Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (406 page)

After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and then the mother would get madder than ever.

“Can’t you say something to him?” she would cry indignantly to her husband. “How do you think the children can get to sleep, poor things, with that hideous row going on all night? Might just as well be living in a saw-mill.”

Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call out in a nervous, apologetic manner: —

“I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn’t mind being quiet a bit. My wife says she can’t get the children to sleep. It’s too bad, you know, ‘pon my word it is.”

“Gor on,” the corncrake would answer surlily. “You keep your wife herself quiet; that’s enough for you to do.” And on he would go again worse than before.

Then a mother blackbird, from a little further off, would join in the fray.

“Ah, it’s a good hiding he wants, not a talking to. And if I was a cock, I’d give it him.” (This remark would be made in a tone of withering contempt, and would appear to bear reference to some previous discussion.)

“You’re quite right, ma’am,” Mrs. Thrush would reply. “That’s what I tell my husband, but” (with rising inflection, so that every lady in the plantation might hear) “
he
wouldn’t move himself, bless you — no, not if I and the children were to die before his eyes for want of sleep.”

“Ah, he ain’t the only one, my dear,” the blackbird would pipe back, “they’re all alike”; then, in a voice more of sorrow than of anger:—”but there, it ain’t their fault, I suppose, poor things. If you ain’t got the spirit of a bird you can’t help yourself.”

I would strain my ears at this point to hear if the male blackbird was moved at all by these taunts, but the only sound I could ever detect coming from his neighbourhood was that of palpably exaggerated snoring.

By this time the whole glade would be awake, expressing views concerning that corncrake that would have wounded a less callous nature.

“Blow me tight, Bill,” some vulgar little hedge-sparrow would chirp out, in the midst of the hubbub, “if I don’t believe the gent thinks ‘e’s a-singing.”

“‘Tain’t ‘is fault,” Bill would reply, with mock sympathy. “Somebody’s put a penny in the slot, and ‘e can’t stop ‘isself.”

Irritated by the laugh that this would call forth from the younger birds, the corncrake would exert himself to be more objectionable than ever, and, as a means to this end, would commence giving his marvellous imitation of the sharpening of a rusty saw by a steel file.

But at this an old crow, not to be trifled with, would cry out angrily: —

“Stop that, now. If I come down to you I’ll peck your cranky head off, I will.”

And then would follow silence for a quarter of an hour, after which the whole thing would begin again.

CHAPTER V

Brown and MacShaughnassy came down together on the Saturday afternoon; and, as soon as they had dried themselves, and had had some tea, we settled down to work.

Jephson had written that he would not be able to be with us until late in the evening, and Brown proposed that we should occupy ourselves until his arrival with plots.

“Let each of us,” said he, “sketch out a plot. Afterwards we can compare them, and select the best.”

This we proceeded to do. The plots themselves I forget, but I remember that at the subsequent judging each man selected his own, and became so indignant at the bitter criticism to which it was subjected by the other two, that he tore it up; and, for the next half-hour, we sat and smoked in silence.

When I was very young I yearned to know other people’s opinion of me and all my works; now, my chief aim is to avoid hearing it. In those days, had any one told me there was half a line about myself in a newspaper, I should have tramped London to obtain that publication. Now, when I see a column headed with my name, I hurriedly fold up the paper and put it away from me, subduing my natural curiosity to read it by saying to myself, “Why should you? It will only upset you for the day.”

In my cubhood I possessed a friend. Other friends have come into my life since — very dear and precious friends — but they have none of them been to me quite what this friend was. Because he was my first friend, and we lived together in a world that was much bigger than this world — more full of joy and of grief; and, in that world, we loved and hated deeper than we love and hate in this smaller world that I have come to dwell in since.

He also had the very young man’s craving to be criticised, and we made it our custom to oblige each other. We did not know then that what we meant, when we asked for “criticism,” was encouragement. We thought that we were strong — one does at the beginning of the battle, and that we could bear to hear the truth.

Accordingly, each one pointed out to the other one his errors, and this task kept us both so busy that we had never time to say a word of praise to one another. That we each had a high opinion of the other’s talents I am convinced, but our heads were full of silly saws. We said to ourselves: “There are many who will praise a man; it is only his friend who will tell him of his faults.” Also, we said: “No man sees his own shortcomings, but when these are pointed out to him by another he is grateful, and proceeds to mend them.”

As we came to know the world better, we learnt the fallacy of these ideas. But then it was too late, for the mischief had been done.

When one of us had written anything, he would read it to the other, and when he had finished he would say, “Now, tell me what you think of it — frankly and as a friend.”

Those were his words. But his thoughts, though he may not have known them, were: —

“Tell me it is clever and good, my friend, even if you do not think so. The world is very cruel to those that have not yet conquered it, and, though we keep a careless face, our young hearts are scored with wrinkles. Often we grow weary and faint-hearted. Is it not so, my friend? No one has faith in us, and in our dark hours we doubt ourselves. You are my comrade. You know what of myself I have put into this thing that to others will be but an idle half-hour’s reading. Tell me it is good, my friend. Put a little heart into me, I pray you.”

