Front matter

Cover

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE

BY

TEMPLE THURSTON

AUTHOR OF "The Apple of Eden," "Mirage," etc.

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1911

Copyright, 1900, by DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

Published, September, 1909

Dedicated to ROSINA FILIPPI, to whom I am indebted for the gift of laughter which I hope has crept its way into the pages of this book.

LONDON, 18, 3, '09.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE ROAD TO THE CITY

CHAPTER

A Prelude on the Eve of St. Joseph's Day

The Last Candle

The Greengrocer's--Fetter Lane

What to Call a Hero

The Ballad-Monger--Fetter Lane

Of Kensington Gardens

The Voyage of the Good Ship Albatross

The Fateful Ticket-Puncher

The Art of Hieroglyphics

The Need for Intuition

A Side-Light Upon Appearances

The Chapel of Unredemption

The Inventory

The Way to Find Out

What is Hidden by a Camisole

Easter Sunday

The Fly in the Amber

The Nonsense-Maker

The Mr. Chesterton

Why Jill Prayed To St. Joseph

The City Of Beautiful Nonsense

BOOK II

THE TUNNEL

The Heart of the Shadow

Amber

BOOK III

THE CITY

The Palazzo Capello

The Letter--Venice

The Return--Venice

The True Mother

The Treasure Shop

The Candle for St. Anthony

The Qualities of Ignatia

The Sacrifice

The Departure--Venice

The 16th of February--London

The Dissoluble Bondage

The Wonder of Belief

The Passing

The Circular Tour

A Process of Honesty

The End of the Loom

BOOK I

THE ROAD TO THE CITY

The City of Beautiful Nonsense

CHAPTER I

A PRELUDE ON THE EVE OF ST. JOSEPH'S DAY

Of course, the eighteenth of March--but it is out of the question to say upon which day of the week it fell.

It was half-past seven in the evening. At half-past seven it is dark, the lamps are lighted, the houses huddle together in groups. They have secrets to tell as soon as it is dark. Ah! If you knew the secrets that houses are telling when the shadows draw them so close together! But you never will know. They close their eyes and they whisper.

Around the fields of Lincoln's Inn it was as still as the grave. The footsteps of a lawyer's clerk hurrying late away from chambers vibrated through the intense quiet. You heard each step to the very last. So long as you could see him, you heard them plainly; then he vanished behind the curtain of shadows, the sounds became muffled, and at last the silence crept back into the Fields--crept all round you, half eager, half reluctant, like sleepy children drawn from their beds to hear the end of a fairy story.

There was a fairy story to be told, too.

It began that night of the eighteenth of March--the Eve of St. Joseph's day.

I don't know what it is about St. Joseph, but of all those saints who crowd their hallowed names upon the calendar--and, good heavens! there are so many--he seems most worthy of canonisation. In the fervent fanaticism of faith, the virtue of a martyr's death is almost its own reward; but to live on in the belief of that miracle which offers to crush marital happiness, scattering family honour like dust before the four winds of heaven--that surely was the noblest martyrdom of all.

There is probably enough faith left in some to-day to give up their lives for their religion; but I know of no man who would allow his faith to intercede for the honour of his wife's good name when once the hand of circumstance had played so conjuring a trick upon him.

And so, amongst Roman Catholics, who, when it comes to matters of faith, are like children at a fair, even the spirit of condolence seems to have crept its way into their attitude towards this simple-minded man.

"Poor St. Joseph," they say--"I always get what I want from him. I've never known him to fail."

Or--"Poor St. Joseph--he's not a bit of good to me. I always pray to the Blessed Virgin for everything I want."

Could anything be more childlike, more ingenuous, more like a game in a nursery--the only place in the world where things are really believed.

Every saint possesses his own separate quality, efficacious in its own separate way. St. Rock holds the magic philtre of health; you pray to St. Anthony to recover all those things that were lost--and how palpably stand out the times when, rising from your knees, your search was successful, how readily those times drop into oblivion when you failed. It is impossible to enumerate all the saints and their qualities crowding the pages of those many volumes of Butler's Lives. For safety at sea, for instance, St. Gerald is unsurpassed; but St. Joseph--poor St. Joseph!--from him flow all those good things which money can buy--the children's toys, the woman's pin money and the luxuries which are the necessities of the man.

Think, if you can--if you can conjure before your mind's eye--of all the things that must happen on that eve of the feast day of St. Joseph. How many thousands of knees are bent, how many thousand jaded bodies and hungry souls whisper the name of poor St. Joseph? The prayers for that glitter of gold, that shine of silver and that jangling of copper are surely too numerous to count. What a busy day it must be where those prayers are heard! What hopes must be born that night and what responsibilities lightened! Try and count the candles that are lighted before the shrine of St. Joseph! It is impossible.

It all resolves itself into a simple mathematical calculation. Tell me how many poor there are--and I will tell you how many candles are burnt, how many prayers are prayed, and how many hopes are born on the eve of St. Joseph's day.

And how many poor are there in the world?

The bell was toning for eight o'clock Benediction at the Sardinia St. Chapel on that evening of the eighteenth of March--Sardinia St. Chapel, which stands so tremulously in the shadows of Lincoln's Inn Fields--tremulously, because any day the decision of the council of a few men may rase it ruthlessly to the ground.

Amongst all the figures kneeling there in the dim candle-light, their shoulders hunched, their heads sinking deeply in their hands, there was not one but on whose lips the name of poor St. Joseph lingered in earnest or piteous appeal.

These were the poor of the earth, and who and what were they?

There was a stock-broker who paid a rent of some three hundred pounds a year for his offices in the City, a rent of one hundred and fifty for his chambers in Temple Gardens, and whose house in the country was kept in all the splendour of wealth.

Behind him--he sat in a pew by himself--was a lady wearing a heavy fur coat. She was young. Twenty-three at the utmost. There was nothing to tell from her, but her bent head, that the need of money could ever enter into her consideration. She also was in a pew alone. Behind her sat three servant girls. On the other side of the aisle, parallel with the lady in the fur coat, there was a young man--a writer--a journalist--a driver of the pen, whose greatest source of poverty was his ambition.

Kneeling behind him at various distances, there were a clerk, a bank manager, a charwoman; and behind all these, at the end of the chapel, devout, intent, and as earnest as the rest, were four Italian organ-grinders.

These are the poor of the earth. They are not a class. They are every class. Poverty is not a condition of some; it is a condition of all. Those things we desire are so far removed from those which we obtain, that all of us are paupers. And so, that simple arithmetical problem must remain unsolved; for it is impossible to tell the poor of this world and, therefore, just so impossible it is to count the candles that are burnt, the prayers that are prayed or the hopes that are born on the eve of St. Joseph's day.

CHAPTER II

THE LAST CANDLE

When the Benediction was over and the priest had passed in procession with the acolytes into the mysterious shadows behind the altar, the little congregation rose slowly to its feet.

One by one they approached the altar of St. Joseph. One by one their pennies rattled into the brown wooden box as they took out their candles, and soon the sconce before the painted image of that simple-minded saint was ablaze with little points of light.

There is nature in everything; as much in lighting candles for poor St. Joseph as you will find in the most momentous decision of a life-time.

The wealthy stock-broker, counting with care two pennies from amongst a handful of silver, was servant to the impulses of his nature. It crossed his mind that they must be only farthing candles--a penny, therefore, was a very profitable return--the Church was too grasping. He would buy no more than two. Why should the Church profit seventy-five per cent. upon his faith? He gave generously to the collection. It may be questioned, too, why St. Joseph should give him what he had asked, a transaction which brought no apparent profit to St. Joseph at all? He did not appreciate that side of it. He had prayed that a speculation involving some thousands of pounds should prove successful. If his prayer were granted, he would be the richer by twenty per cent. upon his investment--but not seventy-five, oh, no--not seventy-five! And so those two pennies assumed the proportions of an exactment which he grudgingly bestowed. They rattled in his ear as they fell.

After him followed the charwoman. Crossing herself, she bobbed before the image. Her money was already in her hand. All through the service, she had gripped it in a perspiring palm, fearing that it might be lost. Three-penny-bits are mischievous little coins. She gave out a gentle sigh of relief when at last she heard it tinkle in the box. It was safe there. That was its destination. The three farthing candles became hers. She lit them lovingly. Three children there were, waiting in some tenement buildings for her return. As she put each candle in its socket, she whispered each separate name--John--Mary--Michael. There was not one for herself.

Then came the clerk. He lit four. They represented the sum of coppers that he had. It might have bought a packet of cigarettes. He looked pensively at the four candles he had lighted in the sconce, then turned, fatalistically, on his heel. After all, what good could four farthing candles do to poor St. Joseph? Perhaps he had been a fool--perhaps it was a waste of money.

Following him was the bank manager. Six candles he took out of the brown wooden box. Every year he lit six. He had never lit more; he had never lit less. He lit them hurriedly, self-consciously, as though he were ashamed of so many and, turning quickly away, did not notice that the wick of one of them had burnt down and gone out.

