presence and came to the Annual Dinner at the far-famed Holborn Restaurant. This restaurant, I may say, is almost a palace in itself, and the walls are decorated with sumptuous marbles and works of foreign art. The waiters are also foreign. There are fountains and a band to play while you eat; and it shows how accustomed the London mind can get to almost anything in the way of luxury, for I have seen people eating through brilliant masterpieces of music and not in the least put off their food by them, though every instrument in the band was playing simultaneously. But, of course, there were no bands or fountains where I went for my Bath bun and glass of milk. As a matter of fact, this was rather a light meal for me, but I hoped to get accustomed to it. Anyway the result, when dinner-time came at the flat of my Aunt Augusta, was remarkably good, and I used to eat in a way that filled her with fear. And, after eating, I felt that I simply must have exercise of some sort, and I used to go out in the dark to the Regent’s Park and run for miles at my best pace. It worried policemen when I flew past them, because it is very unusual to race about after dark in London if you are honest, and policemen are, unfortunately, a suspicious race and, owing to their work, get into the way of thinking that anything out of the common may be a clew. Once having flown past a policeman and run without stopping to a certain lamp-post, I went back to the man and explained to him that I had to sit on an office stool most of the day, and that at night, after dinner, I felt a frightful need for active exercise, and so took it in this way. I thought he would rather applaud the idea, but he said it was a fool’s game and might lead to trouble if I persisted in it. He advised me to join an athletic club and a gymnasium, and I told him that the advice was good and thanked him. As a matter of fact, I was able to tell the policeman also that a great friend of mine had put me up for the London Athletic Club, and that I hoped soon to hear that I had been elected as a member. I mentioned Dicky Travers and thought the policeman would be a good deal surprised that I actually knew this famous man. However, the surprise was mine, because the policeman had never heard of him. But sport was a sealed book to him, as the saying is.

I only remember one other thing about those runs. I used to put on very little clothes, of course, but even so, naturally worked myself up into a terrific perspiration, which was what I meant to do, it being a most healthful thing for people who have to sit still all day. But my aunt was quite alarmed when I returned to have a bath and a rub down; and then it came out that she had never seen anybody in a real perspiration before! I roared with laughter and explained, and she said that she thought people only had perspirations when they were ill. She had never been in one in her whole life apparently. She was a very nice and kind woman, but I puzzled her fearfully, because she had never known many boys of my age, and though she smoked cigarettes herself, she thought they were bad for me and begged me to be very temperate in the use of them. To be temperate in everything was a mania with her. I must have upset her flat a lot one way and another; but she was very patient and wouldn’t hear of my going into lodgings alone.

“You are much too young,” she said. “You must look upon me as your mother till you are eighteen, at any rate.”

Then it was—after I had been in the City of London six weeks—that I met with my first great misfortune, though it began as a most hopeful and promising affair.

I had heard, of course, from Dicky Travers and Mr. Blades and others, that there were plenty of shady characters in London, and that their shadiness took all sorts of forms; but this did not bother me much, because a clerk such as I was would not, I thought, provoke a shady character, owing to my youth. But a good many of these shady characters mark down young men as their regular and lawful prey, like the tiger marks down the bison in the jungle. And a great feature of the cunning of these people is that they get themselves up in a way to hide their real natures—in fact, such is their ingenuity, that they pretend to go to the other extreme, and appear before their victims dressed just the very opposite of what one would expect in a shady character. They are, in fact, full of deceit.

One day I had eaten my bun and drunk my glass of milk in about a second and a half, and was looking at books in a very interesting bookseller’s window that spread out into the street near that historic building known as the Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor lives. I had found a sixpenny book about Mr. Henry Irving’s art and was just going to purchase it, bringing from my pocket a five-pound note to do so, when an old man of a religious and gentlemanly appearance spoke to me.

But first, to calm the natural excitement of the reader at hearing me mention a five-pound note, I ought to explain that that morning was pay-day at the office—the first in which I had actively participated. The five-pound note was the first that I had ever earned, and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction to feel it in my pocket. This was natural.

“Good literature here, sir,” said the stranger. “I hope you love books?”

“Yes, I do,” I answered, concealing my five pounds instantly.

“I write books,” he told me. “I dare say my name is familiar enough to you, if you are a reader of poetry.”

I looked at him and saw that he had a long grey beard and red rims to his eyes. His clothes were black and had seen better days. He wore rather a low waistcoat which was touched here and there with grease; but his shirt was fairly white, and through his beard I saw a black tie under his chin. He was tall, and carried an umbrella and a black and rather tattered bag of leather. I seemed to feel that his black bag was heavy with great poetry. It was a solemn moment for me.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of a hand at poetry, sir,” I said. “At school one had a lot to learn, and now I’m rather off it—excepting Shakespeare.”

“You City men don’t know what you are missing,” he answered. “I have just come from Paternoster Row, where I have been arranging with a great publisher—one of the greatest, in fact—for my next volume of poems. Strangely enough, I saw you handle a book of mine on this bookstall only a few moments ago, and I felt drawn to you.”

“Then you are Mr. Martin Tupper!” I exclaimed, “for I picked up a book of his just now—though only to see what was under it, I am afraid.”

He felt disappointed at this, but admitted that I was right in my suspicion.

“I am Tupper,” he confessed; “and though perhaps nobody in the world has more unknown friends, yet I allow myself no intimates. It is owing to my terribly sensitive genius. I read men like books. That is why I am talking to you at this moment. My knowledge of human nature is such that I can see at a glance—I can almost feel—whether a fellow-creature is predisposed towards me or not.”

“It is a great honour to speak to you, Mr. Martin Tupper,” I answered. “But I’m afraid a man like me—just a clerk in a noisy and booming hive of industry—wouldn’t be any good to you as a friend. I don’t know much about anything—in fact, I am nobody, really; though I hope some day to be somebody.”

“I felt sure of that,” he answered. “Your reply pleases me very much, young man, because it indicates that you are modest but also plucky. You recognise that you have as yet done nothing, but your heart is high and you look forward to a time when you will do everything. Had you read my Proverbial Philosophy, you would have discovered that—however, you must read it—to please me. You must let me send you a copy from the author.”

I was, of course, greatly surprised at such unexpected kindness, but there was more to come.