But the other, full of the lust of criticism, which is civilisation’s substitute for cruelty, would answer more in frankness than in friendship. Then he who had written would flush angrily, and scornful words would pass.

One evening, he read me a play he had written. There was much that was good in it, but there were also faults (there are in some plays), and these I seized upon and made merry over. I could hardly have dealt out to the piece more unnecessary bitterness had I been a professional critic.

As soon as I paused from my sport he rose, and, taking his manuscript from the table, tore it in two, and flung it in the fire — he was but a very young man, you must remember — and then, standing before me with a white face, told me, unsolicited, his opinion of me and of my art. After which double event, it is perhaps needless to say that we parted in hot anger.

I did not see him again for years. The streets of life are very crowded, and if we loose each other’s hands we are soon hustled far apart. When I did next meet him it was by accident.

I had left the Whitehall Rooms after a public dinner, and, glad of the cool night air, was strolling home by the Embankment. A man, slouching along under the trees, paused as I overtook him.

“You couldn’t oblige me with a light, could you, guv’nor?” he said. The voice sounded strange, coming from the figure that it did.

I struck a match, and held it out to him, shaded by my hands. As the faint light illumined his face, I started back, and let the match fall: —

“Harry!”

He answered with a short dry laugh. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said, “or I shouldn’t have stopped you.”

“How has it come to this, old fellow?” I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder. His coat was unpleasantly greasy, and I drew my hand away again as quickly as I could, and tried to wipe it covertly upon my handkerchief.

“Oh, it’s a long, story,” he answered carelessly, “and too conventional to be worth telling. Some of us go up, you know. Some of us go down. You’re doing pretty well, I hear.”

“I suppose so,” I replied; “I’ve climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and am trying to stick there. But it is of you I want to talk. Can’t I do anything for you?”

We were passing under a gas-lamp at the moment. He thrust his face forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.

“Do I look like a man you could do anything for?” he said.

We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that might seize hold of him.

“You needn’t worry about me,” he continued after a while, “I’m comfortable enough. We take life easily down here where I am. We’ve no disappointments.”

“Why did you give up like a weak coward?” I burst out angrily. “You had talent. You would have won with ordinary perseverance.”

“Maybe,” he replied, in the same even tone of indifference. “I suppose I hadn’t the grit. I think if somebody had believed in me it might have helped me. But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself. And when a man loses that, he’s like a balloon with the gas let out.”

I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment. “Nobody believed in you!” I repeated. “Why,
I
always believed in you, you know that I—”

Then I paused, remembering our “candid criticism” of one another.

“Did you?” he replied quietly, “I never heard you say so. Good-night.”

In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood of the Savoy, and, as he spoke, he disappeared down one of the dark turnings thereabouts.

I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick steps before me for a little way, they were soon swallowed up in the sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel stands, I had lost all trace of him.

A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made inquiries.

“What sort of a gent was he, sir?” questioned the man.

“A tall thin gentleman, very shabbily dressed — might be mistaken for a tramp.”

“Ah, there’s a good many of that sort living in this town,” replied the man. “I’m afraid you’ll have some difficulty in finding him.”

Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I should never listen for their drawing near again.

I wondered as I walked on — I have wondered before and since — whether Art, even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted in her behalf — whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.

Jephson arrived about nine o’clock in the ferry-boat. We were made acquainted with this fact by having our heads bumped against the sides of the saloon.

Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard, without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him. This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking along the passage at the moment, and the result to her was that she received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then on the right.

She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to regard it as an intimation from the boy that he had come; but this double knock annoyed her: so much “style” was out of place in a mere ferry-boy. Accordingly she went out to him in a state of high indignation.

“What do you think you are?” she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his ears first on one side and then on the other, “a torpedo! What are you doing here at all? What do you want?”

“I don’t want nothin’,” explained the boy, rubbing his head; “I’ve brought a gent down.”

“A gent?” said Amenda, looking round, but seeing no one. “What gent?”

“A stout gent in a straw ‘at,” answered the boy, staring round him bewilderedly.

“Well, where is he?” asked Amenda.

“I dunno,” replied the boy, in an awed voice; “‘e was a-standin’ there, at the other end of the punt, a-smokin’ a cigar.”

Just then a head appeared above the water, and a spent but infuriated swimmer struggled up between the houseboat and the bank.

“Oh, there ‘e is!” cried the boy delightedly, evidently much relieved at this satisfactory solution of the mystery; “‘e must ha’ tumbled off the punt.”

“You’re quite right, my lad, that’s just what he did do, and there’s your fee for assisting him to do it.” Saying which, my dripping friend, who had now scrambled upon deck, leant over, and following Amenda’s excellent example, expressed his feelings upon the boy’s head.

There was one comforting reflection about the transaction as a whole, and that was that the ferry-boy had at last received a fit and proper reward for his services. I had often felt inclined to give him something myself. I think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a good deal.

His mother undertook that for three-and-sixpence a week he should “make himself generally useful” to us for a couple of hours every morning.

Those were the old lady’s very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when I introduced the boy to her.

“This is James, Amenda,” I said; “he will come down here every morning at seven, and bring us our milk and the letters, and from then till nine he will make himself generally useful.”

Amenda took stock of him.

“It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the look of him,” she remarked.