Part 13
There was no portent in the sky on the night of my triumph. A barrowful of onions, indeed, upset itself at the door, but that was a coincidence. The hall was crammed with billycocks waiting for "We was shopmates." The great heart beat healthily. I went to my beer the equal of Shakespeare and Moliere at the wings in a first night. What would my public say? Could anything live after the abandon of "We was shopmates"? What if the redcoats did not muster in their usual strength. O my friends, never in your songs and dramas forget the redcoat. He has sympathy and enormous boots.
I believed in the redcoat; in the great heart of the people: above all in myself. The conductor, who advertised that he "doctored bad songs," had devised a pleasant little lilting air for my needs, but it struck me as weak and thin after the thunderous surge of the "Shopmates." I glanced at the gallery--the redcoats were there. The fiddle-bows creaked, and, with a jingle of brazen spurs, a forage-cap over his left eye, my Great and Only began to "chuck it off his chest." Thus:
"At the back o' the Knightsbridge Barricks, When the fog was a-gatherin' dim, The Lifeguard talked to the Undercook, An' the girl she talked to 'im."
"_Twiddle-iddle-iddle-lum-tum-tum!_" said the violins.
"_Ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling-ting-ling!_" said the spurs of the Great and Only, and through the roar in my ears I fancied I could catch a responsive hoof-beat in the gallery. The next four lines held the house to attention. Then came the chorus and the borrowed refrain. It took--it went home with a crisp click. My Great and Only saw his chance. Superbly waving his hand to embrace the whole audience, he invited them to join him in:
"You may make a mistake when you're mashing a tart, But you'll learn to be wise when you're older, And don't try for things that are out of your reach, And that's what the girl told the soldier, soldier, soldier, And that's what the girl told the soldier."
I thought the gallery would never let go of the long-drawn howl on "soldier." They clung to it as ringers to the kicking bell-rope. Then I envied no one--not even Shakespeare. I had my house hooked--gaffed under the gills, netted, speared, shot behind the shoulder--anything you please. That was pure joy! With each verse the chorus grew louder, and when my Great and Only had bellowed his way to the fall of the Lifeguard and the happy lot of the Undercook, the gallery rocked again, the reserved stalls shouted, and the pewters twinkled like the legs of the demented ballet-girls. The conductor waved the now frenzied orchestra to softer Lydian strains. My Great and Only warbled piano:
"At the back o' Knightsbridge Barricks, When the fog's a-gatherin' dim, The Lifeguard waits for the Undercook, But she won't wait for 'im."
"_Ta-ra-rara-rara-ra-ra-rah!_" rang a horn clear and fresh as a sword-cut. 'Twas the apotheosis of virtue.
"She's married a man in the poultry line That lives at 'Ighgate 'Ill, An' the Lifeguard walks with the 'ousemaid now, An' (_awful pause_) she can't foot the bill!"
Who shall tell the springs that move masses? I had builded better than I knew. Followed yells, shrieks and wildest applause. Then, as a wave gathers to the curl-over, singer and sung to fill their chests and heave the chorus through the quivering roof--alto, horns, basses drowned, and lost in the flood--to the beach-like boom of beating feet:
"Oh, think o' my song when you're gowin' it strong An' your boots is too little to 'old yer; An' don't try for things that is out of your reach, An' that's what the girl told the soldier, soldier, so-holdier!"
Ow! Hi! Yi! Wha-hup! Phew! Whew! Pwhit! Bang! Wang! Crr-rash! There was ample time for variations as the horns uplifted themselves and ere the held voices came down in the foam of sound--
"_That's what the girl told the soldier._"
Providence has sent me several joys, and I have helped myself to others, but that night, as I looked across the sea of tossing billycocks and rocking bonnets, my work, as I heard them give tongue, not once, but four times--their eyes sparkling, their mouths twisted with the taste of pleasure--I felt that I had secured Perfect Felicity. I am become greater than Shakespeare. I may even write plays for the Lyceum, but I never can recapture that first fine rapture that followed the Upheaval of the Anglo-Saxon four hundred of him and her. They do not call for authors on these occasions, but I desired no need of public recognition. I was placidly happy. The chorus bubbled up again and again throughout the evening, and a redcoat in the gallery insisted on singing solos about "a swine in the poultry line," whereas I had written "man," and the pewters began to fly, and afterwards the long streets were vocal with various versions of what the girl had really told the soldier, and I went to bed murmuring: "I have found my destiny."
