Part 7

There were rare nights—nights of great winds—when we would suddenly realise that fear had entered into the room, and that, after all, we were children in a world of men. Our efforts to talk resulted in tremulous whispers that bred fear rather than allayed it, and though we would not even then admit it, we knew that we were possessed with a great loneliness. Sooner or later some cunning spirit would suggest a pilgrimage to the realms of the Olympians, and treading the warm stair-carpet with our bare feet, we would journey till we heard the comforting sound of their laughter and the even murmur of their conversation. Sometimes we would stay there till we grew sleepy, and the fear passed away, so that we could tiptoe back to bed, wondering a little at ourselves; sometimes the Olympians would discover us, and comfort our timid hearts with rough words and sweet biscuits. In the morning we would pretend that the whole business had been only an adventure, and we were not above bragging of our courage in daring the ire of the grown-up people. But we knew better.

STREET-ORGANS

IT is very true, as Mr. Chesterton must have remarked somewhere, that the cult of simplicity is one of the most complex inventions of civilisation. To eat nuts in a meadow when you can eat a beefsteak in a restaurant is neither simple nor primitive; it is merely perverse, in the same way that the art of Gauguin is perverse. A shepherd-boy piping to his flock in Arcady and a poet playing the penny whistle in a Soho garret may make the same kind of noise; but whereas the shepherd-boy knows no better, the poet has to pretend that he knows no better. So I reject scornfully the support of those amateurs who profess to like street-organs because they are the direct descendants of the itinerant ballad-singers of the romantic past; or because they represent the simple musical tastes of the majority to-day. I refuse to believe that in appreciating the sound of the complex modern instruments dragged across London by Cockneys disguised as Italians the soul of the primitive man who lurks in some dim oubliette of everybody’s consciousness is in any way comforted. I should imagine that that poor prisoner, if civilisation’s cruelty has not deprived him of the faculty of hearing, is best pleased by such barbaric music as the howling of the wind or the sound of railway-engines suffering in the night; and indeed every one must have noticed that sometimes certain sounds unmusical in themselves can arouse the same emotions as the greatest music.

But it is not on this score that street-organs escape our condemnation; their music has certain defects that even distance cannot diminish, and they invariably give us the impression of a man speaking through his nose in a high-pitched voice, without ever pausing to take breath. If, in spite of this, we have a kindness for them, it is because of their association with the gladdest moments of childhood. To the adult ear they bring only desolation and distraction, but to the children the organ-man, with his curly black hair and his glittering earrings, seems to be trailing clouds of glory. For them the barrel-organ combines the merits of Wagner, Beethoven, Strauss, and Debussy, and Orpheus would have to imitate its eloquent strains on his lute if he wished to captivate the hearts of London children.

When I was a child the piano-organ and that terrible variant that reproduces the characteristic stutter of the mandoline with deadly fidelity were hardly dreamed of, but the ordinary barrel-organ and the prehistoric hurdy-gurdy, whose quavering notes suggested senile decay, satisfied our natural craving for melody. It is true that they did not make so much noise as the modern instruments, but in revenge they were almost invariably accompanied by a monkey in a little red coat or a performing bear. I always had a secret desire to turn the handle of the organ myself; and when—too late in life to enjoy the full savour of the feat—I persuaded a wandering musician to let me make the experiment, I was surprised to find that it is not so easy as it looks to turn the handle without jerking it, and that the arm of the amateur is weary long before the repertoire of the organ is exhausted. It is told of Mascagni that he once taught an organ-man how to play his notorious Intermezzo to the fullest effect; but I fancy that in professional circles the story would be discredited, for the arm of the practised musician acquires by force of habit a uniform rate of revolution, and in endeavouring to modify that rate he would lose all control over his instrument.

Personally, I do not like hearing excerpts from Italian opera on the street-organs, because that is not the kind of music that children can dance to, and it is, after all, in supplying an orchestra for the ballroom of the street that they best justify their existence. The spectacle of little ragged children dancing to the music of the organ is the prettiest and merriest and saddest thing in the world. In France and Belgium they waltz; in England they have invented a curious compound of the reel, the gavotte, and the cakewalk. The best dancers in London are always little Jewesses, and it is worth anybody’s while to go to Whitechapel at midday to see Miriam dancing on the cobbles of Stoney Lane. There is not, as I once thought, a thwarted enchanter shut up inside street-organs who cries out when the handle turns in the small of his back. But why is it that I feel instinctively that magicians have drooping moustaches and insinuating smiles, if it is not that my mind as a child founded its conception of magicians on itinerant musicians? And they weave powerful spells, strong enough to make these poor little atomies forget their birthright of want and foot it like princesses. Children approach their amusements with a gravity beside which the work of a man’s life seems deplorably flippant. A baby toddling round a bandstand is a far more impressive sight than a grown man circumnavigating the world, and children do not smile when they dance—all the laughter is in their feet.

