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 TypeScript: Modern
JavaScript Development

Leverage the features of TypeScript to boost

your development skills and create captivating
web applications

A course in three modules

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
TypeScript: Modern JavaScript Development
Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this course may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this course to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this course
is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this course.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this course by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Published on: December 2016

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78728-908-6
www.packtpub.com
 Credits

Authors Content Development Editor

Remo H. Jansen Rohit Kumar Singh
Vilic Vane
Ivo Gabe de Wolff Graphics
Jason Monteiro

Reviewers
Liviu Ignat Production Coordinator
Shraddha Falebhai
Jakub Jedryszek
Andrew Leith Macrae
Brandon Mills
Ivo Gabe de Wolff
Wander Wang
Matthew Hill
 Preface
It wasn’t a long time ago that many JavaScript engineers or, most of the time, web
frontend engineers, were still focusing on solving detailed technical issues, such
as how to lay out specific content cross-browsers and how to send requests cross-
domains.

At that time, a good web frontend engineer was usually expected to have notable
experience on how detailed features can be implemented with existing APIs. Only
a few people cared about how to write application-scale JavaScript because the
interaction on a web page was really simple and no one wrote ASP in JavaScript.

However, the situation has changed tremendously. JavaScript has become the
only language that runs everywhere, cross-platform and cross-device. In the main
battlefield, interactions on the Web become more and more complex, and people are
moving business logic from the backend to the frontend. With the growth of the Node.
js community, JavaScript is playing a more and more important roles in our life.

TypeScript is indeed an awesome tool for JavaScript. Unfortunately, intelligence is

still required to write actually robust, maintainable, and reusable code. TypeScript
allows developers to write readable and maintainable web applications. Editors can
provide several tools to the developer, based on types and static analysis of the code.

What this learning path covers

Module 1, Learning TypeScript, introduces many of the TypeScript features in a simple
and easy-to-understand format. This book will teach you everything you need to
know in order to implement large-scale JavaScript applications using TypeScript.
Not only does it teach TypeScript’s core features, which are essential to implement a
web application, but it also explores the power of some tools, design principles, best
practices, and it also demonstrates how to apply them in a real-life application.

[i]
Preface

Module 2, TypeScript Design Patterns, is collection of the most important patterns you
need to improve your applications’ performance and your productivity. Each pattern
is accompanied with rich examples that demonstrate the power of patterns for a
range of tasks, from building an application to code testing.

Module 3, TypeScript Blueprints, shows you how to use TypeScript to build clean web
applications. You will learn how to use Angular 2 and React. You will also learn how
you can use TypeScript for servers, mobile apps, command-line tools, and games.
You will also learn functional programming. This style of programming will improve
your general code skills. You will see how this style can be used in TypeScript.

What you need for this learning path

You will need the TypeScript compiler and a text editor. This learning path explains
how to use Atom, but it is also possible to use other editors, such as Visual Studio
2015, Visual Studio Code, or Sublime Text.

You also need an Internet connection to download the required references and
online packages and libraries, such as jQuery, Mocha, and Gulp. Depending on
your operating system, you will need a user account with administrative privileges
in order to install some of the tools used in this learning path. Also to compile
TypeScript, you need NodeJS. You can find details on how you can install it in the
first chapter of the third module.

Who this learning path is for

This learning path is for the intermediate-level JavaScript developers aiming to learn
TypeScript to build beautiful web applications and fun projects. No prior knowledge
of TypeScript is required but a basic understanding of jQuery is expected. This
learning path is also for experienced TypeScript developer wanting to take their
skills to the next level, and also for web developers who wish to make the most of
TypeScript.

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail feedback@packtpub.com, and mention

the course’s title in the subject of your message.

[ ii ]
 Preface

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[ iii ]
Preface

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[ iv ]
Module 1: Learning TypeScript

Chapter 1: Introducing TypeScript 1

The TypeScript architecture 2
TypeScript language features 4
Putting everything together 26
Summary 27
Chapter 2: Automating Your Development Workflow 29
A modern development workflow 29
Prerequisites 30
Source control tools 33
Package management tools 38
Task runners 43
Test runners 53
Synchronized cross-device testing 55
Continuous Integration tools 58
Scaffolding tools 59
Summary 61
Chapter 3: Working with Functions 63
Working with functions in TypeScript 64
Asynchronous programming in TypeScript 83
Summary 98
Chapter 4: Object-Oriented Programming with TypeScript 99
SOLID principles 100
Classes 101
Interfaces 104
Association, aggregation, and composition 105
Inheritance 107
Generic classes 115
i
Table of Contents
Generic constraints 118
Applying the SOLID principles 123
Namespaces 127
Modules 129
Circular dependencies 136
Summary 138
Chapter 5: Runtime 139
The environment 140
The runtime 141
The this operator 144
Prototypes 148
Closures 158
Summary 164
Chapter 6: Application Performance 165
Prerequisites 166
Performance and resources 166
Performance metrics 167
Performance analysis 169
Performance automation 186
Exception handling 189
Summary 191
Chapter 7: Application Testing 193
Software testing glossary 194
Prerequisites 196
Testing planning and methodologies 200
Setting up a test infrastructure 203
Creating test assertions, specs, and suites with Mocha and Chai 213
Test spies and stubs with Sinon.JS 220
Creating end-to-end tests with Nightwatch.js 227
Generating test coverage reports 228
Summary 230
Chapter 8: Decorators 231
Prerequisites 231
Annotations and decorators 232
Summary 249
Chapter 9: Application Architecture 251
The single-page application architecture 252
The MV* architecture 258
Common components and features in the MV* frameworks 259

