The eighth wonder

Contents

The Eighth Wonder.

The Rough Little Girl and the Smooth Little Girl.

The Swordsman.

II

Now was the start-in-life period, the period of high youth, and Tom and Harry made much of it. They were a gay, full-blooded and taking pair, much in demand, when at home for their vacations, in all the society round about, and much given to jolly dalliance with the daughters of the countryside. They had between them quite a number of youthful love affairs, blazoned and flickered and gone affairs such as every right young man touches in his student days, and the cause of much genial banter by their proud and happy father. Entirely different the case with Hector. At school neglectful of school sports and interests; now at Hammond’s, a young man, nothing was for him in youth’s affinities and recreations. He had lodgings in Tidborough. A fortnight in the year was his vaca¬ tion; he spent it at home (still mooning about the house), and it happened that his fortnight never coin¬ cided with the generous vacations of his brothers.

“ Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,

Steal from his person with no pace perceived.”

As the hands of a clock, ever moving away yet never perceptible in their motion, so — imperceptibly, but very surely — Hector began to move out of relations with his home and with the friends of his home, and new friends he made none. When he was thirty his mother and father died, in the same year. He was distressed, but his distress did not go very deep or last very long. He was not constituted to feel deeply or lastingly. He was very sorry, and there, in a month, was an end of it, and with it the end of much more. That hateful “ Hector ” was now erased; none now to call him it and with it mock him. His brothers were in India, his parents dead, his old home sold. He be¬ came “ Bywash ”; by signature, “ H. Bywash.” “ Hec¬ tor ” was done, for ever.

He left Hammond’s. A very few months in that office had sufficed to show this was no budding captain of industry or merchant prince had entered it. Other junior clerks advanced their positions in the firm; Bywash remained where he began. There came, shortly after the death of his parents, a gale of reor¬ ganization through Hammond’s. Bywash went out before its blast.

He drifted away, much as, twelve years before, he had drifted in; in three years following, bringing him to three and thirty, was in and out of half-a-dozen posts; at thirty-five, at the same level of drab and listless incompetency, he had drifted into the appear¬ ance of a permanency at a desk in the office of a firm of estate agents. Here he earned two pounds a week, and here, which exactly suited him, he merely sat in the office from nine-thirty to six and entered up properties or copied them for clients. It was not an employment at which it was easy to make mistakes, or in which mistakes, if they were made, could be very serious. It was just the donkey-work of the business, and it was useful to the firm to have for the donkey-work a steady, dull, middle-aged man, who did no more than he was required to do, and for doing it wanted no more than he got.

Hector, therefore, suited, and was himself well suited. He had, in addition to his two pounds a week, some ninety pounds a year from investments under his father’s will. He had no tastes; his only expenditure was his lodging; he only bought clothes when he came through those he wore. He now was forty and forty was his fitting age. He had never been a boy, never a youth. In boyhood the qualities of boyhood, and in youth the qualities of youth, had been expected of him, and he had never been able to produce them. At forty, nothing was expected of him, and that suited him precisely. At forty, looking upon his purposeless mien, his vacant eyes, and his neglected mind, one might say that the Creator, with high and ardent hopes planning in his own image the young body and the young mind that first was here, had faltered in his interest and abandoned it and gone away. . . .

At forty, H. Bywash had no vices and no virtues. He was negative. Nothing interested him, nothing caused his pulses to quicken. The result of the Derby or of the Boat Race, the sonnets of Wordsworth, the spires of Tidborough Cathedral springing to the sky, the bustle and gleam of Tidborough’s commercial streets by night, when pleasure and business were abroad, or May or October arranging their glories upon the countryside — these things were nothing to H. Bywash. Nothing was anything to him.

And suddenly, at forty, thus circumstanced and thus equipped, astounding and tremendous things began to happen to him.

Ill

They began with the beginning of his annual fort¬ night’s holiday taken in this forty-first year of his age, — poignant and mysterious and terrific and fright¬ ful things: emotions that presented at white heat all those ardent emotions he should have known in his youth and never had known; emergencies that called for all those qualities of mind and muscle, of action and of courage, which in his young manhood he should have developed and husbanded, but whose virtues he had never entertained.

He took this holiday, as he had taken twenty before it, at the great seaport town of Stormouth, an hour’s run from Tidborough on the main line from London. No one, observing him waiting on the platform for the down train, would have supposed he was holiday bound. He went on holiday as he went about every¬ thing else, listlessly; he spent it lodged in a cheap room, lounging within doors if the weather were dull, listlessly about the Prince’s Park or on the sea-front if fine.