When from time to time “brain-workers” write to the newspapers to suggest that street musicians should be suppressed I feel that the hour has almost come to start a movement in favour of Votes for Children. It is disgraceful, ladies and gentlemen, that this important section of the community, on whom the whole future of the nation depends, should have no voice in the forming of the nation’s laws! This question of street-organs cannot be solved by banishing them to the slums without depriving many children of a legitimate pleasure. For, _sub rosa_, the children of Park Lane—if there are any children in Park Lane—and even the children of “brain-workers,” appreciate the music of street organs quite as much as their humble contemporaries. While father buries his head under the sofa-cushions and composes furious letters to the _Times_ in that stuffy hermitage, little noses are pressed against the window-pane, little hands applaud, and little feet beat time on the nursery floor upstairs. This is one of those situations where it is permissible to sympathise with all parties, and unless father can achieve an almost inhuman spirit of tolerance I see no satisfactory solution.

For children must have music; they must have tunes to think to and laugh to and live to. Funeral marches to the grave are all very well for the elderly and disillusioned, but youth must tread a more lively measure. And this music should come like the sunshine in winter, surprisingly, at no fixed hour, as though it were a natural consequence of life. One of the gladdest things about the organ-man in our childhood was the unexpectedness of his coming. Life would be dragging a little in schoolroom circles, when suddenly we would hear the organ clearing its throat as it were; we would all run to the window to wave our hands to the smiling musician, and shout affectionate messages to his intelligent monkey, who caught our pennies in his little pointed cap. In those days we had all made up our minds that when we grew up we would have an organ and a monkey of our own. I think it is rather a pity that with age we forget these lofty resolutions of our childhood. I have formed a conception of the ideal street-organist that would only be fulfilled by some one who had realised the romance of that calling in their youth.

How often, when the children have been happiest and the dance has been at its gayest, I have seen the organ-man fold music’s wings and move on to another pitch in search of pennies! I should like to think that it is a revolt against this degraded commercialism that inspires the protests of the critics of street music. The itinerant musician who believed in art for art’s sake would never move on so long as he had an appreciative audience; and sometimes, though I am afraid this would be the last straw to the “brain-workers,” he would arrive at two o’clock in the morning, and the children, roused from their sleep, would hear Pan piping to his moonlit flocks, and would believe that they were still in the pleasant country of dreams.

A SECRET SOCIETY

NOW that the Houndsditch affair has been laid aside by the man in the street and it is once more possible for a bearded Englishman to tread the pavements of London without reproach, I may perhaps venture to give some account of a secret society with which I have been intimately connected, without earning the reputation of a monger of sensations.

Some four or five years ago I met a picturesque journalist who told me that he had once been at pains to worm out the secrets of an anarchist society in London, and had incorporated his discoveries in a volume so marvellous that no editor or publisher would believe it. I only remember one incident of all his wonderful adventures. He was led by an anarchist comrade into a small shop in the Strand, thence into a cellar, and thence along a series of passages and caverns that ultimately brought him out in Seven Dials! Even Mr. Chesterton’s detective-anarchists in the “Man who was Thursday” could not beat this. For my part I shall not try, but shall content myself with a straightforward narration of facts.

I should think it was about last July that I first noticed that the children of my neighbourhood, with whom I have some small acquaintance, were endeavouring to assume a sinister aspect, and were wearing a cryptic button with a marked air of secrecy. When I came out for my morning walk the front garden would be animated with partially concealed children like the park in Mr. Kipling’s “They,” and though I have long realised that suburban front gardens do not lend themselves to the higher horticulture, I felt the natural embarrassment of the man who does not know whether he is expected to expel trespassers or welcome bashful visitors. In the circumstances I affected not to notice that the lilac was murmurous with ill-suppressed laughter and that the laurels were waving tumultuously; but it was hardly reassuring to discover on my return that a large red cross and the letters T. S. had been chalked on my gate by an unknown hand. For a moment I wondered whether the children had been reading “Sentimental Tommy,” for these were the initials and the methods of Mr. Barrie’s luckless hero, but the age and genial contempt for scholarship of the investing forces made this unlikely. On the fourth day, finding one of the band momentarily separated from her comrades, I ventured a _coup d’etat_. Pointing to the letters on her secret button, I remarked, “I see you belong to the Teapot Society.”

“I don’t” she said indignantly; “it’s the Terror Society I belong to.”