The first servant girl who came after him, lifted it out of the socket and lit it at another flame.

"I'm going to let that do for me," she whispered to the servant girl behind her. "I lit it--it 'ud a' been like that to-morrow if I 'adn't a' lit it."

Seeing her companion's expression of contempt, she giggled nervously. She must have been glad to get away down into the shadows of the church. There, she slipped into an empty pew and sank on to her knees.

"Please Gawd, forgive me," she whispered. "I know it was mean of me," and she tried to summon the courage to go back and light a new candle. But the courage was not there. It requires more courage than you would think.

At last all had gone but the lady in the heavy fur coat and the writer--the journalist--the driver of the pen. There was a flood of light from all the candles at the little altar, the church was empty, everything was still; but there these two remained, kneeling silently in their separate pews.

What need was there in the heart of her that kept her so patiently upon her knees? Some pressing desire, you may be sure--some want that women have and only women understand. And what was the need in him? Not money! Nothing that St. Joseph could give. He had no money. One penny was lying contentedly at the bottom of his pocket. That, at the moment, was all he had in the world. It is mostly when you have many possessions that you need the possession of more. To own one penny, knowing that there is no immediate possibility of owning another, that is as near contentment as one can well-nigh reach.

Then why did he wait on upon his knees? What was the need in the heart of him? Nature again--human nature, too--simply the need to know the need in her. That was all.

Ten minutes passed. He watched her through the interstices of his fingers. But she did not move. At last, despairing of any further discovery than that you may wear a fur coat costing thirty guineas and still be poor, still pray to St. Joseph, he rose slowly to his feet.

Almost immediately afterwards, she followed him.

He walked directly to the altar and his penny had jangled in the box before he became aware that there was only one candle left.

He looked back. The lady was waiting. The impulse came in a moment. He stood aside and left the candle where it was. Then he slowly turned away.

There are moments in life when playful Circumstance links hands with a light-hearted Fate, and the two combined execute as dainty an impromptu dance of events as would take the wit of a man some months of thought to rehearse.

Here you have a man, a woman, and a candle destined for the altar of St. Joseph, all flung together in an empty church by the playful hand of Circumstance and out of so strange a medley comes a fairy story--the story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense--a dream or a reality--they are one and the same thing--a little piece of colour in the great patchwork which views the souls still sleeping.

He knew, as he slowly turned away, that the matter did not end there. You must not only be a student of human nature in order to drive a pen. Circumstance must be anticipated as well. There may be nature in everything, but it is the playful hand of Circumstance which brings it to your eyes. So, he slowly turned away--oh, but very slowly--with just so much show of action as was necessary to convey that he had no intention to remain.

But every sense in him was ready for the moment when her voice arrested him.

"You have not," said she, "taken the candle that you paid for." Her voice was low to a whisper.

He came round on his heel at once.

"No--it's the last. I didn't notice that when I dropped my penny in."

"But you ought to take it."

"I left it for you."

"But why should you?"

"It seemed possible that you might want to light it more than I did."

What did he mean by that? That she was poor, poorer than he? That the generosity of St. Joseph was of greater account to her? It was. It must be surely. No one could need more sorely the assistance of the powers of heaven than she did then.

But why should he know? Why should he think that? Had it been that poor charwoman--oh, yes. But--she looked at his serviceable blue serge suit, compared it instinctively with the luxury of her heavy fur coat--why should he think that of her?

"I don't see why I should accept your generosity," she whispered.

He smiled.

"I offer it to St. Joseph," said he.

She took up the candle.

"I shouldn't be surprised if he found your offering the more acceptable of the two."

He watched her light it; he watched her place it in an empty socket. He noticed her hands--delicate--white--fingers that tapered to the dainty finger nails. What could it have been that she had been praying for?

"Well--I don't suppose St. Joseph is very particular," he said with a humorous twist of the lip.

"Don't you? Poor St. Joseph!"

She crossed herself and turned away from the altar.

"Now--I owe you a penny," she added.

She held out the coin, but he made no motion to take it.

"I'd rather not be robbed," said he, "of a fraction of my offer to St. Joseph. Would you mind very much if you continued to owe?"

"As you wish." She withdrew her hand. "Then, thank you very much. Good-night."

"Good-night."

He walked slowly after her down the church. It had been a delicate stringing of moments on a slender thread of incident--that was all. It had yielded nothing. She left him just as ignorant as before. He knew no better why she had been praying so earnestly to poor St. Joseph.

But then, when you know what a woman prays for, you know the deepest secret of her heart. And it is impossible to learn the deepest secret of a woman's heart in ten minutes; though you may more likely arrive at it then, than in a life-time.

CHAPTER III

THE GREENGROCER'S--FETTER LANE

Two or three years ago, there was a certain greengrocer's shop in Fetter Lane. The front window had been removed, the better to expose the display of fruits and vegetables which were arranged on gradually ascending tiers, completely obstructing your vision into the shop itself. Oranges, bananas, potatoes, apples, dates--all pressed together in the condition in which they had arrived at the London docks, ballast for the good ship that brought them--carrots and cauliflowers, all in separate little compartments, were huddled together on the ascending rows of shelves like colours that a painter leaves negligently upon his palette.

At night, a double gas jet blew in the wind just outside, deepening the contrasts, the oranges with the dull earth brown of the potatoes, the bright yellow bananas with the sheen of blue on the green cabbages! Oh, that sheen of blue on the green cabbages! It was all the more beautiful for being an effect rather than a real colour. How an artist would have loved it!

These greengrocers' shops and stalls are really most picturesque, so much more savoury, too, than any other shop--except a chemist's. Of course, there is nothing to equal that wholesome smell of brown Windsor soap which pervades even the most cash of all cash chemist's! An up-to-date fruiterer's in Piccadilly may have as fine an odour, perhaps; but then an up-to-date fruiterer is not a greengrocer. He does not dream of calling himself such. They are greengrocers in Fetter Lane--greengrocers in the Edgware Road--greengrocers in old Drury, but fruiterers in Piccadilly.

Compared, then, with the ham and beef shop, the fish-monger's, and the inevitable oil shop, where, in such neighbourhoods as these, you buy everything, this greengrocer's was a welcome oasis in a desert of unsavoury smells and gloomy surroundings. The colours it displayed, the brilliant flame of that pyramid of oranges, those rosy cheeks of the apples, that glaring yellow cluster of bananas hanging from a hook in the ceiling, and the soft green background of cabbages, cauliflowers and every other green vegetable which chanced to be in season, with one last touch of all, some beetroot, cut and bleeding, colour that an emperor might wear, combined to make that little greengrocer's shop in Fetter Lane the one saving clause in an otherwise dreary scheme. It cheered you as you passed it by. You felt thankful for it. Those oranges looked clean and wholesome. They shone in the light of that double gas jet. They had every reason to shine. Mrs. Meakin rubbed them with her apron every morning when she built up that perilous pyramid. She rubbed the apples, too, until their faces glowed, glowed like children ready to start for school. When you looked at them you thought of the country, the orchards where they had been gathered, and Fetter Lane, with all its hawkers' cries and screaming children, vanished from your senses. You do not get that sort of an impression when you look in the window of a ham and beef shop. A plate of sliced ham, on which two or three flies crawl lazily, a pan of sausages, sizzling in their own fat, bear no relation to anything higher than the unfastidious appetite of a hungry man.

That sort of shop, you pass by quickly; but, even if you had not wished to buy anything, you might have hesitated, then stopped before Mrs. Meakin's little greengrocer's stall in Fetter Lane.

Mrs. Meakin was very fat. She had a face like an apple--not an apple just picked, but one that has been lying on the straw in a loft through the winter, well-preserved, losing none of its flavour, but the skin of which is wrinkled and shrivelled with age. On a wooden chair without any back to it, she sat in the shop all day long, inhaling that healthy, cleanly smell of good mother earth which clung about the sacks of potatoes. Here it was she waited for the advent of customers. Whenever they appeared at the door, she paused for a moment, judging from their attitude the likelihood of their custom, then, slapping both hands on her knees, she would rise slowly to her feet.

She was a good woman of business, was Mrs. Meakin, with a capable way of explaining how poor the season was for whatever fruit or vegetable her customers wished to purchase. It must not be supposed that under this pretence she demanded higher prices than were being asked elsewhere. Oh--not at all! Honesty was written in her face. It was only that she succeeded in persuading her customers that under the circumstances they got their vegetables at a reasonable price and, going away quite contented, they were willing to return again.

But what in the name, even of everything that is unreasonable have the greengrocery business and the premises of Mrs. Meakin to do with the City of Beautiful Nonsense? Is it part of the Nonsense to jump from a trade in candles before the altar of St. Joseph to a trade in oranges in Fetter Lane? Yet there is no nonsense in it. In this fairy story, the two are intimately related.

