Paul Kelver

PAUL KELVER

There was a spot – it has been cleared away since to make room for the approach to Greenwich Tunnel – it was then the entrance to a grain depot in connection with the Milwall Docks. A curious brick well it resembled, in the centre of which a roadway wound downward, corkscrew fashion, disappearing at the bottom into darkness under a yawning arch. The place possessed the curious property of being ever filled with a ceaseless murmur, as though it were some aerial maelstrom, drawing into its silent vacuum all wandering waves of sound from the restless human ocean flowing round it. No single tone could one ever distinguish: it was a mingling of all voices, heard there like the murmur of a sea-soaked shell.

We passed through it on our return. Its work for the day was finished, its strange, weary song uninterrupted by the mighty waggons thundering up and down its spiral way. Hal paused, leaning against the railings that encircled its centre, and listened.

“Hark, do you not hear it, Paul?” he asked. “It is the music of Humanity. All human notes are needful to its making: the faint wail of the new-born, the cry of the dying thief; the beating of the hammers, the merry trip of dancers; the clatter of the teacups, the roaring of the streets; the crooning of the mother to her babe, the scream of the tortured child; the meeting kiss of lovers, the sob of those that part. Listen! prayers and curses, sighs and laughter; the soft breathing of the sleeping, the fretful feet of pain; voices of pity, voices of hate; the glad song of the strong, the foolish complaining of the weak. Listen to it, Paul! Right and wrong, good and evil, hope and despair, it is but one voice – a single note, drawn by the sweep of the

221

JEROME K. JEROME

Player’s hand across the quivering strings of man. What is the meaning of it, Paul? Can you read it? Sometimes it seems to me a note of joy, so full, so endless, so complete, that I cry: ‘Blessed be the Lord whose hammers have beaten upon us, whose fires have shaped us to His ends!’ And sometimes it sounds to me a dying note, so that I could curse Him who in wantonness has wrung it from the anguish of His creatures – till I would that I could fling myself, Prometheus like, between Him and His victims, calling: ‘My darkness, but their light; my agony, O God; their hope!’”

The faint light from a neighbouring gas-lamp fell upon his face that an hour before I had seen the face of a wild beast. The ugly mouth was quivering, tears stood in his great, tender eyes. Could his prayer in that moment have been granted, could he have pressed against his bosom all the pain of the world, he would have rejoiced.

He shook himself together with a laugh. “Come, Paul, we have had a busy afternoon, and I’m thirsty. Let us drink some beer, my boy, good sound beer, and plenty of it.”

My mother fell ill that winter. Mountain born and mountain bred, the close streets had never agreed with her, and scolded by all of us, she promised, “come the fine weather,” to put sentiment behind her, and go away from them.

“I’m thinking she will,” said Hal, gripping my shoulder with his strong hand, “but it’ll be by herself that she’ll go, lad. My wonder is,” he continued, “that she has held out so long. If anything, it is you that have kept her alive. Now that you are off her mind to a certain extent, she is worrying about your father, I expect. These women, they never will believe a man can

222

PAUL KELVER

take care of himself, even in Heaven. She’s never quite trusted the Lord with him, and never will till she’s there to give an eye to things herself.”

Hal’s prophecy fell true. She left “come the fine weather,” as she had promised: I remember it was the first day primroses were hawked in the street. But another death had occurred just before; which, concerning me closely as it does, I had better here dispose of; and that was the death of old Mr. Stillwood, who passed away rich in honour and regret, and was buried with much ostentation and much sincere sorrow; for he had been to many of his clients, mostly old folk, rather a friend than a mere man of business, and had gained from all with whom he had come in contact, respect, and from many real affection.

In conformity with the old legal fashions that in his life he had so fondly clung to, his will was read aloud by Mr. Gadley after the return from the funeral, and many were the tears its recital called forth. Written years ago by himself and never altered, its quaint phraseology was full of kindly thought and expression. No one had been forgotten. Clerks, servants, poor relations, all had been treated with even-handed justice, while for those with claim upon him, ample provision had been made. Few wills, I think, could ever have been read less open to criticism.

Old Gadley slipped his arm into mine as we left the house. “If you’ve nothing to do, young ‘un,” he said, “I’ll get you to come with me to the office. I have got all the keys in my pocket, and we shall be quiet. It will be sad work for me, and I had rather we were alone. A couple of hours will show us everything.”

223

JEROME K. JEROME

We lighted the wax candles – old Stillwood could never tolerate gas in his own room – and opening the safe took out the heavy ledgers one by one, and from them Gadley dictated figures which I wrote down and added up.

“Thirty years I have kept these books for him,” said old Gadley, as we laid by the last of them, “thirty years come Christmas next, he and I together. No other hands but ours have ever touched them, and now people to whom they mean nothing but so much business will fling them about, drop greasy crumbs upon them – I know their ways, the brutes! – scribble all over them. And he who always would have everything so neat and orderly!”

