RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
The London Magazine, January 1911, with "Fog-Folk"
"PETER PAN" was being presented on the boards of the Shamrock Theatre for the first time, but already, in theatrical parlance, he had got "over the footlights," and gripped at the hearts of his audience. Pale, perspiring men and women snatched at the fluttering skirts of their departed childhood, as they fell under the spell of the immortal youth of "the boy who would not grow up."
Outside the building, posters announced "Standing room only!"
Passers-by gaped at these placards, for of late all theatrical enterprise in Polegate had proved a frost. The shadow of the strike fell too heavily over the spirits and pockets of the population for pleasure. The township was passing through a period of unusual strain and anxiety. The heat was not alone responsible for the waxen hue of the faces that glimmered wanly in the darkened building; half their pallor was the result of the poisonous white-lead of care.
It was one man's work, just as Polegate was a one-man show. The township had been spawned, like a mushroom, in a single night. It was the creation and plaything of one Adam Cave, a financial genius with a flair for pockets, who had appeared from nowhere ten years previously, and, seeking the market where he could best bring his heaven-born brains, had brought them to hell.
He found the village in the state of a half-witted bucolic lout, and he had endowed it with a soul—to be damned. By affinity, the flinty streak in his nature seemed to nose out the unsuspected veins of metal lying buried under the earth, and he at once began operations. In an incredibly short time he had something new to show to the late-opened eyes of the rustic land owners, in the shape of a "corner."
When most of the land had passed into his possession mines were sunk and factories erected. After the first burst of prosperity his iron fist was felt in earnest. He had his people on toast. The curses of sweated labour, piece-work and the bonus-system were rife. Men were sucked dry, and then thrown aside like squeezed oranges. Now that they had risen, he fought the strike single-handed from afar, pitting his wealth against the undermining force of want.
But for a few hours, at least, his victims had forgotten their troubles in the story of undying youth. When Peter Pan finally flew out of the window, followed by the floating children, the curtain fell to deafening applause. Lights went up; people remembered they were hot; one heard the sound of fans as they smacked the air.
Wedged high up in one of the circles sat a girl, whose face was alive with joy, as her white teeth crunched candies. She was a slip of a thing, with eyes blue as cornflowers, and hair the colour of bottled sunshine. Impervious alike to heat and depression, her laugh had rung out continuously during the first act.
For five and a half days in the week Jacqueline Eves was a machine, working hard with brain and fingers in a large office. Sunday was passed principally in bed. But on Saturday night she lived her brief hour of crowded existence.
A man by her side had kept time to her mirth with roars of delighted laughter, and as the curtain fell he turned to her impulsively:
"Dandy play, eh? They call it a kiddies' piece, but I reckon it means more to us grown-ups!"
The girl hesitated before replying. The little stenographer who earned her wage had not been wrapped up in cotton-wool like a peach, and she sized up the stranger before beginning a chance acquaintance. The man, who had evidently dropped into the theatre to fill up an odd hour, was in full motoring rig, but there was something about the goggle-disguised face that inspired confidence, and, at the same time, awakened a chord of memory.
"Sure!" she responded, nodding her head. "It does take one back. It sets me in the orchard again, swinging light up in the apple-blossom."
"Ah! Not raised here?"
"My, no! I come from the country, miles back."
The man laughed delightedly.
"Don't I know it? Gee-whiz! Have I forgotten little Jack Eves, the prettiest kid of all the bunch at Teacher Weston's school? I can see you now—curls, pink pinny, and all!"
Jack wrinkled her brow.
"But—who are you?" she asked.
"Sha'n't say. I remembered you, and you oughtn't to forget me. Can't guess? Why, you used to be smart as paint!"
"What was your favourite game?" inquired Jack craftily.
"Fog-folk!"
In an instant, Peter Pan had gripped hold of Jack and swung her through the short-cut, back to her childish days. She sat again in the schoolhouse and felt the blistering heat from its roof of corrugated iron. Small though she was, she sat at the top of the form and put out her tongue at the great, loutish lad who always stuck at the bottom, Cyrus Nobody, a waif and the butt of the whole village.
All day long she bullied the uncouth creature, but when evening fell he came into his own, and she sheltered under the protection of his bulk when he took her home to her mother.
Once again she saw the low line of scrub that melted into the grey haze of evening. The stunted trees and bushes took on queer shapes and waved shadowy arms out of the mist. She and Cyrus hailed them as Fog-folk, and shouted defiance at them, even as they fled by, shrieking with entrancing fear.
