For Gods sake, gentlemen, he said in the raucous tone of weather-beaten poverty, the tone of chronic sore-throat exacerbated by perpetual gin, for Gods sake, gentlemen, have pity on a poor fern-collector!turning up his stale daisies. Food hasnt passed my lips, gentlemen, for the last three days. We gaped at him and at each other, and to our imagination his appeal had almost the force of a command. I wonder if half-a-crown would help? I privately wailed. And our fasting botanist went limping away through the park with the grace of controlled stupefaction still further enriching his outline.
I feel as if I had seen my Doppelganger, said Searle. He reminds me of myself. What am I but a mere figure in the landscape, a wandering minstrel or picker of daisies?
What are you anyway, my friend? I thereupon took occasion to ask. Who are you? kindly tell me.
The colour rose again to his pale face and I feared I had offended him. He poked a moment at the sod with the point of his umbrella before answering. Who am I? he said at last. My name is Clement Searle. I was born in New York, and thats the beginning and the end of me.
Ah not the end! I made bold to plead.
Then its because I HAVE no endany more than an ill-written book. I just stop anywhere; which means Im a failure, the poor man all lucidly and unreservedly pursued: a failure, as hopeless and helpless, sir, as any that ever swallowed up the slender investments of the widow and the orphan. I dont pay five cents on the dollar. What I might have beenonce!theres nothing left to show. I was rotten before I was ripe. To begin with, certainly, I wasnt a fountain of wisdom. All the more reason for a definite channelfor having a little character and purpose. But I hadnt even a little. I had nothing but nice tastes, as they call them, and fine sympathies and sentiments. Take a turn through New York to-day and youll find the tattered remnants of these things dangling on every bush and fluttering in every breeze; the men to whom I lent money, the women to whom I made love, the friends I trusted, the follies I invented, the poisonous fumes of pleasure amid which nothing was worth a thought but the manhood they stifled! It was my fault that I believed in pleasure here below. I believe in it still, but as I believe in the immortality of the soul. The soul is immortal, certainlyif youve got one; but most people havent. Pleasure would be right if it were pleasure straight through; but it never is. My taste was to be the best in the world; well, perhaps it was. I had a little money; it went the way of my little wit. Here in my pocket I have the scant dregs of it. I should tell you I was the biggest kind of ass. Just now that description would flatter me; it would assume theres something left of me. But the ghost of a donkeywhats that? I think, he went on with a charming turn and as if striking off his real explanation, I should have been all right in a world arranged on different lines. Before heaven, sirwhoever you areIm in practice so absurdly tender-hearted that I can afford to say it: I entered upon life a perfect gentleman. I had the love of old forms and pleasant rites, and I found them nowherefound a world all hard lines and harsh lights, without shade, without composition, as they say of pictures, without the lovely mystery of colour. To furnish colour I melted down the very substance of my own soul. I went about with my brush, touching up and toning down; a very pretty chiaroscuro youll find in my track! Sitting here in this old park, in this old country, I feel that I hover on the misty verge of what might have been! I should have been born here and not there; here my makeshift distinctions would have found things theyd have been true of. How it was I never got free is more than I can say. It might have cut the knot, but the knot was too tight. I was always out of health or in debt or somehow desperately dangling. Besides, I had a horror of the great black sickening sea. A year ago I was reminded of the existence of an old claim to an English estate, which has danced before the eyes of my family, at odd moments, any time these eighty years. I confess its a bit of a muddle and a tangle, and am by no means sure that to this hour Ive got the hang of it. You look as if you had a clear head: some other time, if you consent, well have a go at it, such as it is, together. Poverty was staring me in the face; I sat down and tried to commit the points of our case to memory, as I used to get nine-times-nine by heart as a boy. I dreamed of it for six months, half-expecting to wake up some fine morning and hear through a latticed casement the cawing of an English rookery. A couple of months ago there came out to England on business of his own a man who once got me out of a dreadful mess (not that I had hurt anyone but myself), a legal practitioner in our courts, a very rough diamond, but with a great deal of FLAIR, as they say in New York. It was with him yesterday you saw me dining. He undertook, as he called it, to nose round and see if anything could be made of our questionable but possible show. The matter had never seriously been taken up. A month later I got a letter from Simmons assuring me that it seemed a very good show indeed and that he should be greatly surprised if I were unable to do something. This was the greatest push I had ever got in my life; I took a deliberate step, for the first time; I sailed for England. Ive been here three days: theyve seemed three months. After keeping me waiting for thirty-six hours my legal adviser makes his appearance last night and states to me, with his mouth full of mutton, that I havent a leg to stand on, that my claim is moonshine, and that I must do penance and take a ticket for six more days of purgatory with his presence thrown in. My friend, my friendshall I say I was disappointed? Im already resigned. I didnt really believe I had any case. I felt in my deeper consciousness that it was the crowning illusion of a life of illusions. Well, it was a pretty one. Poor legal adviser!I forgive him with all my heart. But for him I shouldnt be sitting in this place, in this air, under these impressions. This is a world I could have got on with beautifully. Theres an immense charm in its having been kept for the last. After it nothing else would have been tolerable. I shall now have a month of it, I hope, which wont be long enough for it to go back on me. Theres one thing!and here, pausing, he laid his hand on mine; I rose and stood before himI wish it were possible you should be with me to the end.