This is how it happens. The house, in which Mrs. Meakin's shop was on the ground floor, was three stories high and, on the first floor above the shop itself, lived John Grey, the journalist, the writer, the driver of the pen, the at-present unexplained figure in this story who offered his gift of generosity to St. Joseph, in order that the other as-yet-unexplained figure of the lady in the heavy fur coat should gratify her desire to light the last candle and place it in the sconce--a seal upon the deed of her supplication.

So then it is we have dealings with Mrs. Meakin and her greengrocery business in Fetter Lane. This little shop, with such generous show of brilliant colours in the midst of its drab grey surroundings, is part of the atmosphere, all part of this fairy-tale romance which began on the eighteenth of March--oh, how many years ago? Before Kingsway was built, before Holywell Street bit the dust in which it had grovelled for so long.

And so, I venture, that it is well you should see this small shop of Mrs. Meakin's, with its splashes of orange and red, its daubs of crimson and yellow--see it in your mind's eye--see it when the shadows of the houses fall on it in the morning, when the sun touches it at mid-day--when the double gas jet illuminates it at night, for you will never see it in real life now. Mrs. Meakin gave up the business a year or so ago. She went to live in the country, and there she has a kitchen garden of her own; there she grows her own cabbages, her own potatoes and her own beetroot. And her face is still like an apple--an older apple to be sure--an apple that has lain in the straw in a large roomy loft, lain there all through the winter and--been forgotten, left behind.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT TO CALL A HERO

John Grey is scarcely the name for a hero; not the sort of name you would choose of your own free will if the telling of a fairy story was placed unreservedly in your hands. If every latitude were offered you, quite possibly you would select the name of Raoul or Rudolfe--some name, at least, that had a ring in it as it left the tongue. They say, however, that by any other name a rose would smell as sweet. Oh--but I cannot believe that is true--good heavens! think of the pleasure you would lose if you had to call it a turnip!

And yet I lose no pleasure, no sense of mine is jarred when I call my hero--John Grey. But if I do lose no pleasure, it is with a very good reason. It is because I have no other alternative. John Grey was a real person. He lived. He lived, too, over that identical little greengrocer's shop of Mrs. Meakin's in Fetter Lane and, though there was a private side entrance from the street, he often passed through the shop in order to smell the wholesome smell of good mother earth, to look at the rosy cheeks of the apples, to wish he was in the country, and to say just a few words to the good lady of the shop.

To the rest of the inhabitants of the house, even to Mrs. Meakin herself, he was a mystery. They never quite understood why he lived there. The woman who looked after his rooms, waking him at nine o'clock in the morning, making his cup of coffee, lingering with a duster in his sitting-room until he was dressed, then lingering over the making of his bed in the bedroom until it was eleven o'clock--the time of her departure--even she was reticent about him.

There is a reticence amongst the lower classes which is a combination of ignorance of facts and a supreme lack of imagination. This was the reticence of Mrs. Rowse. She knew nothing; she could invent nothing; so she said nothing. They plied her with questions in vain. He received a lot of letters, she said, some with crests on the envelopes. She used to look at these in wonder before she brought them into his bedroom. They might have been coronets for the awe in which she held them; but in themselves they explained nothing, merely added, in fact, to the mystery which surrounded him. Who was he? What was he? He dressed well--not always, but the clothes were there had he liked to wear them. Three times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, he donned evening dress, stuck an opera hat on his head and Mrs. Meakin would see him pass down the Lane in front of her shop. If she went to the door to watch him, which quite frequently she did, it was ten chances to one that he would stop a passing hansom, get into it, and drive away. The good lady would watch it with her eyes as it wheeled round into Holborn, and then, returning to her backless chair, exclaim:

"Well--my word--he's a puzzle, he is--there's no tellin' what he mightn't be in disguise--" by which she conveyed to herself and anyone who was there to listen, so wrapt, so entangled a sense of mystery as would need the entire skill of Scotland Yard to unravel.

Then, finally, the rooms themselves, which he occupied--their furnishing, their decoration--the last incomprehensible touch was added with them. Mrs. Meakin, Mrs. Brown, the wife of the theatre cleaner on the second floor, Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the plumber on the third floor, they had all seen them, all marvelled at the rows of brass candlesticks, the crucifixes and the brass incense burners, the real pictures on the walls--pictures, mind you, that were painted, not copied--the rows upon rows of books, the collection of old glass on the mantle-piece, the collection of old china on the piano, the carpet--real velvet pile--and the furniture all solid oak, with old brass fittings which, so Mrs. Rowse told them, he insisted upon having kept as bright as the brass candlesticks themselves. They had seen all this, and they had wondered, wondered why a gentleman who could furnish rooms in such a manner, who could put on evening dress at least three times a week--evening dress, if you please, that was not hired, but his own--who could as often drive away in a hansom, presumably up West, why he should choose to live in such a place as Fetter Lane, over a greengrocer's shop, in rooms the rent of which could not possibly be more than thirty pounds a year.

To them, it remained a mystery; but surely to you who read this it is no mystery at all.

John Grey was a writer, a journalist, a driver of the pen, a business which brings with it more responsibilities than its remuneration can reasonably afford. There is no real living to be made by literature alone, if you have any ambitions and any respect for them. Most people certainly have ambitions, but their respect for them is so inconsiderable when compared with their desire of reward, that they only keep them alive by talking of them. These are the people who know thoroughly the meaning of that word Art, and can discuss it letter for letter, beginning with the capital first.

But to have ambitions and to live up to them is only possible to the extreme idealist--a man who, seeing God in everything, the world has not yet learnt or perhaps forgotten to cater for.

So far everything is utilitarian--supplying the needs of the body which can only see God in consecrated wine, and so it is that wise men build churches for fools to pray in--the wise man in this world being he who grows rich.

This, then, is the solution to the mystery of John Grey. He was an idealist--the very type of person to live in a City of Beautiful Nonsense, where the rarest things in the world cost nothing and the most sordid necessities are dear. For example, the rent of number thirty-nine was a gross exactment upon his purse. He could ill afford that thirty pounds a year. He could ill afford the meals which sometimes hunger compelled him to pay for. But when he bought a piece of brass--the little brass man, for example, an old seal, that was of no use to anybody in the world, and only stood passively inert upon his mantel-piece--the price of it was as nothing when compared with the cheap and vulgar necessities of existence.

But it must not be supposed that Fetter Lane and its environs constitute the spires, the roofs and domes of that City of Beautiful Nonsense. It is not so. Far away East, on the breast of the Adriatic, that wonderful City lies. And we shall come to it--we shall come to it all too soon.

CHAPTER V

THE BALLAD-MONGER--FETTER LANE

In Kensington Gardens, you will find romance. Many a real, many a legendary, person has found it there. It will always be found there so long as this great City of London remains a hive for the millions of human bees that pass in and out of its doors, swarming or working, idling or pursuing in silent and unconscious obedience to a law which not one of them will ever live to understand.

Why it should be Kensington Gardens, more than any other place of the kind, is not quite possible of explanation. Why not Regent's Park, or St. James's Park? Why not those little gardens on the Embankment where the band plays in the late mornings of summer and romances certainly do find a setting? Why not any of these? But no--Kensington Gardens rule par excellence, and there is no spot in this vast acreage of humanity to touch them.

You will see there the romances that begin from both ends of a perambulator and, from that onwards, Romance in all its countless periods, infinitely more numerous than the seven ages of man; for Romance is more wonderful than just life. It has a thousand more variations, it plays a thousand more tricks with the understanding. Life is real, they tell us--Life is earnest; but Romance is all that is unreal besides; it is everything that is and is not, everything that has been and will be, and you will find some of the strangest examples of it under the boughs of those huge elms, on those uncomfortable little penny seats in Kensington Gardens.

When those rooms of his in Fetter Lane became unbearable, John Grey would betake himself to the Gardens, sitting by the round Pond where the great ships make their perilous voyages, or he would find a seat under the trees near that little one-storyed house which always shows so brave a blaze of colour in the flower beds that circle it round.

Who lives in that little house? Of course, everybody knows--well, everybody? I confess, I do not. But the rest of the world does, and so what is the good of letting one's imagination run a-riot when the first policeman would cheerfully give one the information. But if your imagination did run riot, think of the tales you could tell yourself about the owner of that little house in Kensington Gardens! I have never asked a policeman, so I am at liberty to do what I like. It is really the best way in this world; so much more interesting than knowledge. Knowledge, after all, is only knowing things, facts, which next year may not be facts at all. Facts die. But when you imagine, you create something which can live forever. The whole secret of the matter being that its life depends on you, not on Circumstance.

One Friday, three weeks or more after the slender incident of the last candle in the Sardinia St. chapel, those rooms in number 39 Fetter Lane became unbearable. When they did that, they got very small; the walls closed in together and there was no room to move. Even the sounds in the street had no meaning. They became so loud and jarring that they lost meaning altogether.

Moreover, on Friday, the clarionet player came. It was his day; nothing could alter that. If the calendar had not been moved on for weeks together--and some calendars do suffer in that way--John at least knew the Friday of the week. It is an ill wind, you know--even when it is that which is blown through the reed of a clarionet.

