Part 7

Over the road he gave the sovereign into her keeping, and she frisked up a side street. Prosser followed him down Victoria Street, helped him silently over the crossings, and was still dreaming of one like himself, meeting an old friend and lacking the energy to acknowledge him; when the blind man turned suddenly and grabbed him by the arm.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Prosser,’ he faltered.

‘I thought so. You’ve been drinking, you ---- fool. Where have you been all this time since you came out?’

‘I ... I’m in service.’

‘Ah?’

‘I’ve turned over a new leaf. Was that my little girl?’

‘That was Joey. Why?’

‘I only wanted to know.’

‘Ah! making conversation, as it were. Yes; you’re gentry now, of course--joined the respectable classes.’ He fumbled Prosser’s coat as he spoke, feeling round the cloth buttons to see if they were sound and fat. ‘One has to talk for talking’s sake when one belongs to the gentry. Well, I’m off. Don’t waste your elegant conversation on me; go back to the Duchess.... _Pity_ the poor blind!’ He was off again, crying hoarsely along the big grey blocks, and Prosser pursuing timidly.

‘Stop, stop, Mr. Hartopp! You didn’t mind my mentioning the little girl?’

‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’

His appeal to the public was launched with an abrupt intonation which implied a final ‘D---- you!’ as plain as words.

‘It’s _my_ little girl after all,’ said Prosser.

‘Don’t talk like a d----d drunken maudlin fool!’ growled the blind man, stopping short again. People looked over their shoulders as they went past, ladies from the Stores drew aside into the road and hurried by, seeing this maimed old man leaning back over his extended crutch, blaspheming at the trim underling who stood so mild and weak behind him.

‘I know your sort! rotten gutless puppies that lose their grit as soon as they get under. Portland; good conduct marks; conversion; piety; ticket-of-leave, and then drink, drink, drink! “Gone into service!” “My little girl!” Ugh! What do you want to do with your “little girl”? Would you like the little pet to “go into service” too? and wear a little muslin pinafore, with pockets in front? Speak up, man, speak up. Don’t stand there like a sodden hog, dreaming over your next big drink while I’m making conversation. Don’t you hear me, you elegant toff?’

Prosser started guiltily.

‘I’d been thinking perhaps my employer would find her a nice home somewhere.’

‘A little cottage in the country somewhere, eh? with geraniums in the window and a little watering pot all her own, eh? And what about me? I’d make a pretty footman if you’d recommend me, and stand on the steps in a salmon-coloured suit and help the gentlefolk in and out of their carriages.’

‘He’d do something for you, I’m sure. He’s a very kind master.’

‘“A very kind master!” Oh, good Lord!... _Pity_ the poor blind!’

‘Mr. Hartopp, Mr. Hartopp!’

The old man stopped again and faced right round.

‘Prosser, if you follow me an inch further I’ll knock out your mucky fuddled brains with my crutch all over the pavement. I swear I will. Go home and soak, you sentimental skunk.’

Prosser stood still for some time watching the angry figure bobbing down the road. Then he turned up by the Turkish Baths and made his way home.

That evening he related the whole of his adventure to Prince Dwala, not even omitting the confession of his own intemperance.

‘So you drink, do you? Drink too much of course, that is.’

‘You’re not angry, sir?’

‘Of course not. Not a bit.... It must be awfully expensive?’

‘I can’t help it, sir. I don’t want to help it. Of course I’ll have to go?’

‘Go where?’

‘Leave you, I mean, sir.’

‘Oh, please don’t do that, Prosser. You shall have as much as you need. Don’t have more than you really need. I’m sorry it’s you, of course, because I like you so much. But now you explain it to me, I don’t see how it could have been helped. I’m awfully sorry about it. That’s a very wonderful old man.’

‘Mr. Hartopp? Yes, sir.’

‘Do you think he’d come and live here?’

‘He wouldn’t take service, sir.’

‘No, as a friend, I mean. You see, Prosser, this house is much bigger than I really need. I have to live in it, of course, because I’m so rich; besides, there’s poor Huxtable to think of.’

‘You needn’t pity Mr. Huxtable much, sir.’

‘No, that’s true: I suppose he’s very happy. Do you know anything about Mr. Hartopp’s past life? One isn’t born a “Fence” I suppose?’

