# Episodes Before Thirty/Chapter 28

CHAPTER XXVIII
If it is impossible to recapture the boyish moods of those early days, it is also difficult not to import into these notes the point of view and feelings that belong to later life. Surely, but gradually, the scale of time changes with the years, and with it the range and quality of the emotions: to-day, a year seems a very brief period; the few months spent in the woods after our Gold Fields fiasco seemed both an eternity, yet far too brief. A faint flavour of childhood's immense scale, when twelve months was an immeasurable stretch of time, still clung to them, perhaps.
But the magnet of New York drew us. Any idea of returning to England until I had made good was far from me. We arrived in the detested city late in October, with livings to earn, and with less money than when we had first come two years before. We took separate rooms this time, for I had learned my lesson about sharing beds and clothes and scanty earnings. It was to be each man for himself. Paxton disappeared immediately; only occasionally did I hear his "Ouch, Ouch!" again; M. found a bed in Harlem and started to teach boxing; I took quarters in East 21st Street, on the top floor of a cheap but cleanish house, and arranged for breakfast and dinner in a neighbouring boarding-house at $2.50 a week.
Two Germans lived in the adjoining attic. Through the thin wooden partition I heard their talk, their breathing, their slightest movement. They rarely came to bed before midnight; they talked the whole night through. Informing them in a loud voice that I understood their language made no difference; they neither stopped nor answered. Yet, oddly enough, I never once saw them; never met them on the stairs, nor in the hall, nor at the front door. They remained invisible, if not inaudible. But I formed vivid pictures of them, and knew from their ​conversation that they were not better than they need be. An old man and a young one, I gathered. An unpleasant house altogether, the low rent more easily explained than I at first guessed. Long afterwards I had my revenge upon those unsavoury Germans--by writing an awful story about them, "A Case of Eavesdropping," though by the time it was published they were probably either dead or in gaol. A sinister couple, these invisible Teutons!
My one main object was to avoid the Evening Sun: any work was better, I felt, than a return to that hated sensational reporting. A place was always open to me under McCloy, but my detestation of the police court, and of the criminal atmosphere generally, was so strong that I would rather have taken a street-cleaning job under Tammany than go back to it. I therefore began by trying free-lance work, gathering news items and selling them for a dollar or two apiece to various papers, writing snippets of description, inventing incidents, and earning perhaps ten dollars a week on the average. It was hard going, but pawning and free lunches in the saloons made it possible to live. I knew all the tricks by now; I used them. The blanket off my bed occasionally spent a week-*end with a new "Ikey," though getting it out of the house and back again was no easy matter, while the smell of the moth-balls I always expected must betray me. It was a poor blanket, too, worth only 50 cents from Ikey's point of view, and certainly not worth the foolish risk involved. For, literally--though this never once occurred to me at the time--it was stealing, and the fact that I told Ikey where it came from, hoping to extract thereby an extra half-dollar from him, could not have exonerated me if the landlady had met me on the stairs. Personally, I think the quantity of food I devoured at the free lunch counters in exchange for a five-cent glass of lager was a more flagrant case of theft. Only it was a recognized theft. The temporary absence of the blanket, anyhow, since I made my own bed, was never discovered, and my heart remained innocent of conscious burglary. ​ A dozen years before, aged 12, I had once been accused of stealing by the headmaster of the private school I adorned in Sevenoaks. I was innocent, but the evidence was both ludicrous and damning, so damning, indeed, that, strangely, I felt guilty and accepted the punishment. A terrifying experience, it haunted me for years, and the sight of a policeman, or the words "criminal judge," sent shivers down my spine long afterwards. When a little older, I came to suspect that it was worked up against me by the master to curry favour with an influential parent; but at the actual time I had visions even of prison--for something I had not done. All about a poem, too!
At evening "prep" a "bit of poetry," as we called it, had to be learnt by heart; my own poetry book was lost; I borrowed young Gildea's. The last thing in the world I wanted to own was that poetry book of young Gildea, the last thing I wanted to do was to learn that poem by heart. I spent the hour, therefore, inscribing my name with elaborate flourishes on the title page. Twice I wrote it, with capitals, of which I was very proud; I thought it ornate and beautiful; and when the hour was over I tossed the book into my locker and forgot all about it. Next morning I was summoned into the headmaster's presence. He wore red whiskers about an otherwise clean-shaven face: a face of natural sternness, with a big nose, a mouth of iron, and steely blue eyes. He was a clergyman of evangelical persuasion.