“When I find a young and promising man studying the books upon this stall between the hours of one and two o’clock,” said Mr. Tupper, “my custom is to ask him to join me at a modest meal—luncheon, in fact. Now do not say that you have lunched, or you will greatly disappoint me.”

Of course I had lunched, and yet, in a manner of speaking, I hadn’t—not as a man of world-wide fame would understand the word. To tell the truth, I had felt from the first that it was rather sad in a way—having to subsist on a Bath bun and a glass of milk for so many hours; and I knew that I never should get to feel it was a complete meal. So when this good and celebrated man offered me a luncheon, I felt, if not perfectly true, yet it was true enough and not really dishonest to say that I had not lunched. So I said it, and he was evidently very glad.

“We will go to the ‘Cat on Hot Bricks,’” he told me. “It is an eating-house of no pretension, but I prefer the greatest simplicity in all my ways, including my food and drink. At the big restaurants I should be recognised, which is a source of annoyance to me; but I am unknown at the ‘Cat on Hot Bricks,’ and I often take my steak or chop and a pint of light ale there, with other celebrities, and study life. Ah! the study of life, my young friend, is the prince of pursuits! The name that I have made is based entirely upon that study. Long practice has enabled me to see in a moment the constituents of every character and know at a glance with whom I have to deal.”

I told him my name, and he said that he had had the pleasure to meet some of the elder members of my family in the far past. I ventured to tell him about Aunt Augusta and her paintings, and he said that they were well known to him and that he possessed a good example of her genius. He even promised to call upon her when next in that part of London. He was immensely interested in my work and asked me many questions concerning fire insurance. And then I told him that I hoped in course of time to be an actor, and he said that, next to the poet, the actor was often the greatest influence for good. He himself had written a play, but he shrank from submitting it to a theatrical manager for production. It was a highly poetical play and made of the purest poetry, and so delicate that he feared that actors and actresses, unless they were the most famous in London, might go and rub the bloom off it and spoil it.

He let me choose what I liked for luncheon, and I chose steak-and-kidney pie and ginger beer. He then told me that the steak-and-kidney pie was all right, but that the only profits made at the “Cat on Hot Bricks” arose from the liquid refreshment, and that it would not be kind or considerate to drink so cheap a drink as ginger beer. So he ordered two bottles of proper beer, and then he told me about the place and its ways.

“The Bishop of London often comes here—just for quiet,” he said. “Of course I know him, and we have a chat sometimes, about religion and poetry and so on. And the Dean of St. Paul’s will drop in now and then. He has a weakness for ‘lark pudding’—a very famous dish here. They have it on Wednesdays only. Now tell me about your theatrical ambitions, for I may be able to help you in that matter.”

I told him all about my hopes, and he said that one of his few personal friends was Mr. Wilson Barrett, of the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford Street.

“That great genius, Mr. Booth, from America, has been acting Shakespeare there lately,” I said.

“He has,” answered Mr. Tupper; “his ‘Lear’ is stupendous. I know him well, for he often recites my poems at benefit matinees. But Wilson” (in this amazingly familiar way he referred to the great Mr. Wilson Barrett) “is always on the lookout for promising young fellows to join his company, and walk on with the crowds, and so learn the rudiments of stage education and become familiar with the boards. He is anxious to get a superior set of young fellows on to the stage, and he often comes to me, because he knows that in the circles wherein I move the young men are intellectual and have high opinions about the honour of the actor’s calling.”

“It would be a glorious beginning for a young man,” I said, “but, of course, such good things are not for me.”

Mr. Tupper appeared to be buried in his own thoughts for a time. When he spoke again, he had changed the subject.

“Will you have another plate of steak-and-kidney pie?” he asked, and I consented with many thanks.

Then he returned to the great subject of the stage.

“Only yesterday,” he said, “I was spending half an hour in dear old Wilson’s private room at the Princess’s Theatre. He likes me to drop in between the acts. He is a man who would always rather listen than talk; and, if he has to talk, he chooses any subject rather than himself and his histrionic powers. All the greatest actors are the same. They are almost morbid about mentioning their personal talents, or the parts they have played. But the subjects that always interest Wilson are the younger men and the future of the drama. ‘Martin,’ he said to me, ‘I would throw up the lead in my own theatre to-night, if I could by so doing reveal a new and great genius to the world! I would gladly play subordinate parts, if I could find a young man to play my parts better than I do myself.’ I tell you this, Mr. Corkey, to show you that one supreme artist, at least, is always on the lookout for talent, always ready to stretch a helping hand to the tyro.”

“Perhaps some day,” I said, “years hence, of course, when I have learned elocution and stage deportment and got the general hang of the thing, you would be so very generous and kind as to give me a letter of introduction to Mr. Barrett?”

Mr. Tupper filled my glass with more beer and sank his voice to a confidential whisper.

“I couldn’t ‘give’ you an introduction, Mr. Corkey, because Wilson himself would not allow that. I am, of course, enormously rich, but it is always understood between me and the great tragedian that I get some little honorarium for these introductions. Personally, I do not want any such thing; but he feels that a nominal sum of three to five guineas ought to pass before young fellows are lifted to the immense privilege of his personal acquaintance, and enabled actually to tread the boards with him in some of his most impassioned creations. The money I give to the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen at Newington Butts—in which I am deeply interested. Thus, you see, these introductions to Mr. Wilson Barrett serve two great ends: they advance the cause of the Decayed Gentlewomen—the number of whom would much distress you to learn—and they enable the aspirant to theatrical honours to begin his career under the most promising circumstances that it is possible to conceive.”

“But I ought to go through the mill, like Mr. Barrett himself and Mr. Henry Irving and all famous actors have done,” I said; and Mr. Tupper agreed with me.

“Have no fear for that,” he answered. “Wilson will see to that. He is more than strict and, while allowing reasonable freedom for the expansion of individual genius, will take very good care you have severe training and plenty of hard work. But the point is that you must go through his mill and not another’s. It is no good going to Wilson after some lesser man has taught you to speak and walk and act. You would only have to unlearn these things. If you want to flourish in his school of tragedy, which is, of course, the most famous in England at the moment, you must go to him, as it were, empty—a blank sheet—a virgin page whereon he can impress his great principles. Will you have apple tart, plum tart, or tapioca pudding and Surrey cream?”

I took apple tart, but Mr. Tupper said that sweet dishes were fatal to the working of his mind in poetical invention, so he had celery and cheese.

