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                          THE CALL OF THE TOWN




                          The Call of the Town

                        A Tale of Literary Life


                                   By
                            J. A. HAMMERTON

                                 AUTHOR OF
         "J. M. BARRIE AND HIS BOOKS," "LORD ROSEBERY," "TONY'S
                          HIGHLAND TOUR," Etc.


                                 LONDON
                          R. A. EVERETT & CO.
                     42 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
                                  1904




                                CONTENTS


    CHAP.                                               PAGE
      I. "THE PROUD PARENT"                                9
     II. HENRY LEAVES HOME                                22
    III. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL                           36
     IV. MR. TREVOR SMITH, IF YOU PLEASE                  53
      V. IN WHICH HENRY DECIDES                           61
     VI. WHICH INTRODUCES AN EDITOR                       70
    VII. AMONG NEW FRIENDS                                80
   VIII. THE YOUNG JOURNALIST                             91
     IX. WHAT THE NECKTIE TOLD                           100
      X. VIOLET EYES                                     111
     XI. ONE'S FOLLY, ANOTHER'S OPPORTUNITY              122
    XII. "A JOLLY, DASHING SORT OF GIRL"                 136
   XIII. THE PHILANDERERS                                147
    XIV. FATE AND A FIDDLER                              157
     XV. "THE MYSTERIOUS MR. P."                         164
    XVI. DRIFTING                                        177
   XVII. THE WAY OF A WOMAN                              192
  XVIII. IN LONDON TOWN                                  202
    XIX. THE PEN AND THE PENCIL CLUB                     214
     XX. THREE LETTERS, AND SOME OTHERS                  228
    XXI. "THAT BOOK"                                     238
   XXII. HOME AGAIN                                      244
  XXIII. A TRAGIC ENDING                                 254
   XXIV. ONE SUNDAY, AND AFTER                           259




                          THE CALL OF THE TOWN




                               CHAPTER I

                           "THE PROUD PARENT"


IF you happen to be riding a bicycle you arrive somewhat unexpectedly in
the little Ardenshire village of Hampton Bagot, and are through it in a
flash, before you quite realise its existence. But in the unlikely event
of your having business or pleasure there, you approach the place more
leisurely in the carrier's cart from the little station which absurdly
bears the name of the village, though two miles distant.

The ancient Parish Church, with its curious old chained library and bits
of Saxon masonry, "perfectly unique," as Mr. Godfrey Needham, the vicar,
used to say, and the one wide street of quaint old houses, with their
half-timbered fronts, remain to this day much as they were, no doubt,
when good Queen Bess ruled England. But the thirsty cyclist, whose
throat may happen to be parched at this particular stage of his journey,
is a poor substitute for the old-time stage-coach which made Hampton
Bagot a place of change. Somehow, the village continues to exist, though
its few hundred people scrape their livings in ways that are not obvious
to the casual visitor. The surrounding district is richly pastoral,
plentifully sprinkled with cosy farm-houses, and here, perhaps, we have
the reason why Hampton continues under the sun.

If you wandered along the few hundred yards of street, and noted the
various substitutes for shops, in which oranges and sweets and babies'
clothing mingle familiarly with hams and shoe-laces, you would be struck
by the more pretentious exterior of one which bears in crudely-painted
letters the legend, EDWARD JOHN CHARLES, and underneath, in smaller
characters, the words POST OFFICE. The building, a two-storied one, with
the familiar blackened timbers supporting high-pitched gables, and a
bay-window of lozenged glass, was, at the time of which I write, the
place of next importance in the village to the "Wings and Spur." Behind
this window, and by peering closely, one could see dusty packets of
writing-paper and fly-blown envelopes, a few cheap books, clay and briar
pipes, tobacco, and some withered-looking cigars. Below the window,
after diligent search, a slit for the admission of letters might be
found.

But while the place itself would easily have been passed over, not so
the figure at the door; for there, most days of the week and most hours
of the day, stood the portly form of Edward John Charles himself.

It was as though the legend overhead referred to the man beneath, and
the smile usually on his face spoke of contentment with himself and the
world at large. His face was ruddy and clean-shaven, as he chose to coax
his whisker underneath his chin, where it sprouted so amply that the
need to wear a collar or a tie did not exist; certainly, was not
recognised.

