Despair's Last Journey Part 10

CHAPTER IV

Paul survived. He left the church, and returned with a doubtful allegiance to Ebenezer. He joined the singing-cla.s.s there, for his voice had suddenly grown harsh and deep, and he conceived himself to be a ba.s.so. The parish swarmed with vocal celebrities, and he would be one of them. He made his first visit to the cla.s.s, and got there early.

Came in two young ladies in hoops, with pork-pie hats and hair done up in bags of chenille. The like figures may be seen in the drawings of John Leech, _circa_ 1860. Each young lady had a curved nose. One nose curved inward at the bridge, and the other outward at the bridge, and if the curves had been set together they would have fitted with precision.

Came in a lean lady with a purse mouth, rather open--looking like an empty voluntary-bag. Came in a stout lady, like a full voluntary-bag, the mouth close shut with a clasp. Came in a gentleman with s.h.i.+ning rabbit teeth, smiling as if for a wager. Came in a gentleman with a deep ba.s.s voice consciously indicated in the carriage of his head--the voice garrotting him, as it were, rather high up in the collar. Came in a gentleman with heavy movable eyebrows, which looked too big for the limited playground a very small forehead afforded. Came in a small apoplectic man, bald and clean-shaven, and red and angry in the face, like an ill-conditioned baby. Came in ladies and gentlemen who smirked and slid; ladies and gentlemen who loitered, and were sheepish when by hazard they caught an eye; ladies and gentlemen crammed to suffocation with a sense of their own importance; ladies and gentlemen miserably overwhelmed with a sense of the importance of other people.

Paul knew every one of them, and had known them from childhood; and somehow they were all transformed from commonplace, and dignified into a comedy which was at once sympathetic and exquisitely droll. His narrow world had widened; his neighbours had sprung alive. His heart was tickled with a genial laughter, and his mirth tasted sweet to him, like a mellow apple. He could have hugged the crowd for sheer delight.

The conductor of the singing-cla.s.s weeded Paul out at the close of the first glee, and brought his musical ambitions to an end.

'Theer are at least twelve notes in an ordinary singin' voice,' said the conductor, 'and theer ought to be eight half-tones scattered in among 'em, somewheer. You've got two notes at present, and one's a squeak and t'other's a grumble. I think you might find a more advantageous empl'yment for your time elsewheer.'

Paul submitted to this verdict with high good-humour. He retired to the far end of the schoolroom, and sat out 'the practice' with a growing sense of pleasure. He exulted in the possession of a new sense which made all these people lovable.

'Now I've found this out,' said Paul to himself, 'I shall never be lonely any more. There'll always be summat to think about--summat with a relish in it.'

He must needs, of course, try to get the relish on paper, and he wrote a great deal of boyish stuff in flagrant imitation of d.i.c.kens, and hid it, jackdaw-like, in such places as he could find. In the slattern old office where Paul was learning more or less to be a workman at his trade there was no such thing as a ceiling. Frayed mortar, with matted sc.r.a.ps of cow-hair in it, used to fall frequently into the type-cases whenever a high wind shook the crazy slates, and, to obviate this, some contriving person had nailed a number of sheets of brown paper to the rafters. Paul's hiding-place for his literary work was above these sheets of paper, and one day when old Armstrong stood by his side, a tintack gave way beneath the superinc.u.mbent weight, and the whole bundle of sc.r.a.ps in verse and prose fell at the author's feet Armstrong stooped for it, and Paul went red and white, and his legs shook beneath him.

There was an upturned box by the side of the cracked and blistered old stove which warmed the room in winter, and Armstrong went to it and sat down to untie his bundle. The author had never had any confidences with anybody, and his father was one of the last people in the world to whom he would have dared to make appeal for advice or help. In his agitation he went on pecking at the case of type before him, and setting the stamps on end at random, inside out and upside down, and in any progression chance might order. The old man coughed, and Paul dropped his composing-stick into the s.p.a.ce-box with a clatter, and spilt its contents there. Armstrong slipped the string which bound the roll of papers, and began to glance over his discovery. Paul felt as if the ramshackle building had been out at sea.

'M'm,' said Armstrong, with the merest dry tick of a tone which seemed to express inquiry and surprise. Paul started as if an arrow had gone through him, and dropped his composing-stick a second time. 'Ye're very clumsy, there, my lad,' said the old man. 'What's happening?'

Paul made no answer, and the father went back to his papers.

'"Bilsby,"' the old man hummed, half aloud, '"Bilsby is fat--fat with the comfortable fatness which has grown about him in the course of five-and-forty years of perfect self-approval. Bilsby is not great, or good, or magnanimous, or wise, or wealthy, or of long descent, or handsome, or admired; but he is happy. He gets up with Bilsby in the morning, has breakfast, dinner, tea and supper with him, and goes to bed with him at night. If Bilsby had a choice--and Bilsby hasn't--he would make no change. He has himself to feed on--an immortal feast He sits at that eternal board, before that unfailing dish, which grows the more he ruminates upon it. Fat of the fat, sweet of the sweet is Bilsby to Bilsby's palate. What will become of Bilsby when he dies? There can be no heaven for Bilsby, for he would have to hymn another glory there; There can be no fate of pain, for even if the Devil take him, there will still be Bilsby, and that fact alone would keep him happy."

'What's all this rampant wickedness, y' irreverent dog?' asked Armstrong. 'This is your writing, isn't it?'