The train roared in. Everybody quickened up and bustled. Some greeted, some took leavesome rushed about for accommodation; some after luggage. Boys bawled newspapers and refreshments. Porters thun¬ dered trucks towards and away from the baggage vans. The engine contributed a tremendous and spec¬ tacular din of escaping steam. Mr. Bywash, sole emotionless figure, drifted towards the coach that had halted nearest him and drifted in. He scarcely noticed the occupants, a man and a woman, seated side by side opposite him and at the farther corner. The train started. He looked out of the window, seeing, for all the countryside conveyed to his mind, as much or as little as if a blank wall ’flanked the way.

When the train had run about twenty minutes he altered his position, and made to look across the car¬ riage through the further window. Then he noticed his companions. The man was a huge, obese creature, with a heavy, brutish face, got up in a horsey way, the rough publican or bookmaker type. He had enormous hands, great, big, red, sledge-hammer hands, and his face — the mouth tightly pursed as though he desired to show he had no intention of speaking — held the expression of a malevolent and threatening smile as if there were some ferocious power he had that in his chosen time he would exercise. The whole bulk and coarseness and brutality of the man, the heavy and ferocious aspect that he had, vaguely frightened Mr.

By wash. It made him feel uncomfortable, alarmed. WHy that dominating and repellent mien? . . . Why that mouth thus pursed as though to show he would not speak? . . . Why in his face that cynical present¬ ment of triumph, of power? . . . Why? Uncomfort¬ able, apprehensive, Mr. Bywash slid his eyes to the ferocious man’s companion, to the woman; and then knew why; and knew, immediately and poignantly, extraordinary and mysterious and terrible and immod¬ erately alarming sensations.

She was slightly twisted in her seat so that her face was upturned beneath the man’s face. Her face was pale. It was pale with a creamy pallor, and it had eyes of dim grey, grey with the pearl and exquisite grey¬ ness of the last film that lifts above the dawn, and shining stuff about the lower lids. . . . (“ Tears! ”* thought Mr. Bywash dreadfully. “ Tears! Oh, my, she’s crying! ”) And she had soft black hair, low on her temples and upon her brow, as shadows on white roses, that stirred and lifted in the window’s breeze as fronds in the depths of some clear pool. And she was talking, talking, talking; she was imploring, imploring,, imploring; ceaselessly, piteously, frantically. Mr. Bywash could not hear what she was saying; she was speaking very low, and there was the rushing noise of the train; scarcely the murmur of her tone was dis¬ cernible to him. But all too frightfully clear to him the fact that she was begging, begging, imploring, entreating. It explained the pursed-up lips of that huge and ferocious man. She was imploring a word from him, and he would not speak a word. It explained that horrible look of his, of triumph and of power that in his chosen time he would exercise. She was in terror of that triumph, in dismay of that power.

Mr. Bywash watched; and watched with all these mysterious and frightful and never-before-experienced feelings swelling and surging within him, and causing him fear (which he had often felt, but never for such a reason) and aching pity, which he never in his life had felt for anybody; and, much worse, bewildering and dizzying emotions — yearnings, longings, crav¬ ings, high desires of knight errantry, of brave and reckless actions; and, worse still, born out of these, regret.

‘Yes, watching the face of that woman, hurt by the stresses it aroused within him, there consumed Mr. Bywash a great pain of regret, of realisation, of mor¬ tification. It was regret at all he had never been, and now never could become; it was realisation of all he had missed and now could recover never; it was mor¬ tification at all he now was — the nerveless, negligible entity he knew he looked — and at all the fine and shining and valorous things that in the furnace of these emotions he most terribly desired to be, and could not be.

He cried inwardly, he could have cried it aloud, “ Oh, dear me! ”

He thought, “ What could I not be? Oh, what am I?”

There answered him, exultingly blared in the rhythm of the train, over and over again, thumping it out, beating it in:

“ Oh, my goodness! ” He could have jumped out of the train . . .

