Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green Part 25

"Then said I to myself, 'I will give it away. I will select some poor deserving person, and make him a present of the d.a.m.ned thing.' I pa.s.sed a good many people, but no one looked deserving enough. It may have been the time or it may have been the neighbourhood, but those I met seemed to me to be unworthy of the bird. I offered it to a man in Judd Street, who I thought appeared hungry. He turned out to be a drunken ruffian. I could not make him understand what I meant, and he followed me down the road abusing me at the top of his voice, until, turning a corner without knowing it, he plunged down Tavistock Place, shouting after the wrong man. In the Euston Road I stopped a half-starved child and pressed it upon her. She answered 'Not me!' and ran away. I heard her calling shrilly after me, 'Who stole the goose?'

"I dropped it in a dark part of Seymour Street. A man picked it up and brought it after me. I was unequal to any more explanations or arguments. I gave him twopence and plodded on with it once more. The pubs were just closing, and I went into one for a final drink. As a matter of fact I had had enough already, being, as I am, unaccustomed to anything more than an occasional cla.s.s of beer. But I felt depressed, and I thought it might cheer me. I think I had gin, which is a thing I loathe.

"I meant to fling it over into Oakley Square, but a policeman had his eye on me, and followed me twice round the railings. In Golding Road I sought to throw it down an area, but was frustrated in like manner. The whole night police of London seemed to have nothing else to do but prevent my getting rid of that goose.

"They appeared so anxious about it that I fancied they might like to have it. I went up to one in Camden Street. I called him 'Bobby,' and asked him if he wanted a goose.

"'I'll tell you what I don't want,' he replied severely, 'and that is none of your sauce.'

"He was very insulting, and I naturally answered him back. What actually pa.s.sed I forget, but it ended in his announcing his intention of taking me in charge.

"I slipped out of his hands and bolted down King Street. He blew his whistle and started after me. A man sprang out from a doorway in College Street and tried to stop me. I tied him up with a b.u.t.t in the stomach, and cut through the Crescent, doubling back into the Camden Road by Batt Street.

"At the Ca.n.a.l Bridge I looked behind me, and could see no one. I dropped the goose over the parapet, and it fell with a splash into the water.

"Heaving a sigh of relief, I turned and crossed into Randolph Street, and there a constable collared me. I was arguing with him when the first fool came up breathless. They told me I had better explain the matter to the Inspector, and I thought so too.

"The Inspector asked me why I had run away when the other constable wanted to take me in charge. I replied that it was because I did not desire to spend my Christmas holidays in the lock-up, which he evidently regarded as a singularly weak argument. He asked me what I had thrown into the ca.n.a.l. I told him a goose. He asked me why I had thrown a goose into the ca.n.a.l. I told him because I was sick and tired of the animal.

"At this stage a sergeant came in to say that they had succeeded in recovering the parcel. They opened it on the Inspector's table. It contained a dead baby.

"I pointed out to them that it wasn't my parcel, and that it wasn't my baby, but they hardly took the trouble to disguise the fact that they did not believe me.

"The Inspector said it was too grave a case for bail, which, seeing that I did not know a soul in London, was somewhat immaterial. I got them to send a telegram to my young lady to say that I was unavoidably detained in town, and pa.s.sed as quiet and uneventful a Christmas Day and Boxing Day as I ever wish to spend.

"In the end the evidence against me was held to be insufficient to justify a conviction, and I got off on the minor charge of drunk and disorderly. But I lost my situation and I lost my young lady, and I don't care if I never see a goose again."

We were nearing Liverpool Street. He collected his luggage, and taking up his hat made an attempt to put it on his head. But in consequence of the swelling caused by the horseshoe it would not go anywhere near him, and he laid it sadly back upon the seat.

"No," he said quietly, "I can't say that I believe very much in luck."

d.i.c.k DUNKERMAN'S CAT

Richard Dunkerman and I had been old school-fellows, if a gentleman belonging to the Upper Sixth, and arriving each morning in a "topper" and a pair of gloves, and "a discredit to the Lower Fourth," in a Scotch cap, can by any manner of means be cla.s.sed together. And though in those early days a certain amount of coldness existed between us, originating in a poem, composed and sung on occasions by myself in commemoration of an alleged painful incident connected with a certain breaking-up day, and which, if I remember rightly ran:--

d.i.c.ky, d.i.c.ky, Dunk, Always in a funk, Drank a gla.s.s of sherry wine, And went home roaring drunk,

and kept alive by his brutal criticism of the same, expressed with the bony part of the knee, yet in after life we came to know and like each other better. I drifted into journalism, while he for years had been an unsuccessful barrister and dramatist; but one spring, to the astonishment of us all, he brought out the play of the season, a somewhat impossible little comedy, but full of homely sentiment and belief in human nature.

It was about a couple of months after its production that he first introduced me to "Pyramids, Esquire."

I was in love at the time. Her name was, I think, Naomi, and I wanted to talk to somebody about her. d.i.c.k had a reputation for taking an intelligent interest in other men's love affairs. He would let a lover rave by the hour to him, taking brief notes the while in a bulky red-covered volume labelled "Commonplace Book." Of course everybody knew that he was using them merely as raw material for his dramas, but we did not mind that so long as he would only listen. I put on my hat and went round to his chambers.