ii
 Table of Contents
Choosing an application framework 273
Writing an MVC framework from scratch 274
Summary 299
Chapter 10: Putting Everything Together 301
Prerequisites 302
The application's requirements 302
The application's data 303
The application's architecture 304
The application's file structure 305
Configuring the automated build 307
The application's layout 310
Implementing the root component 310
Implementing the market controller 312
Implementing the NASDAQ model 314
Implementing the NYSE model 316
Implementing the market view 316
Implementing the market template 319
Implementing the symbol controller 320
Implementing the symbol view 323
Implementing the chart model 325
Implementing the chart view 327
Testing the application 330
Preparing the application for a production release 330
Summary 332

iii
 Module 1

Learning TypeScript

Exploit the features of TypeScript to develop and maintain captivating web

applications with ease
Other documents randomly have
different content
 Our Rector
We had two, if not three, celebrities in our village. The Rector is
dead; the Clerk is dead; the Professor still lives. But, independently
of this claim to our respect, let us give precedence to the Church.
Less than fifty years ago the services in a parish not ten miles from
one of our well-known watering places were done—or left undone—
by surely the queerest cleric of his time.
A grand old man he was in person—tall, and venerable as Bede
himself, with the most benevolent of faces and the most silver of
silver hair. Fit to be an archbishop, so far as appearances went, but
most unfit to have the charge of the hundred souls—there were no
more of them—committed to his trust.
To these he ministered, or (as I have said) failed to minister, on
Sunday mornings; for often as not the services, stipulated for at the
price of £75 per annum, were left unperformed on the shallowest of
pretexts. It might be the weather; it might be that he was
indisposed; often, I fear, it was from sheer disinclination.
To the hamlet that clustered close round the church it was a matter
of comparative indifference. They never believed by anticipation in
the service till the bell was actually sounding; and his henchman
(clerk, sexton, choirmaster and gravedigger in one) had strict orders
to withhold this summons till the Rector himself was actually in
view. But to our party, who lived two miles away, the question of
service or no service was a serious one. It meant hesitation in
starting, and reluctance to risk the chance—provocation, too, even
to my long-suffering father, when he found the church door barred,
and a south-wester brewing, in the teeth of which we had to
struggle home over a barren down, unsupported by the nutriment,
mental and moral, on which we had calculated. But the service,
when it did take place, was a queerer experience by far than the
service foregone. The orchestra would have been the despair of
Nebuchadnezzar. It consisted of a single flageolet, blown by the
wheezy old sexton—one Joseph Edwards by name. We did not even
boast of a serpent—instrument immortalised by Mr. Hardy for its
volume of tone in supplementing deficiencies. Now the flageolet is a
pet aversion of mine, and I can forgive Nebuchadnezzar many of his
iniquities for having (so far as we know) excluded it from his band.
Indeed, musicians themselves would seem to be ashamed of it, for
they have re-christened it, I am told, by a humbler name. But I was
careful not to betray my feelings to my friend Joseph, and listened
patiently while he enlarged on the capabilities and melodiousness of
his pet instrument. “Not but what I’m getting a bit wheezy (he’d
often say to me), and can’t make the flourishes as onst I could. But
’tis may be better as it is. They quieter tunes are belike more godly.
Anyhow the choir—poor souls—got right puzzled among my turns
and quavers, coming in here, there and no how at the finish.”
But, praise it as he might, the flageolet is the worst instrument
possible to constitute an orchestra; especially when played as
Joseph played it. It gave out a series of squeaks and counter-
squeaks—punctuated and accentuated by his wheezes rather than
by the requirements of the tune. Indeed, a boy learning the bugle,
or a Punch and Judy panpipe, would have discoursed more decorous
music. To me the panpipe and the flageolet seem nearly akin; only
the flageolet is the more powerful instrument of the two, and Punch
is more exacting than we were in the choice of an executant.
Once, as a special favour, I was invited by Joseph to attend a choir
practice. It was before his hand or, I should say, his breath had lost
its cunning; and it took place on this wise. An hour before service
(which on this occasion was actually realised) Joseph took his stand
in the reading desk, flageolet in hand, while a group of apple-
cheeked cottagers—fishermen mainly, and plough-boys—grouped
themselves in my father’s pew below. In one point at any rate
Joseph had anticipated the ritual of later days; he repudiated all
women from his choir. “’Taint no place for ’em,” he’d say; “I wonder
what ’postle Paul ’d think, if he could ha’ heard they two women at
S. Matthew’s screechin’ out ‘O ’twas a joyful sound to hear’—and
none of us, let alone the choir, privileged to put in a joyful sound
along wi ’em. If women baint allowed to preach in Church, stands
to reason that they baint allowed to sing.”
“Now boys, turn to ‘Aurelia,’ and go for to remember that we sing
the whole on’t right through this time. Last time as ever we did it
some on you took to skipping and one sang one verse and t’other
the next, whereby I had to blow myself nigh faint to hide your
discordance. And mind ye too, sing ’en slow, not as if you wanted to
get shot on’t.”
All went well at the first rehearsal, for Joseph played the air
distinctly and without disturbing flourishes—only with an intolerable
drawl, mindful in all probability of “passon’s” injunctions; of which
more anon.
“Well sung,” says he; “you be a good choir when you be so minded;
and well instructed, too, though I says it as didn’t ought to. Now
then, we’ll see what ye can do when I puts in the flourishes.”
This was a change for the worse, and what had been a melancholy
dirge became a haphazard scramble for notes, each boy seizing on
the one that he could detect among the enveloping flourishes,
regardless whether it was the same note that had found favour with
his neighbour. In the end the hymn became a sacrilegious fugue,
devoid of time, harmony or sequence. Yet Joseph was never
disquieted at the result. On the contrary, he regarded it as a tribute
to his skill, addressing his choir at the finish as a general might
address his discomfited troops: “You’ve done your best, and none of
us can’t do no more. Better luck at church-time, and this I do say,
that ’tis few players can overlay a melody as I can wi’ flourishes and