‘Oh no, sir, it takes a very intelligent man to be a Fence. Mr. Hartopp’s a very intelligent man, and had a first-class education.’

‘What’s his story, then?’

‘Story, sir? There’s no story as far as I ever heard. Nothing out of the ordinary, sir.’

‘How did he become blind?’

‘Overwork, sir. He was a schoolmaster as a young man down in our part of the country, and overworked his eyes like at his work, sir. That’s how he lost his place. He had a fever, and they took him to the Workhouse Infirmary. It’s that what made him go to the bad, they say, sir; he’d always had a horror of the rates. He often talks of himself as a pauper, as if it was a disgrace like. He’d worked his way up like, sir, and couldn’t stand being mixed up with pauperism. So when they discharged him he came up to London and went to the bad.’

‘Drink, I suppose? It always begins that way, I’m told.’

‘Mr. Hartopp, sir? Oh no, sir, I never knew him drink anything, sir, nor smoke neither. Drink and tobacco he says are ... some funny word, painkillers sort of, to keep the workin’ classes from yellin’ out while they’re bein’ skinned alive. He’s a very funny man, sir, always makin’ jokes. Not but what he’s fond of good livin’ too, sir. When trade was good one time he used to go regular every day and lunch at the Carlton. I only found out by chance; I was that surprised. Up till then I’d always took him for a Socialist.’

‘How did he lose his leg?’

‘His leg, sir? I really don’t remember how that was. It wasn’t very long ago, I know. Blind men often get knocked about like in the traffic.’

XXI

Dwala left his valet abruptly and spent many hours walking up and down the picture-gallery, deep in thought. Some of his slow ideas were coming suddenly to maturity.

Men--these strange wild beasts that lived wholly in a delirium of invented characters, assigning fantastic attributes to one another and acting solemn plays where everything was real--blood, knives, and misery--everything but the characters themselves--had thrust on him the strangest mask of all; they had made him great. And now, at the touch of one small hand on the lever, all the machinery of the theatre was in motion to make him greater still, with the greatest greatness of all--for so to his rude mind, unskilled in the abstract mystery of Royalty, seemed political greatness, the power of ordering men’s days and nights.

Himself, he was nothing--nothing to anyone but himself; for others he was a suit of irrelevant attributes; no one cared what he thought or felt or was; his Ego had no place in their scheme. He had been always the same; and all his differences were of human making. First Man clapped on him the attribute of Monkey, and purposed putting him in a cage and offering him for an entertainment. Then Man clapped God, King, Prisoner, and Millionaire on him in quick succession; now they were preparing Statesman for him to wear. Empty garments all of them, by the very essence of things: Nature makes no Gods, Kings, Prisoners, Millionaires or Statesmen. All fanciful unsubstantialities of men, real only in their effect on men, as laws of gravity are real only in the eagerness of little things to be impelled; empty shells, inhabited by irrelevant I’s that live in corners of them, apart and unconsidered; vacancies, chosen at random for a centre of genuflexions, services, obediences, gold, velvet, paper, and different sorts of food. A wise Providence has ordained that Man’s eyes should be blind to the vision of real naked Nature-given personality: were it suddenly otherwise, the long-wrought classifications of the ages would disappear at once in a confusion of particular differences; all leadership and direction would be lost; just as Science would shiver to a heap of individual facts if she were robbed of her slow-built generalisations.

Dwala saw that he could never merely put aside his mask and say, Behold me as I am. Such revelations are unthinkable to the human mind: one might as well say, Behold me, for I have disappeared. He could renounce Statesman if he liked, stay Millionaire, go back to God or King or Monkey; but until he went away from men, and hid himself in the wild forest, he could never be plain self again: he must inhabit either a palace, or a temple, or a cage.

What was he going to do, he asked himself, in this new mask that Man was preparing for him with so much labour? The answer was evident; Lady Wyse knew it too. He was making a Joke, a big slow Joke; men were rolling it painfully up the board for him, panting and groaning, and when it reached the top he would tip it lightly over and see it fall with a crash like a falling mountain. Surely that would make him laugh?

And after? Well, that was a little matter. They would kill him, perhaps; he would die laughing at them, laughing in their angry shame-lit faces as they stabbed him. More probably they would let him go. They would hardly exhibit him in Earl’s Court: ‘Pithecanthropus erectus, ex-Cabinet Minister.’ He would get back to the woods of Borneo again, and laugh among the trees. In any case, he would have had his Joke.

