PAUL, FALLING IN WITH A GOODLY COMPANY OF PILGRIMS, LEARNS OF THEM THE ROAD THAT HE MUST TRAVEL. AND MEETS THE PRINCESS OF THE GOLDEN LOCKS.  
The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare. The of the tram-bell and the of the omnibus and cart continuously with the rain of many feet, beating ceaselessly upon its pavements. But at the time of which I write it was an empty, voiceless way, bounded on the one side by the long, echoing wall of the docks and on the other by occasional small houses amid market gardens, drying grounds and rubbish heaps. Only one thing remains—or did remain last time I passed along it, connecting it with its former self—and that is the one-storeyed brick cottage at the commencement of the bridge, and which was the toll-house. I remember this toll-house so well because it was there that my childhood fell from me, and sad and frightened I saw the world beyond.
 
I cannot explain it better. I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on a visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which to keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing nature.
 
“Have the half-crown in your hand,” my mother would direct me, while making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the bottom of my knickerbocker pocket; “but of course if he won't take it, why, you must bring it home again.”
 
I am not sure, but I think he was some distant connection of ours; at all events, I know he was a kind friend. I, seated in the chair of state, he would unroll his case of instruments before me, and ask me to choose, recommending with affectionate eulogisms the most murderous looking.
 
But on my opening my mouth to discuss the fearful topic, lo! a pair would shoot from under his coat-sleeve, and almost before I knew what had happened, the trouble would be over. After that we would have tea together. He was an old bachelor, and his house stood in a great garden—for Plaistow in those days was a village—and out of the fruit thereof his made the most wonderful of jams and jellies. Oh, they were good, those teas! Generally our conversation was of my mother who, it appeared, was once a little girl: not at all the sort of little girl I should have imagined her; on the contrary, a , little girl, though good company, I should say, if all the tales he told of her were true. And I am inclined to think they were, in spite of the fact that my mother, when I repeated them to her, would laugh, saying she was sure she had no recollection of anything of the kind, adding that it was a pity he and I could not find something better to gossip about. Yet her next question would be:
 
“And what else did he say, if you please?” explaining impatiently when my answer was not of the kind expected: “No, no, I mean about me.”
 
The tea things cleared away, he would bring out his great microscope. To me it was a peep-hole into a fairy world where dwelt strange dragons, monsters, so that I came to regard him as a sort of harmless magician. It was his pet study, and looking back, I cannot help associating his enthusiasm for all things with the fact that he was an exceptionally little man himself, but one of the biggest hearted that ever breathed.
 
On leaving I would formally hand him my half-crown, “with mamma's compliments,” and he would formally accept it. But on putting my hand into my jacket pocket when outside the gate I would invariably find it there. The first time I took it back to him, but unblushingly he all knowledge.
 
“Must be another half-crown,” he suggested; “such things do happen. One puts change into a pocket and overlooks it. Slippery things, half-crowns.”
 
Returning home on this particular day of days, I paused upon the bridge, and watched for awhile the lazy manoeuvring their way between the . It was one of those hushed summer evenings when the air even of grim cities is full of whispering voices; and as, turning away from the river, I passed through the white toll-gate, I had a sense of leaving myself behind me on the bridge. So vivid was the impression, that I looked back, half expecting to see myself still leaning over the iron parapet, looking down into the sunlit water.
 
It sounds foolish, but I leave it , wondering if to others a like experience has ever come. The little chap never came back to me. He passed away from me as a man's body may possibly pass away from him, leaving him only remembrance and regret. For a time I tried to play his games, to dream his dreams, but the substance was wanting. I was only a thin ghost, making believe.
 
It troubled me for quite a spell of time, even to the point of tears, this feeling that my childhood lay behind me, this sudden realisation that I was travelling swiftly the strange road called growing up. I did not want to grow up; could nothing be done to stop it? Rather would I be always as I had been, playing, dreaming. The dark way frightened me. Must I go forward?
 
Then gradually, but very slowly, with the long months and years, came to me the consciousness of a new being, new pulsations, sensories, throbbings, rooted in but differing widely from the old; and little Paul, the Paul of whom I have hitherto spoken, faded from my life.
 
So likewise must I let him fade with sorrow from this book. But before I part with him , let me recall what else I can remember of him. Thus we shall be quit of him, and he will with us no more.
 