expect them as sings it to pick out the tune.”
But to return to our Rector. The fun began (I write, remember, as a
boy of ten) with the First Lesson. When the time for it approached,
great preparations were seen to be in progress. Our benevolent
Archbishop retired into the recesses of the reading desk (a high,
square pew, scarcely to be differentiated from our own) and
disposed his lunch in orderly array upon the sill overhanging my
father’s head. And, to give time for its consumption, a boy was
summoned from the congregation—usually it was his own son, a
curly-pated lad of thirteen—to discourse the Lesson. Manfully he
grappled with the difficulties and hard names of the Old Testament—
sticking and halting at nothing, and making a record of false
quantities and mispronunciations that I have never heard beaten
during a twenty years’ experience of the average undergraduate.
Meanwhile his father lunched peacefully, careless what havoc he
made with the Kings of Israel and Judah. But woe betide the boy if
ever he tried to skip a name. A guttural rebuke issued from the
depths of the reading desk: “None of that, Jack; go back, my lad,
and try it again.”
But his greatest delight of all was to hear Jack struggling with the
genealogy in St. Luke. A series of chuckles issued from the corner
where the old man lay ensconced, that gathered in volume with
every fresh fall; and when the boy, hot and discomfited, retired from
the fray, there was a pause in the proceedings till the old man had
recovered himself sufficiently to resume his functions. His luncheon
meanwhile had been progressing steadily, not without the gurgling
sound of something comforting to facilitate digestion. It puzzled me
for years to discover the raison d’ être of this extraordinary meal,
knowing as I did that an hour later he would be dining with one of
his cottagers, after careful preliminary enquiry as to which house
could offer the most attractive fare. Only quite lately, long after the
idea of luncheon had been stereotyped upon my brain, I found out
that the so-called luncheon was, after all, no luncheon at all, but
only a retarded breakfast. Our Rector being a late riser, and having
a five-mile walk before him, could find no opportunity of taking it in
comfort till he had reached the haven of the parish reading desk.
A cigar was the indispensable accompaniment of the second Lesson,
during which period its fumes could be seen ascending like “curling
incense” to the blackened rafters of the roof. Indeed, the only thing
that ever really shattered my father’s equanimity was the sight of its
reeking end, projected over his head from the sill of the reading
desk, where the Rector had reluctantly placed it while he applied
himself to the requirements of the “Benedictus.”
When the flageolet sounded the key note of the first hymn, the
Rector regarded it as the signal of a temporary relaxation. He was
for a time off duty, and the cigar was again in requisition. But in fine
and balmy weather, he found the atmosphere of the church too close
for its enjoyment. It “gathered sweetness from the open air.” So,
attired in surplice, stole and bands, our Rector strolled out into the
churchyard—giving us pleasant little vista-views of his enjoyment as
he passed and re-passed the windows of the aisles. That it might be
enjoyed in perfection and unto the end, the hymns selected were
inordinately long. But, if fate was against him, and the wind light,
and the cigar drew slowly, he had no false shame in appearing on
the chancel steps to announce with all the dignity of a formal notice
that the last two verses of the hymn would be repeated. After which
he disappeared into the churchyard again.
The sermon was to me, as a boy, full of the most delightful interest.
It had an infinity of anticipation. No one knew what was coming—
least of all the Rector himself. We felt stimulated by the chance of
any and every possibility. A clergyman of the strictest sect of the
Evangelicals, he always preached in a surplice. (It was in the days,
remember, when the Geneva gown was the badge of that school,
and the sign of a high church cleric was barely appearing above the
horizon).
But I sadly fear that our Rector was influenced by no question of
principle or non-principle; I cannot, I think, be wronging him if I
infer that his preference for the surplice was due to sheer
indifference or indolence.
Then came the always exciting task of moving the immense Bible
from the reading desk to the pulpit. He regarded it, I think, almost
in the light of a fetish, and certainly, so long as I knew him, would
never have attempted a sermon with any smaller and less
trustworthy guide. He balanced the enormous volume in his right
hand, and, with his left hand on the rails, steadied himself as he
made the painful and perilous ascent. The hope, I fear, of us boys
was that the book would one day slip from his hand and imperil the
head of the clerk beneath, who was now no longer choirmaster, but,
like a Roman flute player, had crossed over to his proper seat and
resumed his duties beneath the pulpit. But the hope was never
realised, and I have felt ever since that my life has lacked something
in consequence.
The choice of his text was the longest part of his sermon. The Bible
was opened haphazard, as though he intended to execute a sort of
sors Vergiliana. But so casual a method was quite unsuited to the
dignity of our Rector. The pages were turned and re-turned; whole
chapters were read and carefully studied, and, after a quarter of an
hour of this preliminary investigation, a text was given out, that for
glaring irrelevance and disconnection with everything else could
never have been surpassed if he had taken it at sight. A name out
of a genealogy—the Christian name Mary—Tophet—the daubed wall
—pillows for all armholes—are among the subjects that I distinctly
remember were selected for our edification. But of the treatment
alas! I remember nothing—nothing then, and certainly nothing now,
when I would give £50 to trace the exact process of his reasoning.
The last sermon I ever heard him deliver was on the text, “And there
shall be no more sea”—an unwise and disquieting subject for a
congregation, most of whom came of a race of fishermen, and
gained their living from the element which he so confidently
annihilated.
“If there baint no sea, then ’tis no place for I,” I heard a man say to
his neighbour as he passed out of church; “and sakes alive, where
be ’en going to get their fish from?”
Such was our Rector. Not reverent or discreet, you will say, in his
capacity of priest. No, but a kindly, genial old man; devoted to his
parishioners, if not to his duties; clever too, and companionable in
society, and inexhaustible to the boys of the parish in the matter of
marbles and gingerbread.
It is with affection that I recall him, for, in spite of his eccentricities,
and perhaps because of them, I loved him well.—R.I.P.