I had no idea why I had been summoned, but his glance made me at once feel uneasy.
"Blackwood minor," he said in a solemn and portentous voice, "did you do--this?" He held out Gildea's poetry book towards me with the cover open. His finger pointed to my name in pencil, flourishes and all.
I was completely puzzled as to what was coming, but I admitted the signature of course.
"Is the book yours?" he asked. I said it was not. "Gildea has reported the loss of his own copy," the voice of doom went on. "It has been found--in your locker-- ​and with your name written in it." The voice made me think of "and God spake" in the Bible.
He looked at me in such a way that I felt sure I was going to be flogged. What had I done? And why? I couldn't quite remember. No explanation came to me. The simple truth was too silly to mention. I had nothing to say except to admit everything. The man, with his awful manner and appalling aspect, terrified me. I stood speechless and paralysed, wondering what was coming next. The red whiskers made me think of Satan.
I little dreamed, however, that the headmaster would say what he then did say. He spoke with a terribly slow, deliberate emphasis.
"This is as grave a case of stealing," fell the awful words of judgment, "as ever came before a Criminal Judge. I have sent for your father."
I was petrified. It was enough to frighten any boy into his boots.
My father in due course arrived; Gildea's parents, both of them, arrived likewise; there were consultations, mysterious comings and goings; it was a day of gloom and terror; for some reason I made no attempt to defend myself; it all flabbergasted, frightened, puzzled me beyond understanding. I was made to confess to Gildea and to apologize to the parents. To my own father I said nothing. He looked troubled, yet somehow not as grave as he ought to have looked. Perhaps he had his doubts. . . . What that fiendish headmaster, whose name I will not mention, had said behind my back, I did not know, for my father never referred to the matter afterwards, and both I and my brother were removed from the school at the end of the term. But I was severely punished—sent to Coventry for three days—for doing something I had both done and had not done, and the phrase "Criminal Judge" was burnt into my memory with letters of fire. My revenge was rather an oblique one—a fight with that headmaster's son, though about quite another matter. With each blow I landed—and I landed several—I saw red whiskers on a boy about my own age!
​ This digression concerning a poetry book occurs to me only now, while telling of my wickedness about the blanket. The lesson that master wished to teach me had no effect, for the simple reason that I had not stolen. The fear, however, doubtless remained; the injustice scored deep, bitter wounds. I trace back to it a curious persistent dread, not entirely obliterated even now: the dread of being accused of a crime I have not committed; yet where the evidence of guilt seems overwhelming. Patanjali's "Aphorisms" describe a method of living through in imagination all possible experiences. A series of laborious incarnations would be necessary to exhaust these experiences in the ordinary way. They can be lived out in the mind instead. In imagination, anyhow, thanks to that little school injustice, I have often tried to realize the feelings of a man serving a term of imprisonment for a crime he has not committed. Patanjali's interesting method is, at any rate, a means of opening the mind to a sympathetic understanding of many an experience one could not otherwise know. Only imagination must be sustained and very detailed, and the projection of the personality is not easy.
An interlude of play-acting now enlivened my period of free-lance journalism. Kay was in my life again, and the opportunity came through him. He had spent the summer between odd jobs on the stage, and odd jobs at buying and selling exchange in Wall Street. He made both ends meet, at any rate, and had a cheap room in the purlieus of Hoboken across the river. A part in a third-rate touring company had just been offered to him, and he said he could get me a part as well. One-night stands in the smaller towns of New York State with a couple of plays, of which "Jim, the Penman," was one, formed the programme, and my utter ignorance of acting, he assured me, need not stand in the way. My salary would be $15 a week, with travelling expenses paid. Gilmour, the leading man, and organizer of the company, was anxious to find someone like myself.
I jumped at it. Gilmour looked me up and down ​and said I'd do. I had only one line to say. I was a prison warder on sentry duty, pacing to and fro between the walls at night, when Gilmour, the hero, escaping from his cell, knocks me down after a brief struggle, and disappears into the night. A moment later the alarm is given; other warders arrive, find me wounded on the ground and ask which way the prisoner has gone. "That way," I shout, pointing the direction before losing consciousness; whereupon the curtain falls.