“I see Wilson to-night,” he resumed. “To be quite frank, I have to tell him about a lad who is very anxious to join him, and wishes to give me fifty pounds for the introduction; but such is my strange gift of intuition in these cases, that I would far rather introduce you to the theatre than the youth in question. You are clearly in earnest and I doubt if he is. You have a theatrical personality and he has not. Your voice is well suited for the higher drama; his is a cockney voice and will always place him at a disadvantage save in comedy. Had it been in your power to go before Wilson this week, I should have substituted your name for the other. I wish cordially there were no sordid question of money. I would even advance you five guineas myself. But you are as delicate-minded as I am. You would not like me to do that.”

I assured him that such a thing was out of the question.

“Indeed, Mr. Tupper,” I said, “you are doing far, far more than I should ever have thought anybody would do for a perfect stranger. And unless I could pay the money for the decayed Home, I should not dream of accepting such a great kindness.”

He was quite touched. He blew his nose.

“We artists,” he said, “are emotional. There is a magic power in us to find all that is trusting and good and of sweet savour in human nature. And yet goodness and gratitude and proper feeling in the young always move me, as you see me moved now. They are so rare.”

He brought out a brown leather purse and took from it half a sovereign. He then called the waiter and paid the bill.

“We will go down into the smoking-room,” he said. “No doubt a liqueur will not be amiss.”

I’d forgotten all about the time and, in fact, everything else in the world during this fearfully exciting meeting with Mr. Martin Tupper; and the end of it all was that I fished out my first five-pound note for the introduction to Mr. Barrett and my first step on the stage.

“It should be guineas,” said Mr. Tupper, “but in your case, and because I have taken a very great personal fancy to you, it shall be pounds. And don’t grudge the money. Go on your way happy in the knowledge that it will greatly gladden a life that has a distinctly seamy side. There is a sad but courageous woman whose eyes will brighten when she sees this piece of paper.”

But though he idly threw my note into his pocket as a thing of no account, yet he was a man of the most honourable and sensitive nature.

“I cannot,” he said, “leave you without carrying out my part of the contract. I gather that you are rather pressed for time, or I would drive you to the Princess’s Theatre in my private brougham, which is waiting for me near the Mansion House. No doubt the driver thinks I am lunching with the Lord Mayor, as I often do. But to take you just now to the Princess’s Theatre would interfere with your duties at the Apollo Fire Office, which I should be the last to wish to do; so I will write you a personal introduction to my dear friend, Mr. Barrett, and you can deliver it, either to-night or on the next occasion that you go to see him act.”

“It will be to-night,” I said.

He refused to go until his part was done.

“We must avoid even the appearance of evil,” he told me. “You might feel uneasy and suspicious were I to leave you with nothing but a promise. Martin Tupper’s word is as good as his oath, I believe; but it is a hard, a cold, and a cruel world. At any rate, you shall have the letter.”

He opened his bag, which contained writing materials, and he had soon written a note to Mr. Barrett, warmly commending me to the attention of that great man. He made me read it, and I was surprised how well he had summed up my character. He next gave me his own address, which was No. 96 Grosvenor Square—one of the most fashionable residential neighbourhoods in London—and then, hoping that I would dine with him and Mrs. Tupper two nights later, at 8 o’clock, he shook me warmly by the hand, wished me good luck, and left me.

I saw his dignified figure steal into the street, and though the general public did not seem to recognise him in his modest attire, I fancy that a policeman or two cast understanding glances at him. No doubt they had seen him before—at royal or other functions.

I seemed to be walking on air when I went back to work, for this great man, inspired by nothing but pure goodwill, had, as it were, opened the door of success to me and given me a chance for which thousands and thousands of young professional actors must have sighed in vain. He was hardly the man I should have chosen to know; but now that I did know him, I felt that it must have been a special Providence that had done it. I wished that I could make it up to him and hoped that he would live long enough for me to send him free tickets to see me act. Meantime, I determined to buy all his books, which was the least I could do.

But I was brought down to earth rather rudely from these beautiful thoughts, for when I got back to the office, Mr. Blades told me that Mr. Westonshaugh wished to speak to me; and it then transpired that, instead of taking half an hour for my luncheon, according to the rules and regulations of the Apollo, I had been out for two hours and rather more!

I was terribly sorry, and felt the right and proper thing was to be quite plain with Mr. Westonshaugh.

“I met Mr. Martin Tupper at a bookstall, and he introduced himself and asked me to lunch, sir,” I said. But the Head of the Department did not like this at all, and I was a good deal distressed to find the spirit in which he took it. He seemed pained and startled by what I told him; he even showed a great disinclination to accept my word.

“Go back to your work, sir,” he said, in a very stern voice, “and don’t add buffoonery to your other irregularities. I am much disappointed in you, Mr. Corkey.”

It was a fearful thing to hear this great and good man misunderstand me so completely. In fact, the blood of shame sprang to my forehead—a thing that had never happened before. And then he made another even more terrible speech.

“You look to me very much as if you’d been drinking,” he said. “Have a care, young man; for if there is one thing that will ruin your future more quickly than another, it is that disgusting offense!”

I sneaked away then, in a state of bewildered grief, sorrowful repentance, and mournful exasperation. This was by far the unhappiest event in my life; and things got worse and worse as the day wore on.

Mr. Blades asked me what the deuce I’d been doing, and when I told him, he said “Rats!” This was a word he used to mean scorn. Then he continued, and even used French.

“‘Martin Tupper!’ Why don’t you say it was Martin Luther at once? I believe it’s a case of ‘Sasshay la fam!’”

“Martin Luther died in 1546, so it couldn’t have been him, and I don’t know what ‘Sasshay la fam’ means,” I said, and Mr. Blades replied in a most startling manner:

“So’s Martin Tupper dead—sure to be! Ages ago, no doubt. Anyway, I happen to know that Mr. Westonshaugh thinks the dickens of a lot of him, so when you said he’d been standing you a lunch, you made the worst joke you could have.”

“It wasn’t a joke, but quite the reverse,” I said; and then I told Mr. Blades how I had an introduction to Mr. Wilson Barrett at that moment in my pocket—to prove the truth of what I was saying.

Mr. Blades read it carefully and shook his head.

