The girl began to whimper, and the lieutenant took Darco by the sleeve.

'Don't worry her to-night, governor,' he said. 'She's a good little sort, and her mother's dying.'

'Vy the tevil didn't you zay zo? demanded the manager. 'How am I to know? Gif her a zovereign,' he whispered, 'and ask her if she vants anything--bort-wine or ch.e.l.lies. _You_ know.' Then he turned, roaring: 'Vere is Miss Lawrence's understudy? Zing, if you please, Miss Clewes.

I never sbeak to beobles twice. You may go home, Miss Lawrence. Dell Villips if you want anything, ant I'll zee to it. Vy the tevil don't beobles zay when there are things the madder at home? Now, Miss Clewes.'

The lieutenant was back at Paul's elbow a minute later.

'The governor's a hot un,' he said--'he's a fair hot un when he's at work. But for a heart--well, I'm d.a.m.ned if gold's in it with him!'

CHAPTER IX

In a month's time from this Paul's soul sat chuckling all day long. He lived with the quaintest set he had ever conceived, and there was no page of 'Nickleby' which was fuller of comedy than a day of his own life. He met Crummies, and actually heard him wonder how those things got into the papers. He met the Infant Phenomenon. With his own hands he had helped to adjust the immortal real pump and tubs. He was still in the days when there was a farce in an evening's performance to play the people in, and a solid five-act melodrama for the public's solid fare, and a farce to play the people out.

Darco travelled with his own company, majestically Astrachan-furred and splendid, but rarely clean-shaven. Nine days in ten an aggressive stubble on cheek and chin seemed to sprout from an inward sense of his own glorious import.

'I am Cheorge Dargo,' he said unfailingly to every provincial stage-manager he met 'I nefer sbeaks to beobles twice.'

His brutalities of demeanour earned for him the noisy hatred of scores of people. His hidden benefactions bought for him the silent blessings of some suffering unit in every town. He bullied by instinct in public.

He blessed the suffering by instinct in private. He was cursed by ninety-nine in the hundred, and the odd man adored him. Paul's heart fastened to the uncouth man, and he did him burningly eager service.

Paul was in clover, and had sense enough to know it.

'I regognise the zymptoms,' said Darco, when they had been on tour a week. 'I am not going to haf my insbirations in the tay-dime any longer.

All my crate iteas will gome to me now for some dime in the night. You haf got to be near me, young Armstrong. You must sday vith me in the zame lotchings.'

This meant that Darco paid his whole expenses, and that his salary came to him each week intact. He began to save money and to develop at the same time an inexpensive dandyism. He took to brown velveteen and to patent leather boots. He bought a secondhand watch at a p.a.w.nbroker's, but disdained a chain. His father had inspired him with a horror of jewellery; for once, when he had spent the savings of a month upon a cheap scarf-pin, the elder Armstrong had wrathfully asked him what he meant by sticking that bra.s.s-headed nail in his chest, and had thrown the gewgaw into the fire. But the watch for the first week or two was a token of established manhood, and it was consulted a full hundred times a day, and was corrected by every public clock he pa.s.sed.

His occupation was no sinecure, for Darco was running half-a-dozen companies, and kept up a fire of correspondence with each. He had dramas on the anvil, too, and dictated by the hour every day. Often he woke Paul in the dead of night, and routed him out of bed, and gave him notes of some prodigious idea which had just occurred to him.

Darco had an unfailing formula with his landladies: 'Prek-fasd for three, lunge for three, tinner for three; petrooms and zidding-room for two,' He worked for three and ate for two.

'I am in many respegs,' he told Paul, 'a most remarkaple man. I am a boet, and a creat boet; but I haf no lankwage. My Vrench is Cherman, and my Cherman is Vrench, ant my Enklish is Alsatian. My normal demperadure is fever heat. I am a toctor; I am a zoldier. I haf peen a creat agdor in garagder bards--Alsatian garagder bards--in Vrance and in Chermany.

I can write a blay, ant I can stage id, ant I can baint the scenery for id. I am Cheorge Dargo, ant vere I haf not been it is nod vorth vile to co; and vot I do not know apout a theatre it is not vorth vile to learn.

Sdob vith me, and I will deach you your business.'

The company played a week within five miles of Castle Barfield, and Paul s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour for home. There the brown velveteen and the patent leathers and the watch made a great impression, and the eight sovereigns Paul was able to jingle in his pockets and display to wondering eyes.

'There's danger in the life, lad,' said Armstrong wistfully. 'I know it, for I saw a heap of it in my youth. Keep a clean heart, Paul. High thinking goes with chaste and sober living. There's nothing blurs faith like our own misdeeds.'

