OF THE FASHIONING OF PAUL. Loves of my youth, whither are ye vanished? Tubby of the golden locks; Langley of the nose; Shamus of heart but faint of limb, easy enough to “down,” but impossible to make to cry: “I give you best;” Neal the thin; and Dicky, “dicky Dick” the fat; Ballett of the weeping eye; Beau Bunnie lord of many ties, who always fought in black kid gloves; all ye others, ye whose names I cannot , though I well remember ye were very dear to me, whither are ye vanished, where haunt your creeping ghosts? Had one told me then there would come a day I should never see again your merry faces, never hear your wild, of greeting, never feel again the warm clasp of your inky fingers, never fight again nor quarrel with you, never hate you, never love you, could I then have borne the thought, I wonder?
 
Once, methinks, not long ago, I saw you, Tubby, you with whom so often I discovered the North Pole, probed the problem of the sources of the Nile, (Have you forgotten, Tubby, our secret camping ground beside the lonely waters of the Regent's Park canal, where discussing our meal of toasted elephant's tongue—by the uninitiated mistakable for jumbles—there would break upon our trained hunters' ear the hungry lion or tiger's distant roar, with the , long- of the Polar Bear, growing ever in volume and until half-past four ; and we would snatch our rifles, and with stealthy tread and every sense alert make our way through the jungle—until stopped by the fencing round the Zoological Gardens?) I feel sure it was you, in spite of your side whiskers and the greyness and the thinness of your once clustering golden locks. You were hurrying down Throgmorton Street chained to a small black bag. I should have stopped you, but that I had no time to spare, having to catch a train at Liverpool Street and to get shaved on the way. I wonder if you recognised me: you looked at me a little hard, I thought. , hearted Shamus, you who fought once for half an hour to save a frog from being skinned; they tell me you are now an Income Tax assessor; a man, it is reported, with power of disbelief unusual among even Inland Revenue circles; of little faith, lacking in the charity that thinketh no evil. May direct you to other districts than to mine.
 
So Time, Nature's handy-man, to and fro about the many rooms, making all things tidy, covers with sweet earth the burnt volcanoes, turns to use the of the ages, smoothes again the ground above the dead, heals again the bark by lovers.
 
In the beginning I was far from being a favourite with my schoolmates, and this was the first time trouble came to dwell with me. Later, we men and women generally succeed in convincing ourselves that whatever else we may have missed in life, popularity in a greater or less degree we have at all events secured, for without it altogether few of us, I think, would care to face existence. But where the child suffers keener than the man is in finding himself exposed to the cold truth without the protecting clothes of self-deception. My was painfully plain to me, and, as was my nature, I brooded upon it in silence.
 
“Can you run?” asked of me one day a most important personage whose name I have forgotten. He was head of the Lower Fourth, a tall youth with a nose like a , and the manner of one born to authority. He was the son of a draper in the Edgware Road, and his father failing, he had to be content for a in life with a lower clerkship in the Civil Service. But to us youngsters he always appeared a Duke of Wellington in , and under other circumstances might, perhaps, have become one.
 
“Yes,” I answered. As a matter of fact it was my one , and of it maybe had reached him.
 
“Run round the playground twice at your fastest,” he commanded; “let me see you.”
 
I my fists and charged off. How grateful I was to him for having spoken to me, the outcast of the class, thus publicly, I could only show by my to please him. When I drew up before him I was panting hard, but I could see that he was satisfied.
 
“Why don't the fellows like you?” he asked bluntly.
 
If only I could have stepped out of my shyness, spoken my real thoughts! “O Lord of the Lower Fourth! You upon whom success—the only success in life worth having—has fallen as from the laps of the gods! You to whom all Lower Fourth hearts turn! tell me the secret of this popularity. How may I acquire it? No price can be too great for me to pay for it. Vain little egoist that I am, it is the sum of my desires, and will be till the long years have taught me wisdom. The want of it all my days. Why does silence fall upon their groups when I draw near? Why do they drive me from their games? What is it shuts me out from them, them from me? I creep into the corners and shed scalding tears of shame. I watch with eyes and ears all you to whom the gift is given. What is your secret? Is it Tommy's swagger? Then I will swagger, too, with anxious heart, with mingled fear and hope. But why—why, seeing that in Tommy they admire it, do they wait for me with imitations of cock-a-doodle-do, beside me a pouter pigeon? Is it Dicky's playfulness?—Dicky, who runs away with their balls, snatches their caps from off their heads, springs upon their backs when they are least expecting it?
 