Meanwhile other attributes had been laid on him for which he had no use: power to demand a million little satisfactions, gross and fine, for which he had no taste. Space to sleep and wake, food enough to nourish him--that was all he wanted till the great Joke reached the tumbling point. A thousand minor jokes would crop up by the way in the endless inequality of masks: jokes too slender for his own handling. Must all this go to waste? Why not enjoy by proxy? To his large mind it was indifferent _who_ was the agent of enjoyment: himself or another, as they had the fitter talent. Therefore he had long been vaguely seeking someone who could replace him in the present; an ambassador in the courts of luxury; someone vivid, eager, strong and discontented, some Enemy of the World, who could exploit for him the minor meannesses of men, a preparatory humiliation, a handy touchstone for everyday use. Surely Hartopp was the man?

Dwala went with a candle in the middle of the night to his valet’s bedroom and awoke him from uneasy sleep.

‘I’ve made up my mind I must know this Mr. Hartopp, Prosser.’

‘I’m afraid you mightn’t like him if you saw him, sir,’ said the valet, sitting up in his night-cap, with hollow eyes, as of one rescued only for a while from some fear to which he must return anon.

‘I don’t know. We’ll go and look for him to-morrow. You know where he lives?’

‘Whereabouts, sir. Somewhere off Shaftesbury Avenue.’

‘All right. We’ll go and look him up to-morrow. That’ll be rippin’. Good-night.’

XXII

Neglecting his engagements and Huxtable’s remonstrances Dwala sought Hartopp for many days in vain. With Prosser at his side he visited the places where children play, open spaces, archipelagos of pavement, washed by the roaring traffic of St. Giles’s: for it was among the children that Prosser gave most hope of finding him.

‘It’s one of his curious ways, bein’ with children, sir; his dram-drinkin’ he calls it. He’s goin’ to raise a Revolution of the children one of these days, he says. He don’t set much store by the grown-ups: over-civilised he says they are, while the children are all young savages.’

Hartopp had risen to lofty heights in Prosser’s estimation, since he had realised Dwala’s plans about him; he was a Socrates now, whose every saying had a strange new value in remembrance.

At last they found him. They were standing one sunny summer day in Shaftesbury Avenue, when Prosser cried:

‘There he is!’

A throng of tiny Bacchanals came skipping and whooping out of Endell Street, and in their midst the old Silenus, clumping and swinging jovially along. It was a gay chatter of question and answer, gibe and repartee, flying to and from Silenus to the nymphs, while laughter flickered here and there at random.

They crossed the broad roadway in open defiance of the traffic, and landed on the island where Dwala stood.

‘Five o’clock!’ cried the old Fence as St. Giles’s clock rang out: ‘time you were home for your teas!’ He grinned, and fumbled in his big yellow pocket. ‘What are you waiting for, you little animals? Your mothers are all drunk by now, and you’ll get what for if you’re late.... Scramble!’ he shouted, suddenly flinging a handful of pink sweatmeats up in the sunshine and down in the dirt, while the children wallowed and fought with cries of joy.

‘Here’s two toffs,’ said one of the knot of elders, drawing off as Dwala and Prosser approached.

‘Mr. Hartopp,’ murmured Prosser, touching his hat.

‘Aha, my sentimental friend, are you there? I smell you. What’s the news? Have you brought something sweet in chiffon for your darling little daughter to drive in to the Opera to-night?’

‘Hoping you’ll excuse me, Mr. Hartopp, I’ve brought Prince Dwala, my employer, who was anxious to see you.’

‘Oho! the “kind master.” Come to see how the “pooah” live, my Lord?’

‘I’ve come to ask if you won’t come and live with me.’

‘Live with you, d---- you?’

‘Yes, live with me, at home.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I like you.’

‘The h---- you do! Why?’

‘Because I believe you’re what’s called a “blackguard.”’

‘What’s this feller you’ve got hold of, Prosser? Is he a detective, or a philanthropist, or a lunatic?’

‘He’s what’s called an “eccentric” I believe, Mr. Hartopp.’

‘Where do you live?’ asked the Fence abruptly.

‘Park Lane,’ answered Dwala.

The Fence whistled.

‘What number?’

‘Number --.’