“You’re such a jug, Corkey,” he said. “This is neither more nor less than a common or garden confidence trick. The beggar saw you had a ‘fiver’ at the bookstall and soon found you were a soft thing. Then he pretended to be friendly and just hammered away till he found the weak spot. If you’d go and have a sensible lunch, like everybody else, instead of wandering about London in the helpless way you do, on a bun and a glass of milk, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“The great point is whether Mr. Tupper is or is not dead,” I told Mr. Blades. “If he is dead, really and truly, then no doubt I have been swindled by a shady character; but if he is not, then there is still hope that it was really him.”

Mr. Blades, with his accustomed great kindness, himself went in to Mr. Westonshaugh with me and explained the painful situation in some well-chosen words.

“I shouldn’t have thought of using the name of such a world-renowned poet, sir,” I said to the Head of the Department; “but he told me so himself, and he was exceedingly serious-looking and solemn and kind; and far above clean clothes—which is a common thing with poets. But, of course, if he’s dead, as Mr. Blades thinks—--”

“He’s not dead,” answered the Chief. “I am glad to say that he is not dead. It is my privilege to correspond with Mr. Tupper occasionally. I heard from him on the subject of a difficult passage in one of his poems only a month ago.”

“Does he live in Grosvenor Square, sir?” I asked; “because this Mr. Tupper said he did—at No. 96.”

“He does not,” answered Mr. Westonshaugh. “He doesn’t live in London at all.”

Then Mr. Blades had a brilliant idea.

“Would you know Mr. Tupper’s handwriting, sir?” he asked, and Mr. Westonshaugh said that he would know it instantly.

He examined the letter of introduction to Mr. Barrett, and pronounced it to be an unquestionable forgery.

“A great crime has been committed,” he said. “A professional thief has used the name and signature of Mr. Tupper in order to rob you of five pounds, and he has succeeded only too well. Let this be a lesson to you, Mr. Corkey, not again to fall into conversation with the first well-dressed—or badly dressed—stranger who may accost you. To think that the insolent scoundrel dared to use that sacred name!”

Mr. Westonshaugh evidently considered it a very much worse thing to forge Martin Tupper’s name than to steal my five-pound note. And I dare say it was. He forgave me, however, and withdrew his dreadful hint about my having had too much to drink.

Then I left him and worked in a very miserable frame of mind until six o’clock—to make up for my wasted time.

It was my earliest great and complete crusher; and, coming just at this critical moment, made it simply beastly sad. Because my very first earnings were completely swallowed up in this nefarious manner by a shady customer. I had hoped to return home and flourish my five-pound note in the face of Aunt Augusta and tell her to help herself liberally out of it; but, instead of that, I had to horrify her with the bad news that my money was gone for ever. If it had happened later, I believe that I should have made less and even felt less of it; but such fearful luck falling on my very first “fiver” made it undoubtedly harder to bear than it otherwise would have been. And then I got a sort of gloomy idea that losing my first honest earnings meant a sort of curse on everything I might make in after life! I felt that a bad start like that might dog me for years, if not for ever. I had a curious and horrid dread that I should never really make up this great loss, but always be five pounds short through the rest of my career to my dying day!

Aunt Augusta tried hard to make light of it. In fact, it is undoubtedly at times like this that a woman is far more comforting than a man. She went to her private store and brought out another crisp and clean five-pound note and made me take it. She insisted, and so reluctantly I took it; but I didn’t spend it in the least with the joy and ease that I should have spent the other. It was, in fact, merely a gift—good enough in its way—but very different from the one I had earned, single-handed, by hard work, in a humming hive of industry.

The whole thing had its funny side—to other people, and I heard a good deal about it at the Apollo Fire Office. In fact, I must have done the real Martin Tupper a good turn in a way, because it was the fashion for everybody to quote from his improving works when I passed by.

It was a great lesson all round; but London is full of interesting things of this sort.

V

I was too much hurt about the insult offered Mr. Wilson Barrett and myself to go and see him act again for a long time; but other theatres demanded my attention because I was now a regular student of the drama and didn’t like to miss anything. Sometimes I went alone and sometimes I got a clerk from the Apollo to go with me. But none of them much cared about legitimate drama.

I was already deeply in love, in a far-distant and hopeless sort of way, with Miss Ellen Terry, and when there came a first night at the Lyceum Theatre, I resolved to be present in the pit. I told Aunt Augusta not to expect me at dinner-time, but she was well used to this and said she wouldn’t. So the moment that I was free from my appointed task I flew off to the Lyceum pit door and took my place. I was, however, by no means the first to arrive. A crowd had already collected and I found myself among that hardy and famous race of men and women known as “first-nighters.” There were even youngish girls in the crowd, for one stood near me reading the Merchant of Venice, which was the play we had all come to see. Luckily for the girl a gas-lamp hung over her head and she was thus enabled to read the play and pass the time. Like a fool I had brought nothing, yet it was enough amusement and instruction for me to be among so many regular professional “first-nighters”; and I listened with great interest to their deep knowledge of the subject. Five or six men of all ages evidently knew one another, and they were talking about a little book that had just been written on Mr. Henry Irving by Mr. William Archer. It was a very startling book—the very one, in fact, that I was going to buy at the bookstall when the shady customer pretended he was Mr. Martin Tupper. It was a small book with rather a grim picture of Mr. Henry Irving on the outside, and I found that these old hands of the stage did not altogether approve of the book and thought parts of it rather strong coming from Mr. Archer to Mr. Irving.

“He says that Irving is half a woman,” said a grey man. “Now that’s going too far, in my opinion.”

“I know what he’s driving at,” answered a young man with a very intellectual face. “You see, every artist has got to be man, woman, and child rolled into one. Every great artist has to have the imagination and power of feeling and fellow-feeling to identify himself with every other sort of possible person. If you can’t do that, you can’t be a first-class actor. That’s where Irving beats Barrett into a cocked hat—temperament and power of imagination. Irving could act anything—from Richard the Third to an infant in arms; Barrett could not.”

“Barrett very nearly made Hamlet an infant in arms, all the same,” said the grey man, and at this excellent and subtle joke they all laughed. I wanted to laugh in an admiring sort of way, but doubted whether it would not be rather interfering. So I contented myself with smiling heartily; because I didn’t want them to think so fine a joke had been lost upon me.

They were very deeply read in everything to do with the theatre, and I found that they knew most of the actresses by their married names, which, of course, I did not. Thus, greatly to my surprise, I found out that nearly all the most fascinating and famous actresses were married. Many even had families.

