The Fool and his Heart. Being the plainly told story of Basil Thimm

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE HOUSE OF THE STRANGE WOMAN " A fascinating, alluring romance. The grip the novel takes at the beginning never slackens, and we follow to the end with quickening pulse the fortunes that shatter doll^' houses and heroes' hearts. Apart from Mr. Connell's curious and original incidents the charm of his rapid and trenchant style would secure him an audience anywhere. He has mastered to some purpose the uses of the English '.ongue, and has found fit subjects for his powerful pen." — Morning Leader. IN THE GREEN PARK " A fantastic and amusing work. Mr. Connell is a humorist, and a humorist of a distinctly original type. We have laughed heartily over this book. The author is a good fellow ; and nobody will regret making his acquaintance." — Weekly Sun. BEING THE PLAINLY TOLD STORY OF BASIL THIMM BY F. NORREYS CONNELL Author of "In the Green Park," "The House of the Strange Woman," etc., etc.

" Quand on eprouve une passion vraie, la presence de la personne aimee n'assouvit-elle pas nos d£sirs les plus violents ? Quand nous sommes admis devant elle, n'est-ce-pas le bonbeur du ch_<_t.en devant Dieu." — Honors de Balzac. LEONARD SMITHERS A RUN DEL STREET: STRAND LONDON W.C. MDCCCXCVI TO MY DEAR FRIEND ERNEST DOWSON IN MEMORY OF A SORROW FUL JOURNEY THROUGH FLANDERS. The Author has in this book been wittingly guilty of one or tws> anachronisms, as when he represents the battle of Majuba Hill to have taken place recently. Doubtless unwittingly he has fallen into other errors. For both he craves the indulgence of the critics and the public, and trusts they will even forgive him if he is dull. Mons par Donnemarie en Montois, 29th January, 1896. CONTENTS.

Part I. Chapter Page

I. The Opening of a Campaign . . 5 II. Looking Backwards .... 15 III. How Little Things Look Large . 31 IV. From Alma Mater to De Profundis 44 V. The World Wags .... 62 VI. How the Poor Live .... 69 VII. More or less Theatrical ... So VIII. In the Swim 89 IX. Life and Literature .... 98 X. The First Book 107 XI. In Which Basil Takes Advice . .120 XII. Desdichado 127 XIII. Basil Despairs 133 XIV. Basil Makes Friends .... 142 XV. Helen is AIarried . . . . 150 XVI. Into the Depths 157 XVII. The Second Book .... 164 XVIII. The Downfall 168 XIX. Flight CONTENTS.

Part II. Chapter Page

I. By the Rhine and on the Hillside. 187 II. Frank Answers Basil's Letter . 197 III. Of Finance and Other Things . . 203 IV. Greatness Thrust Upon One . . 207 V. Basil Faces the Music . . . 216 VI. Across the Frontier .... 222 VII. Basil is Married .... 227 VIII. Arcadia, not far from Paris . . 230 IX. The Third Book 233 X. The Coming Terror .... 240 XI. Oliver at his Best and Worst . 245 XII. The Arcana 249 XIII. Death, the Trickster . . . 256 XIV. The Claims of Religion . . . 262 XV. When the Devil was III . . . 270 XVI, Waltz Tunes and Church Music . 2715 XVII. Lovers' Meeting .... 2^4 XVIII. The End of It 289 XIX. Etcetera •■•... 2 PROEM There lies a land in the stormy ocean of life, which fools think is a free country. Its inhabitants are wrinkled youths, callow satyrs, and sad women ; its pleasures are joyless ; its sorrows desperate ; its mirthful feasts are debauches of depravity ; its loves are shameful ; its marriages are unions of harpies and embryos.