‘Number --?... I’ve got the plans of that somewhere. What’s the plate like, Prosser?’

‘Very handy, Mr. Hartopp,’ answered the valet, falling into old tracks of thought.

‘It’s beautiful plate,’ said Dwala: ‘all the most expensive kinds. You’d have it on the table every day at meals if you came and lived with me, Mr. Hartopp: of course you wouldn’t see it, because you’re blind, but you’d know it was there. It’s a lovely house altogether, I believe: everything’s as expensive as we could get anywhere; there are five footmen, and heaven only knows how many housemaids. What I’m looking for is somebody who’d really enjoy all these things. I can’t. It’s such a pity you’re blind, because you’ll miss a lot; in fact, I had half a mind not to ask you, because you were blind. But I was so awfully fetched by the way you threw those sweetmeats to the children.’

‘You’re another d----d sentimentalist, I see. Does he drink too, Prosser?’

‘No, I don’t drink,’ said Dwala: ‘I have so many other amusements.’

‘What’s your income?’

‘Four hundred thousand pounds a year.’

‘Four hun.... Good Lord! you ought to be ashamed of yourself.... Here, Thomas, Andy--anybody there?’ he cried out, hobbling excitedly towards the iron seats.

‘I’m here, Bill!’ came a voice from the distance.

‘All right, I don’t want you.’ He hobbled back again, and blew three calls on a dog-whistle which hung from his neck. ‘I’ll call Joey.’ Joey came frisking up from nowhere, as dirty as mud could make her.

She turned formal at once on seeing the ‘nobs,’ and put out her tongue at Prosser.

‘Joey, old girl, you see these two d----d fools here? One of ’em’s a Prince of ancient lineage.’

‘What, that great big ugly bloke?’

‘With four hundred thousand pounds a year!’

‘Lor’!’ said Joey, politely.

‘Borrow a hanky from some nice little girl and prepare for hysterics, for the other one’s your long-lost father!’

‘He drinks,’ said Joey, edging away.

Hartopp laughed. ‘It’s wonderful what a lot these children know. Now look here, Joey.... Joey’s included, of course?’

‘Yes, Joey’s included,’ answered Dwala.

‘You wouldn’t like to be a real lady, would you, Joey?’

‘Wouldn’t I!’ said Joey, shyly but decisively.

‘What! Be a rotten West-End kid?’

Joey giggled an affirmative.

‘Wash every day?’ Another giggle.

‘Ain’t she sweet?’ murmured Prosser.

A sudden idea flashed over Joey’s face.

‘With him about?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I’d be about, Joey,’ said Prosser.

Without a moment’s hesitation Joey fled through the traffic and down St. Martin’s Lane.

‘Well?’ said Dwala: ‘what’s your decision, Mr. Hartopp?’

‘Go to h----!’ said the blind man, hobbling resolutely away. The Prince and Prosser, after standing a little longer, turned and went sadly home again.

XXIII

As Dwala and Huxtable were sitting at breakfast one morning, a week later, the butler leaned down in his gentle fatherly way over the Prince’s shoulder, and told him that a man had been asking for him.

‘A blind man, sir, with a little girl with him; very respectable. They came about half-past seven.’

‘Where are they?’

‘They went away again, sir.’

‘Did they say if they were coming back?’

‘Not a word, sir; they just turned round and went into the Park when they heard you wasn’t up.’

Dwala then propounded at length to Huxtable all his ideas about Hartopp and Joey. Huxtable listened quietly, with an occasional colourless: ‘Quite so, quite so.’ He retired to his room after breakfast, and walked up and down a great deal. His ideas cleared after some hours of perambulation. He arrived at the same conclusion as Prosser. Prince Dwala was an eccentric. He thought over the cases of a number of peers and millionaires he knew about who had been eccentric, and suddenly realised that eccentricity was more than respectable; it was _chic_: it belonged to the grandest school of behaviour. It was not what he had expected in coming to Prince Dwala; his own part would be difficult and call for care. It was like the Boer War; that had been eccentric too; but for that very reason it had been the making of his cousin Jim, who was now in command of a brigade. When he came down to luncheon he looked at Dwala with an interest almost tender.

Meanwhile Hartopp and Joey had not come back. Dwala had been out into Park Lane three or four times in the course of the morning, looking vainly up and down for them. There was only a patient four-wheeled cab, with two big new leather trunks on it, standing a little way off the gate; the driver opened his eyes heavily each time Dwala emerged, and then returned to sleep.