Splendid stories were told by the grey man. He related a great jest about Mr. William Terriss when he was acting with Mr. Irving. It was irreverent in a way to such a famous actor as Mr. Terriss; but, of course, for mere intellectual power Mr. Terriss was not in it with Mr. Irving—any more than any other actor was, though he might, none the less, be very great in himself. And once, when Mr. Terriss was rehearsing with Mr. Irving, the latter, failing to make the former do what he wanted, said before the actors, actresses, and supernumeraries at that time assembled on the spacious boards of the Lyceum Theatre—he said, “My dear Terriss, do try and use the little brains that God has given you!”

The hours rolled by and one or two of the young men spoke kindly to me. Then the girl, who had grey eyes and a mass of yellow hair under a deer-stalker hat, and was dressed in cloth of the same kind, also spoke to me and asked me to take my elbow out of her shoulder-blade. I apologised instantly and altered my position. The crush was now increasing and the air was exceedingly stuffy; but there still remained an hour before the doors opened.

Having broken the ice, the girl, who I think was tired of keeping quiet for such a long time, began to talk. We discussed the drama and “first nights” in general. From one thing we went to another and I found, much to my interest, that the girl intended to become an actress. She was an independent and courageous sort of girl. Her parents had a shop in the Edgware Road and were very much against her going on the stage; but she was determined to defy them. There was to be a dramatic school opened shortly, and she was going to join it. Then I naturally told her that I was going to join that school too, and she was quite pleased.

“Perhaps we shall play parts in the same play some day,” she said; and I said I hoped we might.

“Phew!” she exclaimed presently. “This is getting a bit thick, isn’t it?”

Certainly it was. I had never been in such a tightly packed crowd and, as bad luck would have it, I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable. I was, in plain words, starving. Like a fool I had spared no time for tea, but rushed off at the earliest possible moment, and now I began to feel emptier than I had ever felt in my life before.

The girl, to whom I mentioned this, said that I had gone white as chalk, but that I should be able to buy something to eat and drink inside. She had some chocolate in her pocket, fortunately, and with great generosity insisted upon sharing it with me; but it amounted really to nothing in my ravenous state. It was like giving a hungry tiger a shrimp.

And then a most extraordinary thing happened—a thing that I should not have believed possible. I began to feel funnier and funnier, and to gasp in a very fishlike way, and to feel a cold and horrid sweat bursting out upon my forehead. I had not felt like this for many, many years—in fact, only once before: on the day that I and Jackson Minor found a cigar at Merivale and tossed for it and I won and smoked the cigar secretly to the stump. And I remembered now, with tragical horror, what happened afterwards; and the hideous thought came to me that I was going to be ill in that seething crowd of hardy old “first-nighters”! Think of the disgrace and shame of it; and it wasn’t only that, because, of course, the “first-nighters” would never forget a horrible adventure of that kind, and no doubt the next time I presented myself among them, to wait five or six hours before the doors opened upon some great triumph of Thespian art, they would recognise me and band together against me and order me away, as a man unfit to take his place among seasoned critics of the drama.

All this and much more flashed through my head and then, just before the climax, there came the comforting thought that I couldn’t be ill in that way, having had nothing since my bun and glass of milk eight hours before. I am sorry to keep on mentioning this bun and glass of milk because it sounds greedy, but for once in a way I was glad that I was empty—for the sake of all those artistic and courageous “first-nighters,” not to mention the brave, grey-eyed girl.

Then I felt my knees give and the gaslight overhead whirled about like a comet with twenty tails; I saw the heads of the people round me fade off their shoulders; the gaslight went out; I heard a tremendous humming and roaring in my ears, like a train in a tunnel, and all was over. My last thought was that this was death, and I wondered if Miss Ellen Terry would read about it in the paper next day and be sorry. But, even at that ghastly moment, I knew she wouldn’t, because of course she would want to hear what the critics thought of her “Portia”; and that would naturally be the principal thing in the newspaper for her.

Of course I wasn’t dying really; but I fainted and must have put a great many people to fearful inconvenience. It shows, however, what jolly good hearts “first-nighters” have got, in my opinion, that they didn’t merely let me sink to the earth, and ignore me, and walk over me when the doors opened. But far from that, despite the length of my legs, they lugged me out somehow and forced open the side door of a public-house that was close at hand, and thrust me in.

When I came to, my first instinct was one of pure self-preservation and I asked for food. Outside, the people were crushing into the pit of the theatre, and by the time I had eaten about a loaf and half a Dutch cheese, and drunk some weak brandy-and-water, which the landlord of the public-house very kindly and humanely insisted upon my doing, the pit was full—not even standing room remained. It was rather sad in a way; but I felt less for the frightful disappointment, after waiting all those hours, than for the debt I owed the merciful men who had rescued me. Of course I didn’t know who they might be and, in any case, it was impossible to wait there till midnight, on the off-chance of seeing them after the play was over and thanking them gratefully.

I could have kicked myself over it, because for a chap nearly six feet high, about to join the London Athletic Club and going to be an actor some day and so on—for such a chap, with his way to make in the world, to go into a crowd and faint, like a footling schoolgirl who cuts her finger—it was right bang off, as they say. I felt fearfully downcast about it, because it looked to me as if my career might just as well be closed there and then: but the kind landlord rather cheered me up. He said:

“You needn’t take on like that. No doubt you’ve outgrown your strength. It’s nothing at all. The air out there in these crushes would choke a crow. It’s the commonest thing in the world for people to be dragged out and shot in that door.”

“Women, I dare say—not men.”

“Women—and boys,” he answered. “And what d’you call yourself?”

“Well, I’m a man, I suppose,” I replied. “I’m earning my own living, anyway.”

“So did I—afore I was ten years old, my bold hero!” said the landlord.

He talked to me, while I ate my bread and cheese, and presently advised me to take a cab and drive home; but this I scorned to do, being perfectly fit again. I said I hoped to see him once more some day and he only took sixpence for all my refreshment. He was a good man and I felt jolly obliged to him—especially when he told me that my faint was not a disgrace in itself, but more in the nature of a misfortune.

I walked home and said nothing about this unfortunate event; but merely told Aunt Augusta that I had not been able to get into the Lyceum, which was the strict truth and no more. For if I had revealed to her about fainting she would have fussed me to death and very likely made me go to Harley Street in grim earnest and not merely as a spectator of that famous spot.