Paul was thankful for the dusk which hid his flaming cheeks at this moment. His mother had taken away the candle, and the old man had chosen the instant's solitude for this one serious word.

'I'm not denying,' said Armstrong, 'that it is a good worldly position for a lad of your years, but what's it going to lead to, Paul, lad?

What's the direction, I'm asking?

'I'm going to be a dramatist,' said Paul.

'A play-actor!' cried the mother, who was back again.

'A play-writer,' Paul corrected. 'I've got the best tutor in the world.'

'Do you mean to tell me,' his mother asked, 'that you think o' making that a trade for a lifetime?'

'Why not? asked Pau.

'Why not, indeed!' she cried, with an angry click of her knitting-needle. 'Writing a parcel o' rubbidge for fools to speak, and other fools to laugh at.'

'It was Shakespeare's trade, Mary,' said Armstrong.

'It's a pretty far cry from our Paul to Shakespeare, I reckon,' said the mother with sudden dryness.

'I suppose it is,' said Paul, laughing; 'but there are degrees in every calling. Wait a bit I don't mean that you shall be ashamed of me.'

Paul had been away from home for half a year, and absence had altered many things. The High Street of the town had grown mean and sordid to the eye. Shops which had once been palatial had lost all the glamour which childhood had given them and custom had preserved. The dusty, untidy shop at home had shrunk to less than half its original dimensions. Armstrong seemed changed more than anything or anybody else. He looked suddenly small and old and gray. He was not much over five-and-sixty, but he had always seemed old to Paul, even from the earliest recollections of infancy. But his age had been the age of dignity and authority, and now it was age without disguise, white-haired and withered, and bowed in uncomplaining patience.

But Paul felt that there was no such change anywhere as in himself. A certain complacency had stolen across the horror which had shaken him at the first contemplation of his own fall. He had made a step towards manhood; he heard the talk of men--not the best, not the wisest, yet neither the worst nor the most stupid--and he knew now how lightly they valued that which he had once esteemed priceless. He had written in his note-book:

'To forgive is G.o.dlike. Be as G.o.d unto thyself.'

He had made a step towards manhood. He had thought it a hideous, irremediable plunge to ruin, and yet somehow he seemed to stand the higher for it. The episode was to be hateful for ever in memory. But it was to cloud life no longer--only to stand as a sign of warning, a danger-signal. Surely the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird. The burned child dreads the fire. He did not as yet reckon that man is a moral Salamander, and accommodates himself to all temperatures of heat and asceticism. How should a raw lad of less than nineteen think in such a fashion? But he knew what he had not known; he had pa.s.sed through the fire, and the smell of burning had left his raiment.

The Midland mother gave him a cold cheek to kiss when he went away, but the Scottish father embraced him with a trembling arm.

'Ye'll be remembering Sir Walter's last words to Lockhart,' he said. 'Be a good man, my dear.'

Paul pressed his smooth cheek against the soft white whiskers of his father's face, and held his right hand hard. There was a lump in his throat, and his good-bye had a husk in it. He went back to the society of men who had never thought manly chast.i.ty a virtue or the unchast.i.ty of men a crime. He went back armed in steel, and the armour lasted a full fortnight in its perfection. Then here and there a rivet came out, and by-and-by the whole suit fell to pieces.

'Id is gurious,' said Darco, 'that all the vunniest sdories in the vorlt should be vhat they gall imbrober. Look at Arisdophanes; look at Jaucer; look at the "Gontes Troladigues"; look at the "Tegameron."'

'Look at Pickwick,' said Paul.

'Vell!' cried Darco, 'look at Bigvig. Bigvig woult haf peen a creat teal vunnier if Tickens had lived at the dime of Zmollet.'

'I don't mind drinking out of a jug,' said Paul, 'but I like a clean jug. I've read Aristophanes--in translation. It's like drinking wine out of a gold cup that has been washed in a sewer.'

'Who says that?' asked Darco.

'I do,' said Paul.

'It is a ferry coot ebicram,' said Darco. 'I vill rememper id. But, mindt you, to be squeamish is not to be glean-minded.

If a sdory is vunny, I laugh. Vy not? If a man tells me a sdory that is only dirdy, I co someveres else. I am a goot man. For dwendy-three hours and fifty-eight minutes in a tay I am as bure-minded as a child; then, in the ott dwo minutes somepoty tells me a dirdy sdory. I laugh, and I go avay, and I think of my blays and my boedry and my pusiness. It is water on a duck's pack.'

'Dirty water,' said Paul.