Echoes from an Organ Loft

“Pale fingers moved upon the keys,
The ghost hands of past centuries.”

From Joseph’s flageolet to one of the finest organs in England—from

the scene of “our Rector’s” ministrations to a building that could
have swallowed up his church and his school room and all the house
property in his parish—was a startling transition for a boy of
fourteen.
I wonder how often, during my first experience of a cathedral
service, my thoughts travelled back to the tiny hamlet in the west,
with its ruined chancel on which the Atlantic had spent its rage, and
its few cottages straggling on and up behind an avenue of elms, to
where the new church, safe in a sheltered paradise of its own, looks
down compassionately upon the wreckage of the past.
In times to come I got to know every nook and corner of the great
organ loft at K. It was built in those large minded days before
architects had conceived the fatal idea of economising space.
Ascending by a broad staircase that rose with the dignity of an
inclined plane, you came out upon a plateau, roomier and more
comfortable than many a London flat. The sanctum of the organist
—indeed, the huge instrument itself—were little more than incidents
of the loft. There was a chamber for the wife of the dean, and
another chamber for the wife of the organist, together with a library
for the Church music; and still there was room in it for blind man’s
buff—when the choristers could get the chance.
The organ itself might have been a mile away—so little did you hear
of it. In this respect the loft resembled the deck of a battleship,
where the men who work the guns hear least of the explosion. Only
a few muttered growls from the big pipes that lined the walls on
either side, or burrowed in the caverns underneath, suggested the
proximity of sound. The crash of the full organ was delivered at a
point far above your head, somewhere among the shadowy outlines
of the roof.
The space allotted to the dean’s wife on the other side of the organ
was less comfortable than ours, but far more interesting. The floor
outside her enclosure was broken by yawning chasms to give the
great pipes breathing room; and though they were of wood, and
spoke, as wooden pipes should speak, in hollow muffled tones, they
must, I fancy, have confused her devotions and raised a small
hurricane about the nape of her neck.
Linking the present to the past were the names of by-gone
choristers, carved in schoolboy fashion upon the old oak panels, who
had sung their last note a hundred years ago—it might be in this
very gallery. It was easy to picture them passing and re-passing still
through the trap door which opened at our feet—a white robed
procession of the voiceless dead.
An organ loft is a delightfully irresponsible place from which to take
part in a service, especially when the instrument is a large one, well
removed from the congregation on the top of a screen—above all,
when you do not happen to be the organist.
I would not for an instant be understood to imply that the sense of
aloofness necessarily engenders irreverence. On the contrary, many
of the most solemn hours of my life were passed within the recesses
of the great organ at K., and my friend the organist might have been
a pattern to the congregation in true devotional spirit. But the
necessities imposed by a choral service afforded him little
opportunity for a devotional attitude, while he would have been
more, or less, than human if he had not utilised our isolation to
impart to me pleasant little details regarding the progress of the
service. These would be interrupted at intervals by parenthetical
instructions whenever he wanted help in the management of his
stops.
A reminiscence of an organ-loft monologue would read something as
follows: “Draw the Gamba, please. How flat that boy Robinson’s
singing; and oh! those h’s of his! Principal, please, and now the
mixtures. Green’s getting shaky in his top notes; he only looked at
that upper G. Take care; you put in that coupler before I had
finished the bar. What a nuisance it is! I shall never get a boy like
him . . . The finest hymn written, don’t you think? (They were
singing Stainer’s ‘Saints of God’) . . . and ‘Aurelia’ is the second
best. (Well done! Joseph, I thought; you’re in it after all.) Get me
Wely’s Offertoire in G, will you? It’s poor stuff, but the people will
have it. The Oboe, please, for the air . . . And now for the scramble
. . . Turn over in good time; I can see ahead of me, but I can’t see
through the page.” And he dashed into the finale at the hurricane
pace that alone makes the thing endurable. Even he couldn’t talk till
it was done.
Sometimes we were interested in events that were proceeding in the
world beneath us. “What on earth’s the man reading the fifteenth
for? it’s the sixteenth that’s the lesson for the day.” “Oh, it’s
Henderson,” would be my reply. “He always chooses a fine chapter
to show off his voice and elocution. If he’s hauled up for it, he’ll say
he did it by mistake.”
On one occasion we were favoured by a reader, fresh from the study
of Aristophanes, with the startling announcement that the First
Lesson for the day was taken from the Book of Ecclesiazusae.
One day I heard voices in the choir beneath. I knew, before I saw
