Hammer marks; a biographical novel

Chapter I " You are not to come in here, Arno.”

Her face shone pale in the darkness of the window through which she looked. Her voice was flexile and unguarded of tone, betraying, to one who cared to note, each fashion of her emotions ; not so her face ; it betrayed nothing, not joy nor sorrow, hope nor despair ; even her eyes were silent as to the battles of her heart. She lived in the blind-walled fortress of her reserve, which was something of a prison, but by her tell-tale voice her husband knew that there were fountains in its inner courtyard, and whether they flashed high enough to glint in sunshine or welled slowly and darkly away, he, Jeffry Brooke, her husband, knew the manner of them.

“ Arno,” she called again, with a wash of song in her voice; such song as the breaking sea-wave throws to space.

Her son did not heed, even if he heard. He held a triangle of blue glass over a square of yellow and stared through them at the sun. Arnold Brooke was six years old, and when a boy is six in his years he appreciates a green sun as a change from the ordinary, everybody’s sun, which makes his eyes water when he stares at it through his finger-slots.

Arnold’s mother saw that he was far too interested in his own affairs to be likely to penetrate into her own, so she turned from the window. Then, remembering that she would require all the light which she could 13 obtain, she raked the cotton lace curtains back along their tape.

Arnold considered the mystery of the green sun for a minute before he dropped the glass trinkets to the heap at his feet. He picked up others of different colours and began to make absorbing experiments. He con¬ ducted these experiments with the puzzled seriousness of an alchemist, rather than the carelessness of a child who takes a toy, and takes a toy, and takes a toy.

“ A green sun is silly,” he announced, crossing and crossing his magic glasses. “ The blue sun is the moon, but the red glass makes the sun white. What for ? It ought not to look white,” he reasoned. “ It ought to look lik e one of the knots in the ash-house door, when you shut yourself in and the sun shines outside.”

He would have liked to look at the knots in the ash-bin door through the red glass, and see what happened then; but the ash-bin was forbidden ground because of “sentry” and fever. He did not believe there was a sentry there, because he had watched for horns and had not seen one ; but he knew the fever was there, because the big boys who brought him bits of glass from the tip, and who knew almost everything, had seen a gravestone, and on it the words : “ Miskin door! Miskin door! Don’t you open the miskin door, for that has brought me to my grave.”

Arnold turned his attention to the house, scrutinising it through the ruby glass. His house looked lovely. It was twice as good as the other houses in the court, because they were the back houses, single houses ; his was a double house. It was the best house in Rudyard Street; in all Birmingstow; in all the world. It was three times as good as the other houses in the court, because the front room was a shop, and it had a back¬ yard ; none of the other houses in the court had a back¬ yard with a fowlpen in it. It was hundreds of times better ; billion, million, trillion times better : a lot better !

And his father was a lot better father than theirs, each’s, all of them’s—only he had the toothache. His father was a gun action maker and had a workshop that was as good as his own. A lot of men worked for him ; only his father had the toothache and his master would not let him work. His father used to get lots of money before he had toothache bad, so much bad. It hurt, only men did not cry like little boys as was hurt. Before he was bad, his father used to wash his Arnold in the big tin bath with peephole handles ; his mother washed him now at night; his mother wore a hard ring and washed him as if she wanted to get him clean : his father washed him as if he loved his Arnold. Because his father was poorly, the boys brought Arnold bits of glass from the tip, and Mr. Rockby, who painted pictures with long brushes, let Arnold sit and watch him work in the " stewdy-io.” He liked Mr. Rockby. But he loved his father.

Yes, he liked his house best through the red glass ; then it was almost as wonderful as when he bent and looked at it upside down from between his legs, with the sky running underneath it like the seaside on the posters.

Suddenly he had an inspiration ; he would look at the house upside down and through the red glass at the same time. Wasn’t that funny ! He could not see the house at all; he only saw what was behind him at the end of the yard—the fowlpen against the wall, the end of the general wash-house, and the round-faced iron tap like a baby weighing-machine. That was a good game the big boys played ; somebody stood on the sough to try their weight and pretended to put a penny in the slot, then another boy who knew the game would turn the handle and the water would come all over their feet.

Above the wall Arnold could see John Rockby’s studio and the backs of the big houses in Athol Crescent. He thought that when he grew up he would like to be an artist and paint pictures like John Rockby. John Rockby’s father was a doctor, but even then he was not as good as Arnold’s father.