Chief among the pictures that I see is that of my aunt Fan, over the kitchen fire; her skirt and crinoline rolled up round her waist, leaving as sacrifice to custom only her petticoat. Up and down her body sways in motion, her hands stroking affectionately her own knees; the while I, with paper knife for sword, or horse of broomstick, stand opposite her, flourishing and declaiming. Sometimes I am a and she a wicked ogre. She is , and swearing, and at once becomes the beautiful princess that I secure and bear away with me upon the broomstick. So long as the princess is merely holding sweet with me from her high-barred window, the scene is realistic, at least, to sufficiency; but the bearing away has to be make-believe; for my aunt cannot be persuaded to leave her chair before the fire, and the rubbing of her knees.
 
At other times, with the assistance of the meat chopper, I am an Indian brave, and then she is Laughing Water or Singing Sunshine, and we go out scalping together; or in less bloodthirsty moods I am the Fairy Prince and she the Sleeping Beauty. But in such parts she is not at her best. Better, when seated in the centre of the up-turned table, I am Captain Cook, and she the Cannibal Chief.
 
“I shall skin him and hang him in the till Sunday week,” says my aunt, her lips, “then he'll be just in right condition; not too tough and not too high.” She was always strong in detail, was my aunt Fan.
 
I do not wish to deprive my aunt of any credit due to her, but the more I exercise my memory for evidence, the more I am convinced that her on these occasions was not conceived entirely in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Often would she suggest the game and even the theme; in such case, casting herself invariably for what, in old , would have been termed the heavy lead, the dragons and the wicked uncles, the necromancers and the uninvited fairies. As authoress of a new cookery book for use in giant-land, my aunt, I am sure, would have been successful. Most recipes that one reads are so meagre: “Boil him,” “Put her on the spit and roast her for supper,” “Cook 'em in a pie—with plenty of gravy;” but my aunt into the domestic economy of Ogredom introduced variety and daintiness.
 
“I think, my dear,” my aunt would direct, “we'll have him stuffed with and served on toast. And don't forget the giblets. They make such excellent sauce.”
 
With regard to the diet of she would advise:
 
“Not too much fish—it spoils the flesh for roasting.”
 
The things that she would turn people into—king's sons, rightful princesses, such sort of people—people who after a time, one would think, must have quite forgotten what they started as. To let her have her way was a lesson to me in natural history both present and pre-historic. The most beautiful damsel that ever lived she would without a moment's turn into a Glyptodon or a Hippocrepian. Afterwards, when I could guess at the spelling, I would look these creatures up in the dictionary, and feel that under no circumstances could I have loved the lady ever again. and kings she would delight in transforming into plaice or , and queens into Brussels .
 
With gusto would she plan a complicated , paying to every detail: the sharpening of the knives, the having ready of mops and pails of water for purposes of after cleaning up. As a writer she would have followed the realistic school.
 
Her death, with which we invariably wound up the afternoon, was another effort. Indeed, her and writhings would sometimes frighten me. I always welcomed the last gurgle. That finished, but not a moment before, my aunt would let down her skirt—in this way suggesting the fall of the curtain upon our play—and set to work to get the tea.
 
Another frequently picture that I see is of myself in glazed-peaked cap explaining many things the while we walk through streets to yet a smaller figure curly haired and open eyed. Still every now and then she runs ahead to turn and look admiringly into my face as on the day she first became captive to the praise and fame of me.
 
I was glad of her company for more reasons than she knew of. For one, she protected me against my baser self. With her beside me I should not have dared to flee from sudden . Indeed, together we courted adventure; for once you get used to it this standing hazard of attack adds a charm to outdoor exercise that older folk in districts better policed enjoy not. So possibly my dog feels when together we take the air. To me it is a simple walk, maybe a little , suggested rather by contemplation of my waistband than by desire for walking for walking's sake; to him an expedition full of danger and surprises: “The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's doorstep! will he greet me with a friendly or try to bite my head off? This cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the lamp-post! shall we pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become locked in a life and death struggle? Impossible to say. This coming corner, now, '! Is anybody waiting round there to kill me, or not?”
 
But the trusting face beside me nerved me. As reward in lonely places I would let her hold my hand.
 
A second advantage I from her company was that of being less on, less walked over, less swept aside into or than when alone. A pretty, face had this little maid, if Memory plays me not false; but also she had a vocabulary; and when the blind idiot, male or female, instead of passing us by walking round us, would, after the custom of the blind idiot, seek to gain the other side of us by walking through us, she would use it.
 
“Now, then, where yer coming to, old glass-eye? We ain't sperrits. Can't yer see us?”
 
And if they attempted reply, her child's treble, so strangely at with her dainty appearance, would only rise more .
 