But it needs a more mighty intellect to write the Songs of the People. Some day a man will rise up from Bermondsey, Battersea or Bow, and he will be coarse, but clearsighted, hard but infinitely and tenderly humorous, speaking the people's tongue, steeped in their lives and telling them in swinging, urging, dinging verse what it is that their inarticulate lips would express. He will make them songs. Such songs! And all the little poets who pretend to sing to the people will scuttle away like rabbits, for the girl (which, as you have seen, of course, is wisdom) will tell that soldier (which is Hercules bowed under his labours) all that she knows of Life and Death and Love.
And the same, they say, is a Vulgarity!
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 27: "Turnovers," No. IX.]
"THE BETRAYAL OF CONFIDENCES"[28]
That was its real name, and its nature was like unto it; but what else could I do? You must judge for me.
They brought a card--the housemaid with the fan-teeth held it gingerly between black finger and blacker thumb--and it carried the name Mr. R.H. Hoffer in old Gothic letters. A hasty rush through the file of bills showed me that I owed nothing to any Mr. Hoffer, and assuming my sweetest smile, I bade Fan of the Teeth show him up. Enter stumblingly an entirely canary-coloured young person about twenty years of age, with a suspicious bulge in the bosom of his coat. He had grown no hair on his face; his eyes were of a delicate water-green, and his hat was a brown billycock, which he fingered nervously. As the room was blue with tobacco-smoke (and Latakia at that) he coughed even more nervously, and began seeking for me. I hid behind the writing-table and took notes. What I most noted was the bulge in his bosom. When a man begins to bulge as to that portion of his anatomy, hit him in the eye, for reasons which will be apparent later on.
He saw me and advanced timidly. I invited him seductively to the only other chair, and "What's the trouble?" said I.
"I wanted to see you," said he.
"I am me," said I.
"I--I--I thought you would be quite otherwise," said he.
"I am, on the contrary, completely this way," said I. "Sit still, take your time and tell me all about it."
He wriggled tremulously for three minutes, and coughed again. I surveyed him, and waited developments. The bulge under the bosom crackled. Then I frowned. At the end of three minutes he began.
"I wanted to see what you were like," said he.
I inclined my head stiffly, as though all London habitually climbed the storeys on the same errand and rather wearied me.
Then he delivered himself of a speech which he had evidently got by heart. He flushed painfully in the delivery.
"I am flattered," I said at the conclusion. "It's beastly gratifying. What do you want?"
"Advice, if you will be so good," said the young man.
"Then you had better go somewhere else," said I.
The young man turned pink. "But I thought, after I had read your works--all your works, on my word--I had hoped that you would understand me, and I really have come for advice." The bulge crackled more ominously than ever.
"I understand perfectly," said I. "You are oppressed with vague and nameless longings, are you not?"
"I am, terribly," said he.
"You do not wish to be as other men are? You desire to emerge from the common herd, to make your mark, and so forth?"
"Yes," said he in an awestricken whisper. "That is my desire."
"Also," said I, "you love, excessively, in several places at once cooks, housemaids, governesses, schoolgirls, and the aunts of other people."
"But one only," said he, and the pink deepened to beetroot.
"Consequently," said I, "you have written much--you have written verses."
"It was to teach me to write prose, only to teach me to write prose," he murmured. "You do it yourself, because I have bought your works--all your works."
He spoke as if he had purchased dunghills _en bloc_.
"We will waive that question," I said loftily. "Produce the verses."
"They--they aren't exactly verses," said the young man, plunging his hand into his bosom.
"I beg your pardon, I meant will you be good enough to read your five-act tragedy."
"How--how in the world did you know?" said the young man, more impressed than ever.