His attitude caused his head to swim. He straight¬ ened his back, and then sat down on the hard ground with his treasure enclosed in the V of his legs. In addition to the shapes of coloured glass there were long edgings of Muranese glass discarded by stained window makers ; and scoops of mother of pearl, scalloped and fretted with round holes, from the button factory ; and bright snippings of scrap tin. Placing his coloured fragments side by side on the beaten ground he began to construct a great flower pattern, changing it and changing it with kaleidoscopic changes, until it was so big that he had to travel round it on hands and knees to place the last jewels on the winking points of the star. It gleamed a glorious, barbaric decoration in the drab court.

In the centre of the orderly spangles was a red glass disc intended for window lettering. Arnold crawled between the points of the star and picked the ruby out; he took it on to the low roof of the f owlpen and began to spin it, making it skip in a dazzle of rays.

He was reminded of his tops ; how they pleased his father. Had his father not made wagers that no other boy could keep nine tops spinning so long as he upon a tin tray without them knocking ?

He made his way into the house. The kitchen was dingier than ever now that the naked window gave fuller access to the light. His mother was mixing a mash of linseed in a blue and white striped basin. The Turkey red table-cloth was half turned back, and there were scissors and rolls of bandaging and other forbidden play¬ things upon a flattened newspaper. His father had his hands above his head drawing a steaming cloth to his face ; he crossed the bandages and wrenched the hot dressing tightly to his cheek.

Arnold dragged his tray of tops and chalks from under the sofa, and, parting the fringe of the Turkey red covering, stretched himself in his favourite attitude upon his stomach. He lay half way from under the table with his tray upon the rag hearthrug ; he leaned upon his elbows while he tore bits of paper, and, moisten¬ ing them, stuck them on the domes of some of the tops, to make coloured wings when they should be spun ; on others he made chalk marks, pink and blue.

Arnold looked up at his father to see if he were as interested as usual; his father did not notice him.

To Arnold, in his lowly position, the man looked gigantic where he leaned in a sitting posture on the fire¬ guard ; his hands were a little way out from his side, holding the brass rail which formed the top of the guard ; a fire blazed at his back; his head was as high as the opaque vases on the black wooden mantelshelf, but not so high as the fluffy pampas plumes arranged in them.

Arnold, looking upwards, saw his father’s face from a new direction. The chin was more prominent, and was firmly modelled as a knee ; the clipped eaves of the brown-gold moustache showed him the dimpled lip which usually was hidden, and the pouches beneath the eyes showed fuller and more darkly blue ; perhaps it was because of the angle of Arnold’s gaze or because his father was looking at the ceiling, but the man seemed to be bearing patiently great pain; and Arnold loved him, loved him every bit.

“ Are you ready for the next one, Jeffry ? ” asked Arnold’s mother.

“ Yes.”

The man raised himself a little on the guard and, lifting his hands, unfastened the wrappings where they were knotted above his head, and lowered the festoon of bandages.

Arnold gave a piercing scream and buried his face in his arm among his toys. “ Take him away! Oh, take him away! ” he screamed in terror, lest anyone should touch him. In the hollow of his father’s throat he had seen the livid cancer, seeming to be alive in the flickering firelight.

Arnold ceased to cry out and lay quivering, filled with fear. Oh, the horrible thing which was about in the house ; the horrible, the ugly, the terrible thing which had fastened on to his father. It had been in the house all the time and he had not known. He lay terrified with a pulsing, unqualified terror ; when he felt the touch of his mother’s hand he nearly lost his senses in the dread that it might be the unnamable thing which

Bh had been bound to his father ; the swollen thing without eyes which rippled with fluttering, flame-like life.

It was his mother who was lifting him ; her breast and shoulder were between him and his unhappy father’s face ; she was carrying him up the dark staircase to his bedroom. He hid his face in her bosom and made his breaths with little jerky coughs. She was not taking him out of the terrifying house, for he could hear the loose handrail on the stairs rattle to her hold. He was to stop in the house with the awful silent thing which fluttered.

The bedroom was comfortingly lighter than the kitchen, but his mother had left the door open ; he ceased seeing, feeling ; he suspended every sense but hearing to listen for a sound on the dark staircase. There was no sound. Oh, his poor father alone below there with it, and no sound!

His mother laid him on the bed, his head upon the pillow, and began to unfasten his boots. Oh, why had she left the door open ? She kissed him and held his stockinged feet together in her hand—she had always liked to fold his feet together between her palms like this—but she did not stay ; she was going to leave him. He held out his two hands to her. She folded his hands in her palms even as she had fondled his feet; her hands were warm and moist from the steam.

