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Simon the Jester

<h2> CHAPTER XX </h2> I went home to my solitary dinner, and afterwards took down a volume of Emerson and tried to read. I thought the cool and spacious philosopher might allay a certain fever in my blood. But he did nothing of the kind. He wrote for cool and spacious people like himself; not for corpses like me revivified suddenly with an overcharge of vital force. I pitched him—how much more truly companionable is a book than its author!—I pitched him across the room, and thrusting my hands in my pockets and stretching out my legs, stared in a certain wonder at myself. I, Simon de Gex, was in love; and, horribile dictu! in love with two women at once. It was Oriental, Mormonic, New Century, what you will; but there it was. I am ashamed to avow that if, at that moment, both women had appeared before me and said “Marry us,” I should have—well, reflected seriously on the proposal. I had passed through curious enough experiences, Heaven knows, already; but none so baffling as this. The two women came alternately and knocked at my heart, and whispered in my ear their irrefutable claims to my love. I listened throbbingly to each, and to each I said, “I love you.” I was in an extraordinary psychological predicament. Lola had remarked, “You are not quite alive even yet.” I had come to complete life too suddenly. This was the result. I got up and paced the bird-cage, which the house-agents termed a reception-room, and wondered whether I were going mad. It was not as if one woman represented the flesh and the other the spirit. Then I might have seen the way to a decision. But both had the large nature that comprises all. I could not exalt one in any way to the abasement of the other. All my inherited traditions, prejudices, predilections, all my training ranged me on the side of Eleanor. I was clamouring for the real. Was she not the incarnation of the real? Her very directness piqued me to a perverse and delicious obliquity. And I knew, as I knew when I parted from her months before, that it was only for me to awaken things that lay virginally dormant. On the other hand stood Lola, with her magnetic seduction, her rich atmosphere, her great wide simplicity of heart, holding out arms into which I longed to throw myself. It was monstrous, abnormal. I hated the abominable indelicacy of weighing one against the other, as I had hated the idea of their meeting. I paced my bird-cage until it shrank to the size of a rat-trap. Then I clapped on my hat and fled down into the streets. I jumped into the first cab I saw and bade the driver take me to Barbara's Building. Campion suddenly occurred to me as the best antidote to the poison that had entered my blood. I found him alone, clearing from the table the remains of supper. In spite of his soul's hospitable instincts, he stared at me. “Why, what the——?” “Yes, I know. You're surprised to see me bursting in on you like a wild animal. I'm not going to do it every night, but this evening I claim a bit of our old friendship.” “Claim it all, my dear de Gex!” he said cordially. “What can I do for you?” It was characteristic of Campion to put his question in that form. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have asked what was the matter with me. But Campion, who all his life had given, wanted to know what he could co. “Tell me fairy tales of Lambeth and idylls of the Waterloo Bridge Road. Or light your pipe and talk to me of Barbara.” He folded up the tablecloth and put it in the sideboard drawer. “If it's elegant distraction you want,” said he, “I can do better than that.” He planted himself in front of me. “Would you like to do a night's real work?” “Certainly,” said I. “A gentleman of my acquaintance named Judd is in the ramping stage of delirium tremens. He requires a couple of men to hold him down so as to prevent him from getting out of bed and smashing his furniture and his wife and things. I was going to relieve one of the fellows there now, so that he can get a few hours' sleep, and if you like to come and relieve the other, you'll be doing a good action. But I warn you it won't be funny.” “I'm in the mood for anything,” I said. “You'll come?” “Of course.” “That's splendid!” he shouted. “I hardly thought you were in earnest. Wait till I telephone for some medicine to be sent up from the dispensary. I promised to take it round with me.” He telephoned instructions, and presently a porter brought in the medicine. Campion explained that it had been prescribed by the doctor attached to the institution who was attending the case. “You must come and see the working of our surgery and dispensary!” he cried enthusiastically. “We charge those who can afford a sixpence for visit and medicine. Those who can't are provided, after inquiry, with coupons. We don't want to encourage the well-to-do to get their medical advice gratis, or we wouldn't be able to cope with the really poor. We pay the doctor a fixed salary, and the fees go to the general fund of the Building, so it doesn't matter a hang to him whether a patient pays or not.” “You must be proud of all this, Campion?” I said. “In a way,” he replied, lighting his pipe; “but it's mainly a question of money—my poor old father's money which he worked for, not I.” I reminded him that other sons had been known to put their poor old father's money to baser uses. “I suppose Barbara is more useful to the community that steam yachts or racing stables; but there, you see, I hate yachting because I'm always sea-sick, and I