But on this particular morning, the clarionet player was insufferable.

There is a day in nearly every week on which the things which one has grown accustomed to, the sounds that one listens to without hearing, the sights that one looks at without seeing, become blatant and jarring. It is then that we hear these sounds twice as loudly as we should, that we see those things twice as vividly as they are. It is then that the word "unbearable" comes charged with the fullest of its meaning. And just such a day was this Friday in the middle of April--it does not matter how many years ago.

John had been working. He was writing a short story--a very tricksy thing to try and do. It was nearly finished, the room was getting smaller and smaller; the sounds in the street were becoming more and more insistent. A barrel organ had just moved away, leaving a rent of silence in all the noise of traffic, a rent of silence which was almost as unbearable as the confused clattering of sounds; and then the clarionet player struck up his tune.

"Oh, Charlie, he's my darling, my darling, my darling--

Oh, Charlie, he's my darling, my young Chevalier."

This was one of the only four tunes he knew. You may readily guess the rest. He always played them through, one after the other, in never-varying order. Charlie, he's my darling--the Arethusa--Sally in our Alley and Come Lasses and Lads. He was a ballad-monger. He looked a ballad-monger--only he was a ballad-monger on the clarionet. John Leech has drawn him over and over again in the long ago pages of Punch; drawn him with his baggy trousers that crease where they were never intended to, with his faded black frock coat that was never cut for the shoulders it adorned, with every article of clothing, which the picture told you he would wear to the end of his days, inherited from a generous charity that had only disposed of its gifts in the last moments of decay.

"Oh, Charlie, he's my darling, my darling, my darling--"

He brought such a minor tone into it all; it might have been a dirge. It was as he sang it. For these ballad-mongers are sad creatures. Theirs is a hard, a miserable life, and it all comes out in their music.

The unhappy individual with a musical instrument who stands on the curbstone in the pouring rain can find some depressing note to dwell on in the liveliest of tunes. Art is most times only the cry of the individual.

When the clarionet player began, John shut up his book, rose from his chair, and went to the window. The windows wanted cleaning. It only costs a shilling for four windows--the difficulty is sometimes to find the man to do it--more often the difficulty is to find the shilling. There is generally a man at the first street corner, but never a coin of the realm.

Someone threw a penny into the street from an upper window. The music stopped with a jerk. The ballad-monger chased the rolling coin to the very edge of a drain, then stood erect with a red and grateful face.

He licked his lips, put the penny in his pocket and began again. That penny had insured another five minutes at least. The sun was burning down into the street. John got his hat, picked up his book and went downstairs. Kensington Gardens was the only place left in the world.

Outside, he passed the ballad-monger as he was shaking the moisture out of his reed. No wonder it is a thirsty business, this playing on the clarionet. John was not in the mood to appreciate that very necessary clearing of the instrument. At that moment all ballad-mongers were unnecessary, and their habits loathsome. He stopped.

"Do you know no other tunes," he asked, "than those four you play here every Friday?"

"No, sir." His voice was very deferential and as sad as his music.

"Well--don't you imagine we must all be very tired of them?"

"I often think that, sir. I often think that. But you only hear them every Friday."

"You mean you hear them every day of the week?"

"That is what I mean, sir."

There is always the other person's point of view. You learn that as you go along, and, in the street, you will learn it as quickly as anywhere. The man who runs into you on the pavement is going in his direction as well as you in yours, and it is always a nice point to decide whether you ran into him or he into you. In any case, you may be certain that he has his opinion on it.

John smiled.

"And you're sick of them too, eh?"

The ballad-monger fitted his mouthpiece carefully on to the instrument that played the golden tunes.

"Well, I've what you might call passed that stage, sir. They're in the blood, as you might say, by this time. They're always going on. When I'm asleep, I hear bands playing them in the street. If it isn't 'Arethusa,' it's 'Come Lasses and Lads,' or 'Sally in Our Alley.' They keep going on--and sometimes it's shocking to hear the way they play them. You almost might say that's how I earned the money that people give me, sir--not by playing them on this instrument here--I don't mind that so much. It's the playing them in my head--that's the job I ought to get paid for."

John looked at him. The man had a point of view. He could see the nicer side of a matter. There are not so very many people who can. The predominant idea when he came into the street, of telling the man he was a nuisance, vanished from John's mind. He felt in his pockets. There lay one sixpence. He fingered it for a moment, then brought it out.

"Buy yourself a penny score of another tune," he said, "and let's hear it next Friday. It may drive the others out."

The man took it, looked at him, but said no word of thanks. No words are so obsequious. No words can so spoil a gift. John walked away with a sense of respect.

At the top of the Lane he remembered that he had no penny to pay for his chair in Kensington Gardens. What was to be done? He walked back again. The ballad-monger was at the last bars of the "Arethusa."

He looked round when he had finished.

John stammered. It occurred to him that he was begging for the first time in his life and realised what an onerous profession it must be.

"Would you mind sparing me a penny out of that sixpence?" he asked; and to make it sound a little bit better, he added: "I've run rather short."

The man produced the sixpence immediately.

"You'd better take it all, sir," he said quickly. "You'll want it more than I shall."

John shook his head.

"Give me the penny," said he, "that you caught at the edge of the drain."

CHAPTER VI

OF KENSINGTON GARDENS

So strange a matter is this journey to the City of Beautiful Nonsense, that one cannot be blamed if, at times, one takes the wrong turning, finds oneself in the cul de sac of a digression and is compelled to retrace one's steps. It was intended with the best of good faith that the last chapter should be of Kensington Gardens. Quite honestly it began with that purpose. In Kensington Gardens, you will find Romance. What could be more open and above-board than that? Then up starts a ballad-monger out of nowhere and he has to be reckoned with before another step of the way can be taken.

But now we can proceed with our journey to that far city that lies so slumberously on the breast of the Adriatic.

If you live in Fetter Lane, these are your instructions. Walk straight up the Lane into Holborn; take your first turning on the left and continue directly through Oxford Street and Bayswater, until you reach Victoria Gate in the Park railings. This you enter. This is the very portal of the way.

'Twas precisely this direction taken by John Grey on that Friday morning in April, in such a year as history seems reticent to afford.

There is a means of travelling in London, you know, which is not exactly in accordance with the strict principles of honesty, since it is worked on the basis of false pretences; and if a hero of a modern day romance should stoop to employ it as a means of helping him on his journey to the City of Beautiful Nonsense, he must, on two grounds, be excused. The first ground is, that he has but a penny in his pocket, which is needed for the chair in Kensington Gardens; the second, that most human of all excuses which allows that, when Circumstance drives, a man may live by his wits, so long as he takes the risk of the whipping.

This, then, is the method, invented by John Grey in an inspired moment of poverty. There may be hundreds of others catching inspiration from the little street arabs, who have invented it too. Most probably there are, and they may be the very first to exclaim against the flippant treatment of so dishonest a practice. However that may be, out of his own wits John Grey conceived this felonious means of inexpensive travelling--absolutely the most inexpensive I ever knew.

You are going from Holborn to Victoria Gate in the Park railings--very well. You must mount the first 'bus which you see going in the direction you require; grasp the railings--and mount slowly to the top, having first ascertained that the conductor himself is on the roof. By the time you have reached the seat upstairs, if you have done it in a masterly and approved-of fashion, the 'bus has travelled at least twenty yards or so. Then, seeing the conductor, you ask him politely if his 'bus goes in a direction, which you are confident it does not. This, for example, is the conversation that will take place.

"Do you go to Paddington Station?"

"No, sir, we don't; we go straight to Shepherd's Bush."

"But I thought these green 'busses went to Paddington?"

"There are green 'busses as does, but we don't."

"Oh, yes, I think I know now, haven't they a yellow stripe--you have a red one."

"That's right."

You rise slowly, regretfully.

"Oh, then I'm sorry," and you begin slowly to descend the stairs.

"But we go by the Edgware Road, and you can get a 'bus to Paddington there," says the conductor.

For a moment or two longer you stand on the steps and try ineffectually--or effectually, it does not matter which, so long as you take your time over it--to point out to him why you prefer the 'bus which goes direct to its destination, rather than the one which does not; then you descend with something like a hundred yards or so of your journey accomplished. Repeat this ad lib till the journey is fully complete and you will find that you still possess your penny for the chair in Kensington Gardens. The honesty which is amongst thieves compels you--for the sake of the poor horses who have not done you nearly so much harm as that conductor may have done--to mount and descend the vehicle while in motion. This is the unwritten etiquette of the practice. It also possesses that advantage of prohibiting all fat people from its enjoyment, whose weight on the 'bus would perceptibly increase the labour of the willing animals.

Beyond this, there is nothing to be said. The method must be left to your own conscience, with this subtle criticism upon your choice, that if you refuse to have anything to do with it, it will be because you appreciate the delight of condemning those who have. So you stand to gain anyhow by the possession of the secret. For myself, since John Grey told me of it, I do both--strain a sheer delight in a condemnation of those who use it, and use it myself on all those occasions when I have but a penny in my pocket for the chair in Kensington Gardens. Of course, you must pay for the chair.

