Chapter 4

There are moments, for certain people, when such fantastic unreality as this is the truest realism. Matthew and I talked like this with our brains, because we hadn't the courage to allow our hearts to break in upon the conversation. Had I dared to say some real emotional thing, what effect would it have had but to set poor tired Matthew a-coughing? and it was our aim that he should die with as little to-do as practicable. The emotional in such situations is merely the obvious. There was no need for either of us to state the elementary feelings of our love. I knew that Matthew was going to die, and he knew that--I was going to live, and we pitied each other accordingly; though I confess my feeling for him was rather one of envy,--when it was not congratulation.

Thus, to tell the truth, we never mentioned 'the hereafter.' I don't believe it even occurred to us. Indeed, we spent the few hours that remained of our friendship in retailing the latest gathered of those good stories with which we had been accustomed to salt our intercourse.

One of Matthew's anecdotes was, no doubt, somewhat suggested by the occasion, and I should add that he had always somewhat of an ecclesiastical bias--would, I believe, have ended some day as a Monsignor, a notable 'Bishop Blougram.'

His story was of an evangelistic preacher who desired to impress his congregation with the unmistakable reality of hell-fire. 'You know the Black Country, my friends,' he had declaimed,' you have seen it, at night, flaring with a thousand furnaces, in the lurid incandescence of which myriads of unhappy beings, our fellow-creatures (God forbid!), snatch a precarious existence--you have seen them silhouetted against the yellow glare, running hither and thither, as it seemed from afar, in the very jaws of the awful fire. Have you realised that the burdens with which they thus run hither and thither are molten iron, iron to which such a stupendous heat has been applied that it has melted, melted as though it had been sugar in the sun?--well! returning to hell-fire, let me tell you this, that in hell they eat this fiery molten metal for ice-cream!--yes! and are glad to get anything so cool.'

It was thus we talked while Matthew lay dying, for why should we not talk as we had lived? We both laughed long and heartily over this story; perhaps it would have amused us less had Matthew not been dying; and then his kind old nurse brought in our lunch. We had both excellent appetites, and were far from indifferent to the dainty little meal which was to be our last but one together. I brought my table as close to Matthew's pillow as was possible, and he stroked my hand with tenderness in which there was a touch of gratitude.

'You are not frightened of the bacteria!' he laughed sadly; and then he told me, with huge amusement, how a friend (and a true, dear friend for all that) had come to see him a day or two before, and had hung over the end of the bed to say farewell, daring to approach no nearer, mopping his fear-perspiring brows with a handkerchief soaked in 'Eucalyptus'!

'He had brought an anticipatory elegy too,' said my friend, 'written against my burial. I wish you'd read it for me,' and he fidgeted for it in the nervous manner of the dying. Finding it among his pillows, he handed it to me saying, 'You needn't be frightened of it. It is well dosed with Eucalyptus.'

We laughed even more over this poem than over our stories, and then we discussed the terms of three cremation societies to which, at the express request of my friend, I had written a day or two before.

Then having smoked a cigar and drunk a glass of port together (for the assured dying are allowed to 'live well'), Matthew grew sleepy, and, tucking him beneath the counterpane, I left him, for, after all, he was not to die that day.

Circumstances prevented my seeing him again for a week. When I did so, entering the room poignantly redolent of the strange sweet odour of antiseptics, I saw that the great artist had been busy in my absence. Indeed, his work was nearly at an end. Yet to one unfamiliar with his methods there was still little to alarm in Matthew's face. In fact, with the exception of his brain, and his ice-cold feet, he was alive as ever. And even to his brain had come a certain unnatural activity, a life as of the grave, a sort of vampire vitality, which would assuredly have deceived any who had not known him. He still told his stories, laughed and talked with the same unconquerable humour, was in every way alert and practical, with this difference, that he had forgotten he was going to die, that the world in which he exercised his various faculties was another world to that in which, in spite of his delirium, we ate our last boiled fowl, drank our last wine, smoked our last cigar together. His talk was so convincingly rational, dealt with such unreal matters in so every-day a fashion, that you were ready to think that surely it was you and not he whose mind was wandering.

