Paul Kelver

“Not that I say, mind yer,” he would continue, “that there are none of the right sort. They’re to be ‘ad – real good ‘uns. All I say is, taking ‘em at their own valuation ain’t the way to do business with ‘em.”

What he was on the look out for – to quote his own description – was a really first class article, not something from which the paint would come off almost before you got it home.

“They’re to be found,” he would cheerfully affirm, “but you’ve got to look for ‘em. They’re not the sort that advertises.”

Behind Jarman in the second floor back resided one whom Jarman had nicknamed “The Lady ‘Ortensia.” I believe before my arrival there had been love passages between the two; but neither of them, so I gathered, had upon closer inspection satisfied the other’s standard. Their present attitude towards each other was that of insult thinly veiled under exaggerated politeness. Miss Rosina Sellars was, in her own language, a “lady assistant,” in common parlance, a barmaid at the Ludgate Hill Station refreshment room. She was a large, flabby young woman. With less powder, her complexion might by admirers have been termed creamy; as it was, it presented the appearance rather of underdone pastry. To be on all occasions “quite the lady” was her pride. There were those who held the angle of her dignity to be exaggerated. Jarman would beg her for her own sake to be more careful lest one day she should fall down backwards and hurt herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly calculated to check familiarity. Even stockbrokers’ clerks – young men as a class with the bump of reverence but poorly developed – would in her presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of not noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the noisiest customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange it for three of whiskey, which he had; take his money and return him his change without ever seeing him, hearing him, or knowing he was there. It shattered the self-assertion of the youngest of commercial travellers. Her tone and manner, outside rare moments of excitement, were suggestive of an offended but forgiving iceberg. Jarman invariably passed her with his coat collar turned up to his ears, and even thus protected might have been observed to shiver. Her stare, in conjunction with her “I beg your pardon!” was a moral douche that would have rendered apologetic and explanatory Don Juan himself.

To me she was always gracious, which by contrast to her general attitude towards my sex of studied disdain, I confess flattered me. She was good enough to observe to Mrs. Peedles, who repeated it to me, that I was the only gentleman in the house who knew how to behave himself.

The entire first floor was occupied by an Irishman and – they never minced the matter themselves, so hardly is there need for me to do so. She was a charming little dark-eyed woman, an ex-tight-rope dancer, and always greatly offended Mrs. Peedles by claiming Miss Lucretia Barry as a sister artiste.

“Of course I don’t know how it may be now,” would reply Mrs. Peedles, with some slight asperity; “but in my time we ladies of the legitimate stage used to look down upon dancers and such sort. Of course, no offence to you, Mrs. O’Kelly.”

Neither of them was in the least offended.

“Sure, Mrs. Peedles, ye could never have looked down upon the Signora,” the O’Kelly would answer laughing. “Ye had to lie back and look up to her. Why, I’ve got the crick in me neck to this day!”

“Ah! my dear, and you don’t know how nervous I was when glancing down I’d see his handsome face just underneath me, thinking that with one false step I might spoil it for ever,” would reply the Signora.

“Me darling! I’d have died happy, just smothered in loveliness!” would return the O’Kelly; and he and the Signora would rush into each other’s arms, and the sound of their kisses would quite excite the little slavey sweeping down the stairs outside.

He was a barrister attached in theory to the Western Circuit; in practice, somewhat indifferent to it, much more attached to the lower strata of Bohemia and the Signora. At the present he was earning all sufficient for the simple needs of himself and the Signora as a teacher of music and singing. His method was simple and suited admirably the locality. Unless specially requested, he never troubled his pupils with such tiresome things as scales and exercises. His plan was to discover the song the young man fancied himself singing, the particular jingle the young lady yearned to knock out of the piano, and to teach it to them. Was it “Tom Bowling?” Well and good. Come on; follow your leader. The O’Kelly would sing the first line.

“Now then, try that. Don’t be afraid. Just open yer mouth and gave it tongue. That’s all right. Everything has a beginning. Sure, later on, we’ll get the time and tune, maybe a little expression.”

Whether the system had any merit in it, I cannot answer. Certain it was that as often as not it achieved success. Gradually – say, by the end of twelve eighteen-penny lessons – out of storm and chaos “Tom Bowling” would emerge, recognisable for all men to hear. Had the pupil any voice to start with, the O’Kelly improved it; had he none, the O’Kelly would help him to disguise the fact.