He unearthed his tragedy, the title of which I have given, and began to read. I felt as though I were walking in a dream; having been till then ignorant of the fact that earth held young men who held five-act tragedies in their insides. The young man gave me the whole of the performance, from the preliminary scene, where nothing more than an eruption of Vesuvius occurs to mar the serenity of the manager, till the very end, where the Roman sentry of Pompeii is slowly banked up with ashes in the presence of the audience, and dies murmuring through his helmet-vizor: "S.P.Q.R.R.I.P.R.S.V.P.," or words to that effect.
For three hours and one-half he read to me. And then I made a mistake.
"Sir," said I, "who's your Ma and Pa?"
"I haven't got any," said he, and his lower lip quivered.
"Where do you live?" I said.
"At the back of Tarporley Mews," said he.
"How?" said I.
"On eleven shillings a week," said he.
"I was pretty well educated, and if you don't stay too long they will let you read the books in the Holywell Street stalls."
"And you wasted your money buying my books," said I with a lump the size of a bolster in my throat.
"I got them second-hand, four and sixpence," said he, "and some I borrowed."
Then I collapsed. I didn't weep, but I took the tragedy and put it in the fire, and called myself every name that I knew.
This caused the young man to sob audibly, partly from emotion and partly from lack of food.
I took off my hat to him before I showed him out, and we went to a restaurant and I arranged things generally on a financial basis.
Would that I could let the tale stop here. But I cannot.
Three days later a man came to see me on business, an objectionable man of uncompromising truth. Just before he departed he said: "D' you know anything about the struggling author of a tragedy called 'The Betrayal of Confidences'?"
"Yes," said I. "One of the few poor souls who in the teeth of grinding poverty keep alight."
"At the back of Tarporley Mews," said he. "On eleven shillings a week."
"On the mischief!" said I.
"He didn't happen to tell you that he considered you the finest, subtlest, truest, and so forth of all the living so forths, did he?"
"He may have said something out of the fulness of an overladen heart. You know how unbridled is the enthusiasm of----"
"Young gentlemen who buy your books with their last farthing. You didn't soak it all in by any chance, give him a good meal and half a sovereign as well, did you?"
"I own up," I said. "I did all that and more. But how do you know?"
"Because he victimised me in the same way a fortnight ago."
"Thank you for that," I said, "but I burned his disgusting manuscripts. And he wept."
"There, unless he keeps a duplicate, you have scored one."
But considering the matter impartially, it seems to me that the game is not more than "fifteen all" in any light.
It makes me blush to think about it.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 28: "Turnovers," No. IX.]
THE NEW DISPENSATION--I[29]
LONDON IN A FOG--NOVEMBER
Things have happened--but that is neither here nor there. What I urgently require is a servant--a nice, fat Mussulman _khitmatgar_, who is not above doing bearer's work on occasion. Such a man I would go down to Southampton or Tilbury to meet, would usher tenderly into a first-class carriage (I always go third myself), and wrap in the warmest of flannel. He should be "_Jenab_" and I would be "_O Tum_." When he died, as he assuredly would in this weather, I would bury him in my best back garden and write mortuary verses for publication in the _Koh-i-Nur_, or whatever vernacular paper he might read. I want, in short, a servant; and this is why I am writing to you.
The English, who, by the way, are unmitigated barbarians, maintain cotton-print housemaids to do work which is the manifest portion of a man. Besides which, no properly constructed person cares to see a white woman waiting upon his needs, filling coal-scuttles (these are very mysterious beasts) and tidying rooms. The young homebred Englishman does not object, and one of the most tantalising sights in the world is that of the young man of the house--the son newly introduced to shaving-water and great on the subject of maintaining authority--it is tantalising, I say, to see this young cub hectoring a miserable little slavey for not having lighted a fire or put his slippers in their proper place. The next time a big, bold man from the frontier comes home I shall hire him to kick a few young gentlemen of my acquaintance all round their own drawing-rooms while I lecture on my theory that this sort of thing accounts for the perceptible lack of chivalry in the modern Englishman. Now, if you or I or anybody else raved over and lectured at Kadir Baksh, or Ram Singh, or Jagesa on the necessity of obeying orders and the beauty of reverencing our noble selves, our men would laugh; or if the lecture struck them as too long-winded would ask us if our livers were out of order and recommend _dawai_. The housemaid must stand with her eyes on the ground while the young whelp sticks his hands under the tail of his dressing-gown and explains her duty to her. This makes me ill and sick--sick for Kadir Baksh, who rose from the earth when I called him, who knew the sequence of my papers and the ordering of my paltry garments, and, I verily believed, loved me not altogether for the sake of lucre. He said he would come with me to _Belait_ because, "though the sahib says he will never return to India, yet I know, and all the other _nauker log_ know, that return is his fate."