scarcely know which end of a horse you put the bridle on. Every man to his job. This is mine. I like it.” “I wonder whether holding down people suffering from delirium tremens is my job,” said I. “If so, I'm afraid I shan't like it.” “If it's really your job,” replied Campion, “you will. You must. You can't help it. God made man so.” It was only an hour or two later when, for the first time in my life, I came into practical touch with human misery, that I recognised the truth of Campion's perfervid optimism. No one could like our task that night in its outer essence. For a time it revolted me. The atmosphere of the close, dirty room, bedroom, kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, bathroom, laundry—all in one, the home of man, wife and two children, caught me by the throat. It was sour. The physical contact with the flesh of the unclean, gibbering, shivering, maniacal brute on the foul bed was unutterably repugnant to me. Now and again, during intervals of comparative calm, I was forced to put my head out of the window to breathe the air of the street. Even that was tainted, for a fried-fish shop across the way and a public-house next door billowed forth their nauseating odours. After a while access to the window was denied me. A mattress and some rude coverings were stretched beneath it—the children's bed—on which we persuaded the helpless, dreary wife to lie down and try to rest. A neighbour had taken in the children for the night. The wife was a skinny, grey-faced, lined woman of six-and-twenty. In her attitude of hopeless incompetence she shed around her an atmosphere of unspeakable depression. Although I could not get to the window, I was glad when she lay down and spared me the sight of her moving fecklessly about the room or weeping huddled up on a broken-backed wooden chair and looking more like a half-animated dish-clout than a woman. The poor wretch on the bed was a journeyman tailor who, when sober, could earn fair wages. The cry of the wife, before Campion awed her into comparative silence, was a monotonous upbraiding of her husband for bringing them down to this poverty. It seemed impossible to touch her intelligence and make her understand that no words from her or any one could reach his consciousness. His violence, his screams, his threats, the horrors of his fear left her unmoved. We were there to guard her from physical danger, and that to her was all that mattered. In the course of an hour or so the nausea left me. I felt braced by the grimness of the thing, and during the paroxysms I had no time to think of anything but the mechanical work in hand. It was all that Campion and I, both fairly able-bodied men, could do to keep the puny little tailor in his bed. Horrible shapes menaced him from which he fought madly to escape. He writhed and shrieked with terror. Once he caught my hand in his teeth and bit it, and Campion had some difficulty in relaxing the wretch's jaw. Between the paroxysms Campion and I sat on the bed watching him, scarcely exchanging a word. The wife, poor creature, whimpered on her mattress. It was not a pleasant vigil. It lasted till the grey dawn crept in, pitilessly intensifying the squalor of the room, and until the dawn was broadening into daylight. Then two of Campion's men from Barbara's Building arrived to relieve us. Before we went, however, the neighbour who had taken charge of the children came in to help the slatternly wife light a fire and make some tea. I have enjoyed few things more than the warm, bitter stuff which I drank out of the broken mug in that strange and depressing company. I went out into the street with racked head and nerves and muscles. Campion kept his cloth cap in his hand, allowing the morning wind to ruffle his shaggy black hair, and drew a long breath. “I think the worst is over now. As soon as he can be moved, I'll get him down to the annexe at Broadstairs. The sea air will pull him round.” “Isn't it rather hopeless?” I asked. He turned on me. “Nothing's hopeless. If you once start the hopeless game down here you'd better distribute cyanide of potassium instead of coals and groceries. I've made up my mind to get that man decent again, and, by George, I'm going to do it! Fancy those two weaklings producing healthy offspring. But they have. Two of the most intelligent kids in the district. If you hold up your hands and say it's awful to contemplate their upbringing you're speaking the blatant truth. It's the contemplation that's awful. But why contemplate when you can do something?” I admitted the justice of the remark. He went on. “Look at yourself now. If you had gone in with me last night and just stared at the poor devil howling with D.T. in that filthy place, you'd have come out sick and said it was awful. Instead of that, you buckled to and worked and threw off everything save our common humanity, and have got interested in the Judds in spite of yourself. You'll go and see them again and do what you can for them, won't you?” I was not in a merry mood, but I laughed. Campion had read the intention that had vaguely formulated itself in the back of my mind. “Of course I will,” I said. We walked on a few steps down the still silent, disheartening street without speaking. Then he tugged his beard, half-halted, and glanced at me quickly. “See here,” said he, “the more sensible people I can get in to help us the better. Would you like me to hand you over the Judd family en bloc?” This was startling to the amateur philanthropist. But it is the way of all professionals to regard their own