Two nights later I went to the Lyceum again and waited three hours, and being laden in every pocket with sausage rolls, mince pies, and fat, sustaining pieces of chocolate, simply laughed at the waiting. However, it was a lesson in its way; and the lesson was never to be hungry in London. It is the worst place in the world to be hungry in—owing to the great strain on the nerves, no doubt. And hunger weakens the strength in a very marked way and makes you liable to be run over, or anything. Besides that, to be hungry is not only very uncomfortable in itself; but it makes you a great nuisance to other people; and the hungry person ought not to go into crowds for fear of the consequences. A time was coming when I was going to see hundreds of hungry persons all assembled in one place together; but that remarkable and fearful sight did not happen until many months later.

The immediate result of the fainting was a change of diet, and you will be glad to know I shall never mention the bun and the glass of milk again; because it went out of my career from that day forward.

I had no secrets from Mr. Blades, who was now my greatest and most trusted friend in London. Therefore I told him about the catastrophe, making him first swear silence; and he explained it all and let me go out to lunch with him that very day, to show me what a good and nourishing lunch ought to be.

“It is silly to say you can’t pay for it,” declared Mr. Blades, “because you must. And it is far better to pay for a chop or steak or even a sausage and mashed and half of bitter ale, than to find yourself in the doctor’s hands.”

He was full of these wise and shrewd sayings; so I went to an eating-house with him and never laughed so much before, owing to the screamingly funny way in which a waiter shouted things down a tube. It was not so much the things in themselves as the way he shortened the names of them, to save his precious time. Men came in and gave their orders, and then this ridiculous but exceedingly clever waiter shouted his version of the orders down a pipe which led to the kitchen of the restaurant, where the dishes were being prepared.

It was like this: the waiter cruised round among the customers and collected orders for soup. Two men ordered ox-tail soup, three had mock-turtle soup, Mr. Blades decided for vegetable soup and I had pea-soup. Well, of course, that was far too much to shout down the tube, so the genius of a waiter said, “Two ox, three mocks, a veg, and a pea!” And there you were! In less than no time the various soups appeared, and the funniest thing of all to me was, that nobody saw anything funny about it. But I roared—I couldn’t help it, and much to my regret annoyed Mr. Blades, who told me not to play the fool where he was known. After a time I steadied down and made an ample meal; and afterwards it transpired that it was generally the custom of Mr. Blades to play a couple of games of dominoes with some of his friends, who lunched at the same place. But, though he promised to teach me, it was impossible that day owing to my being quite unsteadied and helpless and imbecile with laughing just at the end of the lunch.

It was, I need hardly say, the amazing waiter. He saw that he had frightfully amused me and perhaps thought he would get an extra tip for being so wonderful. Which he did do, for I gave him sixpence and made Mr. Blades angry again.

But the waiter deserved a pound, for when two men ordered Gorgonzola cheese and another man ordered a currant dumpling and three others wanted kidneys on toast, he excelled himself by screaming down to the kitchen these memorable words:

“Two Gorgons, a dump, and three kids!” Then he winked at me and I simply rolled about helplessly and wept with laughing. This must have been one of that glorious waiter’s greatest efforts, I think, because several other quite elderly men laughed too.

He was called “William,” and I knew him well in a week. He had a rich fund of humour, but was very honest and hard-working and a Londoner to the backbone. He hated foreign waiters and said that the glitter of his shiny hair was produced by a little fat from the grill well rubbed in every morning. No barber’s stuff could touch it, he said, and if it made him smell like a mutton chop, who thought the worse of him for that? He expected twopence after each luncheon, and if any stranger gave him less, he made screamingly funny remarks. In his evenings he waited at the banquets of the City Companies, which are the most stupendous feeds the world has ever known since Nero’s times; and at these dinners he often heard State and other secrets, which he said would have been worth a Jew’s eye to him if he had not been an honest man. He didn’t, of course, say these things as if they were meant to be true. Simple people no doubt would have believed them, but I soon got to notice that he accompanied many of his most remarkable statements with a wink, which disarmed criticism, as the saying is. He was a good man at heart and had a wife at home and also a lame daughter who would never walk; so, though one would not have thought it, he had his trials. In fact nearly everybody I met, when I got to know them, told me about distressing things which they hid from the world. Even Mr. Blades, who seemed to preserve the even tenor of his way with great skill, confessed to me that he had a brother very different from himself and evidently very inferior in every way. In fact it looked to me, though of course I never hinted at such a thing, that the brother of Mr. Blades must have been rapidly sinking into a shady customer of the deadliest sort.

Really for the moment, after I took to proper lunches, it seemed as if I was the only man in the office with no private worries.

VI

I found that the clerks at the Apollo Fire Office were much more interesting than the work, and I told Mr. Blades so on an occasion when with his usual great generosity he had given me some useful help, because I was behind-hand and had forgotten what I ought to have remembered. But that I should find the clerks more interesting than the work did not please Mr. Blades, and he thought badly of the idea.

“If you are going to be an insurance clerk, the first thing is to master the insurance business,” he said, very truly and wisely to me; and then it was that I told him of my great ambition to become an actor in the future. He instantly disapproved of it.

“There was a clerk in this office in the past, and he went on the stage and did well,” he admitted; “but he was exceptional in every way. He was older than you and had a very remarkably handsome face.”

“In tragedy,” I said, “a handsome face doesn’t matter so much.”

“When you talk of tragedy,” answered Mr. Blades, “you mention the greatest heights of the profession. You are not built to play tragic parts, being far too thin and long in the legs, in my opinion. Besides, it is a calling in which only one in a thousand does any real good. I should advise you to stick to insurance and try to master the principles of it.”

Of course I was getting on, but the lower walks of the science of insurance are tame, and it would not be interesting to explain rates and risks and tariffs and the explosive point of mineral oils and other important things, all of which have to be taken into account by the beginner.