Being a fool, I left Kadir Baksh behind, and now I am alone with housemaids, who will under no circumstances sleep on the mat outside the door. Even as I write, one of these persons is cleaning up my room. Kadir Baksh would have done his work without noise. She tramps and scuffles; and, what is much worse, snuffles horribly. Kadir Baksh would have saluted me cheerfully and began some sort of a yarn of the "It hath reached me, O Auspicious King!" order, and perhaps we should have debated over the worthlessness of Dunni, the _sais_, or the chances of a little cold-weather expedition, or the wisdom of retaining a fresh _chaprassi_--some intimate friend of Kadir Baksh. But now I have no horses and no _chaprassis_, and this smutty-faced girl glares at me across the room as though she expected I was going to eat her.
She must have a soul of her own--a life of her own--and perhaps a few amusements. I can't get at these things. She says: "Ho, yuss," and "Ho, no," and if I hadn't heard her chattering to the lift-boy on the stairs I should think that her education stopped at these two phrases. Now, I knew all about Kadir Baksh, his hopes and his savings--his experiences in the past, and the health of the little ones. He was a man--a human man remarkably like myself, and he knew that as well as I. A housemaid is of course not a man, but she might at least be a woman. My wanderings about this amazing heathen city have brought me into contact with very many English _mem sahibs_ who seem to be eaten up with the fear of letting their servants get "above their position," or "presume," or do something which would shake the foundations of the four-mile cab radius. They seem to carry on a sort of cat-and-mouse war when the husband is at office and they have nothing much to do. Later, at places where their friends assemble, they recount the campaign, and the other women purr approvingly and say: "You did quite right, my dear. It is evident that she forgets her place."
All this is edifying to the stranger, and gives him a great idea of the dignity that has to be bolstered and buttressed, eight hours of the twenty-four, against the incendiary attacks of an eighteen-pound including-beer-money sleeps-in-a-garret-at-the-top-of-the-house servant-girl. There is a fine-crusted, slave-holding instinct in the hearts of a good many deep-bosomed matrons--a "throw back" to the times when we trafficked in black ivory. At tea-tables and places where they eat muffins it is called dignity. Now, your Kadir Baksh or my Kadir Baksh, who is a downtrodden and oppressed heathen (the young gentlemen who bullyrag white women assure me that we are in the habit of kicking our dependents and beating them with umbrellas daily), would ask for his _chits_, and probably say something sarcastic ere he drifted out of the compound gate, if you nagged or worried his noble self. He does not know much about the meaner forms of dignity, but he is entirely sound on the subject of _izzat_; and the fact of his cracking an azure and Oriental jest with you in the privacy of your dressing-room, or seeing you at your incoherent worst when you have an attack of fever, does not in the least affect his general deportment in public, where he knows that the honour of his sahib is his own honour, and dons a new _kummerbund_ on the strength of it.
I have tried to deal with those housemaids in every possible way. To sling a blunt "Annie" or "Mary" or "Jane" at a girl whose only fault is that she is a heavy-handed incompetent, strikes me as rather an insult, seeing that the girl may have a brother, and that if you had a sister who was a servant you would object to her being howled at upstairs and downstairs by her given name. But only ladies' maids are entitled to their surnames. They are not nice people as a caste, and they regard the housemaids as the _chamar_ regards the _mehter_. Consequently, I have to call these girls by their Christian names, and cock my feet up on a chair when they are cleaning the grate, and pass them in the halls in the morning as though they didn't exist. Now, the morning salutation of your Kadir Baksh or my Kadir is a performance which Turveydrop might envy. These persons don't understand a nod; they think it as bad as a wink, I believe. Respect and courtesy are lost upon them, and I suppose I must gather my dressing-gown into a tail and swear at them in the bloodless voice affected by the British female who--have I mentioned this?--is a highly composite heathen when she comes in contact with her sister clay downstairs.
