Part 5

He explained, to my great astonishment, that if you alter the time and the general hang of a tune, and play it with all the solemn notes and deep stops and flourishes of an organ, the most skillful ear is deceived. It was only another tribute to the man’s amazing cleverness; but somehow I felt disappointed that he should have done this thing. It seemed unworthy of him. He had a piano of his own, secured on the hire system; and upon this instrument, after dinner, he played me a great deal of his own music, including many of the numbers from a beautiful fairy opera that he had written with a friend—the words being by the friend.

“The libretto is footle,” confessed Wardle; “but if I could only get a libretto worth talking about, I should surprise some of us.”

I told him that he had already surprised me; but, of course, he meant the outer world of opera-goers and enthusiasts of music, who abound in London, and are to be seen thronging the great concert halls by night.

Another man of exceptional genius was Bassett—a volunteer and a crack shot. He belonged to the Artists’ Corps and was, you might say, every inch a soldier, in the complete disguise of an insurance clerk.

This martial man seemed always to be panting for bloodshed, and openly hoped that England would go to war with some important nation—in fact, one of the Great Powers for choice—before he was too old to participate in the struggle. He knew as much of our military heroes as Tomlinson knew of our racehorses. He was not content with being a sergeant in the Artists’ Corps and one of their leading marksmen, but also went into the deepest science of battle and tactics and strategy. He read war by day and he dreamed of war by night, and he would have liked to see conscription come in at any moment.

This fiery, but large-hearted man was very anxious for me to become a volunteer, and it was a great sorrow to me to find that he did not feel any further interest in me when I refused to do so, while thanking him heartily for the idea. He said that drilling was far better and more useful than going down to the L.A.C. to caper about half-naked, and that if I did regular drills and so on, I should in time come to the Field Days, and have all the joy of forced marches and maneuvers at Easter, and sleeping under canvas, and going on sentry duty by night and waking to the ringing sound of the trumpet at dawn.

But none of these things tempted me as much as Bassett expected. In fact, I had already discovered in earlier life that the god Mars was nothing to me. Bassett said that he didn’t know what the young generation was coming to when I told him this, and he hinted, rather openly, that I was unpatriotic. But I would not allow that I was. I said:

“We can’t all be volunteers, any more than we can all be proper soldiers.”

And Dicky Travers, who, though also quite dead to the martial spirit, was a most patriotic man in sporting matters, called Bassett a “dog-shooter”!

This, however, was merely repartee, of which Mr. Travers was a complete master. In fact, he had invented a nickname for everybody in the Department, and at his wish, having a slight turn for rhyming, I made up a long poem of thirty-eight verses, being one verse for each man in the Department. The mere poetry, which was nothing, was mine; but the rich humour and subtle irony, not to say satire, was the work of Dicky Travers. Each verse of this poem was arranged in the shape of a “Limerick,” which is a simple sort of rhyme well suited to humour combined with satire; and it showed the delicate skill of Mr. Travers and his surprising knowledge of human nature, that each person who read the poem invariably laughed very heartily at thirty-seven verses—in fact, all except the verse about himself. I noticed this peculiar fact and was rather astonished at it; but Travers was not astonished. He said:

“My dear Corkey, when you are as old as I am, you will find that to see your friends scored off is one of those trials in life which you can always manage to get over. But the feeling is entirely different when anybody scores off you.”

I may give a glimpse of yet another first-class and original man before concluding this short chapter and proceeding to more serious business.

In some ways Mr. Bent, who lived at Chislehurst, was among the most naturally gifted of the staff of the Country Department of the Apollo. His talent, or you might almost say “genius,” was purely horticultural; and by dint of long and patient study, and devoting his entire spare income and all his spare time to the subject, he had gradually arranged and planted a garden that would undoubtedly have become historical, if only it had been a little bit larger.

It was his custom to give the Department a taste of his great skill during the summer months, for flowers were to him what a sporting paper was to Tomlinson, or a rifle to Bassett—in fact, the breath of his nostrils.

