Paul Kelver | Page 5

your
father a true wife, but it was the old story: a man's way is not a
woman's way, and a woman's way is not a man's way, so there lives
ever doubt between them."
"But they came together in the end," I say, remembering.
"Aye, in the end," answers the House. "That is when you begin to
understand, you men and women, when you come to the end."
The grave face of a not too recently washed angel peeps shyly at me
through the railings, then, as I turn my head, darts back and disappears.
"What has become of her?" I ask.
"She? Oh, she is well enough," replies the House. "She lives close here.
You must have passed the shop. You might have seen her had you
looked in. She weighs fourteen stone, about; and has nine children
living. She would be pleased to see you."
"Thank you," I say, with a laugh that is not wholly a laugh; "I do not
think I will call." But I still hear the pit-pat of her tiny feet, dying down
the long street.

The faces thicken round me. A large looming, rubicund visage smiles
kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of
instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn
from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth
and the loveliest eyes I ever have known in a man.
"Was he as bad, do you think, as they said?" I ask of my ancient friend.
"Shouldn't wonder," the old House answers. "I never knew a
worse--nor a better."
The wind whisks it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling
nimbly by aid of a stick. Three corkscrew curls each side of her head
bob with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the
most alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to
herself some fascinating secret, "I'd like to skin 'em. I'd like to skin 'em
all. I'd like to skin 'em all alive!"
It sounds a fiendish sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old lady,
with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond my
ken.
Then, as though choosing contrasts, follows a fair, laughing face. I saw
it in the life only a few hours ago--at least, not it, but the poor daub that
Evil has painted over it, hating the sweetness underlying. And as I
stand gazing at it, wishing it were of the dead who change not, there
drifts back from the shadows that other face, the one of the wicked
mouth and the tender eyes, so that I stand again helpless between the
two I loved so well, he from whom I learned my first steps in manhood,
she from whom I caught my first glimpse of the beauty and the mystery
of woman. And again the cry rises from my heart, "Whose fault was
it--yours or hers?" And again I hear his mocking laugh as he answers,
"Whose fault? God made us." And thinking of her and of the love I
bore her, which was as the love of a young pilgrim to a saint, it comes
into my blood to hate him. But when I look into his eyes and see the
pain that lives there, my pity grows stronger than my misery, and I can
only echo his words, "God made us."

Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but
the centre round which they circle remains always the one: a little lad
with golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy,
awkward ways and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.
And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask: "Would he know
me, could he see me, do you think?"
"How should he," answers the old House, "you are so different to what
he would expect. Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?"
"It is sad to think he would not recognise me," I say.
"It might be sadder if he did," grumbles the old House.
We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House
is thinking. Soon it speaks as I expected.
"You--writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him? There is
something that you know."
It is the favourite theme of the old House. I never visit it but it suggests
to me this idea.
"But he has done nothing?" I say.
"He has lived," answers the old House. "Is not that enough?"
"Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times," I persist.
"How of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?"
The old House waxes impatient of