let it be noted that the glasses in question held no great quantity of the hot liquor. indeed, they were what used to be called rummers; round, and of a bloated aspect, but of comparatively small capacity. therefore, nothing injurious to the clearness of those old heads is to be inferred, when it is said that between the third and fourth filling, the talk drew away from central london and the lost, beloved strand and began to go farther afield, into stranger, less-known territories. perrott began it, by tracing a curious passage he had once made northward, dodging by the globe and the olympic theatres into the dark labyrinth of clare market, under arches and by alleys, till he came into great queen street, near the freemason’s tavern and inigo jones’s red pilasters. another took up the tale, and drifting into holborn by whetstone’s park, and going astray a little to visit kingsgate street—“just like phiz’s plate: mean, low, deplorable; but i wish they hadn’t pulled it down”—finally reached theobald’s road. there, they delayed a little, to consider curiously decorated leaden water-cisterns that were once to be seen in the areas of a few of the older houses, and also to speculate on the legend that an ancient galleried inn, now used as a warehouse, had survived till quite lately at the back of tibbles road—for so they called it. and thence, northward and eastward, up the gray’s inn road, crossing the king’s cross road, and going up the hill.
“and here,” said arnold, “we begin to touch on the conjectured. we have left the known world behind us.”
indeed, it was he who now had the party in charge.
“do you know,” said perrott, “that sounds awful rot, but it’s true; at least so far as i am concerned. i don’t think i ever went beyond holborn town hall, as it used to be-i mean walking. of course, i’ve driven in a hansom to king’s cross railway station, and i went once or twice to the military tournament, when it was at the agricultural hall, in islington; but i don’t remember how i got there.”
harliss said he had been brought up in north london, but much farther north—stoke newington way.
“i once knew a man,” said perrott, “who knew all about stoke newington; at least he ought to have known about it. he was a poe enthusiast, and he wanted to find out whether the school where poe boarded when he was a little boy was still standing. he went again and again; and the odd thing is that, in spite of his interest in the matter, he didn’t seem to know whether the school was still there, or whether he had seen it. he spoke of certain survivals of the stoke newington that poe indicates in a phrase or two in ‘william wilson’: the dreamy village, the misty trees, the old rambling red-brick houses, standing in their gardens, with high walls all about them. but though he declared that he had gone so far as to interview the vicar, and could describe the old church with the dormer windows, he could never make up his mind whether he had seen poe’s school.”
“i never heard of it when i lived there,” said harliss. “but i came of business stock. we didn’t gossip much about authors. i have a vague sort of notion that i once heard somebody speak of poe as a notorious drunkard—and that’s about all i ever heard of him till a good deal later.”
“it is queer, but it’s true,” arnold broke in, “that there’s a general tendency to seize on the accidental, and ignore the essential. you may be vague enough about the treble works, the vast designs of the laboured rampart lines; but at least you knew that the duke of wellington had a very big nose. i remember it on the tins of knife polish.”
“but that fellow i was speaking of,” said perrott, going back to his topic, “i couldn’t make him out. i put it to him; ‘surely you know one way or the other: this old school is still standing—or was still standing—or not: you either saw it or you didn’t: there can’t be any doubt about the matter.’ but we couldn’t get to negative or positive. he confessed that it was strange; ‘but upon my word i don’t know. i went once, i think, about 95, and then, again, in 99—that was the time i called on the vicar; and i have never been since.’ he talked like a man who had gone into a mist, and could not speak with any certainty of the shapes he had seen in it.
“and that reminds me. long after my talk with hare—that was the man who was interested in poe—a distant cousin of mine from the country came up to town to see about the affairs of an old aunt of his who had lived all her life somewhere stoke newington way, and had just died. he came in here one evening to look me up—we had not met for many years—and he was saying, truly enough, i am sure, how little the average londoner knew of london, when you once took him off his beaten track. for example,’ he said to me, ‘have you ever been in stoke newington?’ i confessed that i hadn’t, that i had never had any reason to go there. ‘exactly; and i don’t suppose you’ve ever even heard of canon’s park?’ i confessed ignorance again. he said it was an extraordinary thing that such a beautiful place as this, within four or five miles of the centre of london, seemed absolutely unknown and unheard of by nine londoners out of ten.”