“ Be a brave man like father,” she said, and, drawing the coverlet over him, she left him, and he heard the grateful click of the closing door.

But the thing was flat! It could come under the door and he would not see it; he could not see the bottom of the door beyond the bed! He hid under the bed¬ clothes, and abandoned himself to unmitigated terror.

He wanted to shrink and shrink right away so that nothing and no one but his mother would find him, and his mother could tell his father where he was when the thing had gone.

His mother had told him to be brave like his father was, but he knew he could not be brave, he could not help being a coward. He began to sob because he could not be brave although he wanted to be ; his sobs began to form words, " I—want to be brave, I want to be brave.” He pushed away some of the heavier coverings and whimpered, " Father, Arnie wants you. Father, Arnie wants you,” and he glided to sleep.

The afternoon grew so grey that the sickle day-moon became distinct; the forge-glow of sunset tempered it, and the night came, chilling it to steel; still Arnold slept. Several times his mother came to see if he had wakened. She undressed him in his sleep and bathed his face, and put his white nightgown upon him ; last his father came and stayed a long, long while ; kneeling by his bed in the darkness, touching him with a quiet hand. He went away.

The moon rose higher, seeming transparent in its brilliance. Neither his father nor his mother came again to the room, but feet went often up and often down the stairs.

Arnold woke ; it was a kiss which had wakened him, a kiss among his hair.

“ Father wants to see you.” It was his mother’s voice speaking.

Arnold was widely awake, so freshly and clearly awake. He climbed from the bed and found his mother’s hand, and stepped with her to the door which was open, showing the light from his father’s room across the little landing. There was a step down to the landing, and a step up into the room beyond; Arnold carefully made the crossing.

His father’s room was lit by an oil lamp upon a table of thin wood stained to imitate mahogany. To Arnold the room seemed well lit. He met his father’s gaze as soon as he had passed the open door. He saw nothing else but his father. He did not wonder why he was wanted ; he only looked into those very beautiful grey eyes as he walked round the foot of the bed, and loved his father, and loved him, and loved him.

As the face of a gentle knight framed in a cowl of chain mail, the oval of his father’s face was bound about with a capuchon of white linen ; a blanched, spent face, made vivid by the light in the eyes, made tender by the soft curves of the lovable mouth in the shadow of the golden-red moustache.

His father held out his arms to him, and he went into them for a few very little minutes.

They kissed.

“ Good-bye, Arnold.”

“ Good-bye, father.”

The embrace opened, and Arnold moved from it. For a moment they told all their love, each to the other s eyes. Arnold felt a coin being placed in his palm ; his fingers closed over it; the ritual was ended ; he had taken upon the tablets of his mind, indelibly, a picture of his father—a pale and golden knight.

Arnold took his mother’s hand and went carefully from the room, carefully across the landing, and waited for her to lift him into his bed. He lay awake, but no thoughts came to blur the outline, and later, when he fell asleep, no dreams.

In the sparse moonlight the barbaric star which Arnold had made gleamed like a decoration in the dreary courts

Chapter II

Arnold grew into a boy of very glum aspect, and it may have been his joyless expression which warded off from him the fellowship of other boys of his own age, and caused him to lead a life strangely unchildlike in its friendlessness. As he approached the time when he would be leaving schooldays behind he began to feel this isolation, and it weighed upon and cramped his spirit. Books he did not care for, but he was happy with a pencil and paper or with tin boxes of paints, sitting in the small kitchen while his mother served in the shop, or did plain sewing for people of better circumstances who lived in the Crescent.

It had been eight years since his father died, but his mother, by means of the little shop, her needle, and much personal forgoing of comforts, had kept him well fed, well dressed, and provided with childish pleasures which Rudyard Street considered “ waste, a sin and a shame.”

“ Why don’t you go out and play the same as the other boys while the light nights are here ? You'11 wish you had when it’s dark,” his mother would ask, and he would rise obediently, leaving his pictures, to go and stand against the lamp-post at the corner, from whence he watched the children playing. He had a peculiar dread of his mother finding out that he himself did not play, but only stood and apathetically watched the games of others. He would wait until the children were called to their homes, or were dragged there, protesting loudly, when he would run back to his pictures, glad to be released by the late hour from the penance of play.

Sometimes the urchins invited him to share their amusements, but always he shook his head. “ He can’t play cause he’s a coward,” they would cry, and as he backed away to the corner wall they would jeer and sing in chorus a doggerel verse, “ Cowardy, cowardy custard! Can’t eat a bit of mustard.” He would regard them until they were tired and then return to his lamp-post position to consider the force and merits of their gibe and song.