She squealed like a little bunny.
"Oh, Cy, Cy, fancy it being you—after all these years! It makes me feel I just want to spin like a humming-top. And at the play, too, when everything takes you back and makes you a child once more. Isn't it wonderful?"
"I guess that's so. And what about you, Jack? Married?"
"I allow I've more sense, thank you. I'm in business—a stenographer, and I've had two rises already."
"Never! But you always were a powerful speller. Beats me how you do it. Never could spell, and can't now. But I've done well, too, Jack. I was a clod, so I went in for land—what I understood. I've grown warm. I've—"
"Hush! The curtain's going up!"
Again the story gripped them as the child within each woke up at the pull of memory. No matter what the age or clime, the appeal to childhood was universal—in Red Indian, pirate, mermaid and pillow-fight.
Half way through the act, however, there was a disturbance. A hugely built man in rough clothes, groped his way up through the circle, stumbling in the dim light and swearing audibly. Jack touched her companion's arm.
"Horrors, he's coming here! It's Bully Jones—and not sober, either, I'm sure. What's he doing at a piece like this? They oughtn't to have let him in. Afraid to stop him, that's what they are! Cowards!"
"Hush!"
An angry whisper whirred through the theatre.
The intruder squeezed himself violently into the few inches of space by the side of Cyrus; then, expanding his chest and squaring his elbows, he proceeded to make room for himself by the simple means of pressure.
Half-stifled murmurs of protest arose all along the crowded bench. Cyrus held himself in by an effort, until the close of the act. Directly the lights went up he turned and faced the intruder.
Small wonder that Bully Jones inspired fear in the breast of the pallid-faced theatre attendant. As he leered aggressively around, his sprouting beard, broken fangs and massive bulk gave him the ferocious appearance of a cave man.
"Stop barging, can't you?" shouted Cyrus angrily. "Can't you see I have a lady here? Clear out of this seat, you clown!"
The man grinned insolently.
"No names—no pack-drill!" he responded. "Paid my check, I have, and I'll keep my seat, thank you."
He gave an extra lunge at the words, and the murmur of indignation grew.
"Chuck him out!"
But no one moved, all the same. In a primitive place like Polegate the arrangements were not above reproach, and the attendant remained deaf to all plaints.
Jack touched Cyrus's arm.
"Turn him out yourself, Cy!" she commanded in her old imperious way.
Cyrus rose obediently at the words, and took the bully by the shoulders. The next minute he staggered before a mighty blow that cut his nose and completely wrecked his headgear and goggles. Jones's reply had been simple but effective.
"That's to begin with," he remarked amiably. "Smash your head next time!"
A chorus of voices broke loose, urging Cyrus on to reprisal. Jack's eyes sparkled with excitement. The pretty stenographer, in her war with the world, had developed somewhat of a militant spirit, and her heart warmed towards her old chum in his character of public champion.
Then, to her dismay, she saw that Cyrus had hurried towards one of the exits, his handkerchief to his face. Hardly able to believe the evidence of her eyesight, she hurried after him.
"Cy, Cy, stand up to him! You're never going to let him give you best? Go back! You're never afraid?"
The man's back was turned to her. She faintly heard his voice, coming in a choking whisper:
"Yes. Mortal afraid!"
She could hardly credit her ears. From such a muscular giant the cowardice was stupendous. She pushed him aside contemptuously.
"You coward! Fight, or I'll never look at you again!"
Stung by the words, Cyrus turned round with sudden resolution.
"Come on!" he shouted, clenching his fists.
The crowd broke into a shout of approbation, and Jack's eyes sparkled once more. Then a man standing near called out something she could not hear. His words were the signal for another outburst.
Jack shivered involuntarily. She thought there was a different note in that tumult. The good-natured uproar had merged into one prolonged yell, through which throbbed the undercurrent of a deep growl. It seemed to the girl there was something sinister and menacing in the sound.
Looking around her, she noticed that some of the audience were rising in their seats. As she stared in wonder at the sight, the clamour broke out in louder swell, booming and threatening.
Instinctively, she recognised the cry—the call of a pack that sights its quarry. It was the dreadful cry of the mob.
She gripped Cyrus's arm.
"What's wrong?" she cried. "Who are they after?"
"Me!"