“Take it easy, now; take it easy,” the O’Kelly would counsel. “Sure, it’s a delicate organ, yer voice. Don’t ye strain it now. Ye’re at yer best when ye’re just low and sweet.”

So also with the blushing pianiste. At the end of a month a tune was distinctly discernible; she could hear it herself, and was happy. His repute spread.

Twice already had he eloped with the Signora (and twice again was he to repeat the operation, before I finally lost sight of him: to break oneself of habit is always difficult) and once by well-meaning friends had he been induced to return to home, if not to beauty. His wife, who was considerably older than himself, possessed, so he would inform me with tears in his eyes, every moral excellence that should attract mankind. Upon her goodness and virtue, her piety and conscientiousness he would descant to me by the half hour. His sincerity it was impossible to question. It was beyond doubt that he respected her, admired her, honoured her. She was a saint, an angel – a wretch, a villain such as he, was not fit to breathe the same pure air. To do him justice, it must be admitted he showed no particular desire to do so. As an aunt or grandmother, I believe he would have suffered her gladly. He had nothing to say against her, except that he found himself unable to live with her.

That she must have been a lady of exceptional merit one felt convinced. The Signora, who had met her only once, and then under somewhat trying conditions, spoke her praises with equal enthusiasm. Had she, the Signora, enjoyed the advantage of meeting such a model earlier, she, the Signora, might have been a better woman. It seemed a pity the introduction could not have taken place sooner and under different circumstances. Could they both have adopted her as a sort of mutual mother-in-law, it would have given them, I am positive, the greatest satisfaction. On her occasional visits they would have vied with each other in showing her affectionate attention. For the deserted lady I tried to feel sorry, but could not avoid the reflection that it would have been better for all parties had she been less patient and forgiving. Her husband was evidently much more suited to the Signora.

Indeed, the relationship between these two was more a true marriage than one generally meets with. No pair of love-birds could have been more snug together. In their virtues and failings alike they fitted each other. When sober the immorality of their behaviour never troubled them; in fact, when sober nothing ever troubled them. They laughed, joked, played through life, two happy children. To be shocked at them was impossible. I tried it and failed.

But now and again there came an evening when they were not sober. It happened when funds were high. On such occasion the O’Kelly would return laden with bottles of a certain sweet champagne, of which they were both extremely fond; and a friend or two would be invited to share in the festivity. Whether any exceptional quality resided in this particular brand of champagne I am not prepared to argue; my own personal experience of it has prompted me to avoid it for the rest of my life. Its effect upon them was certainly unique. Instead of intoxicating them, it sobered them: there is no other way of explaining it. With the third or fourth glass they began to take serious views of life. Before the end of the second bottle they would be staring at each other, appalled at contemplation of their own transgression. The Signora, the tears streaming down her pretty face, would declare herself a wicked, wicked woman; she had dragged down into shame the most blameless, the most virtuous of men. Emptying her glass, she would bury her face in her hands, and with her elbows on her knees, in an agony of remorse, sit rocking to and fro. The O’Kelly, throwing himself at her feet, would passionately abjure her to “look up.” She had, it appeared, got hold of the thing at the wrong end; it was he who had dragged her down.

At this point metaphor would become confused. Each had been dragged down by the other one and ruined; also each one was the other one’s good angel. All that was commendable in the Signora, she owed to the O’Kelly. Whatever was not discreditable about the O’Kelly was in the nature of a loan from the Signora. With the help of more champagne the right course would grow plain to them. She would go back broken-hearted but repentant to the tight-rope; he would return a better but a blighted man to Mrs. O’Kelly and the Western Circuit. This would be their last evening together on earth. A fresh bottle would be broached, and the guest or guests called upon to assist in the ceremony of renunciation; glasses full to the brim this time.

So much tragedy did they continue to instil into the scene that on the first occasion of my witnessing it I was unable to refrain from mingling my tears with theirs. As, however, the next morning they had forgotten all about it, and as nothing came of it, nor of several subsequent repetitions, I should have believed a separation between them impossible but that even while I was an inmate of the house the thing actually happened.