It was not an exacting part. Gilmour said I should make a "bully warder." My own shabby clothes, with a brown billycock hat, would do as they were. I was to carry a large wooden pistol. We rehearsed the scene, swaying to and fro, breathing hard, grunting with effort, cursing each other fiercely, until the prisoner, wrenching the pistol from me, struck me on the head and floored me. Such was my rôle.
I played it at Yonkers and Mount Vernon, three nights in each place, if memory serves me correctly, but "went through it" is the true description of my performance. For the theatre, either as a writer or actor, I possess no trace of talent, a fact rediscovered recently when playing an insignificant part in Drinkwater's "Oliver Cromwell" on tour with Henry Ainley. My dismissal at the end of the first week, however, was not due to this lack of skill--it was due to a pail of beer and the leading lady. For the leading lady, handsome daughter, I remember, of a Washington General, was the inspiration of the touring company, and it was for her beaux yeux that the enterprise was undertaken. Gilmour was what is known as "crazy" about her, his jealousy a standing joke among us, so that when those beaux yeux were turned upon my lanky, half-starved self, there were warnings that trouble might begin. But I was looking for salary and food rather than for trouble. In the dressing-room we underlings all shared together, though "dressing" was of negligible kind, I was quite safe. Chance meetings, however, were unavoidable, of course, and Bettina's instinct for adventure was distinctly careless. It was here the pail of beer came ​in—into our crowded dressing-room. Who brought it, I have forgotten; the miscreant who stood treat to the band of hungry and thirsty Thespians is lost to memory. I only know that, empty of food as I was, my share of that gallon pail distinctly cheered me. The beaux yeux had been boldly rolling; another pair of eyes, not so lovely, had been rolling too. To be ungallantly honest about it, my own feelings were not engaged in any way, except on this particular night, when they were considerably roused--against that stupid, jealous Gilmour. The way he glared in my direction stirred my bile; the few glasses of beer made me reckless. When the escaping prisoner fought with me for the possession of the great wooden pistol, I refused to be "thrown."
The scanty audience that night witnessed a good performance of my brief, particular scene. Gilmour cursed and swore beneath his breath, but he was a smaller man than I was. He could do nothing with me. What was a shocking performance in one sense, was a realistic and sincere performance in another. Had my share of the pail been slightly bigger than it was, I should undoubtedly have "thrown" the prisoner and spoilt the curtain. As it was, however, Gilmour managed in the end to wrench the pistol from me, and in doing so, his fury genuine, he landed me a blow on the forehead with its heavy butt that stunned me. I fell. He fled. Roars of applause I heard dimly. My brown billycock hat, I remember, fell on its springy brim, bounced into the air, then hopped away against the footlights. And all my interest went with my precious hat. To the warders who at once rushed on with cries of "He's escaped! Which way did he go?" I used the right words, taking my cue correctly. Only I pointed in the wrong direction. I pointed towards my old hat against the footlights. It lay outside the curtain.
It is odd to think that somewhere in the under-mind of the individual who lay half-stunned on the stage of a Yonkers theatre, pointing wildly at a dilapidated, but precious, old brown billycock, slept a score of books, waiting ​patiently for expression a few years later. It is difficult, indeed, as I write these notes, to realize that the individual who describes the incidents is the individual who experienced them. The body itself has changed every single physical particle at least four times in succession. Nor is the mind the same. With the exception of one or two main interests, easily handed on by the outgoing atoms to the incoming atoms in the brain, "I" possess little that the "I" of those distant New York days possessed. Even the continuity of memory is bequeathable by atoms leaving the brain to the new ones just arriving. Where, then, is the self who experienced years ago what the self holding this pen now sets down?
The "I," during the next few years, at any rate, went rolling; rolling from one experience to another, if not cheerily, at least resignedly. Whatever happened--and what happened was mostly unpleasant--there was never absent the conviction that it was deserved, and must be lived out in a spirit of acceptance, until finally exhausted. Any other attitude toward unwelcome events meant evasion, and a disagreeable experience shirked merely postponed it to another time, either in this life or another. There was, meanwhile, a real self that remained aloof, untouched, neither happy nor unhappy, a spectator, but a royal spectator. Into this eternal Self was gathered the fruit and essence of each and every experience the lower "I" passed through; the secret of living was to identify oneself with this exalted and untroubled royalty....