The secret was out, but I thought it wiser to conceal my triumph. Evidently, however, my discovery troubled the band, for next morning I received a _soi-disant_ anonymous letter of caution signed in full by all the members. I felt that the moment had arrived for definite action, especially as the cat who honours my house with his presence, and whose summer morning basking-place is in the front garden, had been much upset by this recurrent invasion of his privacy. I wrote a humble letter to the Society, apologising for my crimes and begging that I might be allowed to become a member, and placed it outside on the path. Five minutes later two very unembarrassed children appeared in my study, and introduced themselves as Captain and Secretary of the Terror Society.

The Captain was very frank with me.

“Of course, we didn’t really want to frighten you,” she said, “but we had to get you to become a member somehow or other.”

“But I’m afraid I’m not much good at conspiracies,” I said modestly.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” the Captain answered kindly. “You can be honourable Treasurer. You know we want a lot of things for our house.”

I began to see what part I had in the scheme of things. “What are the rules of the Society?” I asked in all innocence, and thereby flung the Secretary into confusion.

“You see, she wrote them out,” the Captain explained, “and she doesn’t want you to read them because of the spelling. But they’re only make-up rules, so you needn’t bother about them. Don’t you want to see the house?”

“Captain,” I said firmly, “it is my one wish. Lead on!”

“You ought really to be blindfolded,” the Captain whispered to me as we went along, “but I used my handkerchief to wrap up some of cook’s toffee this morning, and it’s rather sticky.”

“Don’t apologise,” I murmured hastily; “I don’t mind not being blindfolded a bit. Besides, I’m practically a member, and you mustn’t blindfold members; it isn’t done.”

The Captain seemed relieved. “I knew you would make a good treasurer,” she said with cheerful inconsequence. “But, look! there’s the house.”

The headquarters or club-house of the Terror Society stood beside the allotment gardens at the top of the hill, and may, at some less honourable period of its history, have served as a place for storing tools. In the course of their trespassings the children had found it lying empty, and had obtained permission from the landlord to have it for their very own. I have implied that the feminine element was predominant in the Society, and, recalling the wigwams and log huts of my own childhood, the difference between the ideals of boys and girls was sharply brought home to me when I crossed the threshold. The walls were papered with sentimental pictures out of Christmas numbers and literally draped with curtains; there were vases filled with flowers in every corner, and in the middle of this boudoir three of the members were drinking tea. In a sense, perhaps, the girls were to be commended for finding the true romance in domesticity, but I could not help wondering what Captain Shark of the barque _Rapacious_, that faithful friend of my boyhood, would have thought of a Terror Society run on such principles. However, I saw that the eyes of the members were upon me, and I hastened to do my duty as an honourable member. “It’s wonderful,” I said. “How on earth did you manage to do it all yourselves?”

The children all fell to apportioning the credit—all, that is, save the Captain, who seemed to me a very businesslike fellow.

“You see, Mr. Treasurer,” she said, “we want some more of those camp-stools and a lock to keep out burglars, and some knives and forks, and a tin of biscuits and a pail and candles and a candlestick and a clothes-brush and a little bell to ring at dinner-time and a knocker for the door.”

Fortunately she paused to take breath.

“My dear Captain,” I interrupted quickly, “I have a sovereign in the savings-bank, and if you come with me to-morrow we’ll draw it out, and do the best we can with the money. But tell me, am I really a member?”

“Of course you are!”

“Then where’s my mysterious button?”

The Captain frowned. “Jessie will have to paint you one, but the ribbon costs a penny.”

“That makes twenty shillings and a penny,” said the Secretary. It was indeed a businesslike Society.

The next day the Captain and I did a lot of miscellaneous shopping, and two days later the button was left at my door by a small boy. Then for a fortnight I heard nothing of the Society or its members, and no sinister invasion of the morning occurred to disturb the far peace in the eyes of my cat. At last I met the Captain in the road, and though she endeavoured to elude me, I succeeded in getting her into a corner.

“Well, Captain,” I said, “how’s the Terror Society?”

The Captain looked gloomy. “Haven’t you heard?” she said. “The Terror Society is all over.”

“Finished already!” I cried in astonishment. “Why, what have you done with the house?”

“It has been given to another society,” she said without a blush.

“Another society?”

“Yes, the Horror Society. I am Captain.”

I considered this news for a moment. “Well, I suppose I’m a member of the new society?” I ventured.

The Captain shook her head sadly. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but the H. S. has a rule that no grown-ups are admitted!”

That is why, though I myself was a member of the Terror Society, I yet feel myself at liberty to write about it. For as on inquiry I discovered that the ranks of the Horror Society differed in no wise from those of the Terror Society save for the exclusion of the honourable Treasurer, I cannot help feeling that I have been rather badly treated.