In incredulous dismay she turned and looked at her companion. In that moment she understood his fear. Free from his disguising headgear she saw him plainly, and at the sight his cowardice became stamped with motive. The face that was revealed was one familiar to her through the medium of many papers and magazine pages—a remarkable countenance, battered and seamed like that of a Caesar on an old coin, yet bearing in every deep-cut line the impress of ruthless power.
"Adam Cave!" she screamed in terror.
The subdued hum of the crowd answered her, like the pinging of a hive of furious bees.
The man turned to her.
"Hide your face, quick, girl! You mustn't see what's coming!"
But Jack remained staring round. In the surging mass of humanity boiling furiously around them she picked out faces she knew. It was incredible to think that if one could tear apart this composite monster—the mob—it would be dissected into such inoffensive mortals as Peel, who sold groceries, and Ditch, who dealt in leather.
Then she flung a look at Cave, standing at bay. He threw her an answering smile.
As his graven features broke up, memory gripped her. She saw again the clownish Cyrus with his elemental, unchecked strength and his undivined possibilities. Before her, in this alien man, was the finished product, but Cyrus, her childish friend and schoolmate, had furnished the raw material.
She seized his hand.
"Come with me! For our lives!" she panted.
"Too late! Let go!"
As he spoke, a vivid red light flickered over his face, giving him the appearance of a lost soul in the pit. Jack threw a startled glance over her shoulder, her knees loosening with fright. Other people turned as well at the sudden glare, and instantly a fresh shout rang through the building. One word only, but the insensate fury on every face was sponged cleanly away.
"Fire!"
A cloud of smoke belched from one of the wings, followed by a fork of spitting flame. At the sight the whole house broke up. Like a flash of lightning, conducting from one person to another, had come the overwhelming, shattering force of panic. Before its current wits and nerves were crumpled up, flattened and tossed aside, like scraps of tissue paper in a maelstrom.
Jack lost her wits with the rest and began to swell the clamour with her frightened cries. An arm closed round her, and she felt herself wedged behind a pillar, while Cyrus's huge form shielded her like a buttress.
"Hold tight! Close as wax. They're coming. Oh, Lord!"
The rush had begun. Like a herd of stampeding cattle, people plunged and struggled, butting their way through the crowd, in their frenzied efforts to escape. A few who tried to call for order were swept aside in the fighting throng. The manager attempted to shout something inaudible from the front, but was driven back by the flames, which were eating their way, with appetite, through the dry wood. The fireproof curtain made a spasmodic effort to descend, but its mechanism, stiff from disuse, failed to respond, and it hung askew in jaunty despair.
Jack hid her face. Already had begun the sickening jam. The theatre was poorly provided with ordinary doors and had nothing in the shape of an emergency exit. The place had been run up with the rest of the township, in the night, and it was clear that the contractor, in his passion for low estimates, had held human life yet cheaper. The whole building was a death-trap.
Cyrus shifted his weight against the encroaching numbers.
"We'd best get out of this," he said. "Now, then, don't loose me, if you want to see your daddy again!"
With desperate eyes he looked around, for to swell the numbers of the packed fighting press below was merely to ask for death—and a very ugly one. Far off, at the top of the gallery, he spied a small window, and towards this he steered his way.
"A thread of a chance," he muttered, "if only she has the nerve."
He looked hopelessly at the girl's white face and glazed eyes.
"Pull yourself together, dear," he urged, as he managed to hoist her through the narrow frame on to the leads outside. Half blinded by the red haze, Jack drew back in a panic; their faces seemed to be turned towards the very core of the fire.
Cave was seized with a sudden inspiration.
"It's only a game, dear," he said, "just a game. The Fog-folk are after us. Look snappy, or they'll have you!"
What followed was the work of Peter Pan. Instantly the stunned girl, waiting for a flaming death, responded to the call of the game. A mist of memory clogged her faculties. Peter Pan fluted on his pipe, and she became a little child.
Dropping instantly to her knees, she crawled along the gutter between two roofs that were warm to her touch; a shower of sparks fell on her hair, and dense clouds of smoke forced her to screw her lids tightly together. But she heeded none of these things in her dazed condition.
"It must be a dream!" she whispered. "I shall soon wake up. Nothing to be afraid of!"
Then she felt herself dragged to her feet. She found she was standing, with Cyrus, flush with a fiery cauldron. It was a peep of Hades. A pall of smoke hung over every side, but directly barring her path was the gulf of spraying sparks, beating up from a flaring sea.
Cave pressed her forward towards the red haze.
"Come on, Jack! Jump!"