It came about in this wise. His friends, having discovered him, had pointed out to him again his duty. The Signora – a really excellent little woman so far as intention was concerned – had seconded their endeavours, with the result that on a certain evening in autumn we of the house assembled all of us on the first floor to support them on the occasion of their final – so we all deemed it then – leave-taking. For eleven o’clock two four-wheeled cabs had been ordered, one to transport the O’Kelly with his belongings to Hampstead and respectability; in the other the Signora would journey sorrowfully to the Tower Basin, there to join a circus company sailing for the Continent.

I knocked at the door some quarter of an hour before the appointed hour of the party. I fancy the idea had originated with the Signora.

“Dear Willie has something to say to you,” she had informed me that morning on the stairs. “He has taken a sincere liking to you, and it is something very important.”

They were sitting one each side the fireplace, looking very serious; a bottle of the sobering champagne stood upon the table. The Signora rose and kissed me gravely on the brow; the O’Kelly laid both hands upon my shoulders, and sat me down on a chair between them.

“Mr. Kelver,” said the Signora, “you are very young.”

I hinted – it was one of those rare occasions upon which gallantry can be combined with truth – that I found myself in company.

The Signora smiled sadly, and shook her head.

“Age,” said the O’Kelly, “is a matter of feeling. Kelver, may ye never be as old as I am feeling now.”

“As we are feeling,” corrected the Signora. “Kelver,” said the O’Kelly, pouring out a third glass of champagne, “we want ye to promise us something.”

“It will make us both happier,” added the Signora.

“That ye will take warning,” continued the O’Kelly, “by our wretched example. Paul, in this world there is only one path to possible happiness. The path of strict – ” he paused.

“Propriety,” suggested the Signora.

“Of strict propriety,” agreed the O’Kelly. “Deviate from it,” continued the O’Kelly, impressively, “and what is the result?”

“Unutterable misery,” supplied the Signora.

“Ye think we two have been happy here together,” said the O’Kelly.

I replied that such was the conclusion to which observation had directed me.

“We tried to appear so,” explained the Signora; “it was merely on the outside. In reality all the time we hated each other. Tell him, Willie, dear, how we have hated each other.”

“It is impossible,” said the O’Kelly, finishing and putting down his glass, “to give ye any idea, Kelver, how we have hated each other.”

“How we have quarrelled!” said the Signora. “Tell him, dear, how we have quarrelled.”

“All day long and half the night,” concluded the O’Kelly.

“Fought,” added the Signora. “You see, Mr. Kelver, people in – in our position always do. If it had been otherwise, if – if everything had been proper, then of course we should have loved each other. As it is, it has been a cat and dog existence. Hasn’t it been a cat and dog existence, Willie?”

“It’s been just hell upon earth,” murmured the O’Kelly, with his eyes fixed gloomily upon the fire-stove ornament. Deadly in earnest though they both were, I could not repress a laugh, their excellent intention was so obvious. The Signora burst into tears.

“He doesn’t believe us,” she wailed.

“Me dear,” replied the O’Kelly, throwing up his part with promptness and satisfaction, “how could ye expect it? How could he believe that any man could look at ye and hate ye?”

“It’s all my fault,” cried the little woman; “I am such a wicked creature. I cannot even be miserable when I am doing wrong. A decent woman in my place would have been wretched and unhappy, and made everybody about her wretched and unhappy, and so have set a good example and have been a warning. I don’t seem to have any conscience, and I do try.” The poor little lady was sobbing her heart out.

When not shy I could be sensible, and of the O’Kelly and the Signora one could be no more shy than of a pair of robin redbreasts. Besides, I was really fond of them; they had been very good to me.

“Dear Miss Beltoni,” I answered, “I am going to take warning by you both.”

She pressed my hand. “Oh, do, please do,” she murmured. “We really have been miserable – now and then.”

“I am never going to be content,” I assured her, “until I find a lady as charming and as amiable as you, and if ever I get her I’ll take good care never to run any risk of losing her.”

It sounded well and pleased us all. The O’Kelly shook me warmly by the hand, and this time spoke his real feelings.

“Me boy,” he said, “all women are good – for somebody. But the woman that is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who’s the best for somebody else. Ye understand?”

I said I did.