“Garn! They'd run out of 'eads when they was making you. That's only a wot you've got stuck on top of yer!” I offer but .
 
Nor was it of the slightest use attempting personal , as sometimes an lady or gentleman would be foolish enough to do. As well might an attempt to reprove a terrier. The only result was to provide comedy for the entire street.
 
On these occasions our positions were reversed, I being the admiring spectator of her prowess. Yet to me she was ever , almost irritatingly submissive. She found out where I lived and would often come and wait for me for hours, her little face pressed tight against the iron railings, until either I came out or shook my head at her from my bedroom window, when she would run off, the dying away into silence of her pattering feet leaving me a little sad.
 
I think I cared for her in a way, yet she never entered into my day-dreams, which means that she existed for me only in the outer world of shadows that lay round about me and was not of my real life.
 
Also, I think she was unwise, introducing me to the shop, for children and dogs—one seems unconsciously to bracket them in one's thoughts—are little . If only her father had been a in firewood I could have myself by imagining mistakes. It was a common occurrence, as I well knew, for children of quite the best families to be brought up by wood choppers. Fairies, the best intentioned in the world, but born muddlers, were generally responsible for these , which, however, always became righted in time for the wedding. Or even had he been a pork butcher, and there were many in the neighbourhood, I could have thought of him as a swineherd, and so found for hope.
 
But a fishmonger—from six in the evening a fried fishmonger! I searched history in vain. Fried fishmongers were without the pale.
 
So gradually our meetings became less frequent, though I knew that every afternoon she waited in the quiet Stainsby Road, where dwelt in semi-detached, six-roomed the aristocracy of Poplar, and that after awhile, for arriving late at times I have been witness to the sad fact, tears would trace pathetic patterns upon her dust-besprinkled cheeks; and with the of the world-illuminating Barbara, to which event I am drawing near, they ceased altogether.
 
So began and ended my first romance. One of these days—some quiet summer's afternoon, when even the air of Pigott Street vibrates with tenderness beneath the whispered sighs of Memory, I shall walk into the little grocer's shop and boldly ask to see her. So far have I already gone as to trace her, and often have I tried to catch sight of her through the glass door, but hitherto in vain. I know she is the more or less troubled mother of a numerous . I am told she has grown , and probable enough it is that her tongue has gained rather than lost in sharpness. Yet under all the unrealities the clumsy-handed world has built about her, I shall see, I know, the lithesome little maid with fond, admiring eyes. What help they were to me I never knew till I had lost them. How hard to gain such eyes I have learned since. Were we to write the truth in our books, should we not admit the quality we most admire in others is of ourselves? And is it not a wise selection? If you would have me admirable, my friend, admire me, and speak your commendation without that in the sunshine of your praises I may wax. For maketh an indifferent man, and contempt a man. Come, is it not true? Does not all that is in us grow best by honour?
 
Chief among the remaining figures on my childhood's stage were the many servants of our house, the “generals,” as they were termed. So rapid, as a rule, was their through our kitchen that only one or two, by reason of their lingering, remain upon my view. It was a neighbourhood in which domestic servants were not much required. Those intending to take up the calling seriously went . The local ranks were recruited mainly from the discontented or the disappointed, from those who, unappreciated at home, hoped from the stranger more discernment; or from the love-lorn, the jilted and the jealous, who took the cap and as in an earlier age their like would have taken the veil. Maybe, to the comparative of our basement, as contrasted with the alternative of shop or factory, they felt in such mood more . With the advent of the new or the recovery of the old young man they would again into the vain world, leaving my poor mother to search afresh amid the legions of the cursed.
 
With these I made such comradeship as I could, for I had no child friends. Kind creatures were most of them, at least so I found them. They were poor at “making believe,” but would always squeeze ten minutes from their work to with me, and that, perhaps, was healthier for me. What, perhaps, was not so good for me was that, staggered at the amount of “book-learning” implied by my conversation (for the journalistic instinct, I am inclined to think, was early displayed in me), they would listen open-mouthed to all my information, regarding me as a . Sometimes they would obtain permission to take me home with them to tea, generously eager that their friends should also profit by me. Then, encouraged by admiring, grinning faces, I would “hold forth,” keenly enjoying the sound of my own proud piping.
 
“As good as a book, ain't he?” was the tribute most often paid to me.
 
“As good as a play,” one enthusiastic listener, an old greengrocer, went so far as to say.
 
Already I regarded myself as among the .
 