Somewhat under medium height, and of more than medium girth, Edward John
Charles was by no means an unpleasant figure to the eye, and if the
commonplace caste of face and prominent ears did not suggest any marked
intellectual gifts, the net result of a casual survey was "a
good-natured sort." He had a habit of concealing his hands mysteriously
underneath his coat-tails as he stood at the door beneath the staring
sign, and his coat had absorbed something of its owner's nature, for by
the perch of the tails one could guess his mood. They were flapped
nervously when the wearer was displeased; they opened into a wide and
settled =V= inverted when he was in the full flavour of his
satisfaction; and happily that was their most common condition. Indeed,
the coat-tails of Edward John Charles were as eloquent as the stumpy
appendage of the Irish terrier usually to be seen at the door with him.

Edward John stood in his familiar place this morning, and surveyed
placidly the one and only street of Hampton Bagot.

The street does not belong to Hampton at all, but is only so many yards
of a great highway to London. If you asked a Hampton man where it led
to, he would say to Stratford, as that is the end of his world. That he
is spending his life on a main-travelled road that goes on and on until
it is lost in the multitudinous streets of modern Babylon has never
occurred to him. Stratford is his _ultima thule_, the objective of his
longest travels.

But Edward John was no ordinary man, despite his common exterior, and it
was in the list of his distinctions that he had in his early manhood
spent two days in London. To him, the road on which he looked out for so
many hours each day was one of the tentacles thrown out by the mighty
City to drag the sons of Nature into its gluttonous maw.

"It ain't got me, 'owever," he reflected, as he contentedly wagged his
tails; "but as for 'Enry, why, 'oo knows?"

And really, what London would have done with Edward John we cannot
guess, nor have we at present any idea of what it will do with 'Enry.

At this particular moment you would scarcely have credited the
postmaster-bookseller-tobacconist with such philosophic reflections; for
he seemed to be chiefly interested in watching with a critical eye a
dawdling creature by the name of Miffin, the inefficient tailor across
the way.

Edward John pursed his lips and flapped his coat-tails in stern
disapproval of that sluggard's method of removing the single shutter
which covered his window as a protection from the sun's rays, rather
than a barrier to thieves, the latter being unknown in Hampton. Miffin
made the mere act of withdrawing a bolt a function of five or ten
minutes' duration, exchanging courtesies with every possible creature in
the neighbourhood, from schoolboys to cats, while engaged in the
operation. He would even call across to Edward John on the state of the
day, and secretly wonder when the postmaster ever did a stroke of work,
while in the mind of the latter certain wise maxims about ants and
sluggards from the Book of Proverbs were suggesting themselves as
peculiarly applicable to Mr. Miffin.

Presently, as Edward John turned his glance along the village street
towards the Parish Church, which sat on a leafy knoll to the west, with
a reproving eye on all Hampton, he saw the Rev. Godfrey Needham
hastening eastward at a brisk pace.

The sight was no unusual one. Mr. Needham never moved unless in a whirl,
the looseness of his clerical garb helping him to create quite a little
gust of energy as he hurried by with his good-hearted greetings to his
admiring parishioners. Such haste in a man of sixty was unaccountable,
especially when one was fully alive to his appearance. He looked as if
he had suddenly awakened after going to sleep a century before, and was
in a hurry to make up lost time. Thin-faced, with prominent nose, and
eyes red at the rims, blinking behind spectacles; he wore a rusty
clerical hat and clothes of ancient cut and material, his trousers
terminating a good three inches above his low shoes and disclosing
socks, formerly white. The fact that his legs remotely suggested a pair
of calipers added to the quaintness of the figure he presented while in
full stride down the village street.

The moment Mr. Needham swung into view, the coat-tails of the postmaster
were violently agitated, and his face broadened into a smile as he
turned quickly into the doorway and called:

"'Enry, 'ere quick. 'Ere's the passon!"

Back in the shade and coolness of the shop the person thus addressed had
been eagerly engaged in dipping into several volumes just brought that
morning by the carrier from Birmingham, for it was Mr. Edward John
Charles's great privilege to be the medium of obtaining books for
several of the county gentry in the neighbourhood of Hampton, and these
were always feverishly fingered by his son Henry before being despatched
to their purchasers.

This same Henry was esteemed by his fond parent a perfect marvel of
learning, and nothing delighted more the postmaster than to present him
on all available occasions for the vicar's admiration.

In response to the summons, Henry issued into the sunlight of the open
door, and craning his neck beyond the projecting window, beheld the
advancing figure of the vicar. But the vicar, rusty and time-soiled
though he seemed,