At eight o’clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived – as Flora MacDonald, in green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking. As a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles and the subject of deserted wives in general.

“A fine-looking man,” allowed Mrs. Peedles, “but weak – weak as water.”

The Signora agreed that unfortunately there did exist such men: ‘twas pitiful but true.

“My dear,” continued Mrs. Peedles, “she wasn’t even a lady.”

The Signora expressed astonishment at the deterioration in Mr. Peedles’ taste thus implied.

“I won’t go so far as to say we never had a difference,” continued Mrs. Peedles, whose object appeared to be an impartial statement of the whole case. “There may have been incompatability of temperament, as they say. Myself, I have always been of a playful disposition – frivolous, some might call me.”

The Signora protested; the O’Kelly declined to listen to such aspersion on her character even from Mrs. Peedles herself.

Mrs. Peedles, thus corrected, allowed that maybe frivolous was too sweeping an accusation: say sportive.

“But a good wife to him I always was,” asserted Mrs. Peedles, with a fine sense of justice; “never flighty, like some of them. I challenge any one to accuse me of having been flighty.”

We felt we should not believe any one who did, and told her so.

Mrs. Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a confidential attitude. “If they want to go, let ‘em go, I always say,” she whispered loudly into the Signora’s ear. “Ten to one they’ll find they’ve only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. One can always comfort oneself with that.”

There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles. Her virtuous sympathies, I gathered, were with the Signora. Mr. O’Kelly’s return to Mrs. O’Kelly evidently manifested itself in the light of a shameful desertion. Having regard to the fact, patent to all who knew him, that the poor fellow was sacrificing every inclination to stern sense of duty, such view of the matter was rough on him. But philosophers from all ages have agreed that our good deeds are the whips with which Fate punishes us for our bad.

“My dear,” continued Mrs. Peedles, “when Mr. Peedles left me I thought that I should never smile again. Yet here you see me laughing away through life, just as ever. You’ll get over it all right.” And Mrs. Peedles wiped away her tears and smiled upon the Signora; upon which the Signora commenced to cry again.

Happily, timely diversion was made at this point by the bursting into the room of Jarman, who upon perceiving Mrs. Peedles, at once gave vent to a hoot, supposed to be expressive of Scottish joy, and without a moment’s hesitation commenced to dance a reel.

My neighbours of the first floor knocked at the door a little while afterwards; and genteelly late arrived Miss Rosina Sellars, coldly gleaming in a decollete but awe-inspiring costume of mingled black and scarlet, out of which her fair, if fleshy, neck and arms shone luxuriant.

We did not go into supper; instead, supper came into us from the restaurant at the corner of the Blackfriars Road. I cannot say that at first it was a festive meal. The O’Kelly and the Signora made effort, as in duty bound, to be cheerful, but for awhile were somewhat unsuccessful. The third floor front wasted no time in speech, but ate and drank copiously. Miss Sellars, retaining her gloves – which was perhaps wise, her hands being her weak point – signalled me out, much to my embarrassment, as the recipient of her most polite conversation. Mrs. Peedles became reminiscent of parties generally. Seeing that most of Mrs. Peedles’ former friends and acquaintances were either dead or in more or less trouble, her efforts did not tend to enliven the table. One gathering, of which the present strangely reminded her, was a funeral, chiefly remarkable from discovery of the romantic fact, late in the proceedings, that the gentleman in whose honour the whole affair had been organised was not dead at all; but instead, having taken advantage of an error arising out of a railway accident, was at the moment eloping with the wife of his own chief mourner. As Mrs. Peedles explained, and as one could well credit, it had been an awkward position for all present. Nobody had quite known whether to feel glad or sorry – with the exception of the chief mourner, upon whose personal undertaking that the company might regard the ceremony as merely postponed, festivities came to an end.

Our prop and stay from a convivial point of view was Jarman. As a delicate attention to Mrs. Peedles and her costume he sunk his nationality and became for the evening, according to his own declaration, “a braw laddie.” With her – his “sonsie lassie,” so he termed her – he flirted in the broadest, if not purest, Scotch. The O’Kelly for him became “the Laird;” the third floor “Jamie o’ the Ilk;” Miss Sellars, “the bonnie wee rose;” myself, “the chiel.” Periods of silence were dispersed by suggestions that we should “hoot awa’,” Jarman himself setting us the example.