THE PRICE OF PEACE

I CANNOT remember how old I was when I wrote the thrilling poem about the tiger who swallowed the horse, nor am I quite certain that it was my first literary effort, but I know that I was still at the tight knickerbocker stage, and that my previous poems, if there had been any, had remained secrets of my own. It was due to a cousin that my conspiracy against the world of common sense was finally discovered. Woman-like, she tickled my ears with flattery, and persuaded me to let her read the precious document; and then, as soon as she had it in her hand, she fled to the camp of the Olympians, leaving me alone in the little dark room to reflect on the guiles of the sex. With straining ears I waited for the distant chorus of mocking laughter that would announce my failure, while my body tingled all over with shame. Yet beneath my fear I was conscious that I had not been wholly unwilling to be betrayed. It seemed to me that if I proved to be a great poet, my future traffic with the Olympians might be of a more agreeable character than it had been previously. On the other hand, I felt that life would be impossible if they greeted my poem with scorn. Conceived and perfected in solitude, it had become an intimate part of myself, and I turned dark thoughts to the purple berries that grew in the shrubbery, and provided us with wholly innocuous poison for our arrows. Even then, it would seem, I had an instinctive knowledge of the tragedy of failing as a poet.

And then, while I yet waited in suspense, I heard the sound of footsteps and knew that my cousin was returning. In a flash I realised how stupid I had been to remain in the room, when I might have hidden myself in some far corner of the attic and appeared no more until my shame had been forgotten. My legs trembled in sudden panic, and it seemed to me that my face was ticking like a clock. I received my first critic with my head buried in the cushions of the sofa.

Looking back, I perceive that the Olympians rose to the occasion, but at the time I could hardly believe my good-fortune. Long after my cousin had gone away I lay on the sofa turning over the pleasant message in my mind—and the magic half-crown in my hand. Praise I had desired, if not expected; but that the Olympians—whose function in life was to divert our tips into a savings-bank account that meant nothing to us, that these stern financiers should give me a whole half-crown in one sum, unhindered by any restrictions in the spending, was incredible. Yet I could feel its rough edge in the dark; and considering its source, I formed an erroneous idea of the influence of the arts on the minds of sane grown-up people, from which even now I am not wholly delivered.

After a while, with a mind strangely confused between pride and modesty, I stole into the room where the others were sitting. But with a quick sense of disappointment I saw that I need not have concerned myself at all with the proper attitude for a young poet to adopt. The Olympians, engaged in one of their meaningless discussions, did not notice my entrance, and only my brothers were interested when I crept silently into their midst.

“What are you going to spend it on?” they whispered.

Oddly, for I was the youngest of four, this success of mine was responsible for a literary outburst in our normally uncultured schoolroom, and one of the fruits of that intellectual disturbance, in the shape of a manuscript magazine, lies before me. It contains an editorial address to the “friendly reader,” two short stories full of murders, a quantity of didactic verse, and the first instalment of a serial, which commences gravely: “My father was a bootmaker of considerable richness.” Of literary achievement or even promise it would be hard to find a trace in these yellowing pages, but there is an enthusiasm behind every line of them that the critic would seek in vain in modern journalism. Indeed, those were the days in which to write, when paper and pencil and half an hour never failed to produce a masterpiece, and the finished work invariably thrilled the artist with “out-landish pride.” I cannot recall that any further half-crowns rewarded our efforts, and possibly that is the reason why three of the four boys who wrote that magazine are now regenerate and write no more.

And even the fourth must own to having lost that fine, careless trick of throwing off masterpieces, and to regretting, in moments of depression, the generous Olympian impulse that enabled him to barter his birthright of common sense for a silver coin with a rough edge. And the Olympians—they, too, have regretted it, I suppose, for the goddess of letters is an exacting mistress, and we do not willingly see our children engaging in her irregular service. Yet I do not see what else they could have done at the time.

A little while ago I discovered a small girl, to whom I act as a kind of illegal uncle, in the throes of lyrical composition. With soft words and flattering phrases, borrowed, perhaps, from the cousin of the past, I won the paper from her grasp. It was like all the poetry that children have ever written, and I was preparing to banter the young author when I saw that she was regarding me with curious intentness, and that her face turned red and white by turns. Even if my intentions had been honourable I could not have disregarded her signs of distress. “I think it’s very nice indeed,” I said; “I’ll give you half a crown for it.”

As her fingers closed on the coin I felt inclined to raise a shout of triumph. For now that I had paid the half-crown back I should be able gradually—for, of course, the habit of years is not broken in a minute—to stop writing. My only fear is that my conscience may have gone to sleep in my long years of aloofness from simplicity; for though I already detect a note of vagueness in the eyes of my niece, and her mother complains that she is becoming untidy, I hold my peace, and offer no explanation. For I feel sure that if I did I should recover my half-crown.

ON CHILDREN’S GARDENS