By this method of progress, then, John Grey reached Kensington Gardens on that Friday morning--that Friday morning in April which was to prove so eventful in the making of this history.

The opening of the month had been too cold to admit of their beginning the trade in tea under the fat mushroom umbrellas--that afternoon tea which you and oh, I don't know how many sparrows and pigeons, all eat to your heart's content for the modest sum of one shilling. But they might have plied their trade that day with some success. There was a warm breath of the Spring in every little puff of wind that danced down the garden paths. The scarlet tulips nodded their heads to it, the daffodils courteseyed, bowed and swayed, catching the infection of the dancer's step. When Spring comes gladsomely to this country of ours, there is no place in the world quite like it. Even Browning, in the heart of the City of Beautiful Nonsense, must write:

"Oh to be in England,

Now that April's there."

From Fetter Lane to the flower-walk in Kensington Gardens, it is a far cry. Ah, you do not know what continents might lie between that wonderful flower-walk and Fetter Lane. Why, there are people in the darksome little alleys which lie off that neighbourhood of Fleet Street, who have never been further west than the Tottenham Court Road! Fetter Lane, the Tottenham Court Road, and the flower-walk in Kensington Gardens! It may be only three miles or so, but just as there is no such thing as time in the ratio of Eternity, so there is no such thing as distance in the ratio of Space. There is only contrast--and suffering. They measure everything.

John made his way first to the flower-walk, just for the sight and the scent of those wonderful growing things that bring their treasures of inimitable colour up out of the secret breast of the dull brown earth. Where, in that clod of earth, which does but soil the hands of him who touches it, does the tulip get its red? Has the Persian Poet guessed the secret? Is it the blood of a buried Cæsar? Enhance it by calling it a mystery--all the great things of the world are that. Wherever the tulip does get its red, it is a brave thing to look at after the dull, smoky bricks of the houses in Fetter Lane.

John stood at the top of the walk and filled his eyes with the varied colours. There were tulips red, tulips yellow, tulips purple and scarlet and mauve. The little hunchback was already there painting them, hugging up close to his easel, taking much more into the heart of him than he probably ever puts down upon his canvas.

He comes every season of every year, that little hunchback, and Spring and Summer, and Autumn and Winter, he paints in Kensington Gardens; and Spring and Summer, and Autumn and Winter, I have no doubt he will continue to paint the Gardens that he loves. And then one day, the Gardens will miss him. He will come no more. The dull brown earth will have taken him as it takes the bulb of a tulip, and perhaps out of his eyes--those eyes which have been drinking in the colours of the flowers for so long, some tulip will one day get its red.

Surely there cannot be libel in such a statement as this? We must all die. The little hunchback, if he reads this, will not approach me for damages, unless he were of the order of Christian Scientists or some such sect, who defy the ravages of Time. And how could he be that? He must have seen the tulips wither.

From the flower-walk, John made his way to the round pond. The ships were sailing. Sturdy mariners with long, thin, bamboo poles were launching their craft in the teeth of the freshening breeze. Ah, those brave ships, and those sturdy men with their young blue eyes, searching across that vast expanse of water for the return of the Daisy or the Kittywake or some such vessel with some such fanciful name!

John took a chair to watch them. A couple of hoary sailors--men who had vast dealings with ships and traffic on deep waters--passed by him with their vessels tucked up under their arms.

"I sail for 'Frisco in five minutes," said one--"for 'Frisco with a cargo of iron."

"What do you use for iron?" asked the other, with the solemnity that such cargo deserved.

"My sister gave me some of her hairpins," was the stern reply.

This, if you like it, is romance! Bound for 'Frisco with a cargo of iron! Think of it! The risk, the peril, the enormous fortune at stake! His sister's hairpins! What a world, what a City of Beautiful Nonsense, if one could only believe like this!

John spread out his short story on his knee, looked at the first lines of it, then closed it with disgust. What was the good of writing stories, when such adventures as these were afoot? Perhaps the little hunchback felt that too. What was the good of painting with red paint on a smooth canvas when God had painted those tulips on the rough brown earth? Why had not he got a sister who would hazard her hairpins in his keeping, so that he might join in the stern business of life and carry cargoes of iron to far-off parts?

He sat idly watching the good ship start for 'Frisco. One push of the thin bamboo pole and it was off--out upon the tossing of the waves. A breath of Spring air blew into its sails, filled them--with the scent of the tulips, perhaps--and bore it off upon its voyage, while the anxious master, with hands shading his eyes, watched it as it dipped over the horizon of all possible interference.

Where was it going to come to shore? The voyage lasted fully five minutes and, at the last moment, a trade wind seizing it--surely it must be a trade wind which seizes a vessel with a cargo such as this--it was born direct for the shore near where John was sitting.

The captain came hurrying along the beach to receive it and, from a seat under the elm trees, a girl came toward him.

"Do you think it's brought them safely?" she asked.

He looked up with a touch of manly pride.

"The Albatross has never heaved her cargo overboard yet," he said with a ringing voice.

So this was the sister. From that wonderful head of hair of hers had come the cargo of the good ship Albatross. She turned that head away to hide a smile of amusement. She looked in John's direction. Their eyes met.

It was the lady of the heavy fur coat who had prayed to St. Joseph in the Sardinia Street chapel.

CHAPTER VII

THE VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP ALBATROSS

This is where Destiny and the long arm of Coincidence play a part in the making of all Romance. One quality surely there must be in such matters, far more essential than that happiness ever after which the sentimentalist so clamours for. That quality, it is, of Destiny, which makes one know that, whatever renunciation and despair may follow, such things were meant to be. Coincidence combines to make them so, and, you may be sure, for a very good reason. And is it so long a stretch of the arm from Sardinia Street Chapel to Kensington Gardens? Hardly! In fiction, and along the high-road, perhaps it might be; but then this is not fiction. This is true.

Romance then--let us get an entirely new definition for it--is a chain of Circumstances which out of the infinite chaos links two living things together for a definite end--that end which is a pendant upon the chain itself and may be a heart with a lock of hair inside, or it may be a cross, or a dagger, or a crown--you never know till the last link is forged.

When he looked into the eyes of the lady of St. Joseph--so he had, since that incident, called her in his mind--John knew that Destiny had a hand in the matter.

He told me afterwards----

"You only meet the people in this world whom you are meant to meet. Whether you want to meet them or not is another matter, and has no power to bribe the hand of Circumstance."

He was generalising certainly, but that is the cloak under which a man speaks of himself.

However that may be, and whether the law holds good or not, they met. He saw the look of recognition that passed across her eyes; then he rose to his feet.

The knowledge that you are in the hands of Destiny gives you boldness. John marched directly across to her and lifted his hat.

"My name is Grey," he said--"John Grey. I'm taking it for granted that St. Joseph has already introduced us and forgotten to tell you who I was. If I take too much for granted, say so, I shall perfectly understand."

Well, what could she say? You may tell a man that he's presumptuous; but hardly when he presumes like this. Besides, there was Destiny at the back of him, putting the words into his mouth.

She smiled. It was impossible to do otherwise.

"Do you think St. Joseph would be recognised in our society?" she asked.

"I have no doubt of it," said he. "St. Joseph was a very proper man."

They turned to a cry of the master mariner as the good ship Albatross touched the beach. Immediately she was unloaded and her cargo brought triumphantly to the owner.

"This," said John, "is the cargo of iron. Then I presume we're in 'Frisco.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"I heard the sailing orders given in the Docks at London ten minutes ago."

She looked down, concealing a smile, at her brother, then at John, lastly at the good ship Albatross--beached until further orders. He watched her. She was making up her mind.

"Ronald," said she, when the wandering of her eyes had found decision, "this is a friend of mine, Mr. Grey."

Ronald held out a horny hand.

"How do you do, sir."

Surely that settled matters? St. Joseph was approved of. She had said--this is a friend of mine.

They shook hands then with a heavy grip. It is the recognised way with those who go down to the sea in ships.

"When do you take your next voyage?" asked John.

"As soon as we can ship a cargo of gravel."

"And where are you bound for?"

"Port of Lagos--West Africa."

"Dangerous country, isn't it? Fever? White man's grave, and all that sort of thing?"

"Those are the orders," said Ronald staunchly, looking up to his sister for approval.

"I suppose you couldn't execute a secret commission for me," said John. He laid a gentle stress on the word secret. "You couldn't carry private papers and run a blockade?"

Private papers! Secret commission! Run a blockade! Why the good ship Albatross was just built for such nefarious trade as that.

John took the short story out of his pocket.

"Well, I want you to take this to the port of Venice," said he. "The port of Venice on the Adriatic, and deliver it yourself into the hands of one--Thomas Grey. There is a fortune to be made if you keep secret and talk to no one of your business. Are you willing to undertake it and share profits?"