He accepted their dictum that he could not play by reason of his being a coward. It never entered his head to question their summing up and judgment. Yet he was not shy, for he entered into any necessary intercourse with them without restraint. He was not reserved, for he thought they were rather fine fellows, these urchins of his own age. He was not sensitive, for he never avoided their ridicule. His lack of interest in games and fellowship was not occasioned by his being a weakling. This he tested secretly, running alone in less time the distances they raced, so many times round the square ; climbing the lamp-posts, and throwing from the top of the street to beyond Bloom’s Alley.

It became an established fact with them and him that he was a coward. During the impressionable years of ten to fifteen in his age his beliefs were instilled with the subtle aroma of his cowardice—beliefs which per¬ meated his thoughts, his actions, his conscience.

That he did not fear physical pain did not affect his opinion of his cowardice ; to be afraid of being hurt was only ordinary cowardice; his was something worse.

On a late September evening, when powdery chaff, dirty paper and vegetable refuse, and silt in the gutters made Rudyard Street look as if an open market had been held there, Arnold leaned against the corner lamp-post and knocked his heels on the curb and wished for night to come soon. With tame interest, as of one who watches a play seen many times before, he was looking at a group of boys cautiously approaching a house opposite him. The foremost urchin carried several jagged pieces of sheet glass, the others slunk close at his heels, exhibiting stealth common to footlight villains.

The boy with the glass flung it at a doorstep, his com¬ panions of the moment thumped the house window as the glass crashed, and then all scampered to find hidingplaces. The house door was snatched open and an elderly woman rushed into the street, followed by a man several years younger. She felt about the window-pane with the flat of her hand, although she could see it was undamaged. She stooped to the shattered glass and picked scraps of it up.

“ It must be the fanlight or one of the bedrooms Bert. Little imps ! ” she exclaimed.

Bert was more interested in seeking the perpetrators of the deed. He caught sight of Arnold, and, crossing the road, brought him unresisting to the scene of the jest. “ Here’s one on ’em,” he said.

“ No, it wouldn’t be him, Bert. That’s Mrs. Brooke’s son, and he,can’t play.”

“ Can’t play ? He’s a funny kid if he can’t play. I never knew one yet.”

“ No. When his mother was carrying him they found out her husband had a cancer and would die, but it went dormant.”

“ D’you mean he’s a bit touched ? ” asked Bert.

“ No, I don’t. He’s as smart a kid as there is in the street, but he don’t know how to enjoy himself.”

“ Poor little devil! I suppose if his father had cancer he’ll have it ? ”

“ Nothing so sure. It’s always handed down.”

“ You’ll frighten the kid,” said Bert, forgetting that he had instigated the remark.

“ Not me ; he’s too young to know what we’re talking about.”

“ What is a cancer ? ” asked Arnold.

“ It’s a silver new nothing to wear on your sleeve. You run off while you are safe.”

Arnold walked gravely to the little shop. He went into * his bedroom and fumbled in the dark for his dictionary. He could feel which it was as it had no cover. He brought it down, and, spreading it on the table, found the page he sought.

“ A genus of crustaceans ; one of the twelve zodiacal signs ; the sign of the summer solstice ; a malignant tumour.”

The whole explanation as set forth served to deepen the mystery ; six of the words were strange to him. He began to look them up in the book.

“ What are you looking for ? ” enquired his mother.

“ Solstice,” said Arnold, who had progressed thus far.

“ What do you want it for ? ” she asked.

“ It came in a lesson at school to-day,” he answered.

“Now why did I tell that He ? ” he asked himself. “ I suppose it’s because I’m funky, and I always shall be.”

“ Mr. Rockby has started teaching at the School of Art,” said his mother, “ evenings as well.”

“ I know,” said Arno.

“ Should you like to go to the School of Art and be in his class ? ”

Arnold thrust the book aside at this suggestion. “Oh, that would be lovely,” he said.

“ Go and wash your face then, and wait at the corner of the Crescent until he comes. He is sure not to be long now.”

“ But I did wash my face this morning,” protested Arnold.

“ Then wash it again,” said his mother. “ You’ve got lots of time.”

Cleaned and brushed, Arnold walked through the little shop into Rudyard Street. Rudyard Street after dark revealed to the full the marrow of its sordid misery. When lamps and candles were lit, old sacks and pieces of faded rag fastened across the lower windows served to attract inquisitive attention to what was not hidden in the living-rooms, and but little was hidden above table-level. But if the inquisitive attention was a stranger’s, he glanced through no more than one window, for with concerted disapproval the whole population of the street appeared menacingly at doorways and windows and the entrances of courts, gathered by fee lin g in general the contagion of a common itch. Rather than method it was a law none analysed which governed the swiftness to communicate between and the readiness to co-operate of all the corpuscles crowding in the arteries of Rudyard Street.