It is a sepulchre not whited, but painted in gaudy splashes ; its shores are studded with magnetic rocks, and on them sit wailing, singing sirens ; and woe ! woe ! to the Ulysses who stops not his ears, for this is the land of Bohemia, where bleach the bones of lost souls. B

PART I

Chapter I. The Opening Of

A CAMPAIGN. The Irish Mail steamed into Euston Station five minutes late on the morning of April i, 1S85. From the window of a first-class sleeping car, a young man watched with drowsy eyes the panorama of cabs and vans which shot past his eyes. Endless lines of chocolate hansoms, and four-wheelers, and scarlet mail carts, and news vans zig-zagged through his view. Then with a grunt the train stopped ; there was a Babel of voices as it vomited out its occupants ; many of them hirsute, ulstered Irish members, in the grey dawn seeming so many noisy ghosts. The young man, who had been but partially dressed when he turned to look out of the window, now slowly completed his toilet, and was critically examining the fold of his tie when a porter came to the door. "Any luggage, sir ? The boy — for he could not have been more than twenty — put on his coat before making answer, pointing out his Gladstone bag, hat box, and rug strap — " These, and two portmanteaus and a basket in the brake ; all initialled ' B. T.' " " Yes, sir. The hotel or a keb, sir ?

" "Cab." " Hansom, sir ? " " No, I'm afraid I'll have to take a four-wheeler, the basket's rather large." " Werry good, sir," seizing the luggage. " Four wheeler hup. Look sharp, Bill, gentleman's a-waiting. 'Ere y'are, sir." (Placing the articles on the front seat.) "Now which brake, sir? From'Olyhead ? that'll be forrard. Two portmanties and a bawsket libelled ' B. T.' 'Ere's wun of 'em. Beg'n pordon, sir, an' there's the other. Now what about the bawsket. Is that 'im there ? " pointing to a neat little lady's dress basket. " No," said the youth ; " the large plain one in the corner of the van ; that's mine." " Wot ! That big 'un over there ? " shaking his head gravely. " That aint no bawsket. That's wot we calls an 'amper." " Never mind, it's mine," said the young man, smiling good-naturedly.

" It's a bloomin 'eavy 'amper, that's wot it is," asserted the porter, with a touch of asperity ; but all the same he caught it up on his back and staggered off with it to the four-wheeler. " 'Eads ! " he exclaimed, as he bumped it down beside the driver, who pushed it into position on the roof. Then he returned for the portmanteaus, and taking one in each hand jerked rather than handed them up to the Jehu. The traveller then took a glance round him, and stepped into the vehicle. " Will that be hall, sir ? " inquired the porter, slamming to the door and touching his cap. The traveller produced a shilling. " All right, thanks. Tell him to drive to Seymour Street, Brompton Road." The porter's face wore a worried look ; divided between delight at having received double his usual tip, and melancholy at having to mention such an unexpected address.

He stood for a moment, then saying, " Seymour Road, Brompton Street," to the driver, hastened away. The driver — an old, old withered charioteer, senile to the degree of idiocy — caught the word Brompton only, and having considered his mental map of London for the space of five minutes, took courage and his reins together, and, lashing his horse furiously, crawled out of the station. As they passed under the arches the traveller read the words " Drive slowly," and smiled. The legend might have been written on every lamp post and gable end they passed. The cab turned into the Euston Road, the day growing brighter, and then down Tottenham Court Road. The traveller kept both windows open ; the air held a pleasant frostiness which relieved him after his night in the stuffy railway carriage. A policeman stood in a shelter, beating himself with fat gloved hands ; a little further on a milkman and a newsboy were discussing the weather, the newsboy holding in his hand a placard with the words, " Rumours of War."

Passing Great Russell Street the traveller saw a weary-kneed man with bloodshot eyes, a white tie peeping through his buttoned-up overcoat, his silk hat ruffled the wrong way, his patent leather shoes lustreless, a pair of dirty white gloves in his hand, and a cigarette puffing nervously between his tremb ling lips, step into a hansom and collapse on its cushions. The boy laughed, and the cab rolled on into Oxford Street. He could hear the funny three-legged flop of the wretched animal jogging between the shafts, and the vacuous mumble of the slave-driver urging it along. Ever and again, too, he heard the whip writhing through the air ; followed by a hideously human shriek of pain from the carcase. "This won't do," he thought at last, and putting his head out of the window he called to the driver, "Look here, you needn't beat your horse so much ; I'm in no hurry."