But the clerks were far more full of interest, and some were stern and ambitious men, who were determined sooner or later to get to the top of the office and become Secretary; and some were easy men without great ambition, but full of ideas, though the ideas were not about the science of risk from fire. There was one remarkable man, whose age was thirty-two, and he lived at Clapham in lodgings all alone. This man, whose name was Tomlinson, possessed enormous ability in the direction of racehorses. His knowledge of these famous quadrupeds was most extraordinary. If you looked into a paper and saw the name of a racehorse, Tomlinson would instantly tell you whether it was a male or female horse, and the name of its father and mother, or I should say sire and dam. He would also tell you its age and its owner and its trainer and the jockeys who had ridden it, and the races it had run and was going to run, and the money, if any, it had earned in stakes during its career.

In this singular man’s desk were evidences of his passion for the turf. Nailed to the lid was the shoe or “racing plate” of a Derby winner, and arranged round it were photographic portraits of racehorses extracted from packets of cigarettes. A particular brand of cigarettes always contained these portraits, and so, naturally, Tomlinson smoked them. He seldom went to race-meetings himself, but read all the particulars of each race with great perseverance, in order to guide his future betting transactions. He had a Turf Agent and visited him frequently during the luncheon hour, and on the occasion of the classic races, such as the Derby and Oaks, or St. Leger, Tomlinson always arranged a sweepstake in the Country Department of the Apollo Fire Office and was well thought of for doing so.

He said that if he had been blessed with a good income he should have become a “gentleman backer,” which is some particular order of turf-specialist; and if he had been born with real wealth, he should have been an owner of racehorses, and a member of the Jockey Club. As it was, he knew several jockeys—though, curiously enough, jockeys are not themselves members of this far-famed club.

Then I might mention Wardle, who was the chief of one of the divisions of the Country Department, and a man of such varied mind that, while very skillful in his profession of insurance, he yet found leisure to develop the art of music to the very highest pitch. He was, in fact, a professional organist on Sundays; and not contented with this, actually composed music in the loftiest Gregorian manner, and played it on his organ before the congregation. His way of work was a great revelation to me, for while Tomlinson might be calculating the proper weights for a handicap, or taking down names for a sweepstake, Wardle, with a piece of music paper before him, which it always was in his spare moments, would be arranging triumphs of thorough bass and counterpoint and so on—all to delight his congregation some day, when the composition was finished. He did not like Wagner, and told me that he was a charlatan and would soon vanish forever; but Mozart he considered his own master, and said that Mozart was the very spirit and essence and soul of religious music. He spoke bitterly, but quite patiently, about the vicar of the church where he played and said that the man, though a well-meaning and honourable man, had never grasped the powers of music in religion.

“If he had,” said Wardle, “I should have had a new organ to play upon long ago. Our instrument is very inferior and our choir a thing of nought. As it is, the people come to hear me and not him.”

But one of his pieces of music had been played by a friend on the organ of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Wardle had heard it and been a good deal moved to find how his composition came out amid the solemn and glorious architecture of that sacred edifice. He hoped it would be played at Westminster Abbey, when the regular organist was taking his holiday and his locum tenens, as they call it, was in his place. Because this locum tenens was known to Mr. Wardle and believed in his powers of composition.

This genuine musician, on finding that every sort of art interested me a good deal, became very friendly and was so good as to ask me to go to his church one Sunday and hear him play, and have dinner with him afterwards. It was a great compliment, and of course I went and was deeply impressed to see the amazing ease with which Wardle, in surplice and cassock, handled his organ and managed the pedals and pulled out stops, and turned over the music and played psalms and hymns and responses and so on,—all with unfailing success. During the collection the hymn came to an end too soon, and doubtless, with a less complete master of harmony than Wardle, an awkward pause would have ensued; but, with a nerve begot of long practice, he permitted his fingers to stray over the “Ivories,” as they call them, and his feet to stray over the pedals, with a result both rich and harmonious. A solemn melody reverberated through the aisles and rolled from the instrument, and entirely concealed the mean sound of pennies and threepenny pieces falling into the collecting dishes.

I praised this feat warmly after the service and Wardle was gratified that I had noticed it. Then I asked him why he did not commit such an improvisation to paper, so that it should not be lost, and he laughed and said:

“Why, it was a music-hall tune: ‘Father’s teeth are stopped with zinc!’”

He explained, to my great astonishment, that if you alter the time and the general hang of a tune, and play it with all the solemn notes and deep stops and flourishes of an organ, the most skillful ear is deceived. It was only another tribute to the man’s amazing cleverness; but somehow I felt disappointed that he should have done this thing. It seemed unworthy of him. He had a piano of his own, secured on the hire system; and upon this instrument, after dinner, he played me a great deal of his own music, including many of the numbers from a beautiful fairy opera that he had written with a friend—the words being by the friend.

“The libretto is footle,” confessed Wardle; “but if I could only get a libretto worth talking about, I should surprise some of us.”

I told him that he had already surprised me; but, of course, he meant the outer world of opera-goers and enthusiasts of music, who abound in London, and are to be seen thronging the great concert halls by night.

Another man of exceptional genius was Bassett—a volunteer and a crack shot. He belonged to the Artists’ Corps and was, you might say, every inch a soldier, in the complete disguise of an insurance clerk.

This martial man seemed always to be panting for bloodshed, and openly hoped that England would go to war with some important nation—in fact, one of the Great Powers for choice—before he was too old to participate in the struggle. He knew as much of our military heroes as Tomlinson knew of our racehorses. He was not content with being a sergeant in the Artists’ Corps and one of their leading marksmen, but also went into the deepest science of battle and tactics and strategy. He read war by day and he dreamed of war by night, and he would have liked to see conscription come in at any moment.

This fiery, but large-hearted man was very anxious for me to become a volunteer, and it was a great sorrow to me to find that he did not feel any further interest in me when I refused to do so, while thanking him heartily for the idea. He said that drilling was far better and more useful than going down to the L.A.C. to caper about half-naked, and that if I did regular drills and so on, I should in time come to the Field Days, and have all the joy of forced marches and maneuvers at Easter, and sleeping under canvas, and going on sentry duty by night and waking to the ringing sound of the trumpet at dawn.

But none of these things tempted me as much as Bassett expected. In fact, I had already discovered in earlier life that the god Mars was nothing to me. Bassett said that he didn’t know what the young generation was coming to when I told him this, and he hinted, rather openly, that I was unpatriotic. But I would not allow that I was. I said:

“We can’t all be volunteers, any more than we can all be proper soldiers.”

And Dicky Travers, who, though also quite dead to the martial spirit, was a most patriotic man in sporting matters, called Bassett a “dog-shooter”!