The rolling-stone went rolling, therefore, somewhat in this spirit, which helped and comforted, which made most things possible, bearable at any rate, because it was the outcome of that strange inner conviction established in my blood, a conviction, as mentioned, neither argument nor evidence could alter.
Letters from home, home memories as well, pertained now to some distant, unrecoverable region that was dead and gone. My mother's letters--one every week without a single omission--expressed a larger spirit. Her faithful ​letters, secure in a sincere belief, were very precious, I remember. Sometimes, though never successfully, they tempted me almost to giving my full confidence and telling more than my camouflaged reports revealed. From the rest of my family, with the exception of a really loved brother, I knew myself entirely divorced, a divorce that later years proved final and somehow inevitable.
To my father, who was always something of a stranger to me, I could never tell my heart; my mother, on the other hand, always had my confidence, coupled with an austere respect. Few words passed between us, yet she always knew, I felt, my thoughts. And this full confidence dated, oddly enough, from an incident in early childhood, when I was saying the Lord's Prayer at her knee. There was a phrase that puzzled me even when I was in knickerbockers: "Lead us not into temptation...." I stopped, looked up into her face, and asked: "But would He lead me into temptation unless I asked Him not to?" Her eyes opened, she gazed down into mine with a thoughtful, if perplexed expression, for a moment she was evidently at a loss how to answer. She hesitated, then decided to trust me with the truth: "I have never quite understood those words myself," she said. "I think, though, it is best to leave their explanation to Him, and to say the words exactly as He taught them."
"Old souls" and "young souls" was a classification that ruled my mind in this New York period: my mother was of the former, my father of the latter. In the Old lay innate the fruits, the results, the memories of many many previous lives, and this ripeness of long experience showed itself in certain ways--in taste, in judgment, in their standard of values, in that mysterious quality called tact; above all, perhaps, in the type and quality of goods they desired from life. Worldly ambitions, so-called, were generally negligible in them. What we label to-day as the subconscious was invariably fully charged; also, without too much difficulty, accessible. It made them interesting, ​stimulating and not easily exhausted. Wide sympathies, spread charity, understanding were their hall-marks, and a certain wisdom, as apart from intellect, their invariable gift; with, moreover, a tendency to wit, if not that rare quality wit itself, and humour, the power of seeing, and therefore laughing at, oneself. The cheaper experiences of birth, success, possessions they had learned long ago; it was the more difficult, but higher, values they had come back to master, and among the humbler ranks of life they found the necessary conditions. Christ, I reflected, was the son of a carpenter.
The Young Souls, on the other hand, were invariably hot-foot after the things of this world. Show, Riches and Power stuck like red labels on their foreheads. The Napoleons of the earth were among the youngest of all; the intellectuals, those who relied on reason alone, often the prosperous, usually the well-born, were of the same category. Rarely was "understanding" in them, and brilliant cleverness could never rank with that wisdom which knows that tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. To me the Young Souls were the commonplace and uninteresting ones. They were shallow, sketchy, soon exhausted, the Dutzend-menschen; whereas, the others were intuitive, mature in outlook, aware of deeper values and eager for the things of the spirit....
Thinking over my distinguished relations, I found none fit to black the boots of that kindly waiter in Krisch's cheap eating-house, Otto, the Black Forest German, who trusted us for food and often forwent his trumpery tip with a cheery smile. And there were many others, whose memory remains bright and wonderful from those dismal New York years.... A volume of "Distinguished People I have Met," for instance, would include the Italian bootblack at the corner of 4th Avenue and 20th Street, who had the sun in his face, in his bright black eyes and brown skin, and who trusted me sometimes for a month, although five cents meant as much to him as it did to me. The bigwigs I interviewed for newspapers are forgotten, but the faces of Otto and the Italian shine in memory still. ​I even remember the sentence the latter taught me. It invariably formed our daily greeting: E molto tempo che siete stato amalato? Often since have I spouted it in Italy, as bewildered by the voluble replies I could not understand, as the peasants were by my familiar enquiry after their health. Mrs. Bernstein, I think, would be entitled to a place, and Grant, who pawned his overcoat to buy me food, most certainly to full mention.