“ Yes, if you had the pluck! ”

“ Oh, my goodness! ” These new and frightful emotions he was suffering had set within him an articu¬ late entity that could talk, and this was the first thing it said. “ Yes, you could jump out of the train to stop that song and to still your shame, you could jump out and end it — if you had the pluck. Ha, ha! If you had the pluck! ”

And while he writhed it went on: “And if you had the pluck to jump out, By wash, you wouldn’t want to jump out. If you had the pluck to do that you’d have the pluck to do splendid things here in the carriage, and you’d have the appearance and the strength that goes with pluck. You’d get up. You’d interfere. If need be, you’d strike that hulking brute. You’d pro¬ tect that poor creature. You’d take her. She would turn to you, Bywash. She would admire you, she would turn to you, she would cling to you, she would love you. You’d take her away. She’d be yours, your own; yours, your darling, and you her dearly loved, her hero — if you had the pluck, By wash! If only you were not what you have always been. If only you had sought the things in life you’ve never sought. If only you had not missed all you have missed. If only you were not what you have come to be. If only you were your brother Harry, Bywash, or your brother Tom.

If only — but listen to the train, Bywash, you’re not hearing it Listen!”

Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these..

He said between his lips, “ Oh, my God! ”

* * * * *

She was still and ceaselessly at it, imploring, beseech¬ ing; and the man basilisk, imperturbable, with never a word, with only that sinister indifference, with only that reserved ferocious threat. Anon she would pause, as in exhaustion of despair, and shrink away into her¬ self; and By wash would see, and tremble to see, all her wrought-up spirit as it were dissolve away in a piteous sigh, and that shining stuff upon her lower lids fill and discharge itself in a swift crystal 'flash down her cheeks; and in a moment she would start, as though in panic at the moments suffered to fly empty, and urge herself again towards him, and urge again that des¬ perate prayer, that most piteous entreaty. Once she slid her hand — Bywash saw a wedding ring upon it — timidly upon those huge red hands of the man. It was the gentlest and most touching motion of appeal. The man threw up his hand and jerked hers violently away; and the action tore Bywash to the quick; and it did other — it frightened him anew. Those sledge-ham¬ mer hands; the sight of them and the thought of their power alarmed him even more than did the man’s fero¬ cious face. The horrible instruments, those hands, of all the horrible violences that face might do.

“ Interfere! ” mocked the new voice within Mr. Bywash. “ Look at those butcher hands of his and interfere. Go on! ”

Bywash bit his lips.

Once while he stared, and while like one entombed searching escape vainly he sought for courage, the man looked up and directed upon him a full gaze, and By¬ wash dropped his eyes and turned away his head, and louder than before the beaten rhythm of the train announced:

“ . . . and some of Hercules;

Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these.”

He groaned.

In a little he screwed up courage to look again; and he watched now warily and ready to slip away his eyes at an instant’s warning. “ Imagine it,” mocked the voice. “ Imagine it; you daren’t even be caught watch¬ ing ! ” And once — and this was the most frightful and bitterest moment of all — once the woman ceased her entreaty and made with her hands a little frantic motion of despair and looked swiftly about her in obvious quest of help. And Bywash was the sole other person there. And her eyes just fleeted a moment on his face — fleeted, and were gone, and she made again that little frantic motion of despair.

Oh, bitterest moment and of all most frightful! That glance at him and that immediate turning from him! As if a mirror it had been he saw therein his negligible and useless self. If only he had been Tom, if only he had been Harry, if only he had been any other than this he had become!

“ Oh, my goodness! ” cried Bywash to himself.

IV

The train ran into Stormouth. He leaned from the window to turn the handle of the door. It was too stiff for his feeble wrist. He never before had noticed how puny were his arms. The man pushed him uncere¬ moniously aside, flicked round the latch without an effort, and stepped out. The woman followed. Her skirts brushed Bywash. Her knees touched his. It was the first contact with a woman that he had ever so much as noticed. It thrilled him dreadfully. He made a great effort. He said — and knew it as he said it for the throaty sound it was — “ Can I help you? ”

She did not hear. How should she, terrified as he had been lest the man should hear ? She did not hear. She was gone. She was passing up the platform in the man’s wake.

Was he to let her go like this? Oh, not .after these terrible and mysterious emotions, this amazing and frightful feeling towards her, that had come at him as unexpected flame burst through an opened door. Oh, not after that! Oh, not with this upon him — these tumults, these revelations, these visions of one great act of glorious courage, these transports of what would then be won — a look, a touch, a word, a bond with her! Not after that! He had baggage, but he let it go; he stumbled out of the train; and he pressed anxiously through the busy plat¬ forms; and he followed the pair out into the street and through many streets.