On his desk he had two vases, and in these vases always stood choice blossoms during official hours. Sometimes I recognised them, and oftener I did not; but when I did not, Mr. Bent, who was a man of mild expression and thin and stooping appearance, told me the names, such as Alströmeria and Carpentaria and Berberidopsis and Oncocyclus Iris and Pardanthes and Calochortus and Magnolia and Mummy Pea and many another horticultural triumph of the rarest sort. After the day was done, with the generosity of the born gardener, he would give away these precious things to anybody who wanted a buttonhole; but there were times when he naturally expected some return for magnificent hothouse exotics, which he brought to the office in the depths of winter or early spring, when flowers were worth money. Such things as gardenias and Maréchal Niel roses and Eucharis lilies he invariably raffled—not, as he told me, for gain, but simply to pay, or help pay, for the expense of buying coke for his hothouse, the temperature of which had to be kept up to fever heat, as you might say, in order that the various tropical marvels grown by Mr. Bent should survive the English winter.

Finding that I was very anxious to understand gardening, because I knew that many famous actors had said in newspapers that they occupied their leisure in their palatial gardens and orchid houses, Mr. Bent most kindly allowed me to go down one afternoon after office hours, not only to see his garden, but, better still, to watch him gardening in it.

“It is a pursuit that needs certain gifts,” he told me, as we rode in the train to Chislehurst. “You must, of course, first have the enthusiasm and love of the science for itself but that is not enough. You must make sacrifices and read learned books and study the life-history of plants and their various requirements. Some, for instance, like lime and some die if you give them lime. A lily, or a rhodo. or an azalea hates lime; a rose likes it. Some alpine plants must have limestone chips to be prosperous; others, again, like granite chips. My son, a child of tender age but already full of the gardening instinct, once gave a choice saxifrage a pennyworth of cocoanut chips—under the infantile hope that what pleased him so well would please the plant. A touching story which does not in my opinion spoil by repetition.”

In this improving way Mr. Bent talked, and when we reached his home he disappeared instantly to don his gardening clothes, while his wife gave me some tea. She, too, was a gardener and very kindly advised me to be especially delighted with a plant called Mysotidium, which Mr. Bent had flowered for the first time in his life. It was rather like a huge forget-me-not with rhubarb leaves, and it came from New Zealand and cost five shillings.

Then Mrs. Bent’s little boy arrived and she told me how he had given cocoanut chips to the saxifrage; and he didn’t like me, unfortunately, and wouldn’t go into the garden with me. And then Mr. Bent returned accoutred in all the trappings of the professional gardener. He wore a blue apron and leather gloves and a clump of bast sticking out of his pocket; and his trousers and sleeves turned up and everything complete.

“I must be busy,” he said, “but my collection is completely labeled, and you will have no difficulty in following the general scheme of the garden.”

This was true, because of the great simplicity of the scheme. The garden, in fact, ran down quite straight between two other gardens, and finished at a brick wall.

“A howling wilderness you see on each side,” explained Mr. Bent, waving his trowel to the right and left. By this he meant, of course, that the other gardens only had roses and wallflowers and carnations and larkspurs and lilac, and the common or garden flowers familiar to the common or garden gardener. But it was no “side” on Mr. Bent’s part to talk in this scornful way, because to him, from his eagle heights of horticulture, so to speak, his neighbours’ gardens were barren wastes, with nothing in them to detain the expert for a moment.

His garden was literally stuffed with rare and curious things. He admitted that some of them were not beautiful; but they were rare and in some cases he doubted if anybody else in Kent had them. It never occurred to him that nobody else in Kent might want them. Everything was beautifully labelled with metal labels, and many of the rarer and more precious alpine plants had zinc guards put round them to keep away garden pests, such as slugs and snails.