One girl, a dear, creature named Janet, stayed with us for months and might have stayed years, but for her to strong language. The only and well-beloved child of the captain of the “Nancy Jane,” trading between Purfleet and Ponder's End, her conversation was at once my terror and delight.
 
“Janet,” my mother would exclaim in agony, her hands going up to guard her ears, “how can you use such words?”
 
“What words, mum?”
 
“The things you have just called the gas man.”
 
“Him! Well, did you see what he did, mum? Walked straight into my clean kitchen, without even wiping his boots, the—” And before my mother could stop her, Janet had relieved her feelings by calling him it—or rather them—again, without any idea that she had done aught else than express in fitting phraseology a natural human emotion.
 
We were good friends, Janet and I, and therefore it was that I personally undertook her reformation. It was not an occasion for one's words. The stake at issue was, I felt, too important. I told her bluntly that if she persisted in using such language she would go to hell.
 
“Then where's my father going?” demanded Janet.
 
“Does he use language?”
 
I gathered from Janet that no one who had enjoyed the privilege of hearing her father could ever again take interest in the feeble efforts of herself.
 
“I am afraid, Janet,” I explained, “that if he doesn't give it up—”
 
“But it's the only way he can talk,” interrupted Janet. “He don't mean anything by it.”
 
I sighed, yet set my face against weakness. “You see, Janet, people who swear do go there.”
 
But Janet would not believe.
 
“God send my dear, kind father to hell just because he can't talk like the gentlefolks! Don't you believe it of Him, Master Paul. He's got more sense.”
 
I hope I pain no one by quoting Janet's common sense. For that I should be sorry. I remember her words because so often, when sinking in of childish despond, they afforded me firm foothold. More often than I can tell, when compelled to listen to the sententious voice of immeasurable explaining the eternal mysteries, has it comforted me to whisper to myself: “I don't believe it of Him. He's got more sense.”
 
And about that period I had need of all the comfort I could get. As we the road of life, the journey, demanding so much of our attention, becomes of more importance than the journey's end; but to the child, standing at the valley's gate, the terminating hills are clearly visible. What lies beyond them is his constant wonder. I never questioned my parents directly on the subject, shrinking as so strangely we all do, both young and old, from discussion of the very matters of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my need, themselves with the vague generalities with which we seek to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs. But there were foolish voices about me less ; while the literature, illustrated and otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt . If you did wrong you burnt in a furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could turn to the accompanying illustration, and see at a glance how you yourself would and shrink and scream, while cheerful devils, well organised, were busy stoking. I had been burnt once, rather badly, in consequence of live coals, in course of transit on a , being let fall upon me. I imagined these burning coals, not confined to a mere part of my body, but pressing upon me everywhere, not snatched swiftly off by loving hands, the pain by applications of soft soap and the blue bag, but left there, eating into my flesh and . And this continued for . You suffered for an hour, a day, a thousand years, and were no nearer to the end; ten thousand, a million years, and yet, as at the very first, it was for ever, and for ever still it would always be for ever! I suffered also from about this period.
 
“Then be good,” replied the foolish voices round me; “never do wrong, and so avoid this endless agony.”
 
But it was so easy to do wrong. There were so many wrong things to do, and the doing of them was so natural.
 
“Then ,” said the voices, always ready.
 
But how did one repent? What was ? Did I “hate my sin,” as I was instructed I must, or merely hate the idea of going to hell for it? Because the latter, even my child's sense told me, was no true repentance. Yet how could one know the difference?
 
Above all else there haunted me the fear of the “Unforgivable Sin.” What this was I was never able to discover. I to too closely, lest I should find I had committed it. Day and night the terror of it clung to me.
 
“Believe,” said the voices; “so only shall you be saved.” How believe? How know you did believe? Hours would I kneel in the dark, repeating in a whispered scream:
 
“I believe, I believe. Oh, I do believe!” and then rise with white , wondering if I really did believe.
 