The Jehu, too astonished to reply, relinquished his occupation silently, and pondered in his senile dead-and-alive way whether his fare were a lunatic. Now they were driving down Regent Street — one of the most cheerful-looking places in the world at that early hour. Even the horse put up his tail, and almost trotted for a moment; and his driver forgetting himself, said " Gee up," quite distinctly. But then lurching across the thoroughfare they turned down Conduit Street, and the brightness was gone, not to appear again until, Hanover Square and Bond Street passed, they wheeled into the glorious artery of Piccadilly. The youngster breathed more quickly as the scent of the budding vegetation from the parks caught his nostrils; the day seemed still gaining in brightness. A heavily laden 'bus — the first from Putney — came lumbering up the road, the driver, red and cheery faced, lifting with firm hands his horses to the slight incline.

The huge apparatus rolled past with a jolly rumbling of the wheels, to give place, however, to another false note in the harmony — another white faced thing in evening clothes asleep in a hansom : some young roarer returning to his chambers in St. James's, after a night at Chelsea. Further down the road came another 'bus much like the first, only it carried a flag and was dark brown instead of white, and showed the label " West Kensington." At Hyde Park corner the scavengers were sweeping the roads, and two cabs turning up Grosvenor Place from the direction of Pimlico, disappeared one up Park Lane and the other back Eastward. Both held white faces. The four-wheeler continued its funeral-paced career down the hill to Knightsbridge. The driver pulled up a moment to consult with a policeman at the corner of Sloane Street ; then the wheels revolved again, bearing their burden down the Brompton Road.

At the South Kensington Museum there was another halt ; the Jehu descended shakily from the box. " Where did you say ? " he asked. " 19, Seymour Street, Brompton Road," returned the traveller. The driver scratched himself. "This is the Brompton Road. Where's Seymour Street?" he asked, sulkily. " That's your business to find out, presumably. I don't know," said his fare. A postman passed. " I say, you there. Where's Seymour Street ? " called the driver. The civil servant paused, rubbed his nose with his finger, then answered perfunctorily : " Up the road, second turn on the right." The cabman looked and objected. " But that's Archibald Street." " So it was before they changed the name," said the postman, scurrying away. The cabman remounted his box, and pulling his horse's head round with an impatient expectoration, turned back up the road.

A few more tottering steps of the horse brought them into Seymour Street. As the vehicle stopped with a convulsive halt at No. 19, the occupant saw a withered hand tear an " Apart ments " card hastily from the ground floor window. He jumped out and ascended the little whitewashed steps, the door opened, a tall, gaunt, rather hand some old woman appeared. " Mrs. Whyte ? " said the traveller. " Quite right, sir. You are Mr. Thimm ? " Yes. Have you a man here to carry in my things? " " My 'usband is coming, sir. " My 'usband " appeared in the person of a hook nosed, whiskered man of the family coachman class, short and rather bandy-legged, a sort of stunted horsey Duke of Wellington with that reposeful, almost religious manner which distinguishes the better class English servant. Although old and small he caught the heavy basket dexterously in his arms and with a lissom swing, stepped a few running paces and plumped it down neatly in the widest part of the hall.

Then he went back and brought in the two portmanteaus and the Gladstone bag, carrying them one after the other through the narrow passage into a room beyond. Thimm — Basil Thimm — that was his name, descended the steps, took his hat-box and rug-strap in one hand and gave a last searching glance round to see that he had left nothing behind. This done, he slammed to the door, and handed the driver up two half-crowns. And the old fellow, now quite satisfied that the young man was touched in his head, secreted his gains in some mysterious strong hold under the apron, and being again free to use his whip, belaboured his motive power lustily until it dragged him away into the white morning mist. As Basil, hat-box and rug-strap in hand, turned once more to ascend the steps, the noise of the door of the next house now being closed aroused his attention, and throwing a look that way he beheld another draggled white-tied gallant ; this time a tall middle-aged man, blear-eyed, Semitic, yet not un aristocratic, flashy, wearing moustache and imperial, faultily dressed.