the speakers reflected from the mirror in front of me, that they were
two limp figures in blue serge and coal-scuttle bonnets. The strident
tones were unmistakeable, the product, in so far as the human
throat can compass it, of a long and careful assimilation of the clash
of the cymbals.
“A rare fine buildin’, this,” said one, “and what a hinstrument! I only
wish we ’ad it in our place; draw a sight better than drums and
cymbals, wouldn’t it? And a deal noisier.”
“You’re right,” answered the other, “but, for all that, I wouldn’t
exchange with that lot to get it. They deans and chapters and
canons, and heaven knows what they calls theirselves, aye, and the
bisshup hisself, is that sunk in ignorance and self-conceit that they
can’t see the right way; no, nor never will.”
Occasionally, but very rarely, matters went wrong in our own
department. The water that fed the hydraulic gear failed, or was cut
off at the main, and the organ “went out” in the middle of an
anthem. One afternoon in November it clouded over so suddenly
that we could hardly see our faces in the organ loft. Worse luck still,
the matches were damp, and till I could be back with some more,
Dr. H. had to guess at the anthem as best he could. I am not
musician enough to know how he surmounted the difficulty, but I
suspect that the choir that day must have been treated to an
amount of improvisation to which they were wholly unaccustomed
from an organist who, as a rule, played what he had to play, and
rarely indulged in vagaries.
But our worst disaster was of earlier date. Bildad the Shuhite blew
the organ. He had received that name because he cleaned shoes in
a corner of the Close. It was in prehistoric days before hydraulic
gear was dreamed of in connexion with the organ. As luck would
have it, Bildad fell sick, and had to supply a deputy at the last
moment. Dr. H. studied the man carefully, mistrusting, I think, his
intelligence. But his answers were satisfactory, though I thought
with the Doctor that he protested too much. Anyhow, the service
was due, and we had no time to waste on our fears. The singing
began, but the organ was irresponsive, and, hurrying to the back of
the loft, I found our deputy-blower contemplating with blank stolidity
the mechanism at his command, and pleading with an injured air,
“Sir, I am a’ waitin’ for you to begin!”
One day I was laboriously extracting discords from the great
instrument with Dr. H. at my elbow, when a gentle voice at our side
asked for permission to try the instrument. What a delight it was,
after the horrors I had been perpetrating, to see the long fingers
charm out the melody, till they drifted at last into the chords of
Chopin’s great march. Surely, I thought, the composer must hear
and welcome such a perfect realisation of his wondrous dream.
“Charrlie, me boy, thry the pey-dals,” came a voice from below, with
the raciest and most captivating of brogues. It was my first
introduction to Ireland’s great musician—Sir Robert Stewart—and his
still greater pupil, composer in prospective of the Requiem and
Revenge.
At our next interview the Professor of the future gave me a friendly
lecture on Wagner, emphasising his teaching the while by illustrative
passages, which he played, I remember, in thick woollen gloves, of
which he hadn’t troubled to divest himself, being pressed for time
and the organ loft none too warm. The mechanism of the organ, I
am bound to add, was old and antiquated—not as it is in these days,
when the notes speak if a fly sits upon them, or you venture to
sneeze in their neighbourhood.
I have made acquaintance with strange scenes in an organ loft—an
organist of surpassing ability playing through a service when he was
drunk, but certainly not incapable. Yet a deputy sat by him, ready to
take his place in case he should prove unequal to retaining his seat
at the instrument. I have seen a fight between two choristers who
had been sent to fetch music for the choir. It began on this wise. “I
can lick you ’ead over ’eels in ’oly ’oly ’oly,” said one. The taunt was
not to be endured by a chorister of spirit, so “Come on!” said the
other; and they had fought it out to the bitter end at the back of the
organ before ever Dr. H. was aware that the battle was in progress.
I have seen courtship too—ending, as all courtship should do, in
matrimony—while the organist played unsuspiciously a soft and
dreamy accompaniment. And I have seen heroism too—grand as
any displayed upon a field of battle—when my friend came from his
sick bed and played through a service magnificently while the death
dew gathered on his face. And I coveted, as I never coveted before
or since, the divine gift of music, which would have enabled me to
spare him his long and patient hour of martyrdom.
And, at the end, he played the Dead March, never knowing that it
was for himself he played it, while a furious thunder-storm raged
over head, and the roll of the thirty-two-foot pipes was drowned by
reverberating peals. As the final chords came crashing from his
hands, he said to me, “Handel must have written it, I think, to an
accompaniment like this. And yet the modern school of organists
would have us leave out the drums! I shall never care to play it
again.”
And three weeks afterwards he was dead.

