  Mrs. Partington was standing at the door of her house towards sunset, waiting for the children to come back from school. Her house is situated in perhaps the least agreeable street—Turner Road—in perhaps the least agreeable district of East London—Hackney Wick. It is a disagreeable district because it isn't anything in particular. It has neither the tragic gayety of Whitechapel nor the comparative refinement of Clapton. It is a large, triangular piece of land, containing perhaps a square mile altogether, or rather more, approached from the south by the archway of the Great Eastern Railway, defined on one side by the line, and along its other two sides, partly by the river Lea—a grimy, depressed-looking stream—and partly by the Hackney Marshes—flat, dreary wastes of grass-grown land, useless as building ground and of value only for Saturday afternoon recreations of rabbit coursing and football. The dismalness of the place is beyond description at all times of the year. In winter it is bleak and chilly; in summer it is hot, fly-infested, and hideously and ironically reminiscent of real fields and real grass. The population is calculated to change completely about every three years, and I'm sure I am not surprised. It possesses two important blocks of buildings besides the schools—a large jam factory and the church and clergy-house of the Eton Mission. Turner Road is perhaps the most hopeless of all the dozen and a half of streets. (It is marked black, by the way, in Mr. Booth's instructive map.) It is about a quarter of a mile long and perfectly straight. It is intersected at one point by another street, and is composed of tall dark houses, with flat fronts, perhaps six or seven stories in height. It is generally fairly silent and empty, and is inhabited by the most characteristic members of the Hackney Wick community—quiet, white-faced men, lean women, draggled and sharp-tongued, and countless over-intelligent children—all of the class that seldom remain long anywhere—all of the material out of which the real criminal is developed. No booths or stalls ever stand here; only, on Saturday nights, there is echoed here, as in a stone-lined pit, the cries and the wheel-noises from the busy thoroughfare a hundred yards away round the corner. The road, as a whole, bears an aspect of desperate and fierce dignity; there is never here the glimpse of a garden or of flowers, as in Mortimer Road, a stone's throw away. There is nothing whatever except the tall, flat houses, the pavements, the lampposts, the grimy thoroughfare and the silence. The sensation of the visitor is that anything might happen here, and that no one would be the wiser. There is an air of horrible discretion about these houses. Mrs. Partington was—indeed is (for I went to see her not two months ago)—of a perfectly defined type. She must have been a handsome factory girl—dark, slender, and perfectly able to take care of herself, with thin, muscular arms, generally visible up to the elbow, hard hands, a quantity of rather untidy hair—with the tongue of a venomous orator and any amount of very inferior sentiment, patriotic and domestic. She has become a lean, middle-aged woman, very upright and very strong, without any sentiment at all, but with a great deal of very practical human experience to take its place. She has no illusions about either this world or the next; she has borne nine children, of which three survive; and her husband is almost uninterruptedly out of work. However, they are prosperous (for Turner Road), and have managed, so far, to keep their home together. The sunset was framed in a glow of smoky glory at the end of the street down which Mrs. Partington was staring, resembling a rather angry search-light turned on from the gates of heaven. The street was still quiet; but already from the direction of the Board-school came thin and shrill cries as the swarm of children exploded in all directions. Mrs. Partington (she would have said) was waiting for her children—Jimmy, Maggie and 'Erb—and there were lying within upon the bare table three thick slices of bread and black jam; as a matter of fact, she was looking out for her lodgers, who should have arrived by midday. Then she became aware that they were coming, even as she looked, advancing down the empty street en Échelon. Two of them she knew well enough—they had lodged with her before; but the third was to be a stranger, and she was already interested in him—the Major had hinted at wonderful mysteries.... So she shaded her eyes against the cold glare and watched them carefully, with that same firm, resolute face with which she always looked out upon the world; and even as, presently, she exchanged that quick, silent nod of recognition with the Major and Gertie, still she watched the brown-faced, shabby young man who came last, carrying his bundle and walking a little lame. "You're after your time," she said abruptly. The Major began his explanations, but she cut them short and led the way into the house. (II)I find it very difficult to record accurately the impression that Frank made upon Mrs. Partington; but that the impression was deep and definite became perfectly clear to me from her conversation. He hardly spoke at all, she said, and before he got work at the jam factory he went out for long, lonely walks across the marshes. He and the Major slept together, it seemed, in one room, and Gertie, temporarily with the children and Mrs. Partington in another. (Mr. Partington, at this time, happened to be away on one of his long absences.) At meals Frank was always