He walked down the street with heavy plodding footsteps. Basil came in and shut the door. Mrs. Whyte attended him in the hall. She squeezed her lanky body against his basket to let him pass before her into the sitting-room. Accustomed to large rooms, the traveller, when he entered the apartment, seemed to himself to be in danger of walking through the window — there was only one. The room appeared quite tiny ; at most its flooring could not have represented a square of more than twelve feet, and the ceiling was horribly low. A tiny fire burnt with desperate gasps in a toy grate ; the mural decorations consisted of a staring bedroom paper, and a couple of photographs of consumptive looking white-washed farm houses. In the place of honour over the piano was the crowning glory of the room — a wooden bracket, to which was attached a stuffed canary bird in a state of eternal suspense.

Open folding doors disclosed to the traveller his bedroom beyond. It was smaller than his sitting room, and looked more uncomfortable, but was spotlessly clean, as indeed was the room he stood in. His eyes returned and lighted gratefully upon a wicker-work armchair which stood beside the fireplace. He was still contemplating this reassuring object when his landlady asked him, " What may I get you for breakfast, sir ? " The words awoke a fresh emotion in the traveller's breast. " Eggs and bacon, tea and toast," he said without hesitation ; " and bring me some hot water, please." "Very good, sir." Mrs. Whyte disappeared, and presently her husband, carrying the water, knocked at the bedroom door where Basil was taking off his travelling clothes. "Would you care for a morning paper, sir ? " he inquired, moving quietly about, unstrapping the new lodger's portmanteaus.

" Yes, the Morning Post," answered Basil, stropping his razor, "and you might get me the Telegraph too." He thrust his hand into his trousers pocket to find the necessary coins, but Mr. Whyte did not wait. "That'll be all right, sir," he said, and left the room. When Basil returned to the sitting-room he found his breakfast neatly laid out and the two papers lying crisp and fresh upon his plate. He took his seat at the table with a sigh of relief. The fire was burning better and things became more cheerful ; the eggs and bacon were done to a nicety, the tea was strong and made with properly boiling water, the toast was hot, the butter cold. The feeling of depression which had fallen upon him when he entered the room left him, his heart beat more quickly ; the cries of the hawkers in the street fell merrily on his ear.

Breakfast over he sat in the armchair and counted out his money — four sovereigns, a florin, three shillings, and a penny. "And I've got to conquer London with that," he said to himself, smiling. The sun poked his nose into the room and saw a healthy stripling, unmistakably sanguine in tem perament, reddish haired, blue eyed, warm coloured, hot blooded. And the stripling, attracted by the sunlight, looked up and saw through the window, a little blurred owing to weak eyesight — his one weak ness — another blot on the blossoming day, an old man, the purple from his dyed moustache running down his chin in a dirt}- line, his face spotted with the vice of years, come down the steps of a house opposite. " This can't be a very good address," reflected the traveller, and then reverting to a more congenial subject, he wondered what steps he should take first to make himself a great man.

Chapter II. Looking Backwards

There lived in Dublin a distinguished physician, Sir Francis Thimm, who saved the lives of full five Irish viceroys from the grip of typhoid fever, that fashionable Eblanic complaint, and to this hero of an hundred medicines Basil was born, it may be thirty years ago. Yes, thirty years it must have been, for the day young Basil was first dandled in a woman's arms was that day when the northern half of the United States for the one part, and the southern half for the other, by Christian convention agreed that no more throats should be cut on the one part or the other until just cause might again arise, and that day was the 26th of May, 1865. Basil had not been the first child born to the worthy doctor, far from it, he was the sixth ; three girls and two boys had passed before him from his mother's womb, and his tardy arrival on the scene filled his father, who already kept with difficulty within his income, with dismay.

In a panic he disposed of his racing stable, selling two excellent steeple-chasers for a mere song, and thus in auspiciously was Basil hailed on his entry into this world of sorrow. The first thirteen years of a human entity's existence consist of four years' moral nirvana, and nine years so strikingly vivid that they sometimes seem the only real hours of life : as they are almost invariably unpleasant, this arrangement appears to the cynic a little thoughtless. Since the world first started rolling, propelled by the feet of the gods, and then exhilarated by the motion (and possibly a little dizzied by its own rotation) declined to recognize the impossibility of perpetual motion, there may have been one or more persons whose childhood was not acutely miserable ; but, if so, they have left no record of their happiness.