Fighting the Cholera

Was it an escapade, I wonder? or was it something greater and
grander? There are, I suppose, escapades good and bad; heroic
and unheroic.
One evening I was tidying up Ronald’s room at Cambridge. We were
both of us in residence now: I as an M.A., while he had just entered
as an undergraduate. He was as studiously untidy as I was the
reverse, and, but for me, his room, artistic as it was, would always
have looked like a boudoir that had been used over-night for a tap-
room. Pipes, tobacco, and matches met the eye everywhere,
scattered among vases of flowers and ferns; no two sheets of the
Times were together in one place; “Esmond” lay cheek by jowl with
“Tom Jones” (the former, I was glad to see, the better worn), while
there was more than a suspicion that his surplice was in use as a
bed for a litter of kittens.
Ronald himself lay at his ease upon the sofa, watching—I cannot say
with interest, but at any rate without prejudice—my improvements
for the worse. But I roused him at last. In replacing a small box of
Italian olive wood I knocked off the lid, and an aggregation of
articles unimaginable were scattered on the floor.
“Hullo! stop that, old man,” he said. “You’ll be losing or breaking
some of my most cherished possessions.”
“What on earth are they, Ronald? Here’s a small crucifix and a
missal (you haven’t turned Roman Catholic, have you?) and any
amount of rings—most of them brass—and, by Jove, a lock of hair!
Is the last a love token? It looks uncommonly like the relic of
another escapade. Did it belong to the girl who played the
harmonium on the beach at Bayview? I didn’t know you’d got so far
as that. Besides, her hair was light, if I remember. Out with it, old
man, and clear your conscience by confession.”
“Have done with your jokes, Fred; you’re the last fellow to chaff like
that if you knew the rights of it. And, if I must tell you, I must. But
I didn’t want you to know of the matter; it looks too much like
boasting. However, you find out everything I do; so I may as well
tell you all about this, before you hunt it up for yourself in some
underhand way, or make a tale out of it that isn’t the true one. You
know Richards, Fred; the man my uncle made me travel with last
autumn—to see the world, as he called it. I never liked the fellow,
and always thought him a cad; but I didn’t know till then that he
was a coward as well as a cad.”
“I always thought him both,” was my reply.
“Taormina in Sicily was one of the places we stopped at: the loveliest
spot that you could dream of, if you dreamed your hardest. You’ve
never been there, have you? Well: the town itself is a fair day’s walk
up hill from the sea, and Mola’s another day’s walk above that; by
which time you’ve nearly reached the clouds—only, as it happens,
Sicily doesn’t boast of any. But you needn’t go higher than Taormina
for the loveliest view on earth. They may talk of seeing Madrid,
Seville, Naples, and a hundred other places, and then dying
contented—why, there’s none of them that’s a patch on Taormina.
Sit down in the proscenium of the old theatre, facing Etna, with the
Straits of Messina and the foot of Italy laid out like a map on your
left: and you can do without another view for the rest of your
natural life. The only objection we found to it was that in September
of last year it was most awfully hot, and Taormina is pestiferous
enough to be a Turkish settlement. It is worse, I think, than the old
town of Granada, which is perhaps the filthiest place that I know in
Europe. The cholera, too, was about last year, especially in Italy;
and, if it did cross the Straits, Taormina was ripe and handy for it.
“After we’d been there for a week or so it did come with a
vengeance. First a suspicious case or two, then a case that was not
suspicious at all, and then it fell like a thunderbolt on the town.
Richards was off directly, and with him everyone in the place who
could afford to go; so the poorer people, with their old priest, who
stuck to his work like a man, had it all to themselves.
“Now it looks like boasting, but I didn’t like to run. Besides, I had
come there for a fortnight, and I was fond of the place and the view
and the old theatre—so why go? Anyhow I didn’t budge, and did
what I could to help the old man in his difficulty—it was little
enough. However, I had heaps of money, and they wanted that
more than anything. And he taught me something about medicine—
what little he knew of it; though, after all, nothing but stimulants at
one stage and opium at another seemed to do them the slightest
good.
“What a time it was! I pray that I may never stand face to face with
cholera again. Overhead, a sky like brass, and, veiling the town, a
dusky, steel-blue haze, almost as palpable as gauze: the distinctive
colour (I’ve been told) of a cholera atmosphere. They died like flies,
crowded in their close, evil-smelling dwellings, though we lighted
fires in the streets to clear the air; an idea I borrowed, I believe,
from ‘Old St. Paul’s.’
“Late one evening I hurried from a sick room to get a breath of air in
the theatre below. My friend, the old priest, was there before me.
This was an unusual coincidence, as he scarcely ever gave himself a
moment’s rest. Yet he might have done so now, for in ten days’ time
the disease abated as rapidly as it had begun. And besides, he had
organised a band of fairly efficient helpers.
“‘Good evening, signor,’ he said. ‘You see me in my church; for I find
in it the same relief that my brethren in the cities find within the
walls of a cathedral. To me it would seem a poor exchange—for
what cathedral built by man could match this view?’ As he spoke he
pointed through the ruined arches to where Etna towered in the
distance. Surely the noblest drop-scene ever fashioned by the hand
of nature, and not unworthily framed by the artist who had designed
the theatre. Between the ruined columns on the left a steamer,
environed by a little group of feluccas, made a series of dissolving
views as it overtook and passed them on the sea below. But I saw
he had some trouble on his mind over and above his care for his
patients.
“‘Take courage, padre mio. The worst is over. That shroud of steel-
blue mist is lifting day by day. I should like to know what causes it.
I believe if we had had the power of gauging it, its changes would
have made no bad register of the death-rate in the town.’
“‘You are right, my son; the worst is past; and, thanks mainly to you,
I have been enabled to do my duty while it lasted. Without you I
could have done little. Take an old man’s thanks, signor, on behalf
of those who are left and those who are gone. Neither the one nor
the other will ever forget you, here or in the world that holds them
now. Yet I could almost wish that you had never come.’
“‘Why so?’ I asked.
“‘I wish, at any rate’ (speaking with more vehemence than his
wont), ‘that you had not brought with you that false-hearted friend
of yours.’
“‘You mean Richards. Yes, he is a coward to run away like that.’
“‘Worse, far worse. You know little Ninetta well, who lives at your
lodgings up the hill—the prettiest girl in Taormina they call her, and I
fancy they are right. She is down with the cholera—didn’t you know
it? Taken this morning, and, unless I am wrong in my judgment, it
is one of the worst cases we have had—hopeless, I should say, from
the very first.’
“‘Poor little Ninetta! It does seem hard; taken, too, just when the
disease was dying out. But what has Richards to do with it?’
“‘The confessional is sacred, my friend. But it may be that, in this
one case, the cholera has struck in kindliness. Though I am sorry he
should be away when he might have made her end more peaceful.
Even when I left her to come and find you, she was perpetually
calling for him. Put her off with excuses; it won’t be for long. Don’t
let her think him a coward as well as a villain. If you weren’t a
heretic, I would absolve you beforehand for any necessary evasion.’
“‘You may be sure I’ll do my best. The evasions won’t lie heavy
upon my conscience. Goodnight.’
“There was no hope for her, as he had said. During the early stage
of her illness she was always asking for him—wondering why he
stayed away—for I obeyed the priest’s injunctions, and never told
her he’d been coward enough to run. As she got worse, she began
to wander, and, from having seen us so often together, she would
confuse him with me; and, at the last, was perfectly happy so long
as I was with her; calling me by his name, and thanking him, as she
imagined, for all his care and kindness to her. The lock of hair that
puzzled you is hers. She gave it to me just before she died (she had
nothing else to give, poor girl) in the belief she was giving it to
Richards. And then, quite quietly, still in the belief that he was with
her, and that it was his hand and not mine that she was holding, she
died.
“There you have the story, Fred, such as it is. All the other things
were given me by the villagers—the few of them, that is, who lived—
all except the missal, which came from my old friend the priest. It
was his most cherished possession; given, I believe, in the hope of
converting me. Well, if conversion would make me another such as
he was, I wouldn’t say no to it.
“Shall I ever see him again, I wonder? Some day, Fred, you and I
will go and hunt him up.”