quiet and well-behaved, yet not ostentatiously. Mrs. Partington found no fault with him in that way. He would talk to the children a little before they went to school, and would meet them sometimes on their way back from school; and all three of them conceived for him an immense and indescribable adoration. All this, however, would be too long to set down in detail. It seems to have been a certain air of pathos which Mrs. Partington herself cast around him, which affected her the most, and I imagine her feeling to have been largely motherly. There was, however, another element very obviously visible, which, in anyone but Mrs. Partington, I should call reverence.... She told me that she could not imagine why he was traveling with the Major and Gertie, so she at least understood something of the gulf between them. So the first week crept by, bringing us up to the middle of December. It was on the Friday night that Frank came back with the announcement that he was to go to work at the jam factory on Monday. There was a great pressure, of course, owing to the approach of Christmas, and Frank was to be given joint charge of a van. The work would last, it seemed, at any rate, for a week or two. "You'll have to mind your language," said the Major jocosely. (He was sitting in the room where the cooking was done and where, by the way, the entire party, with the exception of the two men, slept; and, at this moment, had his feet on the low mantelshelf between the saucepan and Jimmy's cap.) "Eh?" said Frank. "No language allowed there," said the Major. "They're damn particular." Frank put his cap down and took his seat on the bed. "Where's Gertie?" he asked. ("Yes, come on, Jimmie.") Jimmie crept up beside him, looking at him with big black, reverential eyes. Then he leaned against him with a quick smile and closed his eyes ecstatically. Frank put an arm round the boy to support him. "Oh! Gertie's gone to see a friend," said the Major. "Did you want her?" Frank said nothing, and Mrs. Partington looked from one to the other swiftly. Mrs. Partington had gathered a little food for thought during the last few days. It had become perfectly evident to her that the girl was very much in love with this young man, and that while this young man either was, or affected to be, ignorant of it, the Major was not. Gertie had odd silences when Frank came into the room, or yet more odd volubilities, and Mrs. Partington was not quite sure of the Major's attitude. This officer and her husband had had dealings together in the past of a nature which I could not quite determine (indeed, the figure of Mr. Partington is still a complete mystery to me, and rather a formidable mystery); and I gather that Mrs. Partington had learned from her husband that the Major was not simply negligible. She knew him for a blackguard, but she seems to have been uncertain of what kind was this black-guardism—whether of the strong or the weak variety. She was just a little uncomfortable, therefore, as to the significance of Gertie; and had already wondered more than once whether or no she should say a motherly word to the young man. There came a sound of footsteps up the street as Mrs. Partington ironed a collar of Jimmie's on the dining-room table, and laid down the iron as a tap fell on the door. The Major took out his pipe and began to fill it as she went out to see who was knocking. "Oh! good evening, Mrs. Partington," sounded in a clear, high-bred voice from the street door. "May I come in for a minute or two? I heard you had lodgers, and I thought perhaps—" "Well, sir, we're rather upside-down just now—and—" "Oh! I won't disturb you more than a minute," came the other voice again. There were footsteps in the passage, and the next instant, past the unwilling hostess, there came a young, fresh-colored clergyman, carrying a silk hat, into the lamplight of the kitchen. Frank stood up instantly, and the Major went so far as to take down his feet. Then he, too, stood up. "Good evening!" said the clergyman. "May I just come in for a minute or two? I heard you had come, and as it's in my district—May I sit down, Mrs. Partington?" Mrs. Partington with sternly knit lips, swept a brown teapot, a stocking, a comb, a cup and a crumby plate off the single unoccupied chair, and set it a little forward near the fire. Clergymen were, to her mind, one of those mysterious dispensations of the world for which there was no adequate explanation at all—like policemen and men's gamblings and horse-races. There they were, and there was no more to be said. They were mildly useful for entertaining the children and taking them to Southend, and in cases of absolute despair they could be relied upon for soup-tickets or even half-crowns; but the big mysterious church, with its gilded screen, its curious dark glass, and its white little side-chapel, with the Morris hangings, the great clergy-house, the ladies, the parish magazine and all the rest of it—these were simply inexplicable. Above all inexplicable was the passion displayed for district-visiting—that strange impulse that drove four highly-cultivated young men in black frock-coats and high hats and ridiculous little collars during five afternoons in the week to knock at door after door all over the district and conduct well-mannered conversations with bored but polite mothers of families. It was one of the phenomena that had to be accepted. She supposed it stood for something beyond her perceptions. "I thought I must come in and make your acquaintance," said the clergyman, nursing his hat and smiling at the