'You might reach that pocket-book, and ring for Mrs. Davies,' he would say in so casual a way that of course you would ring. On Mrs. Davies's appearance he would be fumbling about among the papers in his pocket-book, and presently he would say, with a look of frustration that went to one's heart--'I've got a ten-pound note somewhere here for you, Mrs. Davies, to pay you up till Saturday, but somehow I seem to have lost it. Yet it must be somewhere about. Perhaps you'll find it as you make the bed in the morning. I'm so sorry to have troubled you....'

And then he would grow tired and doze a little on his pillow.

Suddenly he would be alert again, and with a startling vividness tell me strange stories from the dreamland into which he was now passing.

I had promised to see him on Monday, but had been prevented, and had wired to him accordingly. This was Tuesday.

'You needn't have troubled to wire,' he said. 'Didn't you know I was in London from Saturday to Monday?'

'The doctor and Mrs. Davies didn't know,' he continued with the creepy cunning of the dying: 'I managed to slip away to look at a house I think of taking--in fact I've taken it. It's in--in--now, where is it? Now isn't that silly? I can see it as plain as anything--yet I cannot, for the life of me, remember where it is, or the number.... It was somewhere St. John's Wood way ... never mind, you must come and see me there, when we get in....'

I said he was dying in debt, and thus the heaven that lay about his deathbed was one of fantastic Eldorados, sudden colossal legacies, and miraculous windfalls.

'I haven't told you,' he said presently, 'of the piece of good luck that has befallen me. You are not the only person in luck. I can hardly expect you to believe me, it sounds so like the Arabian Nights. However, it's true for all that. Well, one of the little sisters was playing in the garden a few afternoons ago, making mud-pies or something of that sort, and she suddenly scraped up a sovereign. Presently she found two or three more, and our curiosity becoming aroused, a turn or two with the spade revealed quite a bed of gold; and the end of it was, that on further excavating, the whole garden proved to be one mass of sovereigns. Sixty thousand pounds we counted ... and then, what do you think?--it suddenly melted away....'

He paused for a moment, and continued, more in amusement than regret--

'Yes--the Government got wind of it, and claimed the whole lot as treasure-trove!

'But not,' he added slyly, 'before I'd paid off two or three of my biggest bills. Yes--and--you'll keep it quiet, of course,--there's another lot been discovered in the garden, but we shall take good care the Government doesn't get hold of it this time, you bet.'

He told this wild story with such an air of simple conviction that, odd as it may seem, one believed every word of it. But the tale of his sudden good-fortune was not ended.

'You've heard of old Lord Osterley,' he presently began again. 'Well, congratulate me, old man: he has just died and left everything to me. You know what a splendid library he had--to think that that will all be mine--and that grand old park through which we've so often wandered, you and I! Well, we shall need fear no gamekeeper now, and of course, dear old fellow, you'll come and live with me--like a prince--and just write your own books and say farewell to journalism for ever. Of course I can hardly believe it's true yet. It seems too much of a dream, and yet there's no doubt about it. I had a letter from my solicitors this morning, saying that they were engaged in going through the securities, and--and--but the letter's somewhere over there; you might read it. No? can't you find it? It's there somewhere about, I know. Never mind, you can see it again....' he finished wearily.

'Yes!' he presently said, half to himself, 'it will be a wonderful change! a wonderful change!'

* * * * *

At length the time came to say good-bye, a good-bye I knew must be the last, for my affairs were taking me so far away from him that I could not hope to see him for some days.

'I'm afraid, old man,' I said, 'that I mayn't be able to see you for another week.'

'O never mind, old fellow, don't worry about me. I'm much better now--and by the time you come again we shall know all about the securities.'