The man was walking much too fast for her. There was.in his great stride and in the massive hulk of his shoulders the same air of vengeful purpose and of biding power that his mien in the train had presented; there was in her agitated hurrying and in the droop of her slender figure the same pitiable appeal that first had wrung these frightful tumults out of Mr. Bywash’s heart. And she was being hurried to her doom! He would get her within doors somewhere, and then-

Mr. Bywash followed along, keeping safely behind and hating himself for his caution. What was he going to do ? He didn’t know. But he was trying to nerve himself to something, and he was knowing as he tried that there was nothing in him to respond to nerv¬ ing. He was experiencing all those ardours and those valors which spring in young manhood and which young manhood, feeling, plants in his breast to be his own — and he never had had »any young manhood! He was an island castaway come upon treasure and without means to enjoy it; he was one that had laid up his talent in a napkin, and now sought in vain its yield.

The passage of the pair was through the streets of Stormouth’s commercial quarter. Mr. Bywash lost his bearings after many turns. He recovered them again as he found himself approaching the district in which lay that Prince’s Park where it had been his habit on former visits to lounge away the hours lis¬ tening to the band. The couple turned down a street he remembered walking on his way to the park. The houses here were in a solid row on either side, their doors opening directly on to the pavement by two steps, and before one the pair halted. Mr. Bywash halted also, a dozen doors behind. The man opened the door with a key. Mr. Bywash made a great effort at his nerves, and came a few paces on. The man went up the steps and in. It smote terribly at Bywash’s heart that the woman hesitated, faltered. The man turned and caught her arm, dragging her roughly. Mr. Bywash was trembling, but he advanced. As he came abreast of the door it was swung to. He stood there trembling.

He had a glimpse before the door swung; a long, narrow passage, on the left a room belonging to the window against the entrance by which he stood, at the end a flight of stairs. He heard heavy steps up the passage and the stairs creak; a darkening behind the window told him that one had entered there. The man had gone upstairs; the woman was in the room. He looked at the door. His heart beat. The door was not latched. It was open! Even as he looked it began to move in a widening aperture.

He did a most appalling thing.

He crept within the door and stood in the passage. He was shaking with fear. Overhead were heavy movements. In the room beside him was sobbing. “ I’m mad. I shall be killed! ” thought Mr. Bywash. He went into the room. She was collapsed upon a couch, her arms over its back, her head bowed on her arms. He stood there. He was trembling.

She looked up. She sprung to her feet. “ Oh, what is it ? Who are you ? What do you want ? ”

He was so shaking, he was so strained with listening for approach from above, his condition was altogether so frightful that he could not speak, not for a full minute, while she stared upon him in amazement. Then he stammered, “ Can I help you ? ”

“ Who are you ? Who are you ? ”

“ I was in the train with you.”

But what do you want ? What are you doing here? I don’t understand. What is it you want?”

“ I was in the train. I saw what was going on with you. I-”

Her eyes were*round and staring in incomprehension. She struck her hands together, bewildered. “ But what do you want ? ”

The moments were flying. He seemed to have been hours in this perilous position. At any instant might come descent upon the stairs. He was shaking. He said, “ I want to help you.”

She understood. Her eyes that had been wide en¬ larged yet more. He knew perfectly well her thought, the absurd and futile spectacle he presented! If only he were like Tom! If only he were like Harry! He knew her thought; and she spoke and gave him her thought in its dreadful bitterness. “ You! You! You must be mad — you must be.”

It was awful to hear. His face twitched. He said with a catch in his voice, “ I know. I know. But I want to. I want to. I saw you. I couldn’t bear it. I felt for you. I want to. I want to.”

And wider yet her eyes.

Then she made a quick step to him and put her hands on his wrists and pressed him away. “ Go! Go! Go at once. While you can. You are mad — mad to be here.”

She was terrified for him, and her terror joined and urged his own. But she was touching him! Her hands were on his hands, her face was close to his, the faint and stirring perfume of her 'flesh. He stood his ground. For a brief instant, as one in flush of wine, he forgot his fears, “ I want to help you. I want to.”

She stood away and wrung her hands. “ Oh, what can you do? What can you do? You? Go, go! He’ll kill you. He’ll kill you.”

And terror struck across her face, “ Listen! ”

The change in her countenance, and that hissed, dreadful word, froze him. He listened. Footsteps on the stairs above. He turned and fled.

Outside and down the street, his thoughts went: Still, he had done it! Craven in that flight of his — still, he had done it! He had gone in. He had spoken to her. Surely that was brave? Surely it was? Yes, it was. He had done that much, that terrific and appalling much. He could not then be utterly, not utterly, abandoned. True, by that craven flight there were confirmed to him all those lamentable exposures of himself revealed in the railway carriage. True, he was wretched and no man. He knew it now. Still, he had done it. . . . He clung on to that.