"We'll do our best, sir," said Ronald.

Then the secret papers were taken aboard--off started the good ship Albatross.

The other mariner came up just as she had set sail.

"What cargo have you got this time?" he whispered.

Ronald walked away.

"Mustn't tell," he replied sternly, and by such ready confession of mystery laid himself open to all the perils of attack. That other mariner must know he was bound on secret service, and perhaps by playing the part of Thomas Grey on the other side of the round pond, would probably be admitted into confidence. There is no knowing. You can never be sure of what may happen in a world of romantic adventure.

John watched their departure lest his eagerness to talk to her alone should seem too apparent. Then he turned, suggested a seat under the elm trees and, in silence, they walked across the grass to the two little penny chairs that stood expectantly together.

There they sat, still in silence, watching the people who were promenading on the path that circles the round pond. Nurses and babies and perambulators, there were countless of these, for in the gardens of Kensington the babies grow like the tulips--rows upon rows of them, in endless numbers. Like the tulips, too, the sun brings them out and their gardeners take them and plant them under the trees. Every second passer-by that sunny morning in April was a gardener with her tulip or tulips, as the case might be; some red, some white, some just in bud, some fully blown. Oh, it is a wonderful place for things to grow in, is Kensington Gardens.

But there were other pedestrians than these. There were Darbys and Joans, Edwards and Angelinas.

Then there passed by two solemn nuns in white, who had crosses hanging from their waists and wore high-heeled shoes.

The lady of St. Joseph looked at John. John looked at her.

She lifted her eyebrows to a question.

"Protestant?" she said.

John nodded with a smile.

That broke the silence. Then they talked. They talked first of St. Joseph.

"You always pray to St. Joseph?" said he.

"No--not always--only for certain things. I'm awfully fond of him, but St. Cecilia's my saint. I don't like the look of St. Joseph, somehow or other. Of course, I know he's awfully good, but I don't like his beard. They always give him a brown beard, and I hate a man with a brown beard."

"I saw St. Joseph once with a grey beard," said John.

"Grey? But he wasn't old."

"No, but this one I saw was grey. It was in Ardmore, a wee fishing village in the county of Waterford, in Ireland. Ah, you should see Ardmore. Heaven comes nearer to the sea there than any place I know."

"But what about St. Joseph?"

"Oh, St. Joseph! Well, there was a lady there intent upon the cause of temperance. She built little temperance cafés all about the country, and had the pictures of Cruikshank's story of the Bottle, framed and put on all the walls. To propitiate the Fates for the café in Ardmore, she decided also to set up the statue of St. Daeclan, their patron saint in those parts. So she sent up to Mulcahy's, in Cork, for a statue of St. Daeclan. Now St. Daeclan, you know, is scarcely in popular demand."

"I've never heard of him," said the lady of St. Joseph.

"Neither had I till I went to Ardmore. Well, anyhow, Mulcahy had not got a statue. Should he send away and see if he could order one? Certainly he should send away. A week later came the reply. There is not a statue of St. Daeclan to be procured anywhere. Will an image of St. Joseph do as well? It would have to do. Very well, it came--St. Joseph with his brown beard.

"'If only we could have got St. Daeclan,' they said as they stood in front of it. 'But he's too young for St. Daeclan. St. Daeclan was an old man.'

"I suppose it did not occur to them that St. Daeclan may not have been born old; but they conceived of a notion just as wise. They got a pot of paint from Foley's, the provision store, and, with judicious applications, they made grey the brown beard of St. Joseph, then, washing out the gold letters of his name, they painted in place of them the name of St. Daeclan."

The lady of St. Joseph smiled.

"Are you making this up?" asked she.

He shook his head.

"Well, then, the café was opened, and a little choir of birds from the chapel began to sing, and all the people round about who had no intention to be temperate, but loved a ceremony, came to see the opening. They trouped into the little hall and stood with gaping mouths looking at that false image which bore the superscription of St. Daeclan, and the old women held up their hands and they said:

"Oh, shure, glory be to God! 'tis just loike the pore man--it is indeed. Faith, I never want to see a better loikeness of himself than that."

John turned and looked at her.

"And there he stands to this day," he added--"as fine an example of good faith and bad painting as I have ever seen in my life."

"What a delightful little story," she said, and she looked at him with that expression in the eyes when admiration mingles so charmingly with bewilderment that one is compelled to take them both as a compliment.

"Do you know you surprise me," she added.

"So I see," said he.

"You see?"

"In your eyes."

"You saw that?"

"Yes, you were wondering how I came to be praying--probably for money--to St. Joseph--praying in an old blue serge suit that looked as if a little money could easily be spent on it, and yet can afford to sit out here in the morning in Kensington Gardens and tell you what you are so good as to call a delightful little story?"

"That's quite true. I was wondering that."

"And I," said John, "have been wondering just the same about you."

What might not such a conversation as this have led to? They were just beginning to tread upon that virgin soil from which any fruit may be born. It is a wonderful moment that, the moment when two personalities just touch. You can feel the contact tingling to the tips of your fingers.

What might they not have talked of then? She might even have told him why she was praying to St. Joseph, but then the master mariner returned, bearing papers in his hand.

"Are you one Thomas Grey?" said he.

"I am that man," replied John.

"These are secret papers which I am to deliver into your hands. There is a fortune to be made if you keep secret."

John took the short story.

"Secrecy shall be observed," said he.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FATEFUL TICKET-PUNCHER

The master of the good ship Albatross departed, chartered for another voyage to the Port of Lagos with his cargo of gravel, gathered with the sweat of the brow and the tearing of the finger nails from the paths in Kensington Gardens.

John hid the short story away and lit a cigarette. She watched him take it loose from his waistcoat pocket. Had he no cigarette case? She watched him take a match--loose also--from the ticket pocket of his coat. Had he no match-box? She watched him strike it upon the sole of his boot, believing all the time that he was unaware of the direction of her eyes.

But he knew. He knew well enough, and took as long over the business as it was possible to be. When the apprehension of discovery made her turn her head, he threw the match away. Well, it was a waste of time then.

"I thought," said she presently, "you had told me your name was John?"

"So it is."

"Then why did you tell Ronald to deliver the papers to Thomas Grey?"

"That is my father."

"And does he live in Venice?"

What a wonderful thing is curiosity in other people, when you yourself are only too ready to divulge! Loth only to tell her it all too quickly, John readily answered all she asked.

"Yes, he lives in Venice," he replied.

"Always?"

"Always now."

She gazed into a distance of her own--that distance in which nearly every woman lives.

"What a wonderful place it must be to live in," said she.

He turned his head to look at her.

"You've never been there?"

"Never."

"Ah! there's a day in your life yet then."

Her forehead wrinkled. Ah, it may not sound pretty, but it was. The daintiest things in life are not to be written in a sentence. You get them sometimes in a single word; but oh, that word is so hard to find.

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"The day you go to Venice--if ever you do go--will be one day quite by itself in your life. You will be alive that day."

"You love it?"

She knew he did. That was the attraction in asking the question--to hear him say so. There is that in the voice of one confessing to the emotion--for whatever object it may happen to be--which can thrill the ear of a sensitive listener. A sense of envy comes tingling with it. It is the note in the voice, perhaps. You may hear it sometimes in the throat of a singer--that note which means the passion, the love of something, and something within you thrills in answer to it.

"You love it?" she repeated.

"I know it," replied John--"that's more than loving."

"What does your father do there?"

"He's an artist--but he does very little work now. He's too old. His heart is weak, also."

"Then does he live there by himself?"

"Oh, no--my mother lives with him. They have wonderful old rooms in the Palazzo Capello in the Rio Marin. She is old, too. Well--she's over sixty. They didn't marry until she was forty. And he's about ten years older than she is."

"Are you the only child?"

"The only child--yes."

"How is it that they didn't marry until your mother was forty?"

She pattered on with her questions. Having accepted him as a friend, the next thing to do was to get to know all about him. It is just as well, in case people should ask; but in this huddle of houses where one knows more of the life of one's next-door neighbour than one ever does of one's friends, it really scarcely matters. She thought she wanted to know because she ought to know. But that was not it at all. She had to know. She was meant to know. There is a difference.

"Perhaps I'm being too inquisitive?" she suggested gently. This is only another way of getting one's question answered. You might call it the question circumspect and, by borrowing from another's wit, mark the distinction between it and the question direct. But it is not so much the name that matters, as its effectiveness.

In a moment, John was all apologies for his silence.

"Inquisitive? No! It's only the new sensation."

"What new sensation?"

"Somebody wanting to know something about oneself. On the other side of the street where I live, there resides a parrot; and every Sunday they put him outside on the window-sill, and there he keeps calling out--'Do you want to know who I am? Do you want to know who I am?' And crowds of little boys and little girls, and idle men and lazy women, stand down below his cage in the street and imitate him in order to get him to say it again. 'Do you want to know who I am, Polly?' they call out. And oh, my goodness, it's so like life. They never reply--'Who are you, then?' But every single one of them must ask him if he wants to know who they are, just when he's longing to tell them all about himself. It is like life you know."