“Why should Dicky's reward be laughter, and mine a nose and a widened, deepened circle of dislike? I am no heavier than Dicky; if anything a pound or two . Is it Billy's ? I too would fling my arms about their necks; but from me they angrily themselves free. Is the best plan? I walk apart with step I try so hard to render careless; but none follows, no little friendly arm is slipped through mine. Should one seek to win one's way by kind offices? Ah, if one could! How I would fag for them. I could do their sums for them—I am good at sums—write their impositions for them, gladly take upon myself their punishments, would they but return my service with a little love and—more important still—a little .”
 
But all I could find to say was, sulkily: “They do like me, some of them.” I dared not, aloud, acknowledge the truth.
 
“Don't tell lies,” he answered; “you know they don't—none of them.” And I hung my head.
 
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” he continued in his lordly way; “I'll give you a chance. We're starting hare and hounds next Saturday; you can be a hare. You needn't tell anybody. Just turn up on Saturday and I'll see to it. Mind, you'll have to run like the devil.”
 
He walked away without waiting for my answer, leaving me to meet Joy running towards me with outstretched hands. The great moment comes to all of us; to the politician, when the Party whip slips from confabulation with the Front Bench to congratulate him, smiling, on his really admirable little speech; to the youthful dramatist, reading in his bed-sitting-room the managerial note asking him to call that morning at eleven; to the subaltern, to the stirrup of his chief—the moment when the sun breaks through the morning mists, and the world lies stretched before us, our way clear.
 
Obeying orders, I gave no hint in school of the great fortune that had come to me; but hurrying home, I exploded in the passage before the front door could be closed behind me.
 
“I am to be a hare because I run so fast. Anybody can be a hound, but there's only two hares, and they all want me. And can I have a ? We begin next Saturday. He saw me run. I ran twice round the playground. He said I was splendid! Of course, it's a great honour to be a hare. We start from Hampstead Heath. And may I have a pair of shoes?”
 
The jersey and the shoes my mother and I purchased that very day, for the fear was upon me that unless we hastened, the last blue and white striped jersey in London might be sold, and the market be empty of running shoes. That evening, before getting into bed, I dressed myself in full costume to admire myself before the glass; and from then till the end of the week, to the terror of my mother, I practised leaping over chairs, and my method of stairs was and roundabout. But, as I explained to them, the credit of the Lower Fourth was at stake, and banisters and legs equally of small account as compared with fame and honour; and my father, nodding his head, supported me with argument; but my mother added to her prayers another line.
 
Saturday came. The members of the hunt were mostly boys who lived in the neighbourhood; so the arrangement was that at half-past two we should meet at the turnpike gate outside the Spaniards. I brought my lunch with me and ate it in Regent's Park, and then took the 'bus to the Heath. One by one the others came up. Beyond glances, none of them took any notice of me. I was wearing my ordinary clothes over my jersey. I knew they thought I had come merely to see them start, and I hugged to myself the dream of the surprise that was in store for them, and of which I should be the hero. He came, one of the last, our leader and chief, and I sidled up behind him and waited, while he busied himself organising and constructing.
 
“But we've only got one hare,” cried one of them. “We ought to have two, you know, in case one gets blown.”
 
“We've got two,” answered the Duke. “Think I don't know what I'm about? Young Kelver's going to be the other one.”
 
Silence fell upon the meet.
 
“Oh, I say, we don't want him,” at last broke in a voice. “He's a muff.”
 
“He can run,” explained the Duke.
 
“Let him run home,” came another voice, which was greeted with laughter.
 
“You'll run home in a minute yourself,” threatened the Duke, “if I have any of your cheek. Who's captain here—you or me? Now, young 'un, are you ready?”
 
I had commenced unbuttoning my jacket, but my hands fell to my side. “I don't want to come,” I answered, “if they don't want me.”
 
“He'll get his feet wet,” suggested the boy who had spoken first. “Don't spoil him, he's his mother's pet.”
 
“Are you coming or are you not?” shouted the Duke, seeing me still motionless. But the tears were coming into my eyes and would not go back. I turned my face away without speaking.
 
“All right, stop then,” cried the Duke, who, like all people, was impatient above all things of . “Here, Keefe, you take the bag and be off. It'll be dark before we start.”
 
My substitute snatched eagerly at the chance, and away went the hares, while I, still keeping my face hid, moved slowly off.
 
“Cry-baby!” shouted a sharp-eyed youngster.
 
“Let him alone,” the Duke; and I went on to where the grew.
 
I heard them start off a few minutes later with a whoop. How could I go home, confess my disappointment, my shame? My father would be expecting me with many questions, my mother waiting for me with hot water and blankets. What explanation could I give that would not betray my secret?
 
It was a chill, afternoon, the Heath , a thin rain commencing. I slipped off my shirt and jacket, and rolling them under my arm, off alone, hare and hounds combined in one small carcass, to chase myself sadly by myself.
 