I couldn’t believe that a snail would have dared to show his face in that garden; but Mr. Bent said he always had to be fighting them, and that sometimes they conquered and managed to scale a zinc guard and devour a small choice alpine in a single night!

He had most beautiful flowers to show me; or rather he let me walk up and down among them while he gardened. It was very interesting to see the sure professional touch of Mr. Bent. He never hesitated or doubted what to do. He knew exactly what to cut off a plant, or how much water to give it, or how to tie up a trailer. He planted out a few seedling zinnias to show me. Then he watered them in and removed the seed boxes, and all was neat and tidy in a moment.

He handled long and difficult Latin names with the consummate ease of a native, and he showed me piles of gardeners’ catalogues. Once he had raised a begonia from seed, which they accepted at Kew Gardens, and the Director of Kew gave him something in exchange for his hothouse.

“It died,” said Mr. Bent, “and that through no fault of mine; but the distinction and the compliment have not died and never will.”

He was a member of the R.H.S., or Royal Horticultural Society, and he had shown a plant now and again at their meetings, but without any honour falling to it.

Before supper I was allowed to help Mr. Bent with a garden hose on the grass; and while we were at work a man from next-door looked over the wall and wished Mr. Bent “good-evening” and asked for some advice. Seeing me, he told me the story of Mr. Bent’s little boy and the cocoanut chips for the third time; then he explained to Mr. Bent that his sweet peas were curling up rather oddly and said that he would thank him to go and have a look at them.

“Good Lord, the peas a failure!” said Mr. Bent; then with his usual kindness he instantly hastened to see if anything could be done. When he returned I could see that he was troubled.

“His peas have failed,” he said. “It is one of those disasters that come upon even good gardeners sometimes. Not that Mason is a good gardener, or, in fact, a gardener at all in the real sense. I don’t know what has happened to his peas—the trouble is below ground and might be one of five different things; but all is over with the peas. I have told him to give up hope about them. I may be able to spare him some annuals later.”

Mrs. Bent, who was a most perfect woman for a gardener’s wife, insisted on picking me a bunch of good and sweet flowers before I went away, and then, just as I was going, Mr. Bent’s brother-in-law walked past the gate and stopped to ask a horticultural question. He was a beginner, but such was Mr. Bent’s fire and genius in these matters that he inspired everybody with his own passion for the science and, as he truly said, no one could know him intimately without sooner or later becoming a gardener.

I am sure I was full of enthusiastic joy about it after supper, and if my Aunt Augusta had had enough garden to grow a blade of grass, I should have planted one. Even as it was, I planned a box for bulbs and things during the next autumn.

Mr. Bent’s brother-in-law happened to be going to the tobacconist’s, and he walked as far as the station with me after he had bought half a pound of coarse tobacco to fumigate his greenhouse, which was bursting with green-fly and other pests. Thus I heard the story of Mr. Bent’s little boy and the cocoanut chips for the fourth time, and it was rather instructive in its way to find how the fun of it had waned. In fact, such was my feeling to the story, that I didn’t even tell it to Aunt Augusta when I got home; though, coming fresh to her, it might have faintly amused her.

As an example of the poem that I had written with Dicky Travers, I may here quote the verse upon Mr. Bent. It ran as follows:

“A middle-aged wonder called Bent, Made the deuce of a garden in Kent, And his roses and lilies And daffadown dillies All helped with the gentleman’s rent.”

Here, you see, was humour combined with satire. But the peculiarity of the poem held in the case of this verse, as it did in all the others. While everybody else thought it good, Mr. Bent considered it vulgar and didn’t like it in the least, because of the ironic allusion to raffles.

He never asked me to see his garden again, though I entered for raffle after raffle of his choice exotics and once won four fine gardenias, at the ridiculous cost of a penny, and took them home to Aunt Augusta.