business as of absorbing interest to the outside world. The stockbroking mind cannot conceive a sane man indifferent to the fluctuations of the money market, and to the professional cricketer the wide earth revolves around a wicket. How in the world could I be fairy godfather to the Judd family? Campion took my competence for granted. “You may not understand exactly what I mean, my dear Campion,” said I; “but I attribute the most unholy disasters of my life to a ghastly attempt of mine to play Deputy Providence.” “But who's asking you to play Deputy Providence?” he shouted. “It's the very last idiot thing I want done. I want you to do certain definite practical work for that family under the experienced direction of the authorities at Barbara's Building. There, do you understand now?” “Very well, I'll do anything you like.” Thus it befell that I undertook to look after the moral, material, and spiritual welfare of the family of an alcoholic tailor by the name of Judd who dwelt in a vile slum in South Lambeth. My head was full of the prospect when I awoke at noon, for I had gone exhausted to sleep as soon as I reached home. If goodwill, backed by the experience of Barbara's Building, could do aught towards the alleviation of human misery, I determined that it should be done. And there was much misery to be alleviated in the Judd family. I had no clear notion of the means whereby I was to accomplish this; but I knew that it would be a philanthropic pursuit far different from my previous eumoirous wanderings abut London when, with a mind conscious of well-doing, I distributed embarrassing five-pound notes to the poor and needy. I had known—what comfortable, well-fed gentleman does not?—that within easy walking distance of his London home thousands of human beings live like the beasts that perish; but never before had I spent an intimate night in one of the foul dens where the living and perishing take place. The awful pity of it entered my soul. So deeply was I impressed with the responsibility of what I had undertaken, so grimly was I haunted by the sight of the pallid, howling travesty of a man and the squeezed-out, whimpering woman, that the memory of the conflicting emotions that had driven me to Campion the night before returned to me with a shock. “It strikes me,” I murmured, as I shaved, “that I am living very intensely indeed. Here am I in love with two women at once, and almost hysterically enthusiastic over a delirious tailor.” Then I cut my cheek and murmured no more, until the operation was concluded. I had arranged to accompany Lola that afternoon to the Zoological Gardens. This was a favourite resort of hers. She was on intimate terms with keepers and animals, and her curious magnetism allowed her to play such tricks with lions and tigers and other ferocious beasts as made my blood run cold. As for the bears, they greeted her approach with shrieking demonstrations of affection. On such occasions I felt the same curious physical antipathy as I did when she had dominated Anastasius's ill-conditioned cat. She seemed to enter another sphere of being in which neither I nor anything human had a place. With some such dim thoughts in my head, I reached her door in Cadogan Gardens. The sight of her electric brougham that stood waiting switched my thoughts into another groove, but one running oddly parallel. Electric broughams also carried her out of my sphere. I had humbly performed the journey thither in an omnibus. She received me in her big, expansive way. “Lord! How good it is to see you. I was getting the—I was going to say 'the blind hump'—but you don't like it. I was going to turn crazy and bite the furniture.” “Why?” I asked with masculine directness. “I've been trying to educate myself—to read poetry. Look here”—she caught a small brown-covered octavo volume from the table. “I can't make head or tail of it. It proved to me that it was no use. If I couldn't understand poetry, I couldn't understand anything. It was no good trying to educate myself. I gave it up. And then I got what you don't like me to call the hump.” “You dear Lola!” I cried, laughing. “I don't believe any one has ever made head or tail out of 'Sordello.' There once was a man who said there were only two intelligible lines in the poem—the first and the last—and that both were lies. 'Who will, may hear Sordello's story told,' and 'Who would, has heard Sordello's story told.' Don't worry about not understanding it.” “Don't you?” “Not a bit,” said I. “That's a comfort,” she said, with a generous sigh of relief. “How well you're looking!” she cried suddenly. “You're a different man. What have you been doing to yourself?” “I've grown quite alive.” “Good! Delightful! So am I. Quite alive now, thank you.” She looked it, in spite of the black outdoor costume. But there was a dash of white at her throat and some white lilies of the valley in her bosom, and a white feather in her great black hat poised with a Gainsborough swagger on the mass of her bronze hair. “It's the spring,” she added. “Yes,” said I, “it's the spring.” She approached me and brushed a few specks of dust from my shoulder. “You want a new suit of clothes, Simon.” “Dear me!” said I, glancing hastily over the blue serge suit in which I had lounged at Mustapha Superieur. “I suppose I do.” It occurred to me that my wardrobe generally needed replenishing. I had been unaccustomed to think of these things, the excellent Rogers and his predecessors having done most of the thinking for me. “I'll go to Poole's at once,” said I. And then it struck