So Rudyard Street had lit its lamps and made a sneer¬ ing pretence at privacy with rags and old newspapers, and then had put bricks against wide-open doors and lit more dripping tallows in the bedrooms, that it might wash and eat, dress and undress, quarrel and cook, in comfortable publicity.

It was Thursday night, and there was scarcely any money in Rudyard Street pockets ; the “ Rose and Crown ” and “ The Why Not Inn ” had little spittle on their sanded floors. The men lolled against walls, finding ease and satisfying their vanity by the height to which their shirt-sleeves were rolled ; their hands were ever roving, on pipe-stems or in the covert depths of their flap pockets. The women who had babies sat on doorsteps and suckled them, those who had not fidgeted with their fingers in their hair or their blouses. The whole of the visible population was watching the excited manoeuvres of various mongrel dogs. Arnold also watched the dogs, since, bred of Rudyard Street, he was becoming to have one eye, one mind, one appetite with the denizens thereof. To lose initiative and sacri¬ fice personality apart from the whole body’s personality was the lot of a corpuscle of Rudyard Street.

He turned at the corner by the “ Rose and Crown ” and waited where John Rockby must pass to reach Athol Crescent.

As Rudyard Street was the edge of the slum area, so was the Crescent the edge of a good-class district, its rampart which defied the undesirable.

As Arnold saw John Rockby approach he raised his cap and said, “ Good evening, Mr. Rockby.” Then he had to slip quickly aside to avoid being jostled by the man, who did not alter his pace as he passed. Arnold looked at the broad back. A quiver ran through him, beginning at his heart.

John Rockby pushed open the iron gate with a thrust of his knee and went up the stone steps between the shrubs. He knocked the ash from his pipe upon one of the pillars, and, taking a latch-key from his vest pocket, let himself into the hall. The cradled light in the hall showed round his broad back with ochre glow for a moment before the door closed. Arnold looked at the door as he had looked at the man’s back—with an empty mind, with an empty heart.

He walked toward Rudyard Street, and stopped as his mind definitely resumed its action. “ Perhaps he did not see it was me,” he thought, and slowly turned and retraced his steps to the gate. His hand was between the spikes ; he hesitated. “ Perhaps he saw it was me only he is bothered and did not want to stop and myther with me.” He dropped his hand to his side and turned again. He now walked as far as the “ Rose and Crown ” before he changed his thought. “ I did not speak very loud ; he might not have heard me : No, I did not speak loud.”

A boy with a jug of beer came out of the outdoor department of the “ Rose and Crown.” He kicked a stone at Arnold, and said casually, as if from force of habit, “ Cowardy, cowardy custard.”

Arnold hesitated, and then walked the way he had come. A fit tie more animation came in his tormentor’s voice as he cried, “ Er—coward, run away.” But, seeing that Arnold ignored him, he stroked the froth off the beer with his finger and drew it up his nose.

This time Arnold lifted the knocker of Dr. Rockby’s house before a new and arresting thought possessed him. “If I’ve only come back because Harry Jenks called me a coward I am still a coward, only I am scared of Harry Jenks instead of John Rockby.” He lowered the knocker.

“ I’d sooner be scared of Rockby than Harry Jenks,” he thought. “ Besides, it’s late, and he would be at supper.” Glad that his indecision was ended, he ran on his way back to the shop.

His mother looked up as he dropped the counter-flap with a bang and raced into the kitchen. “ Well, have you had a nice long chat with Mr. Rockby ? ” she asked.

She had a pair of scissors in her hand, cutting a piece of cloth on the table to the measurement of brown paper shapes pinned to it.

“ This for me? ” asked Arnold, fingering the cloth. “ Is it all of a suit or only a jacket ? ”

“ A suit,” she said. “ I can’t send you among gentle¬ men’s sons without making you decent.” She paused a minute for his silence to prove if what she thought was so, was so indeed. She made a line with a piece of soap and asked, “ What did Mr. Rockby say ? ”

Arnold swallowed with difficulty.

“ He was having his supper,” he said. “ I’ve got to see him when he’s finished. I’ll go now.”

“ And Arnold.”

“ Yes, mother ? ”

“ I think I should call him 4 sir.’ ”

“ I think I will; he’s a gentleman really, mother, isn’t he ? ”