The securities! My heart had seemed like a stone, incapable of feeling, all those last unreal hours together; but the pathos of that sad phrase, so curiously symbolic, suddenly smote it with overwhelming pity, and the tears sprang to my eyes for the first time. As I bent over him to kiss his poor damp forehead, and press his hand for the last farewell, I murmured--

'Yes--dear, dear old friend. We shall know all about the securities....'

THE BOOM IN YELLOW

Green must always have a large following among artists and art lovers; for, as has been pointed out, an appreciation of it is a sure sign of a subtle artistic temperament. There is something not quite good, something almost sinister, about it--at least, in its more complex forms, though in its simple form, as we find it in outdoor nature, it is innocent enough; and, indeed, is it not used in colloquial metaphor as an adjective for innocence itself? Innocence has but two colours, white or green. But Becky Sharp's eyes also were green, and the green of the aesthete does not suggest innocence. There will always be wearers of the green carnation; but the popular vogue which green has enjoyed for the last ten or fifteen years is probably passing. Even the aesthete himself would seem to be growing a little weary of its indefinitely divided tones, and to be anxious for a colour sensation somewhat more positive than those to be gained from almost imperceptible _nuances_, of green. Jaded with over-refinements and super-subtleties, we seem in many directions to be harking back to the primary colours of life. Blue, crude and unsoftened, and a form of magenta, have recently had a short innings; and now the triumph of yellow is imminent. Of course, a love for green implies some regard for yellow, and in our so-called aesthetic renaissance the sunflower went before the green carnation--which is, indeed, the badge of but a small schism of aesthetes, and not worn by the great body of the more catholic lovers of beauty.

Yellow is becoming more and more dominant in decoration--in wall-papers, and flowers cultivated with decorative intention, such as chrysanthemums. And one can easily understand why: seeing that, after white, yellow reflects more light than any other colour, and thus ministers to the growing preference for light and joyous rooms. A few yellow chrysanthemums will make a small room look twice its size, and when the sun comes out upon a yellow wall-paper the whole room seems suddenly to expand, to open like a flower. When it falls upon the pot of yellow chrysanthemums, and sets them ablaze, it seems as though one had an angel in the room. Bill-posters are beginning to discover the attractive qualities of the colour. Who can ever forget meeting for the first time upon a hoarding Mr. Dudley Hardy's wonderful Yellow Girl, the pretty advance-guard of _To-Day_? But I suppose the honour of the discovery of the colour for advertising purposes rests with Mr. Colman; though its recent boom comes from the publishers, and particularly from the Bodley Head. _The Yellow Book_ with any other colour would hardly have sold as well--the first private edition of Mr. Arthur Benson's poems, by the way, came caparisoned in yellow, and with the identical name, _Le Cahier Jaune_; and no doubt it was largely its title that made the success of _The Yellow Aster_. In literature, indeed, yellow has long been the colour of romance. The word 'yellow-back' witnesses its close association with fiction; and in France, as we know, it is the all but universal custom to bind books in yellow paper. Mr. Heinemann and Mr. Unwin have endeavoured to naturalise the custom here; but, though in cloth yellow has emphatically 'caught on,' in paper it still hangs fire. The ABC Railway Guide is probably the only exception, and that, it is to be hoped, is not fiction. Mr. Lang has recently followed the fashion with his _Yellow Fairy Book_; and, indeed, one of the best known figures in fairydom is yellow--namely, the Yellow Dwarf. Yellow, always a prominent Oriental colour, was but lately of peculiar significance in the Far East; for were not the sorrows of a certain high Chinese official intimately connected with the fatal colour? The Yellow Book, the Yellow Aster, the Yellow Jacket!--and the Yellow Fever, like 'Orion' Home's sunshine, is always with us' somewhere in the world.' The same applies also, I suppose, to the Yellow Sea.