company. (He, too, occasionally shared Mrs. Partington's wonder as to the object of all this; but he, too, submitted to it as part of the system.) "People come and go so quickly, you know—" "Very pleased to see a clergyman," said the Major smoothly. "No objection to smoke, sir, I presume?" He indicated his pipe. "Not at all," said the clergyman. "In fact, I smoke myself; and if Mrs. Partington will allow me—" He produced a small pink and gilded packet of Cinderellas. (I think he thought it brought him vaguely nearer the people to smoke Cinderellas.) "Oh! no objection at all, sir," put in Mrs. Partington, still a little grimly. (She was still secretly resenting being called upon at half-past six. You were usually considered immune from this kind of thing after five o'clock.) "So I thought I must just look in and catch you one evening," explained the clergyman once more, "and tell you that we're your friends here—the clergy, you know—and about the church and all that." He was an extremely conscientious young man—this Mr. Parham-Carter—an old Etonian, of course, and now in his first curacy. It was all pretty bewildering to him, too, this great and splendid establishment, the glorious church by Bodley, with the Magnificat in Gothic lettering below the roof, the well-built and furnished clergy-house, the ladies' house, the zeal, the self-devotion, the parochial machinery, the Band of Hope, the men's and boys' clubs, and, above all, the furious district-visiting. Of course, it produced results, it kept up the standards of decency and civilization and ideals; it was a weight in the balances on the side of right and good living; the clubs kept men from the public-house to some extent, and made it possible for boys to grow up with some chance on their side. Yet he wondered, in fits of despondency, whether there were not something wrong somewhere.... But he accepted it: it was the approved method, and he himself was a learner, not a teacher. "Very kind of you, sir," said the Major, replacing his feet on the mantelshelf. "And at what time are the services on Sunday?" The clergyman jumped. He was not accustomed to that sort of question. "I ..." he began. "I'm a strong Churchman, sir," said the Major. "And even if I were not, one must set an example, you know. I may be narrow-minded, but I'm particular about all that sort of thing. I shall be with you on Sunday." He nodded reassuringly at Mr. Parham-Carter. "Well, we have morning prayer at ten-thirty next Sunday, and the Holy Eucharist at eleven—and, of course, at eight." "No vestments, I hope?" said the Major sternly. Mr. Parham-Carter faltered a little. Vestments were not in use, but to his regret. "Well, we don't use vestments," he said, "but—" The Major resumed his pipe with a satisfied air. "That's all right," he said. "Now, I'm not bigoted—my friend here's a Roman Catholic, but—" The clergyman looked up sharply, and for the first time became consciously conscious of the second man. Frank had sat back again on the bed, with Jimmie beside him, and was watching the little scene quietly and silently, and the clergyman met his eyes full. Some vague shock thrilled through him; Frank's clean-shaven brown face seemed somehow familiar—or was it something else? Mr. Parham-Carter considered the point for a little while in silence, only half attending to the Major, who was now announcing his views on the Establishment and the Reformation settlement. Frank said nothing at all, and there grew on the clergyman a desire to hear his voice. He made an opportunity at last. "Yes, I see," he said to the Major; "and you—I don't know your name?" "Gregory, sir," said Frank. And again a little shock thrilled Mr. Parham-Carter. The voice was the kind of thing he had expected from that face. It was about ten minutes later, that the clergyman thought it was time to go. He had the Major's positive promise to attend at least the evening service on the following Sunday—a promise he did not somehow very much appreciate—but he had made no progress with Frank. He shook hands all round very carefully, told Jimmie not to miss Sunday-school, and publicly commended Maggie for a recitation she had accomplished at the Band of Hope on the previous evening; and then went out, accompanied by Mrs. Partington, still silent, as far as the door. But as he actually went out, someone pushed by the woman and came out into the street. "May I speak to you a minute?" said the strange young man, dropping the "sir." "I'll walk with you as far as the clergy-house if you'll let me." When they were out of earshot of the house Frank began. "You're Parham-Carter, aren't you?" he said. "Of Hales'." The other nodded. (Things were beginning to resolve themselves in his mind.) "Well, will you give me your word not to tell a soul I'm here, and I'll tell you who I am? You've forgotten me, I see. But I'm afraid you may remember. D'you see?" "All right." "I'm Guiseley, of Drew's. We were in the same division once—up to Rawlins. Do you remember?" "Good Lord! But—" "Yes, I know. But don't let's go into that. I've not done anything I shouldn't. That's not the reason I'm like this. It's just turned out so. And there's something else I want to talk to you about. When can I come and see you privately? I'm going to begin work to-morrow at the jam factory." The other man clutched at his whirling faculties. "To-night—at ten. Will that do?" "All right. What am I to say—when I ring the bell, I mean?" "Just ask for me. They'll show you straight up to my room." "All right," said Frank, and was gone. (III)Mr. Parham-Carter's