For one moment the girl hesitated.
"Come on, Jack. It's the best part! We open the window, and fly. Fly!"
The spell of Peter Pan was deeply laid. Without another quiver of fear, Jack leaped into the void, with the floating sensation of dream adventure. One giddy leap through the hot air, and she felt herself gripped violently and her fall broken, as she came heavily to earth, on a heap of rubbish and dead leaves.
"Dangerous here! Hurry on!" shouted Cy.
Up the slope of the roof he dragged her, and over the bristling parapet. Below lay a black gulf, but the man pressed on.
"Don't be afraid, Jack. You can't fall in a dream!"
Of course not. The girl laughed in answering excitement. In the friendly darkness, and strung up to concert-pitch, she advanced with perfect ease, where in daylight and cold blood she would never have stirred one foot. They slid down the steep slope—down, down—to unknown depths. The girl felt her feet shoot into vacancy, just before Cyrus jerked them back again into the narrow ledge of the gutter.
Another long, blind crawl, the sloping roof on one side, and on the other, the Never-Never Land. Then up again, like enchanted cats, swarming along the slates, to glissade down on the other side, in an entrancing slide.
Jack's world, that expressed its thoughts in the sprawling angles of shorthand and rattled out its sentences in the clattering voices of typewriters—that began every Black Monday and ended every payday—that world rolled completely away. She lived in dreamland, high up on the housetops, while an alien sky pulsed and throbbed in reddening patches overhead.
In the very height of the mad adventure Cyrus stopped short and pulled Jack gently down under the shelter of a clump of chimneys.
"Safe!" he panted. "There's a fire-escape at that corner, but you'd best rest before you try it. My, you're a sport!"
Jack gave a violent start. With the sudden jump that a sleeper experiences before dropping off to slumber she came back from the Land of Nod. At last she was awake.
She shivered, as a crowd of facts marshalled themselves before her. She—Jacqueline Eves—had been in a fire, faced a lynching mob, braved unknown perils, and was now perched sky-high, in a chimney-nest, in the unspeakable company of the Polegate bogey-man—Adam Cave. Yes, it was she—Jacqueline Eves, stenographer—with her weekly wage to her name and the fear of the Lord inside her.
Pinching did no good. She drew away her hand with a cry.
"Hallo! What's up, Jack?"
"Don't call me Jack, you—you horror!"
"Bless my soul! You were glad enough to see old Cy a bit back."
"You aren't Cy. You're Adam Cave. Oh!"
"Yes, I'm Adam Cave now!" The man laughed in triumph. "Think of it. Me—the booby, the clown, with every soul's hand against him! But it was always there, like a big lump swelling up like yeast, inside me. When they chivvied me and clouted me, I knew. Couldn't do book-learning, wasn't handy about the place. But they couldn't keep me under. I had to rise!"
The great, battered face was radiant with pride. The fronts of the jerry-built houses opposite, dyed scarlet by the glow, threw back their reflected light on to his rigid mask of power.
"So I hooked it. Made my first bit of a gamble—a mere fleabite, but it gave me something to play with. After that it all came my way. Couldn't lose. Seemed to smell money in every deal. And all the time I never looked at a woman, Jack. I just sweated on to make my pile, and reckoned at the end I'd look up that little kid with the yellow curls and pink pinny, that would have grown up a big girl. Jack, I've got the money. It's all for you."
Adam Cave, millionaire, who thought in thousands, and who had made a town as a child builds a card-castle, leaned eagerly towards the girl, a slip of a nobody, who typed in an office. A fitting sequence to the piled-up events of a mad night!
Yet it fell to Jack to cap the situation.
With a shrug of her shoulders, she dismissed the gorgeous prospect.
"Marry you! You! I wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with you!"
Cave reeled under the unexpected blow.
"But—you—you can't really mean it! Say, Jack, you aren't giving me the cold shoulder? Haven't you tumbled to it? I'm Cy and I'm Cave. I'm rich. I've money, and money's everything. It talks, and there's no back-answering it."
But the narrowed imagination of the little stenographer was slow to grasp the possibilities of his wealth.
"Depends on how the money's made," she answered. "My people have always been respected. What they made has been made honestly. D'you think I'd touch money made like yours, with a long pole? D'you think I want a husband who goes out whole and's brought back in pieces?"
Cave quailed before the words. He knew the girl would never forget the episode of the mob, and that she could only remember that the millionaire had been—so nearly—something less than a man.