"What nice little stories you tell. I believe you make them up as you go along--but they're quite nice. So that's the new sensation?"

"Yes--that's it. Someone, at last, has said 'Who are you, then?' And I hardly know where to begin."

"Well, I asked you why your father didn't marry till your mother was forty. You said she was forty."

"Yes, I know--yes, that's quite right. You see he was married before to a wealthy woman. They lived here in London. I'm afraid they didn't get on well together. It was his fault. He says so, and I believe it was. I can quite understand the way it all happened. You must love money very much to be able to get on with it when it's not your own. He didn't love it enough. Her money got between them. One never really knows the ins and outs of these things. Nobody can possibly explain them. I say I understand it, but I don't. They happen when people marry. Only, it would appear, when they marry. She never threw it in his face, I'm sure of that. He always speaks of her as a wonderful woman; but it was just there--that's all. Gold's a strange metal, you know--an uncanny metal, I think. They talk of the ill-luck of the opal, it's nothing to the ill-luck of the gold the opal is set in. You must realise the absolute valuelessness of it, that it's no more worth than tin, or iron, or lead, or any other metal that the stray thrust of a spade may dig up; if you don't think of it like that, if you haven't an utter contempt for it, it's a poison, is gold. It's subtle, deadly poison that finds its heavy way into the most sacred heart of human beings and rots the dearest and the gentlest thoughts they have. They say familiarity breeds contempt. In every case but that of gold, it's true. But in gold it's just the reverse. The only way with gold, to have contempt for it, is to have none and, when it does enter your possession, give it away. You keep it, you struggle for it, you give it a moment's place on your altar, and you'll find that your first-born must be the burnt offering you will have to make to assuage its insatiable lust."

The sense of humour saved him from saying more. Suddenly he turned and looked at her, and laughed. The only way with gold, to have contempt for it, is to have none and, when it does enter your possession, give it away.

Glorious words to say when you have only a penny in your pocket to pay for your chair in Kensington Gardens--such a fine sense of bravado in them. As for the chance of money falling from the heavens or the elm trees into your lap, it is so remote, that you can afford to voice your preachings without fear of having to put them into immediate practice.

Seeing all this and, seeing the solemn expression on her face, John laughed. All that fine parade of words of his was very human. He knew it. There is not one amongst us but who does it every day. There never is so fine an army of brave men as you will find in times of peace; never so lavish a man with money as he who has none. These are the real humours, the real comedies in this struggle for existence. And yet, it is the only philosophy for the poor man who has nothing, to say he wants less. So you cheat the little gods of their laughter, and whistle a tune to show how little you care.

But to see through it all--there are so many who do it unconsciously--that is a quality beyond philosophy. John laughed.

She looked up quickly.

"You laugh? Why?"

"You look so serious."

"I was. It's so true--quite true, all you said. But what is one to do when everybody around one sets their standard in gold--when people are only good-spirited when there is money to be had, and cross and inconsiderate when there is none? What is one to do then?"

"Must you follow their lead?" asked John.

"What else? The community governs, doesn't it?"

"So they say. But even government is a thing that must be taught, and someone must teach it to the community, so that the community may become proficient at its job. When you get into a community of people like that, all you have to do is to break away. It doesn't matter how universally good a wrong may be, you can't make it right for the individual."

"What did your father do?"

"Oh--he disobeyed the laws of the community. He went away. He deserted her."

She stole a hurried glance at his face.

"Don't you speak rather hardly?"

"No--conventionally--that's all. That is the technical term. He deserted her. Went and lived in the slums and worked. He was probably no paragon, either, until he met my mother. No man is until he meets the woman with the great heart and God's good gift of understanding."

"Have you ever met her yet?"

"No--I'm only twenty-six."

"Do you think you ever will meet her?"

"Yes--one day."

"When?"

"Oh, the time that Fate allots for these things."

"When is that?"

"When it's too late."

"Isn't that pessimistic?"

"No--I'm only speaking of Time. Time's nothing--Time doesn't count. You may count it--you generally do with a mechanical contrivance called a clock--but it doesn't count itself. As the community looks at these things it may be too late, but it's not too late to make all the difference in life. The point is meeting her, knowing her. Nothing else really matters. Once you know her, she is as much in your life as ever marriage and all such little conventional ceremonies as that can make her."

She looked up at him again.

"What strange ideas you have."

"Are they?"

"They are to me. Then your father didn't meet your mother too late? How soon did he meet her after--after he went away?"

"Two years or so."

"Oh--he was quite old, then?"

"No--quite young."

"But I thought you said they didn't marry until she was forty."

"Yes--that is so. He couldn't marry her till then. They were both Catholics, you see. Eighteen years went by before they married."

She made patterns on a bare piece of ground with the ferrule of her umbrella, as she listened. When he came to this point of the story, she carved the figure one and eight in the mould.

"Yes," said John, looking at them--"it was a long time to wait--wasn't it?"

She nodded her head and slowly scratched the figures out.

"So the secret papers were sent to your father?" she said.

"Yes."

She communed with herself for a few moments. She was very curious to know the secret of those papers; just as curious as that other mariner had been. But when you get beyond a certain age, they tell you it is rude to be curious--more's the pity! It takes away half the pleasure from life. She wanted so much to know. The mystery that surrounded John Grey in Fetter Lane was clinging to him here in Kensington Gardens. She felt just as curious about him as did Mrs. Meakin, and Mrs. Rowse; and Mrs. Morrell, and, like them, she was afraid to show it to him.

Presently she left off scratching her patterns in the mould and raised her head, looking out wistfully across the pond.

"Ronald was delighted to be carrying secret papers," she said pensively.

"Was he?"

"Yes--he's been reading Stevenson, and Henty, and all those books--the idea of secret papers was just what he loved."

John's eyes twinkled.

"Do you think he told that other boy?" he asked.

"Oh--no--I'm sure he wouldn't."

"Not if he got the other boy to play the part of Thomas Grey--and satisfied his conscience like that?"

"No--because he delivered them to you. I'm sure he never looked at them. You're the only one who knows the secret."

John's eyes twinkled again. She was so curious to know.

"It's a terrible thing to be the only possessor of a secret like that," he said solemnly.

She glanced quickly at his face.

"It is, if it's something you mustn't tell," said she. And you could hear the question in that; just the faint lingering note of it; but it was there. Of course, if he could not tell, the sooner she knew it the better. You can waste upon a person even so poor a sentiment as curiosity, and when a woman gets proud, she will give you none of it.

If he had kept his secret another moment longer, she would undoubtedly have got proud; but just then, there came into view the insignificant little figure of a man in faded, dirty livery, a peaked cap, a sleuth-like, watchful air and, hidden in the grasping of his hand, there was a fateful ticket puncher. Two seats, and John had only a penny! What can one do under such circumstances as these? He looked helplessly through his mind for a way out of the dilemma. He even looked on the ground to see whether some former charitable person had thrown away their tickets when they left--he always did as much for the cause of unknown humanity himself. You never know how many people there are in London with only a penny in their pockets. But he looked in vain. There were only the figures that she had carved and scratched out in the mould.

He thought of saying that he had bought a ticket and lost it. One of those little gusts of wind that were dancing under the elm trees would readily vouch for the truth of his story in such a predicament as this. But then this might be the only ticket puncher in the gardens at that time of the year, and he would know. He thought of going through all his pockets and simulating the despair of a man who has lost his last piece of gold. And the slouching figure of the chair man drew nearer and nearer. And oh, he came so cunningly, as if he had nothing whatever to do with this crushing tax upon the impoverished resources of those who seek Romance.

Yes, John rather liked that last idea. Anyone might lose their last piece of gold. It is not even a paradox to say it would be the first they would lose. But it would be acting the lie to her as well as to the chairman. Was that fair? The chairman would only look imperturbably at him with a stony eye--it was more than likely he would have heard that story before, and a chair man will not be baulked of his prey. Then she would have to pay. No--that would not be fair. Then----

"I'm going to pay for my seat," said the Lady of St. Joseph.

"Oh, no!" said John vehemently--"Why should you?"

Couldn't he get up and say he was only sitting there by accident; had never meant to sit down at all?

"Yes--I'm going to pay," she said--"I owe you a penny for the candle to St. Joseph."

Ah! That was the way out of it! You see, if you only pray earnestly enough, St. Joseph is bound to answer your prayer. This was his return for John's offer of generosity. There is not a doubt of it in my mind. There was not a doubt of it in his.

CHAPTER IX

THE ART OF HIEROGLYPHICS

The bell of the ticket-puncher rang, the tiny slips of paper were torn off the roll and exchanged hands. For that day, at least--so long as they chose to sit there--the little penny chairs belonged to them; indisputably to them.

You feel you have bought something when you pay for it with your last penny. John leant back with a breath of relief as the chair man walked away. It had been a terrible moment. In this life, you never lose that sense that it is only the one friend in the world who does not judge you by the contents of your pocket; and when an acquaintance is but of a few moment's standing--even if it be a Lady of St. Joseph--it is hazarding everything to have to admit to the possession of only one penny.