We talked about indifferent matters for a quarter of an hour or so, and then I launched forth upon my theme. I had exhausted her beauty and goodness, and was well into my own feelings--the madness of my ever imagining I had loved before, the utter impossibility of my ever caring for any other woman, and my desire to die breathing her name--before he made a move. I thought he had risen to reach down, as usual, the "Commonplace Book," and so waited, but instead he went to the door and opened it, and in glided one of the largest and most beautiful black tom- cats I have ever seen. It sprang on d.i.c.k's knee with a soft "cur-roo,"

and sat there upright, watching me, and I went on with my tale.

After a few minutes d.i.c.k interrupted me with:--

"I thought you said her name was Naomi?"

"So it is," I replied. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing," he answered, "only just now you referred to her as Enid."

This was remarkable, as I had not seen Enid for years, and had quite forgotten her. Somehow it took the glitter out of the conversation. A dozen sentences later d.i.c.k stopped me again with:--

"Who's Julia?"

I began to get irritated. Julia, I remembered, had been cas.h.i.+er in a city restaurant, and had, when I was little more than a boy, almost inveigled me into an engagement. I found myself getting hot at the recollection of the spooney rhapsodies I had hoa.r.s.ely poured into her powder-streaked ear while holding her flabby hand across the counter.

"Did I really say 'Julia'?" I answered somewhat sharply, "or are you joking?"

"You certainly alluded to her as Julia," he replied mildly. "But never mind, you go on as you like, I shall know whom you mean."

But the flame was dead within me. I tried to rekindle it, but every time I glanced up and met the green eyes of the black Tom it flickered out again. I recalled the thrill that had penetrated my whole being when Naomi's hand had accidently touched mine in the conservatory, and wondered whether she had done it on purpose. I thought how good and sweet she was to that irritatingly silly old frump her mother, and wondered if it really were her mother, or only hired. I pictured her crown of gold-brown hair as I had last seen it with the sunlight kissing its wanton waves, and felt I would like to be quite sure that it were all her own.

Once I clutched the flying skirts of my enthusiasm with sufficient firmness to remark that in my own private opinion a good woman was more precious than rubies; adding immediately afterwards--the words escaping me unconsciously before I was aware even of the thought--"pity it's so difficult to tell 'em."

Then I gave it up, and sat trying to remember what I had said to her the evening before, and hoping I had not committed myself.

d.i.c.k's voice roused me from my unpleasant reverie.

"No," he said, "I thought you would not be able to. None of them can."

"None of them can what?" I asked. Somehow I was feeling angry with d.i.c.k and with d.i.c.k's cat, and with myself and most other things.

"Why talk love or any other kind of sentiment before old Pyramids here?"

he replied, stroking the cat's soft head as it rose and arched its back.

"What's the confounded cat got to do with it?" I snapped.

"That's just what I can't tell you," he answered, "but it's very remarkable. Old Leman dropped in here the other evening and began in his usual style about Ibsen and the destiny of the human race, and the Socialistic idea and all the rest of it--you know his way. Pyramids sat on the edge of the table there and looked at him, just as he sat looking at you a few minutes ago, and in less than a quarter of an hour Leman had come to the conclusion that society would do better without ideals and that the destiny of the human race was in all probability the dust heap.

He pushed his long hair back from his eyes and looked, for the first time in his life, quite sane. 'We talk about ourselves,' he said, 'as though we were the end of creation. I get tired listening to myself sometimes.

Pah!' he continued, 'for all we know the human race may die out utterly and another insect take our place, as possibly we pushed out and took the place of a former race of beings. I wonder if the ant tribe may not be the future inheritors of the earth. They understand combination, and already have an extra sense that we lack. If in the courses of evolution they grow bigger in brain and body, they may become powerful rivals, who knows?' Curious to hear old Leman talking like that, wasn't it?"

"What made you call him 'Pyramids'?" I asked of d.i.c.k.

"I don't know," he answered, "I suppose because he looked so old. The name came to me."

I leaned across and looked into the great green eyes, and the creature, never winking, never blinking, looked back into mine, until the feeling came to me that I was being drawn down into the very wells of time. It seemed as though the panorama of the ages must have pa.s.sed in review before those expressionless...o...b..--all the loves and hopes and desires of mankind; all the everlasting truths that have been found false; all the eternal faiths discovered to save, until it was discovered they d.a.m.ned.

The strange black creature grew and grew till it seemed to fill the room, and d.i.c.k and I to be but shadows floating in the air.

I forced from myself a laugh, that only in part, however, broke the spell, and inquired of d.i.c.k how he had acquired possession of it.

"It came to me," he answered, "one night six months ago. I was down on my luck at the time. Two of my plays, on which I had built great hopes, had failed, one on top of the other--you remember them--and it appeared absurd to think that any manager would ever look at anything of mine again. Old Walcott had just told me that he did not consider it right of me under all the circ.u.mstances to hold Lizzie any longer to her engagement, and that I ought to go away and give her a chance of forgetting me, and I had agreed with him. I was alone in the world, and heavily in debt. Altogether things seemed about as hopeless as they could be, and I don't mind confessing to you now that I had made up my mind to blow out my brains that very evening. I had loaded my revolver, and it lay before me on the desk. My hand was toying with it when I heard a faint scratching at the door. I paid no attention at first, but it grew more persistent, and at length, to stop the faint noise which excited me more than I could account for, I rose and opened the door and _it_ walked in.