Novel Notes Part 11

"Oh, it's a long, story," he answered carelessly, "and too conventional to be worth telling. Some of us go up, you know. Some of us go down.

You're doing pretty well, I hear."

"I suppose so," I replied; "I've climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and am trying to stick there. But it is of you I want to talk. Can't I do anything for you?"

We were pa.s.sing under a gas-lamp at the moment. He thrust his face forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.

"Do I look like a man you could do anything for?" he said.

We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that might seize hold of him.

"You needn't worry about me," he continued after a while, "I'm comfortable enough. We take life easily down here where I am. We've no disappointments."

"Why did you give up like a weak coward?" I burst out angrily. "You had talent. You would have won with ordinary perseverance."

"Maybe," he replied, in the same even tone of indifference. "I suppose I hadn't the grit. I think if somebody had believed in me it might have helped me. But n.o.body did, and at last I lost belief in myself. And when a man loses that, he's like a balloon with the gas let out."

I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment. "n.o.body believed in you!" I repeated. "Why, _I_ always believed in you, you know that I--"

Then I paused, remembering our "candid criticism" of one another.

"Did you?" he replied quietly, "I never heard you say so. Good-night."

In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood of the Savoy, and, as he spoke, he disappeared down one of the dark turnings thereabouts.

I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick steps before me for a little way, they were soon swallowed up in the sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel stands, I had lost all trace of him.

A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made inquiries.

"What sort of a gent was he, sir?" questioned the man.

"A tall thin gentleman, very shabbily dressed--might be mistaken for a tramp."

"Ah, there's a good many of that sort living in this town," replied the man. "I'm afraid you'll have some difficulty in finding him."

Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I should never listen for their drawing near again.

I wondered as I walked on--I have wondered before and since--whether Art, even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted in her behalf--whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.

Jephson arrived about nine o'clock in the ferry-boat. We were made acquainted with this fact by having our heads b.u.mped against the sides of the saloon.

Somebody or other always had their head b.u.mped whenever the ferry-boat arrived. It was a heavy and c.u.mbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard, without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him.

This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking along the pa.s.sage at the moment, and the result to her was that she received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on the right.

She was accustomed to accept one b.u.mp as a matter of course, and to regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double knock annoyed her: so much "style" was out of place in a mere ferry-boy.

Accordingly she went out to him in a state of high indignation.

"What do you think you are?" she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his ears first on one side and then on the other, "a torpedo! What are you doing here at all? What do you want?"

"I don't want nothin'," explained the boy, rubbing his head; "I've brought a gent down."

"A gent?" said Amenda, looking round, but seeing no one. "What gent?"

"A stout gent in a straw 'at," answered the boy, staring round him bewilderedly.

"Well, where is he?" asked Amenda.

"I dunno," replied the boy, in an awed voice; "'e was a-standin' there, at the other end of the punt, a-smokin' a cigar."

Just then a head appeared above the water, and a spent but infuriated swimmer struggled up between the houseboat and the bank.

"Oh, there 'e is!" cried the boy delightedly, evidently much relieved at this satisfactory solution of the mystery; "'e must ha' tumbled off the punt."

"You're quite right, my lad, that's just what he did do, and there's your fee for a.s.sisting him to do it." Saying which, my dripping friend, who had now scrambled upon deck, leant over, and following Amenda's excellent example, expressed his feelings upon the boy's head.

There was one comforting reflection about the transaction as a whole, and that was that the ferry-boy had at last received a fit and proper reward for his services. I had often felt inclined to give him something myself. I think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a good deal.

His mother undertook that for three-and-sixpence a week he should "make himself generally useful" to us for a couple of hours every morning.

Those were the old lady's very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when I introduced the boy to her.

"This is James, Amenda," I said; "he will come down here every morning at seven, and bring us our milk and the letters, and from then till nine he will make himself generally useful."

Amenda took stock of him.

"It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the look of him," she remarked.

After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or blood-curdling b.u.mp would cause us to leap from our seats and cry: "What on earth has happened?" Amenda would reply: "Oh, it's only James, mum, making himself generally useful."

Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he came near--that was not a fixture--he knocked over; if it was a fixture, it knocked _him_ over. This was not carelessness: it seemed to be a natural gift. Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a bucketful of anything anywhere without tumbling over it before he got there. One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof.

Fortunately--for the flowers--Nature, that summer, stood drinks with a lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed vegetable toper: otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought. Never one drop of water did they receive from him. He was for ever taking them water, but he never arrived there with it. As a rule he upset the pail before he got it on to the boat at all, and this was the best thing that could happen, because then the water simply went back into the river, and did no harm to any one. Sometimes, however, he would succeed in landing it, and then the chances were he would spill it over the deck or into the pa.s.sage. Now and again, he would get half-way up the ladder before the accident occurred. Twice he nearly reached the top; and once he actually did gain the roof. What happened there on that memorable occasion will never be known. The boy himself, when picked up, could explain nothing.

It is supposed that he lost his head with the pride of the achievement, and essayed feats that neither his previous training nor his natural abilities justified him in attempting. However that may be, the fact remains that the main body of the water came down the kitchen chimney; and that the boy and the empty pail arrived together on deck before they knew they had started.

When he could find nothing else to damage, he would go out of his way to upset himself. He could not be sure of stepping from his own punt on to the boat with safety. As often as not, he would catch his foot in the chain or the punt-pole, and arrive on his chest.

Amenda used to condole with him. "Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself," I heard her telling him one morning; "she could never have taught you to walk. What you want is a go-cart."

He was a willing lad, but his stupidity was super-natural. A comet appeared in the sky that year, and everybody was talking about it. One day he said to me:--

"There's a comet coming, ain't there, sir?" He talked about it as though it were a circus.

"Coming!" I answered, "it's come. Haven't you seen it?"

"No, sir."

"Oh, well, you have a look for it to-night. It's worth seeing."