Despair's Last Journey Part 20

He came to the Metropolitan Music Hall in the Edgware Road, and suffered himself to be borne in by the crowd at the doors. The place and its like were strange to him. The performance seemed wholly contemptible and absurd. Men and women screamed with laughter and roared applause at jests which were either inane or hateful. A noisy man in a long-waisted overcoat, whose skirts swept the stage, a blonde wig, flying yellow whiskers, and a white hat at a raking angle, sang an idiotic song with patter interspersed between the verses. He described a visit received from Lord Off-his-Chump, Lady Off-her-Chump, and all the honourable Misses Off-their-Chumps. The witticisms convulsed Paul's neighbours and left him saturnine. He conceived a loathing and despite for the creature on the stage which he had never felt before for any living thing. The popular laughter and applause fed his personal hatred and disdain. He made an involuntary sound of contempt as the 'lion comique' went off.

'Ah!' said a voice beside him. 'You don't like that?' Paul turned and looked at the man who had accosted him. He was evidently a foreigner, and his complexion was so jaundiced that he was the colour of a guinea.

What should have been the whites of his eyes were of a deep yellow.

His nose had a hook, high up, right between the eyes, and his lofty forehead, narrowing to a peak, was ridged like a ploughed field. His hair and beard and moustache were all crisp and curling, and their blackness was faintly streaked with gray.

'You don't like that?' said the stranger again. 'No,' said Paul. I don't.'

'The cruel thing about it,' said the stranger, 'is that other people do.'

'Yes,' said Paul; 'that is the cruel thing about it.'

He had the suspicion of strangers which is natural to most rustic folk in London, and his manner was purposely dry.

'It strikes me,' said the yellow man, 'that you and I are about the only sensible people here. Come and have a drink.'

'Thank you,'Paul returned, 'I don't drink with strangers.'

'Oh, well,' said the other, 'that's a wise thing, too. Have a cigar?'

'I don't smoke, thank you.'

'And that again is a very sensible thing,' said the stranger, laughing.

'I am a slave to tobacco. Smoking has ceased to be a pleasure since it became a necessity.'

The man's speech had a faintly foreign sound, but his English was faultless. The very slight peculiarity which marked it was rather a level flatness in the tone than an accent It suggested a time when it had cost him an effort to speak the language, though the time had long pa.s.sed away. The good-nature with which he accepted Paul's rebuff lulled the youngster's suspicions, and lulled it the more completely that the man turned away with a smiling nod and made no further attempt to enter into conversation.

The lion comique was followed by a juggler, who appeared in the guise of a hotel waiter, and laid a table as if for breakfast. The table arranged, he began to perform the most extraordinary tricks with the things he had placed upon it Eggs, egg-cups, teapot, cream-jug, sugar-basin, breakfast bacon, loaf, bread-trencher, table-napkins, plates, knives, forks, and spoons spouted in a fountain from his hands.

They seemed to be thrown into the air at random, and the man darted hither and thither about the stage to catch them. Then he was back at the table again amidst a storm of crockeryware, cutlery, and provisions, and each article as it descended was caught with an astonis.h.i.+ng dexterity and set in its proper place with a swift exactness which looked like magic. The artist had a perfect aplomb, and he put off the catching of each article till the last fraction of the inevitable second, so that he seemed secure in perfect triumph and yet on the edge of instant failure. The house howled with excited laughter and applause, and Paul roared as loud as any. He was as sober as a judge so far as balance of body and clearness of speech and thought were concerned, but the wine was in his blood. He stamped, clapped hands, and shouted until the performer left the stage, and had twice returned and bowed He felt that the applause would not cease until he ceased to lead it.

'That's better, eh?' said the man at Paul's side when the tumult was over.

'Yes, by Jingo!' said Paul 'It _was_ better. Look here, I'm afraid I was rather rude to you a little while ago. Come and have a drink with me.'

'With all the pleasure in life,' the stranger answered.

They rose and pushed their way to the bar together. The stranger would like a brandy-and-soda. Paul would take a brandy-and-soda. They talked, and Paul thought his chance-found companion a remarkably agreeable fellow. He seemed to have been everywhere. He spoke familiarly of many European countries and of the United States. But somehow he faded away in a sort of mist, and Paul's last remembrance of him was that he was laughingly pulling at his arm and advising him to go home. He seemed to be blotted out suddenly in that very act.

The Exile flashed back from his memories to himself, and awoke with a faint, gasping cry, for his mind had led him to the hour of the lost innocence. There are thousands on thousands of men who have lived purer lives than he who would yet deride the shaft which struck him, and laugh to think of its poignant power to wound. For the pure soul in the frail body, for the high hope and the will of burned cord, for the pa.s.sion which hurries the senses and has no power to blind the conscience, there is a lasting purgatory open. How many a time since that hour of loss he had groaned in the silence of the night to think of it, and had taken his pillow in his teeth! To live the purer for the shame which bit so deep and keen? Ah, no; to overlay it with new shames, to groan over in new vigils.

Easy for the callous good, who know neither sin nor virtue in extremes, who live somewhere about the level of a pa.s.sable rect.i.tude, and neither sink nor soar far from it--easy for them to dismiss this bitter truth for a mere sentimentalism; but there _is_ a virginity of the soul which evil custom cannot deflower. Woe to him who knows it, the chaste in wish and the unchaste in act, the rogue who values honour, the poltroon who would fain be brave! Ah, the goat-hoofed Satyr dancing there, drunk and leering, goatish in odour, unwashed and foul! Is it I? Is it I? And the anguished angel who weeps to look upon him. Is it I? Woe, woe is me, for I am each and both of these!