VII

In course of time Mr. Travers informed me that I was elected an active member of the L.A.C. These magic letters stand for the London Athletic Club, easily the most famous athletic club in the world. I had been there as one of the public on several occasions, and already knew by sight such giants of the arena as Phillips and George and Cowie and other most notable men, all historically famous. In fact George soon joined the professional ranks, as we say, and the day was coming when he would run a mile faster than anybody in the world had ever run it.

The first time I went to Stamford Bridge it so happened that a most sad misfortune fell on my friend Dicky Travers.

He had entered for a two-mile walking race and trained very carefully for it—as well he might, because, such was his universal fame at this distance, that he was handicapped to give all the other competitors a lot of start. Some had actually as much as a minute start; but Dicky started from scratch. He told me in the morning of the day that he felt very well and expected to get pretty near fourteen minutes for the two miles. I lunched with him on the day, and, as it was an evening meeting at the L.A.C. and he would not be racing before six o’clock, he ate a steak and some bread and cheese; but he drank nothing but water; because experience had shown him that beer was no use before a great struggle of this sort.

In due time, after the first heats of a “sprint” and a half-mile race, the walking competition came on, and I was very glad to hear several spectators cheer Travers when he appeared on the cinder path. I also did the same. He wore black drawers and vest; but the rest of him was, of course, entirely bare, save for his feet, which were encased in walking shoes which he had made expressly to his directions. In each hand he carried an oblong cork, and his face had a cheerful and calm expression which little indicated the great ordeal before him.

Eight men had entered for the race, and the limit man went off at such a great pace that it seemed absurd to suppose Travers could ever get near him. Others started quickly after each other according to the handicap, and then a man called Forrester started. He was next to Travers and received only ten seconds start from him. But such was his speed that he had gone about forty yards before Dicky was told to go.

Every eye was fixed upon the scratch man as, with a magnificent and raking action, he set out on his gigantic task. Though not very tall, he had a remarkable stride, and his legs, which were slightly hairy and magnificently shaped, were remarkable, owing to a muscle that had developed on the front of the shin bones. This is the walking muscle, and only great walkers and racers have it developed in this extraordinary manner. Travers had a very long stride and a graceful motion. You didn’t realise that he was going so fearfully fast till you saw that, from the first, he began to gain upon the rest. Some of the others—all, of course, men of great distinction—appeared to be walking quite as fast as Dicky; but they were not. Umpires ran along on the grass inside the track to see the walking was fair; and the men who performed this onerous task had all been famous also in their day.

At last they exercised their umpiring powers and stopped one of the competitors. He had a most curious action, certainly, and several experts near me prophesied from the first that he would be pulled out. He didn’t seem to be actually running and he didn’t seem to be actually walking. It was a kind of shuffle of a very swift and speedy character; but whatever it exactly was, the umpires didn’t like it and told him that he was disqualified. He was a very tall man in a red costume, and he didn’t seem in the least surprised when they stopped him. In fact he was rather glad, I believe. A spectator next to me, smoking a cigar and talking very loud, said that the man had been really making the pace for another man.

Now the race had covered a mile and Travers was walking in the most magnificent manner it is possible to describe. An expression of great fierceness was in his eye and he was foaming slightly at the mouth, like a spirited steed. He and the man who had received ten seconds from him were too good for the rest of the field, and when they had covered a mile and a half, they passed the leader up to that distance and simply left him standing still. It was now clear there was going to be a historic race for the victory between Forrester and Travers, and the supporters of each great athlete shouted encouragement and yelled and left no stone unturned to excite their man to make a supreme effort and win. Travers and Forrester were walking one behind the other and it was, of course, a classical exhibition of fair “heel-and-toe” work, such as is probably never seen outside the famous precincts of the L.A.C. I shrieked for Travers and the man next me, with the cigar, howled for Forrester. Such was his excitement that the man with the cigar seized his hat and waved it to Forrester as he passed; and seeing him do this, I seized my hat, too, and waved it to Dicky.