'Yes, sir,' said Paul, feeling his throat harsh and constricted like a quill.

Armstrong said no more, but rolling up the bundle and sliding the knotted string once more about it, put it in his pocket and walked downstairs. Paul hardly dared to meet him at the mid-day dinner, but he put the best face he could upon the matter--a very pale and disturbed face it was--and presented himself at table. Nothing was said. The gray man sat with his book propped up against the bread-basket, as usual, and ate without knowing what pa.s.sed his lips. The meal over, he took his arm-chair by the kitchen fire, and lit his pipe, and read with the cat perched on his shoulder. Mrs. Armstrong went to mind the shop, the rest of the family dispersed to their various avocations, and Paul sat still, listening to the ticking of the clock, and awaiting the stroke of two to take him back to work. He felt as if it would be cowardice to go earlier, but he was unhappy, and would willingly have been elsewhere.

Suddenly Armstrong reached out his hand towards the table and set down his book. Then from the coat-pocket where Paul had plainly seen it bulging he drew the roll of ma.n.u.script.

'Paul,' said the old man, 'I've been readin' this farrago, and the less that's said about it the better. I obsairve that the main part of it's devoted to the exaggerated satire of your neighbours. That's a spirit I'm sorry to notice in ye, and I regret to see that ye're already looking sulky at rebuke. The vairse,' pursued Armstrong, 'is mainly sickly, whining, puling stuff, as far away from Nature and experience as it's easily possible to be. Now, I invite ye. Listen to this.'

He began to read with a fine disdain:

'"Come not when I am dead To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave."'

Paul averted his head, and set one hand before his face. Months ago, when May Gold's perfidy was a new thing, and the whole world was darkened, he had copied these lines from the Poet Laureate with tears, and they had seemed to him a perfect expression of himself. The old man ground out the lines with increasing scorn, and Paul began to grin, and then to shake with suppressed laughter. Armstrong went on to the end unyieldingly.

'I'm not denying,' he said, a moment later, 'that I've found here and there a salt sprinkle o' common-sense. But _that_, my lad,' banging a hand on the ma.n.u.script page before him, 'is simply unadulterated rubbish. It's the silliest thing in the haul collection.'

Paul's reverence for his father's judgment in such matters was a tradition and a religion. 'Old Armstrong' was the parish pride as scholar and critic. The Rev. Roderic Murchison, who was a Master of Arts of Aberdeen, sat at the gray little man's feet like a pupil. Armstrong had none of the minister's Greek and Latin, but he was his master in English letters. In spite of this awful prescription of authority Paul spirted laughter.

'It's Tennyson!' he spluttered. 'It's the Poet Laureate!'

'Then,' said Armstrong, 'the Poet Laureate's a drivelling idiot, like his predecessor.'

'What?' Paul asked, underneath his breath. He had never listened to such blasphemy.

'In my day,' said Armstrong, 'a poet laid a table for men to eat and drink at. We'd Sir Walter's beef and bannocks, and puir young Byron's Athol brose. Wha calls this mingling o' skim milk an' treacle the wine o' the soul a poet ought to pour?

'Scott and Byron!' cried Paul, amazed out of all reverence. 'Why, there's more poetry in Tennyson's little finger than in both their bodies.'

'Hoots, man! hauld your silly tongue,' cried his father.

'Have you read "In Memoriam"?' cried Paul.

'No,' returned Armstrong curtly, 'I have not.'

'Then,' Paul stormed, 'what's your opinion good for?'

The old man's eyes flashed, and he made a motion as if to rise. He controlled himself, however, and reached out a hand to the hob for the clay he had relinquished a minute or two before.

'The question's fair,' he said; 'the question's fair--pairfectly fair, Paul. I misliked the manner of it, but the question's fair.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Paul.

He could have knelt to him.

'They'll be having Tennyson at the Inst.i.tute Library?' the old man asked. 'I'll walk over for him.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Paul, 'but Tennyson----'

'Ay, ay!' said Armstrong, 'age fossilizes. It's like enough the man has a word to say. I'll look at him.'

He took his rusty old silk hat from its hook beside the eight-day clock, and went out quietly.

For the first minute in his life Paul truly loved him.

'It would ha'served me right,' he mourned, 'if he'd ha' knocked me down.

It's a lot better as it is, though; but it's hard to bear.'

That afternoon, and for many a morning and afternoon for months, old Armstrong shuffled swiftly along the weedy garden, and took his seat on the upturned box beside the stove, and there studied his Tennyson and smoked his pipe. These were halcyon days for Paul, for the old man was not long obdurate, and began to halve the delight of his own reading.

'Ay, ay!' he said, by way of making his first admission, '"in My Father's house are many mansions." This chap has the key to the organ-loft' Then, a little later: 'It's clean thinking, and a bonny music' Later still, with a long, slow sigh on the word: 'Eh!' and then, unconsciously: 'Deep waters, lad, deep waters.'

He read slowly, for the dialect was new, and he was bent on mastering it. His occasional difficulties seemed strange to the boy, but then, Paul had been suckled at this fountain, and could make no allowances for the prepossessions of age, and the distaste of an old palate for a new flavour. An occasional question startled him, the answer was so obvious and simple.

'"Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of G.o.d,"'

Armstrong read out 'D'ye find the meaning of that, Paul, lad,' he asked.

'Village church,' said Paul 'Holy Communion.'