I see it still, that pathetically ridiculous little figure, jogging over the dank fields. Mile after mile it runs, the little idiot; jumping—sometimes falling into the muddy ditches: it seems anxious rather than otherwise to get itself into a mess; through the dripping hedges; over tarry fence and slimy paling. On, on it pants—through Bishop's Wood, by Churchyard Bottom, where now the railway ; down lanes, bordering Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, . At it stops an instant to its eyes with its little rag of a handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its chief anxiety to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to , to across highroads when nobody is looking. And so tear-smeared and mud-bespattered up the long rise of darkening End Lane, where to-night the electric light blazes from a hundred shops, and dead beat into the Seven Sisters Road station, there to tear off its soaked jersey; and then home to Poplar, with shameless account of the jolly afternoon that it has spent, of the admiration and the praise that it has won.
 
You poor, pitiful little ! Popularity? it is a shadow. Turn your eyes towards it, and it shall ever run before you, escaping you. Turn your back upon it, walk towards the living sun, and it shall follow you. Am I not right? Why, then, do you look at me, your little face twisted into that quizzical grin?
 
When one takes service with Deceit, one signs a contract that one may not break but under penalty. Maybe it was good for my health, those lonely runs; but oh, they were ! By a process of argument not I persuaded myself that truth was a matter of mere words, that so long as I had actually gone over the ground I described I was not lying. To further satisfy my conscience, I bought a big and from it torn-up paper as I ran.
 
“And they never catch you?” asked my mother.
 
“Oh, no, never; they never even get within sight of me.”
 
“Be careful, dear,” would advise my mother; “don't overstrain yourself.” But I could see that she was proud of me.
 
And after awhile imagination came to my help, so that often I could hear behind me the sound of pursuing feet, catch through gaps in the trees a sight of a merry, host upon my trail, and would redouble my speed.
 
Thus, but for Dan, my loneliness would have been . His friendship was always there for me to creep to, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. To this day one may always know Dan's politics: they are those of the Party out of power. Always without question one may know the cause that he will champion, the unpopular cause; the man he will defend, the man who is down.
 
“You are such an un-understandable chap,” complained a fellow Clubman to him once in my hearing. “I sometimes ask myself if you have any opinions at all.”
 
“I hate a crowd,” was Dan's only of faith.
 
He never claimed anything from me in return for his affection; he was there for me to hold to when I wanted him. When, baffled in all my attempts to win the affections of others, I returned to him for comfort, he gave it me, without even relieving himself of friendly advice. When at length childish success came to me and I needed him less, he was neither hurt nor surprised. Other people—their thoughts, their actions, even when these concerned himself—never troubled him. He loved to , but as to response was strangely indifferent; indeed, if anything, it bored him. His nature appeared to be that of the fountain, which fulfils itself by giving, but is unable to receive.
 
My popularity came to me unexpectedly after I had given up hoping for it; surprising me, annoying me. Gradually it dawned upon me that my company was being sought.
 
“Come along, Kelver,” would say the spokesman of one group; “we're going part of your way home. You can walk with us.”
 
Maybe I would go with them, but more often, before we reached the gate, the delight of my society would be claimed by a rival troop.
 
“He's coming with us this afternoon. He promised.”
 
“No, he didn't.”
 
“Yes, he did.”
 
“Well, he ain't, anyhow. See?”
 
“Oh, isn't he? Who says he isn't?”
 
“I do.”
 
“Punch his head, Dick!”
 
“Yes, you do, Jimmy Blake, and I'll punch yours. Come, Kelver.”
 
I might have been some Queen of Beauty offered as prize for contest. Indeed, more than once the argument concluded thus , I being carried off in triumph by the party.
 
For a period it remained a mystery to me, until I asked explanation of Norval—we called him “Norval,” he being one George Grampian: it was our wit. From taking joy in teasing me, Norval had suddenly become one of my greatest admirers. This by itself was difficult enough to understand. He was in the second eleven, and after Dan the best fighter in the lower school. If I could understand Norval's change of attitude all would be plain to me; so when next time, bounding upon me in the cloakroom and slipping his arm into mine, he clamoured for my company to Camden Town, I put the question to him bluntly.
 
“Why should I walk home with you? Why do you want me?”
 
“Because we like you.”
 
“But why do you like me?”
 
“Why! Why, because you're such a funny chap. You say such funny things.”
 
It struck me like a slap in the face. I had thought to reach popularity upon the ladder of heroic qualities. In all the school books I had read, Leonard or Marmaduke (we had a Marmaduke in the Lower Fifth—they called him Marmalade: in the school books these disasters are not contemplated), won love and admiration by reason of integrity of character, nobility of sentiment, goodness of heart, of intellect; combined maybe with a certain amount of , instinct in the direction of , or for jumping; but such only by the way. Not one of them had ever said a funny thing, either ............