The comparatively few people with whose childhood we have had any acquaintance seem all agreed that youth is essentially unpleasant ; and the lives of such divergent men of genius as Buonaparte, Dickens, and Gordon of Khartoum, give us historical precedent for the same conclusion. So Basil merely shared the common lot of all mortals when he found his life unhappy. His first consciousness of toil and travail opened up in him one October day, when he was doing his first term at a certain preparatory school to which his father had sent him ; on that day he made acquaintance with pain in one of its most vicious forms at the hands of a long-robed ecclesiastic — and why ? Because he had gone to sleep during the service of the Mass. The Thimms had a house on the east side of Fitzwilliam Square, one of those dull red-brick hole and-corner mansions, which give Dublin such an indecent resemblance to Bloomsbury, and to this dismal family abode young Basil made his way on the fifth anniversary of the day on which he had received his first fustigation, the present day having been the occasion of his three hundred and tenth.

There is a momentary epoch in every man's life ; it comes somewhere about the sixteenth year in most, an epoch when the slightest influence for good will bear fair fruit, but if the trail of evil shall cross his path instead, then has sin found an easy votary ; and he that had that in him which passeth virtue will sink to the level of the sot. Basil Thimm, who was precocious, had arrived at this epoch at the age of thirteen. The only times when the climate of Dublin is at all pleasant, are the early spring and the late autumn. To-day the wind blew crisply from the sea, bearing with it a faint odour of ozone struggling manfully against the stench of the river, and the sun shone in an energetic, light-hearted way, pierc ing with hot beams the cold air, stiff with the first suggestion of frost.

Basil's heart, which was just a little rebellious and sobful, was heartened by the rollicking day ; and as he turned from Leeson Street, where the school stood, into Pembroke Street, and so into the square itself, he swung his books with boyish energy and whistled, with exuberant disregard to the common places of melody, the first tenor solo from La Fille de Madame Angot. The strains of C'est Clairette qui j'aime swelled piping up in the quiet street to lose themselves in the open air of the square. To cut off an angle of the parallelogram he let himself into the enclosure with his key, and was crossing the grass when a girl approached him from the gate to which he was making his way. Basil took off hi; c cap and stopped her. She was young — no older than himself— with features of cold beauty, though warm with life ; her hair, of golden brown, swam down to her waist, glinting richly on the red, tight fitting coat which fell in slender delicate curves to her knees.

She carried a Prayer-book in her hand : it was bound in ivory, with a raised cross standing out in relief on the cover. She looked like a belated saint in her childish purity, and Basil's dim eyes fancied a glory encircling her head. Basil did not dare to touch even her hand. " Where are you going, Helen ? " he asked simply. " To confession," she said, with the simple smile of a virgin child. " Oh ! " exclaimed Basil, and with an unusual inflection in his voice he added, " Pray for me, will you ? " She looked at him. " Yes, and you must pray for me too," she said. There was a suspicion of a northern accent in her tones, which gave them a piquant asperity. Basil was startled. It sounded absurd that he should pray for this angel — he, a thing of common clay, a schoolboy. She added the word " Remem ber," then turned and left him ; he heard the snap of the gate as she closed it after her, before he had recovered from his surprise.

He went and sat on a seat at the edge of the grass plot and sleepily reviewed his juvenescence. He saw himself creeping up from a weakly baby hood into comparative sturdiness ; he saw the dark days of infancy brighten in the springing grip of life ; he remembered how he had gradually learned to know the sun from the moon, and with what difficulty he had been disabused of the idea that the stars were the gems on God's night-robe. He traced inwardly the birth of reverence, of prayer and of hope, of thought and the budding weed of knowledge. He saw himself a faithful, trusting child of God, and then a toddling doubter, turning with foolish footsteps from the profound happiness of faith to the loose paths of reason ; a baby unbeliever, mad from self-torture. He saw himself a prey, at the most youthful age, to the unending combat between God and Satan ; he glowed with mischief and writhed in regret all in a little hour.