Ronald’s Courtship
I

I HAVE been looking through all my old letters to-night. It is a

strange sensation in these days, when the shuttle spins so fast, to
re-read the letters between childhood and manhood. All details
seem softened, viewed through the haze of time. Human nature
was (or so it seems to one) so much kindlier then than now. What
pleasant ghosts are raised by these old letters; what touches that
one missed in them in the hurried, feverish days when they were
written! In so very many cases, too, the hands that penned them
are still. I have come upon one from Ronald, written when he was
just twenty-five. It is singularly devoid of romance, compared with
many of the others, and has “brisked me up” considerably, when I
was verging on melancholia.

“Dear Fred (it runs),

“I shall want you for a wedding a month hence. Guess the
name of the happy lady. No more escapades from—Yours
respectably,
“Ronald.”

Who was she? and how had he managed it? were the questions I
asked myself at the time. Somehow or other, I couldn’t imagine
Ronald proposing to his lady-love in a conventional, Christianlike
way. True, time had sobered him considerably. He was now a
handsome young fellow, living quietly and sedately with his uncle at
Broadwater; not easy to recognise as the lad who had discomfited
an itinerant preacher, and played the stable-boy on the race-course
at Bayview. But the spirit of Bohemianism dies hard, and I was
possessed with the idea that, even in the act of “placing himself” for
life, Ronald would make opportunity for a final fling. He was having
a really bad time of it with his uncle, and, in spite of occasional
outbursts, when the Viking blood got the better of him, had been
fairly amenable to discipline. The old man, I know, must have been
a constant thorn in his flesh; very selfish, and very dogmatic on all
points, especially politics. If he could have reasoned logically
himself, or have listened to reason in others, he would have been
less objectionable. But he formed his opinions on grounds as strictly
illogical as does the average woman, and, to do him justice, never
abandoned them. For example:
“What a grand speech that was of Gladstone’s yesterday, Ronald!”
“Do you think so, sir? It seemed a trifle commonplace to me in
comparison with Dizzy’s reply.”
“Pshaw! Dizzy’s no speaker at all compared with him.”
“Did you ever hear him, sir?”
“Never—and don’t want to.”
“Then you have read his speeches, sir?”
“Never—and I hope I never may.”
This was his recognised line of argument (Heaven save the mark!)
on all topics. Yet to differ from any of his conclusions was a most
serious offence, which Ronald in time learned how to avoid. His own
part in a conversation became limited to a series of characterless
phrases—“Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Of course, sir”—which passed muster
as entirely satisfactory. Occasionally, it is true, they were flavoured
with a salt of sarcasm, but as this only rebounded harmlessly,
without piercing his uncle’s pachydermatous hide, the peace was
seldom broken between them. Outsiders were less merciful.
“Growing a trifle dogmatical is Heyward, isn’t he?”—one club
member would say to another—when a theory, accepted obediently
by my uncle’s household, had been thrust a little prematurely down
a stranger’s throat. “But there: he’s getting on in years—sixty, I
should say, if he’s a day—and we shall all of us like our own way
then. Indeed, youngsters like it too, as a Master of Trinity found
with his junior Fellows. ‘Not one of us is infallible,’ he said to them,
‘not even the youngest.’”
It was a gentlemanly face, was old Heyward’s, though, if you
happened to be a judge of faces, you would probably have added “a
weak one.” Yes, and—No. Not strong, certainly, in intellect or
knowledge, though the features are scored with deep-cut lines, that
might be mistaken by the casual observer for traces of reflective
thought. But lines traced by the hand of intellect ennoble and
brighten the face, even in the act of carving it; these had only
soured and embittered it. Such strength as they show is the
strength of a dogged persistency, which clings to an opinion, right or
wrong, because it admits no counter argument, and always carries
its point by a process of blank obstructiveness. But each victory
thus gained is of the nature of a defeat, narrowing and confining the
soul still more within its self-imposed limits, deafening it to the
interests of an outer world, and to the joys and sorrows of humanity
at large.
His sister was a tall, angular woman, with thin, compressed lips and
a cold, grey eye, betokening a far more active and aggressive will.
But probably no two people were ever more entirely in harmony, till
Ronald sowed dissension between them. Even dissimilarities, in
their case, became points of agreement. For instance, the uncle
read much and forgot all that he read, while she read nothing and
had consequently nothing to forget. Then again, they were united in
their devotion to comfort, for which each required the other. Wider
forms of attachment they ignored and dispensed with, as