Powerless to say a word in his defence he chafed under the verdict. Dumbly he felt its injustice. It wasn't fair. He knew it. What chance had he? Nobody's brat, kicked into the gutter for cradle, brought up by hand and on the tip of a boot—what wonder if, in the rough-and-tumble of existence, he developed a dorsal fin instead of a heart? Done harm? Of course. So had others to him. Trodden on them? He had taken his trampling first, and hadn't whined. It was all a question of who was top-dog.
He looked drearily at the houses opposite. The glow was dying down, and grey shadows licked their faces like the spasms drawn by torture.
"You're very hard on me, Jack," he said at last. "But it wasn't my fault. There was something inside me. I had to rise. Good? Bad? Wasn't either. Strong—just strong. Folks stood in the way. A stream in flood sweeps all flat. But you don't call it names."
In imagination, the brown, roaring rush of a swollen river, mud-stained, foam-flecked, debris-laden, boiling on in relentless fury, passed before his eyes. Then he turned to the girl, a sudden flicker of hope in his face.
"Jack," he said coaxingly, "tell me what you'd like best in all the world."
Jack yielded to the persuasive tone. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed in front of her.
"I reckon, one day, I'd like a little house in the country, with flowers all around, and chickens, carpets in every room, a piano in the parlour, and—oh, dear heart, think of it!—my very own kitchen!"
The little office-girl's cheeks glowed as the glorious vision of pots and pans was vouchsafed to her.
Cave gulped.
"Room in it for two, Jack? Room for—old Cy?"
"For Cy? Why, yes!"
The man gave a wild shout.
"For Cy! Good old Cy! Then it's Cave you hate? Well, there'll have to be an end of him. Stay here!"
It was some minutes before Jack, lost in her domestic dream, realised that she was alone. She rose to her feet and stared at the flickering town. In the distance she saw a head silhouetted blackly against the lurid sky. As she looked it dropped behind a roof.
A sudden fear gripped her. What had he said? An end of Cave?
With unsteady feet she lurched down the gutter, retracing the perilous path. But the spell of the dream had vanished, and in its place she felt the awful clutch of vertigo. Instinct urged her to look upwards, while her muscles, hardened by gymnasium work, responded to her will. With sore knees and broken finger-nails she scrambled down the last roof. The glare grew suddenly vivid. Then, with a sob of relief, she saw before her the stooping form of Cave.
He greeted her with a shout of horror.
"How did you get here?"
"I had to come! Oh, Cy, Cy, don't!"
Cave pressed her fingers.
"There, there! I'm not going out that way. There's going to be an end of Cave, that's all. See this?"
He showed her the bundle in his band.
"My watch, cigar-case, metal-bound pocket-book. Enough for identification marks. Folks will think I got trapped and made into toasted cheese. The Trust'll go to pieces when it's known Cave's kicked the bucket. The State will fight over the money."
Then he patted his pocket.
"Enough here for a fresh start. You and me, and the country cottage—kitchen and all. Let's bury poor old man Cave, and then we'll skedaddle down the chute over there. Street's black as currants with folks, too busy with the fire to notice us. Now, then, Jack. Stand clear!"
The girl pressed forward. The fire had nearly burned itself out. The air was interlaced with the jets of water from the hose, and the clouds of smoke, no longer feathered with tips of fire, were clogged with damp.
Into the heart of the glowing shell Cave heaved his bundle. The two stood in silence, and then the man spoke.
"Seems a pity," he said, in broken tones. "He was a big man. Took a long time to make him, and now he's all gone to waste."
Then, as his sombre eyes fell on the girl, his voice was tinged with the first hint of future hope.
"What's it the sky-pilots say, Jack? 'After death the resurrection.' That's it. I'm strong. I'll rise again. But it shall be honest, this time. Not because folks are weak, but because I'm strong. You shall die a rich man's wife, after all. I'll come to the top again."
The tears came smarting to Jack's eyes. She also knew that she was the witness of the funeral of a man—a bad man, but a big. Mechanically, the words passed through her brain: "Of your charity, pray for the soul of Adam Cave!"
The man turned away from the ruin.
"He's gone by now," he said. "Nothing left."
He shivered forlornly—an unborn soul, waiting for the Stork.
"Seems lonesome," he said pitifully. "Who am I now?"
"You're Cy. My Cy!"
Then the light broke out on the man's face. He had fallen "out of the Everywhere" straight into a woman's heart.
Life had come again.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.