room in the clergy-house was of the regular type—very comfortable and pleasing to the eye, as it ought to be for a young man working under such circumstances; not really luxurious; pious and virile. The walls were a rosy distemper, very warm and sweet, and upon them, above the low oak book-cases, hung school and college groups, discreet sporting engravings, a glorious cathedral interior, and the Sistine Madonna over the mantelpiece. An oar hung all along one ceiling, painted on the blade with the arms of an Oxford college. There was a small prie-dieu, surmounted by a crucifix of Ober-Ammergau workmanship: there was a mahogany writing-table with a revolving chair set before it; there were a couple of deep padded arm-chairs, a pipe-rack, and a row of photographs—his mother in evening dress, a couple of sisters, with other well-bred-looking relations. Altogether, with the curtains drawn and the fire blazing, it was exactly the kind of room that such a wholesome young man ought to have in the East of London. Frank was standing on the hearth-rug as Mr. Parham-Carter came in a minute or two after ten o'clock, bearing a small tray with a covered jug, two cups and a plate of cake. "Good-evening again," said the clergyman. "Have some cocoa? I generally bring mine up here.... Sit down. Make yourself comfortable." Frank said nothing. He sat down. He put his cap on the floor by his chair and leaned back. The other, with rather nervous movements, set a steaming cup by his side, and a small silver box of cigarettes, matches and an ash-tray. Then he sat down himself, took a long pull at his cocoa, and waited with a certain apprehensiveness. "Who else is here?" asked Frank abruptly. The other ran through the three names, with a short biography of each. Frank nodded, reassured at the end. "That's all right," he said. "All before my time, I expect. They might come in, you know." "Oh, no!" said the clergyman. "I told them not, and—" "Well, let's come to business," said Frank. "It's about a girl. You saw that man to-day? You saw his sort, did you? Well, he's a bad hat. And he's got a girl going about with him who isn't his wife. I want to get her home again to her people." "Yes?" "Can you do anything? (Don't say you can if you can't, please....) She comes from Chiswick. I'll give you her address before I go. But I don't want it muddled, you know." The clergyman swallowed in his throat. He had only been ordained eighteen months, and the extreme abruptness and reality of the situation took him a little aback. "I can try," he said. "And I can put the ladies on to her. But, of course, I can't undertake—" "Of course. But do you think there's a reasonable chance? If not, I'd better have another try myself." "Have you tried, then?" "Oh, yes, half a dozen times. A fortnight ago was the last, and I really thought—" "But I don't understand. Are these people your friends, or what?" "I've been traveling with them off and on since June. They belong to you, so far as they belong to anyone. I'm a Catholic, you know—" "Really? But—" "Convert. Last June. Don't let's argue, my dear chap. There isn't time." Mr. Parham-Carter drew a breath. There is no other phrase so adequate for describing his condition of mind as the old one concerning head and heels. There had rushed on him, not out of the blue, but, what was even more surprising, out of the very dingy sky of Hackney Wick (and Turner Road, at that!), this astonishing young man, keen-eyed, brown-faced, muscular, who had turned out to be a school-fellow of his own, and a school-fellow whose reputation, during the three hours since they had parted, he had swiftly remembered point by point—Guiseley of Drew's—the boy who had thrown off his coat in early school and displayed himself shirtless; who had stolen four out of the six birches on a certain winter morning, and had conversed affably with the Head in school yard with the ends of the birches sticking out below the skirts of his overcoat; who had been discovered on the fourth of June, with an air of reverential innocence, dressing the bronze statue of King Henry VI. in a surplice in honor of the day. And now here he was, and from his dress and the situation of his lodging-house to be reckoned among the worst of the loafing class, and yet talking, with an air of complete confidence and equality of a disreputable young woman—his companion—who was to be rescued from a yet more disreputable companion and restored to her parents in Chiswick. And this was not all—for, as Mr. Parham-Carter informed me himself—there was being impressed upon him during this interview a very curious sensation, which he was hardly able, even after consideration, to put into words—a sensation concerning the personality and presence of this young man which he could only describe as making him feel "beastly queer." It seems to have been about this point that he first perceived it clearly—distinguished it, that is to say, from the whole atmosphere of startling and suggesting mystery that surrounded him. He looked at Frank in silence a moment or two.... There Guiseley sat—leaning back in the red leather chair, his cocoa still untouched. He was in a villainous suit that once, probably, had been dark blue. The jacket was buttoned up to his chin, and a grimy muffler surrounded his neck. His trousers were a great deal too short, and disclosed above a yellow sock, on the leg nearest to him, about four inches of dark-looking skin. His boots were heavy, patched, and entirely uncleaned, and the upper toe-cap of one of them gaped from the leather over the instep. His