He would play his child's follies and then prostrate himself before the altar of his Creator, beseeching, longing for forgiveness. Assuredly if there is joy for the sinner that repenteth he must have given Heaven much happiness ; for, except when sinning anew he ceased not one instant to repent. He hardly believed in God, yet he loved and feared Him; his brain gave him no clear conception or definition of sin, yet when not sinning he detested and abominated it. He had the soul of a saint, the body of a satyr, and the brain of a student ; so he developed an artistic temperament and his life became supremely unhappy. A wretched childhood is a terrible thing. It is easy for a man to bear sorrow, time has told him that it is the portion of all ; but on a child each unhappiness falls with a double weight, for a child cannot see the sorrow of others ; he has not the human consolation of knowing of the ubiquity of pain.

To him it seems that he is the victim of a malicious world ; the sun being hot burns only him, he alone is bitten by the frost. Others are happy in their fashion, he suffers to the end of the chapter. And Basil really suffered more than most children. His actual physical pain was greater than that of his comrades ; mentally he suffered infinite torture. Other boys were cuffed and bullied yesterday, and would be cuffed and bullied again to-morrow, but to-day at least they could breathe freely ; not so Basil — he suffered in memory the pain of yesterday, in anticipation the pain of to-morrow. But this being mere earthly pain was nothing. He had been bitten deep in his bowels by the horrors of Catholicism : a Catholicism in which the dogmas of churchmen merged in the traditions of dry nurses, and produced fantastical spectres ; a Catholicism, the theology of which permitted Jesus the Saviour and Abaddon the destroying angel to fight together on something nearly approaching equal terms ; in short a Calvinistic Romanism, almost theatrical in its hopelessness — a religion excellent no doubt to administer in large doses to blockheads and heredi tary criminals, but which if served to a thinking being could only lead to lunacy or unbelief.

To begin with, it nearly led Basil to lunacy. His was a spirit of the type which sees in the circle of the Host not an opaque disc of bread, but the real quintessence of God, and when he tasted of its substance he felt moved to transcendental degrees. Wrhen voices chorussed with the thundering organ through the incense laden air, the walls of the church faded from him, and he stood on clouds singing the glory of God in the Highest. But the vision never lasted; the music died away, the church walls returned with their garish pictures, the incense burned out, and he smelt only dust and ashes. His religion had grasped him deeply, but she held him not with the palpable bonds of indestructible con viction ; he was merely tied to her by a rope of terror, strengthened by the magnetic attraction of her more beautiful moments.

It was as if the colder Norman blood of his father struggled in his veins against the hot Celtic flood he had inherited from his mother, she being the daughter of an ancient western house which, though crushed by eight centuries of the strong hand, still clung to its religion and its sterile acres in distant Connemara. Truly, if the Irish chieftains of the early Christian era were not eager to fling themselves in support of the Cross of the Nazarene, that burden once accepted, they have strained and laboured and died under it with ample Christian patience. There is no people on the face of the globe who have shown such a whole-hearted, may one say, such an altruistic devotion to the Cross as the Irish have done. It is easy during a fever of agrarian outrage to accuse the cottage farmer of fanatical devotion to the soil, but what other people has sacrificed its fields broadcast rather than yield its slightest scruple ?

Lady Thimm was heart and soul a good Catholic. She was a shallow woman, quick rather than clever, more witty perhaps than wise ; but two things she understood clearly, she had been blessed with a kind husband and an honourable faith, and she clung to them both, never letting their faults obscure their good qualities. When Sir Francis lost his money in an absurd speculation, or secretly pawned some of her jewels to pay a racing debt, she was sympathetic and not reproachful ; even on the one occasion when, still a young man, he had been cited in the public divorce court as co-respondent, but fortunately for his career, escaped through the cleverness of his advocate, she accepted the public verdict unhesitatingly ; though his eyes told her he had sinned. And he was grateful for this mercy, and as she grew older she learned to be grateful for this gratitude.