This, however, was merely repartee, of which Mr. Travers was a complete master. In fact, he had invented a nickname for everybody in the Department, and at his wish, having a slight turn for rhyming, I made up a long poem of thirty-eight verses, being one verse for each man in the Department. The mere poetry, which was nothing, was mine; but the rich humour and subtle irony, not to say satire, was the work of Dicky Travers. Each verse of this poem was arranged in the shape of a “Limerick,” which is a simple sort of rhyme well suited to humour combined with satire; and it showed the delicate skill of Mr. Travers and his surprising knowledge of human nature, that each person who read the poem invariably laughed very heartily at thirty-seven verses—in fact, all except the verse about himself. I noticed this peculiar fact and was rather astonished at it; but Travers was not astonished. He said:

“My dear Corkey, when you are as old as I am, you will find that to see your friends scored off is one of those trials in life which you can always manage to get over. But the feeling is entirely different when anybody scores off you.”

I may give a glimpse of yet another first-class and original man before concluding this short chapter and proceeding to more serious business.

In some ways Mr. Bent, who lived at Chislehurst, was among the most naturally gifted of the staff of the Country Department of the Apollo. His talent, or you might almost say “genius,” was purely horticultural; and by dint of long and patient study, and devoting his entire spare income and all his spare time to the subject, he had gradually arranged and planted a garden that would undoubtedly have become historical, if only it had been a little bit larger.

It was his custom to give the Department a taste of his great skill during the summer months, for flowers were to him what a sporting paper was to Tomlinson, or a rifle to Bassett—in fact, the breath of his nostrils.

On his desk he had two vases, and in these vases always stood choice blossoms during official hours. Sometimes I recognised them, and oftener I did not; but when I did not, Mr. Bent, who was a man of mild expression and thin and stooping appearance, told me the names, such as Alströmeria and Carpentaria and Berberidopsis and Oncocyclus Iris and Pardanthes and Calochortus and Magnolia and Mummy Pea and many another horticultural triumph of the rarest sort. After the day was done, with the generosity of the born gardener, he would give away these precious things to anybody who wanted a buttonhole; but there were times when he naturally expected some return for magnificent hothouse exotics, which he brought to the office in the depths of winter or early spring, when flowers were worth money. Such things as gardenias and Maréchal Niel roses and Eucharis lilies he invariably raffled—not, as he told me, for gain, but simply to pay, or help pay, for the expense of buying coke for his hothouse, the temperature of which had to be kept up to fever heat, as you might say, in order that the various tropical marvels grown by Mr. Bent should survive the English winter.

Finding that I was very anxious to understand gardening, because I knew that many famous actors had said in newspapers that they occupied their leisure in their palatial gardens and orchid houses, Mr. Bent most kindly allowed me to go down one afternoon after office hours, not only to see his garden, but, better still, to watch him gardening in it.

“It is a pursuit that needs certain gifts,” he told me, as we rode in the train to Chislehurst. “You must, of course, first have the enthusiasm and love of the science for itself but that is not enough. You must make sacrifices and read learned books and study the life-history of plants and their various requirements. Some, for instance, like lime and some die if you give them lime. A lily, or a rhodo. or an azalea hates lime; a rose likes it. Some alpine plants must have limestone chips to be prosperous; others, again, like granite chips. My son, a child of tender age but already full of the gardening instinct, once gave a choice saxifrage a pennyworth of cocoanut chips—under the infantile hope that what pleased him so well would please the plant. A touching story which does not in my opinion spoil by repetition.”

In this improving way Mr. Bent talked, and when we reached his home he disappeared instantly to don his gardening clothes, while his wife gave me some tea. She, too, was a gardener and very kindly advised me to be especially delighted with a plant called Mysotidium, which Mr. Bent had flowered for the first time in his life. It was rather like a huge forget-me-not with rhubarb leaves, and it came from New Zealand and cost five shillings.

Then Mrs. Bent’s little boy arrived and she told me how he had given cocoanut chips to the saxifrage; and he didn’t like me, unfortunately, and wouldn’t go into the garden with me. And then Mr. Bent returned accoutred in all the trappings of the professional gardener. He wore a blue apron and leather gloves and a clump of bast sticking out of his pocket; and his trousers and sleeves turned up and everything complete.

“I must be busy,” he said, “but my collection is completely labeled, and you will have no difficulty in following the general scheme of the garden.”

This was true, because of the great simplicity of the scheme. The garden, in fact, ran down quite straight between two other gardens, and finished at a brick wall.

“A howling wilderness you see on each side,” explained Mr. Bent, waving his trowel to the right and left. By this he meant, of course, that the other gardens only had roses and wallflowers and carnations and larkspurs and lilac, and the common or garden flowers familiar to the common or garden gardener. But it was no “side” on Mr. Bent’s part to talk in this scornful way, because to him, from his eagle heights of horticulture, so to speak, his neighbours’ gardens were barren wastes, with nothing in them to detain the expert for a moment.

His garden was literally stuffed with rare and curious things. He admitted that some of them were not beautiful; but they were rare and in some cases he doubted if anybody else in Kent had them. It never occurred to him that nobody else in Kent might want them. Everything was beautifully labelled with metal labels, and many of the rarer and more precious alpine plants had zinc guards put round them to keep away garden pests, such as slugs and snails.

I couldn’t believe that a snail would have dared to show his face in that garden; but Mr. Bent said he always had to be fighting them, and that sometimes they conquered and managed to scale a zinc guard and devour a small choice alpine in a single night!

He had most beautiful flowers to show me; or rather he let me walk up and down among them while he gardened. It was very interesting to see the sure professional touch of Mr. Bent. He never hesitated or doubted what to do. He knew exactly what to cut off a plant, or how much water to give it, or how to tie up a trailer. He planted out a few seedling zinnias to show me. Then he watered them in and removed the seed boxes, and all was neat and tidy in a moment.

He handled long and difficult Latin names with the consummate ease of a native, and he showed me piles of gardeners’ catalogues. Once he had raised a begonia from seed, which they accepted at Kew Gardens, and the Director of Kew gave him something in exchange for his hothouse.

“It died,” said Mr. Bent, “and that through no fault of mine; but the distinction and the compliment have not died and never will.”

He was a member of the R.H.S., or Royal Horticultural Society, and he had shown a plant now and again at their meetings, but without any honour falling to it.