hands were deep in his pockets, as if even in this warm room, he felt the cold. There was nothing remarkable there. It was the kind of figure presented by unsatisfactory candidates for the men's club. And yet there was about him this air, arresting and rather disconcerting.... It was a sort of electric serenity, if I understand Mr. Parham-Carter aright—a zone of perfectly still energy, like warmth or biting cold, as of a charged force: it was like a real person standing motionless in the middle of a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary to men who have received a public school and university education, half slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have just attempted to set down.) Frank, then, seemed as much out of place in this perfectly correct and suitable little room as an Indian prince in Buckingham Palace; or, if you prefer it, an English nobleman (with spats) in Delhi. He was just entirely different from it all; he had nothing whatever to do with it; he was wholly out of place, not exactly as regarded his manner (for he was quite at his ease), but with regard to his significance. He was as a foreign symbol in a familiar language. Its effect upon Mr. Parham-Carter was quite clear and strong. He instanced to me the fact that he said nothing to Frank about his soul: he honestly confessed that he scarcely even wished to press him to come to Evensong on Sunday. Of course, he did not like Frank's being a Roman Catholic; and his whole intellectual being informed him that it was because Frank had never really known the Church of England that he had left it. (Mr. Parham-Carter had himself learned the real nature of the Church of England at the Pusey House at Oxford.) But there are certain atmospheres in which the intellectual convictions are not very important, and this was one of them. So here the two young men sat and stared at one another, or, rather, Mr. Parham-Carter stared at Frank, and Frank looked at nothing in particular. "You haven't drunk your cocoa," said the clergyman suddenly. Frank turned abruptly, took up the cup and drank the contents straight off at one draught. "And a cigarette?" Frank took up a cigarette and put in his mouth. "By the way," he said, taking it out again, "when'll you send your ladies round? The morning's best, when the rest of us are out of the way." "All right." "Well, I don't think there's anything else?" "My dear chap," said the other, "I wish you'd tell me what it's all about—why you're in this sort of life, you know. I don't want to pry, but—" Frank smiled suddenly and vividly. "Oh, there's nothing to say. That's not the point. It's by my own choice practically. I assure you I haven't disgraced anybody." "But your people—" "Oh! they're all right. There's nothing the matter with them.... Look here! I really must be going." He stood up, and something seemed to snap in the atmosphere as he did so. "Besides, I've got to be at work early—" "I say, what did you do then?" "Do then? What do you mean?" "When you stood up—Did you say anything?..." Frank looked at him bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about." Mr. Parham-Carter did not quite know what he had meant himself. It was a sensation come and gone, in an instant, as Frank had moved ... a sensation which I suppose some people would call "psychical"—a sensation as if a shock had vibrated for one moment through every part of his own being, and of the pleasant little warm room where he was sitting. He looked at the other, dazed for a second or two, but there was nothing. Those two steady black eyes looked at him in a humorous kind of concern.... He stood up himself. "It was nothing," he said. "I think I must be getting sleepy." He put out his hand. "Good-night," he said. "Oh! I'll come and see you as far as the gate." Frank looked at him a second. "I say," he said; "I suppose you've never thought of becoming a Catholic?" "My dear chap—" "No! Well, all right.... oh! don't bother to come to the gate." "I'm coming. It may be locked." Mr. Parham-Carter stood looking after Frank's figure even after it had passed along the dark shop fronts and was turning the corner towards Turner Road. Then it went under the lamplight, and disappeared. It was a drizzling, cold night, and he himself was bareheaded; he felt the moisture run down his forehead, but it didn't seem to be happening to him. On his right rose up the big parish-hall where the entertainments were held, and beyond it, the east end of the great church, dark now and tenantless; and he felt the wet woodwork of the gate grasped in his fingers. He did not quite know what was happening to him but everything seemed different. A hundred thoughts had passed through his mind during the last half hour. It had occurred to him that he ought to have asked Guiseley to come to the clergy-house and lodge there for a bit while things were talked over; that he ought, tactfully, to have offered to lend him money, to provide him with a new suit, to make suggestions as to proper employment instead of at the jam factory—all those proper, philanthropic and prudent suggestions that a really sensible clergyman would have made. And yet, somehow, not only had he not made them, but it was obvious and evident when he regarded them that they could not possibly be made. Guiseley (of Drew's) did not require them, he was on another line altogether.... And what was that line? Mr. Parham-Carter leaned on the gate a full five minutes considering all this. But he arrived at no conclusion. |
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