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Page 34
"Oh, it's a long, story," he answered carelessly, "and too conventional
to be worth telling. Some of us go up, you know. Some of us go down.
You're doing pretty well, I hear."
"I suppose so," I replied; "I've climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and
am trying to stick there. But it is of you I want to talk. Can't I do
anything for you?"
We were passing under a gas-lamp at the moment. He thrust his face
forward close to mine, and the light fell full and pitilessly upon it.
"Do I look like a man you could do anything for?" he said.
We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that
might seize hold of him.
"You needn't worry about me," he continued after a while, "I'm
comfortable enough. We take life easily down here where I am. We've no
disappointments."
"Why did you give up like a weak coward?" I burst out angrily. "You had
talent. You would have won with ordinary perseverance."
"Maybe," he replied, in the same even tone of indifference. "I suppose I
hadn't the grit. I think if somebody had believed in me it might have
helped me. But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself. And
when a man loses that, he's like a balloon with the gas let out."
I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment. "Nobody
believed in you!" I repeated. "Why, _I_ always believed in you, you know
that I--"
Then I paused, remembering our "candid criticism" of one another.
"Did you?" he replied quietly, "I never heard you say so. Good-night."
In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood
of the Savoy, and, as he spoke, he disappeared down one of the dark
turnings thereabouts.
I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick
steps before me for a little way, they were soon swallowed up in the
sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel
stands, I had lost all trace of him.
A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made
inquiries.
"What sort of a gent was he, sir?" questioned the man.
"A tall thin gentleman, very shabbily dressed--might be mistaken for a
tramp."
"Ah, there's a good many of that sort living in this town," replied the
man. "I'm afraid you'll have some difficulty in finding him."
Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I
should never listen for their drawing near again.
I wondered as I walked on--I have wondered before and since--whether Art,
even with a capital A, is quite worth all the suffering that is inflicted
in her behalf--whether she and we are better for all the scorning and the
sneering, all the envying and the hating, that is done in her name.
Jephson arrived about nine o'clock in the ferry-boat. We were made
acquainted with this fact by having our heads bumped against the sides of
the saloon.
Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat
arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was
not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of
him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was
wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with
the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard,
without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him.
This was sometimes the bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a
steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling. That he
never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who
built her.
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