me, to my whimsical dismay, that in the present precarious state of my finances, especially in view of my decision to abandon political journalism in favour of I knew not what occupation, I could not afford to order clothes largely from a fashionable tailor. “I shouldn't have mentioned it,” said Lola apologetically, “but you're always so spick and span.” “And now I'm getting shabby!” I threw back my head and laughed at the new and comical conception of Simon de Gex down at heel. “Oh, not shabby!” echoed Lola. “Yes, my dear. The days of purple and fine linen are vorbei. You'll have to put up with me in a threadbare coat and frayed cuffs and ragged hems to my trousers.” Lola declared that I was talking rubbish. “Not quite such rubbish as you may think, my dear. Shall you mind?” “It would break my heart. But why do you talk so? You can't be—as poor—as that?” Her face manifested such tragic concern that I laughed. Besides, the idea of personal poverty amused me. When I gave up my political work I should only have what I had saved from my wreck—some two hundred a year—to support me until I should find some other means of livelihood. It was enough to keep me from starvation, and the little economies I had begun to practise afforded me enjoyment. On the other hand, how folks regulated their balance-sheets so as to live on two hundred a year I had but a dim notion. In the course of our walk from Barbara's Building to the Judds the night before I had asked Campion. He had laughed somewhat grimly. “I don't know. I don't run an asylum for spendthrift plutocrats; but if you want to see how people live and bring up large families on fifteen shillings a week, I can show you heaps of examples.” This I felt would, in itself, be knowledge of the deepest interest; but it would in no way aid me to solve my own economic difficulty. I was always being brought up suddenly against the problem in some form or another, and, as I say, it caused me considerable amusement. “I shall go on happily enough,” said I, reassuringly. “In the meantime let us go and see the lions and tigers.” We started. The electric brougham glided along comfortably through the sunlit streets. A feeling of physical and spiritual content stole over me. Our hands met and lingered a long time in a sympathetic clasp. Whatever fortune held in store for me here at least I had an inalienable possession. For some time we said nothing, and when our eyes met she smiled. I think she had never felt my heart so near to hers. At last we broke the silence and talked of ordinary things. I told her of my vigil overnight and my undertaking to look after the Judds. She listened with great interest. When I had finished my tale, she said almost passionately: “Oh, I wish I could do something like that!” “You?” “Why not? I came from those people. My grandfather swept the cages in Jamrach's down by the docks. He died of drink. He used to live in one horrible, squalid room near by. I remember my father taking me to see him when I was a little girl—we ourselves weren't very much better off at that time. I've been through it,” she shivered. “I know what that awful poverty is. Sometimes it seems immoral of me to live luxuriously as I do now without doing a hand's turn to help.” “Chacun a son metier, my dear,” said I. “There's no need to reproach yourself.” “But I think it might be my metier,” she replied earnestly, “if only I could learn it.” “Why haven't you tried, then?” “I've been lazy and the opportunity hasn't come my way.” “I'll introduce you to Campion,” I said, “and doubtless he'll be able to find something for you to do. He has made a science of the matter. I'll take you down to see him.” “Will you?” “Certainly,” said I. There was a pause. Then an idea struck me. “I wonder, my dear Lola, whether you could apply that curious power you have over savage animals to the taming of the more brutal of humans.” “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully. “I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged.” “Oh, Simon!” she exclaimed reproachfully. “I quite thought you were serious.” “So I am, my dear,” I returned quickly, “as serious as I can be.” She laughed. “Do you remember the first day you came to see me? You said that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased. I wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head.” “It wasn't. It was a bad and villainous thought. I came under the impression that you were a dangerous seductress.” “And I'm not?” Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the dearness of her! Oh, that overcharge of vitality! I leaned my head to hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear. My voice shook. “You're a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress.” The blood rose to her dark face. She half closed her eyes. “What else am I?” she murmured. But, alas! I had not time to answer, for the brougham stopped at the gates of the Zoological Gardens. We both awakened from our foolishness. My hand was on the door-handle when she checked me. “What's the good of a mind if you can't change it? I don't feel in a mood for wild beasts to-day, and I know you don't care to see me fooling about with them. I would much rather sit quiet and talk to you.” With a woman who wants to sacrifice herself there is no disputing. Besides, I had no desire to dispute. I acquiesced. We agreed to continue our drive. “We'll go round by Hampstead Heath,” she said to the chauffeur. As soon as we were in motion again, she drew ever so little nearer and said, in her lowest, richest