With the clearance away of the eatables, making room for the production of a more varied supply of bottles, matters began to mend. Mrs. Peedles became more arch, Jarman’s Scotch more striking and extensive, the Lady ‘Ortensia’s remarks less depressingly genteel, her aitches less accentuated.

Jarman rose to propose the health of the O’Kelly, coupled with that of the Signora. To the O’Kelly, in a burst of generosity, Jarman promised our united patronage. To Jarman it appeared that by employing the O’Kelly to defend us whenever we got into trouble with the police, and by recommending him to our friends, a steady income should be assured to him.

The O’Kelly replied feelingly to the effect that Nelson Square, Blackfriars, would ever remain engraved upon his memory as the fairest and brightest spot on earth. Personally, nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to die among the dear friends who now surrounded him. But there was such a thing as duty, and he and the Signora had come to the conclusion that true happiness could only be obtained by acting according to one’s conscience, even if it made one miserable.

Jarman, warming to his work, then proposed the health of Mrs. Peedles, as true-hearted and hard-breathing a lady as ever it had been his privilege to know. Her talent for cheery conversation was familiar to us all, upon it he need not enlarge; all he would say was that personally never did she go out of his room without leaving him more cheerful than when she entered it.

After that – I forget in what – we drank the health of the Lady ‘Ortensia. Persons there were – Jarman would not attempt to disguise the fact – who complained that the Lady ‘Ortensia was too distant, “too stand-offish.” With such complaint he himself had no sympathy; but tastes differed. If the Lady ‘Ortensia were inclined to be exclusive, who should blame her? Everybody knew their own business best. For use in a second floor front he could not honestly recommend the Lady ‘Ortensia; it would not be giving her a fair chance, and it would not be giving the second floor a fair chance. But for any gentleman fitting up marble halls, for any one on the lookout for a really “toney article,” Jarman would say: Inquire for Miss Rosina Sellars, and see that you get her.

There followed my turn. There had been literary chaps in the past, Jarman admitted so much. Against them he had nothing to say. They had no doubt done their best. But the gentleman whose health Jarman wished the company now to drink had this advantage over them: that they were dead, and he wasn’t. Some of this gentleman’s work Jarman had read – in manuscript; but that was a distinction purely temporary. He, Jarman, claimed to be no judge of literature, but this he could and would say, it took a good deal to make him miserable, yet this the literary efforts of Mr. Kelver invariably accomplished.

Mrs. Peedles, speaking without rising, from personal observation in the daytime – which she hoped would not be deemed a liberty; literature, even in manuscript, being, so to speak, public property – found herself in a position to confirm all that Mr. Jarman had remarked. Speaking as one not entirely without authority on the subject of literature and the drama, Mrs. Peedles could say that passages she had read had struck her as distinctly not half bad. Some of the love-scenes, in particular, had made her to feel quite a girl again. How he had acquired such knowledge was not for her to say. Cries of “Naughty!” from Jarman, and “Oh, Mr. Kelver, I shall be quite afraid of you,” roguishly from Miss Sellars.

The O’Kelly, who, having abandoned his favourite champagne for less sobering liquor, had since supper-time become rapidly more cheerful, felt sure there was a future before me. That he had not seen any of my work, so he assured me, in no way lessened his opinion of it. One thing only would he impress upon me: that the best work was the result of strict attention to virtue. His advice to me was to marry young and be happy.

My persevering efforts of the last few months towards the acquisition of convivial habits appeared this evening to be receiving their reward. The O’Kelly’s sweet champagne I had drunk with less dislike than hitherto; a white, syrupy sort of stuff, out of a fat and artistic-looking bottle, I had found distinctly grateful to the palate. Dimly the quotation about taking things at the flood, and so getting on quickly, floated through my brain, coupled with another one about fortune favouring the bold. It had seemed to me a good occasion to try for the second time in my life a full flavoured cigar. I had selected with the caution of a connoisseur one of mottled green complexion from the O’Kelly’s largest box. And so far all had gone well. An easy self-confidence, delightful by reason of its novelty, had replaced my customary shyness; a sense of lightness – of positive airiness, emanating from myself, pervaded all things. Tossing off another glass of the champagne, I rose to reply.