The softer methods lay one open to harder suspicions. Not long ago there was trouble among my shirts. I fancied buttons grew on neck-bands. Kadir Baksh and the _durzie_ encouraged me in the belief. When the lead-coloured linen (they cannot wash, by the way, in this stronghold of infidels) shed its buttons I cast about for a means of renewal. There was a housemaid, and she was not very ugly, and I thought she could sew. I knew I could not. Therefore I strove to ingratiate myself with her, believing that a little interest, combined with a little capital, would fix those buttons more firmly than anything else. Subsequently, and after an interval--the buttons were dropping like autumn leaves--I kissed her. The buttons were attached at once. So, unluckily, was the housemaid, for I gathered that she looked forward to a lifetime of shirt-sewing in an official capacity, and my Revenue Board contemplated no additional establishment. My shirts are buttonsome, but my character is blasted. Oh, I wish I had Kadir Baksh!
This is only the first instalment of my troubles. The heathen in these parts do not understand me; so if you will allow I will come to you for sympathy from time to time. I am a child of calamity.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 29: "Turnovers," Vol. VIII.]
THE NEW DISPENSATION--II[30]
Writing of Kadir Baksh so wrought up my feelings that I could not rest till I had at least made an attempt to get a _budli_ of some sort. The black man is essential to my comfort. I fancied I might in this city of barbarism catch a brokendown native strayed from his home and friends, who would be my friend and humble pardner--the sort of man, y' know, who would sleep on a rug somewhere near my chambers (I have forty things to tell you about chambers, but they come later), and generally look after my things. In the intervals of labour I would talk to him in his own tongue, and we would go abroad together and explore London.
Do you know the Albert Docks? The British-India steamers go thence to the sunshine. They sometimes leave a lascar or two on the wharf, and, in fact, the general tone of the population thereabouts is brown and umber. I was in no case to be particular. Anything dusky would do for me, so long as it could talk Hindustani and sew buttons. I went to the docks and walked about generally among the railway lines and packing-cases, till I found a man selling tooth-combs, which is not a paying trade. He was ragged even to furriness, and very unwashed. But he came from the East. "What are you?" I said, and the look of the missionary that steals over me in moments of agitation deluded that tooth-comb man into answering, "Sar, I am native ki-li-sti-an," but he put five more syllables into the last word.
There is no Christianity in the docks worth a tooth-comb. "I don't want your beliefs. I want your _jat_," said I.
"I am Tamil," said he, "and my name is Ramasawmy."
It was an awful thing to lower oneself to the level of a Colonel of the Madras Army, and come down to being tended by a Ramasawmy; but beggars cannot be choosers. I pointed out to him that the tooth-comb trade was a thing lightly to be dropped and taken up. He might injure his health by a washing, but he could not much hurt his prospects by coming along with me and trying his hand at bearer's work. "Could he work?" Oh, yes, he didn't mind work. He had been a servant in his time. Several servants, in fact.
"Could he wash himself?"
"Ye-es," he might do that if I gave him a coat--a thick coat--afterwards, and especially took care of the tooth-combs, for they were his little all.
"Had he any character of any kind?"
He thought for a minute and then said cheerfully: "Not a little dam." Thereat I loved him, because a man who can speak the truth in minor matters may be trusted with important things, such as shirts.
We went home together till we struck a public bath, mercifully divided into three classes. I got him to go into the third without much difficulty. When he came out he was in the way of cleanliness, and before he had time to expostulate I ran him into the second. Into the first he would not go till I had bought him a cheap ulster. He came out almost clean. That cost me three shillings altogether. The ulster was half a sovereign, and some other clothes were thirty shillings. Even these things could not hide from me that he looked an unusually villainous creature.