notes, and with a coquetry that was bewildering on account of its frankness: “What were we talking of before we pulled up?” “I don't know what we were talking of,” I said, “but we seem to have trodden on the fringe of a fairy-tale.” “Can't we tread on it again?” She laughed happily. “You have only to cast the spell of your witchery over me again.” She drew yet a little nearer and whispered: “I'm trying to do it as hard as I can.” An adorable softness came into her eyes, and her hand instinctively closed round mine in its boneless clasp. The long pent-up longing of the woman vibrated from her in waves that shook me to my soul. My senses swam. Her face quivered glorious before me in a black world. Her lips were parted. Careless of all the eyes in all the houses in the Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, and in the head of a telegraph boy whom I only noticed afterwards, I kissed her on the lips. All the fulness and strength of life danced through my veins. “I told you I was quite alive!” I said with idiotic exultation. She closed her eyes and leaned back. “Why did you do that?” she murmured. “Because I love you,” said I. “It has come at last.” Where we drove I have no recollection. Presumably an impression of green rolling plain with soft uplands in the distance signified that we passed along Hampstead Heath; the side thoroughfare with villa residences on either side may have been Kilburn High Road; the flourishing, busy, noisy suburb may have been Kilburn: the street leading thence to the Marble Arch may have been Maida Vale. To me they were paths in Dreamland. We spoke but little and what we did say was in the simple, commonplace language which all men use in the big crises of life. There was no doubt now of my choice. I loved her. Love had come to me at last. That was all I knew at that hour and all I cared to know. Lola was the first to awake from Dreamland. She shivered. I asked whether she felt cold. “No. I can't believe that you love me. I can't. I can't.” I smiled in a masterful way. “I can soon show you that I do.” She shook her head. “I'm afraid, Simon, I'm afraid.” “What of?” “Myself.” “Why?” “I can't tell you. I can't explain. I don't know how to. I've been wrong—horribly wrong. I'm ashamed.” She gripped her hands together and looked down at them. I bent forward so as to see her face, which was full of pain. “But, dearest of all women,” I cried, “what in the world have you to be ashamed of?” She paused, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then broke out: “I'll tell you. A decent lady like your Eleanor Faversham wouldn't tell. But I can't keep these things in. Didn't you begin by saying I was a seductress? No, no, let me talk. Didn't you say I could make a man do what I wanted? Well, I wanted you to kiss me. And now you've done it, you think you love me; but you don't, you can't.” “You're talking the wickedest nonsense that ever proceeded out of the lips of a loving woman,” I said aghast. “I repeat in the most solemn way that I love you with all my heart.” “In common decency you couldn't say otherwise.” Again I saw the futility of disputation. I put my hand on hers. “Time will show, dear. At any rate, we have had our hour of fairyland.” “I wish we hadn't,” she said. “Don't you see it was only my sorcery, as you call it, that took us there? I meant us to go.” At last we reached Cadogan Gardens. I descended and handed her out, and we entered the hall of the mansions. The porter stood with the lift-door open. “I'm coming up to knock all this foolishness out of your head.” “No, don't, please, for Heaven's sake!” she whispered imploringly. “I must be alone—to think it all out. It's only because I love you so. And don't come to see me for a day or two—say two days. This is Wednesday. Come on Friday. You think it over as well. And if it's really true—I'll know then—when you come. Good-bye, dear. Make Gray drive you wherever you want to go.” She wrung my hand, turned and entered the lift. The gates swung to and she mounted out of sight. I went slowly back to the brougham, and gave the chauffeur the address of my eyrie. He touched his hat. I got in and we drove off. And then, for the first time, it struck me that an about-to-be-shabby gentleman with a beggarly two hundred a year, ought not, in spite of his quarterings, to be contemplating marriage with a wealthy woman who kept an electric brougham. The thought hit me like a stone in the midriff. What on earth was to be done? My pride rose up like the deux ex machina in the melodrama and forbade the banns. To live on Lola's money—the idea was intolerable. Equally intolerable was the idea of earning an income by means against the honesty of which my soul clamoured aloud. “Good God!” I cried. “Is life, now I've got to it, nothing but an infinite series of dilemmas? No sooner am I off one than I'm on another. No sooner do I find that Lola and not Eleanor Faversham is the woman sent down by Heaven to be my mate than I realise the same old dilemma—Lola on one horn and Eleanor replaced on the other by Pride and Honour and all sorts of capital-lettered considerations. Life is the very Deuce,” said I, with a wry appreciation of the subtlety of language. Why did Lola say: “Your Eleanor Faversham?” I had enough to think over for the rest of the evening. But I slept peacefully. Light loves had come and gone in the days past; but now for the first time love that was not light had come into my life. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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