Till one comes to think of it, one hardly realises how many important and pleasant things in life are yellow. Blue and green, no doubt, contract for the colouring of vast departments of the physical world. 'Blue!' sings Keats, in a fine but too little known sonnet--

'... 'Tis the life of heaven--the domain Of Cynthia--the wide palace of the sun-- The tent of Hesperus, and all his train-- The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters ... Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers.'

Yellow might retort by quoting Mr. Grant Allen, in his book on _The Colour Sense_, to the effect that the blueness of sea and sky is mainly poetical illusion or inaccuracy, and that sea and sky are found blue only in one experiment out of fourteen. At morning and evening they are usually in great part stained golden. Blue certainly has one advantage over yellow, in that it has the privilege of colouring some of the prettiest eyes in the world. Yellow has a chance only in cases of jaundice and liver complaint, and his colour scheme in such cases is seldom appreciated. Again, green has the contract for the greater bulk of the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, _ad infinitum_; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellow thus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of the things it colours, rather than in their mileage or tonnage, that yellow is distinguished; though, for that matter, we suppose, the sun is as big and heavy as most things, and that is yellow. Of course, when we say yellow we include golden, and all varieties of the colour--saffron, orange, flaxen, tawny, blonde, topaz, citron, etc.

If the sun may reasonably be described as the most important object in the world, surely money is the next. That, as we know, is, in its most potent metallic form, yellow also. The 'yellow gold' is a favourite phrase in certain forms of poetry; and 'yellow-boys' is a term of natural affection among sailors. Following the example of their lord the sun, most fires and lights are yellow or golden, and it is only in times of danger or superstition that they burn red or blue. And, if yellow be denied entrance to beautiful eyes, it enjoys a privilege which--except in the case of certain indigo-staining African tribes, who cannot be said to count--blue has never claimed: that of colouring perhaps the loveliest thing in the world, the hair of woman. Hair is naturally golden--unnaturally also. When Browning sings pathetically of 'dear dead women--with such hair too!' he continues:--

'What's become of all the _gold_ Used to hang and brush their bosoms'--

not 'all the blue' or 'all the brown,' though some of us, it is true, are condemned to wear our hair brown or blue-black. But such are only unhappy exceptions. Yellow or gold is the rule. The bravest men and the fairest women have had golden hair, and, we may add, in reference to another distinction of the colour we are celebrating, golden hearts. Hair at the present time is doing its best to conform to its normal conditions of colour. Numerous instances might be adduced of its changing from black to gold, in obedience to chemical law. 'Peroxide of hydrogen!' says the cynic. 'Beauty!' says the lover of art.

And it might be argued, in a world of inevitable compromise, that the damage done to the physical health and texture of the hair thus playing the chameleon may well be overbalanced by the happiness, and consequent increased effectiveness, of the person thus dyeing for the sake of beauty. Thaumaturgists lay much stress on the mystic influence of colours; and who knows but that, if we were only allowed to dye our hair what colour we chose, we might be different men and women? Strange things are told of women who have dyed their hair the colour of blood or of wine, and we know from Christina Rossetti that golden hair is negotiable in fairyland--

'"You have much gold upon your head," They answered all together: "Buy from us with a golden curl."'

Whether Laura could have done business with the goblin merchantmen with an oxidised curl is a difficult point, for fairies have sharp eyes; and, though it be impossible for a mortal to tell the real gold from the false gold hair, the fairies may be able to do so, and might reject the curl as counterfeit.