Another question rose to trouble me. In the course of my meanderings I had made the acquaintance of an old sailor, one of the most disreputable specimens possible to find; and had learned to love him. Our first meeting had been outside a confectioner's window, in the Commercial Road, where he had discovered me standing, my nose against the glass, a mere palpitating Appetite on legs. He had seized me by the collar, and hauled me into the shop. There, dropping me upon a stool, he bade me eat. Pride of race prompted me politely to decline, but his language became so awful that in fear and trembling I obeyed. So soon as I was finished—it cost him two and fourpence, I remember—we walked down to the docks together, and he told me stories of the sea and land that made my blood run cold. Altogether, in the course of three weeks or a month, we met about half a dozen times, when much the same programme was gone through. I think I was a fairly frank child, but I said nothing about him at home, feeling instinctively that if I did there would be an end of our comradeship, which was dear to me: not merely by reason of the , though I admit that was a consideration, but also for his tales. I believed them all , and so came to regard him as one of the most interesting criminals as yet unhanged: and what was sad about the case, as I felt myself, was that his of his many , instead of , attracted me to him. If ever there existed a sinner, here was one. He chewed tobacco—one of the hundred or so deadly sins, according to my theological library—and was generally more or less drunk. Not that a stranger would have noticed this; the only difference being that when sober he appeared constrained—was less his natural, self. In a burst of confidence he once admitted to me that he was the biggest blackguard in the merchant service. Unacquainted with the merchant service, as at the time I was, I saw no reason to doubt him.
 
One night in a state of he walked over a gangway and was drowned. Our friend, the confectioner, seeing me pass the window, came out to tell me so; and having heard, I walked on, heavy of heart, and pondering.
 
About his eternal destination there could be no question. The known facts the least ray of hope. How could I be happy in heaven, supposing I eventually did succeed in slipping in, knowing that he, the lovable old scamp, was burning for ever in hell?
 
How could Janet, taking it that she reformed and thus escaped damnation, be contented, knowing the father she loved to ? The heavenly hosts, so I argued, could be composed only of the and indifferent.
 
I wondered how people could go about their business, eat, drink and be merry, with tremendous fate hanging thus ever suspended over their heads. When for a little space I myself forgot it, always it fell back upon me with increased weight.
 
Nor was the contemplation of heaven itself particularly attractive to me, for it was a foolish paradise these foolish voices had fashioned out of their folly. You stood about and sang hymns—for ever! I was assured that my fear of finding the programme was due only to my state of original sin, that when I got there I should discover I liked it. But I would have given much for the hope of avoiding both their heaven and their hell.
 
Fortunately for my I was not left long to brood unoccupied upon such themes. Our worldly affairs, under the sunshine of old Hasluck's round red face, prospered—for awhile; and one afternoon my father, who had been away from home since breakfast time, calling me into his office where also sat my mother, informed me that the long-talked-of school was become at last a concrete thing.
 
“The term commences next week,” explained my father. “It is not exactly what I had intended, but it will do—for the present. Later, of course, you will go to one of the big public schools; your mother and I have not yet quite which.”
 
“You will meet other boys there, good and bad,” said my mother, who sat clasping and unclasping her hands. “Be very careful, dear, how you choose your companions.”
 
“You will learn to take your own part,” said my father. “School is an of the world. One must assert oneself, or one is sat upon.”
 
I knew not what to reply, the thus opened out to me was so unexpected. My blood rejoiced, but my heart sank.
 
“Take one of your long walks,” said my father, smiling, “and think it over.”
 
“And if you are in any doubt, you know where to go for guidance, don't you?” whispered my mother, who was very grave.
 
Yet I went to bed, dreaming of quite other things that night: of Queens of Beauty bending down to crown my brows with laurel: of wronged Princesses for whose cause I rode to death or victory. For on my return home, being called into the drawing-room by my father, I stood transfixed, my cap in hand, staring with all my eyes at the vision that I saw.
 
No such wonder had I ever seen before, at all events, not to my remembrance. The maidens that one meets in Poplar streets may be fair enough in their way, but their millinery displays them not to advantage; and the few lady visitors that came to us were of a staid and matronly appearance. Only out of pictures hitherto had such witchery looked upon me; and from these the spell faded as one gazed.
 
I heard old Hasluck's smoky voice saying, “My little gell, Barbara,” and I went nearer to her, moving unconsciously.
 
“You can kiss 'er,” said the smoky voice again; “she won't bite.” But I did not kiss her. Nor ever felt I wanted to, upon the mouth.
 
I suppose she must have been about fourteen, and I a little over ten, though tall for my age. Later I came to know she had that rare gold hair that holds the light, so that upon her face, which seemed of dainty , there ever fell a radiance as from some shining aureole; those blue eyes where dwell mysteries, shadow veiled. At the time I knew nothing, but that it seemed to me as though the fairy-tales had all come true.
 
She smiled, understanding and well pleased with my confusion. Child though I was—little more than child though she was, it flattered her vanity.
 
Fair and sweet, you had but that one fault. Would it had been another, less cruel to you yourself.