We came to the end of them in less than the time old Gadley had thought needful: in such perfect order had everything been maintained. I was preparing to go, but old Gadley had drawn a couple of small keys from his pocket, and was shuffling again towards the safe.

“Only one more,” he explained in answer to my look, “his own private ledger. It will merely be in the nature of a summary, but we’ll just glance through it.”

He opened an inner drawer and took from it a small thick volume bound in green leather and closed with two brass locks. An ancient volume, it appeared, its strong binding faded and stained. Old Gadley sat down with it at the dead man’s own desk, and snuffing the two shaded candles, unlocked and opened it. I was standing opposite, so that the book to me was upside down, but the date on the first page, “1841,” caught my eye, as also the small neat writing now brown with age.

224

PAUL KELVER

“So neat, so orderly he always was,” murmured old Gadley again, smoothing the page affectionately with his hand, and I waited for his dictation.

But no glib flow of figures fell from him. His eyebrows suddenly contracted, his body stiffened itself. Then for the next quarter of an hour nothing sounded in the quiet room but his turning of the creakling pages. Once or twice he glanced round swiftly over his shoulder, as though haunted by the idea of some one behind him; then back to the neat, closely written folios, his little eyes, now exhibiting a comical look of horror, starting out of his round red face. First slowly, then quickly with trembling hands he turned the pages, till the continual ratling of the leaves sounded like strange, mocking laughter through the silent, empty room; almost one could imagine it coming from some watching creature hidden in the shadows.

The end reached, he sat staring before him, his whole body quivering, great beads of sweat upon his shiny bald head.

“Am I mad?” was all he could find to say. “Kelver, am I mad?”

He handed me the book. It was a cynically truthful record of fraud, extending over thirty years. Every client, every friend, every relative that had fallen into his net he had robbed: the fortunate ones of a part, the majority of their all. Its very first entry debited him with the proceeds of his own partner’s estate. Its last ran – “Re Kelver – various sales of stock.” To his credit were his payments year after year of imaginary interests on imaginary securities, the surplus accounted for with simple brevity: “Transferred to own account.” No record could have been more clear, more frank. Beneath each transaction

225

JEROME K. JEROME

was written its true history; the actual investments, sometimes necessary, carefully distinguished from the false. In neat red ink would occur here and there a note for his own guidance: “Eldest child comes of age August, ‘73. Be prepared for trustees desiring production.” Turning to “August, ‘73,” one found that genuine investment had been made, to be sold again a few months later on. From beginning to end not a single false step had he committed. Suspicious clients had been ear-marked: the trusting discriminated with gratitude, and milked again and again to meet emergency.

As a piece of organisation it was magnificent. No one but a financial genius could have picked a dozen steps through such a network of chicanery. For half a lifetime he had moved among it, dignified, respected and secure.

Whether even he could have maintained his position for another month was doubtful. Suicide, though hinted at, was proved to have been impossible. It seemed as though with his amazing audacity he had tricked even Death into becoming his accomplice.

“But it is impossible, Kelver!” cried Gadley, “this must be some dream. Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal! What is the meaning of it?”

He took the book into his hands again, then burst into tears. “You never knew him,” wailed the poor little man. “Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal! I came here as office boy fifty years ago. He was more like a friend to me than – ” and again the sobs shook his little fat body.

I locked the books away and put him into his hat and coat. But I had much difficulty in getting him out of the office.

226

PAUL KELVER

“I daren’t, young ‘un,” he cried, drawing back. “Fifty years I have walked out of this office, proud of it, proud of being connected with it. I daren’t face the street!”

All the way home his only idea was: Could it not be hidden? Honest, kindly little man that he was, he seemed to have no thought for the unfortunate victims. The good name of his master, of his friend, gone! Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal, a by-word! To have avoided that I believe he would have been willing for yet another hundred clients to be ruined.

I saw him to his door, then turned homeward; and to my surprise in a dark by-street heard myself laughing heartily. I checked myself instantly, feeling ashamed of my callousness, of my seeming indifference to the trouble even of myself and my mother. Yet as there passed before me the remembrance of that imposing and expensive funeral with its mournful following of tearful faces; the hushed reading of the will with its accompaniment of rustling approval; the picture of the admirably sympathetic clergyman consoling with white hands Mrs. Stillwood, inclined to hysteria, but anxious concerning her two hundred pounds’ worth of crape which by no possibility of means could now be paid for – recurred to me the obituary notice in “The Chelsea Weekly Chronicle”: the humour of the thing swept all else before it, and I laughed again – I could not help it – loud and long. It was my first introduction to the comedy of life, which is apt to be more brutal than the comedy of fiction.

But nearing home, the serious side of the matter forced itself uppermost. Fortunately, our supposed dividends had been paid to us by Mr. Stillwood only the month before. Could I keep the

227