Again, if in the vegetable world green almost universally colours the leaves, yellow has more to do with the flowers. The flowers we love best are yellow: the cowslip, the daffodil, the crocus, the buttercup, half the daisy, the honeysuckle, and the loveliest rose. Yellow, too, has its turn even with the leaves; and what an artist he shows himself when, in autumn, he 'lays his fiery finger' upon them, lighting up the forlorn woodland with splashes--pure palette-colour of audacious gold! He hangs the mulberry with heart-shaped yellow shields--which reminds one of the heraldic importance of 'or,'--and he lines the banks of the Seine with phantasmal yellow poplars. And other leaves still dearer to the heart are yellow likewise; leaves of those sweet old poets whose thoughts seem to have turned the pages gold. Let us dream of this: a maid with yellow hair, clad in a yellow gown, seated in a yellow room, at the window a yellow sunset, in the grate a yellow fire, at her side a yellow lamplight, on her knee a Yellow Book. And the letters we love best to read--when we dare--are they not yellow too? No doubt some disagreeable things are reported of yellow. We have had the yellow-fever, and we have had pea-soup. The eyes of lions are said to be yellow, and the ugliest cats--the cats that infest one's garden--are always yellow. Some medicines are yellow, and no doubt there are many other yellow disagreeables; but we prefer to dwell upon the yellow blessings. I had almost forgotten that the gayest wines are yellow. Nor has religion forgotten yellow. It is to be hoped yellow will not forget religion. The sacred robe of the second greatest religion of the world is yellow, 'the yellow robe' of the Buddhist friar; and when the sacred harlots of Hindustan walk in lovely procession through the streets, they too, like the friars, are clad in yellow. Amber is yellow; so is the orange; and so were stage-coaches and many dashing things of the old time; and pink is yellow by lamplight. But gold-mines, it has been proved, are not so yellow as is popularly supposed. Hymen's robe is Miltonically 'saffron,' and the dearest petticoat in all literature--not forgetting the 'tempestuous' garment of Herrick's Julia--was 'yaller.' Yes!--

''Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' er name was Supi-yaw-lat, jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen.'

Is it possible to say anything prettier for yellow than that?

LETTER TO AN UNSUCCESSFUL LITERARY MAN

My Dear Sir,--I agree with every word you say. You have my entire sympathy. The world is indeed hard, hard to the sad--particularly hard to the unsuccessful. A sure five hundred a year covers a multitude of sorrows. It is ever an ill wind for the shorn lamb. If it be true that nothing succeeds like success, it is no less sadly true that nothing fails like failure. And when one thinks of it, it is only natural, for every failure is an obstruction in the stream of life. Metaphorical writers are fond of saying that the successful ride to success on the back of the failures. It is true that many rise on stepping-stones of their dead relations--but that is because their relations have been financial successes. In truth, instead of the failure making the fortune of the successful, it is just the reverse. A very successful man would be the more successful were it not for the failures--on whom he has either to spend his money to support, or his time to advise. The strong are said to be impatient towards the weak--and is it to be wondered at, in a world where even the strongest need all their strength, in a sea where the best swimmer needs all his wind and muscle and skill to keep afloat? If success is sometimes 'unfeeling' towards failure, failure is often unfair to success. Of course, 'it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves,' but that is a text that cuts both ways; and when all is said and done, the failure detracts from the force in the universe; he is the clog on the wheel of fortune. To say that the successful man benefits by the failure of others is as true as it would be to say that the ratepayer benefits by the poor-rates. You use the word 'charlatan' somewhat profusely of several successful writers, and no doubt you are right. But you must remember that it is a favourite charge against the gifted and the fortunate. Because we have failed by fair means, we are sure the other fellows have succeeded by foul. And, moreover, one is apt to forget how much talent is needed to be a charlatan. Never look down upon a charlatan. Courage, skill, personal force or charm, great knowledge of human nature, dramatic instinct, and industry--few charlatans succeed (and no one is called a charlatan till he _does_ succeed, be his success as low or high as you please) without possessing a majority of these qualities; how many of which--it would be interesting to know--do you possess?

Indeed, it would seem to need more gifts to be a rogue than an honest man, and there is a sense in which every great man may be described as a charlatan--_plus_ greatness; greatness being an almost indefinable quality, a quality, at any rate, on which there is a bewildering diversity of opinion.