Do you wonder his breath was of relief? Would you wonder if, wrapped up in that breath, there had been a prayer of thanks to St. Joseph? Only a little prayer, not even spoken in the breath, hardly expressed in the thought that accompanied it--but still a prayer--as much a prayer in his heart, as you might say there was a butterfly in the heart of a cocoon. We know that there is only a chrysalis--sluggish, inert, incapable of the light and dainty flight of a butterfly's wings--but still it will be a butterfly one day. That was just about the relation of John's breath to a prayer.

Under his eyes, he stole a look at her. She was not thinking of pennies! Not she! Once you make a woman curious--pennies won't buy back her peace of mind. She was beginning her tricks again with the ferrule of her umbrella. Why is it that a woman can so much better express herself with the toe of an elegant shoe or the point of a fifteen and six-penny umbrella? Nothing less dainty than this will serve her. Give her speech and she ties herself into a knot with it like a ball of worsted and then complains that she is not understood. But with the toe of an elegant shoe--mind you, if it is not elegant, you must give her something else--she will explain a whole world of emotion.

She had begun scratching up the mould again. John watched the unconscious expression of her mind with the point of that umbrella. One figure after another she scratched and then crossed out. First it was a ship, rigged as no ship has ever been rigged before or since. The Albatross, of course. Then a dome, the dome of a building. He could not follow that. He would have had to know that she had once had a picture book in which was a picture of Santa Maria della Salute--otherwise the meaning of that dome was impossible to follow. He thought it was a beehive. Really, of course, you understood this from the first yourself, it meant Venice. Then she began carving letters. The first was G. The second was R. She thought she felt him looking, glanced up quickly, but he was gazing far away across the round pond. It is always as well not to look. Women are very shy when they are expressing their emotions. It is always as well not to look; but you will be thought a dullard if you do not see. John was gazing across the pond. But nevertheless, she scratched those first two letters out. When he saw that, he took pity.

"Shall I tell you what the secret papers are?" said he, with a smile.

Ah, the gratitude in her eyes.

"Do!" she replied.

"It's a short story."

"A short story! You write? Why didn't you tell me that before?"

"But it's only a short story," said John, "that no one'll ever read."

"Won't it be published?"

"No--never."

"Why?"

"Because people won't like it."

"How do you know?"

"I'm sure of it. I know what they like."

"Read it to me and I'll tell you if I like it."

Read it to her! Sit in Kensington Gardens and have his work listened to by the Lady of St. Joseph! He took it out of his pocket without another word and read it then and there.

This is it.

AN IDYLL OF SCIENCE

The world has grown some few of its grey hairs in search of the secret of perpetual motion. How many, with their ingeniously contrived keys, have not worn old and feeble in their efforts to open this Bluebeard's chamber: until their curiosity sank exhausted within them? You count them, from the dilettante Marquis of Worcester, playing with his mechanical toy before a king and his court, Jackson, Orffyreus, Bishop Wilkins, Addeley, with the rest of them, and, beyond arriving at the decision of the French Academy--"that the only perpetual motion possible ... would be useless for the purpose of the devisers," you are drawn to the conclusion that mankind shares curiosity with the beasts below him and calls it science lest the world should laugh.

You have now in this idyll here offered you, the story of one who found the secret, and showed it to me alone. Have patience to let your imagination wander through Irish country lanes, strolling hither and thither, drawn to no definite end, led by no ultimate hope, and the history of the blind beggar, who discovered the secret of perpetual motion, shall be disclosed for you; all the curiosity that ever thrilled you shall be appeased, feasted, satiated.

There was not one in the country-side who knew his name. Name a man in Ireland and you locate him; Murphy, and he comes from Cork--Power, and he comes from Waterford. Why enumerate them all? But this blind beggar had no name. There was no place that claimed him. With that tall silk hat of his which some parish priest had yielded him, with his long black coat which exposure to the sorrowful rains of a sad country had stained a faded green; with his long, crooked stick that tapped its wearisome, monotonous dirge and his colourless, red 'kerchief knotted round his neck, he was a figure well-known in three or four counties.

No village owned him. At Clonmel, they denied him, at Dungarvan, they disowned him; yet the whole country-side, at certain seasons of the year, had heard that well-known tapping of the crooked stick, had seen those sightless eyes blinking under the twisted rim of the old silk hat. For a day or so in the place, he was a well-known figure; for a day or so they slipped odd pennies into his sensitively opened palm, but the next morning would find him missing. Where had he gone? Who had seen him go? Not a soul! The rounded cobbles and the uneven pavements that had resounded to the old crooked stick would be silent of that tapping noise for another year, at least.

But had chance taken you out into the surrounding country, and had it taken you in the right direction, you would have found him toiling along by the hedges--oh, but so infinitely slowly!--his shoulders bent, and his hand nodding like some mechanical toy that had escaped the clutches of its inventor and was wandering aimlessly wherever its mechanism directed.

How it came to be known that he sought the secret of perpetual motion, is beyond me. It was one of those facts about him which seem as inseparable from a man as the clothes that belie his trade. You saw him coming up the road towards you and the words "perpetual motion" rushed, whispering, to your mind. About the matter himself, he was sensitively reticent; yet he must have told someone--someone must have told me. Who was it? Some inhabitant of the village of Rathmore must have spread the story. Whom could it have been? Foley, the carpenter? Burke, the fisherman? Fitzgerald, the publican--Troy, the farmer? I can trace it to none of these. I cannot remember who told me: and yet, when each year he came round for the ceremonies of the Pattern day, when they honoured the patron saint, I said as I saw him: "Here is the blind beggar who tried to invent perpetual motion." The idea became inseparable from the man.

With each succeeding year his movements became more feeble, his head hung lower as he walked. You could see Death stalking behind him in his footsteps, gaining on him, inch by inch, until the shadow of it fell before him as he walked.

There were times when I had struggled to draw him into conversation; moments when I had thought that I had won his confidence; but at the critical juncture, those sightless eyes would search me through and through and he would pass me by. There must have been a time when the world had treated him ill. I fancy, in fact, that I have heard such account of him; for he trusted no one. Year after year he came to Rathmore for the festival of the Pattern and, year after year, I remained in ignorance of his secret.

At last, when I saw the hand of Death stretched out almost to touch his shoulder, I spoke--straight to the pith of the matter, lest another year should bring him there no more.

He was walking down from the Holy Well where for the last hour, upon his tremulous knees, he had been making his devotions to a saint whose shrine his unseeing eyes had never beheld. This was the opportunity I seized. For a length of many moments, when first I had seen his bent and ill-fed figure, rocking to and fro with the steps he took, I had made up my mind to it.

As he reached my side, I slipped a shilling into his half-concealed palm. So do we assess our fellow-kind! The instinct is bestial, but ingrained. Honour, virtue and the like--we only call them priceless to ourselves; yet it takes a great deal to convince us that they are not priceless to others. I priced my blind beggar at a shilling! I watched his withered fingers close over it, rubbing against the minted edge that he might know its worth!

"That has won him," I thought.

Ah! What a brutal conception of God's handicraft! A shilling to buy the secret of perpetual motion! Surely I could not have thought that Nature would have sold her mysteries for that! I did. There is the naked truth of it.

"Who gives me this?" he asked, still fingering it as though it yet might burn his hand.

"A friend," said I.

"God's blessing on ye," he answered and his fingers finally held it tight. There he kept it, clutched within his hand. No pocket was safe in the clothes he wore to store such fortune as that. "You're leaving Rathmore after the Pattern, I suppose?" I began.

His head nodded as he tapped his stick.

"There's something I want to ask you before you go," I continued.

He stopped, I with him, watching the suspicions pass across his face.

"Someone has told me----" I sought desperately, clumsily, for my satisfaction now. "Someone has told me that you have found the secret of perpetual motion. Is that true?"

The milk-white, sightless eyes rushed querulously to mine. All the expression of yearning to see seemed to lie hidden behind them. A flame that was not a flame--the ghost of a flame burnt there, intense with questioning. He could not see; I knew he could not see; yet those vacant globes of matter were charged with unerring perception. In that moment, his soul was looking into mine, searching it for integrity, scouring the very corners of it for the true reason of my question.

I met his gaze. It seemed then to me, that if I failed and my eyes fell before his, he would have weighed and found me wanting. It is one of the few things in this world which I count to my credit, that those empty sockets found me worthy of the trust.

"Who told ye that?" he asked.

I answered him truthfully that I did not know.

"But is it the case?" I added.

He shifted his position. I could see that he was listening.

"There is no one on the road," I said--"We are quite alone."

He coughed nervously.

"'Tis a matter of fifteen years since I first thought the thing out at all. Shure, I dunno what made it come into me head; but 'twas the way I used to be working in a forge before I lost the sight of my eyes. I thought of it there, I suppose."