unprofitable for the furtherance of the main issue. Friends, servants,
animals, who were found detrimental, simply disappeared without
comment, as unobtrusively as did the obnoxious teachers in Madame
Beck’s famous pensionnat in the Rue Fossette.
In the art of “nagging” our uncle was supreme, bearing out Sarah
Grand’s theory that women are nowhere in this province, which has
been reckoned peculiarly their own. Curling himself up gracefully in
his favourite armchair, and lighting a cigar, he would prepare himself
to enjoy it. Sometimes the attack would be sudden and wanting in
delicacy.
“Ronald, I wish you could manage to be down in time for dinner.”
Ronald, be it observed, had been five minutes late, but yet five
minutes prior to its announcement by the butler.
“My tie was so infern—intolerably hard to fasten, sir. I must get a
Jemima.”
“A Jemima!” shouted the uncle—scandalised at the idea of Ronald
contemplating the introduction of some rustic handmaid—“What on
earth do you mean?”
“A hand-made tie, sir.” (The pun is yours, old man, not mine.
Besides, the uncle wouldn’t have seen it, even if he’d given me the
chance.—R.)
A mollified pause of ten minutes. The next time he would preface
his thrust with a feint, to throw Ronald off his guard.
“What a wonderfully nice young fellow Carter is. Gets himself up as
if he were living in town. I do like to see a fellow wear a tall hat on
Sunday; it’s far and away more respectable than a round one.”
Ronald was incorrigible in this respect, and became as the deaf
adder.
Five minutes’ grace.
“How that fellow Stanton did talk at dinner; one couldn’t get a word
in edgeways. By-the-by, I think you talk a little too freely, Ronald, to
men older and wiser than yourself.”
“Semper ego auditor tantum?” muttered Ronald.
“What is it you are saying, Ronald? I do wish you would speak up.”
“I said I would only listen in future, sir. Nunquamne reponam?” (the
latter sotto voce).
“There you are—muttering again.”
“I was only saying I wished I could write a book, sir.”
Miss Heyward couldn’t hold a candle to her brother in this particular
department. She lacked altogether the delicacy of “finesse” which is
essential to its development, and, strange to say, possessed in a
high degree by people of feeble intelligence. But she seconded him
bravely in cases where temper and determination would serve its
purpose. Here it was to advocate stronger measures, and hers was
the master mind. She was not without a suspicion that time and
reiteration had blunted the edge of her brother’s innuendo. When
therefore she was called in for consultation, Ronald knew that it
betokened a definite and concerted campaign. He would be sent to
Coventry, or fed on roast pork, and specialities that his soul
abhorred, or (but for his age) have been whipped. Finally, and in
the last resort, his pocket money would be docked—a punishment
that was known to be effective. Spending little upon himself, he had
always a band of pensioners who were dependent on him for
assistance. So it was through them that he could most surely be
reached. “Seething the kid in the mother’s milk,” as we are told in
‘Kenilworth,’ is an occupation that offers a wide field to the ingenuity
of the inventive.
“Two’s company and three’s none,” muttered Ronald, when, on
entering a room suddenly, he found an animated conversation drop
suddenly into silence, while an echo of his own escapades and
iniquities lingered in the air.

II

A strange and melancholy life it was for a lad of Ronald’s

temperament; a strange and incongruous fellowship:

“For East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall
meet”

Yet it had in it one redeeming feature. Only a mile from Broadwater,

in the white house that nestles in the heart of the valley, just visible
to us over a depression in the lulls, lived a young widow of twenty-
eight—Ronald’s dearest friend, and his comforter and consoler
whenever the monotony of existence seemed almost intolerable to
the lad just entering on manhood.
The coalition between Ronald and Mrs. Thorpe was regarded with
extreme disfavour by the uncle. “Making a milksop of the lad,” he
called it sneeringly. But the villagers, one and all of them, were
emphatic in their praise. “A nice couple they’d make,” said old
widow Denvers. “I only hope it may come off, and that I may be
alive to see it. And love each other they do already, unless my old
eyes deceive me. See how he follers her about and well nigh
wusshups the ground she treads on. Why he’d be at Thorpe Hill all
day, if only that old aunt of his didn’t watch him like a cat. Drat
her!”
A feeling of companionship had steadily grown up between them.
The almost daily meetings and constant interchange of ideas had
produced their natural result, and the companionship that had at
first been a pleasure had long become a necessity. Yet, strange to
say, neither had recognised the fact. Ronald himself would have
scouted the idea. Possessed of not a penny in his own rights, and
dependent only on what his uncle allowed him, he would have
ridiculed the notion of asking the richest woman in the county to
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