“i know every inch of that neighbourhood,” broke in harliss. “i was born there and lived there till i was sixteen. there’s no such place anywhere near stoke newington.”
“but, look here, harliss,” said arnold. “i don’t know that you’re really an authority.”
“not an authority on a place i knew backwards for sixteen years? besides, i represented crosbies in that district later, soon after i went into business.”
“yes, of course. but—i suppose you know the haymarket pretty well, don’t you?”
“of course i do; both for business and pleasure. everybody knows the haymarket.”
“very good. then tell me the way to st. james’s market.”
“there’s no such market.”
“we have him,” said arnold, with bland triumph. “literally, he is correct: i believe it’s all pulled down now. but it was standing during the war: a small open space with old, low buildings in it, a stone’s throw from the back of the tube station. you turned to the right, as you walked down the haymarket.”
“quite right,” confirmed perrott. “i went there, only once, on the business of an odd magazine that was published in one of those low buildings. but i was talking of canon’s park, stoke newington—”
“i beg your pardon,” said harliss. “i remember now. there is a part in stoke newington or near it called canon’s park. but it isn’t a park at all; nothing like a park. that’s only a builder’s name. it’s just a lot of streets. i think there’s a canon’s square, and a park crescent, and an esplanade: there are some decent shops there. but it’s all quite ordinary; there’s nothing beautiful about it.”
“but my cousin said it was an amazing place. not a bit like the ordinary london parks or anything of the kind he’d seen abroad. you go in through a gateway, and he said it was like finding yourself in another country. such trees, that must have been brought from the end of the world: there were none like them in england, though one or two reminded him of trees in kew gardens; deep hollows with streams running from the rocks; lawns all purple and gold with flowers, and golden lilies too, towering up into the trees, and mixing with the crimson of the flowers that hung from the boughs. and here and there, there were little summer-houses and temples, shining white in the sun, like a view in china, as he put it.”
harliss did not fail with his response, “i tell you there’s no such place.”
and he added:
“and, anyhow, it all sounds a bit too flowery. but perhaps your cousin was that sort of man: ready to be enthusiastic over a patch of dandelions in a back-garden. a friend of mine once sent me a wire to ‘come at once: most important: meet me st. john’s wood station.’ of course i went, thinking it must be really important; ‘and what he wanted was to show me the garden of a house to let in grove end road, which was a blaze of dandelions.”
“and a very beautiful sight,” said arnold, with fervour.
“it was a fine sight; but hardly a thing to wire a man about. and i should think that’s the secret of all this stuff your cousin told you, perrott. there used to be one or two big well-kept gardens at stoke newington; and i suppose he strolled into one of them by mistake, and then got rather wildly enthusiastic about what he saw.”
“it’s possible, of course,” said perrott, “but in a general way he wasn’t that sort of man. he had an experimental farm, not far from wells, and bred new kinds of wheat, and improved grasses. i have heard him called stodgy, though i always found him pleasant enough when we met.”
“well, i tell you there’s no such place in stoke newington or anywhere near it. i ought to know.”
“how about st. james’s market?” asked arnold.
then, they “left it at that.” indeed, they had felt for some time that they had gone too far away from their known world, and from the friendly tavern fires of the strand, into the wild no man’s land of the north. to harliss, of course, those regions had once been familiar, common, and uninteresting: he could not revisit them in talk with any glow of feeling. the other two held them unfriendly and remote; as if one were to discourse of arctic explorations, and lands of everlasting darkness.
they all returned with relief to their familiar hunting-grounds, and saw the play in theatres that had been pulled down for thirty-five years or more, and had steaks and strong ale afterwards, in the box by the fire, by the fire that had been finally raked out soon after the new law courts were opened.