It was one of those solemn summer days which visit London like dreams: one of those days when Hyde Park, with its smooth lawns and ancient dignity of trees, seems like the revelation of a purpose in this fantastic world--a purpose to which the surface of aristocratic life, with its carriages and frocks and parasols, seems so well attuned, that one is convinced that the whole mass of it must needs be as respectable as Nature.

They came at last: Dwala was on the steps to meet them: Hartopp in a well-brushed black tail coat; Joey looking ugly in a tight velvet frock and feathered hat, her hair drawn back into a pig-tail, all clean but her hands.

They both looked tired and saddened. Dwala felt a sudden disillusion, a reduction of something big to small dimensions.

‘Is that your cab outside?’ he asked.

Joey nodded. ‘But we’ve not decided yet. We’ve only come to have a look.’

She ran up the steps, and stopped, peering into the dark entry, awed by the motionless forms of the big footmen.

They went all over the house with Dwala, from bottom to top, conscientiously, doggedly, examining everything. Joey insisted: Hartopp followed, mumbling morosely. Joey listened to all explanations with that air of undue, almost effusive, attentiveness, which marches so nearly with boredom. They saw Huxtable once on a landing: he was passing from one room to another, in spectacles, with a bundle of papers; he always wore spectacles till tea-time. He looked at them drily, externally, as one looks at events in another family.

A kind of depression, a melancholy hush, weighed on the whole house and household, as if someone had just died. One thing only was certain: they all knew that the pretence of a probation was an empty one; Hartopp and Joey had come to stay.

Hartopp was aware of this, and wondered at his own blank listlessness. The Enemy of Society felt suddenly as a wild bull might, which had spent a long hot day goring a big cathedral and was now being led quietly to a pew. There is a magic in our masquerading: it is with deep feelings of solemnity that man shuffles off one disguise and gets into another; the fraudulent company-promoter, growing rich, enters upon his fortune almost with the same ennobling awe as a young girl going to her Confirmation.

Hartopp made an effort: he stopped Dwala as they went downstairs.

‘Let’s understand one another clearly, Prince What’s-your-name. If I come, I come as a free man: Joey too. We come as gentry, or we don’t come at all. The servants are to treat us with respect as such. Do you see?’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘We’ll have the best of everything: eat what we like, drink what we like, spend as much money as we like. Do you see? No d----d philanthropy.’

‘I promise you solemnly.’

‘That’s right.’

The cabman was paid off and the boxes were brought in.

‘Both Joey’s,’ said Hartopp: ‘I’ve brought nothing.’

‘I’ll have a fire in my bedroom, please,’ said Joey.

Huxtable came in at tea-time and recounted three amusing anecdotes, at which Joey stared in awe and the old man chuckled faintly. The butler inquired if the young lady would like a maid to unpack her boxes. Joey declined: she would do it herself.

She went out primly after tea, to see to it, jangling keys on a string. Huxtable went back to some mysterious ‘work.’

Then the air cleared suddenly. The blind man unbent with a touch of humour. It is humour that keeps the door in the wall through which alone we may hope to peep into our neighbour’s garden. We have passed that ivy-grown, impenetrable portal a thousand times, when suddenly one day we find it open, and instead of a dog growling in an arid patch of weeds, we find a friendly neighbour grinning in our face.

‘Do you know what’s in those boxes?’ said Hartopp confidentially.

‘No; what?’

‘Wood pavement.’ He exploded with laughter. ‘Her things weren’t fit to bring, but she wouldn’t be seen arriving without luggage; so she put that in to weight them down. That’s what the fire’s for. She’ll keep ’em locked till she’s got it all burnt--a little day by day. Don’t let her know I told you.’

It was a great nuisance, Dwala said, he had to go out that evening. Huxtable must entertain them. As for himself, he was dining with Lady Wyse.

‘Is Lady Wyse a friend of yours?’

‘A great friend.’

‘The one whose name’s always in the paper?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, take my advice and don’t let Joey know.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’d look down on you.’

‘Why? Lady Wyse is a very charming woman.’

‘You say that because you’re a toff. She’d hear a very different name, if she came down our street. I’d tell her straight myself.’

XXIV