Of course Travers, with the enormous cunning of the old stager, had kept just behind Forrester all the way—to let him set the pace; but now he knew that Forrester was slacking off a little—to save himself for a great finish—and so Travers felt that the time had come to make his bid for victory. It was just passing me that he did so, and I saw the flash of genius in his eye as he gathered himself for the supreme effort that was to dash the hopes of Forrester. Only one more round of the cinder track had to be made, so Dicky instantly got to Forrester’s shoulder and, after a few terrific moments, during which I and the man with the cigar and many others practically ceased to breathe, Travers wrested the lead from Forrester. It was a gigantic achievement and a cool and knowing sportsman near me with a stop watch in his hand declared that if Dicky wasn’t pulled up he would do fourteen and a quarter. “He’s getting among it,” said the cool hand, which was his way of meaning that Travers was promised to achieve a notable performance.

But Forrester was not yet done with. This magnificent walker, in no way discouraged by his doughty foeman, stuck gamely to his colossal task and Travers, try as he would, could not shake him off.

“He’s lifting! He’s lifting!” screamed the man with the cigar. “Pull him out—stop him!”

“He’s not—you’re a liar!” I shouted back, in a fever of rage, because the friend of Forrester, of course, meant that Travers was lifting. And if you “lift” in a walking race, you are running and not walking and all is over.

They had only two hundred yards to go and Travers was still in front, when an umpire, to my horror, approached Dicky. He had been watching Dicky’s legs with a microscopic scrutiny for some time and now he stopped the leader and told him that he was disqualified.

I shouted “Shame! Shame!” with all my might, and so did several other men; but the man with the cigar, who evidently understood only too well the subtleties of lifting among sprint walkers, screamed shrilly with exaggerated joy and behaved like a silly fool in every possible way.

Forrester, relieved of his formidable rival, took jolly good care not to lift himself. And as the next man in the race was nearly a hundred yards behind, he, of course, won comfortably.

Travers behaved like the magnificent sportsman he was, and I felt just as proud of knowing him as if he’d actually won; for he did not whine and swear and bully the umpires or anything like that. He just took his coat from the bench where he had thrown it before the race, inquired of the timekeeper what Forrester had done it in, and presently walked into the dressing-room with the others, quite indifferent to the hearty cheers that greeted him and the victor.

I went in while he dressed and he said the verdict, though hard, was just.

“I knew he was going to do me when he came up again after I passed him,” explained Travers. “He’s a North London chap in a lawyer’s office. I’ve never walked against him before. I ought to have pushed him much earlier and tried to outwalk him for the mile. He’s got fine pace. Look at the time—14.22—and he wasn’t walking after I came off. I meet him again at Catford Bridge next month. He seems a very good sort.”

Thus did this remarkable sportsman take his defeat. But he was, of course, cast down by it, for he had only been stopped twice before during the whole of his honourable and brilliant career on the cinder path.

As for my own experience, I went down after my election and Travers himself came to see how I shaped. At Merivale I had been a sprinter and had done well up to two hundred yards, and since I came to London I had seen Harry Hutchings—the greatest sprinter who ever lived and of course a professional champion. Therefore I decided to go in for that branch of the pedestrian’s art. I bought my costume, which was entirely black, like Dicky’s, and a pair of spiked running shoes and a black bag to carry them in. Then I went down one evening after office hours with my friend, and he introduced me to Nat Perry and his son, Charles Perry. Nat Perry was the hero of many a hard-won field, and immense and dogged courage sat upon his bronzed and clean-shaved countenance. Many hundreds of athletes had passed through his hands to victory or defeat, as the case might be, and he was a master in the art of judging an athlete’s powers. As the friend of Travers he welcomed me with great kindness, heard that I wanted to be a sprinter, but seemed doubtful whether I was the sort of build for that branch of running.

“You look more like a half-miler or miler with them legs,” he said, casting his eye over me critically but kindly. “And you’re on the thin side. You want to put on some flesh. But you’re young yet.”