Oh, goat-hoofed devil in man, and buffeted aspirant soul! Oh, divine G.o.d-man, who art myself, and whom I with my own hands do hourly crucify, whom I do scourge and crown with thorns and spit upon!

Shall a man think thus but once only--shall he feed this burning iron in his breast but one sole time, and then go gaily afield in search of fresh agonies? Even so, and not once again only, but his lifetime through. This is why it is written that though you bray a fool in a mortar among bruised wheat with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart from him.

Bowed earthward, with garments that stink of rain-soaked dye drying in the suns.h.i.+ne, with swollen features and boots that suck at the flagstones, bristled and bloated and bleared, I go by you. Had I never a concupiscence for honour? Is there no Christ-half that walks within me towards the place of rottenness and dead men's bones?

Back to the vision again, not merely remembering, but living it all.

Sick nausea, rising faintly yet heavily on the senses, swimming upward, as it were, along with a half-drowned rebeginning of life and the cognizance of things; deep loathing, and eyes like new-cast musket-b.a.l.l.s for heat and weight; a frowsy air; a mouth like burned leather lined with vile odours. Forget it all in a mere instinct of distaste. Sink down with the sick wave. Swim down the sick wave in floating circles.

Sway here and swing there at the bottom of the whirlpool, and up again towards the light which heaves slowly on the eye as it used to do at the upward turn after a dive, when the sunlight shone through the yellow water of the lock. Then on a sudden--daylight; and then, like a bursting sh.e.l.l on the brain, the truth.

No use for the incredulous oath that the truth is false.

'My G.o.d! it isn't--it can't be!'

It can be--and it is. It _has_ been, and no mere episode of an eternity will wipe it out or can undo it There is the dirty blind torn away from one corner of the roller; there is the peeling paper on the wall, and the wall leprous where the paper has fallen away from it. Here, under his cheek, is the yellow malodorous pillow.

The sick brain cannot think; the foul mouth seems to taste of his own soiled soul.

And the woman, when he turns his leaden head, lying there, flushed--a girl of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l-handsome sort, with a smear of wet black hair on her brow, and a sensuous mouth, spurting breath like the lips of a swimmer half under water.

Out of this--anywhere. Feverish haste in dressing. Robbed, too--penniless.

What does that matter?

It matters greatly, it would seem, for here is a hulking, pock-marked villain demanding money, and a shrieking, night-gowned virago hauling the fugitive back up the stairs with obscenities which match the place and himself and her.

Then a flash in the heart, as if h.e.l.l's flame of shame and Heaven's lightning of righteous wrath lit it together. The pock-marked rascal is lying quiet on the ruddled bricks at the foot of the stairs. The woman's Voice curses until the corner is turned. A door slams. He is hatless and unwashed and dishevelled, standing in the Blackfriars Road.

Never to be forgotten the taste of the morning river air; never to be forgotten the grain of the stone on which his elbows leaned, or the tawny coil of the waters below him; never to be forgotten the purple dome and dark cross of Paul's, with its edge of gold on one side and the rosy east away and away beyond it.

His thoughts were the gasps of a devil's agony. He felt in gushes, like the welling of heart's blood. His soul clamoured 'Beast, beast, beast!'

at him; 'how dare you foul my dwelling-place!'

A warm trickle on his left hand, which had some dim a.s.sociations of physical pain, bade him look at it; there was a yellow splinter of tooth sticking there. He warmed to think he had struck home, and then chilled as he asked: 'Wasn't the poor devil at his proper trade?' He pulled out the jagged splinter, and bound the wound with his handkerchief.

To be twenty hours younger! To be only ten hours younger!

Ting, ting, clang, clang 'Ting, ting, dang, clang! Ting, ting, clang, clang! Ting, ting, clang, clang! The bells of the clock-tower at Westminster. He made a fool's rhyme to them:

'Down--In--my--home--'neath---the--clear--sky--No--thing--they--know --and--naught--care--I.'

The big bell said 'Doom 'eight times.

'Doom' the big bell seemed to say a ninth time, sweet and far. The Dreamer started, awoke, and knew his surroundings again. The ninth sound was the deep call of an engine whistle, rolled on river and rock and forest, and mellowed on many miles of smoky air. He sat with his chin on his hands, his heart yet tingling.

'Was that how it happened, Paul?

In his soul the question sounded, not in his ear. He answered the voice with a sighing 'Yes,' and then looked up and wondered.

'Dad,' he said aloud, 'am I making confession? Do you follow these memories? Have I only to gla.s.s things in my mind for you to see them?'

He waited in a sudden awe. He would make no answer of his own; he would lend the aid of no obscure mechanism of the brain to any tricking of himself. No answer came, and he sat disheartened, staring at the one visible hill which peered like a shadow from the other shadows in the midst of which he dwelt.

A minute later he was ten years forward. He was seated in the smoking-room of the Victoria Hotel at Euston, and he and Ralston were alone. Ralston was talking.

'The soul,' he said, 'makes experiments. It writes its notes on the body, and, having learned its own lesson, it throws the paper away. We lose to learn value. We shall know better next time. We have to sample our cargo, and we waste most of it, but we shall be refound for the next voayge. Bless G.o.d for an open-air penitence, but let us have no foul air of the cloister to turn repentance sour. So big a thing as the soul can afford to forgive so small a thing as the body.'