Now to do more. He went to the station and claimed his bag, carried it to the street of his adventure and from the corner surveyed the road. In the fanlight of several doorways “ Apartments ” was to be seen. There was the house, just by that lamp standard. He walked towards it on the other side, and at a house three doors opposite inquired for a room, stip¬ ulating it must overlook the street, and obtained it.

He seated himself in the window and watched.

Early on the following morning, again watching, he saw the man come out. The man could not possibly see him, but he caught his breath and shrunk away behind the curtain. How huge he looked! How brutal! Those frightful hands swinging by his sides!

About midday the woman appeared. She carried a shopping bag. He took up his hat and went down¬ stairs and followed.

She made purchases in two or three shops. He kept away on the further side, his eyes adoring. Now she passed away from the shopping streets and her direc¬ tion became the direction of the park. If only she were to go there! She was! She was! She entered the park, and he followed.

She went to a secluded seat and took it; and Bywash went up to her and she recognized him.

Now, now began the amazing days! Now life, as a walled city opening its gates to one all night without, raised its portals and Bywash entered.

V

For a long period into that second meeting her part was solely of utter incomprehension. She simply could not understand Mr. Bywash, and he was so mani¬ festly the futile thing he looked that she made no pretence of understanding him. She might have been afraid of his approaches; but no living creature could possibly be afraid of Mr. Bywash. She might have been indignant at his presumption; but his extraor¬ dinary manner did not arouse indignation. That was just it; he was so utterly out of keeping with the part he played. And what was the part he played? She simply could not comprehend. Over and over again she said to him, he standing there before her, “ But I don’t understand. I simply can’t. What is it you want ? Why are you speaking to me? I can’t under¬ stand.”

And he could not explain. He could only stammer perfectly meaningless things. He wanted to say all sorts of things, and could not say them. He was suf¬ fering all sorts of emotions, manifested by a lump in his throat, by mistiness before his eyes, and he could not possibly express them. And she kept on with that, “ But what is it you want ? Why are you speaking to me?” — telling him as plainly as if she were saying it what a figure he looked.

A moisture dimmed his eyes. She saw it. She said quickly: “ I am so sorry; I really am; but really I simply cannot understand. I can’t. Believe me, how sorry I am.”

He had to wipe his eyes. This kind note in her voice ... It worsened his plight.

He said, “ The truth is just that I want to talk to you. I’ve never spoken to a woman — for that reason

— in my life before. I saw you in that carriage yes¬ terday, and I saw how wretched you were, and I felt, I simply can’t tell you how I felt for you. I’ve never felt sorry for any one or cared in the least what hap¬ pened to any one, in all my life before. I felt for you

— I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it even to myself — how it happened so suddenly, how I felt it so fright¬ fully. I can’t tell you. I wanted to interfere, to say something, somehow to help you. I didn’t dare. You can see what I am. You saw yesterday when I bolted out of your house what I am. It’s no good trying to hide it. You can see for yourself. Any one can. I wanted to interfere. I didn’t dare. I followed you. I had to. I’ve told you why. It was just what came over me so frightfully when I looked up at you in the carriage. So I had to follow. And then I went in. I did do that. Of course I bolted. I bolted directly I heard him coming. It’s no good trying to hide what I am. But that I did go in — that shows you, I do hope it shows you, how frightfully I felt for you, how frightfully I do feel for you.”

He ended, “ That’s all. It’s just what I’ve tried to tell you. It’s just that I’ve never spoken to a woman in my life — oh, do please let me talk to you. It’s incredible that I can be of any help to you. But you never know. Perhaps I can. If only I could-”

She said, “ Oh, do sit down. It is extraordinary, this. Even now I can’t quite — But indeed I do thank you very much for wanting to help me. I’m glad to talk to you. If you were any one else I shouldn’t dare. But you — it doesn’t seem to matter with you.

You don’t mind my saying that, do you? It really doesn’t seem to matter. And I am glad to talk to you. There’s no one I’m ever allowed to talk to. When you saw me in the carriage — you want to know about that, don’t you? — when you saw me, I’d been running away. It was the second time I’d tried. He came after me and caught me. He was bringing me back.”

Mr. Bywash said, “ He looked as though he was

going to-Does he b-” He hardly could

frame the dreadful word. “ Does he beat you? ”